“Trevor has been with me for a Super Bowl win, a Super Bowl loss, and nearly every other football scenario you can imagine. We talk almost every day during the season. We try to meet every Thursday to talk in depth. He'll fly to meet me wherever I am. It's a major part of game preparation for me.

What am I saying to myself? What am I saying to my teammates? What language am I using? How am I impacting myself? How am I impacting others? How am I being my best self every time I step on the field?

It's critical to have a fundamental mental plan. Anything we go through in life is a new map to a new destination. What's the story we want to tell? How are we going to write that story? Trevor helps me choose the best words."

-Russell Wilson

“At the end of the day, the things we say, the body language we give off, and the people we're surrounded by affect our internal and external growth and possibilities. That's everything. Trevor and I try to capture that every time we talk, and then I try to live it."

-Russell Wilson

“It’s hard to clearly see reality when your subconscious is busily prejudging it.”

“He understands he doesn’t have choices if he wants to be a star quarterback in the NFL. He has a narrow path, and the only way to stay on that path is to stay neutral. To be aware of the past. Grounded in the present. In control of the next behavior."

“Downshifting your brain into neutral takes practice. But when you get the hang of it, once you develop the skill to shift your thoughts into neutral, you can go to the truth on a dime. You can deal with the facts at hand. Where are we? What can we do next? How can we best do it? You'll feel more calm, more aware of the situation as it unfolds moment to moment. And the athlete - or employee, or spouse, or parent - who's more calm and more aware generally succeeds."

"Some might call it mindfulness. It certainly overlaps with aspects of mindfulness. But neutral thinking is more than simply being mindful. It's a quick pivot step toward swift, decisive, stunning action. Mindfulness doesn't care if you win. I do."

“Many people conflate realistic thinking with negative thinking.”

“It takes away emotion and replaces it with behaviors. Instead of asking, 'How do I feel?' you should be asking yourself, 'What do I do?'"

“Negative, cynical thinking doesn't make you more realistic. It just makes you negative and cynical."

"Don't worry about what you feel. Rely on what you know."

“The present determines the present, and today's behavior is what influences tomorrow's outcomes. Start now."

“It takes a plan to achieve anything of value. When you plan, you identify an end goal and then chart out neutral behaviors that can help you reach that goal. That may sound overly simplistic, but a lot of people say 'I want to do this' without thinking about the behaviors and benchmarks required to reach that goal. Choosing not to plan is actually a plan around not planning. I don't recommend that."

“In my experience working with elite athletes, the ones who haven't experienced great success tend to want to know what they must do to reach their goals. The more self-confident athletes want to discuss the factors that could keep them from reaching their goals. They don't mind objectively examining the barriers to success."

“Russell doesn’t speak in 'ifs' when it comes to his performance. He speaks in 'I's.' 'I do this' versus 'If I do this.' Why? He knows the impact of his own language on him and on others. 'If' implies a choice. He knows there are no choices for leaders in the biggest moments. 'If' gives your brain an out. 'I' makes a commitment."

“Russell jogged onto the field with that unique blend of inner peace and urgency. He had it before I ever met him. People may be surprised that he works to make it even more world-class, but that's the standard and price of sustained excellence."

“You keep your head up. I'm never down. I can never be down. I'm grateful for the opportunities that I get. You have to take things like a man. You have to take things with strength and understanding. And even though it's not easy to understand in the moment, you have to know that there's going to be clarity someday. There's going to be clarity and understanding."

-Russell Wilson

“People are surprised to find out that I'm not a sports fan. I'm a fan of growth. I believe in people. Wherever that journey starts for them, I can see what they will become when weaponized with the right behaviors. I see it in eleven-year-olds. I see it in sixty-year-olds. I saw it in the football complex at Alabama. I saw it with my first U-18 girls club team. And all of them would get my best."

“Vince was amazed that so many players could have such a goal while behaving in ways so counter to what it would take to actually achieve that goal."

“During that 2015 conversation, I asked Vince a question: Is choice an illusion? Of course, he said. There was no way he'd still be in the NBA in his late thirties if he'd done everything he wanted to do. He did what was demanded. 'So it takes what it takes?' I asked. 'Exactly,' he said."

“Making bad choices is the lifeblood of average.”

“There are relatively few paths that will lead where you want to go, and the sooner you understand that, the sooner you can start putting yourself on those paths."

“You’ve got people out there training to beat you.”

“You can win even when the opponent is your own previous choices.”

“We are responsible for telling ourselves what we are. There are options, but not choices. Not really. This is particularly true for those who seek greatness."

“No matter what situation you find yourself in, there is almost always a behavior you can easily identify that, if you eliminate it, will set you on a better path."

“My goal, my aim, my dream was this: what if we could get people to just stop saying stupid shit out loud?"

“This is what we know. The human mind absorbs negativity seven times more easily than it absorbs positivity. We also know that language is the most powerful carrier of negativity. Thinking about my struggles is nowhere near as powerful as verbalizing them. When it comes out of my mouth, it affects me tenfold. If it's negative it may be seven times more on top of that."

“Negativity affects you negatively 100 percent of the time.”

“You have to retrain your brain to look at the world differently than it wants to.”

“I knew he was referring to the urgency and directness I've learned to speak with in order to survive in the world of sports. Teams give me limited windows at important moments, so I try to be as direct as possible."

“After eighteen years in this field, I've learned that inner voices and those feelings fuck with everyone. But it doesn't have to have the power we think it does. What we say has the power. And those words have an instant link to what we do."

“If you want to find what that next level is, then the language and the behaviors have to line up with who you want to be, with the outcome you desire. Period. Great teams behave like great teams. Great employees behave like great employees. By the same token, average employees behave like average employees. I respect everyone's right to make that choice."

“I get it. I believe you. And you just described a day in the life of many of the best athletes as they get ready to do their jobs in front of 80,000 people. But this is the point: does a bad 50 percent of your day give you the right to concede the other 50 percent?"

“After a day of slaying yourself with your external talk followed by four hours of the wrong TV and music, I can promise you that the meditation app you just downloaded is not going to help. Neither will the five bullet-point mantras on your fridge."

“The business model of today's 24-hour news channels is to make you mad, scared, or - preferably - both. They want you to think the world will end if the person you don't like wins an election. They want you to think there are kidnappers waiting around every corner to steal your children. This keeps you watching. It also bombards you with negative thoughts and helps you generate your own."

“I had chosen an equally competitive enemy - stupid shit going into my brain. This wouldn’t harden my arteries like cholesterol would. It would harden my attitudes and obscure my vision.”

“If there was any upside, it was that my empathy for people in adversity and facing challenges increased. I took inventory of that, but I understood the idea of psychogenic death a lot better."

“I believed I could beat external influencers with my own internal language. I was wrong. I don't think our own language can work nearly as well if we continue to consume emotional mediums - like music or brutal news - that weaponize negativity. They rendered forty-plus years of psychological strategies ineffective because I was in a place of brutal despair."

“If we don’t become hopeless, then we won’t become helpless.”

“Make hope a habit.”

“So what did I learn? Negativity, in any form that we choose to bring into our lives, is poison. There is negativity outside of our lives that we can't stop and can't stay away from. But we can choose what we bring into our lives.

Don't choose the things that will weaponize us against ourselves. Stay away from cable news channels. Stay away from radio shows and podcasts designed to inflame and anger. Nothing personal against Sam Hunt, but stay away from sad country songs.

Life is hard enough even when we don't choose to bombard our senses with negativity. When we do, everything can feel hopeless. So watch shows that make you laugh or cheer. Consume news that deals in facts, not opinions. Listen to songs that lift you up instead of dragging you down.

I'm a warrior. I believe my adversity tolerance is as elite as you'll ever see. I folded in twenty-six days. It's not a fair fight. So choose not to fight it. Choose not to assault your senses with negativity. You'll be happier. You'll also find it easier to stay neutral."

“It’s time to understand that everything we say matters. Obviously the words we say out loud to other people matter, but the words we say in our own heads are just as important. Because we have more power over ourselves than anyone else does."

"Words are tools, and they both predict and perpetuate performance."

“My dad lived in a world grounded in truth, and bad shit happens. My dad partnered that with another reality, however: we all create our own internal environment. Our own internal culture. Our socioeconomic status or family life or time with friends are realities, but we control how we interpret them."

"No one will be able to influence me like I will be able to influence me. This is particularly true when the words come out of my mouth and start immediately connecting to behaviors. Words become self-fulfilling prophecies. So if I created an internal ad campaign that presents me as a loser no one would want to listen to, I would act as if my talents didn't matter. I'd wonder why anyone would want to read this book. And that would make it very difficult to write this book."

“So yes, advertising works. That’s why it’s a multibillion-dollar industry.”

“You produce multiple ad campaigns every day. That dialogue going on inside your mind creates the ads. It creates your brand. No one knows exactly how many thoughts you have a day. The estimates range anywhere from 60,000 to 120,000. Whatever it actually is, it's a lot. Your brain is constantly evaluating situations. The key is to learn to control those thoughts in order to advertise to yourself. Because you are the most powerful advertiser."

“Their decisions and their ability to exert their own influence on themselves over the next few months could have lifelong financial ramifications. How they behaved between that point and the NFL draft could make them millions or cost them millions."

“Notice that Russell didn’t talk about the Broncos' defense or the Patriots' defense. Yes, he was aware that there were 300-pound dudes trying to rip his head off, but he had prepared for them. His teammates had prepared for them. His coaches had prepared for them. The only way they could throw him off his game was by cancelling the commercial in his head and forcing his thoughts elsewhere.

Instead, Russell kept repeating the same neutral thoughts to keep himself focused even though the entire world was watching. Think about that. His influence outweighed the world's influence."

“We lose track of how important being in the moment is. You have to be able to focus on the moment. In our relationships, in our friendships, in our sport, in our field, just be in the moment as much as you can. Clarity is key. I know my mission. I know what I need to accomplish. Let's go do it."

-Russell Wilson

“Michael had reentered the mode that won him his gold medals. 'I was feeling that little bit of improvement,' he said. 'I know what that feels like. I've been there.'

In his racing days, Michael worked days at a time for incremental gains. Shaving off a few hundredths of a second sometimes took months. So Michael's brain inherently accepted the idea that while he wouldn't walk normally again overnight, he would walk normally again if he worked at it. The tiny improvements he felt that first day helped him visualize the bigger gains that would come later.

The goal in rehab was to retrain Michael's left leg to work like his right leg did. Once he made the choice that walking normally again was his priority, nothing could stop him. 'I will make a full recovery,' Michael told himself. 'And I'm going to do it faster than everybody else.'

Doctors indeed marveled at Michael's progress. He did walk normally again within a few months, much sooner that most people in the same situation. He made a plan to recover, and he visualized the literal steps he'd have to take to get back to walking normally. As he made progress, he visualized the next, bigger steps. His visions kept coming true until eventually he reached his ultimate goal.

There is effectively zero chance that you'll run for gold at the Olympics. But there is a decent chance that one day you'll find yourself standing next to a physical therapist trying to make something work again. You don't need to be Michael Johnson in that moment. You just need to choose his mentality.

Your mind matters. You exert incredible influence on what you think. What you see. We don't have to accept life the way it comes to us. We can design it in advance so we can get the life we seek."

“I believe your destiny is defined by what you do next.”

“Life rewards those who start.”

“Your habits have no place to hide.”

“If you’re under pressure, it means someone gives a shit what you do. If you’re under pressure, it means someone relies on you.”

“Average people become average by doing average shit.”

“It’s about creating the opportunity to win by behaving like people who win.”

“You need to be thinking neutrally, making plans, and making good choices so you're prepared when the pressure arrives. Someone is going to get what you want. It's up to you to make sure that person is you."

“Are we for real? If I'm doing what I've intended to do in the manner it is supposed to be done, then I'm absolutely for fucking real."

“Find an excuse to win.”

“World-class behavior leads to world-class performance.”

“My dad had a magnetic personality. He was authentic. He was confident. I never questioned that he both lived and believed everything he taught. And in 1999 - after being told at fifty-nine that he had less than one year to live - I saw him attack his plan, create his own personal ad campaign, eliminate the controllable negatives, master his own language, and behave in alignment with both the choices and mentality that would give someone a fighting chance against multiple myeloma. And he lived until 2007."

“Wanting leads to questions. Those questions make us look at the role choice plays in our life relative to the things we want. That pushes us to make a plan. From there the barriers become clear, and the solutions quickly follow.

When our mind sees solutions, we begin to adopt the best behaviors. We can approach life neutrally and do what we must do to produce the outcomes we desire. Once we reach this point, we know. It takes what it takes."

“The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours - it is an amazing journey - and you alone are responsible for the quality of it."

-Bob Moawad

“It’s only one game…until you miss the playoffs by only one game.”

“Winning is not a marathon; it’s a sprint with no finish line.”

"Your mind is your area to dominate, and if you don’t dominate it, someone else will."

“At the core of this idea of self-mastery is an instinctive reaction against anything that masters us. Who can be free when they have lost, as one addiction specialist put it, ‘the freedom to abstain?’”

“Think about it: Most people don’t even show up. Of the people who do, most don’t really push themselves. So to show up and be disciplined about daily improvement? You are the rarest of the rare.”

“How much progress could you make if you made just a little each day over the course of an entire life? What might this journey look like, where might it lead, if each bit of progress you made presented both the opportunity and the obligation to make a little more progress, and you seized those opportunities, you lived up to those obligations, each and every time?”

“Real toughness is experiencing discomfort or distress, leaning in, paying attention, and creating space to take thoughtful action. It’s maintaining a clear head to be able to make the appropriate decision.

Toughness is navigating discomfort to make the best decision you can. And research shows that this model of toughness is more effective at getting results than the old one.”

“Our ability to be ‘tough’ and handle adversity starts well before we even encounter any difficulty. It starts with embracing the reality of the situation and what you’re capable of.”

“The old model of toughness, in essence, throws people into the deep end of the pool but forgets that we need to first teach people how to swim.”

“The first and most fundamental threat to your Future Self is not having hope in your future. Without hope, the present loses meaning. Without hope, you don't have clear goals or a sense of purpose for your life. Without hope, there is no way. Without hope, you decay."

“If you’re around people who have low expectations for you, you'll fall to those standards. If you're around people with high expectations, you'll rise to those standards."

“The more conscious you become of how everything you do right now impacts the person you are in the future, the better and more thoughtful your actions will be."

#1: “But do we have the luxury of choice if excellence is what we aspire to?”

#2: "What if we just stopped saying stupid shit out loud?"

#3: “If it doesn’t play out how we want it to tomorrow, what would stop it?”

#4: “If it plays out exactly as you see it, why would it? How would you influence that?”

#5: "Does a bad 50 percent of your day give you the right to concede the other 50 percent?"

"Judge a man by his questions, rather than by his answers."

"The path to success is to take massive, determined action.”