No. 1 Performance Coach: What the Best in the World Know About Success

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Almost everything we tell ourselves is a story, and the story we build around events matters more than the events.

  We have no direct contact with reality. The brain interprets the data coming in through our senses, and it prefers explanations that fit what's already 'loaded in', discarding contradictions. Loehr calls the inner voice the 'command center' that largely determines your destiny: your belief in yourself, your joy and your resilience.

• 02

  A parent's public voice becomes the child's private voice.

  Loehr realized that offhand remarks to his three sons, like 'you're always screwing things up; if I'd had your opportunities I'd have been a star', were being installed as their inner critics, and he stopped 'on a dime'. Parents and coaches get direct access to the space where meaning is made. Under stress, people pass their own parents' voice down. A harsh inner critic means fighting a two-front war, against the world and against yourself.

• 03

  Test your stories against three guidelines: true, aligned with your values, and taking you where you want to go.

  Is the story grounded in objective reality, or just convenient? Does it reflect the best of who you want to be? Does it make you more hopeful about your future, or convince you you're not capable? His benchmark: if your self-talk were shown on a Jumbotron, would you be proud of how you coached yourself?

• 04

  Rewrite a limiting story by hand, repeatedly, and listen to yourself read it.

  After testing visualization and many other methods with a strong faculty, his institute found handwriting changed thinking most durably. Write the new story, rewrite it several times from memory, compare versions, then record it as a voice memo and play it back, so your private voice becomes public. He points to James Pennebaker's research on expressive writing and trauma. His own data suggested handwriting beat typing.

• 05

  Most number-one performers never expected to get there; love of the pursuit came first.

  Of the 17 world number ones he worked with, most were astonished by where they ended up. They had parents who enabled rather than forced them, and coaches who believed in them early. Loehr's own basketball coach, Guy Gibbs, told him, 'I believe in you more than you believe in yourself.' One early coach told a young Novak Djokovic he had the greatest potential she'd ever seen. Success forced on a child by a parent rarely lasts.

• 06

  Who you become in the pursuit matters more than what you achieve.

  Loehr built his career on mental toughness, but noticed that athletes who developed moral and ethical character alongside their sport were the true winners. They also sustained success longer, 'because everyone wanted them to succeed'.

• 07

  Time has value only when it meets energy, and full engagement is the skill of investing that energy.

  At the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy he filmed 240 elite juniors. All arrived on time, yet some got worse through practice because they weren't engaged. He told Stephen Covey's son that time management rests on a faulty premise: four hours at home spent irritable and watching the game can produce 'a reverse return'. Bringing energy when you're low on it is what shows people you care.

• 08

  We're oscillatory beings: chronic stress without recovery is the problem, not stress itself.

  Nothing in human physiology is a flat line 'except death'. To spend a lot of energy, you must recover a lot, through sleep, regular meals, hydration and fitness, since fitter people recover faster. 'Health ignites performance.' The hormones of stress are the hormones of life: surround yourself with marshmallows and pillows and that's all you'll be able to handle. He worked on recovery with surgeons and nurses on 12-hour shifts, and with special forces.

• 09

  Rituals are habits you deliberately acquire to serve your mission.

  Most of our days run on 'the unbearable automaticity of being', habits we never chose. Humans can pause between stimulus and response and rewire, but it takes energy and a purpose strong enough to carry you 'into the storm'. Start with tiny rituals: a fixed wake time, a small breakfast instead of a huge dinner.