If You Want To Win, You Can’t Play Scared
The following is an edited excerpt from the book Living on Purpose: Stories about Faith, Fortune, and Fitness That Will Lead You to an Extraordinary Life by Brandon Steiner.
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“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek.”
— Joseph Campbell
When people achieve a high level of success, the tendency is to get nervous about what others think or how that level of success will be maintained. As a result of how worried they feel, they’ll often stop doing what brought them success in the first place.
I experienced this myself as Steiner Sports began gaining notoriety and more attention came my way. I didn’t have experience with our new level of success or making as much money as we were. Honestly, the pressure stifled me a bit. Even living in my new house, I was struggling to get comfortable there. It was only the second house I’d ever lived in.
If athletes tense up in big games, coaches will often tell them to play like they did when they were a kid. There’s wisdom in that old coaching cliché. To handle my company’s new success, I needed to approach life like I did when I was kid — fearless and filled with faith.
In other words, I had to stop playing scared.
It reminds me of the time I went to watch the Syracuse men’s basketball team play Duke and sat right behind the Syracuse bench. The game was at Cameron Indoor Stadium, which is Duke’s home court. It’s a rowdy, rough place to play. It’s extremely intimidating. The fans are right on top of you. There are more Final Four banners and retired numbers than there are people in the arena. It’s a legendary building, built in 1940, and holds about 9,000 screaming, crazy fans. There are plenty of reasons to be fearful when you walk into this stadium to play against Coach Krzyzewski and the Duke Blue Devils.
My beloved Orange had a terrible first half. The players were tight, and the score was ugly at halftime. Syracuse managed just sixteen points. About ten minutes into the game, Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim called a timeout and huddled with his players on the bench. I leaned in close to hear how Coach would snap his players out of their funk.
“You cannot play this game scared,” he told the team. He repeated the line twice more for emphasis. The players were locked into what he was saying. As Coach spoke, they all looked at each other, nodding their heads in agreement. They knew that if they didn’t shake off the fear they felt right now, the game would be over. Duke would pummel them.
I sat back in my seat, curious to see how the Syracuse players would respond. I was happy to see them loosen up throughout the rest of the first half and perform better in the second half. They couldn’t overcome the hole they dug for themselves and ended up losing the game, but the advice Boeheim gave his players during that timeout stuck with me.
After a sluggish start, Coach knew the culprit wasn’t poor mechanics or a lack of effort. His guys were playing scared. It showed when they passed up open jumpers, refused to attack the basket, didn’t crash the boards, and committed careless turnovers.
Once they stepped out of that fear and into faith — in the game plan, their coach, and each other — they started playing up to their potential and gave Duke all they could handle.
My question to you is: Are you playing scared right now?
I was seeing a lot of people around me at different stages of life who played scared. The thought of switching jobs or asking for a raise, or growing closer with their spouse and children, terrifies them. They’re scared of failure, but they’re also scared of success. I’ve often seen people with the means to do something different with their lives who would rather play not to lose instead of play to win. I have to include myself in that group.
The past few years, I’ve been focused on getting out of that fearful state and into a faithful one. I’ve always been confident in my ability to make money. What I wanted was to have that same confidence when it came to being faithful, growing closer with my family, being a better friend, and being a more kind and generous person.
A fine line exists between fear and faith, so you have to be mindful of which side you’re on in any given situation. The side of fear is a steep, slippery slope. When you slide into fear, you’ll find it’s easy to keep sliding and difficult to climb out. The good news is that faith works the same way, but in the opposite direction. Like a train rolling downhill, once you start living faithfully, you’ll approach every situation with optimism and joy.
I believe that kind of faithful living is an express road to extraordinary. You’re still going to hit some bumps, but those bumps won’t leave you on the side of the road. Of course, for this express road to be a viable option, we need to understand what faith means and what extraordinary achievement looks like.
How WNBA Star Brittney Sykes Defeated Fear
“Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.”
— Robert H. Schuller
Brittney Sykes knows all too well how fear can threaten your faith when hardships strike. Brittney is from Newark, New Jersey, and played college basketball at Syracuse. She was drafted at number seven overall in the 2017 WNBA draft, the highest selected women’s basketball player in school history. Brittney was a McDonald’s All-American in high school and was the highest rated recruit Syracuse had ever landed up to that point. The team saw immediate success with her in the lineup, winning its first NCAA tournament game against Chattanooga in 2014, which was her sophomore season.
That was also the game in which Brittney tore the ACL in her right knee.
Ten months of rehab followed her injury. If you know anything about coming back from an ACL tear, it’s physically and mentally grueling. Fear can swallow you up pretty fast as months go by without stepping foot on the court. Nevertheless, Brittney persisted in faith and worked her way back. She managed to return to action a few games before the team’s showdown with number-four-ranked Notre Dame. The jubilation felt by those who supported Brittney through her rehab turned to heartbreak when she went down with a knee injury in the first half. Her worst nightmare was confirmed shortly after the game ended — a torn right ACL, the same one she’d just spent ten months rehabbing.
Can you imagine how it must’ve felt to receive that news? I’d have been gutted.
At this point, Brittney easily could’ve listened to the voice in her head saying, Maybe this isn’t for me.Nobody would’ve blamed her for walking away after tearing her ACL for the second time in ten months. But that wasn’t Brittney.
I’d been spending time with Brittney and her teammates for a couple years leading up to the 2015 season. I’d been working with Quentin Hillsman, the head women’s basketball coach at Syracuse, to develop a strategy for the upcoming season. Quentin has been the head women’s basketball coach since 2006 and has helped turn that program into a national powerhouse among the likes of UConn and Tennessee.
With help from the players, we wanted to define what it meant to play for Syracuse women’s basketball. What kind of legacy did this team want to leave?
During my first talk with the players, I told them I’d bought plane tickets for Indianapolis, home of the Final Four that year, and I expected to see them there. In my mind, anything less than a Final Four appearance would be a disappointment, given the talent level on that team. I knew, however, that getting Brittney involved would be crucial to Syracuse making a deep run. Brianna Butler and Alexis Peterson could carry the team offensively, but come tournament time, they would need Brittney to step up her offensive output.
As the NCAA tournament drew near in February, Syracuse had lost some games but was playing well overall. Brittney, I noticed, had moments when she looked hesitant. You could tell she was playing scared. Again, I didn’t blame her after two ACL tears and months of rehab, but if Syracuse wanted to make a Final Four run, they needed the preinjury version of Brittney who slashed through the lane and crashed the glass with no fear.
After the game against Georgia Tech, I asked Brittney how she felt.
“I feel fine,” she replied. “I’m like 99 percent there.”
“The difference between 99 percent and 100 percent is 100 percent,” I told her. “The reason I ask is because you look hesitant about going hard to the basket, like maybe you’re afraid to hurt your knee again. You seem to be a little nervous.”
“Oh,” she said, looking reflective. “I hadn’t really thought about that.”
“Look, you’re one of the best players on this team, if not one of the best players in this league,” I told her. “I think it’s time to reintroduce yourself to your teammates and coaches, but before you can do that, I think you need to reintroduce yourself to yourself. Teams need to be afraid whenever you’ve got the ball, but right now, they’re not. You have to believe in yourself and have faith, not fear, in your game. When you do, teams won’t be able to stop you at all.”
I was working to convert her fear into faith. To drive the point home, I left her with a half-joking threat, “If you don’t put up fifteen a night the rest of the way, I’ll be back!”
Four nights later against Virginia, Brittney scored seventeen points. She averaged thirteen points per game the rest of the season, and Syracuse exceeded its goal of making a Final Four, losing to an undefeated UConn team in the national championship game.
Brittney had all the physical tools to help lead her team to a title game. She simply had to decide that fear wasn’t going to dictate how she played on the court. Syracuse was a team with a purpose that year, and Brittney carried her own purpose — to show people back in Newark that she was the real deal and to make good for her mom, who’d always supported her. When Brittney combined those twin purposes with a renewed faith in her game, Syracuse became the force of nature it was destined to be and accomplished things no other team in school history had done. She carried that success into her first year with the Atlanta Dream, averaging 13.9 points per game and receiving votes for Rookie of the Year.
From two ACL tears to a top rookie in the WNBA — that’s the power of faith.
To keep reading, pick up Living on Purpose: Stories about Faith, Fortune, and Fitness That Will Lead You to an Extraordinary Life by Brandon Steiner.
