Bill Russell is one of the great names in basketball, an all-American... and the only athlete to ever win an NCAA Championship, an Olympic Gold Medal, and a professional championship all in the same year-1956...But Bill Russell had this one problem: He threw up before every game.

Great performers in all fields seem immune to what outsiders think about them. Their sense of themselves never depends on the feedback-positive or negative-they get from the environment.

Confidence is a resolute state of mind by which you believe nothing is impossible.

To be a top performer you have to be passionately committed to what you're doing and insanely confident about your ability to pull it off.

We tend to view confidence as a product of accomplishment rather than part of the process that leads there. But supremely confident people were confident long before they achieved anything.

Great performers are, by definition, abnormal; they strive throughout their entire careers to separate themselves from the pack.

Great performers welcome pressure.