Focus on What You Control: How Tom Brady’s Mindset Shift Made Him the Best
During his second year at Michigan, Tom Brady was thinking about transferring.
He was third string and feared he wasn’t getting the opportunity to show off his talents.
“I would complain all the time,” he said, “that the guys ahead of me were getting more opportunity than I was.”
“In practice, the starter would get 20 [repetitions]. The backup would get ten. And I would get two.”
So his coach had him talk with a sports psychologist at Michigan, Greg Harden.
“How can I ever get better? All these guys get all the reps and I only get two,” Brady told Harden.
What Harden said would change Brady’s life forever.
Harden said, “Just go in there and focus on the two that you’ve got. Make them as perfect as you possibly can.”
And that’s exactly what Brady did.
“I’d sprint in there like it was Super Bowl XLIX,” he said. Even though he only had two reps, he made the most of those reps. He brought enthusiasm and energy and he performed.
“It went from two reps to getting four reps because those two were pretty good,” Brady said. “Then I had four good reps, then I got ten good reps.”
Eventually, his teammates named him team captain and he won the starting quarterback role, leading Michigan to a comeback win in the Citrus Bowl.
Your Favorite Topic Ever
Harden’s guidance to Brady reminds me of the best advice I ever got on public speaking:
Bring enthusiasm.
My mentor told me, “No matter what the topic is, when you get up there to present, it’s your favorite topic ever.”
It shows. When you’re nervous or uncertain, you come off as unpleasant. And no one wants to see that.
But when you’re confident and enthusiastic, you come off as interesting and exciting. And everyone wants to see that.
Just by changing your demeanor, you can improve your performance.
Reversing the Formula
In life as it is in public speaking and football, we tend to follow a simple formula.
We tell ourselves, “Once I’m successful I’ll be happy.”
Once I get a raise, once I have a boyfriend or girlfriend, once I win the starting role—then I’ll be happy.
But, psychologists are finding that it’s the other way around.
As Shawn Achor explained in The Happiness Advantage, “Your brain at positive performs significantly better than at negative, neutral, or stressed.”
“Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise.”
It is easy to get down about what’s wrong. We complain that we have a boring job or that we constantly feel lethargic.
We look for our environment to change so that we can finally be happy.
But that’s the wrong way to look at it.
If we can “reverse the formula”, as Achor puts it, “If we can find a way of becoming positive in the present, then we’re able to work harder, faster, and more intelligently.”
Success follows happiness, not the other way around.
As Brady said, “Whenever you get an opportunity, you take advantage of it, you treat it like it’s the Super Bowl. You go out there and treat practice like no one else does.”
And success will follow.
