3 Habits of Highly Successful Players

Foreign Podcast. Appreciate all of you guys for listening today. Apple Podcast and Spotify and of course, everybody who's watching on YouTube right now shout out to you guys. Wanted to give you guys a really, really helpful, practical episode today. And I know it's one that is going to really be something you guys can take right now, be able to implement and immediately start to see changes and just the way that you approach things. I think the three things we're going to talk about today are such a major part of you being successful as a player and really not just basketball, but really with anything you do. These three things are going to be major factors in how successful you can be, how much you can improve, and ultimately the rate at which you do that. So I think it's a topic that is very, very, very, very important and that's why I wanted to get to it today. You know, one of the biggest things that I get, like the questions or I guess topics more so that I get in my whether it's DMs or comments or whatever, it's like, you know, how do I get here? Like, how do I reach this goal? How do I do this? How do I do that? And obviously there's your workouts and all that stuff that's important, but there's also more to it than just the work that you do. I want to, you know, 2021, I want to get past the notion that it's all about your workouts and if you just work hard, then this will happen or that'll happen. That's part of it, but it's not the entire thing. There's so much more that goes into it. And I think our topic today about becoming a successful player, habits you need to have and the characteristics that you need to have are just as important, to be honest, as the work that you do. And honestly, a lot of it leads into the work that you're going to do. So we'll hop into it. But again, thank you guys for listening. If you guys are on Apple podcasts, go and leave a review for me. Always going. Actually, I just went through the reviews a couple days ago, so go ahead and leave a review. I'll see it. Really, really cool to see that sort of stuff. And of course, my Instagram isndriven basketball, so you have any questions for me or you want to give me a follow, go ahead and do that. So let's hop into it. Three habits of highly successful Basketball players and habit number one that highly successful players have is that they want to be challenged and they want to be coached. And this is. This is such a major, major key to being a successful player. Really being successful at anything is learning from people. And not just that, but being willing to be challenged and not always allowing things to be easy or allowing yourself to get by, but having, you know, holding yourself to a high standard, but also the people around you, your coaches, your teammates, allowing them to hold you to a high standard and not be the type of person who gets coached hard or whatever and just goes into a shell and doesn't care and is all about themselves, but a person who's about, okay, what can I do to get as good as I possibly can? And that player understands that being challenged and coaching is such a major part of that. So, you know, a lot of players will seek out the path of least resistance. And that might be with workouts, but really it could be with. With anything else. And the players who are successful are the ones who. Who don't do that. You know, a lot of times it's, how can I get by with doing the least amount of work? How can I get through this practice? Right? You know, maybe you're going through a drill and you know that you can. You can, you know, maybe it's a. It's a sprint or whatever, and you know, you can beat everybody. But you know, that, like, listen, you know, I. As long as I finish, like, you know, fifth, sixth place, like, I'll. It'll be fine. Like, I'll get by doing that. The coaches won't notice it. That's. That's a situation. That's just an example. But that. That overall approach where it's saying, like, what can I do to get by? Instead of, you know, what is the level I need to push to. To be able to challenge myself and get better from this? I think that's a major thing for players to think about when it comes to wanting to be challenged and challenging yourself to be as good as you possibly can be. And the thing with players who are successful and highly successful is that they don't always need to hear somebody tell them, good job. Right? They don't always need to hear the praise. They don't always need to hear, like, oh, you're so good at this. You're so good at that. They're also willing to hear the criticism, and they understand the importance of criticism. And my call to everybody who's watching or listening right now is that you start to prioritize criticism over the praise you get. You start to seek out criticism instead of seeking out praise because while praise can be a good thing and everyone likes that, if that's what you value, then it can be very easy to get complacent, especially if the people around you are all telling you how good you are or this or that, oh, it's not your fault that you lost. That person did this or they did that or whatever it might be. Okay? Now, I'm not saying to be around a bunch of people who are always negative and telling you that you're bad and doing all that. No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying the people who are willing to constructively criticize you, people who want you to be your best and therefore are willing to tell you what you don't do well, what you could be doing better. Those are the people and the situations and the feedback, honestly, that you should prioritize, that you should want to have more of, because that's ultimately going to be what propels you to being the most successful player that you possibly can be. So don't just seek out that advice or that. Don't just seek out criticism, but seek out people who are willing to be that for you. People who are willing to say, hey, man, you could do this better, or, hey, maybe if you change this up, then you'll be able to do this better, right? Or, yeah, listen, you did that well. But I also think that you could have done that better. And when that's the case, you constantly have something to strive towards. You constantly have a goal that you're moving towards. And ultimately that's going to be what propels you to be as good as you possibly can be. You know, the thing is, when it comes to coaching, right, a good coach is often going to tell you what your friends and your parents or your family members or, you know, any really anybody else who's in your life won't tell you because a lot of times, you know, your friends and family are going to tell you stuff that you, you want to hear because they're on your. And it's not always because they're trying to, like, you know, be untruthful, but their view is, through. Is. Is they want to put you in a positive light because that's what they do, right? If, if, if they're your friends or family, they probably are going to do that. So they might, what they might say to you might not necessarily be the truth or the right thing, but their bias towards you. Okay, okay. So they might not tell you when you're wrong. They might not tell you when you need to do something better, right? But a coach, a good coach, is going to do that because coaches are one of the few people in your life who truly benefit from you being as good as you possibly can. When they help you to become as good as you possibly can be, then they win more games. So you guys both benefit, right? So when they criticize you, typically, again, with good coaches, it's in the best interest of you becoming as good as you possibly can be. So that therefore, you can help the team be as good as the team could possibly be and you guys win more, okay? So start to view things through that lens. Just because it comes from somebody who's your friend or your family doesn't necessarily mean that it's the right thing, right? Doesn't mean it's always wrong. But you have to be able to accept the fact that, listen, this person may or may not know what's going on. The other thing with coaching is that, especially when it comes to your own team, right, it's you and your coaches who are in the gym every day, right? Your parents or your. Your family or your friends or whatever, your brother, your sister. They're not in the gym with you every day. They're not in, in. In practice with you every day. So they don't see what happens. They don't see what you guys are working on. They don't see who's doing what. They don't see who's performing in practice and who's not. They don't see who's hitting shots in practice and who's not hitting shots in practice. All they see is the game. And that's a very small part of what actually is. That's really the tip of the iceberg. There's so much that goes on underneath that as well. So keep in mind that not only are coaches going to, first of all have your best interest in mind, because your best interest typically is going to be their best interest as well when it comes to winning. But also, your coaches see the entire picture, right? They see the foundation that you've built to get to the actual game. And everybody else just sees the final product. So that's something to be considered about as well. Having good coaching is such a major, major key for you. If you want to be as good as you possibly can and facing challenges ultimately, whether that be through coaching, whether it just. Whether that just be yourself. Being willing to go into the gym every day and challenge yourself, being willing to go into practice every day and challenge yourself, that ultimately breeds confidence. And confident players are successful players. Right. So if you want to be highly successful, then develop confidence. And a great way to do that is by facing challenges, overcoming challenges, understanding the fact that, listen, I've faced this, this, and this before, so I know when I get into this situation, good, like, I'm gonna be able to do it. I'm able to figure it out. So something for you guys to keep in mind, first of all, is that highly successful players want to be challenged and they want to be coached. Number two, highly successful players go the extra mile. And what I mean by this is that a player who's highly successful with them, they don't just stop at team workouts or, you know, maybe they work out a couple times a week with a trainer that's. They don't just stop there. There's so many players that I know who like, will go and work their, you know, one day a week with their trainer, and then they'll go to their two team practices or two team open gyms in the off season. And then outside of that, they do nothing by themselves. And that, you know, the game of basketball is one of those games where you need, like, the reps really, really add up and you need time in the gym, especially when it comes to shooting. You know, if you want to be a person who hits shots, it requires you to put a certain, a certain level, a certain amount of time into the game. And that, that is really where you can start to see who's really dedicated and who's not. Because, you know, there are guys who put the work in and guys who don't. And what you don't want to fall victim to is thinking like, okay, I did this once a week, so I'm cool right now. Like I said earlier, I kind of alluded to it earlier. What I'm not saying is that you have to be, oh, 24, seven. I'm in the. No, no, that's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying that you need to be working out for eight hours a day at all. What I'm saying is that just stopping at your sort of structured workouts where, whether it be with a trainer or whether it be with your team, if that's only a couple days a week for you, then what are you doing the rest of those days? Are you. Are you at the park or at the gym, at the ymca, whatever? Like, are you out there? Are you there getting shots up? Are you there working on, you know, your ball handling or whatever it might be? Right? Whatever you might be working on? Is that what you're doing because it can't just be a situation where you rely on your. Your team stuff and you rely on, you know, working out once or twice a week with a trainer. Because think of it like this, especially if it's with your team stuff, how are you going to separate yourself if you're doing the exact same stuff as everybody else on your team? Right. Everyone wants to be the best player on their team. But if you're not putting in that extra work, how do you actually expect to be that it's going to be hard for you to be able to separate yourself? I'm not saying. What I am saying is that you should be at those, those team workouts and all that stuff and be in getting better like that. But also there's additional stuff that you can add on to that as well. So I think on going with that, that's kind of a baseline thing. And I'm sure a lot of you guys like, yeah, that makes sense. Also going along with that, going the extra mile. Do you watch film? I know a lot of players who just don't watch, like they have film available. They'll have games that they play in that they can go back and watch after, and they just don't do it because they don't think they need to or they would rather do other things. But the best way to learn from yourself and to get better is to actually watch what happened. And then at that point you can look and say, oh, you know what? Hey, that situation, I should have done that. Oh, man, I had an opportunity in that situation to do that. And if that's the case, well, you would never know that if you didn't go back and watch the film. Right? You might have thought that during the game, you might thought, oh, man, I should have done that. But then, guess what? The next play happens and you're onto that. So by the time the game's over, you don't remember what happened back in the second quarter. So watching film is such a big thing. If you have access to it, you've got to be somebody who's watching that, who's running back and learning, okay, what can I do better? What situation I take advantage of? What opportunities will I have moving forward? So, you know, maybe in the, in the season, right, when you have a couple days off, you know, maybe you have a day off from your team, or maybe you just have an opportunity in the morning before school or whatever to get some extra work in where you can say, hey, you know what? I have some opportunities from the wing off of a driving kick. So I gotta, maybe I take 30 minutes and I work on, okay, catch and shoot from the wing and then catch and rip through and then finish. And then. So I'm just getting in work in a spot where I was watching my film back and, and I saw that, hey, on that wing I kept getting the ball off driving kicks and I had an opportunity to attack there and I didn't. So what am I doing now to make sure that I can take advantage of that the next time that I'm in that situation? Again, something you learn from watching the film back. And if you aren't doing that, then you're really going to leave a lot on the table. Okay. By the way, speaking of film, at some point soon I'm going to do a breakdown of kind of how I watch film, how I go about it. Kind of an in depth thing. Because there's different ways that you watch film and there's different reasons that you would watch it too. Like you would watch film, for example, like me as a, as a coach. So I also coach a high school team. Like I watch film of my team differently than I watch film of like an individual NBA player. Right. I would watch if I was playing on my, like if I was back in high school, I would watch that film differently than I would watch the film now. Right. Or that I would watch you if I'm watching, you know, Bradley Beal, I would watch that differently than I would watch my own film when I was like, that's, that's kind of the. So there's a lot of different areas and avenues depending on what your goal is with the, with that film. So that's why, like, it's kind of a weird thing to do but, or to make a video on. But I will, I'll break that down at some point and just kind of take you through how I do it. But ultimately, like, don't wait for that. Like, watching film is pretty straightforward. Eventually as you start to watch, you pick up patterns and you recognize things and you say, hey, you know what, that's an opportunity right there. And, and especially if it's your own film, it's very, very easy to figure out what situations you had opportunities to, to succeed in. And, and if you want to celebrate learning, go the extra mile, put the time in. There's another thing right there. If in the winter you think that the only time that you really have to be engaged with your team is at practice or at games, there's another, there's another situation where that's not true. Right. Are you putting in the film, the work to watch film outside of your practices? Okay. Are you putting in those couple days a week where you're going to get that extra work in? Whether it's extra shots or whatever, whatever it might be, there's always the extra mile that you can go. And again, I'm not saying to go burn yourself out and try and do everything, but you certainly can. There's certainly more that you can do aside from just what your team is doing. Okay. Really think that's a big key right there. And I also think going along with that as well, that a big part of developing is also reading books. And this. I talked about this a couple weeks ago, but this doesn't necessarily just have to be about, like, oh, okay, reading. So it has to be about basketball. It doesn't have to be a basketball. Like, there's. There's way more out there than just basketball. So you know that the book could be about mindset or it could be about leadership or success, Whatever it is. Like, there's a lot of areas that you can learn about that will help you as a basketball player that doesn't have to just be like, oh, what basketball book should I read? It doesn't have to be like that. So I would say, honestly, don't even worry about, like. Like what I'm reading or like, you. I mean, if you ask me in the comments, like, I'll give you a couple. But like, if you just go to your library or whatever, like, there are plenty of books just on leadership or about success, they're gonna have a lot of principles and stuff that you can take and apply to literally what you do. So don't, don't overthink it. Just. Just go out and do it. That's really what more I would say when it comes to that. But I think that the other thing is that players think, okay, I do my work on the court, and that's it. But I also think that developing yourself as a whole and mentally reading is such a major key in doing that. Okay. And the, the. What's the. What's the cliche saying it's readers are leaders. Right. And you know, that. That, that's, you know, whatever. Like, I'm. I'm kind of making a joke by saying that, but I really do think that if players are reading books that push them to become leaders, right? Reading books about how to be a good leader, you're reading books on developing a strong mindset that's going to translate to you and your team, and you're going to be a more valuable member of your team because that's the approach you take. You're going to take stuff, you learn from that, and, and you're going to use that as a leader on your team. And because of your team is going to be better, you're going to win more games, you're going to be a better player, and ultimately everybody wins. So make sure that you're doing that as well. Like, really, I can't overemphasize how important that is as well. So number two is that players who are highly successful go the extra mile and habit number three is that players who are highly successful, they prioritize improvement over everything. So the thing to understand is that losing and adversity can be a very good thing over time. If you have the right approach to it. If you understand that you can learn a lot from losing, you can learn a lot from facing challenges, then you're going to be able to overcome that and use that to say, listen, what can I do to get better? Now? The next time you face a challenge like that, it's not going to be as much of a challenge for you, okay? And there's the improvement that you'll be able to tangibly see if you approach things the right way with it, with a, with a strong mindset, you understand that challenges and adversity, short term is painful and not fun, but long term is going to make you better as well. And that's really a. This third key is really where I think the separation comes, because there's so many things that you can be focused on, reading, be focused on, okay, how many points did I score? Be focused on, okay, how much playing time did I get, how much this, how much that, which are kind of arbitrary things, because if you play on a really, really good team, you might just not play as much. If you have a bunch of teammates who are really good, you might not play as much. But if you play in a team that's terrible, you might not even be that good. And you might play okay. So that's, that's kind of an intangible thing. But the other thing to think about, if you play on a team that's really good, you might not score that many points because other people can score. But if you play on a team where everybody's bad, then you might get to shoot the ball a lot, and therefore you might score even if you aren't that good. So being able to focus on, am I maximizing my potential Am I playing up to my highest capability? Am I reaching my highest capability every day when I come in and I put the work in? Am I moving closer towards where I need to be? If you can answer yes to that question, then you are moving in the right direction and you're going to be a successful player. That's ultimately what it comes down to. These type of players understand that the reps add up, okay? So it's really an exponential thing as you continue to put. To put the work in and put the reps in. Right. It's a thing where, like, progress is not going to be linear. It's going to be up and down sometimes, but it's going to be on a trend, moving upward. And eventually as you can get put to put things up and you get better and better and better, then you'll start to see those that progress become even more consistent. And that's just those reps adding up. But that comes from your prioritization of improvement over everything. And if your measuring stick for success is how much improvement you make, you're going to be able to feel good about the work that you put in because you're not always going to win. And honestly, there's going to be. There's always somebody who's better than you. There will always be somebody on earth who is better backhauled than you. There will almost always be a team that you face that will be better than you. So you're going to lose from time to time. Like you're just going to. That's just kind of a fact of everything. You're going to lose. But can you say to yourself, like, yeah, I'm reaching my highest potential. I put in the work and I'm proud of the work that I've put in because I know the improvements coming and I see the improvement. I know that the reps are adding up again. That's going to be what makes you successful long term. Because instead of getting bogged down by, oh, I lost, or this person's better than me, well, no longer, like, is that the way that you prioritize things? And long term, people who take that approach are the ones who are successful. And basketball is absolutely the case as well. So number three, players who are highly successful value improvement over everything. So three habits right there that going throughout this year, you guys need to make sure that you develop if you want to be that successful player. And I think ultimately when it comes down to it, developing good habits is such a major key, because as talented as you might be, if you have bad habits. Eventually the people who, you know you'll make it to some certain point will where everybody's talented. And now the difference is who has good habits and who has bad habits. And it'll be very apparent very quickly who does and who doesn't. So develop that now. Okay? While you're developing yourself as a player, also develop yourself mentally in these three areas so that not only do you have those habits, but your progress as a player starts to exponentially improve because you're approaching things the right way. Okay? So hopefully this is helpful for you guys. Like I said before, guys, my Instagram is at visionary basketball. Leave a DM for me. Drop a follow as well. And if you guys are on YouTube, go ahead and hit that like button. Subscribe and drop a comment down below. Let me know what you think. I'll talk to you guys soon. Peace, Sa.