Toughness and Reading

posted on: December 1, 2014
author: Brian Lomax, Ed.D.

As my students and good friends know, I’m a big fan of reading daily as a habit. Every day, I read for at least 30 minutes, and I listen to an audio book for at least 30 minutes, usually while I’m driving. It’s a great way to stay engaged with your passion whether that’s sports, business, music, whatever, and it’s a commitment to living a life of learning. Learning and living go hand-in-hand.  Of course, if you’d like to adopt this habit, you don’t have to commit to 30 minutes a day.  Maybe you can do 5 minutes or 10.  Maybe you can read 10 pages a day.  Whatever – you’re busy, I know,  so do what you can to get your reading habit moving.  And if you already have a daily reading habit, kudos to you!

So what am I reading now? Well, I just finished Toughness:  Developing True Strength On and Off the Court by current ESPN college basketball commentator and former Duke Blue Devil, Jay Bilas, and I thought this was a great book. It’s one of those many books that I wish I could have read when I was 13 years old. Through his experiences in high school, college and pro basketball as well as those as a trial lawyer and commentator at ESPN, Bilas describes what true toughness is and what it isn’t. It isn’t about beating your chest and celebrating after a play – that’s a waste of energy and it’s mis-directed focus. Instead, true toughness is about things like trust, commitment, persistence, resilience, focus and hope. He uses multiple examples to illustrate all these points, and while some reviewers of the book have noted that the message is repetitive, I think that’s a good thing. These are messages that need to be repeated over and over again because true toughness is harder to see and harder to do than faux toughness. If you’ve got a young athlete on your holiday shopping list, consider this book as one of the potential gifts. I think it could make a tremendous difference for both young men and young women.  And by the way, tough people read! 🙂

Also, I’ve created a PerformanceXtra reading list for athletes as well as a more general one for coaches and parents. If you’re interested in seeing either of these lists, send me an email at brian@performancextra.com or leave a comment below with your email address. Happy reading!

photo credit: susivinh via photopin cc