Relentless Tim Grover

Don’t Think

He flew two thousand miles to hear these two words: Don’t think.

To be the best, whether in sports or business or any other aspect of life, it’s never enough to just get to the top; you have to stay there, and then you have to climb higher, because there’s always someone right behind you trying to catch up. Most people are willing to settle for “good enough.” But if you want to be unstoppable, those words mean nothing to you. Being the best means engineering your life so you never stop until you get what you want, and then you keep going until you get what’s next. And then you go for even more. Relentless.

This isn’t about motivation. If you’re reading this book, you’re already motivated. Now you have to turn that into action and results.

Believe this: Everything you need to be great is already inside you. All your ambitions and secrets, your darkest dreams. they’re waiting for you to just let go.

It’s time to stop listening to what everyone else says about you, telling you what to do, how to act, how you should feel. Let them judge you by your results, and nothing else; it’s none of their business how you get where you’re going. If you’re relentless, there is no halfway, no could or should or maybe. Don’t tell me the glass is half-full or half-empty; you either have something in that glass or you don’t.

Decide. Commit. Act. Succeed. Repeat.

I don’t care how good you think you are, or how great others think you are—you can improve, and you will. Being relentless means demanding more of yourself than anyone else could ever demand of you, knowing that every time you stop, you can still do more. You must do more. The minute your mind thinks, “Done,” your instincts say, “Next.”

I’m going to show you how to stop thinking about how you’re going to think, and do something instead.

Can you learn from their work ethic and relentless drive and uncompromising focus on their goals? Absolutely. Can you improve your chances of success by learning about others who succeeded, and those who didn’t? Of course.

If you want to be truly successful, you can’t be content with “pretty good.” You need to find an extra gear.

I understand how they think, how they learn, how they succeed and fail. what drives them to be relentless. It’s not all pretty, but it’s all true. Everything I’ve learned from them, everything I teach them, I’m sharing with you here. It’s not science. It’s raw animal instinct.

Here’s the key: I’m not going to tell you how to change. People don’t change. I want you to trust who you already are, and get to that Zone where you can shut out all the noise, all the negativity and fear and distractions and lies, and achieve whatever you want, in whatever you do.

If you’re aiming to be the best at what you do, you can’t worry about whether your actions will upset other people, or what they’ll think of you. We’re taking all the emotion out of this, and doing whatever it takes to get to where you want to be. Selfish? Probably. Egocentric? Definitely. If that’s a problem for you, read the book and see if you feel differently afterward.

But in this case, the player knew he needed space, and he was willing to risk the consequences if he got caught leaving the team. He knew it was on him to get back in the Zone, that deeply personal space where you can quiet your mind until you have no thoughts, it’s just you and your instincts, focused and unemotional. Where you feel no external pressure, just the internal pressure to prove yourself, over and over, because you want it for yourself, not anyone else.

“Forget about losing,” I tell him, looking for that “click” behind the eyes when you know the guy gets it. “Forget about trying, because if you’re just trying, then losing is still an option. You want to be the best? Then you ignore the pain and the exhaustion and the pressure to please everyone else. You don’t let your enemies take your balls, you don’t let them set up shop in your head. When all hell breaks loose on the outside, you barely notice; you’re calm on the inside because you’re ready, prepared, and the best at what you do. You don’t tell anyone how you’re going to handle the situation, you just handle it. Everyone else is panicking and choking, and you say, ‘No problem.’ You step on the other guy’s throat, and you finish the fight.

Of course, everything is impossible until someone does it. Michael had worked with a trainer once, injured his back during the workout, and was hesitant about trying again. Yet he also instinctively knew it wasn’t enough to have the greatest basketball skills in the history of the game. If he wanted to be more than a legend, if he was truly going to become an icon, he would also need to take his body to the ultimate level, and he was willing to do whatever was necessary to make that happen. So he told John and Mark to find someone who understood exactly what he needed.

We learned from each other. We never saw obstacles or problems, we only saw situations in need of solutions. And since there had never been a player like Michael Jordan, we encountered a lot of situations without known solutions. We learned, we made mistakes, we learned from our mistakes. We kept learning.

Michael wasn’t the best because he could fly through the air and make impossible shots; he was the best because he was relentless about winning, relentless in his belief that there’s no such thing as “good enough.” No matter how many times he won, no matter how great he became, he always wanted more, and he was always willing to do whatever it took—and then some—to get it.

Relentless is about never being satisfied, always driving to be the best, and then getting even better. It’s about finding the gear that gets you to the next level. even when the next level doesn’t yet exist. It’s about facing your fears, getting rid of the poisons that guarantee you will fail. Being feared and respected for your mental strength and toughness, not just your physical abilities.

The Cleaner You Are, The Dirtier You get

And you don’t just hope it all works out. You make every possible move to put yourself where you need to be.

“In order to have what you really want, you must first be who you really are.”

Being relentless means never being satisfied. It means creating new goals every time you reach your personal best. If you’re good, it means you don’t stop until you’re great. If you’re great, it means you fight until you’re unstoppable. It means becoming a Cleaner.

There are others, in all walks of life; I’ll let you consider the possibilities. Remember, it’s not about talent or brains or wealth. It’s about the relentless instinctive drive to do whatever it takes—anything—to get to the top of where you want to be, and to stay there. Dwyane wasn’t the most gifted player on the floor the night the Heat won the title, but he was the only one who knew what everyone else had to do in order for them to win. That’s what champions do; they put people in place to get results and make everyone else around them look better.

A Cleaner has the guts and the vision to steer everything to his advantage. You never know what he’s going to do, but you know something’s coming and all you can do is wait and watch, with fear and respect for his ability to handle anything without discussion or analysis. He just knows.

Being a Cleaner has almost nothing to do with talent. Everyone has some degree of talent; it doesn’t always lead to success. Those who reach this level of excellence don’t coast on their talent. They’re completely focused on taking responsibility and taking charge, whether they’re competing in sports or managing a family or running a business or driving a bus; they decide how to get the job done, and then they do whatever is necessary to make it happen. These are the most driven individuals you’ll ever know, with an unmatched genius for what they do: they don’t just perform a job, they reinvent it. I own this.

Cleaners have a dark side, and a zone you can’t enter. They get what they want, but they pay for it in solitude. Excellence is lonely. They never stop working, physically or mentally, because it gives them too much time to think about what they’ve had to endure and sacrifice to get to the top. Most people are afraid to climb that high, because if they fail, the fall will kill them. Cleaners are willing to die trying. They don’t worry about hitting the ceiling or the floor. There is no ceiling. There’s no floor either.

A Cooler is careful; he waits to be told what to do, watches to see what everyone else is doing, and then follows the leader. He’s a mediator, not a decision-maker; he’s not taking sides unless he’s forced to. He can handle a certain amount of pressure when things are going well, but when things get too intense, he kicks the problem over to someone else. He can make a huge play, but he’s not ultimately responsible for the outcome. He’s the setup guy, keeping things cool until the Closer or Cleaner can take over.

I won’t ask you to transform into something you’re not and don’t aspire to be. I simply ask that you open your mind to the possibility that you can do so much more with what you already have. If you’re serious about going where you’ve never been, pushing higher and further than you or anyone else thought you could, it’s time to trust the voice inside telling you to do what you know you can do and become truly relentless.

1. WHEN YOU’RE A CLEANER.

You keep pushing yourself harder when everyone else has had enough.

I want you to be able to take all of this and use it as a framework for yourself to achieve whatever you desire. You don’t have to worry about training like a professional athlete—that’s a full-time job, and anyone who says you can “train like a pro” by reading a book is just trying to sell you a book. The book might be a good start, but let’s be honest: you train like a pro by committing to work at the highest level of intensity, every moment, in everything you do, constantly working on your body, your skills, your preparation, leaving no detail to chance. It’s not something you can do for thirty minutes in the morning, then head to work or school or wherever your other obligations take you.

But you can take an elite athlete’s mentality and use it to succeed at whatever you do. Absolutely everything in this book can be applied equally to athletics or business or school or anything else you do in the world.

That’s completely backward. Excellence isn’t only about hitting the gym and working up a sweat; that’s the smallest part of what you have to do. Physical ability can only take you so far.

The fact is, you can’t train your body—or excel at anything—before you train your mind. You can’t commit to excellence until your mind is ready to take you there. Teach the mind to train the body.

Physical dominance can make you great. Mental dominance is what ultimately makes you unstoppable.

You will never have a more powerful training tool than this: get your mind strong, so your body can follow. The true measure of an individual is determined by what you can’t measure—the intangibles. Anyone can measure weight, height, physical strength, speed. but you can’t measure commitment, persistence, or the instinctive power of the muscle in your chest, your heart. That’s where your true works begins: understanding what you want to achieve and knowing what you’re willing to endure to get it.

But we have to do this my way. No disrespect to your team trainer or dad or massage therapist, but if they knew how to handle the details of your situation, or if you knew how to do it yourself, you wouldn’t be here. What we’re going to do together is maybe 20 percent physical, and the rest is mental. You already have the talent; my job is to show you what you can do with all that talent so you can bust out of that cage holding you back. You may not like what I tell you, but if you stay with it, you’ll see the rewards.

I don’t need to be your friend.

Do. The. Work. Every day, you have to do something you don’t want to do. Every day. Challenge yourself to be uncomfortable, push past the apathy and laziness and fear. Otherwise, the next day you’re going to have two things you don’t want to do, then three and four and five, and pretty soon, you can’t even get back to the first thing. And then all you can do is beat yourself up for the mess you’ve created, and now you’ve got a mental barrier to go along with the physical barriers.

Cleaners do the hardest things first, just to show there’s no task too big. They might not be happy about it, they don’t ever love it, but they’re always thinking about the destination, not the bumpy road that takes them there. They do whatever they have to because they know it’s necessary, and you usually don’t have to tell them twice. More likely, while everyone else is slumped over in complete exhaustion, they’ll want to do it all again, and then they’ll say the second time was the best.

They come to me because they’re not satisfied staying where they are, they’re committed to enduring the pain and discomfort of improving on near-perfection, and they know I’ll push them until they exceed their goals.

Bottom line if you want success of any kind: you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Every time you think you can’t, you have to do it anyway. That last mile, the last set, the last five minutes on the clock. You have to play the last game of the season with the same intensity as you played the first. When your body is screaming and depleted and telling you, “No way, asshole,” you work harder and tell yourself, “Do it. Now.”

You control your body, it does not control you. You shut out the fear and emotion and physical stress and you do the thing you dread. You don’t go through the motions and watch the clock until it’s over. You invest in what you started, pushing yourself again and again beyond where you’ve already been.

There are no secrets. There are no tricks. If anything, it’s the opposite: Whether you’re a pro athlete or a guy running a business or driving a truck or going to school, it’s simple. Ask yourself where you are now, and where you want to be instead. Ask yourself what you’re willing to do to get there. Then make a plan to get there. Act on it.

Okay, you’re a fucking liar. You want to screw this up, do it somewhere else. I know it’s not easy, but you can’t stay in your comfort zone and expect results. Challenge yourself. Don’t be afraid to be uncomfortable. We can’t help people committed to failure.

Not me. Get comfortable being uncomfortable, or find another place to fail.

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