what the rgeats can teach us about greatness
They all share the same philosophy on mindset.
The people who make it are the people who think they can.
I’ve been listening to those at the top of their class discuss how they got to where they are for years, and the commonality they all share is their focus on a mindset of greatness.
In a recent interview after Game 1 of the 2019 NBA Finals, Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors answered a reporter’s question asking him to justify his claim that he is the “best defender ever.”
“If you’re trying to do something meaningful, and you don’t have the mindset that you’re the best ever, you’ve failed already. That’s been my mindset since I can remember: That I am the best ever at what I do. … And that will give me a shot at being the best.”
— Draymond Green
Draymond Green playing for Michigan State University, 2011.
J. Cole on the final track Last Call of his second mix-tape, the Warm Up, discusses his hunger for being the best:
“Look, all he wanted was a record deal, so when he got it he just faded, but hey, tell me what’s a deal when you want to be the greatest? So, Jay, I appreciate it, it’s a hell of a stepping stone, I wonder if he sees in my eyes I wanna get the throne, Wonder if the people know how many nights I spend alone, Making beats, writing rhymes, thinking deep, fighting time, Getting better, but wasn’t getting younger, And all that time could make the most confident guy wonder, But never doubt it or allow that stuff to phase me yo, Just switch my thoughts up like the stations on the radio. Now I am…”
J. Cole circa 2006, in a freestyle video he made wearing a shirt that says “Produce for Jay-Z or Die Trying.” He was signed by Jay-Z’s Roc Nation 3 years later.
Muhammad Ali, famous for his rock solid mindset and self-confidence, preached the importance of self-belief more than anyone. He said:
“I am the greatest. I said that even before I knew I was.”
-Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali vs. Sonny Liston, 1965. Photo by Neil Lefer.
Mindset is indisputably powerful. If these quotes show us anything, it’s that to achieve greatness, you need to believe you can be the greatest.
The connection between our thoughts and our outcomes is something I learned at around age 10 as a gymnast. Our coaches got us into the habit of lying down before our balance beam routines at competitions, closing our eyes and imagining ourselves completing a perfect beam routine, sticking it and being the greatest we could possibly be in that moment.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that this process of manifestation through thinking is exactly what so many of these ‘self-improvement tools’ — meditation, yoga, positive thinking, journalling, etc — are trying to get you to do. Despite all the hype around these practices, many of us tend to dismiss the importance of refining our mindset:
What difference can 10 minutes of closing my eyes and breathing in the morning make? Does anyone actually journal? Who has time for manifestation?
But the reality is that meditation, journalling, visualization, etc. are simply tools which help your mind crawl into an isolated state where it can imagine you being the greatest at whatever you’re trying to do — whether that be the best yoga teacher, investor, hockey player, writer, student, or anything else.
The reason that so few make it is because so few are able to hold on to this greatness mindset for the duration necessary to become the greatest. J. Cole dropped three full mix-tapes and was making music for nearly 10 years before he got signed by Jay-Z. Draymond Green was bullied when he first started playing basketball by older kids who tried to stuff him in garbage bins near the court he played on. Muhammad Ali did not have any astounding physical gifts making him particularly suited to fight, but he had something no one else did — complete faith in himself. Greatness takes time. It takes many nights spent alone, as J. Cole puts it in his verse of Last Call above. It takes patience, it takes endurance — endurance that must be trained, practiced, and developed. Endurance that most people don’t have.
When we were building endurance as little gymnasts, we used to have to do something called cardio floor routines (they were just as painful as they sound). For these routines, instead of doing our usual tumbling passes (which already demanded a remarkable amount of athletic endurance), our coaches would pause the music in the middle of our routines and we’d have to sprint across the floor 3–5 times, then immediately resume our routine, panting. Sometimes, our coaches would even have us do three of these burn-out routines in a row, no matter how tired we were. Why? Because to be the greatest we could be, we needed to develop the endurance to avoid burning out by the end of our routines. We needed the endurance to perform at the end of our routines just as powerfully, excitedly and purposefully as we did when we got into our starting position, waiting for the music to start. And cardio floor routines worked! Because when you train yourself to be an endurance athlete, the things that wear others out can’t touch you. And, similarly, when you train yourself to be an endurance thinker, you won’t get tired and quit right away or, worse, get lazy and slowly start to slack off without you noticing until you’ve ‘faded away’.
Aly Raisman’s Olympic gold medal-winning floor routine in 2012. This is just one of her four tumbling passes in that routine. Endurance is not optional!
Ultimately, if you want to be the greatest at what you do, you must treat your mindset as if its your most important tool to get there. Sharpen it daily with visualization and positive psychology. Read about outliers in the fields you’re interested in. Ask people consistently excelling around you what they think about before they compete or perform. Find what keeps you in a good headspace and practice that daily.
The quality and consistency of your thoughts will be the primary factor in determining how far you go. No one says it better than Ali himself:
If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it — then I can achieve it.
-Muhammad Ali.