On Competing: Part Four

15 Commandments for Competitors

1. Compete with 100% focus and effort even when you don't feel like you're performing well.
2. Move on from the last moment, whether it was a success or failure, and put your full attention on this moment.
3. Study, practice, and train at the level you intend to perform.
4. Find pleasure in the pain and learn to appreciate the discomfort.
5. Fall in love with the act of competing, not a desire to win or disdain to lose.
6. Seek, find, and engage with better opponents.
7. Obsess over the simple elements of execution that give you an advantage.
8. Build the skill to seamlessly transition between big picture awareness of the broader context and narrow focus on the details.
9. Commit to honest and detached observation of your skills and performance and prove it through how you practice and improve.
10. Know your sources of competitive fuel, how to create them, and when to tap into them.
11. Use frustration as fuel for better effort and never as justification to quit.
12. Insist on maintaining a conscious awareness of your possibilities and limitations.
13. Leverage your strengths and maneuver to stay in position to use them as often as possible.
14. Isolate and navigate around weaknesses you haven't improved yet.
15. Become a world-class student and learner of your craft, whatever that process looks like for you.

Answer the call. Do the work.