Tom Brady says his career turned around when a sports psychologist told him to stop complaining about what he wasn’t getting and start stewarding what he had the right way “Greg said to me, ‘Why don’t you quit bitching about all the things you’re not getting, and how about you do the best with whatever opportunities you get?’, ‘Stop worrying about what the other quarterback’s getting. Stop worrying about what the coach is saying to you.’” “‘Every time you get in there, you bring the juice. You bring the energy. You bring the enthusiasm. You treat practice like a game.’ Because if you just decide to go out there and you’re blaming everybody else, where does that get you? So I started to change my attitude.” “I didn’t have a lot of confidence in myself. And when you don’t have a lot of confidence in yourself, you blame other people. When you gain confidence in yourself, you start pointing the finger at yourself.” “I would encourage every athlete to look in the mirror after every day of practice or a game and say, ‘What can I do better to help the team? What can I do better?’” “Not, ‘What does the coach need to do better?’ Not, ‘What do my teammates need to do better?’, ‘What do I need to do better?’ If every player does that, you’re going to have an incredible team.” “You can’t have a false confidence. You don’t only gain your confidence because of your physical ability. You gain your confidence because you’re prepared, because you’re competitive. I couldn’t just show up and be better than everybody.” “I had to show up prepared. I had to show up with energy. I had to show up with my body feeling right. I had to show up like I was on a mission.”

Aaron Rodgers believes quarterbacks need to throw more incompletions in practice: “That’s where you grow. You have to put yourself in the most adverse situations.” “When coaches or players are more concerned about what it looks like than how it feels, it’s really hard to grow.” “You’re just hoping for perfect passes in practice.” Instead, it should be, ‘Oh, you missed that one?’ Perfect.” “That’s exactly what you want. Now you have a feeling. I was a little too far onto my front foot. My hitch was a little too much. I need more weight on my back foot. I need to put more air on this ball when it’s 25 yards outside the numbers.” “Working with young quarterbacks, I tell them, ‘That’s the best rep possible.’ Remember that one.” “So when it comes up next time, you can make the right throw.”

Sean McVay on what has become non-negotiable when evaluating players: “There are certain things that have to be non-negotiables. What’s your football character like? I think that more than anything, especially because of some of the things I’ve gone through where I look back and say, ‘Man, I did not like the kind of leader or the caliber of person I was. I was fragile. I wasn’t resilient. The game honors toughness, but I think life and the game honor toughness, both mentally and physically. How many different ways can we measure that mental resilience?" "What have they been through, and how did that shape who they’ve become in the midst of the journey?” “When you go through each guy and have a personal message of appreciation and gratitude for him, the consistent theme is that everybody who has had any sort of success has experienced some adversity. Maybe when you’re in it, you don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, but if it shapes you and callouses you the right way, growth demands that discomfort.” “You don’t punish people who haven’t been through adversity, but I also think it’s important for guys to know, ‘We’re in this shit with you, too. Let’s build a relationship.’” “Chris Petersen always used to say to me, ‘It’s really important that all our players know they’ll never meet the enemy on the sideline.’ I’d like to think the connection, the camaraderie and the enjoyment of each other’s success are what you see when you watch our group play. That’s the type of people we’re trying to identify.”

Tom Brady on the most common trait elite performers share: They want to be held accountable. The best understand that preparation must carry urgency. You may only have three practices before the game, and every one of them has to move you closer to being ready. There are no wasted reps. No casual days. No assuming you can fix it tomorrow. The margin is too small. Whether it’s the NFL, college sports, or business, someone else is preparing with purpose. Every rep has to carry weight because every rep becomes part of your performance and/or pushes reps further down the line. Great leaders establish that standard where the floor of the team is an urgent one.