George Mumford

I also came to realize that you couldn’t solve problems with the same consciousness that created them. It’s only in changing your consciousness that you can solve problems and transform your game, whatever it is and wherever you’re playing it.

The more you practice mindfulness, the more readily you set yourself up to experience conscious flow. Put differently, having a mindfulness practice is like watering your garden; it’s the only way to make things grow.

When you’re faced with a challenge, do you have the mental suppleness and belief in yourself to get quiet, stay connected to that space between stimulus and response, and move forward with right effort?

Through conscious breathing, or what I call Awareness of Breath (AOB), concentration and relaxation coexist.

It is estimated that we take between seventeen thousand and thirty thousand breaths a day—usually without even being aware of a single one of them.

The thing is, if you’re comfortable, and you just want to stay that way, that’s fine. But if you want to pursue excellence and high performance, then you have to be willing to get uncomfortable.

Failure is what you make of it. Failure can be an opportunity. Mistakes are feedback for learning.

The convergence of the principles I’ve outlined—concentration, outcome expectation, visualization, intention and deliberate practice—are the secret of pure performance.

From my experience working with thousands of professional and amateur athletes, the number one reason elite performers succeed, skill and resources being equal, is their desire and *intention* to succeed. Intention is what motivates players to do what they have to do, even if it means pushing themselves out of their comfort zones—in fact, especially if it pushes them out of their comfort zones.

Plato said that a great mind is a grateful mind. To unlock the greatness within, it’s vital that we’re grateful.

To embrace what we fear. To work through it. Is there a more powerful experience in life? This is, indeed, the hero’s journey.

For me, prayer and meditation overlap, but meditation is really about attunement, just letting the spirit flow through me. Prayer has more to do with asking myself to come into alignment with divine will.

Martial arts master Bruce Lee said: ‘I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

No struggle, no swag. That could be the motto for everything we do in life. Without struggle, we don’t grow. Without something to push against, we don’t become stronger. It’s not just a matter of physical strength either. It’s the same for emotional resilience and wisdom. Nothing is worth anything if it’s easy and effortless. It doesn’t mean anything if you don’t pay for it in sweat and blood (literal or metaphorical).

I realized that slow was smooth and smooth is fast, as I would come to teach athletes.