It's easy to compete when things are going well in your in the hunt. Being a true competitor is finding a way to put out effort when you’re in the grind and there’s little hope of victory. That's what makes great competitors great. They find a way to keep giving their all.

Homer's Definition of Toughness: What The Odyssey Can Teach Us About Performance This weekend, a 2,800-year-old poem had the biggest opening of Christopher Nolan's career. Bigger than Batman, Oppenheimer, you name it. A quarter of a billion dollars, worldwide, for a story your high school English teacher assigned you. One reason, is that while it might seem like an adventure story. It’s really about the traps inside our own head and how to get past them. At its heart, The Odyssey is one of the oldest surviving maps of pressure, fear, temptation, homesickness, trauma, identity, leadership, and recovery. It’s resonated for millennia because it gets at the human condition, and our own struggles so well. At its very base is goal conflict. A drive to get home, to see his family, while everything is pulling us in competing directions. Sometimes, it’s shiny objects and temptations, other times its items that pull at our own ego. It might just be one of the clearest demonstrations of what real toughness is all about. It’s not some macho fearlessness. It’s the ability to keep making the right choice while fear, grief, fatigue, desire, shame, uncertainty, and ego are all trying to hijack you. It’s taking wise action amidst the chaos. So with that said, let’s take a look at what the Odyssey can teach us about navigating a messy world. 1. Uncertainty is at the root of stress and anxiety Odysseus is known as a brilliant cunning man. But throughout his ordeal, he’s acting on incomplete information. Half the time he doesn’t know where he is, what god is angry at him, whether his family waited for him, or if home even exists anymore. And he often finds himself in situations with no clear comparison or way out. It’s the basic psychology of stress: an always looming threat, with lots of uncertainty, and much of it beyond your control. It’s the constant battle of hope. The moment that you let the uncertainty shadow everything else, and throw up your hands because it seems like nothing you do matters, you default to hopelessness. And trying becomes impossible. You’ve got to get comfortable acting despite incomplete information. You’ve got to learn how to take the leap, despite not knowing whether you still have a shot at your goal or not. You’ve got to hold on to hope, even if the situation seems dire. It’s exactly what Viktor Frankl communicated in his work on surviving the Holocaust. It’s holding on to the smallest bit of meaning and sense of control. 2. It’s the Numbing That You Have to Watch Out For. When Odysseus men eat the lotus, they get stuck in a state of pleasant contentment. They forget all about the mission or their desire to go home. It’s so bad that Odysseus has to drag his crying men back to the ships and tie them up. That’s how strong the pull is. It’s not hard to see the parallels to modern life. There’s the addiction angle, but I think for most of us it’s more that modern life has a tendency to numb us out. We scroll endlessly, get trapped in cycles of watching TikTok videos for hours instead of meaningful pursuits. The feed asks us to care about everything, so we end up caring about nothing. It’s not just our phones, it’s that we design a life of comfort so that we don’t feel anything anymore. We don’t get the struggle of doing hard things, or of pursuing meaningful relationships, because much of our modern life is designed around avoiding anything with even the littlest friction. Too often, we think we want ease and comfort, but what we really need is things to make us feel alive. Pursuits that challenge us, relationships that force us to grow. At the heart of living a good life, is keeping the pulls towards avoidance at bay with a strong enough desire. It’s what Odysseus had. Even when he went astray, that pull or even ache towards home, is what guided him. It’s what kept him alive. 3. You Can’t Willpower Your Way Through Everything Everyone knows the story of the Sirens. Odysseus had his men tied him to the mast of the ship so he could hear the songs, while his men put wax in their ears and were told to ignore his commands and not to untie him no matter what. It’s a simple but profound lesson. We can’t grit or willpower our way through everything. Even the great heroes can’t. This is the original anti social media influencer hustle and discipline content. It’s telling us that at some point those things will fail, and you better have something else. It’s not saying those things aren’t valuable. It’s just that you need to know their limitations. You need to understand when environmental design beats discipline. Or when you need good people around you to prevent you from doing something stupid. 4. Ego Can Sabotage Everything In one of the more famous stories, the cyclops Polyphemus traps Odysseus and his men in a cave. Odysseus tells the cyclops that his name is “nobody.” After they stab the cyclops in his eye, the monster screams out to other cyclops and when they ask what’s happening, he says “Nobody is attacking me.” So they leave him alone. This cunning move ultimately allows Odysseus to escape. But then, on their ships sailing away, Odysseus can’t resist taunting the cyclops to make sure that he knows who it was who beat him. The cyclops then prays to his father, the sea god Poseidon, to curse him with a long journey back home. That’s the reason why Odysseus journey takes 10 long years. This is the clearest lesson in the book. You can win the battle, you can be the most intelligent and masterful. But a tiny slip of your ego, destroys it all. Ego is the engine of self-sabotage. When we prioritize status-seeking over all else, it erodes our judgement and ability to think clearly under stress. It’s really freaking hard to turn off that status and comparison engine. If you don’t do the work to keep your ego just in check, it’s going to come back to bite you. Odysseus shows us the way. Being nobody saved his life. But the need to be somebody, cost him a decade of misery. 5. We all need a Mentor The word “mentor” comes from the Odyssey. It’s as simple as that. Mentor is an old friend that Odysseus leave in charge of his son, Telemachus, to help guide him from being a timid boy to a capable man. The goddess Athena repeatedly tooks disguises (most famously Mentor's) to guide Telemachus.. But what’s interesting is that she doesn’t just guarantee him victories or rescue him. She does what we now think a mentor does, support and nudge him towards action. She instructs him to speak, to travel, to seek news of his father, to enter adult spaces, and to take responsibility for his house. It’s the origin story of good guidance and coaching. Treat people as capable, show them the way, but don’t pave the path for them. A good coach or mentors helps move them towards independence, not dependence. They lend belief long enough for the athlete, student, or young leader to build their own. 6. Define Success Well Achilles was known as the greatest warrior of his time. He was seen almost like a human god. In the Iliad, Achilles tells us of the choice he had to make as a child, “If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy, my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies. If I voyage back to the fatherland I love... my glory dies, but the life that’s left me will be long.” He chose glory over a quiet long life. In the hero culture, it seems like he made the right decision. When Odysseus meets the hero in the underworld, he lavishes him with praise, but Achilles quickly corrects Odysseus, “I’d rather slave on earth for another man — some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive — than rule down here over all the breathless dead.” The man who got what so many craved, an immortal name with poems that echoed for eternity, said it wasn’t worth it. He’d swap all of it for an ordinary Tuesday. The external is always tempting. The awards, accolades, status, and notoriety seem like they are the ultimate prize. Even now, we sacrifice so much for it. But in Homer’s epics the hero of the Iliad who wanted to be remembered meets the man who just wants to return home intact, and the former is saying love is more important than glory. 7. The Return is the Hard Part At the heart of the epic is a simple lesson. The war took a decade. It’s what nearly everyone would say is the hardest part. It’s an actual war after all. But Homer’s poem was trying to tell us that it’s the journey back home that is often just as difficult. Whether it’s the research on modern soldiers struggles and PTSD, athletes and their rate of depression after hanging up their jersey, or the difficulty for folks after retiring. It’s not that you finish the hard thing, and then it’s all joy, bliss, and contentment. The hard thing changes who you are. You saw it when Odysseus finally returned to Ithaca. He doesn’t just show up as a triumphant king. It’s the same island, but it is no longer the world he left. He’s got to wrestle with how he and the world he once remembered changed. It’s what every athlete comes to realize. Andre Agassi: “Now that I’ve won a slam, I know something very few people on earth are permitted to know. A win doesn’t feel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn’t last as long as the bad. Not even close.” Olympic medalist Molly Seidel: “Winning it and realizing it didn’t change me as a person... it didn’t fix anything in my life… Defining yourself by those accomplishments will destroy you ultimately.” Phelps called it the weight of gold. And at it’s heart, it’s what Homer’s epic is all about. It’s right there in the poem. Odysseus returns to Ithaca about halfway through it. The entire second half is about what happens when he finally reaches his goal. He has to find himself, and his place again. Getting home and being home are different problems. Which is exactly the retired athlete’s discovery: the plane lands, the medal’s on the shelf, and the harder half hasn’t started. --- What is toughness? What’s it mean to endure, to be resilient? Homer gives us an answer in the first line of the poem, andra polytropon. Which translates to “the man of many turns.” Living life, pursuing goals, performing is messy. Odysseus himself is a flawed human being. But that line gets at what is at the heart of performing in just about anything: flexibility and adaptability. It’s what all great competitors possess. The challenges that you face are vast and varied. And no solution or tactic works all the time. It’s flexibility, having a big toolbox of coping strategies, which separates those who can figure things out versus those who get stuck. -Steve

We often think coaching is all about the workouts, game plans, and the technical stuff. It's not. That stuff matters. But it misses the stuff that actually make a difference. Here's 23 coaching principles I've collected over two decades of coaching everyone from high school kids to some of the world's best: 1. Coach from dependence to independence. Coaching is about making your own job kind of obsolete. Works towards having our athlete be more self-sufficient, with a coaches role moving towards a kind of mentor and partnership. 2. Coaching comes from conversation. And most of that is observing and listening. The athlete tells you everything you need to know…if you're paying attention. 3. Caring comes first. If they know you don’t care, the perfect plan won’t matter. The old saying “They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care,” is still true. 4. Standards without warmth makes them fragile. Warmth without standards leaves them lost. You need both. In parenting research they call this authoritative instead of authoritarian. 5. The story they tell themselves runs the show. Coach the story. Knowledge doesn’t change behavior. Story does. “It’s hard to outperform your self-concept.” 6. You can't want it more than they do. The day you start trying to is the day you've lost the room. Your job is to set the conditions and pull the lever, not push the cart. 7. Effort is contagious. So is dread. Pay attention to which one you're spreading. You are the thermostat not the thermometer. You're changing the room temp. 8. Challenged, not threatened. We do our best when we're stretched, not when our worth is on the line. Hard things land different when failing doesn't mean you're worthless. Stretch the challenge. Keep the worth out of it. 9. People perform best when they feel valued as a person and not just an athlete, that they belong, and when they’re performing out of joy instead of fear. Joy is a performance enhancer. 10. Reward what you preach. If you say process and only celebrate outcomes, the brain hears the second message.What is honored will be cultivated. Watch what you praise. 11. Action is the antidote to anxiety. One purposeful step convinces the brain the situation is manageable. Don't wrestle the monster. Point at the work and start moving. 12. Confidence is quiet. Insecurity is loud. Arrogance sits on insecurity. Confidence sits on experience. The brashest voice in any room is usually the one most afraid of being found out. Real confidence comes from earned experience. Do the work. 13. Ego kills sync. It crowds out the signals that lead to connection. Always stay in learning mode. Be curious. “Once you stop learning about your athletes, you've stopped coaching.” Brother Colm O’Connell 14. Skills come from struggle. Don’t over coach or step in too early. Rescue them too soon and they don’t keep what they almost figured out. Productive failure beats premature help. 15. Plant seeds constantly. And water them. Any coach, teacher, or parent will tell you of the kid who told them years later they finally get it. We can’t force understanding. Just keep cultivating the space for it to grow. 16. Define success yourself. Don't import a definition that gets in the way of the person you're trying to help become. The borrowed definition almost always fails the person who's actually in front of you. 17. Lower the bar, raise the floor. Too often we focus on those rare days when everything aligns. You can’t control when those show up. Focus on raising your floor, making the average days better. 18. If they can only succeed with you, you’ve failed. The goal is to give people autonomy and agency. To teach them how to do the thing, and then ultimately let them go. 19. Teach, don’t just train. Too often, we get stuck in prescriptive mode. Remember, you are fundamentally changing the person in front of you. 20. Coaching is pattern recognition. We pick up patterns when we pay attention. Build a database deep enough that you can see what an athlete is showing you. Then trust it. 21. Be in love with an idea, just don't marry it. Don't become the person who swears by a single diet for everyone. Every system eventually fails, and if you've tied your identity to it, you go down with the ship. 22. The car ride home is the practice. After a hard race or a bad workout, the brain is wide open. What you say in those minutes lasts longer than anything you said in practice all season. 23. Get out of your own way. Most of coaching is helping people stop self-sabotaging. Under-preparation is a coping strategy. The athlete who skips the work is protecting his ego.

The best thing colleges can do for student-athletes mental and physical health? Hire good coaches who care about the overall person. It's not hard. Coaches in the business know who does it well/who to avoid. All the student welfare programs are meaningless without good leaders.

What Sawe, Bannister and 70 years of research tells us about the belief effect: stevemagness.substack.com/p/…

Parents: Be careful chasing scholarships in sport. They are far fewer than you think. Examples: I was #1 in the nation and received way more partial offers than full. As a college coach: we had conference champs on next to nothing. And all-Americans on less than 50%

What's the best predictor of world-class performance in runners? Volume of Training. You've got to spend a lot of time doing the thing if you want to get good at just about anything.