That is my reaction to reading three books in under three months? I don't remember the last time I read three books in a year, let alone two months and some change. It helps that I am picking books on things I like and am interested in. Reading was always painful in high school because it was reading on things I didn't really care about.
I also have changed some habits of mine recently. I usually doomscroll in the morning and right before bed to start and end my day. I still do that a little bit, but I am working to replace that with reading. Since I started reading before going to sleep last week, I have slept better. I don't know if it actually calms my mind more like I thought mindlessly scrolling did, or what, but I am all about getting better sleep right now. hahaha
Anyways, on to the topic at hand...what did I just finishing reading?
"Think Like a Warrior: The Five Inner Beliefs That Make You Unstoppable" by Darrin Donnelly is a fictional story about football coach, Chris McNeely. McNeely is the coach of the Wisconsin State Warriors, a MAC school, after some bad luck coaching at the NFL level and even worse luck with investing. He is arrogant, quick to blame others and cares about furthering his career more than anything. He is also in the last year of his contract after two losing seasons.
On the other hand, McNeely is a family man. You learn quickly that he has had to file bankruptcy and he feels like he has let his wife and daughter down. When Chris tells his wife about the bankruptcy, which is due to some bad investment advice he got while coaching in the NFL, she tells him that she is pregnant.
All of this sends Chris into a downward spiral that affects his ability to focus on coaching his team. One night he pulls a late night and ends up in a dream where he mets John Wooden, famously known for coaching basketball at UCLA. In this dream, they discuss everything going on in Chris's life and the keys to Wooden's success. You learn they have very similar pasts. Wooden evently teaching McNeely the lesson that you can only control two things in life, your effort and your attitude. This is inner belief number 1.
Chris takes this to his team, and his life, to great success. However, with everything that causes a quick bounce, it comes back to Earth. A hard loss sends McNeely back into a late night working where he meets Buck O'Neil, a famous baseball coach. Here is learns inner belief number 2...loving what you do and taking on each day with joy and enthusiasm.
Throughout the story Chris meets three more famous coachs in his dreams - Herb Brooks, Paul "Bear" Bryant, and Vince Lombardi. Each coach teaches Chris about what helped to make them successful in their coaching careers. They talk about their setbacks, their challenges and their successes. This sets up inner belief number 3, dream big and ignore the naysayers; inner belief number 4, being relentless and never giving up on your dreams; and inner belief number 5, choosing faith over fear.
McNeely uses these five lessons to write a short booklet for his team. That booklet is called (you can probably guess), "Think Like a Warrior: The Five Inner Beliefs That Make You Unstoppable."
I highly recommend this book to any coach or teacher out there. It is a fictional story, but it is an easy read as well. I enjoy reading about sports as well so that helps me. I think students would get a lot of this book as well, but I would be less likely to recommend this to them than I would the last two books I read - "Hidden Potential" (review here) and "Mental Toughness for Young Athletes (review here).
This book had me all fired up as I was reading it. You can tell the McNeely is well meaning, but young and naive as well. This book makes you feel for him and his family but reminds you that we are all human. We learn, we make mistakes, we learn from those mistakes and then make new ones to learn from. This story is a great reminder to keep working, and that you can apply these five inner beliefs to just about anything.
Overall I would 10/10 recommend this for coaches, instructors and teachers. Again, it is a great story full of feeling and lessons that we can all apply to life. I know that I will be applying it to the things that I do.
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