582. Lightning McQueen's Lessons on the Mental Game

Austin uses Cars as the way into a principle most elite athletes already run on: the growth usually is not inside your own sport. Lightning McQueen thought he knew how to race until a cop took him onto a dirt road, where he found out he could not take a turn on sand. He practiced in worse conditions than the ones he competed in, and came back a better racer. Austin connects that to Kobe Bryant taking ballet, Victor Wembanyama running stairs while dribbling, Jaylen Brown training underwater, and Phil Jackson making the Bulls practice with the lights off. The takeaway is a question: pick a domain outside your sport that actually interests you, then do the creative work of figuring out how it applies to what you do.