 The next lesson I want to share with you is that your mind is your most powerful tool. Too many soccer players think that their feet are what will bring them success, but all of your skills will be wasted if you don't learn to unlock the power of your mind. As I mentioned earlier, hitting rock bottom was the best thing that ever happened to me. In that moment, I had a realization that changed my life forever. When bad things happen, they are often blessings in disguise. If I never quit that team, I never would have been forced to look at myself in the mirror, to ask myself the hard questions like what do I really want to achieve and who do I really want to become. Even today, these lessons serve me. When I was broke, it forced me to make more money. When I was overweight, it forced me to get into great shape. When my soccer career was a mess, it forced me to sort it out. You may have heard the quote, life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you. So I would challenge you to really start looking at the negative moments in your life as incredible opportunities to learn and grow. Ask yourself, what is this difficult situation trying to teach me? And I quickly realized that mentality is way more important than ability. Just think about it. Why are there so many talented players around the world that don't achieve their goals? Why do good players crumble under pressure? Why do some people never recover from setbacks, while others come back stronger than ever? It has nothing to do with ability and everything to do with mentality. Regardless of your age, understanding the importance of developing your mental toughness may be the most important thing you ever discovered. We spend so much time working on our skills but very little time working on our minds. If you're struggling with confidence right now, understand confidence is a skill just like shooting or dribbling. And like any skill, it can and must be improved with practice. You may not realize it, but you can control the voices in your head. In fact, that's what confidence is. It's talking yourself forward through difficult times. Everyone can feel confident when things are going well. Your coach likes you, your playing well, your team is winning. But guess what? That's not real confidence. Real confidence is developed when everything is going wrong. You're stuck on the bench, you're not playing well, the coach doesn't like you. Those are the moments where you can either start being negative, make excuses, give up, or you can choose to talk yourself forward through the struggle. Practicing will give you more belief in your abilities, but real confidence is only created when you've been knocked down and you get yourself back up. So I want you to really start becoming aware of the thoughts in your head. You are responsible for those thoughts. Analyze how do you talk to yourself when things start going wrong? Because those are the moments you want. Those are the moments where confidence is earned and the hidden power of your mind can be unlocked. The next lesson I want to share with you is that if you want to become better than other players, you must train differently than other players. I knew if I wanted to be better than I was before, I couldn't keep training the same way. But I also wanted to dominate my old teammates. So I couldn't train the same way they did. How does the average player train? They usually go to the field, juggle a ball for a bit, hit some dead balls and free kicks, and call it a day. They never really challenge themselves in a way that will actually force them to transform into a different type of player. If you keep doing the same thing, you are going to keep getting the same results. If you do what is easy, the match will be hard. If you do what is hard, the match becomes easy. We need to realize that the success we want is in the hard work we've been hiding from. It's hidden in the weaknesses in our game we've been avoiding. Change the way you look at hard work. It's something you want to do because that's what's going to turn you into the player that you want to be. If you continue to hide from it, you'll keep being frustrated with the way that you're playing. Run towards the hard work and the game will start to become easy. I started studying not only the best soccer players, but the most successful people in the world in all different areas of life. What made these people so special? It wasn't their goals because lots of people have big goals and want to be successful, but they never make it happen. It was their habits. Goals are just dreams unless you execute on them daily. You can't set goals and expect them to happen. You need to identify the exact habits that are going to bring those goals towards you. In fact, I discovered that these really successful people almost disconnect from their goals and instead they fall in love with their habits. If you want to become a great soccer player, you need to fall in love with the process of getting better every day. If you do not become addicted to the daily grind of getting better, you don't deserve to achieve the goal. The goal does not happen without habits and it requires doing the same habits over and over again. It's about doing the basics day in and day out, never thinking you're too good for something simple. Because the better we become, the more we realize how much needs to be improved. I remember watching professional soccer when I was 12 years old and thinking, these players are not that much better than me. Fast forward today, I'm 35, better than ever and every day I'm realizing more and more how many things I can still improve. You have to be consistent with your daily efforts. Most players train well for a few days, then they fall off. You've probably experienced this before. I know I have in the past. Imagine how good you would be if you didn't keep stopping and starting. How much farther ahead would you be? Consistency is so important in training. That's why you need to find a training program that you can stick to. You don't need to overcomplicate the process. You don't need the most advanced drills. What you need is to become addicted to the process of making small improvements. Really execute on your daily habits and you won't have to chase your goals. Your goals will start coming to you. So why is it that some players can play well in training, but they can't put it together in games?