Winning

The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

Tim S. Grover, Shari Wenk

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781398501942
• eBook ISBN: 9781398501928
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Sports Psychology
• Index: Psychology

‘Tim Grover’s teachings completely changed how I approached my professional career, helping me navigate the constant ups and downs that sport at the highest level brings.’ Marcus Rashford, MBE
From the elite performance coach for Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade and many others - and the author of the powerful bestseller Relentless - a no-holds-barred formula for winning that is ideal for business people, athletes and anybody wanting to achieve success.

In Relentless, Tim Grover showed that you need to be tough and ruthless - towards others and yourself - to achieve your goals. Now, in Winning he takes that skill repertoire to an even higher level, demonstrating why he is one of the world’s most sought-after mindset experts. Based on three decades of work with elite competitors like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade, Winning challenges you to destroy every obstacle in your path, even if, at the moment of greatest triumph, it may be all taken away.

Whether you’re an athlete striving to win, an entrepreneur building a business, a CEO managing an empire, a salesperson looking to close a deal, or a high achiever determined to stand in the winner’s circle, Winning offers thirteen key principles for ramping up your performance to the maximum. If you’re addicted to the taste of success and crave more, then you’re ready for the results-driven performance formula found here. And if you’re already winning and want to learn how to execute excellence repeatedly - so you can own not just this moment, but the next, and the next - then Winning is for you.

#1. WINNING MAKES YOU DIFFERENT, AND DIFFERENT SCARES PEOPLE

When I was training Michael, we set up a schedule that had him training on game days. This was unheard of at the time, and I heard about that from everyone. Work out on game days? You’ll screw up his shot! He’ll be fatigued! He’ll be less athletic!

Working out makes you less athletic?

We saw it differently.

Think about it. He played three to four games a week, plus travel days, plus practice, plus rest days. When was he supposed to train?

No one really had an answer for that, because daily workouts were not the norm in the NBA at that time, nor were they a high priority. Very few players were on a regular training regimen, especially during the season, and none brought in someone from outside the organization to train them. MJ was the first, when he hired me.

Remember, he brought me in specifically to add muscle and power to his body, because he knew it would help him get past the bigger, stronger players who were physically beating him on the court. As his game elevated, so did the physical intensity he faced from every opponent, and he realized that to get to the next level and win, he had to do something different. The Bulls had a conditioning program for their players, but he wanted—and needed—more.

He was my first professional athlete: The world’s greatest basketball player was working with a trainer who had never trained a pro. Improbable? Yes. Crazy? Maybe. But crazy—combined with the willingness to take a chance—is the secret weapon of Winning, and we both had an impressive arsenal of crazy.

If you think like everyone else, if you act like everyone else, if you follow the same protocols and traditions and habits like everyone else, guess what: You’ll be like everyone else.

Everyone wanted to be like Mike.

Mike did not want to be like anyone else.

Which led us to training on game days.

If our goal was to continuously add muscle and make him stronger—as well as minimize injuries and preserve his longevity—it would have been counterproductive to ignore his training every time he had a game. Believe me, I studied and researched and tested him and looked at every possible variable that could impact his performance. We kept every game day consistent—trained the same muscles, did the same kind of workout, accounted for every component that might affect his shot and his endurance, eliminated as many of those variables as we could, so his body became prepared to play under the same conditions, regardless of the game schedule. It became such a part of his routine that when we didn’t work out, he’d feel the difference and comment, “Something doesn’t feel right.”

Bottom line, it worked for him, and obviously the results spoke so clearly that I never had to respond to everyone who said it wouldn’t work at all.

It was never about being different for the sake of being different, or generating publicity, or trying to look clever and progressive.

It was about understanding the difference between knowing how to think, and being told what to think.

Winners engage their minds and experiences to create new levels of greatness. I’m not just talking about athletes here, I’m talking about innovators and groundbreakers in business, entertainment, science, technology, education, medicine, parenting… every walk of life. Bill Gates personally checking every line of code for the first five years of Microsoft’s existence. Jeff Bezos shipping books out of his garage. Sara Blakely cutting the feet off her pantyhose. Elon Musk gazing up at Mars. They weren’t afraid to think originally, they weren’t worried about what others would think about their “crazy” ideas. That whole BS about thinking outside the box is just that: BS. Winners don’t see the box. They see possibilities. They use their own decisions, successes, and failures as a springboard to elevate their thinking and results.

Every great creation and invention started with people who knew how to think and didn’t allow themselves to be told what to think. If you want to get to the elite level, this is what sets you apart. If you follow the textbook exactly, if you always do it the “normal” way, you can be very good at what you do. But what happens when there’s a glitch or an unforeseeable issue that the textbook didn’t cover? How do you manage when nothing is “normal”? People love to talk about “pivoting” in hard times—making a fast shift in a different direction—but you have to pivot and move toward something, you can’t keep changing direction just to change direction. And unless you know how to think for yourself, you’re just going to keep pivoting back and forth, this way and that way, waiting for someone to save you. Waiting to be told what to think.

If I gave you a piece of paper with a thousand dots, and told you to connect them, how would you attack that challenge? Would you form a picture of something recognizable? Would you create random shapes and designs? Would it look like a crazy doodle? Would you just tear it up?

Those dots are your map of the race to greatness. You can go in a straight line, you can chart your own course, you can wander aimlessly. You can ask others how to get where you’re going. You can quit.

For me, those dots are about watching how a winner moves, and figuring out how I can make him move better. I know how everyone else sees him, can I see him differently? Can I take him in another direction? Can I make him fly? That’s the artwork I see in those dots, the result of everything I’ve learned from others and elevated with my own knowledge. I know there’s already a picture out there telling me what to do. I don’t want that. I want to create my own.

Winning watches to see if you’re confident and bold enough to believe that “different” isn’t wrong. It’s the difference between lighting your own fire and waiting for someone to light it for you. To me, curiosity is the spark that lights that fire. I have a habit of staring at people, not to be rude, but to study and learn about them. I know it can make others uncomfortable, which is not my intention, but I believe it makes me good at what I do; I’d rather observe someone closely than rely on what I’m told.

Are you asking questions? Do you allow your mind to wander into new possibilities and scenarios, no matter how far-fetched and unattainable they might seem, like you did when you were a kid? Kids understand curiosity. They see something interesting and they have to play with it, eat it, throw it… they can’t leave it alone. For a few minutes, it’s the greatest thing they’ve ever known, until an adult comes along and takes it away. They’ll ask question after question after question… until the adult can’t take it anymore and tells them to stop asking so many questions.

That was MJ and me in the beginning of our relationship. There was so much I wanted to know, so much I knew I could learn from him. I’d ask about everything, until he finally said, “Man, you ask so many questions.” I kept on asking. I already knew what I was supposed to think about him, and I knew what everyone else thought about him. I needed to know more than that.

Kobe did the same thing with him; he’d call or text Michael in the middle of the night asking how he played against a certain guy, how he handled a situation, what he thought about this or that. And Michael would always answer his questions, and help him learn. That’s a major trait of the greats, by the way: They want to pass along their knowledge, so the next generation can keep learning.

That’s the difference between competing and winning.

I hear this all the time from my corporate clients: “We know how to compete. Now we need to learn how to win.” It’s not always the same thing.

When you know what to think, you’re ready to compete. When you know how to think, you’re ready to win.

Your education teaches you what to think. Life experience teaches you how to think. In school, you’re tested after you learn. In life, the test comes before you learn.

Coaches and bosses tell you what to think. Doing the work tells you how to think.

Your parents show you what to think. Adulthood shows you how to think… if you’re open to learning.

If you follow a recipe for the perfect chocolate cake, you’ll get that exact cake because you were told what to do. But after you’ve made it a few times, maybe you start thinking of a way to make it even more perfect, so you change something in the recipe. And you were right; it turned out even better. That’s about how to think, not what to think.

You can go into a big chain restaurant, order the mac and cheese, and have complete confidence that you’ll find the exact same meal in a hundred other locations, prepared exactly the same way. There’s a system in place, with procedures and guidelines, and if you’re in charge of preparing that dish, you don’t have the option to think of a better way to make it.

Master chefs have countless ways to make that dish, never the same way twice. How to think, not what to think.

Thinking for yourself creates independence, which many of the self-help “experts” out there dread, despite their promises to the contrary. Why? The more you think for yourself, the less you’ll need the “experts.” If you’re always reading self-help books and listening to motivational talkers and following inspirational geniuses on social media and podcasts, if you can’t make a decision without consulting mentors and masterminds… you’re being told what to think. You’re being told, I’m successful, this is how I did it, this is what I believe, so you should believe it too. And it all makes sense, sounds so good, so you accept it as truth. But how do you know? Are you experiencing it? Using it? Are you staying with it long enough to fully absorb what you’re learning, or are you jumping ahead to the next hot thing? Are you putting action behind all that advice, so you can find out for yourself? You may be getting a lot of great guidance and knowledge, but it’s always going to be someone else’s knowledge, until you question it, adapt it, and find out for yourself if it works for you.

Kobe used to say, “Knowledge is power.” And I’d tell him: “Only if you use it.” He definitely used it.

And yes, I know this applies to me and my books and the ideas I share with you, and if this topic makes you stop and think about how to adapt what I told you and apply it differently to your own life, then I’m doing my job. I want you to question what I believe. It’s precisely the reason some readers griped that Relentless didn’t tell them what to do.

I’m not going to tell you what to do. I’m not going to tell you what to think. I want you to learn HOW to think, to become involved in the process of learning so you can create your own ideas and thoughts, answer your own questions, and know how to create solutions when others don’t even understand the issues.

I work with my sports and business clients the same way when we’re working on mental toughness and focus. At first, most want to talk every week, with a standing appointment. But I don’t work that way, because to me, that’s just waiting to be told what to do, every week at the same time. Oh good, it’s Tuesday, now I can deal with this issue I should have handled five days ago but instead I waited for my scheduled call with Tim. We’ll still talk on a regular basis, but not just because we’re “supposed to.” I want them thinking for themselves, working on their own abilities to make decisions and manage issues. I want to see them create ways to win, and execute those ideas without running them by me first. That’s how you learn to think for yourself.

Sometimes when clients are on a hot streak, I don’t want to talk to them at all. My total communication with them might be a look or a nod, and many times, that says it all. They already know and feel things are going well; I don’t want to alter their thinking. We don’t need to discuss what’s going right, they just need to keep doing it.

Everyone looks for the “key” to Winning, like you can carry it in your pocket and pop it into a lock. There is no key; it’s a combination vault of infinite numbers and infinite outcomes, with rusted, decayed dials that barely move, and digits that have been rubbed bare by countless desperate fingers trying to turn them in their favor.

Most people will solve some of the combination, but they give up trying to figure out the rest and settle for what they have. A select few will keep fiddling with the dials, hoping to get those last couple of numbers.

But if you stay with it long enough, if you can elevate your thinking and your expertise to a level that allows you to figure out the complete combination, you can bust the lock on Winning’s heavily guarded fortress.

And while you’re celebrating, Winning is already changing the combination.

For me, the challenge has always been about working that combination so I can find new ways to make great competitors even greater. I can’t get them there by applying the same techniques everyone else uses, because we’re not talking about getting 10 percent better or 5 percent better. The goal is .0001 percent better, because these performers are already among the best at what they do. Consider an athlete like Michael Phelps, for example, who won twenty-three Olympic gold medals (and twenty-eight medals overall) by finding ways to shave a hundredth of a second off his times. You can’t achieve that by training and thinking like everyone else, you have to be innovative and dedicated enough to go where others can’t or won’t. So when I’m working with a competitor who is so elite that he’s literally competing against himself, I have to combine all the research and teachings and data, add the unique component of his specific needs and challenges, and create solutions that are unique to him.

When I was training MJ, the Bulls’ strength coach asked why I had him doing bicep curls. The theory was that biceps were just for show and didn’t really make someone a better basketball player. And that was probably true. But we were going for that .0001 percent, which included the intimidation factor of his bigger, stronger, more dominant physique. What’s the first thing you see on a basketball player when he takes off his warm-ups? Those arms.

Details matter.

It works the same in business. Look at a company where everyone has the same training, the same procedures, the same rules and regulations, the same products and services to sell. Everyone represents the same name on the logo. But some will excel, above and beyond, because they advanced their skills and their thinking. That’s the difference between learning what is handed to you, and understanding how to build on that.

Winning requires you to learn, question what you learned, and then learn more. You have to be willing to challenge what you’ve been taught, and learn it again with a different perspective. Everything I’ve done with my clients has ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• The Chase
• The Language of Winning
• The Winning 13
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• About Shari Lesser Wenk
• Copyright