Distillations

The Distillation of Michael Jordan

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Driven from within, this was the title of Michael’s book and an important place to start. Michael was never driven “from My Parents, or Driven from my Coaches, or Driven from Money… “ No, the greatest basketball player of all time’s drive came from the only sustainable fuel source there is. Jordan’s drive came from within. 

Every one of the all time greats shared this trait of an insatiable inner drive that propelled them to excellence. They had a deep burning desire within themselves to bring out their greatest potential and do what only THEY could do. This distillation is going to pull back the curtain of the mind behind the most competitive person I’ve ever come across, Michael Jordan. 

“You could argue that Michael Jordan was as good at his job as anyone has ever been at their job, ever, in anything” Mark Vancil.

I COULDN’T HAVE IMAGINED EVERYTHING THAT HAS HAPPENED BUT DREAMS ARE LIKE THAT.

THAT’S WHAT MAKES THE JOURNEY SO INTERESTING.

Put all the work in, and then let the future emerge. It’s what I did on the basketball court. I let the game come to me before I imposed my will. That’s a lot different than forcing the issue because you are worried about an outcome that hasn’t been determined yet. Anything can happen if you are willing to put in the work and remain open to the possibility. Dreams are realized by effort, determination, passion and staying connected to that sense of who you are. 

WHY ME? 

WHY NOT ME?

ALL I KNEW IS THAT I NEVER WANTED TO BE AVERAGE.

“Whatever I was going to do, I wanted to do it my way. I just wanted the freedom to express myself. It wasn’t about trying to be different for the sake of being different. I just wanted to follow what I felt. My father put a challenge in front of me. I knew what he expected, but l expected even more. The expectations I had for myself were beyond my father’s expectations. My thoughts were way beyond the idea of preparing myself for a job so I could be like the guy down the street.”

• The burning desire to go against the grain and be different is embedded in greatness.
  • “With my desire and my drive, I definitely wasn’t normal. Normal people can be happy with a regular life. I was different. I felt there was more to life than just plodding through an average existence.” Arnold Schwarzenegger
  • “There’s no way to quantify all of this on a spreadsheet, but it’s the dream of being the exception.” – Jay Z
  • “The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever seen before.” – Albert Einstein
  • “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” – Robert Frost.
  • “If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” – Maya Angelou

 

I HAD DREAMS. THEY WERE MY DREAMS, AND I HAD NO FEAR OF THEM.

I knew I was going against the grain a fair amount of the time, but I came

to realize that was just part of the process. I know my parents

worried about me amounting to anything, much less someone whose

dreams extended beyond Wilmington, North Carolina. But I wanted

to become more than a slightly better version of somebody else.

I WANTED TO APPLY MY CREATIVITY

TO EVERYTHING I DID.

I wanted others to see me as I saw myself. Fear of failure? Why would

I have any? I didn’t know where my dreams would lead. I had dreams,

but I didn’t have all the pictures, because they didn’t exist. So I could push

ahead with my eyes wide open, take in whatever happened, and move on.

I wasn’t limited by someone else’s view of how my dreams should look.

I Don’t Believe in Following  

“And the process for me has always been pure. It’s been about leading and staying true-authentic-to those fundamental values that flowed downstream from my parents and later Coach Dean Smith… Players who practice hard when no one is paying attention generally play well when everyone is watching. Success at any level can be reverse engineered to reveal the same architecture. THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS. I HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED IN LEADING WITH ACTION, NOT WORDS. And I learned very early to follow my instincts. My standards have always been mine alone. I have never tried to be like somebody else, or live up to the expectations of others. I don’t believe in following.”

 

NOTHING OF VALUE COMES WITHOUT BEING EARNED

That’s why great leaders are those who lead by example first. You can’t demand respect because of a title or a position and expect people to follow. That might work for a little while, but in the long run people respond to what they see. They might even listen, but they usually will act based on the actions of the person talking. I practiced hard every day because I wanted every one of my teammates to know what I expected out of myself. If I took a day off, then I knew they would, too. 

• Michael says when he got to the Olympics and was part of the Dream Team he was blown away by the lack of work ethic he saw from the best players in the world. Their work ethic wasn’t close to his. 

Just like my high school coach, Clifton “Pop” Herring, used to say: “It’s hard, but it’s fair.” I LIVE BY THOSE WORDS

“Working in the fields cropping tobacco, working at McDonald’s, earning money so I could get a car and buy gas–none of that excited me. I figured if I was as good as I could be playing sports, eventually it would pay dividends. I didn’t know how, but my focus was to be the best player in whatever sport I played. That was all I ever thought about.”

• Jordan’s Mom: “More than anything, we tried to stress to Michael to enjoy what he was doing. Have a passion for what you are doing and work hard. If you don’t enjoy what you are doing, then before long you are going to be tired and you won’t find stability. If you have a passion, then you are going to be challenged every day to give your best.
  • This piece of Michael’s success is so important to me. He had the self belief that eventually if he did his best in what he loved it would eventually pay off. This vision is all he ever focused on and he had a true passion for it. 
  • SELF BELIEF-FOCUS-PASSION… 3 critical ingredients for success in life. 
  • “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” ― Elon Musk
  • “There’s nothing I’d rather be doing. I was born to go into business for myself — and I was destined to find a business that would allow me to share with others my enthusiasm for things I find pleasurable.” – Danny Meyer
  • “The trick is finding what you love to do. We talk about hard work all the time. If you gotta get up every morning and remind yourself how hard you have to work you probably need to choose a different profession. That shouldn’t be there. I wake up in the morning excited to get to it. If I am not training I am missing it. There is no place I’d rather be. If you have that feeling then you are doing what you were put on this earth to do.” – Kobe 

 

I WANTED THE FREEDOM TO DO WHAT I WANTED TO DO. AND I WANTED TO DO IT MY WAY.

• “To this day, I don’t enjoy working. I enjoy PLAYING, and figuring out how to connect playing with business. To me, that’s my niche. People talk about my work ethic as a player, but they don’t understand. What appeared to be hard work to others was simply playing for me. We were playing a game. Why not play as hard as you can? There’s no pressure in taking that approach. Play to win. Why else would you play?”
• Naval Ravikant has the great line, “What feels like play to you but work for others?” When you know this you’re onto your passion and purpose. 
• As Adam Robinson says, “The playful state is the powerful state.” When you approach life from a playful state everything becomes more enjoyable. EVERYTHING Jordan does is from this state. If he’s not excited about it (play) then he doesn’t do it. 
• Jordan believes so much in the power of this concept that he even says “that’s my niche.” You have one of the greatest athletes/entrepreneurs of all time and he says his NICHE is making sure his work feels like play. 

“If you are doing something you would do for nothing, then you are on your way to salvation. And if you could drop it in a minute and forget the outcome, you are even further along. And if, while you are doing it, you are transported into another existence, there is no need for you to worry about the future.” – Dr. George Sheehan 

“I don’t consider what I do at the Jordan brand working either, because I have a passion for the brand. I could sit around talking about shoe designs and fashion all day. You ask me to sit in an office and answer emails for eight hours–to me, that is work. When I got to the point of being able to apply my creativity to the game as a player, it expanded my understanding of who I was and what I wanted.” – Jordan 

Wayne Upchurch, StarNews

“Coach Herring was the first one to see in me what I saw in myself…”

• A critical component for someone’s success that is rarely talked about is having a mentor or someone you admire show their belief in you and provide you additional confidence. Jordan had the self belief but it crystalized even further when his high school coach affirmed what Jordan knew. I’ve seen again and again the power of a singular comment early in someone’s career/life and the transforming impact that can have (it can also be devastating if it’s a negative comment). 
• I’ve always said the best advice I ever received in my life was my 7th grade lacrosse coach Bob Turco who said “The only person who can stop Sean Delaney is Sean DeLaney.” This line can be unpacked a great deal but the key was that he had the belief in me that I saw within myself. 

Morning workouts before High school morning workouts before school with Coach Herring 

“MOST DAYS I ENJOYED IT. SOME DAYS I DIDN’T FEEL LIKE GOING. BUT THOSE WERE THE DAYS COACH HERRING WOULD PUSH ME.” 

• “He’d pick me up at 6:30. We’d shoot jump shots, play one-on-one, and work on ball-handling drills because I couldn’t handle the ball at all. We would work for an hour, then I’d shower and go to class. He made this big ol’ poster with all the drills listed, and we went through them every single day. That’s how it got started. Those mornings created a bond between us. He was a great guy, a YMCA kind of guy. He would counsel me on everything in life. He would give you the shirt right off his back and never ask for a thing in return. And he loved challenging me. He’d stay out there as long as I would.” 
  • RELENTLESSLY practicing the FUNDAMENTALS. Not occasionally, but when you feel like it, but every damn day. That’s what the greats do. 
  • People see the highlight reel and think that’s what they need to practice but they have it all wrong. The highlight reel only comes after relentlessly practicing the fundamentals. 

“Just watch me–that was my mentality.”

 

Building Confidence 

“Most of what I did growing up was born out of a desire to be the best player in Wilmington, or the best player in the park that day. I didn’t have any sense of being the best player in the world, or playing in the NBA because I didn’t have any idea what it took. I didn’t even know what it looked like.

BUT I HAD NO DOUBTS OR FEARS BECAUSE I NEVER HAD EXPECTATIONS THAT WERE OUT OF CONTEXT WITH MY SKILL LEVEL. My expectations were very low. I wanted to be the best player at the park in Wilmington. I wanted to be better than my brothers, or the other guys in the neighborhood. These were my expectations: make the varsity team, impress the coach, get a four-year scholarship to a major college. WITH EACH PROGRESSION I GAINED CONFIDENCE.”

• Your expectations MUST match your skill level. Of course you can dream bigger but if you aren’t putting in the work and have unrealistic expectations built on a weak foundation then you’ll never achieve your goals. 
• Once people reach a level of greatness like Jordan, Kobe and Lebron it’s easy to think they had this level of confidence from day 1 but that confidence got built up over years! 
• Free solo rock climber Alex Honnold who is infamous for climbing 3,000 ft vertical rock faces without a rope also touched on this when he said, “I’ve spent 25 years conditioning myself to work in extreme conditions, so of course my brain is different—just as the brain of a monk who has spent years meditating or a taxi driver who has memorized all the streets of a city would be different.” Alex couldn’t have started from day 1 scaling a 3,000 ft rock wall. He started small and built his confidence up over time just like Jordan did. 

The Rise

“I literally came out of nowhere… No one knew I existed.” 

• Coach Herring brought Jordan up to a 5-star basketball camp in Philadelphia between his junior and senior year that changed everything. Prior to this Jordan wasn’t on anyone’s list ranking the top players in the country. Jordan ended up dominating the first week and the director of the camp told Jordan’s parents he had to stay for the second week and that they didn’t even have to pay for it (Jordan’s mom made him give Michael a job washing the dishes to pay for the second week). 
• “I was full of energy after that second week. I thought I must be doing something right. All I wanted to do was to improve, to keep getting better. IT WAS LIKE THE BLOOD STARTED RUSHING. I became a sponge. I got a glimpse of what success looked like. I saw where I fit with the best players in the country, and they were all there: Chris Mullin, Patrick Ewing. That’s when my parents started to believe that this kid could amount to something.”

Proving People Wrong 

“A lot of kids today need reinforcement. They need a pat on the back. Back in those days, if you didn’t get the pat, you better pat yourself and keep moving. At least it was that way for me. And that knowledge helped me understand some things. I told myself that whatever I did in life was going to be done my way. I knew I had to abide by the basic rules–I knew right from wrong. I wanted to be different. When it came time for me to decide on colleges, I had all kinds of people telling me to go to the Air Force Academy, or to a smaller college where I would be assured of playing. I’m saying, “I’VE GOT HIGHER DREAMS THAN THAT. I’m going to North Carolina. I’m going to a place no one else from my town has ever gone. You can say whatever you want, but I’m going. If I have to sit on the bench, at least I’m going to learn how to sit on the bench with the best.” 

• One teacher said, “You’ll be back here in Wilmington pumping gas if you don’t go to the Air Force Academy: “Yeah? We’ll see about that. I WANTED TO PROVE WHAT I COULD DO.”
• There were a lot of doubters when I was deciding on schools. But my father didn’t waver. His position was, “Go for it all. Go for the big one. Go to North Carolina.” 

Coach Dean Smith 

“Coach Dean Smith’s system wasn’t about excelling at one phase of the game. He was about excellence in every phase of the game: scoring, rebounding, passing, playing defense.”

• Coach Smith would challenge you mentally. I remember my first mistake. I went baseline and tried to do a reverse move, and he just yelled, “Where do you think you are? Do you think you’re back at Laney High School? You’re not. You’re in college. Do you think that was a good shot?” Obviously you can’t say yes, He made you think. He never cursed at anybody. He was the perfect guy for me. He kept me humble, but he challenged me. He gave me confidence by giving me compliments when he thought I needed them. But I was totally afraid of Coach Smith, because he was a big name in the state of North Carolina, and I was this kid from a small city. I never even thought about calling him anything other than Coach Smith.”

Practice

• “I focus on the little things. Little things add up to the big things.”
• “It was intimidating the way he controlled practice. I have never seen practice controlled the way it was at North Carolina. Every minute was thought out. If a drill was supposed to end at 3:10, it ended at 3:10, and the next one started (very similar to Bill Walsh)… I was shocked at how he got into practice, how he controlled every minute, how he taught. They made practice challenging, which was right down my alley. They made it fun to learn. When I got to North Carolina, there had only been four freshman starters: Walter Davis, Mike O’Koren, Phil Ford and James Worthy. I just wanted a chance to get out on the floor and make an impact. I’m listening to what the coaches want, and I’m competing my ass off. I’m trying to impress all of them. I’m not trying to con anybody. I’m competing, and I’m trying to earn the highest accolades. I wanted them to know that I listened, that I applied what I was learning, that I worked hard every single day. I wanted them to know I would be the first guy onto the floor and the last one to leave.” 
  • COACHABLE- Jordan had the humility to learn- He’s a sponge trying to learn everything he possibly can. Beginner’s Mind 
  • COMPETITOR- Working hard EVERY SINGLE DAY. Greatness doesn’t take days off. 
    • “For five years, from 1998 to 2003, we did not believe in days off. I had one because of a snowstorm, two more due to the removal of wisdom teeth. Christmas? See you at the pool. Thanksgiving? Pool. Birthdays? Pool. Sponsor obligations? Work them out around practice time.”- Michael Phelps

Chicago Bulls

“I CAME TO CHICAGO WITH NO EXPECTATIONS. NONE. THE ONLY PRESSURE I FELT WHEN I WENT TO THE NBA WAS TO PROVE I DESERVED TO PLAY ON THAT LEVEL. And that was easy because it was a step-by-step process: playing hard every day in practice, playing against veteran teammates, making the starting five, then playing against NBA players in games. No one knew what I was capable of scoring, and no one tried to define me by putting a number to those expectations. No one had in mind what would be acceptable for me. After the first year, the expectations came, but by that time I had positive habits. I had built a foundation for my game, so it wasn’t a surprise to me. I UNDERSTOOD THAT THE REASON I WAS GETTING ATTENTION WAS BECAUSE OF THE WORK I HAD PUT IN UP TO THAT POINT, NOT BECAUSE OF WHAT I HAD DONE TO MEET OTHER PEOPLE’S EXPECTATIONS FOR ME.”

• To Jordan it ALWAYS gets back to the work and internal drive. You can’t fake it and you can’t achieve this level of success without putting in the work and building your foundation based on positive habits. 
• Rod Higgins: You couldn’t help but notice this guy was different from all of us who were already there with the bulls. His practice habits were unmatched. That’s what stood out right away. He comes into the first drill, and usually a rookie has to feel his way through. Not Michael. I don’t think he ever had the mindset of feeling his way through. Whoever was in front of him, Michael was trying to beat that guy. It didn’t matter who it was. He didn’t say a lot initially. But his level of effort, his level of competing stood out. Then the physical attributes were evident. It was right in your face- he couldn’t see any other way of playing. He always wanted to take it to the next level. If the other guys didn’t take their effort up, then Michael had no problem embarrassing them.

 

“You ever see Star Wars? Yoda is this little ugly thing, but he’s the Jedi Master. He’s the guy who taught everybody. Everybody went to Yoda for knowledge. When you sit around talking to any older person who has lived their life to the fullest, they have great stories to tell because they have had great experiences. MICHAEL IS YODA. HE’S ALWAYS BEEN AN OLD SOUL. When I met Michael he was 21 years old, but he wasn’t 21 to me. I was 29 at the time, but he was so mature at such an early age. That’s probably attributable to the education he got from his parents, the education he got from Dean Smith, and then the Olympics with Bobby Knight. He was more mature than the average 21-year-old kid coming into the NBA… I’m still amazed at him, just like everyone else, and I’ve seen the entire show.” – George Koehler (Jordan’s best friend and personal assistant” 

Nike 

 

I DID NOT WANT TO GO TO THE NIKE MEETING.

I DIDN’T KNOW NIKE.

I DIDN’T THINK I LIKED NIKE.

Howard “H” White (Vice President of Jordan Brand for NIKE): I walked up to this meeting, and there was Mr. Jordan, Mrs. Jordan and Michael. Everybody else at that meeting was white. We all kind of hit it off. I saw they wanted something true and real for their son. It was a leap of faith on both sides because Nike was presenting something that hadn’t been done before. At the time, Michael loved Adidas. He wore Converse all through college. Nike was pretty foreign to Michael. The fact is, all Adidas had to do was come close to what Nike proposed, and Michael would have gone with them. They wouldn’t do it. Converse told Michael they had a line of players, and he’d have to wait. It was amazing how it all came together. You can talk about the grand scheme and the grand design, but here was a guy who really wanted to be somewhere else. Finally, when it was all said and done, it just manifested. I don’t know how you reproduce that kind of thing. Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel? I’m sure somebody could do that today, maybe even far better. The paint would be better. The brushes would be better. But would it be the Sistine Chapel? I don’t think so.

THERE IS SOMETHING THAT HAPPENS WHEN SPECIAL PEOPLE COME TOGETHER THAT TAKES IT ALL TO ANOTHER LEVEL.

• You can’t do an analysis and put those pieces together. You can’t draw it up and execute. It’s not the nature of greatness. It’s like Phil Knight looking around the Nike campus and saying, “Yep, this is exactly how I saw it all coming together when I was selling shoes out of the trunk of my car.” No, that’s not how it works.

THAT WAS NIKE’S GOAL: $3 MILLION IN SALES.

THEY BOOKED SOMETHING LIKE $130 MILLION IN THE FIRST YEAR.

 

Moments That Change Everything

• “Our third game of the season we were playing Milwaukee in Chicago, and they used to kill us. We were down nine points going into the fourth quarter. Everybody had just written off the game. Now, Loughery tested me the same way he had tested me in practice. He wanted to see whether I was going to apply that same energy level to a game that looked like it was out of reach. He started running everything through me, and you could feel the game start to change. The crowd started coming alive, and pretty soon nine went to six and six went to two. Next thing you know, we had the lead, and we ended up winning by six points. THAT IS WHEN I CAN HONESTLY SAY I FELT LIKE I HAD EARNED MY STRIPES, AND THE CITY OF CHICAGO STARTED TO BELIEVE WE COULD CHANGE THE FORTUNES OF THE BULLS. NO GAME WAS OVER AS LONG AS I WAS PLAYING ON THE COURT.”
  • Even the greats have little moments that they look back on “the moment” they feel changed everything. 

 

Leading By Example 

“My leadership came from action, all action…I was doing it with effort and work. I wasn’t asking for anything from anyone. My practice habits were GREAT. I forced those other guys to improve their practice habits. I challenged them because Bulls coach Kevin Loughery challenged me. At the end of practice we would scrimmage, and the losers had to run. We’d be killing the second team, and Loughery would stop practice and put me on the second team. We’d still come back to win. Those were the things the other guys started to learn.”

• Howard “H” White: If “The Guy” is going as hard as he can, what excuse can you have? If this guy is going so hard that people are shoving, getting into fights, then what are you going to be? Tired today? Hurt today? It was an outward challenge: If you are going to play with me, you better come with everything you’ve got every single minute. Michael’s a taskmaster, but look at  the example he set. MJ is hard. But he’s hard on himself first.

YOU HAVE TO BE UNCOMPROMISED IN YOUR LEVEL OF COMMITMENT TO WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING OR IT CAN DISAPPEAR AS FAST AS IT APPEARED Some players noticed me because of everything I was doing off the court, and that was the wrong reason to pay attention to me. Pay attention to the way I played the game. Pay attention to my passion. Pay attention to the idea of focusing on improvement every day. Pay attention to my commitment. Commitment cannot be compromised by rewards. Excellence isn’t a one-week or one-year ideal. It’s a constant. There will be days when you don’t feel on top of your game, or meetings in which you aren’t at your best, but your commitment remains constant. No compromises.

 

“SOME PLAYERS LOOK AT ME FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS: MARKETING, ADMIRATION, MONEY MADE OFF THE COURT. They don’t understand the foundation I had to create to support everything that came afterward. They don’t know about lifting weights at 7 A.M., practicing hard every day, finding ways to motivate myself for every game, sitting up half the night with an ankle in a bucket of ice, or hooked up to an electronic stimulation machine. They don’t know anything about those things. WHAT THEY DO KNOW IS THAT I HAVE MY OWN SHOE LINE AND THAT I DID MCDONALD’S COMMERCIALS. In a sense, my experience created a vision that obscured the hard work and commitment.”

• Never confuse the work that has to go in first and continuously in order to receive the “gifts” that are a byproduct of the commitment and sacrifices. 

“When it comes to signing up new talent, that’s what I’m looking for– not just someone who has the skill, but someone built for this life. Someone who has the work ethic, the drive. The gift that Jordan had wasn’t just that he was willing to do the work, but he loved doing it, because he could feel himself getting stronger, ready for anything. He left the game and came back and worked just as hard as he did when he started. He came into the game as Rookie of the Year, and he finished the last playoff game of his career with a shot that won the Bulls their sixth championship. THAT’S THE KIND OF CONSISTENCY THAT YOU CAN ONLY GET BY ADDING DEAD-SERIOUS DISCIPLINE TO WHATEVER TALENT YOU HAVE.”

― Jay-Z, Decoded

 

Uncompromised to The Process 

“My sense of commitment extended beyond the game of basketball. The Jordan brand has continued to grow because we have remained uncompromised. It’s easy to go the other way, though. It’s easy to rest on your laurels, or to get fat on success. I don’t ever want to get fat that way.

When our motorcycle team made. it to the podium for the first time in early 2005, I celebrated that night with the rest of the team. We toasted our success and talked about how far we had come, especially for a non-factor team. But the next day I sent everyone a letter. I wanted them to know I was proud of what we had accomplished, but it was time to move forward. Look around, and just about any person or entity achieving at a high level has the same focus. 

The morning after Tiger Woods rallied to beat Phil Mickelson at the Ford Championship in 2005, he was in the gym by 6:30 to work out. NO LIGHTS, NO CAMERAS, NO GLITZ OR GLAMOR.

UNCOMPROMISED

Work hard so when you get the gifts, they are yours…   

• “Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status.”- Derek Sivers, How to Live 

Michael’s Mom: “It was all about learning that there were choices and responsibilities. Now how are you going to make those choices? Are you going to stand on the corner waiting for somebody to give you something? Or are you going to earn it and deserve it so no one can say you took anything without earning it? Those words went with Michael onto the basketball court. I told him not to wait for anybody to give him anything. Work hard so when you get the gifts, they are yours.”

 

Warren Buffett’s Advice on Decision Making 

I asked him about his decision-making process. “Mr. Buffett, you are very successful, and obviously I have heard a lot about what you have done. What do you think about when you make decisions? What’s your thought process?”

He says, “Not much. Whatever my gut tells me that’s what I do.”

I thought that was pretty wild, because up to that point no decision I made had involved a lot of statistical analysis, or a lot of weighing of the pros and cons. I was just asking myself, “What do you feel?” I JUST FELT GOOD HEARING THAT FROM A GUY LIKE HIM.

• “It’s generally my gut that makes the final decision. If it feels right, I tend to go for it, and if it doesn’t, I back off.” – Sam Walton 
• “I had learned to trust my own instincts, and to make them explicit for others.” – Danny Meyer 
• “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs
• “I rely far more on gut instinct than researching huge amounts of statistics.”-Richard Branson
• “I’ve trusted the still, small voice of intuition my entire life. And, the only time I’ve made mistakes is when I didn’t listen.” – Oprah Winfrey

“ONCE I MADE A DECISION, I DIDN’T THINK ABOUT IT AGAIN.

It was strictly off gut. That’s how I made the decision to go with David Falk; that’s how I evaluated deals before I signed my contracts. If I thought the money was cool, great. I didn’t think about it again from that point forward.”

 

Relentless FOCUS

“I’m very secure in my ability to focus on what I want. If I have an agenda or a goal, no one is going to deter me from what I want to do. When I’m trying to make a statement or prove something, I might joke around with you, but don’t confuse that with changing my motivation.”

Tim Grover (Michael’s longtime trainer): 

• “If one thing separated Michael from every other player, it was his stunning ability to block out everything and everyone else. Nothing got to him; he was ice… I’ve never seen another player form such a perfect boundary around himself, where nothing goes in except what he brings with him.”
• “Michael stayed in the Zone 100 percent of the time, from the moment he left his home or hotel room for the game until the moment he returned late that night. But during that time on the court he was the real and authentic Michael.”
• “Time is external; it dictates what you can and can’t get done… Focus comes from inside you, where no one else can control it.”

The Effort Never Changes 

“ I played in front of 8,000 people a night in the beginning, and that never determined how hard I played. It’s easy when 18,000 show up, and every game is sold out. It’s not hard to find your motivation in that environment. I was playing when the Stadium was half empty, and my effort was exactly the same.”

It was so easy for me to find ways to motivate myself. It didn’t matter whether it was the seventh game of a playoff series or the 60th game of another season. I know it’s easy to be analytical after the fact and come up with all these wild theories, but my driving force, my passion,

was to impress people with what I could do. That got me through those dog days. It wasn’t about scoring titles, or any of those kind of accolades. The most important thing I learned from my father was the passion to prove what I was capable of doing. It was just that simple. It’s not brain surgery. If I go to New Jersey for Game 56, we were probably expected to win the game by 30 points in those days. But that never dawned on me.

IT WAS THE IDEA SOMEBODY MIGHT BE SITTING THERE WHO HAD NEVER SEEN MICHAEL JORDAN PLAY.

I thought about that person who had never experienced the excitement or entertainment I could provide. That would be the thought that drove me to play that game. My motivation might come from somewhere else the next night. I had to search out and find reasons to play every game at a high level.

The best came out because you find that little bit of strength when you keep going inside, looking for it. That’s determination and focus- the idea that he wasn’t going to give up until he had given his last. That’s life. GIVE IT YOUR BEST, AND ALL THE OTHER THINGS WILL COME TO YOU.

 

“I know the signs of scaredness.”- MJ

HOWARD “H” WHITE: When you get to the idea of the highest vision of one’s self, that’s spirituality in its fullest expression. There aren’t many people who see themselves in that kind of light. It’s hard for a lot of people to see through difficult moments. Not for Michael.

Howard “H” White: Go back to any religion, and the core principle is that God is within us. If you take an orange, all you have is a sphere, a round piece of fruit. If you take the peel off, then you have something to eat, something that can nourish you. And inside that you have seeds that you can plant so you can eat forever. That’s essentially who we are, but we rarely get to the seeds because we spend so much time focusing on the exterior. Rarely do people get to those seeds that can light up the world. MJ saw himself as far more than what others said about him. Now, this is the interesting part. He became able to see himself. The true art of meditation: is being able to look out past all the words, actions and events, and back in at yourself. The responsibility is vast for those who can do that. Michael not only played up to the expectations of people, but he exceeded our expectations for him. 

To be great in athletics, your opponents have to have the idea that they have to play their very best. Everybody understood what Michael Jordan was bringing to the table. Again, it could have been a game, a shoe or anything else, but Michael was bringing everything he had all the time. When the other side knows it has to be prepared to give its very best at every moment, they often. stumble. It’s unnatural to play that way, particularly against someone who is simply expressing who he is in that moment. Michael didn’t have to think about anything. The way he played was who he was. It was self-expression in its purest form. So once Michael starts making things happen, the other guy figures he has to try harder. Michael was Michael. He never had to think about playing harder or lifting his game.

(Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images)

The Dream Team

“The 1992 Barcelona Olympics was one of the best times in my life. You’re talking about the greatest players in the world, guys who’d had every story written about how great they were, all the things they could do and had done on the basketball court. 

All I thought about was, “I have to see all this for myself. I want to see what these guys are all about.” That was my motivation for going to the Olympic Games in 1992. I had won a gold medal in 1984; we were coming off back-to-back titles; and I was exhausted with all the business commitments. But I had to see these guys for myself. 

I’d played against them, but I wanted to see how they practiced. I wanted to see if Clyde Drexler, Karl Malone. David Robinson and the rest of them were competitive. The best part of the whole thing turned out to be the practices. All we did was line up and play. We were all stars out there. We didn’t need anybody to stand above everybody else. We’d been playing ball all our lives. We knew who we were. 

Chuck Daly? He’d just say, “Come on, let’s get a hard hour or two in. Let’s get loose.” That’s all he did. He didn’t coach. He didn’t call fouls. He just threw the ball out there. You had more people watching those practices, from Rod Thorn to David Stern, local media, foreign media. The games were competitive as hell. It was up and down the court. We had 12 players, but John Stockton had broken his leg. Christian Laettner was on the team, but he was still in college, and no one would let him in the games. We played five-on-five. If Magic got off to a good start, or anyone else, the talking would start: “This is what’s going to happen next year.”

These were the teams: Me and Scottie Pippen. Chris Mullin, Larry Bird and Patrick Ewing. That was our five. They had Magic, Drexler, Malone, Charles Barkley and Robinson. We whipped their ass every day. 

In Monte Carlo, we got into the most heated match of the entire time. Magic was telling us how great the Lakers were and how Showtime was the best basketball. Me and Pippen are listening on the way to practice, and we say, “OK, we’re going to show you what these new kids are all about.” Larry’s back was hurting, so all he wanted was to get a good run in. Me and Magic talked trash back and forth all day. I was guarding him, and I’m saying, “You don’t have Kareem now. You got to do it all yourself.” At the other end, he was guarding me, and if I blew by him, I’d be trash-talking: “You don’t have Michael Cooper out here now. This isn’t your old team.” 

We beat them so bad that when the game was over, Magic said, “We ain’t leaving. We got to keep playing. Scottie and I looked at Bird, and we said, “‘We’re ready to go.” Magic said, “Why you ready to go?” And we said, “Because there isn’t any competition here.” Then Pip, who was the biggest instigator, started singing, “Sometimes I dream.”

Magic didn’t speak to us for two days.

You could never say, “I can’t” around our family. How do you know you can’t? Go try it–that was a slogan for us. If you try, then you can’t fail. You have failed if you don’t try. You only have one life. Don’t allow somebody else to live that life for you.

 

AUTHENTICITY

IS ABOUT BEING TRUE

TO WHO YOU ARE

EVEN WHEN EVERYONE ELSE WANTS YOU

TO BE SOMEONE ELSE

That doesn’t mean you don’t have to play fair or conduct yourself in a respectful manner. But it’s a lot harder to become the best you can be when you’re focused on trying to be the best version of someone else.

There’s nothing authentic in that, and if it’s not authentic, then it’s not going to last.

“Escape competition through authenticity.” – Naval Ravikant 

I’VE NEVER BEEN WORRIED ABOUT ANYONE’S PERCEPTION

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. I’VE NEVER ALLOWED ANYONE’S

OPINION TO DEFINE ME. I’M COMFORTABLE WITH WHO I AM.

I TRUST MYSELF.

Baseball

FRED WHITFIELD I can remember going down to the White Sox facility in Chicago with Michael. He was trying to improve the strength in his forearm. THERE WERE 100 SHEETS OF NEWSPAPER IN A PILE, AND THEY HAD HIM GRABBING A SHEET, BALLING IT UP

IN ONE HAND, THROWING IT IN THE TRASH. I WATCHED HIM DO THAT FOR HOURS. GEORGE KOEHLER What Michael did to get himself ready to play baseball was grueling. He would get up every morning and go to the complex in Sarasota where the White Sox had spring training. It was early, way ahead of the other players. The hitting instructor was Walt Hriniak. Michael would go into the cage and take what baseball players called flips. Walt would flip the ball, and Michael would swing the bat, knocking the ball into the cage. He would do that for an hour to 90 minutes. Then the team would show up, and Michael would go through the regular practice, which ran about three hours. Then he would talk to the media for a few minutes before going back out for another half-hour to an hour, taking more flips. If you haven’t swung a baseball bat in a while and decided to pick one up and swing it for 15 minutes, your hands would have blisters. His hands were so raw from taking flips that the calluses would rip open every day. When he came off the field, I don’t know how he could have held anything, much less a bat. The trainers would put a clear, rubberized patch over the inside of his hands. Then they would wrap his hands in gauze and tape. HE LOOKED LIKE A PRIZEFIGHTER. The next morning, Michael was back in the cage, swinging a baseball bat for hours. And he never missed a day. Not only did he not miss a day, but he never said a word about his hands. The trainers knew because they were the ones patching them up every day, but Michael never said a thing.

 

The Return to The Court 

WHEN I CAME BACK, I DIDN’T HAVE TO TELL

ANYONE ANYTHING. I SHOWED THEM.

I let my actions speak for me. I didn’t have to tell Steve Kerr what his role was on those Bulls teams. I didn’t have to tell Scottie or Dennis what I expected of them. They could see what I expected of myself went beyond the normal expectation. My expectation was excellence each and every time I stepped on the court. Whether it was practice or a game, I was there to win. I didn’t have any other agenda, and they knew that.

The Mind

“What holds people back? Sometimes it’s the fear of succeeding, and they don’t even know it. There is a part of us that is so self-conscious that it keeps many people from reaching a destiny that they don’t even know is out there. That’s the part we fight to overcome every day. I remember being at the gym with Michael, and there was this businessman, very successful. He wanted to get back in shape, and he’s laying on the board doing some inverted situps. The guy starts talking about how he’s getting cramps, and he stops. Michael tells him he has to find a way to get past the pain if he really wants to get back into shape. The guy walks around a little while, comes back, and finally does another set. 

Then Michael said, “The mind will play tricks on you. The mind was telling you that you couldn’t go any further. The mind was telling you how much it hurt. The mind was telling you to do these things to keep you from reaching your goal. But you have to see past that, turn it all off if you are going to get where you want to be. Michael was telling this guy about Michael Jordan. He was describing the things that hold all of us back, those things Michael found a way to get past.”- Howard H. White 

 

Michael Jordan credits George Mumford with transforming his on-court leadership of the Bulls, helping Jordan lead the team to six NBA championships. Mumford also helped Kobe Bryant, Andrew Bynum, and Lamar Odom and countless other NBA players turn around their games. 

• When it comes to being a mindful athlete, there are “five superpowers”: Mindfulness, concentration, insight, right effort, and trust.

‘’I visualized where I wanted to be, what kind of player I wanted to become. I knew exactly where I wanted to go, and I focused on getting there.” – MJ

No Fear 

THERE WAS NEVER ANY FEAR FOR ME, NO FEAR OF FAILURE. IF I MISS A SHOT, SO WHAT?

Maybe even a shot that could have won a game. I can deal with that. If I don’t miss the shot, then I don’t miss it–we win. I can rationalize the fact there are only two outcomes: You either make it, or you miss it. I could think that way because I knew I had earned the opportunity to take that shot, I had put in all the work, not only in that particular game, but in practice every day. If I missed, then it wasn’t meant to be. That simple. It wasn’t because the effort wasn’t there. It wasn’t because I couldn’t make the shot, because I had taken the same shot many times in every situation. As soon as the ball went up, there weren’t any nerves because I had trained myself for that situation. I was as prepared as I could possibly have been for that moment. I couldn’t go back and practice a little harder. I knew I had done the right things to prepare myself for that situation. One way or another, I knew I was prepared to be successful. 

Now, if you know you haven’t prepared correctly, or you know you haven’t worked hard enough, that’s when other thoughts and emotions creep into your mind. That’s stress. That’s fear.

It’s the same process for doing anything, anywhere in life no matter how big or small the stage. Whether it’s running a corporation, taking a test in second grade or taking a shot to win a game, at that moment you are the sum total of all the work you have put in, nothing more and nothing less. If you are confident you have done everything possible to prepare yourself, then there is nothing to fear.

THERE’S NO STRESS IN LOSING UNDER

THOSE CIRCUMSTANCES.

IT JUST WASN’T MEANT

TO BE.

I want to allow whatever is going to happen to happen at its own rhythm.

 

I WOULD WAKE UP IN THE MORNING

THINKING

“OK HOW AM I GOING TO ATTACK TODAY?”

“I truly hate having discussions about who would win one-on-one. You heard fans saying, ‘Hey Kobe, you’d beat Michael one-on-one’ and I feel like, yo, what you get from me is from him. I don’t get five championships here without him. ‘Cause he guided me so much and gave me so much great advice.” — Kobe Bryant

 

IN ALL HONESTY, I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S AHEAD

If you ask me what I’m going to do in five years, I can’t tell you. This moment? Now that’s a different story. I know what I’m doing moment to moment, but I have no idea what’s ahead. I’m so connected to this moment that I don’t make assumptions about what might come next, because I don’t want to lose touch with the present. Once you make assumptions about something that might happen, or might not happen, then you open up the possibility of making mistakes. You start limiting the potential outcomes. I don’t make assumptions. I know what I know, and I deal with my life based on what’s happening right now.

 

Additional Reading 

The Mindful Athlete by George Mumford 

The Distillation of Phil Jackson 

Eleven Rings by Phil Jackson