What does that word do to you when you hear it?
I can tell you that for many years the idea of potential, the story of what kind of player I could become, what kind of life I could have, if only this or if only that, ruled my life.

As an aspiring professional football player the only thing I was told, the only thing I believed, from as young as 13 was that I had this mystic thing, this thing they called potential.

And if I wanted to cash in on it, if I wanted to as they would say “realize my potential” I had to train harder than anyone else. To go from being a nobody to a somebody, and not just any somebody but a bona fide champion, I had to train my muscles, my legs, my body. Becoming physically strong was the only path laid out before me.

The results would come from training and I did everything I could to live up to that. To that potential.But when it came time to step out onto the field for a real live match, time to put all the hard work, training and preparation to good use, the rules of the game were completely different than what my training had prepared me for.

Defeated and cast aside as not good enough for the big leagues I was introduced to mental game training and it saved my life.

Listening to the voice on the other side of that recording I understood something I had never thought of before. The question isn’t “how well do you perform during practice” but rather “can you deliver results when everything is on the line?”

It was then I understood that training the body isn’t what will make me the champion I longed to be. Training my mind would.

And now I work every day with people just like you, facilitating a process of transformation where you learn NOT how to fulfill your potential in some distant future, or become a champion one day, but how to claim ownership of the champion you already are. Here and now.

5 things I know to be true:

1. Whether you are a soccer player, professional athlete in another sport or CEO of a major company with tremendous responsibility, you can only achieve that which you can imagine is possible.

    

2. The only way to see what you are truly made of and capable of is to stop defining your self worth and identity based on your results and start living like the champion you want to be, the champion you already are, right now.

    

3. The question is never “what is my potential” but rather “what do I choose to do with my potential”.

    

4. The belief that who you are = today’s results is false. It’s a lie. Start living the values and goals you have for yourself today regardless of the trophy or outside confirmation from others. Live who you want to be tomorrow right now.

    

5. A real champion lives his future in the present moment. He doesn’t wait for great things to happen one day only if, he practices and dedicates every moment of his life to being the champion he wants to be every single day until it happens. Period
   

Eitan Azaria, mental game coach for senior executives at Nike international and three time champion for Hapoel Beer Sheva FC, flips the paradigm of results on its head. “You’re champions by your nature, as you were born. No result in the world can ever change that.”