RELENTLESS – Book Summaries

In  Relentless Tim Glover start by saying that to be the best, whether in sports or business or any other aspect of life, it’s never enough to just get to the top; you have to stay there, and then you have to climb higher, because there’s always someone right behind you trying to catch up.

If you want to be unstoppable, you can’t settle for “good enough” those words mean nothing to you. Being the best means engineering your life so you never stop until you get what you want, and then you keep going until you get what’s next. And then you go for even more.

Relentless

If that describes you, you’re what the author call a Cleaner, the most intense and driven competitor imaginable. You refuse limitations. You quietly and forcefully do whatever it takes to get what you want.

Decide. Commit. Act. Succeed. Repeat.

Everything in Relentless is about raising your standard of excellence, going beyond what you already know and think, beyond what anyone has tried to teach you. A guy tells me he wants to come back from an injury in ten weeks? I’ll get him there in eight. You want to drop thirty pounds? You’ll drop thirty-four. That’s how you become unstoppable—by placing no limits on yourself. Not just in sports, but in everything you do. I want you to want more and get everything you crave.

I don’t care how good you think you are, or how great others think you are—you can improve, and you will. Being relentless means demanding more of yourself than anyone else could ever demand of you, knowing that every time you stop, you can still do more. You must do more.

The minute your mind thinks, “Done,” your instincts say, “Next.”

I’m not going to tell you how to change. People don’t change. I want you to trust who you already are, and get to that Zone where you can shut out all the noise, all the negativity and fear and distractions and lies, and achieve whatever you want, in whatever you do.

Success is about dealing with reality, facing your demons and addictions, and not putting a smiley face on everything you do. If you need a pat on the back and a “Good job!” to get your ass off the couch, Relentless book is not for you. Because if you want to be unstoppable, you have to face who you really are and make it work for you, not against you. Truly relentless people—the Cleaners—are predators, with dark sides that refuse to be taught to be good. Use your dark side well and it can be your greatest gift.

If you’re aiming to be the best at what you do, you can’t worry about whether your actions will upset other people, or what they’ll think of you. We’re taking all the emotion out of this, and doing whatever it takes to get to where you want to be.

From this point, your strategy is to make everyone else get on your level; you’re not going down to theirs. You’re not competing with anyone else, ever again. They’re going to have to compete with you.

Cleaners

Relentless is about achieving the impossible. Anything that requires a long explanation probably isn’t the truth.

Being relentless means never being satisfied. It means creating new goals every time you reach your personal best. If you’re good, it means you don’t stop until you’re great. If you’re great, it means you fight until you’re unstoppable. It means becoming a Cleaner.

Never satisfied, never content, always pushing higher and higher. That’s a Cleaner. Larry Bird is a Cleaner. Kobe, Dwyane . . . Cleaners. Pat Riley. Phil Jackson. Charles Barkley.

There are a handful in the game today, not too many, and probably not whom you’d suspect—stardom doesn’t automatically make you a Cleaner, winning does, and not just winning once; you have to be able to do it again and again. In the business world, we’re talking about Bill Gates, the late Steve Jobs. Most team owners are Cleaners—guys such as Jerry Jones and Mark Cuban and Jerry Reinsdorf, who run their teams with the same cutthroat attitude that made them juggernauts in business.

Remember, it’s not about talent or brains or wealth. It’s about the relentless instinctive drive to do whatever it takes— anything—to get to the top of where you want to be, and to stay there.

‘I own this’ attitude

A Cleaner’s attitude can be summed up in three words: I own this.

Being a Cleaner has almost nothing to do with talent. Everyone has some degree of talent; it doesn’t always lead to success. Those who reach this level of excellence don’t coast on their talent. They’re completely focused on taking responsibility and taking charge, whether they’re competing in sports or managing a family or running a business or driving a bus; they decide how to get the job done, and then they do whatever is necessary to make it happen. These are the most driven individuals you’ll ever know, with an unmatched genius for what they do: they don’t just perform a job, they reinvent it.

I own this. I’m talking about the schoolteacher who won’t give up until every student understands the lessons; the parent working overtime to pay the bills and send the kids to college…

Cleaners don’t do work for show, they don’t go through the motions. A true Cleaner never tells you what he’s doing or what he’s planning. You find out after the job is complete. And by the time you realize what he’s accomplished, he’s already moved on to the next challenge.