“‘These are my dreams! Why live if I abandon them in difficulty? That is when they need me the most.’ Have you ever said those words? Have you ever accessed the victorious spirit within? Because here’s the secret: it’s resting within you, right at this very moment.”
Bert R. Mandelbaum, MD, via The Win Within (Page 35)
“No one invites adversity into their lives, and while you can’t always be as prepared for it as you would like to be, the victorious spirit enables you to turn this bad luck into opportunity. Adversity is never the end, but rather a catalyst for you to push yourself further than you may have even thought possible. You simply need to unlock the victorious spirit.”
Bert R. Mandelbaum, MD, via The Win Within (Page 24)
“People often ask me about the behind-the-scenes mechanics of my work with elite athletes. They want to know the mysterious process that motivates the extraordinary among us. How do they reach such high levels of performance? And how do they go from a devastating injury to return-to-play? How do they stick it out when they suffer a setback that would put others out of the arena for good? The short version is this: They marshal their inner victorious spirit—a resource that is inside all of us—to push through setbacks and perform at peak levels, physically and mentally. They capitalize on the genetic legacy of survival and perseverance that’s part of our collective history, using their biological drive not just to survive, but to thrive.”
Bert R. Mandelbaum, MD, via The Win Within (Page 1)
The Win Within: Capturing Your Victorious Spirit [Book]
Book Overview: As an orthopedic surgeon, a finish-line physician, and a USA team doctor at the World Cup and the Olympics, Dr. Bert Mandelbaum has witnessed the trials and triumphs of elite athletes from a vantage point few of us get. And over his twenty-plus years of experience, he’s identified a common character trait that every elite athlete relies upon for success: it’s what he calls the ”victorious spirit.” In The Win Within, Mandelbaum reveals that any of us–no matter our age or physical condition–can capture that same spirit in our own lives. This inner drive to win resides in all of us, he argues, hardwired into our DNA by ancestry dating back millions of years. You’ll learn how to view life the way a top-performing athlete does: relentlessly, tenaciously, positively, and focusing less on the finish line of the marathon and more on the 26.2 miles that precede it. With narrative support ranging from the lessons of our early ancestors to Mandelbaum’s stories of our modern-day gladiators (both household name and lesser known), The Win Within will give you a greater understanding of how and why we’re all hardwired to win–and you’ll come away with no shortage of tactics and motivation to capture your own victorious spirit.
“I know that sometimes, persistence is not a virtue. I would trade my other abilities to be an exceptional songwriter. I gave it a serious enough try to know that I don’t have the knack, for years, and I’m not interested in being publicly mediocre at the performing arts. My life is incalculably better for having let the dream go. The world will be happiest with a certain range of behaviors from you—life will be easier if you find a place in that range where you’re content. David Whyte calls this the conversational nature of reality, and he is correct about the importance of this concept.”
Sasha Chapin
“The future is shaped by men and women with a steady, even zestful, confidence that on balance their efforts will not have been in vain. They take failure and defeat not as reason to doubt themselves but as reason to strengthen resolve. Some combination of hope, vitality and indomitability makes them willing to bet their lives on ventures of unknown outcome. If our forebears had all looked before they leaped, we would still be crouched in caves sketching animal pictures on the wall.”
John W. Gardner, Self-Renewal (Page xiii)
“High hopes that are dashed by the first failure are precisely what we don’t need. We need to believe in ourselves but not to believe that life is easy. Nothing in the historical record tells us that triumph is assured. Life’s problems resist solution, and we are fallible.”
John W. Gardner, Self-Renewal (Page xiii)
“You’re more likely to unlock a big leap in performance by trying differently than by trying harder. You might be able to work 10% harder, but a different approach might work 10x better. Remain focused on the core problem, but explore a new line of attack. Persistence is not just about effort, but also strategy. Don’t merely try harder, try differently.”
James Clear
“Don’t be distracted by anything. The work is what counts. There are a lot of things that can get in your way, that take up your time and your emotional and intellectual energy; none of them account for anything. They mean nothing. The only thing, in the final analysis, at this stage of the game, that really counts, is the work. The work is everything. The years that I spent in advertising I saw an awful lot of people who had the potential to be good lose a lot of their ability to distraction, to politics, to fear, and to who has the bigger office. You’ll get the bigger office; you’ll make the money. Anything you want will happen, but sometimes it’s hard for people to see that when they’re in the middle of it. It looks like it’s incredibly complicated. Well, it’s not complicated at all. In fact, it’s so uncomplicated it’s amazing. All it is about is the work. Finally, if you do the work people will notice and you will get what you want. That’s it. It’s as simple as that.”
Tom McElligott
“The ability to do hard things is perhaps the most useful ability you can foster in yourself or your children. And proof that you are someone who can do them is one of the most useful assets you can have on your life resume. Our self-image is composed of historical evidence of our abilities. The more hard things you push yourself to do, the more competent you will see yourself to be. If you can run marathons or throw double your body weight over your head, the sleep deprivation from a newborn is only a mild irritant. If you can excel at organic chemistry or econometrics, onboarding for a new finance job will be a breeze. But if we avoid hard things, anything mildly challenging will seem insurmountable. We’ll cry into TikTok over an errant period at the end of a text message. We’ll see ourselves as incapable of learning new skills, taking on new careers, and escaping bad situations. The proof you can do hard things is one of the most powerful gifts you can give yourself.”
Nat Eliason
