This past Saturday I had an opportunity to speak with the players and coaches of the Washington Commanders before they flew to Dallas and pulled off a huge last minute win against the Cowboys!
I told them my goal was to help them continue to get back to the basics, focus on the fundamentals, execute everything with excellence, and to simplify success.
I gave them the following disclaimer:
“I know that everything I’m about to share with you will be stuff that you’ve heard before… and stuff that you already know. But just because you KNOW IT, doesn’t mean you DO IT.
That’s called a Performance Gap: the gap between what we know and what we do. And the very first step towards improving performance is to close that gap. That’s why I feel we often need to be reminded more than we need to be taught.”
I then shared 3 fundamentals that lead to winning on and off the field:
1) Discipline
- Discipline is doing what you said you’d do, when you said you’d do it, and doing it was well as you can.
- Discipline is keeping the promises you make to yourself and to those that you care about.
- Discipline is ensuring that every decision you make aligns with your core values, standards, and the person you strive to become.
- Discipline is making decisions that your future self will be proud of grateful for.
I then told them that discipline will always beat motivation in the long run because discipline is a decision and motivation is a feeling. And like all feelings, it ebbs and flows. No one feels motivated 24/7… but everyone has the power to consistently make disciplined decisions.
And when playing the long game… you should strive for daily, incremental, systematic, progress.
I asked them, “Can you be slightly more disciplined in 2025 than you were in 2024? Can you be slightly more disciplined in January than you were in December? Can you be slightly more disciplined today than you were yesterday?”
2) Mindset
- A winner’s mindset, and true mental toughness, is making the conscious commitment to doing the best you can, with what you have, wherever you are.
- A winner’s mindset is not falling to the temptation to blame, complain, or make excuses.
- A winner’s mindset is acknowledging that you don’t control circumstances or events but that you always control your response (and are thoughtful, intentional, and purposeful in all responses).
- A winner’s mindset learns from the past, prepares for the future, but puts the overwhelmingly majority of their focus on the present. After all, if you want to WIN the moment, you have to be IN the moment.
- A winner’s mindset stays present by focusing on the Next Play (what is right in front of me right now?), focusing on what they control (effort & attitude), and focusing on the process (what is the next actionable step I can take to inch closer to my goal?).
3) Humility
- Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself… less.
- Humility is seeing the world through the lens of ‘it’s not about ME, it’s about YOU.’
- Humility is required to be a good teammate (which is defined as ‘being the teammate you want to play with’ and ‘being fun to play with and hard to play against.’)
- Humility is how you star in the roll you have while you work for the roll you want (during the Unseen Hours).
- Humility is what allows someone to stay open to coaching, open to feedback, open to being held accountable, and open to improvement (knowing that ‘no matter how good I am, I can still get better!’).
I closed by sharing my signature story about meeting Steph Curry for the first time… which ends with this thought:
“The standards you set today will determine who you will be tomorrow.”
