A Standout Mentality
Terry McLaurin is aptly referred to as Scary Terry considering how much anxiety he provokes in opposing players and coaches attempting to stop him from massacring their coverage schemes. In retrospect it is easy to get enamored with how “quickly” Terry ascended to the pinnacle of his professional endeavors. However, I’m fairly certain that quick is not an adjective Terry would use to describe his trek to stardom. In retelling any story it is tempting to lay out a plot line that insinuates everything went exactly according to meticulously executed plans. Terry’s story has an excellent ending but not all of them do. Success is often a terrible teacher because its byproducts are not the cause. We reverse engineer these success stories looking to discover some hidden gems that will expedite our path to success, but ironically all we find are people similar to us taking advantage of opportunities similar to ours. No magic, no hacks, no secrets. Just ordinary people who have embraced their journey and committed to staying on their own path not allowing themselves to get distracted by all the others that may intersect it.
From our standpoint, the scariest thing about Terry is not his speed, or on field play. What’s terrifying is this mindset he adopted early on in his career, this standout mentality. Understanding this mentality is critical to leveraging the power of deployment to unlock your full potential, regardless of your circumstances.
It’s not even debatable that one of, if not, the most crucial components of success is mentality. Mentality informs our relationship with success and failure. Simply put, “when you change the way you look at things the things you look at change” - Wayne Dyer. Individuals that are fixated on outcomes miss, or even worse, avoid most of the growth opportunities life is trying to give them. A standout mentality is a humble devotion to the work required for the team to win and individuals to grow. This is much more than a growth mindset, it’s a scary obsession with the nuances of honing your craft, a relentless pursuit of excellence. Terry provides us with an excellent case study to evaluate how effective a standpoint mentality can be in keeping us in the fight required if we ever hope to nudge toward our full potential.
Let’s face it, unlike Terry, most of us have failed to recognize the scout team opportunities in our life. The few of us that do recognize them fail to appreciate them for the fertile grounds of growth that they are and adopt a standout mentality, but instead we cringe at the thought of being lesser, doing grunt work, and desperately wish these periods away. To truly embrace a standout mentality we have to believe in a few fundamental truths.
Your position doesn’t matter, whether starter or scout team, the only people getting the most meaningful reps in both sports and life are the individuals who have adopted a standout mentality.
Talent is only a starting point. When you want to do something meaningful it doesn’t matter how talented you are you must still do the work and put in the time and effort.
We’re called to a Higher Standard. Standards of performance that instill excellence by dictating what we do, when we do it, and how it gets done.
In the pursuit of mastery you will face adversity!
How to Adopt A Standout Mentality And Level Up Your Leadership Lifestyle
Deploy helps us realize that when it comes to navigating adversity a bias towards intentional action is requisite for success. There is no substitute for instilling meticulous practice, highly effective habits, relentless effort, and self-discipline. But how do we get to this? Here we walk through a simple three step process we’ve developed to help you adopt a standout mentality…