The emotion to handle the pressure is one of the biggest challenges in football – it’s the top challenge.

I don’t feel that emotion is a good thing to have in combat. You must be cold.

I do not abuse players. I talk to myself; I abuse myself. It’s my way of letting off steam. I do it after every century; I do not do it always. I keep telling myself: ‚Improve, improve from the previous match, the previous shot. You can do it.‘

I always have confidence, whether I miss four in a row or make four in a row, that the next one’s going in. To a coach, sometimes that might not make sense.

The most important 6 inches on the battlefield is between your ears.

It’s not fun to get out of bed early in the morning. When the alarm goes off, it doesn’t sing you a song: it hits you in the head with a baseball bat. So how do you respond to that? Do you crawl underneath your covers and hide? Or do you get up, get aggressive, and attack the day?

Weak minds sink under prosperity as well as adversity; but strong and deep ones have two high tides.

There are a lot of inaccuracies out there when it comes to the SEAL training process. You will see guys carrying logs around on television. They think that the hardest part about being on a SEAL team is getting through that training. The fact of the matter is, if you have a good attitude, that training is fun. I had a blast.

Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.

I wasn’t sure of the exact mindset you should have when you go into a Test match. So I probably became too defensive when I played my first Test match. Short balls in one-day cricket, I have never thought of just defending.

Every quarterback can throw a ball; every running back can run; every receiver is fast; but that mental toughness that you talk about translates into competitiveness.

Mentally, the only players who survive in the pros are the ones able to manage all their responsibilities. Everybody struggles in different ways.

God gave you a brain. Do the best you can with it. And you don’t have to be Einstein, but Einstein was mentally tough. He believed what he believed. And he worked out things. And he argued with people who disagreed with him. But I’m sure he didn’t call everybody jerks.

The only way you gain mental toughness is to do things you’re not happy doing. If you continue doing things that you’re satisfied and make you happy, you’re not getting stronger. You’re staying where you’re at. Either you’re getting better, or you’re getting worse. You’re not staying the same.

Mental toughness is a lifestyle. It’s something that you live every single day of your life. When I was growing up, I was a lazy kid. I was a lazy kid, and everybody goes, ‚How did you get to where you’re at today? How did you get to where you’re running 200 miles at one time in 39 hours? Being so disciplined?‘

You have to stay fresh and blank in your mind when you go out to bat. You complicate things, and you’re gone.

The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man… It is more powerful than external circumstances.

A warrior is not a person that carries a gun. The biggest war you ever go through is right between your own ears. It’s in your mind. We’re all going through a war in our mind, and we have to callus our mind to fight that war and to win that war.

The challenge is to stay cool enough to handle the pressure in the moment so that you can succeed in the future.

To me, football is so much about mental toughness, it’s digging deep, it’s doing whatever you need to do to help a team win and that comes in a lot of shapes and forms.