"The mind is like a muscle, the more you train it the stronger it becomes. And while the greats master the body, the greatest master the mind."
“Mentally, I have to get my body and mind in the right place before I start the routine, but once into the zone, it’s like I turn on a switch. I envision myself doing the same thing for the Olympic Games.”
“The one thing that’s common to all successful people. They make a habit of doing things that unsuccessful people don’t like to do.”
"The most important attribute a player must have is mental toughness."
"When we are saying this cannot be accomplished, this cannot be done, then we are short-changing ourselves. My brain, it cannot process failure. It will not process failure. Because if I have to sit there and face myself and tell myself 'you are a failure,' I think that is almost worse than dying."
"The only way you gain mental toughness is to do things you're not happy doing. If you continue doing things that you're satisfied and make you happy, you're not getting stronger. You're staying where you're at. Either you're getting better, or you're getting worse. You're not staying the same."
The minute you get away from fundamentals – whether its proper technique, work ethic or mental preparation – the bottom can fall out of your game, your schoolwork, your job, whatever you’re doing.
“I directed our focus less to the prize of victory than to the process of improving — obsessing, perhaps, about the quality of our execution and the content of our thinking; that is, our actions and attitude. I knew if I did that, winning would take care of itself.”
"What you are thinking, what shape your mind is in, is what makes the biggest difference of all."
"Mental toughness is not being affected by anything but what’s going on in the game or competition no matter what coaches, other players, or refs are doing. It’s being able to block out what’s not important."