Winning Quotes

“Time tells you what you didn’t accomplish. Focus turns off the clock and directs all your energy to the result.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“When you’ve been knocked down, confidence gives you the patience to stay down for a minute, until you know how to get up better than you were before. Most people jump right back up because they don’t want to look weak and damaged, and then immediately get knocked down again. When you’re confident in your ability to recover, you know you’ll never be weak or damaged again.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“If you can tolerate fear and doubt and loneliness… Winning would like a word with you.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“I pulled people along when they didn’t want to be pulled. I challenged people when they didn’t want to be challenged, and I earned that right because my teammates who came after me didn’t endure all the things that I endured. Once you joined the team, you lived at a certain standard that I played the game, and I wasn’t gonna take anything less. Now if that meant I had to go in there and get in your ass a little bit, then I did that. You ask all my teammates, “The one thing about Michael Jordan was he never asked me to do something that he didn’t fucking do.” When people see this, they’re gonna say, “Well, he wasn’t really a nice guy, he may have been a tyrant.” Well, that’s you. Because”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“Winning is an investment. It’s the result of making “selfish” choices that empower your goals, separate you from limitations and insecurities, and create distance between”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“If you can’t face your own truth, if you can’t deal with the darkest part of your past, you’ll never be able to change your story.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“All day, every day, your mental battlefield is attacked by blasts of adrenaline and anger and fear and anxiety, and other explosives too. Stress. Insecurity. Doubt. Envy. Sometimes it’s a stranger who puts them there. Sometimes it’s someone close to you. Sometimes it’s you. Most of the time, it’s you.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“There are four components of Winning that determine how you’ll manage your fears and doubts and make that leap, or if you’ll make it at all. Talent. Intelligence. Competitiveness. Resilience.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“But I had no doubt that whatever happened, I’d be fine.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“Confidence is about taking chances, and never doubting the outcome.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“Winners don’t fear reality, they don’t hide from the truth, and they’re not afraid to confront their own flaws and weaknesses.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“Focus is about controlling your behavior, so it becomes easier to do the right things, and harder to be distracted by the wrong things.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“Control your thoughts, and you control your emotions. Control your emotions, and you control your actions. Control your actions, and you control the outcome.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“We’re all flawed. Confident people don’t hide their flaws; they laugh at them, because they don’t care what you think. Those flaws work for them. They don’t have to work for you.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“We all have self-doubt. You don’t deny it, but you also don’t capitulate to it. You embrace it.” You embrace it. You trust yourself to handle whatever you’re dealing with, and don’t allow your fear to escalate into uncontrollable doubt. If you ever see me at a game, you’ll see no emotion from me.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“The ability to compete is in all of us. You compete for something every minute of the day, with every decision you make. At the basic level, you compete with daily obstacles: Should I go to the gym? Should I skip this donut? Can I get out of the house on time? Will I get my work done today?”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“It is not to be without emotion or feeling but to be one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked.” It is not to deny or bury or go around your feelings or your thoughts about those feelings. It is to feel them, acknowledge them, and work with them—to understand what they are trying to tell you about you, about the situation—to let them show you where there is more work to be done without letting them overwhelm, unbalance, or trap you. They have information for you. Take the information, say thank you, and keep going.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“Winning is a test with no correct answers .”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“It’s not about the ingredients, it’s about the formula for combining those ingredients.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“Fear shows up on its own. Doubt has to be invited. Fear heightens your awareness; it makes you alert. Doubt is the opposite; it slows you down and paralyzes your thinking.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“Winning ignites a self-conscious awareness that others are watching. It’s a lot easier to move under the radar when no one knows you and no one is paying attention. You can mess up and be rough and get dirty because no one even knows you’re there. But as soon as you start to win, and others start to notice, you’re suddenly aware that you’re being observed. You’re being judged. You worry that others will discover your flaws and weaknesses, and you start hiding your true personality, so you can be a good role model and good citizen and a leader that others can respect. There is nothing wrong with that. But if you do it at the expense of being who you really are, making decisions that please others instead of pleasing yourself, you’re not going to be in that position very long.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“So everything I do is to minimize the risk of that happening. That helps me fight the mental urge to doubt myself, to create problems that haven’t happened and overthink everything that could go wrong.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“I am on a path of understanding more and more about myself every day and shifting my perspective just like my father did. I’m becoming more conscious about what I’m ignoring or denying, and my learning process has become faster, my struggles fewer and less intense.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“Confidence lets you hear the voices around you and in your own head, without responding or reacting. You can hear them without listening to a single word.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“Strength comes in many disguises. Yes, it means being relentless and resilient, and holding up others when you can barely hold up yourself. But there’s more to it than showing power and control. It means having the ability to laugh at yourself and see your own flaws. It’s the confidence to walk away when it’s time, and not look back at what you left behind. It’s showing emotion when you feel it, and not faking it when you don’t. It’s sharing your wins with those who rode along with you, who never left your side and never will.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“No matter how intense and competitive and driven you may be, don’t shut out the opportunity to be in the moment, to embrace what you have, and hold on to it for as long as you can. Take time in your life for true fun and happiness and joy and laughter, wherever you can find it. It doesn’t make you weak to enjoy your life and appreciate the things that give you satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“We break down our day and laugh about which of us fucked up the worst. There is no greater superpower than the ability to say “This is who I am.” Most people push that away, because they don’t want to be judged. Winners don’t care. They judge themselves, and live with the verdict. Think about how much energy and time go into trying to be someone or something you’re not. How much further along would you be if you put that same effort into being yourself?”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“They didn’t have to know what was coming, but they were always ready. They knew when to take the shot, and when to pass to someone else. When to talk, and when to stay silent. When to speed up, and when to slow down. When to respond to criticism, and when to laugh it off.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“Winning will use every dirty trick in the book—and make up new ones just to entertain itself—to keep you in hell. It’s too hard, it whispers … you’ll never get there… your parents don’t believe in you… your friends think you’re crazy… look at you, you’re already a failure. Which, by no coincidence, is exactly what you were already thinking. So you stay there, waiting. Waiting to feel different, waiting to be told what to do, waiting for an answer that never comes. And meanwhile, the flames are getting hotter and hotter, until you can’t take it. You have to take action, or you burn out. But instead of being propelled by the heat, you can become frozen where you are.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

“Winning ignites a self-conscious awareness that others are watching. It’s a lot easier to move under the radar when no one knows you and no one is paying attention. You can mess up and be rough and get dirty because no one even knows you’re there. But as soon as you start to win, and others start to notice, you’re suddenly aware that you’re being observed. You’re being judged. You worry that others will discover your flaws and weaknesses, and you start hiding your true personality.”
― Tim S. Grover, Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness