Always Compete

This post is several notes that I have taken from the Always Compete chapter of the book, Win Forever, by Pete Carroll.

-  Competition to me is not about beating your opponent.  It is about doing your best; it is about striving to reach your potential; and it is about being in relentless pursuit of a competitive edge in everything you do.

-  Our stated goal would be to "do things better than they have ever been done before."

-  If you want to win forever, always compete.

-  Competition is a mentality, an outlook, and a way of approaching every day. The traditional definition of competition requires having an opponent.  For players, the real "opposition" is not necessarily the team they are matched up against in a given week - far from it.  The real opposition is the challenge to remain focused on maximizing their abilities in preparation for the game.


-  The essence of my message about competing has nothing to do with the opponent.  My competitive approach is that "it's all about us."  If we've really done the preparation to elevate ourselves to our full potential, it shouldn't matter whom we're playing.

-  Many people confuse 'opponent' with 'enemy,' but in my experience, that is extremely unproductive.  My opponents are not my enemies.  My opponents are the people who offer me the opportunity to succeed.  The tougher my opponents, the more they present me with an opportunity to live up to my full potential and play my best.  From an extreme perspective, that's a reason to love them, not to hate them. At the end of the day, that opponent is the person who makes you int the best competitor you can be.

-  In our practices, we always end each day with our best offensive players competing against our best defensive players to create the most competitive situations.  It is crucial to maximizing the development of the team.

-  We have no control over what our opponents do; we can only control what we do.  We want to maximize our potential, and to do that we must focus our energy and efforts on ourselves.

http://www.amazon.com/Win-Forever-Live-Work-Champion/dp/1591844169

Carroll, Pete.  (2011).  Win Forever.  New York: The Penguin Group.