Quotes from Gary Mack

I help athletes expand their comfort zone and encourage them to take risks.

Playing it safe can be dangerous. Or the greatest risk sometimes is not to take a risk.

Adversity Quotient author Paul Stoltz compares success with a mountain. Only climbers get to the top. The campers, those who get part of the way up and decide to stay where they are, will never feel as alive or as proud as the climbers. As the philosopher said, it takes courage to grow up and to achieve your full potential.

Mentally tough athletes possess an inner strength. They often play their best when they're feeling their worst. They don't make excuses.

Anger. We have to learn to control our emotions or they will control us.

Cus D'Amato, who trained Mike Tyson, said emotions, particularly anger, are like fire. They can cook your food and keep you warm, or they can burn your house down. Many great athletes use anger in a positive way. Anger motivates them. Anger steels their resolve. It is much better to become angry than to become afraid.

When you let anger get the best of you, it brings out the worst in you. The key question is who is in control—you or your emotions? Remember, before you can control your performance you need to be in control of yourself.

Less can be more. Sometimes the highest form of action is inaction. Athletes require rest and recovery time.

The most successful athletes are self-motivated. "The most important thing is to love your sport," said Peggy Fleming, the former Olympic figure-skating champion. "Never do it to please someone else—it has to be yours. That is all that will justify the hard work needed to achieve success.

As Peggy Fleming, the former Olympic champion figure skater, said, the most important thing is to love your sport. Never compete just to please someone else. "You've got to love what you're doing," hockey great Gordie Howe said. "If you love it, you can overcome any handicap or the soreness or all the aches and pains.

Fear lives in the future

Competitive toughness is an acquired skill and not an inherited gift. —CHRIS EVERT

Life is too important to take too seriously. If you learn to laugh at yourself you will enjoy a lifetime of entertainment.

Make 'Em Laugh! Humor is a vastly underrated tool for relationship and trust-building.

To achieve anything you want in life you must first start by getting out of your own way.

Pete Rose warned, "When you mess with my pride you're going to get into trouble." Michael Jordan is another prideful man. When challenged on the basketball court he exhibited what golfer Sam Snead called a "cool mad." In the playoffs, Jordan was always the smiling assassin.

The harder you work the harder it is to surrender. —VINCE LOMBARDI

Accept your present state. Create your desired state. Take action through goal setting.

I began a new career studying the psychology of stress and the psychology of success. My mission was to learn all I could about playing under pressure. I wanted to find out why, under pressure, some athletes break through, as Hamilton did, while others break down.

When you are under stress, deep breathing helps bring your mind and body back into the present.

Whenever they feel themselves growing anxious, breathe in energy. Breathe out negativity. Breathe in relaxation. Breathe out stress.

Rod Carew says he has seen many baseball players blessed with God-given ability who simply didn't want to work. "They are soon gone," Carew says. "I've seen others with no ability to speak of who stayed in the big leagues for fourteen or fifteen years… . You have to want to do the work.

Procrastination is a part of perfectionism in some people. Those who procrastinate don't do anything. By not doing anything, they can't fail. It's an inhibiting, self-defeating cycle.

He had trained for years to prepare for that moment. When the spotlight came on and the music began, he let fate carry him through. The hard work was over. Now, he told himself, go out and enjoy.