Ego-Driven Player vs. Task-Driven Player - Which One Are You?

Foreign podcast. Appreciate every single one of you guys for tuning in this week. Thank you guys. Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, shout out to all of you guys. Gonna get into pretty deep topic today. I was going through a couple things that I have to do for the team that I coach. I take a couple courses and in one of the courses I had to take, there was a really, really interesting topic that reminded me of a couple of you guys that I've talked to about something kind of similar to this. And also a lot of what I see, it kind of just jogged my memory going through this course. And it was one of those things where it started off like, I'm sure if you guys have had a class in school or like maybe some course you had to take where it's like you start off with and you're like, oh, this is literally the dumbest thing I've ever done. And then like, there's some part of it where you're like, okay, this is actually kind of interesting and like, this is kind of applicable. Um, and that was what this course, this part of the course was. Um, and so it inspired this, this podcast. I was taking notes on it and really the, the question that it made me think of is I've gotten this a couple times where, you know, players will ask me like, hey, coach, how do I give the same effort when I'm losing by a lot? Like, my team is losing, my team's losing a lot of games. Like, we're having a rough time. Like, how do you maintain that same level of commitment and focus every single time you're on the court? And I think this can be broken down even more than that. I think we can look at it like, okay, how do you respond when something bad happens to you in a game, in a practice? Like, what is your response to that look like because there are players who are very, very talented, but because their response to negative things happening is so poor, they really self sabotage. And today's podcast is going to be all about that and all about how you can overcome that and ultimately how you can put yourself in a position to be a more consistent player. And not only more consistent, but get yourself to a point where you can play at a higher level more consistently. Okay, how can we optimize the skills you have so that you can be at your best the most amount of time possible? That's our goal ultimately. Okay, that's why we go to the gym and work out. That's why we do all this. That's why you guys listen to my Podcast so you can be at your best as often as you possibly can be, right? So that's the goal of today's podcast. So really, what it comes down to, the first question I want to ask you is, how do you define success? Okay. And let's talk even smaller than that, right? How do you define success in school? Okay, think about that for a second. Like, what would you consider if you were to tell somebody you're a successful student or someone to tell you they're a successful student to you? What is. What does that entail? What does that mean? Okay, maybe that means to you, like, oh, means they got all A's or they have a 4.0 GPA or they're in all honors classes or whatever. Like, whatever might be for you. Okay, now let's talk about that in the context of basketball. Like, what does. What does a successful basketball player look like? Okay? If you tell somebody that you had a successful game, what exactly does that mean? If you tell somebody you had a successful practice, what does that mean? You tell somebody you had a successful season, what does that mean to you? Okay, that's really where we're gonna start off when it comes to this topic that we're gonna break down today. When you have that answer, I want you to hold on to that for a second, okay? There's been a lot of research that's been done that shows that the way an individual person perceives success, their definition of it is gonna have a major influence on the way that they behave, the way that they think, and the actual feeling that they get when they achieve something. Okay? That's why some players, when something bad happens, are going to respond differently than another player, right? The same thing might happen to them. The ones going to respond very, very differently to the other one. Okay? And I know you guys have seen that probably on your own teams, okay? And for the most part, people perceive success in two different ways, right? The first way is task based or task driven. Okay? And the second way is ego driven, okay? So those are kind of two opposite ends. But for the most part, people either lean towards being task driven when they talk about their success or ego driven when we talk about their success. And we're gonna talk about which one is better and which one you fall. But first of all, I want you to think about that answer you gave, right? When you talk about basketball, okay? Is your answer when it comes to being successful, does that mean, oh, a successful season means that, you know, I average 25 a game and my team won every game and I never turned the ball over one time the whole year. I never missed one shot the whole year. If that's your definition of success, that's what we call being ego driven. Because if that's the only way you view success, when that doesn't happen, when you do miss a shot, you're going to be severely affected because now you're going to feel like you can't achieve success and that's going to affect your effort the way that you approach the rest of the game. And ultimately it's going to make the game a lot less fun. Okay, so we talked about an ego driven player, right? What, like, what does that mean? Exactly? So typically an ego driven player is gonna be very, very focused on how their abilities match up to people around them, okay? So they're gonna be thinking, oh, am I better than my teammate? Am I better than that guy? Am I, do I look better than like, basically it's gonna be a major comparison trap, okay? At every moment it's about how can I compare myself and prove that I'm better than this person next to me, okay? And that might, that, that's not. That may be a good thing, but also can be at the detriment of yourself or your team, okay? And ultimately, when you're an ego driven player, okay, there's going to be a major correlation for you with success and winning, okay? Winning equals success and losing equals failure. And that's how it is. There's no context, there's no whatever. You either win and you succeed or you lose and you fail. And there's absolutely no exceptions to that. That's how you do it, okay? And it's a very, very straightforward definition of success for you because basically you just look at the scoreboard and that's all that matters to you, okay? And oftentimes this person would prefer to win by giving. In the ideal situation, they can beat their opponent without having to try as hard and ultimately without having to prepare as much. Okay? So you would prefer to have to get to go play against a terrible team that you know you guys are going to beat by 60 because you know that you don't really have to bring it, you don't have to try that hard in practice the day before because you're going to win. Like those are the games that you love because you know you can go out and drop 30 against guys who are terrible, but you also know that you don't have to give your best effort, okay? And those are the situations that ego driven players seek out because again, all that matters is what does the school board say? Did I win or did I lose? That's all that matters to them. Okay. If their self confidence is really high, then they're going to tend to be focused on how to prove their ability to everybody else around them rather than focusing on improving that ability so that long term they become better. Okay? That's a ego driven player with a high self confidence. If we're talking about an ego driven player with a low self confidence, then they're going to be constantly comparing themselves to the guy next to them being, oh, am I good enough to beat that guy? Am I good enough to be here? Am I good enough to do that? Can I do this? Can I do that? And it's going to be very, very internally focused the entire time. And that's really going to be what you're going to get from a player like that. Okay? So that's really an ego driven player. Kind of in a nutshell. An ego driven player is very, very, it's very, very easy for them to get derailed by, in the context of the game. And that can be by sort of nonsensical things like trash talk and all that stuff where stuff that isn't like a big deal can derail that player. Okay, I'm not saying trash talk is necessarily a bad thing all the time, but I'm saying this player is going to potentially, at the expense of themselves or the team basically get sucked into trash talk to the point where they're not able to produce as well. Right? They're going to get sucked into what the fans are saying to the point where they're not going to be able to produce as well because that's what they care about. They care about proving themselves to people instead of winning actually winning the game. Okay? It's really a, it's really a false, it's a fault. They're putting up a front essentially that, that they're all about winning, but really it's all about proving themselves at any point possible. Okay? They're going to prioritize a scoreboard over actual excellence, okay. Over actual improvement. And that may cause them to avoid situations that they might lose in. Okay? And we're going to go through a couple situations in a minute, but it's very, very detrimental to them. Okay? So there are some upsides to that, but there's a lot of downsides to being that ego driven player as well. That person who only defines success by the scoreboard, winning or losing, no context involved a task driven player on the other Hand is going to feel successful when they gain a skill or, or they improve at something, okay? So their definition of success is about how much can they improve, how much, like, did they play up to their potential that day? Okay? Did they improve their capacity to produce going forward because they got better? That's the definition of success for someone who is task driven, okay? And this person is always going to try their best. They're always trying their hardest. They're always going the hardest. Even if they know that they're a lot better than somebody, they might not have to give their best effort. They might not have to work that hard in practice to beat somebody. They're going to do it anyway because again, their definition of success is did I give my best effort and did I play up to my potential every single day? And that's the way that they define success. If they didn't do it, even if they still won the game, they don't feel successful because they know they could have done better. And this person is focused on experiencing personal improvement. And instead of having to prove that they care about improving, okay, improving themselves rather than having to prove the ability that they already have. And they're able to focus on what they're doing in the moment, not those outside factors. So they don't get derailed by trash talk to the point where it affects them. They don't get derailed by the crowd or what people are saying to them. They are very, very focused on the task at hand, at winning the game, at doing things. They need to be successful on the court, and they primarily think about how to accomplish or get better at the task at hand. And if they are able to achieve that high level of focus and they feel that, that high level of purpose as well, then they're going to feel successful, okay? That's how they're going to judge themselves. That's how they're going to judge their success. And above all, they're fiercely competitive, not just with other people, but themselves, right? They want to be better than they were the day before. They want to. They want to be able to look at themselves, hey, you know what? A week ago, I wasn't as good as I am now, right? And guess what? In another week from now, I'm going to be even better than I am right now. That's the way they compete. They don't necessarily say, hey, you know, I'm better than that guy. I'm better than that guy. I'm not as good as that guy. I'm better than that. Their only competition really is themselves. Okay, you know what? How can I get better this month, right? Am I better than I was last month? Did I improve at the, at the highest rate that I possibly could? Did I put in the. All the work that I could? Did I slack off in practice? Did I make the most of the time that I spent in the gym? That's how they define whether or not they're successful. And because, and the reason, because it's because they want to win. They want to put themselves in the best position to actually win. And this is a true desire to win. Not. Not the front of proving that they're better than everybody or proving that they're this or that they're. That they want to win, actually. Okay? And that's why they are driven the way that they are, because they know that the way to win consistently long term is to become the best player they could possibly be. And you have to understand that the, the way to maximize winning in the long term is by trying hard. It's by getting uncomfortable and it's by choosing to take on challenges and showing persistence when you're faced with adversity. Okay, so that's again a task driven player in a nutshell right there. How do you know which one you are? Right? You might think to yourself, hey, you know what, I kind of feel like I have factors of each. Like, or maybe I feel like I don't even know what you're talking about. Like, how does it relate to me? So how can we figure out what you are? Right? What category do you fall into? Or what characteristics do you show the most often? Okay. Where do you tend to lean when it comes to this? And a. Let's think about this situation right here, okay? And we'll think about it for a task evolved player. So let's say, you know, you're the starting point guard, right? Or you're whatever, okay. And you go out and you miss your first two or three shots of the game, right? First quarter, you miss your first three shots. They were good shots. They're open shots and you just missed them. Okay? A task driven player is going to continue to maintain a high level of energy, high level of focus, high level intensity. They're going to try their best still regardless of the misses, and they're going to take the next shot if they're given the opportunity to. Right? If they're on the court expected to take shots and produce, they're going to continue to do that regardless of whether or not they miss a shot or two. Okay? And again, to Remind you guys, you should know this, but there's going to be situations where you're going to do that. You're going to go through stretches where you're going to miss your first five shots in a game. It's to going to happen sometimes. So they feel successful by continuing to maintain that high level of effort, by continuing to play up to their best, their best, their standard, right? Hold them to, to a standard of excellence, and they're going to feel successful because you know what? I gave my best effort this entire game. Regardless of whether or not the ball went in or didn't go in. This person is a valuable and consistent member of the team because the coaches and the players know, like, hey, you know what, Even if he misses some shots, like, he's going to continue to play hard on defense and he's going to encourage his teammates when they make shots. And he's ultimately a guy that you want to have on your team because he contributes to winning, okay? And they're going to make adjustments based on feedback from both those missed shots. Maybe they turn the ball over, they're going to make feed, they're going to be able to see feedback and receive it, and they're going to make adjustments based on that, okay? They're going to be able to take coaching well. They're going to be able to learn from their misses, and that's not going to affect their energy at all. It's going to stay at a very, very high level. And this person, this player is going to continue to persist until they win the game or the game ends. Right? But ultimately it's not about the scoreboard. It's about, okay, I'm going to give my best, my best effort regardless of the adversity or whatever I face. That doesn't matter to me, okay? I'm going to judge success based on, did I go out there and do the best that I possibly could? Because I can't be expected to do more, right? If the, if there's a level I'm not at yet, then I'm not expecting myself to do that. I'm just gonna go out there and do the best that I can right now. That's how I'm gonna be successful. Because eventually I'm gonna get to a point where I'm gonna put in the work, right? And I'm gonna improve my capacity. We think about it like this, right? Maybe, you know, at that point, their capacity is this, okay? It's really, really small, right? But then, you know, they work at it. They get better. And all of a sudden their capacity is this. So now they can handle more, they can produce more, and now they hold themselves to an even higher standard because they're better. Okay? That's how they define success. And so that's a task of all players. So if you feel like you identify with that, that's a really good thing right there. We're going to get into why this has a lot of upsides to it. The ego driven player has a lot of downsides to it as well. But we talk about ego involved player in the same situation. Let's say they make a shot or too early, they get out there and they hit their first two shots at that point usually becomes tunnel vision. I'm launching the ball every single time. I don't care about what my teammates are doing, what my coaches tell me to do. I'm going to go out there and shoot whether or not it's going to be the best situation for the team. We all know players like this, who maybe you played against you or you played with, where they, they hit a couple shots and then it's like, man, they're not passing the ball and they don't care if they got a guy open, if they're covered, whatever the play might be, they're going to shoot the basketball because that's what they feel like they should do. Okay? And part of that can be low basketball iq, but another part of that can be like, hey, you know what? I made my shots like, now it's all about me. And if they miss two or three shots, conversely, they're going to start to become more passive offensively. They're going to start to shy away from taking shots. They're going to feel like, hey, you know what? Doesn't matter. Like, they're going to start to give less effort all around. They're not going to try as hard to get open. They're not going to make cuts on offense anymore. And usually their defensive effort might waver a little bit as well. And they're just not going to try as hard in other aspects of the game. And then at that point, they're going to start blaming their teammates for why they aren't getting the ball or they're going to blame their teammates for doing this, for not rebounding, for not playing defense, for not doing this or doing that. They're going to start finding some way to shift the blame from them to other people. They're going to blame the coach for calling the wrong plays. They're going to blame the officials for Doing this, the defense for fouling them, whatever it's going to be, they're going to find a way to show blame off of themselves and put onto somebody else because they know that their effort is decreasing and everybody can see it. And they want to find an excuse for why that's acceptable. Okay? That's what the ego driven player is going to do. And again, I'm sure you guys know players like that. Hopefully that's not you, but if it is you, it's okay for that right now. Okay? Be able to admit that, be able to accept that, because that's the first step we're going to go through to be able to change that, okay? And at that point, they're motivated by the fact that if I don't shoot the basketball, I can't miss, right? If I miss my first three shots, people might think I'm terrible, whatever. Now if I don't shoot the basketball, like, I can't miss and no one else can, no one can think that I'm not good, right? Even if it means not being able to play up to their best, their highest potential, they might have the ability to hit shots, but because they feel embarrassed because they missed or they feel like, you know, now someone's, oh, he's a worse player than that guy because he missed those shots, that's what's going through their mind. They're constantly, again, constantly comparing themselves to their teammates or to another guy or the other team or whatever, instead of saying, you know what? I'm just going to go up and play my best game. Now they're in their head about who's thinking what, who's doing what. And that's just not a good place to be. To be at all. And by not trying hard, they're going to have an excuse. Now they can say, hey, you know, I just, I didn't try. Like, I, like that's why I didn't play well. And that to them, that feels like a good enough excuse. So they're gonna start to feel down on themselves and ultimately they're gonna play below their level that they actually can play at all. Because of, mentally up here, things just went crazy, right? That's, that's really the only reason why that happened to them. So before we get into the rest of this, I just want to read you guys a quick quote. You guys probably have all heard this, but it's from Michael Jordan where he says, I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games, 26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed, I failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeeded. So the reason I wanted to read that quote is just because again, it solidifies what I'm talking about when it talks about a task of a player, A guy who's completely committed to getting better, completely committed to playing up to his highest potential, okay, where he's not going to care, like, you know what, I might have missed that shot, but I know that I can make the next one, so I'm going to keep on doing that, okay? Where this guy's saying, hey, you know what? We won that game, but I feel like we should have won that game by more because I feel like I could have played better, right? That's the type of guy that Michael Jordan is. And all the greats are like that. All the guys who are great are, are always focused on, on being better, right? If you listen to a lot of these guys talk after a game, you're gonna hear him say, like, you know what, we won, but we could have won by more. You listen to LeBron postgame, okay? Everyone's seen the quote of Kobe Bryant, right? Where, you know, he, after I forget which, which finals game it was, but after the reporter asked him like, hey, you know, you guys won the game, like, how do you feel? And he's basically like, hey, job's not finished. And that was his, that was his answer, right? Because he knows, like, you know what, for a lot of guys, they want to, if you win a game in the NBA Finals, you feel really good about yourself. But like, for me, like, I know we have another level that we need to get to, like, we're not done yet. Like, we can be better, we can do better. And ultimately that's the sign of a task driven player all about improvement. Oh, but what can I do next to be better, to get better, to improve my ability to perform and what's the next level for me to reach? I can't feel satisfied being where I'm at. I've got to get better. So clearly we can see that the ego driven player is at a disadvantage when it comes to performance, consistent performance especially. And despite the fact that the only metric that an ego driven player has for success is winning. Despite that, they're going to struggle to consistently win because of what the situation we just went through where they start to miss a couple shots and it's boom, checked out downhill from there. So despite the fact that they're like all about winning. They're not really all about winning because they're really mostly about proving themselves to people. And if they feel like they can't do that, then they're not really about winning anymore. So because of this mindset, they're going to struggle to play consistently well, but also they're going to struggle to consistently contribute to a winning team. So you might have a guy who's a really good player, but his team is terrible and you feel like, man, those guys should be way better. Sometimes it can be because their best player or the best players are ego driven and they only play well when things are going well. When things are going well, they're great. But when things start to go wrong, when someone starts to challenge them, it's over for them. Okay? So that's why we want to get away from being that sort of player. We don't want that. We want to be a task driven player. And long term development and success is much more likely to occur when a player, when you evaluate yourself based on factors that you control, okay, you do not control whether or not the ball goes in the basket. It doesn't matter how great you shoot the basketball. You do not control it, right? You control, you might shoot the ball perfectly and you feel as soon as it goes up against, oh, that's, that's nothing but net, like that's going in and it still might roll around and go out, right? You might shoot a layup and you might have a defender come out of nowhere and block your shot. You didn't see him, right? You don't control the ball going in the basket. You don't do it. No matter how hard you try, the ball might still miss, okay? So you don't control that. You definitely don't control the scoreboard. You definitely don't control who scores for your team, who scores the other team. You definitely do not control that. You might play great defense and the offensive might throw up a backward shot without looking and the ball might go in, right? That can happen. So you don't control that. What you do control is your effort. You control your commitment to improvement. And that's what I want to get at here. The up and down that an ego driven player faces ultimately can cause them to love the game less, right? To lose interest in basketball and really in any area but basketball specifically. And I, you know, this is, this is why it's hard for players who, you know, there, there are probably some of you out there who probably have aspects of being an EO driven player where for Example, if you miss a shot, right, you might start to feel really self conscious about it, okay? And you might start to feel like, oh man, I feel like I just can't shoot today or so whatever. Like a lot of you guys might struggle with that and that makes the game less fun, right? When you're so worried about every single game, like, oh, I gotta, I gotta make the shot, gotta make the shot, I made the shot. If I don't make three shots today, then it's bad. Like, if, when you're focused on that every game, it just makes the game less fun. It's not as fun to play it because you feel like you have so much pressure on you that it's like, man, if I, if I go out there and I play well, it's like, okay, I, I, I hit the baseline, right? But if I go out there, I don't play well, then it's the worst thing ever. There's no, like, fun part of it. There's no peak to get to. It's either I'm at my baseline, like, I survived another day, I played well, I survived. Or it's like, I didn't survive, I just crashed and now I'm down the bottom of the hill. Okay, we don't want to, we don't want to be there. We want to be able to be at a genuinely high level above that baseline. We want to be, feel good about ourselves the majority time that we play, okay? That's what we want to be able to do. And by, by adopting that ego driven or that task driven mindset, we're going to be able to do that. Okay, so what's the solution to all this? Like what, what do we take going forward from this? We have to become task focused. As I said, we have to first change the way that we measure being successful. We have to change that. We have to change the way that we view that. We have to make a paradigm shift is what it's called, where we change the way that we actually think about something. We change the entire way that we approach a topic. Okay? Success should not be about winning and losing. Ultimately, it really should not be about that. And I'm gonna explain to you why that is. Let's think about that. Let's say that you go outside, you call up one of your friends, you say, hey, you know you want to play some one on one. He's like, cool, come over. Now you know that your friend isn't that good. Like, you know, he's okay, but you know that you're Gonna beat him, right? You know that 99.9% time if you try like you're gonna be, you're gonna beat your friend. Okay, so let's say you go out there that day and you beat him easily four times. He went 4, 0, okay? And whatever, you go to game 211, you beat him four times straight. And then you guys go home, you feel good about yourself because you won four times today, all this. Now let's say that you call that same friend the next day and you say, hey, you want to come play one on one? He's like, sure. And today though, you decide that you're only going to score with three or less dribbles when you play him. You're only taking three or less dribbles every time when you're in offense. Okay? So now let's say that you end up losing three games, only winning one. Does that mean that you're less successful because you arbitrarily went four and a one day and one and three the next day? You know that you need to get more efficient taking less dribbles when you score, because you know that's going to translate to five on five, right? If you take a million dribbles in a one on one game, unless you are James Harden and you're allowed to do that, probably won't be able to do that in the context of a game, you probably need to score in less dribbles. So you say, you know, I got to work on that, I got to get better at that. So you do that, you work on it and you struggle and you lose three games out of four. Does that make you a failure? Of course it doesn't. In fact, I would argue that it's, it's more successful on that second day because you challenge yourself. And you, we talked about the capacity, your capacity was here, right? With your ability to score efficiently. And after that day, maybe you're here now, maybe you're a little bit better at it. Maybe you, you, you, you got a little bit better at learning how to score with less dribbles. So you got better that day, right? Asking about the first day where you really didn't get that much better because you just, you beat a guy that you should be, right? But you challenge yourself the next day to get even better. And because of that, maybe the next time you go play that guy, maybe you win two games, lose two games now because you got better, right? And then maybe a couple of weeks go by of you doing that, all of a sudden you beat him Four. You beat him four times out of four, because all using three dribbles or less because you were willing to take those licks right, and lose early because you knew that was going to make you a winner moving forward. But if you're, if your metric for success early on was like, hey man, if I, like, if I lose at all, then I'm a failure. So it doesn't matter how I win, but I got to win. If that was how you measured success. So that first day when you tried, you know, hey, oh man, I tried to beat him three dribbles less. I lose all four and I lose three out of four games. Like, I guess I'm never doing that again. And then you go back to just beating him easily with unlimited dribbles. You would never have improved in that area. And then maybe next year, because you're willing to take that time and get better at scoring efficiently, maybe your next season school ball rolls around and your scoring average is up 5 points per game because you're better at getting the basket, you're better at getting, you know, to the basket and getting fouls. Maybe you score two extra layups and a free throw every game because all of a sudden you're better at scoring efficiently. Your coaches give you the ball more because they know that you're efficient with it. That would, that would, that's, that's success right there. Because you went from being, you went from, from not having an ability or having a not great ability to now expanding it and making it better. Now you're a better player. That makes you successful. Okay? So we need to throw away arbitrary losing. And I always say this, but like when I'm playing pickup, like, I love being in situations where like, I'm the worst player there. Like, I love that. It's my, it's my favorite thing because I understand that that's gonna make me a better player long term, okay? And I'm, I don't care about losing pickup games. I don't care about losing one on one games after workouts. Like, I don't care at all. I'll play anybody because even if I lose, I'm going to challenge myself to play better defense and say, you know what? This guy might have scored on me every. Like there'll be times where I'll go play with people and they'll score on me eight times in a row, right? And I'll. But I'll say, you know what? This nighttime, like, you're not scoring on me. Like, I'm going to, I'm going to get better at playing defense right there. How can I adapt and improve and get better? And maybe I stop him one time. So maybe to the outside world, like, I just got killed. Someone, someone scored eight times out of nine on me. But, like, I know for myself, I adapted. And that ninth time I stopped him, okay? That's how I measured success. So I don't care about winning or losing. I want to win, obviously, but at the end of the day, like, can I get better? Because that means moving forward. Like, I'm going to raise up to your level. If I'm playing as you, you're better than me. I'm going to raise up to your level. If I play you enough times, okay, I'm going to be able to find a way to beat you. But if I shy away from that and I only play players who are worse than me, then how do I improve? How can I call myself a better player? I can't. I can't. And to me, that's failure right there. Okay? So ultimately, this is why we need to be task focused. Everything that you do should be driven by this ability to improve your capacity to produce. Okay? We want to go from here to here to here. Every single time that we step on the court. We want to get better. We want to be able to be better. Okay. Okay. We want to be able to have the skills that we have right now. And by going through enough difficult situations, we are allowed to, we were able to do more now and more and more and more. We can, we can, we can become. We can go from being able to work 10 points per game not being, not being satisfied with that. We work hard, we playing as good competition, we challenge ourselves, and the next year we come back and now we're at 15 a game. That's got to be our goal. At every single, every single aspect, every single point that we're at is to. Is to get to the next level. Okay? And the only way you can do that is by pushing yourself every time you step on the court. The, the. That, that aspect right there is focused on. On from a player's perspective, right? But coaches too need to foster this. And me, like, I think most of all time, like when I'm running a practice or a workout, right? Am I setting it up for players to make mistakes and be challenged, be uncomfortable with what we're doing? Like, is that how I set it up? Or do I set it up for them to do things that they're comfortable doing that they're great at doing? So that they feel like, oh, you know, this is, I'm doing great today because I didn't mess up, I didn't miss any shots today. And if there's somebody watching where, if you're, if you're a trainer, right? And you, you're, you, you know, you measure your success by, hey, parents see him making a lot of shots in our workouts, so they're going to keep coming back to me that, that shouldn't be the goal. Like, you should be willing to make your guys look bad in practice. You should be able to expose those weaknesses. And players, you've got to be okay with having your weaknesses exposed. If you find a coach or a trainer who's willing to do that, who's willing to find your weaknesses and exploit them and try and make them better, stick with that guy, okay? Don't go to the guy who makes you feel good because you always do what you're good at and you never have to get better at anything because just go and do what you do. Find guys who are willing to push you and make you better, okay? That's what we have to be able to do. But coaches, we have to be willing to be that person as well. And those are questions that we need to ask ourselves every time. Do I make my players better? And if you're a player, do I allow myself to get better by being in uncomfortable situations? So how do we respond to that, to those situations that we're in? And again, that's always my thing. Ego driven players love being the best player in the gym. Because when you're the best player in the gym, you might. Again I talked about earlier, ego driven players love being able to win without having to prepare as much as another guy or having to give as much effort. So they know I'm the best player in the gym, I can win easily. They don't have to give as much effort and they're going to feel good. Like, oh yeah, man, I was balling today. I didn't lose. I scored 30. Like, cool. You beat somebody who's worse than you. Now go do it against someone who's better than you. And that ego driven place, I'm like, nah, I'm good, I'm good. I'm satisfied with where I'm at. And guess what? That might be cool, that might be fun for now, but there's nobody to push you, okay? You can be lazy, you can be sloppy, you can play down. And then when you go have to compete and when you have to be competing, somebody who's better you're going to lose, you're going to get destroyed because you're so comfortable. You're so used to playing down to your competition, right? You're going to feel way out of your place. Let's think about, let's think about this, right? If you're in the weight room, right, you're lifting weights and let's say that you're real comfortable benching 135, right? So you're in there throwing around 135, like is nothing. You see the guy next to you and he's struggling as hard as he can to bench 115 and you feel good. You're like, yeah, you know what? That's right. I bench 135. This dude only benches 115. Like I'm better than this dude, right? And you feel real good about yourself. You're throwing around 135 for 20 reps. And that guy next to you is trying to get three reps at 115, right? But he's really struggling with it. Okay? But you feel good with your, where you're at, you're better than that guy. So you're cool. Fast forward six months from now. That guy who's struggling is now up at 185. Right now he's getting 185 for three. You're still throwing her 135 because you were comfortable with where you're at. That's, that's what an ego driven player does when they refuse to play against better players. When they refuse, when they, when they decide to avoid situation where they can be challenged, that's what happens to them, right? Those players who weren't afraid are now benching 185. And that player who, who was afraid is stuck at 135. So enjoy being better than people for now, right? But when it matters long term, you're not going to sustain that. People are going to pass you by and you're going to wonder, oh, but I was so good. I was so better. But you weren't willing to. You were satisfied with it. You cannot be there. Okay? Is winning against a player who's worse than you better than losing to a player who's better? I don't think so. I do not agree with that at all. And again, that goes back to my analogy. It might be really easy for you to go to 135, but are you pushers? Are you trying to get to 155? Are you trying to get to 175? Are you trying to get to 205. Like, what are we doing here? Okay? That's what it's all about. You have to challenge yourself to get better. And ultimately, I'll end with this. Embrace losing, okay? I don't mean want to lose. I don't mean be okay with losing. I don't mean, oh, you know, we lost today, that's cool. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying is embrace losing, right? When you're in a workout, embrace struggling with a drill. Embrace playing one on one against somebody who destroys you, okay? Embrace that, because you know that's going to expand your capacity to be better. When you struggle with your workouts, right? When you're with a trainer who pushes you to be better, it might not be fun. When you keep losing the ball or you keep missing shots, that's not fun. No one likes that. But two months from now, the stuff you're doing is going to be easy to you. It's going to be easy, right? And you're going to be a better player because of it. That's where we have to get to embrace losing. Understand? Losing makes you better. Do not run away from situations that are gonna challenge you to be a better person, to be a better basketball player, okay? Because if you want to, you know, for most of you guys, you have big goals with basketball. If you want to get there, there. There can be no fear of challenging somebody who's better than you or. And there can be no fear of saying, hey, you know what? I went out there and I gave it my best and I still lost to somebody that's successful. That's what success is, okay? You're gonna find yourself again that you are. You feel so much better when you go out every day. And the way that you judge yourself is, hey, what was my effort like today? Let's talk about this. What can we take moving forward are actionables? What are the steps that we can take that can ensure that we are task focused? Okay, from now on, I encourage you to define success in this way. After every workout, every practice, every game, ask yourself two questions. One, did I get better today? And number two, did I play to my best effort? Did I get better today? And did I play to my best effort? If you can answer yes to those questions, then you're set up to reach your highest level, to reach your highest potential. You're set up to expand that capacity and become a better player. And long term, you're set up to be a winner, okay? But if you can't answer yes to those things, then it doesn't matter if you scored 20 or you scored 30 or your team won by 40. You're not a success. That's a failure because you didn't live up to what you could have done. That's how we need to start viewing successes and failures. Okay? That's really how it is. And being able to answer yes to did I get better? And being able to answer yes to did I play to my best effort today, that alone is success. Okay? So hopefully that helps you guys out. Again, a question I get. It's like, hey, how do I play to the same level when I'm winning by 20 or losing by 20? That's what it is. Like, it shouldn't matter what the scoreboard is. That shouldn't have, should have no effect on how you play. How you play is, hey, I played at my best effort every single play, and I'm looking to get better every single play. It doesn't matter to me if we lost five straight games. I'm going to practice with that same intensity because I don't care about what the, what the record is. I care about getting better every day. I care about playing my best Everett every day. Because I know that my goal is long term, to be the best. I can only do that if every single day I bring that ever and that intensity, okay? And I also know that when I do that, basketball is way more fun. It's way more fun when that's how I judge myself. Because that's all you can ask for. It's all you can ask for as a coach, and all you can do as a player is that you give your best effort. And if you put in the work right, you put in the shots in the gym, you, you, you've worked on your shooting form, you've worked on your handles, and that stuff is taken care of. Then all you got to do is go out there and play to your best effort and things are going to fall into place. Okay? If you've earned the right to be a great player, you'll be a great player. And at the same time as that, you'll have a lot of fun with it. So again, hopefully that helps you guys out. As I always say, if you have questions for me, send me a DM on Instagram @ Vision Driven Basketball. And if you don't have a question for me, just give me a follow. Anyway, posting all the time. So again, you know you like the podcast, send me a dm. Just tell me like the podcast. Cool. Love getting dms. Like that. I really do appreciate every single one of you guys who is, who has. Has supported my stuff and going along with that. Guys, you know, the last couple months have been really, really good for the channel. You know, a lot of people have a lot of new subscribers, a lot of people who have said, hey, coaches, really helped me out. I really appreciate all you guys who, who watch, who consistently are commenting, sending me messages, liking my videos, doing whatever. I really do appreciate every single one of you guys for doing that. And of course, for all you guys listening to the podcast every week, really, again, appreciate all you guys, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and whatever other apps you guys use for podcasts. Really do appreciate all you guys for tuning in every single week. It's really awesome to see. And again, I'm always, I'm always inspired for these episodes by questions that I get. So your questions for me, send me a dm. And again, making sure every single day you're giving your best effort. And you now define success by did I play up to my best? Did I give my best effort in whatever you might do? Okay, that's how you define being a successful person, basketball player, whatever it might be. Okay, so appreciate you guys. Thank you guys for watching or listening. If you're in YouTube, make sure you, like, subscribe. Talk to you guys soon. Piece.