When my stack of books to read starts to get low, I sometimes go on Amazon and just look for books I might have overlooked in my previous searches. Doing some “mining” recently led me to this book:
I was really happy if found it! A few interesting points:
While the book was written in 1979, the themes are just as relevant today. In fact, many of the themes, and even some of the terminology, can be spotted in later works by others such as Lanny Bassham. If you like Bassham’s book “With Winning in Mind” – published a decade later, you will probably like this one! I don’t know if there was any relationship between the two gentlemen, but I do know that they were both involved deeply with the US Olympic teams during similar periods.
The book is relatively short – about 175 pages, and very easy to read. What I really like is that each of the 10 chapters have a chapter summary at the end filled with actionable items you can really implement. Waitley suggests going back and reading just the summaries repeatedly over a period of a month to really ingrain them! It takes just a few moments to read each summary – might make for a good “bathroom book”!
The themes apply to all facets of life – career, relationships, and yes, sports! As I mentioned earlier, the advice is just as relevant today as it was in 1979. The only piece of advice I took issue with was his suggestion to try to reduce the number of hours of sleep each night to provide additional productive hours to get thing done. Some high fliers in Silicon Valley still subscribe to this advice, but I prefer to protect my sleep – 7 hours is more like it for me!
The investment for this book is really low! You can check it out at the amazon link below. Dr. Waitley updated the book in 2021 with his “The New Psychology of Winning: Top Qualities of a 21st Century Winner”. I may pick that one up as well. If I do, you can be sure I will post about it!