Bill Beswick

Take control of your story and own it rather than letting it own you.

The mind is the athlete, the body simply the means.

You can often succeed with limited talent but never with limited attitude. Performance begins in the head, and successful people think differently from unsuccessful people.

He was learning that true strength of character is the ability to do the next right thing over and over again.

It’s good to set outcome goals that stretch and inspire you, but you cannot let them distract you from the process of building the skills that allow you to achieve them. Wanting to achieve is good but remains simply a desire. You have to turn intention into action by working hard on becoming better every single day.

A simple choice determines whether athletes perform at their best when it really counts or fall apart under the expectations of others and fear of failure. Do they see the competition as a threat or a challenge?

As the late Steve Jobs said: ‘That’s been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex—you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.’

The words attributed to Abraham Lincoln — ‘When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion’ — are so true.

Keep asking yourself what your ‘hero’ would do and then find the courage to do it.