It's not stress that kills you, it's chronic stress unabated by recovery; stress hormones are the hormones of life, and a high-stress environment creates thriving if paired with genuine recovery.

The stories we tell ourselves either enable us to fulfill and have a great life or take us in tragic directions; these stories control our destiny, belief in ourselves, and joy and happiness in life.

Many people struggling with addiction (drugs, alcohol, painkillers) never intended or dreamed they would become addicted; factors like mental illness, injury, genetics (nucleus accumbens and dopamine sensitivity), and lack of knowledge about addictive potential lead ordinary people into addiction despite good intentions.

Most people have been hoodwinked by the time-management paradigm into believing time is everything; realizing that energy is actually what moves the needle can feel uncomfortable and like an indictment of past behavior.

Full engagement is an acquired ability to invest your full energy right here right now regardless of the situation, aligned with the mission; it is a skill set that is difficult but trainable.

If you surround yourself with comfort (marshmallows and pillows), you become less able to handle stress; eventually marshmallows aren't sweet enough and pillows aren't soft enough—you must chase stress to remain capable.

The Youth Performance Institute recruits young people who have overcome significant challenges and uses them as peer mentors for struggling youth, because peer mentoring is the most effective way to reach kids compared to adult messaging.

We are creatures of habit (the 'unbearable automaticity of being'); most days unfold automatically based on how we're wired habitually, but humans have the unique ability to pause between stimulus and response and create a novel response.

We do not have direct contact with reality; data streams into our five sensory portals, and our brain must make sense of it with a preference for information already loaded in our minds, tending to purge contradictory information rather than incorporate it.

A parent's public voice becomes a major factor in how their children's private voice will speak to them as they grow older; what parents say publicly shapes children's internal dialogue and self-conception.

Mental toughness is insufficient; ideal performance requires integration of mental, emotional, physical (fitness), and spiritual (purpose/meaning) dimensions; everything is interconnected.

The effective story-editing protocol involves creating a new story with your hand, rewriting it several times from memory, reading it aloud, recording your voice memo where you speak the story to yourself, playing it back, and listening to your own voice coaching you until the neural pathways transfer the information and the story begins to change over time.

Handwriting by hand is more powerful for story editing than typing on a computer, according to data collection at Loehr's institute (though researcher James Pennebaker has not found this distinction).

Journaling functions as an 'addiction' that changes one's mindset and template for dealing with life's storms; writing about a day's challenges and gratitude transforms how one faces inevitable difficulties throughout the day.

Loehr's personal mission is to live what he teaches—to not teach something he doesn't do himself or only recommend to others; his success is measured by whether an audit of his life would reflect how he actually lives according to his teachings.

Many world-class performers never dreamed they would reach the level they achieved; they started with love for their sport or domain, expanded possibilities emerged as success accumulated, and they were surprised to pinch themselves upon realizing they became number one in the world.

Novak Djokovic's early coach Yelena Ristic told him as a young boy that he had the greatest potential she had ever seen, which changed his perception of himself and likely contributed to his trajectory.

The message from coaches to young athletes should be: 'Use this sport to help you grow up and become a better human being, and if you become number one in the world in doing it, great—no one loses.' This frames success around growth rather than rank.

Loehr evolved from writing books focused on mental toughness to focusing on character strengths; he realized that who you become as a consequence of the pursuit is more important than what you achieve.

The voice you inherited from your parents as a child—unless you became aware of it and intentionally changed it—will be brought to your children particularly under stress.