When I first started coaching, one of the worst things that I think I heard was ‘It will be O.K.’ I would wonder, ‘How the hell is it going to be O.K.?’ The worst word in the English language is ‘hope.’
We don’t want defeat in life. How are we going to be beaten? All right. We have to deal with those things. What’s going to cause us to lose the game, whatever the game might be?
Positive wish: ‘The sun will come out tomorrow.’ Negative reality: ‘Yeah, and it will flash brand-new daylight on the same old mess unless something is done to clean it up.
I’m not sure that an athlete is prepared to be a role model. He has a lot of attention paid to him that he shouldn’t have, and then the athletes tend to think of themselves as better than they are.
