Insight
Su'a: Second-place finishers often have better processes than championship winners
“But what we learn from survivorship bias is that a lot of these people who didn't win, a lot of them were doing the exact same thing. A lot of these guys and these men and women who were came in second place and third place Had the same process, and in some ca…”
Insight
Su'a: Top athletes succeed because they refuse to maintain backup plans
“The athletes are the ones who tell me that the odds were against them. They sure shared with me everything that they did, but, and they always had coaches and parents telling them, you should go do something else. You should go do this. You should have a backu…”
Insight
Su'a: 'You win or you learn' falsely implies winning teaches nothing
“There's a phrase out there that says, sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.
I can't stand that phrase.
And the reason I can't stand that phrase is because it implies two things.
It implies that you can't learn from winning.
Like, you win or you learn?
No.
Yo…”
Insight
Su'a: Mental Skills Require Talking to Yourself Rather Than Listening
“It's your ability to zoom in and to zoom out to gain better perspective, your ability to conduct a premortem, your ability to deploy gratitude in a difficult situation. It's your ability to talk to yourself instead of listen to yourself.”
Insight
Su'a: Talking to yourself means applying debate techniques against self-doubt
“The point is, it's interesting how you can sit here and debate a topic like weather and sport and food, but you don't pause to apply those same principles to debate yourself. When you start doubting yourself, a lot of times we say, oh, that is true. I'm not sm…”
Insight
Su'a: Retrospective debriefs fail unless athletes are primed beforehand
“What I have found is when I go back to an athlete at the end of a game or a season and say, oh, So what were you thinking? What was going on there? They have no clue. They didn't even know what they were looking for, to be quite honest. But if you give, if you…”
Insight
Su'a: Coaches must build relationships strong enough to bear the truth
“A common theme that I've seen is that my role or anyone, even a coach's role is To steal from Tim Elmore, and I've said it earlier, is to build a relationship so strong it can bear the weight of truth. And that's number one. To build a place where players feel…”
Insight
Su'a: Earning athletes' trust requires physical presence and shared hardship
“A lot of professional athletes, that's where it goes, and so at first, you can't shove anything. You are not shoving mental skills or tools down their throat, and so I can say all I want, but they're going to watch behavior. They're gonna see how I go around, …”
Insight
Su'a: Mental performance coaching should be embedded in routines, not isolated sessions
“How do I collaborate with individuals so that it can be baked into the system as opposed to, okay, now we have to have mental performance time. And so now they just get it in different ways. And It's just part of the environment and don't even realize that it'…”
Insight
Su'a: Environment is the invisible hand shaping human behavior
“The environment is the invisible hand that shapes behavior. If you want to take a look at someone's behavior, take a look at the system in which they function in, take a look at their morning routine, take a look at their home, take a look at everything.”
Insight
Justin Su'a: Drastic lifestyle overhauls shock personal systems with unintended consequences
“What happens to a lot of people, they try to make these huge overhauls of time, of energy, and introduce very difficult habits where, where At first, you're like, oh, I could do this every day, but if you're not used to working out an hour every single day, or…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Su'a: Many Well-Known Professional Athletes Privately Lack Confidence
“I have learned through Talking to professional athletes, how many of them lack confidence. They will tell it to my face. They'll say, I don't have confidence. There are players who I will not name, but who all of us know would, you would be surprised to hear h…”
Insight
Su'a: Approaching a bonus triggers a performance-harming bias toward action
“I think we have a bias towards action. I think they're really, really an action bias as opposed to, hey, just keep doing what you're doing. Trust what you're doing was right and trust that the, that your process will yield the results that you're looking for a…”
Insight
Su'a: Winning Masks Systemic Flaws While Losing Masks Great Strategy
“What I have learned in pro sports is that winning masks so many things. You could win, but what's talked about is how great your culture is in your winning, but it over, it just overshadows all of the deficiencies and the problems in the system, and then you l…”
Insight
Su'a: Losing means beating yourself; getting beaten means facing superior competition
“Now, losing, you can frame it as
You didn't give your best effort.
Losing is you beat yourself.
That is truly, truly losing where you didn't do whatever it take.
You lacked preparation.
You just beat yourself from mistakes from maybe it could be mental mistak…”
Insight
Su'a: Finite Finish Lines Create Unsustainable Sprints and Momentum Loss
“This is the problem with having finite destinations or finish lines to whatever you're trying to achieve. Because what happens a lot of times is you, once you achieve it, once you sprint past the finish line, What do we tend to do? We take our foot off the gas…”
