New York Yankees legend Bernie Williams joined me last week on Thirty Minute Mentors. A consistently great player over the course of his long major league career, Bernie was a five-time All-Star, four-time Gold Glove winner, and four-time World Series Champion. We covered a wide range of topics, including a subject I have discussed with other all-time great ballplayers, Olympic gold medalists, Grammy Award-winners, and military leaders: how to excel in the highest-stakes, highest-pressure moments.
Bernie walked me through his “unorthodox” daily routine, which included numerous visualization exercises and an enormous amount of pre-game preparation. By game time, Bernie was raring to go.
“In the World Series, bottom of the ninth, you’re down by a run… Did you feel an added level of pressure?” I asked Bernie. “Or did you walk up to the plate with this same mindset of excitement? I’m ready to go. I’m ready to get at it.”
“Yeah, excitement was the word… The game doesn’t change. The only thing that changes is the circumstances of the situation that you’re in. In a game where people have to throw strikes, they’re gonna throw the ball the same way they have thrown it for years. The bases are the same distance. It’s not that they put the bases farther away. The pitcher throws from the same place on the mound. You have to catch the ball. You have to hit the ball. You have to run the bases. You have to do everything the same as if you were at a spring training game,” Bernie told me. “So what is it that changes? Your mind changes, because of your perception of the moment that you may think is bigger than you.”
How do you transform pressure into excitement? Preparation. When you are deeply prepared, you can embrace the moment instead of allowing the moment to embrace you.
As Bernie told me: “Baseball is the best example of when you’re stepping out in the box and you have no clue what you’re doing, you’re telegraphing that to the pitcher. He’s saying, ‘Okay, I got you, I know you’re not ready for me. So this is going to be an easy out.’ But if you’re prepared, and you fire something straight back and you have this intimidating look, you’re saying you’re ready to go. ‘You’ve gotta be at the top of your game because I am at the top of my game and I am ready to beat you at your game. What are you gonna do about this?’ And that sort of attitude – that means that you’re ready.”
I have heard plenty of other similar examples in my conversations with elite performers ranging from NFL Hall of Famer Terrell Davis to Grammy winner Ryan Tedder to Lieutenant General Tom Trask. Whether you’re playing in the Super Bowl, leading a rescue mission, or speaking in front of a large audience, what you do when the lights are off will greatly impact how you feel – and perform – when the lights are on.
The greatest athletes want the ball in the biggest moments because they have spent their lives training for those moments. That mentality can be adopted by every one of us.
