"Don’t complain about not getting a chance and then be unprepared when you finally do.”

Everyone talks about mental toughness. Very few people define it.

Jack Clark has won 29 national championships as the head coach of Cal Rugby. He's been at it for 40 years. And when he talks about mental toughness, he doesn't use vague motivational language. He gets specific.

His definition: "Mental toughness is the ability to focus on the next most important thing."

That's it. When things go sideways - when you make a mistake, when the call doesn't go your way, when the pressure spikes - mentally tough people don't dwell on what just happened. They don't spiral into what it might mean. They put all their energy into what needs to happen next.

Clark pairs this with a mindset that shapes everything at Cal: Grateful for everything, entitled to nothing.

"We reckon there's not enough true gratitude in the world and we do believe there's probably too much entitlement. When you don't believe that you're owed something and you're truly thankful for everything that you get, you become a more resilient, probably tougher competitor."

This isn't soft. It's the opposite. When you feel entitled to a break, a call, a result - anything that doesn't go your way throws you off. When you're grateful and expect nothing, you're harder to rattle.

Clark also draws a hard line that most coaches won't: high-performance teams are not families.

"Family is unconditional. On high-performance teams it's the opposite - it's highly conditional. This is how we do things, this is what we believe in. Contribute to that or this is the wrong organization for you."

The question isn't whether you value mental toughness. Everyone says they do. The question is whether you've defined it clearly enough that your team knows exactly what it looks like - and what it doesn't.

👉 Inside Premium this summer, I broke down Jack Clark's complete framework for building mental toughness into a team's culture→ Upgrade today

For more on Jack Clark, these insights come from his conversation on the Great Coaches Podcast.

This week's question: How do you define mental toughness? Not a vague feeling - an actual definition. And does your team know it?

John Harbaugh was asked about leadership. His answer was a masterclass in what it actually means to serve the people you lead.

The thread running through all six? Leadership is service. But service doesn't mean soft. Harbaugh demands excellence while he serves. That's the balance.

I break down all six principles in this week's post.

This week's question: Which of these six principles do you need to focus on most right now?

I've been thinking about the phrase relentless resilience.

Resilience is a word we use all the time. It means bouncing back, bouncing forward, and/or recovering from setbacks. Getting knocked down and getting up again.

But when you add the word relentless in front of it, something shifts.

Say it out loud: Relentless resilience.

What do you picture? How does it feel?

To me, it's not just about bouncing back. It's about bouncing back strongly and propelling yourself forward like a trampoline. It's continuous resilience in a sense.

Most people are one or the other. They're relentless - but they burn out because they don't know how to recover. Or they're resilient - they can take a punch, but they lack the drive to keep pursuing once they've recovered.

The elite are both. They recover AND they keep coming. They absorb the setback AND they maintain forward pressure.

Language matters more than we think. The words we use frame how we see ourselves and what we believe is possible. "Resilience" can be reactive - it's about what happens after something goes wrong. "Relentless resilience" is proactive - it's about what you do next, and next, and next.

It's not just getting back up. It's getting back up and moving forward without hesitation.

This week's question: What does relentless resilience mean for you? What would it look like to build it for yourself or your team?

For coaches and leaders:

For athletes and performers:

All of these posts and more are in the Coaching Vault.

What I am reading and listening to:

📚 Book: Heads-Up Baseball : Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time by Ken Ravizza

🎥 Video: Ray Dalio & Bill Belichick on Building Great Teams

🎧Podcast: Supercommunicators with journalist Charles Duhigg | A Bit of Optimism Podcast

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