Relentless

It’s 1989.

Michael Jordan hasn’t won a championship yet and he’s tired of being pushed around by the Detroit Pistons “Bad Boys” aggressive style of basketball. He was looking to get stronger.

Tim Grover was a trainer in Chicago. For years, he tried to get in touch with the Chicago Bulls’ staff to work with the team. He figured he might as well try to reach out to Jordan himself.

Long story short, he got a meeting. Pitched his plan. Jordan said it was too good to be true. He gave him 30 days to prove himself. They worked together for 15 years.

The book walks us through what Grover learned from him and his other athletes about how to succeed at the VERY highest levels of competitive sports and, of course, what he taught them.

Rule #1?

Relentless commitment to being the absolute best you can possibly be.

As in R E L E N T L E S S.

Dictionary definition: “oppressively constant; incessant: the relentless heat of the desert.”

Let’s focus on the word “incessant.” Specifically, the Latin root of the word. It’s from “in– ‘not’ + cessant– ‘ceasing.’” As in, not (ever) ceasing. RELENTLESS.

All of which reminds me of an ever-present (shall we say an “incessant”? ;) theme of my chats with Phil Stutz. He says that we need to embrace a “ceaseless immersion” in the battle against Part X and, essentially, have a RELENTLESS commitment to doing our best.

And, the whole conversation about being relentlessly COMMITTED to being our best vs. the whole “Meh, whatever. I’m good enough.” alternative reminds me of Ben Bergeron’s Chasing Excellence. He teaches us the twelve character traits of his CrossFit Champions. Stuff like Grit, Positivity, Embracing Adversity, etc.

But do you remember his FIRST characteristic? It’s COMMITMENT. You have to move (way!) beyond “Meh, I’m good enough.” and go ALL IN on being your best.

How?

Relentlessly.

What would that look like for YOU??!

Welcome to the first trait of being Relentless: “You keep pushing yourself harder when everyone else has had enough.”

btw: The book is organized around Grover’s “Relentless 13”—which is awesome for two reasons: 1) He has 13 to make it clear that he doesn’t believe in luck (hah!); and 2) All 13 traits are “#1”—as in, no #2, #3, etc.; thirteen #1’s. They’re ALL essential. :)

btw2: The sub-title of the book, as we’ve discussed, is “From Good to Great to Unstoppable.” Grover calls the “Good” guys (and gals) “Coolers” while he calls the “Great” guys “Closers.” The “Unstoppable” among us? He calls those “Cleaners.” They just clean up. All day. Every day.

So… Back to the first #1.

When I read the passage about not doing what needs to get done today, then not doing what needs to get done the next day, etc. etc.—aggregating and compounding all those moments of lack of integrity into one big mess, I thought of Stuart Wilde and his wisdom on the fact that we need to DOMINATE our lives.

Let’s review how he puts it in Infinite Self: “Another discipline I have found particularly important is to establish order in your life. Messy surroundings and an untidy life reflect a weakened metaphysical and psychological state. If you are powerful, you will dominate your life, you will find time to clean up and order things, and you will want to do that as a part of your personal discipline. Mess is the external manifestation of the ego’s disquiet and laziness.”

Yep. We need to dominate our lives. Like Cleaners. The way Byron Katie does her dishes.

Note: The line right after the passage above? “Cleaners do the hardest things first, just to show there’s no task too big.” ← Reminds me of Brian Tracy’s Eat That Frog—which is a book based on EXACTLY that idea. Tracy tells us: “Your ‘frog’ is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it now. It is also the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your life and results at the moment.”

Bergeron echoes this in Chasing Excellence: “Confidence is what happens when you make the most challenging keys to success part of the daily grind and stick with the character traits unwaveringly.”

So, for our purposes today, let’s boil it all down to this: What are you avoiding in your life? Is today (now?) a good time to go hammer it?

Let’s clean up the mess. Do. The. Work. And dominate. Relentlessly. #ribbbit

P.S. I love the way Grover talks about reducing options. Reminds me of Optimizing Algorithms 101. Specifically, the idea of letting Optimus write our algorithms and then simply being a good, well-programmed Optibot. (Any algorithms need Optimizing in your life today?)

P.P.S. Here’s another way he puts it: “I want you in a routine, and I don’t want that routine to vary, whether it’s a meaningless preseason exhibition or the championship game of the Finals. Do what you do every day, so you never have to account for your environment or the situation. Everything stays the same.” ← Note: That’s CASE STUDY Willpower 101: Reduce the variability of your behavior to increase your performance.

That’s from Relentless trait #5. (I mean, #1.) When you’re Unstoppable, “You’re not intimidated by pressure, you thrive on it.” ← When I think of that, I immediately think of Steven Kotler’s Rise of Superman and his genius line from our interview: “No Pressure, No Diamonds.”

I also think of Kelly McGonigal who backs up the wisdom above with the SCIENCE that says it’s all about how we perceive our stress. If we think it’s killing us, it is. If we think it’s helping us excel, it is. Enter: Threat vs. Challenge response via The Upside of Stress.

Adam Grant tells us the same thing. In Originals, he says we need to make fear trigger a “Go!” response rather than a “Stop!” response. And Grant Cardone echoes this goodness in The 10x Rule—which has the same FULL THROTTLE intensity of Relentless.

All of which brings us back to you. What do YOU do when you feel discomfort?

How about we lean in a bit more as we chant, “Bring it on!” and take one step (out of our comfort zone) toward our infinite potential today?! I’m excited. You?

P.S. Although this book isn’t about the actual training program Grover puts his elite athletes on (it focuses on the mental toughness side), you know what the #1 thing he has his athletes do nutrition-wise? ELIMINATE sugar. 100%. Non-negotiable. (Exactly what Maffetone says.)

That’s from the chapter on principle #1 (also known as #6): “When everyone is hitting the ‘In Case of Emergency’ button, they’re all looking at you” in which we learn about the fact that mis-takes are an inherent part of life and DEFINITELY a part of going beyond greatness.

As such, we embrace those mistakes. In fact, we don’t even recognize “failure.” As Grover says (in the context of sharing one of the times his plans didn’t come together quite the way he hoped and he simply adjusted course): “I’ve made a ton of mistakes, I’m going to make plenty more. But I never think of them as failures.”

I think Jordan might have had something to say about this as well. Let me see… Oh, yah. As we’ve discussed, Stanford Professor Carol Dweck was so enamored by his Nike commercial that she literally quoted it in her book Mindset: “Michael Jordan embraced his failures. In fact, in one of his favorite ads for Nike, he says: ‘I’ve missed more than nine thousand shots. I’ve lost almost three hundred games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot, and missed.’ You can be sure that each time, he went back and practiced the shot a hundred times.” ← Note: Odds are, he practiced that shot and/or chatted about it with Grover.

Then there’s this line: “Being relentless means having the courage to say, ‘I’m going for this, and if I’m wrong, I’ll make a change and I’ll still be fine.’”

That reminds me of Seth Godin’s wisdom in The Icarus Deception. He tells us that THE MOST confident thing we can say is, “This might not work.” We recognize that we may be wrong. But we go for it anyway and give it all we’ve got—KNOWING we’ll be fine and adjust if the plan doesn’t materialize the way we hoped.

He says: “If you become someone who is uncomfortable unless she is creating change, restless if things are standing still, and disappointed if you haven’t failed recently, you’ve figured out how to become comfortable with the behaviors most likely to make you safe going forward.”

How are YOU doing with all that?

P.S. One more point: “You want to know a true sign of a Cleaner? He feels no pressure when he screws up and has no problem admitting when he’s wrong and shouldering the blame.” In other words: No excuses, Extreme Ownership style.

That section made me smile and made me think of Jerry Rice. As we discussed in our Note on his autobiography, Go Long!, Rice and Jordan were born within months of one another.

You know what Jerry Rice did the morning after he set the all-time NFL receiving record? He got up early and hit the field—hammering a workout before anyone else got up. Just like always.

Interesting how the guys with the most talent and success spent more time working out than anyone else, eh? THAT’s how we go from Good to Great to Unstoppable. We plug MAXIMUM EFFORT into Angela Duckworth’s Grit equationTWICE.

Remember: Talent x Effort = Skill. Skill x Effort = Achievement.

Let’s do the math. Then squeeze every drop of potential out of ourselves via astonishing Effort.

Those are the final words of the book.

So… What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

Is now a good time to R E L E N T L E S S L Y pursue your dreams and make them a reality?

Let’s do this.