Jeff Heggie Daily Success Strategies
166: The Mind of a Champion
What is a mind of a champion?
I love analyzing the success and failure of athletes because what happens in sports can translate over to all areas of our lives
As I have studied the power of mindset, I have spent a lot of time comparing those with a growth mindset with those with a fixed mindset.
A Fixed Mindset essentially means that you believe the attributes and abilities of yourself and others are inherently fixed and unchanging.
With a Growth Mindset you tend to see yours and others level of intelligence, skill, talent, and success as a starting level with the capacity to grow.
In High Achievers Mindset Secrets I help you to identify your own mindset and also show you how to change it to help you achieve your goals and dreams.
Today I want to look at how athletes with different mindsets look at success and failure and how we can learn from them.
Success
Those with the growth mindset found success in doing their best, in learning, and improving.
They put a lot of focus on their effort:
Jackie Joyner-Kersee said, "I don’t mind losing as long as I see improvement, or I feel I’ve done as well as I possibly could. If I lose, I just go back to the track and work some more.”
If you listen to interviews with Tiger Woods after a defeat, his focus was on the effort he had put into it.
For those with a fixed mindset:
Success is about establishing their superiority
Showing that they are worthier than the nobodies
Unlike Woods, those with a fixed mindset don’t look at effort as something to be proud of, rather, Effort is something that casts doubt on their ability or talent.
Failure
Those with the growth mindset found setbacks motivating. They’re informative. They’re a wake-up call
When Michael Jordan came out of retirement, the first season was a wake-up call for him.
He said, “you can’t leave and think you can come back and dominate this game. I will be physically and mentally prepared from now on."
Jordan embraced his failures.
My brother has Michael Jordan poster in his office that I love, it shows he embraces his failures.
It says, “I’ve missed more than nine thousand shots. I’ve lost almost three hundred games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed.”
You can be sure that each time, he went back and practiced the shot a hundred times.
In the book, Relentless, Tim Grover talks about Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant’s crazy work ethic.
After a loss they would be in the gym working on their game at crazy times for hours on end.
That’s why they were champions
On the other hand, those with a fixed mindset look at failures and setbacks as labels
They interpret a failure as, “I am a failure.”
People with a growth mindset take charge of the process that brings them success
Those with a fixed-mindset look for their natural talents and abilities to carry them through and find reasons or excuses for their failures.
