Sustain Your Game

FOREWORD

I consider myself incredibly fortunate. I get to make my living working for a wonderful company (ESPN), with people I really enjoy, covering my two favorite sports. Don’t get me wrong: I respect and appreciate all sports, but I love college football and basketball.

So needless to say, I am beyond grateful.

As I reflect on my journey, it’s been quite a ride! I started an internship with the CBS affiliate in Tuscaloosa while still a student at the University of Alabama. At the conclusion of a nine-week internship, they hired me as a reporter, giving me valuable on-air experience. After graduation, I worked on my craft during stints in Columbus, Georgia, and Flint, Michigan, before finally making it to ESPN in 1995.

Actually, I started on ESPN2, which was relatively new at the time. I was host of a show called SportsSmash. Show probably isn’t the right word. It was an update segment within shows, but it helped me establish myself at ESPN. After getting in plenty of reps (and there is no substitute for live reps), I got the opportunity of a lifetime and was put in the rotation to host SportsCenter.

This was a sports journalist’s dream, as I got to work alongside legendary sportscasters like Keith Olbermann, Chris Berman, and Dan Patrick. Stuart Scott and Scott Van Pelt were also rising stars who became transcendent hosts and set the standard for professional excellence.

After SportsCenter, I spent the next few years improving my craft on a variety of shows—from NASCAR to the NBA—before landing the lead studio host role for college football and college basketball. More than fifteen years of fifteen-hour days at the command center of college football Saturdays thoroughly prepared me for my current role as the host of College GameDay, which, in my judgment, is the best job in television.

What did those experiences teach me?

When you are first starting out and trying to climb the ladder, looking for that next step can feel daunting and overwhelming. It’s easy to get consumed by what’s next and constantly search for what else is out there.

But you should never compromise the job you have pursuing the job you want. Your #1 priority should be to do the absolute best job you can in the moment, wherever you are.

You should work to be genuine and authentic, never veer from your core values, and always stay true to who you are. Know what you do well and find ways to double down on your strengths.

Doing so is a surefire way to set yourself apart, open doors, and create new opportunities.

For me, I’ve always stayed focused on being reliable, being consistent, and being prepared. Before every show, I repeat these words to myself: poise, presence, personality, preparation. Those are things I control.

My current role on GameDay requires a variety of skills. Skills I’ve worked hard to develop over time, and skills I continue refining to this day.

I have to be informed and prepared and have the ability to think and react quickly. I have to know my stuff and be able to improvise and go off the cuff. We don’t use a teleprompter on College GameDay. We didn’t use one for the college football and basketball studio shows. I thoroughly prepare what I want to say. It’s just not completely scripted. You have to be able to react to what your analyst says or something that happens in the crowd.

I have to maintain high levels of energy and enthusiasm. I have to prioritize my self-care and make sure my mental, physical, and emotional buckets are full.

I also have to quickly move on after a mistake. When you do live television, things are going to go wrong. You are going to make mistakes. It’s inevitable. The key is staying composed, staying humble, and staying confident. That’s where poise and presence in my “four Ps” come in.

I can’t get distracted or consumed with negativity or criticism. I must continue to believe in myself, put in the work, and run my own race. Everything else will take care of itself.

I’ve been in this business for over thirty years and I’ve observed firsthand how to sustain high performance from brilliant colleagues like Jay Bilas and Kirk Herbstreit; from Hall of Fame coaches like Nick Saban, Mike Krzyzewski, and John Calipari; and from pop culture icons like Matthew McConaughey and Keegan-Michael Key.

In a similar fashion, I’ve had a chance to spend time with Alan on the GameDay sets for Duke basketball and Penn State football and really respect and appreciate his perspective on how to not only Raise Your Game but how to sustain it as well.

Regardless of your experience or vocation, I’m confident you’ll benefit from Alan’s stories and strategies on managing stress, avoiding stagnation, and beating burnout.

I congratulate you on investing in this book and wish you well in your pursuit of sustaining excellence, optimizing performance, and living a truly fulfilled life.

Rece Davis

Host of ESPN College GameDay

INTRODUCTION

Though it’s been years since I’ve worked directly with athletes, I still consider myself a coach. And though my primary area of focus is no longer in sports, I still teach the principles, lessons, and strategies that apply to the court and the field. Sports are elemental. They’re about performing in pressure moments, managing your emotions through adversity, communicating with others toward a collective goal, and staying disciplined when others don’t. I think of these as fundamentals, and no matter your domain, your ability to do them will distinguish you from everyone else—even those who may have more opportunity, natural talent, or intelligence. I’ve never believed that what you have is most important, but rather what you do with what you have. That’s what matters most.

The highest performers in all walks of life have taken full ownership of themselves, their work, and their choices. They got to where they are—and have stayed there—because they have chosen to establish, refine, and repeat the habits that serve them best. These men and women understand that you can’t be selective when it comes to excellence: how we do anything is how we do everything.

I’ve worked with the likes of NBA stars Kevin Durant and Victor Oladipo when they were young and watched superstars like Kobe Bryant and Steph Curry in their private routines. I’ve sat across from Mark Cuban and Jesse Itzler as they talked about how they built their empires and interviewed Jay Bilas and Jay Williams about how mental toughness creates success. In sports or business or anything else, the best aren’t the best by accident, genetics, or good fortune. They are at the top because of their commitment to the fundamentals. True superstars never get bored with the basics, and they never underestimate their importance. My primary job is to inspire, guide, and coach people on the fundamental building blocks of high performance (both individually and organizationally). I think of my role as one who works to inspire, motivate, and instruct people in the ways of the basics.

“Nobody wins all the time,” mental performance coach Brian Levenson told me. Levenson works in both business and athletics, recognizing the natural bridge that exists between the two. “And I think it’s one of the values in sports. The value of learning that losing is possible.”

I agree 100 percent. Losing, failure, and obstacles are real and there’s not a sport in the world that doesn’t have those ideas baked in. A game literally doesn’t make sense without them. Pro athletes, even successful ones, lose. Sometimes constantly. Athletes are also well versed in making mistakes—dropping passes, missing shots, and stepping out of bounds. There’s a reason our everyday language has absorbed the terms from sports to mean errors: fumble, strikeout, choke.

For athletes, the failure and the requisite feedback are constant. If they don’t absorb and make use of that feedback, they won’t be playing very long. Because of this, sports are a wonderful way to study improvement, success, and adaptation. Jerry Seinfeld, one of the all-time great comedians, once said, “If you could take your experiences and ask to trade them in, the last ones I would trade would be the failures. Those are the most valuable ones.” He’s not the best in spite of those failures. He’s the best because of them. And he’s the best because he knows this.

This work is my calling. I am passionate about serving, impacting, influencing, and connecting with people. Experience has taught me that success is a choice, and I want to inspire and empower people and organizations to make that choice. I’ve turned a successful basketball performance coaching career into a professional speaking business. Now, major companies from all over the world hire me to teach, train, and consult on effective leadership, performance, and teamwork.

My time as a coach with top high school players led me to opportunities with pros, so I’ve seen both sides of the coin—what it takes to get there and what it takes to remain there. My last book, Raise Your Game, was all about bringing your A game to your job, your relationships, and your life. But that is really only half the battle. Keeping it up is even harder. The commitment to raising your game—in any area of life—is no easy feat. But the commitment to sustaining your game is even more challenging. An athlete has to execute—on the play, for the season, and for a career. In business, publishing, or whatever your field, succeeding along these three timelines is equally important: the moment (short term), the stretch (medium term), and the long haul (long term).

Sustain Your Game is about succeeding in all three, looking at the particular challenges of all three timelines:

This book is for high performers who want to learn practical strategies and actionable tools for how to sustain their game across all three timelines. It will distill advice and lessons from successful athletes, entrepreneurs, social scientists, journalists, CEOs, motivational speakers, business coaches, and consultants, as well as my own personal stories.

Succeeding along each of the three timelines requires discipline. And discipline is doing what you said you would do long after the mood you said it in has faded. Most people refer to me as a motivational speaker, but that’s not really what I do. I’m there to stimulate change. I’m there to encourage, empower, and guide the audience to think, feel, and act differently. To change their perspective and to change their behavior. I believe in motivation, but I never confuse it with discipline. I meditate every day whether I’m motivated or not. I make my bed whether I’m motivated or not. I don’t always want to get up early, work out, travel for work, but I do it with or without the motivation. I do it because I’m disciplined.

Discipline has a negative connotation and is often associated with punishment. But I think of discipline as the opposite: it is the foundation of freedom. Do what’s hard now so things get easier later. Mental coach and entrepreneur Todd Herman told me that “most people want the noun without the verb,” which is a great way to put it: they want the result without doing what it takes to get there. It’s a common misconception that you need to be motivated before you act, when oftentimes we have it backward: acting first will end up motivating you.

My goal is not perfection; it’s progress. Am I closer to where I want to be than I was yesterday? That’s my measurement.

When I was young, I got advice that I have carried with me to this day: Find something you love to do, find something you’re good at, and find where those two intersect. That’s your strength zone, and the more you can stay there, the more you can engage with that space, the more fulfilled you will be. As you grow, continue to be self-aware and reflect on what has changed because that point of intersection is going to move.

Sustain Your Game will give you the tools to perform your best in your arena, wherever that may be. It will help you manage stress, wherever it shows up; fend off stagnation, however it presents itself; and beat burnout, whenever it rears its head.

I am not speaking from a place of mastery. Like everyone else, I am under construction, a work in progress. Coming off a successful first book, I understand the challenge of continuing to perform at a high level and navigating the obstacles along the way. In essence, this book is a manifestation of the very thing I am writing about, a perfect marriage of author and subject, form and content. I am sustaining my game by helping others sustain theirs.

Thank you for joining me on the ride.

How This Book Is Organized

The goal of my first book, Raise Your Game, was to help readers achieve high performance in whatever they do. The goal of Sustain Your Game is to get them thinking about the next step: remaining there. The book is organized along a timeline of short term to medium term to long term because we are always battling all three: stress in the now, stagnation in the present, and burnout in the long term. I think of stress as a “too much” problem, stagnation as a “too little” problem, and burnout as a combination: “too much of too little.” Since I believe that an easily decipherable structure is the best way to retain knowledge, I’ve designed this book into three parallel sections:

Part I—PERFORM is about managing stress in the day-to-day (short term)

Part II—PIVOT is about avoiding stagnation in your current situation (medium term)

Part III—PREVAIL is about beating burnout and making a lasting impact (long term)