How Pete Carroll unlocked all his players' potential

His players knew they were going to win before the game. How you can do the same...

Pete Carroll is famous for the dynasty he created at USC. He replicated that success and won a SuperBowl with the Seahawks.

I was lucky enough to get to listen to Pete a few times when he’d come speak at USC. This sent me down a rabbit hole of learning everything I could about his philosophies. I listened to every podcast and speech he gave so you don’t have to. Here’s what I learned.

For a bit of background, USC was struggling when they hired Pete and Pete was not a splashy hire at all. Many fans were unhappy. He was unproven and had just gotten fired from two unsuccessful stints as an NFL Head Coach. Pete turned USC into a dynasty that won XX and produced Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart.

First of all, the guy looks great. Increasingly convinced the key to longevity is positive thinking, no negativity, being excited. He is 70 years old, but looks much younger. He is full of energy (never drinks coffee) and always running around. Makes you think…all those years of positive thoughts probably have a bigger impact on your general health and wellbeing than you think. He literally doesn't let himself talk about negative things or entertain negative thoughts. We are what we think…

Philosophy #1: Become All You Can Be

You have a shot at life to become all you can become. All Pete wants is for his players to become the very best versions of themselves. He calls this self-actualization.

Whatever it is you want to be the best at - be it. Whether its an investor, entrepreneur, brother/sister, husband/wife, roommate, school teacher. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that it matters to you and you become the best you can be at it. Not the best relative to someone, just the best you can be. That’s all you can do.

Of course, you want to be the best ever like you want to win every game. But those factors are outside of you. All you can control is getting to and being your best so that should be your only focus.

If you become your best, chances are you will win a lot of games. Might even become the best ever.

Reggie bush was the best but pushed himself to be the best. He was their best player but worked harder than anyone else. He’s work out with the lineman in the morning and then the skill players in the afternoon. Only one doing that.

Philosophy #2: Understand Yourself

To be your best, start by understanding yourself.

Pete says, “figuring yourself out is the competition of a lifetime.”

The first step in self-actualization is deep self-reflection. Discovering who you are is the most important thing you can do. To be at your very best, you HAVE to understand who you are. Only way you have complete internal alignment with your skills and your goals.

You need to know yourself to know what you care about enough to dedicate yourself to becoming the best at it. You have to find out what you love and are truly passionate about. If you love it, you'll never be satisfied with it. You will relentlessly work to improve it. You have to love it to have that hunger to become the very best at it.

You will face many obstacles. The fact that you love it is the only reason you will keep going. And you have to keep going.

Vision, affirmations, manifestations. All real. All powerful stuff.

Philosophy #3: Create a Winning Environment

Something that I’ve learned in investing is that culture is everything. There’s a reason some companies do better than others and it comes down to the culture. Costco and Amazon have a culture focused on providing the customer with savings, and that goes through everything they do. Four Seasons with providing incredible hospitality. Best Western not so much. Hard to diligence, hard to create, but so important.

Boeing used to have a culture of engineering excellence. They prided themselves on it. They got pressure from Wall Street to focus on profits and look what happened. They lost their culture and it has gotten ugly.

USC and Seattle had such strong winning cultures. They were fully united as a team yet contained some of the most high-profile individuals with huge personalities. Pete, maybe better than any coach, embraces his players' individuality. He let stars like Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart, Richard Sherman, and Russ Wilson be themselves.

That’s the whole point. To be your very best, you have to be 100% comfortable in your environment. You have to be an environment to be free, especially free to make mistakes. That’s the only way you can push the envelope and see how far you can take it. He fosters environments where people can be themselves and feel comfortable.

Pete said his job as a coach “isn’t so much to force or coerce performance as it is to create situations where players develop their confidence to set their talents free and pursue their potential to its full extent? What if my job as a coach is really to prove to these kids how good they already are, how good they could possibly become, and that they are truly capable of high-level performance”

He is always incredibly positive with his players. He is all about building them up instead of tearing them down. "If self-confidence is so important, why would we ever want to approach someone in a manner that might disrupt or shatter it?"

He also made practices VERY fun. USC was the first team to play music at practice. Pete wanted to create productive learning environments. You only learn when you’re engaged, and you’re engaged when you’re having fun, lively music, enjoying what you’re doing. That makes you pay attention. Pete started the trend of bringing celebrities around his practices. Snopp Dogg would literally be out there running routes and Will Ferrell would come by to crack jokes (link).

“I’ve learned that possibly the greatest detractor from high performance is fear: fear that you are not prepared, fear that you are in over your head, fear that you are not worthy, and ultimately, fear of failure. If you can eliminate that fear—not through arrogance or just wishing difficulties away, but through hard work and preparation—you will put yourself in an incredibly powerful position to take on the challenges you face.”

Create the right environments that works best for you to bring out the best in you.

Philosophy #4: Always Compete

Pete was HUGE on competition. He was always doing random competitions too. Spur of the moment basketball games, a swim race with Will Ferrell, and a lot more. It was the core of his program.

Pete changed how I thought about competition. I used to think of it as someone winning and someone losing. That is a byproduct of competition. To Pete, competition is about pushing yourself to be your best and seeing how good you can get. Competition is the act of striving for personal excellence. By doing that, the score takes care of itself. In Pete’s words, “the only competition that matters is the one that takes place within yourself”

"My opponents are not my enemies. My opponents are the people who offer me the opportunity to succeed. The tougher my opponents, the more they present me with an opportunity to live up to my full potential."

“Are we competing today, every minute, in everything we do in practice. Are we letting loose and daring to be great here and now? And can we sustain that? And repeat it? Trophies are great, but we are trying to Win Forever.

We dont compete to win. We compete to see how good we can be. This is why Reggie Bush said their practices were harder than their games.

Philosophy #4: POSITIVE THINKING

No whining, no complaining, no excuses: they dont allow negative thoughts and conversations. No negative talk. He simply doesnt allow himself or his team to talk about bad things, losing, complaints, etc. This leads to his positive mindset

Day to day, he just always feels like something good is about to happen. “Expect great things to always be around the corner.”

How does he not worry? Reserve judgement. How do you know if a bad play was actually bad? What if it leads to a major play from your team that swings the momentum right back to you.

Nothing outside of you has power over you. You decide how you think, feel and do things in your life.

What you think about matters. Your mind needs to be free to operate at the highest level - it can only do that when it is not bogged down with negative thoughts.

Philosophy #5: Knowing You’ll Win

You should be confident. You did all the work you could to be at your best.

Literally all you can do.

No way to know if your best is good enough to win. But you’re at your best so you should feel good. Sometimes you get beat and they were better. It happens. But if you’re at your best, odds are you’re going to win most the time. That’s what they did.

Before game Pete’s would say “We already know we are going to win. There ain’t no doubt. We just don;t know who is going to score the touchdowns. Dare to be great and let it rip”

Watch the video below. Games were over from the jump. The other teams could just feel USC. They knew they were better. USC knew it too.

You should feel that way too. Know how good you are. Get to work to get even better. Dare to be great and let it rip.