Lessons in Greatness from Ray Lewis

Count money, man.

Money, man.

I'm trying to talk, trying to talk to my beast, but

what's up gang welcome back to another episode of the grind cast get ready.

It's a new day and I wanted to share some of my notes from watching Ray Lewis

in a video where he was speaking to Colorado's football team.

And so there are just some things in here that I thought translate

and correlate to a lot of things in life business sports, whatever you're doing out there.

And so I just want to share some of my notes from that with you.

And so in no specific order, he talked about adopting a dog mentality.

Right.

So you're hearing like, what is it?

You hear this all the time like man, that person's a dog.

What what?

What is a dog mentality?

A dog mentality to me means that you can overcome adversity.

That you're that person that can get hit in life or in business or in sports.

And they just keep coming like a dog.

A dog is is aggressive.

Right.

So you got that.

Oh, I'm going to go out there and I'm going to go get it.

I don't mean aggressive like tackle your receptionist through the through the wall.

You know what I mean?

Like ambitious be aggressive.

Go out there and get it.

Don't wait.

You know, I was talking to somebody recently where it's that old thing.

Good things come to those who wait.

It's not that's I don't know where that came from.

But the good things come to those who wait only was left over by those that get up

and go out there and go get it.

And so a dog mentality is those people are going.

They're running they're going trying to chase it down.

They're not waiting for it to come to them.

They could overcome adversity.

They have grit toughness.

They find a way to get things done.

They find a way to win the bite scratch claw and find a way to not make excuses.

I think it has less to do with winning and more to do with not quitting than anything.

A dog mentality is I'm just not going to give up.

I'm not going to quit.

That's that dog mentality.

There was that I remember watching this video where Will Smith was talking about how competitive he was.

And he said it's basically the explanation is if you get on a treadmill and I get on a treadmill,

either I'm going to win or I'm going to die on here because I'm not going to give up.

I'm just going to fall over.

That's that dog mentality is that I'm just going to keep on coming.

I'm not going to stop no matter what.

He talked about making hard work a lifestyle.

Ray Lewis said make hard work a lifestyle.

What does that mean?

Sometimes we look at stuff we just like we like to the beat to it or it sounds cool.

We keep on moving.

What does he mean by make hard work a lifestyle?

What is a lifestyle?

You know what we start to tell people sometimes in businesses?

It's a lifestyle that is just a part of what you do.

It's not whether it's a certain month or a certain day or I'm on a certain diet or whatever it is.

It's just a lifestyle, a healthy lifestyle.

Not a healthy month, not a diet.

This is what make hard work a lifestyle means that anything that you do more often than not.

You're going to get up that day.

You're going to get up that week and put in that work and make hard work part of what you do.

Not just for a moment.

Make it part of your life and be proud of it.

A lifestyle.

He said greatness requires spiritual education and self-awareness.

What I would get from that is taking time out yourself to get spiritual education and whatever your faith and belief is.

But get educated on it and then self-awareness.

Greatness requires self-awareness.

So that means being honest with yourself looking at yourself in the mirror

on the videotape and saying I need to get faster.

I need to get bigger.

I need to get stronger.

I need to lose some weight.

I need to be more coachable.

I need to have a more positive attitude.

I do have a short temper.

I don't do as good of a job listening to others.

I talk a lot.

Greatness requires self-awareness.

Awareness of yourself and being honest with yourself in order to continue to improve

and to be great.

Then he said this one's in my office on my wall on a poster that somebody got from me as a gift because one of a long time ago,

over 10 years ago, I went through in a major adversity in business.

It was really in my personal life, but it was affecting me in business.

And there was nobody to go to.

I remember being so stressed and so much going on that, you know, I didn't want to go to my mom.

I didn't want to go to my family.

It's like, who am I going to go to?

So I just, I went to God and I found this scripture and it was the same one that he went over and it was Proverbs chapter three verses five and six.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him.

And he will set your past straight.

And so trust in this trust in the Lord with all your heart.

What does that mean?

Not half your heart.

Just trust in the Lord.

And do not lean on your own understanding.

Does man, I don't understand why this happened to me.

I don't understand.

I don't know what's going to happen.

That's that's that's leaning on your own understanding.

It says and do not lean on your own understanding.

Just acknowledge him and he'll set your past rate and it all goes back to to acknowledge him that he'll set your past rate starts out with.

Trust in the Lord.

What are your heart?

Next when he went over, he said losses and failures offer more growth than victories do.

Losses and failures offer more growth than victories do.

That's why they go side by side.

And so if you really want to succeed, you got to be willing to fail.

There's going to be some struggles in there.

There's going to be some losses in there that are just lessons.

There was a book.

John Maxwell had his says sometimes you win.

Sometimes you lose and they had it crossed out and it said learn.

So losses lead to learning failures lead to learning.

And that's where the growth is at.

Sometimes victories winning could be a hard teacher because you're filling yourself.

It's in those losses and failures that if you look for them, if you look for them, if you don't look for them, you ain't going to find them.

But if you look for them, there'll be opportunities for you to grow with every one of them.

Next he said avoid trusting in the wrong people.

Man, we probably all been through this one, right?

Avoid trusting the wrong people, which probably comes with just trusting too soon.

Letting your heart get in the way.

Trust them people before they've been proven and tested, but just go with your gut.

Go with your heart and pay attention, but I haven't always gotten this one right.

So just all of us here together today.

From this note, from Mr. Ray Lewis of let's all avoid trusting the wrong people this week.

Next when he said is surrounding yourself with people who push you towards goals.

Are you surrounding yourself with people that push you towards goals or people that don't push you?

Like right now think about audit yourself who you've been spending the most amount of your time with.

Are you hanging with people that are pushing you towards your goals?

Or are you hanging with people that are cool with status quo?

He said consistent discipline leads to mastery.

So if you want to be a master at something, it takes discipline consistently.

So a lot of people they want to reach a professional level.

They want to get paid at a professional level.

But that starts with you mastering something to get paid like a master.

Being a master is applying consistent discipline.

Consistent discipline leads to mastery.

So I want to master being a bodybuilder, which I don't, let's say as an example,

well, I consistently have to discipline myself to eat the right foods and go to work out and do a certain level of cardio.

I want to be a great boxer.

I want to be a master.

I got to consistently discipline myself to train to spar to do all the things that it requires in sales.

I want to be great.

I want to be a master in sales.

I had to consistently discipline myself to record my presentation so I could learn from it to put myself on a recording and watch myself so I can learn from it.

The discipline to go out and do these things because it's not fun.

The consistent discipline of practicing, repping, repetitions, studying sales, all that consistent discipline discipline is doing the things that you know you need to do.

Regardless if you feel like doing them or not.

So consistently doing things you don't feel like doing that are going to lead you to where you want to be.

Also known as discipline that leads to mastery.

He said to be proactive and not reactive.

What as much as you possibly can be proactive versus reactive.

Let's let's put the work in to your relationship so you don't have to fix it on the backside.

Let's proactively look at our schedule before tomorrow gets here so we don't have to react to it tomorrow when we wake up.

It is all right man.

We're just running like a chicken with his head cut off.

Now let's be proactive.

Let's plan out our workout the day in advance.

Let's plan out our schedule today in advance.

Let's make that call.

If we're not going to be able to make it somewhere a week from today.

Let's be proactive and give that person a call.

Let them know now let's not wait till one hour before it was scheduled to happen.

Be proactive, not reactive as much as you can avoid distractions.

He said to avoid distractions and that social media could be a spiritual drain.

I'll let you think of the reasons why, but you know,

I think a big part is that comparison could be the thief of joy at times.

And social media tends to only put people's highlight reels up there.

Depending on who you're connected to, it could be a place for people just be you a bunch of negativity.

And so I think anything that has you more than you use it can be a problem.

So I think, you know, avoiding distractions is what he was talking about.

Like, man, are you, are you putting more time into social media than you are spiritually developing yourself?

Filling yourself up.

Are you being distracted by social media and by other things?

He said intentional effort applied to knowledge and growth.

And so intentional effort to knowledge and growth.

That means I want to grow.

I'm going to put intentional effort into growing in that area.

What do you want to get better at?

Are you applying intentional effort right now to knowledge in growth in those areas?

He said detailed preparation separates great players from average players.

Detailed preparation separates great players from average players.

So how in your business and your line of work, can you prepare with detail so you could separate, separate yourself from the average players?

Like, for example,

detailed preparation, meaning man and for, for talking football or sports, I'm watching film.

And I'm looking at all the little details.

I'm planning a sport.

I'm doing all the little basic fundamental details.

Detailed preparation.

I know this is they're good at this.

Let me, let me have a detailed preparation approach to that that I'm going to just go ahead and practice that with the smallest details.

The details separate the great players, those small things.

So when you're line of work, well, you're trying to get better where there's an opportunity to prepare.

Are you preparing in advance?

How could you think about what are you doing right now?

How could you better prepare in advance?

How could you be more detailed?

He said growth comes from pushing through pain and continuously challenging yourself.

I think that also applies to what we started out talking about just being a dog.

Growth comes from pushing through pain.

We're going to have pain.

That's how you grow.

That's why they call them growing pains, not growing comfortable.

And continuously challenging in yourself.

Are you challenging yourself?

You could already do that weight.

Can you, can you do a little bit more?

You could already run that fast.

Can you run a little bit faster?

You already did that number.

Can you challenge yourself to do a little bit more?

Continuously challenging yourself to be better in all areas of your life that comes from

looking and realizing I'm not going to be good and comfortable with what I've already done.

I'm going to challenge.

Think about it says challenge yourself continuously.

That means all the time consistently.

Where are areas of your life right now that you could challenge yourself?

Where in your health can you challenge yourself?

Where in your time spent can you challenge yourself?

Continuously challenging yourself and then pushing through pain.

That's how you get to grow.

So many people don't grow because when they have pain, they quit.

When they have pain, they give up.

I was going over something with our team the other day recently and we were talking to

interviewing some of our most successful people and they were talking about in their first six months

if you would have heard how many failures they had how many of them didn't start out in their first

couple months super successful they weren't doing very good they grew through the pain. He said loving

your start loving yourself starts with discipline like if you really want to like self-love like to

care about yourself if you can't love yourself it's going to be hard to love anybody else loving

yourself starts with discipline breaking bad habits and embracing hard truths with the hard

truth what are your bad habits where could you apply more discipline ask yourself those questions

he said leaders take initiative to guide and set examples for the team I don't always get

everything right I don't do everything right I'll just point out to you somebody was asking me

recently I went on a run where I was running our Saturday kickoff calls we do a Saturday

voluntary kickoff call Saturday early morning typically eight o'clock or eight thirty and I was

driving from my house to the office running them from the office and then driving to my son's

baseball game you know after where I could have took the call on zoom from my house why was I doing that

I wanted to take initiative and I wanted to set an example for the team that if I could get up

leave my kids run like a trick chicken with my head cut off to make it to the game only to be here

in person that sets an example of what I'm willing to do and so what areas as a leader can you take

initiative and lead by example in some areas leadership includes knowledge of the game anticipating moves

and taking responsibility for outcomes is what he said that at the end of the day the outcome they say

as always rises and falls on leadership not them blaming the people all the time taking a little

bit of ownership greatness he says is a narrow and fleeting window greatness is a narrow window

means not for everybody it's a small thing it is for everybody but not everybody can not

everybody does it so it's a narrow and fleeting window it requires focus

we hear that word focus what does focus means means like only pay attention locking on that one

thing no distractions preparation greatness if you want greatness we got to prepare

and sacrifice there is no success without sacrifice the higher the levels of greatness the more sacrifice

that you got to be prepared and so on what levels of your life right now do you think you could sacrifice

more what areas of your life do you think you could focus better in what areas of your life

can you prepare yourself more in what areas of your life right now could you apply more sacrifice

because in order to go up you got to give up stuff he said that and this is coming from a huge

competitor i mean watching Ray Lewis play you could tell he's a competitor he said compete with

yourself not others and just continuously aim to improve that goes hand in hand where we talk about

comparison can be the thief of joy when you're always comparing yourself to what somebody else is doing

or what somebody else got that you don't got or what somebody else does that you don't have or whatever

it is just compete with yourself and see if you could get better every day improve every week

compete with yourself think about looking at yourself in the mirror say what areas cannot grow in

be competitive in that area let's compete with ourselves and continuously aim to improve

ourselves and challenge ourselves and those are some of the notes that i had from Ray Lewis's speech

in the video talking to the Colorado Buffalo's football team and I hope that some of you

found value in that hopefully everybody found value in that if you did if you wouldn't mind share

with somebody else we need to share the grindcast with with some other folks that we know that we can

help and impact more the world and as always we thank you and appreciate your time so thanks for

joining us on another episode of the grindcast get ready it's a new day