years, I have published eight books on the Tao and performance, while working with some of the greatest collegiate athletes and teams at Duke, Stanford, Maryland, Missouri, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio State, Columbia, California, and many others. During this time, I have worked with thirty-eight teams who have gone to a Final Four, with eighteen winning national championships. I have learned more from this experience than I have taught.
In addition to this, I have experienced personal victories in numerous competitive sports, including baseball, basketball, track, cross-country, cycling, distance running, tennis, and racquetball. As a coach, a national-class athlete, sports psychologist, teacher, author, and father of several athletic children, I find that the Way of the Champion is present in my life everywhere.
If you wish to take your game to the next level, what I have learned will help you to discover the greatness that lies within you. What I know is that the making of a champion is all about heart. While the champion sees the game as a battlefield against an opponent or clock, it’s also an arena for the battle within, against such demons as fear, fatigue, frustration, failure, and self-doubt. These inner battles are fought with weapons of the heart, or what I like to call “the stuff of champions,” the right stuff. In this sense, being a champion is a spiritual practice of embracing and connecting to the right stuff, sacred virtues such as courage, fortitude, compassion, commitment, patience, perseverance, passion, integrity, responsibility, respect, and self-sacrfice. By learning and applying the right stuff, and absorbing the lessons of champions and the wisdom of Tao, you will live your life with the substance and spirit of a champion and be a true winner in every aspect of the game of life.
The Way of the Champion presents clear, concise, natural, and practical time-honored sacred lessons on how to act like a champion. For example, the personal battle of completing an enormous work project, preparing a meal for twenty-five people, or finishing a twenty-six-mile race can seem overwhelming. At mile twenty of a marathon, I have felt, “I can’t go on; it hurts too much.” This feeling is so intense for many runners that the thought of going six more miles seems problematic at best. However, by going only one more mile, and then repeating that achievement five more times, one learns the ancient lesson: When you divide a seemingly insurmountable task into small, manageable segments, you can achieve a goal. How do you swallow an elephant? One bite at a time.
This Tao lesson, once grasped, is easily applied to all of life’s struggles and can enable you to accomplish extraordinary things in any field of endeavor. Tao lessons, through sports, will help you to witness so much of life in small dramatic ways. Andrew Cooper’s book Playing in the Zone tells us that “sport is a container where passions are channeled and virtues cultivated.” Sport is a spiritual event that can enrich the soul, awakening in all of us a higher sense of self, the true winner within.
This book offers a deeply spiritual, unique, creative, inner approach to mental strength, leadership, and winning that will help to steep your mind and heart in a serene, tranquil, and heightened state of self-confidence. It emphasizes a process of thought as well as trust in your intuitive self—a process that basically conforms to the Zen precept of “doing the right thing.” You will learn how to reach personal and team best performances by clearing barriers and neutralizing the impact of obstacles standing in the way of success, whether these obstacles come from within, are environmentally induced, or derive from other athletes, teams, or personal relationships affecting you in everyday life. According to Sun-Tzu, best performances are achieved not just by knowing all the right moves, but as much by knowing what not to do and when not to do it.
HOW TO GET THE MOST FROM THIS BOOK
S UN-TZU’S ancient treatise on victory, The Art of War, classifies winning into four major categories: Self-Awareness, Strategic Positioning, Competitive Advantage, and Leadership with Team Unity. You will notice that I divide The Way of the Champion into four similar parts. As you reach each major part, my partner, mentor, and friend, Chungliang Al Huang, will greet you with a piece of his beautiful, meditative brush-stroke artwork, capturing the essence and message of that specific section. This will immediately be followed by a relevant quote from Sun-Tzu or other Taoist wisdom, which will set the tone for the chapters within that particular section. Each of the four major parts are subdivided into three chapters, each one filled with pragmatic lessons containing strategies, tactics, quotes, stories, anecdotes, and relevant gems taken from my years of experience with athletes and others, to help you to transform competition, confrontation, and conflict into true art. As a side note, this structure resembles the four seasons and twelve months of the calendar year. In Chinese culture, the cycle of the four seasons represents a complete experience, marking lasting change in habits and relationships. Give yourself this year to create change and establish new habits and relationships in sport and life. When the year is up, begin to read this book again for continued comfort and support in the journey.
At the conclusion of each of the twelve chapters, you will be given a summary of the major lessons to be learned, in the form of usable, practical affirmations. These “touchstones” can be placed individually on 3 x 5 index cards to be referred to throughout the day or week, as gentle reminders and directives to help you stay the course. You can choose all or only those that jump off the page and hit you right between the eyes. All of my clients use this method to help them stay on track, consulting the cards in various situations, such as during the changeover on the tennis court, between hole and tee box on the golf course, at halftime during a basketball game, just prior to a competitive sky dive, while waiting in the start house before a downhill race, or simply waiting for a bus, plane, or train. You can also use these affirmations prior to an important business meeting, before talking to your children after they have misbehaved, and to help you to make changes in unproductive personal or behavior patterns or daily habits.
Following these statements, each chapter will give you two or more questions, the answers to which will guide and direct you forward on the quest in a proactive, integrative way. These “Questions on the Quest” are meditative, reflective, and soul-searching in nature, helping you to access the deeper, more spiritual aspects of yourself and your journey. Like the affirmations, the answers to these penetrating queries can be written on 3 x 5 cards and used as indicators of what must be done in order to keep on track.
I intend that these chapter-ending exercises serve as appetizers for the athletic soul and personal spirit, helping you to expand your lens of perception by focusing on possibilities, on becoming not the best, but the best you can be. By doing so, you come alive and experience more joy, freedom, and profundity in athletics and life. You begin to perform at a higher level and become more successful in all your arenas of performance.
Having said all of this, I strongly advise against reading the book from cover to cover, quickly. I want you to scan the table of contents and see what topics speak to you. Go to that section and slowly “work it.” Digest the morsels, try the exercises, answer the questions, adopt or adapt an affirmation when it fits. Most of us have busy lives, and being on the go makes it difficult to read a whole book. When I read a book of this type, I want to get to the point, learn, close the book, and practice. You may be like this as well. Whether you are a busy athlete, corporate worker, or home manager, I know you can find the time to read the book in this way—perhaps five or ten minutes before bed each day. Give it time during the day to sink in. Little by little, inch by inch, it will be absorbed entirely.
By nurturing and practicing the ways of the champion on a consistent basis, you will develop good habits and increase the chances of performing at more satisfying levels in your life. By being familiar with and entrenched in this way of a champion, by acting-as-if and using these attitudes, precepts, virtues, and lessons, you automatically place yourself in position to realize your potential.
I’m ready... are you? If so, let’s begin the journey, take in the “stuff of champions,” and find out how you can perform and succeed like highly effective athletes, professionals, workers, parents, and people who win in sports and life. This book will come through in the clutch every time, to help you experience more joy,
