If you’ve ever come across me, you know that Kobe Bryant is my favorite athlete of all time. It is no secret that ever since I was 5 I looked up to him and was inspired by him. Part of the reason I chose sport psychology was because I wanted to understand his mentality and wanted to help other athletes gain the same mental strength. While his talent is undisputable he is often discredited because of his attitude and personal life, but in all honestly his attitude is one of the reasons that I look up to him the most. His attitude is the reason he is the monumental success that he is now, and whether you love him or hate him, he is still respected. I have watched countless hours of film, interviews and documentaries on my idol and wanted to share a few of my favorite lessons that have changed the way I see myself and my drive for success. I could honestly post 100s of quotes and lessons so I decided to break this into my first series.
- Break it into pieces-
“ In 2003, I was going through the Colorado situation, and it was very tough. I had to ask myself what I wanted to accomplish. I want to keep my family together. Have to focus on that. I’m a good basketball player: I want more championships. Focus on that. Every endorsement I had, they dropped me. Every marketing person said, “You can’t be fixed.” So I start chopping the problem into smaller pieces, and I focus on them. What else are you going to do?”
Life happens and it’s not always easy and sometimes your problems seem bigger than you can ever handle. It’s so easy sometimes to feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders and you can never get it off. The more you focus on the problems in full, the more impossible it seems to overcome. If you take the time to break your problems in to smaller more manageable pieces then your problems will no longer seem so huge. Take everything one step at a time and you will be amazed how much easier solving your problems will be, one day you’ll look back maybe they won’t even so big.
- Never stop learning-
“It’s really about wanting to learn and feeling like your cup is always empty, because there’s always more that you can fill it with. That’s really the important thing and just continuing to learn, learn, learn.”
To be successful you must continually want to feed your brain, grow your knowledge. The sooner you can admit that you don’t know everything and that there is always more you can learn or become more proficient at. It’s so easy to believe once you’ve reached certain levels of success and obtained some achievements you know all that is needed to be known. That is not the case, there is always more you can learn and always places for you to grow. You need to be hungry for knowledge and constantly strive to get better at your craft.
- Reflect with purpose
“I’m reflective only in the sense that I learn to move forward. I reflect with a purpose.”
It’s natural to look back on our past and want to dissect everything that happened. Reflection is useless if you do not use your past to help prevent the same problems or duplicate the same success in the future. This is really simple but often over looked. Focus on your past only with the sole purpose of making your future better. Focusing on the past for any other reason is a waste of your future.
TO BE CONTINUED…
A. B. mentality 