What Kobe Bryant Said About Adjusting for the Big Moment
Hope you all are staying safe with everything going on.
During this quarantine, I’ve been lucky to be home safe with a lot of free time. Recently, I picked up Kobe Bryant’s book, The Mamba Mentality - How I Play. It’s 150+ pages with a pictures and lessons throughout his NBA career.
I came across a lesson he wrote on practicing self-awareness to get himself in the right mindset for a big moment. I’ll break it down first in overall themes so that it’s easier to act upon.
Realizing what task is in front of you.
Recognizing what mental state you are in right now.
Questioning what mental state do you need to succeed at the task in front of you.
In Kobe’s big moments here (his games), he chose music and auditory tools to adjust his mentality for the big moment. If he needed to be “keyed up, for example, [he] listened to hard music.” The same would go for calming himself down, playing songs that brought him to cheerful memories as a child. Kobe judged his tool belt of music or sounds based on the game he was about to play.
Did he need to be tougher than usual? Or relax and conduct a symphony?
And so not only does Kobe give us the tools to adjust our mindset before the big moment. He gives us a roadmap to practicing self-awareness. Self-awareness is broad, but here we can break it down by context: what task, what goal, dream, moment is in front of us, and personal demeanor: how do we feel in the moment right now. Are we tired, ready, aggressive, timid, confused, etc. Before you achieve something, you have to know what to do. Thank you to Kobe for keeping us company while we’re in quarantine.
Let’s practice self-awareness: context, and demeanor.
Let’s adjust ourselves for the big moment with simple things like music. 1. Realize the task. 2. Recognize the state of mind. 3. Evaluate the trigger/music/genre for changing that state of mind to be successful.
Check out the book below if you have the time during quarantine!