5 athlete-mindsets to unlock your full potential

Below, Ric Bucher shares five key insights from his new book, Coachable: How the Greatest Performers Reach Their Highest Potential. Ric is a longtime sportswriter and TV analyst for ESPN, TNT, and most recently Fox Sports. His writing has been recognized by the Pro Basketball Writers Association, and he has built an international podcast network, United We Cast, which includes his personal show, On the Ball with Ric Bucher. What’s the big idea? The path to realizing your full potential begins with refusing to let your strengths, weaknesses, successes, or setbacks define who you are. By cultivating faith, adaptability, and a broader perspective on life, you create the freedom to become more than you ever thought possible. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Ric himself—in the Next Big Idea App, or buy the book. 1. A fixed flaw can be a fountain of faith. The world knows Stephen Wardell Curry as a four-time NBA champion and the official all-time leader in three-point shots made. Unofficially, he is also the master of miraculous “how did he do that?” shots from literally anywhere inside the painted lines—or even from outside the lines, during warm-ups. No one would have ever predicted any of that for a five-foot-nine high school sophomore with a shooting form that had the ball starting near his waist. Steph was surprisingly accurate, but his father, Dell, a former NBA sharpshooter, told him in no uncertain terms that if he wanted to play beyond high school, he would have to completely change how he shot the ball. So, Stephen did. His entire summer was spent in the shadow of his backyard hoop, mastering a more fundamentally sound shot. It was an incredibly humbling process. Shooting from long range was what he did best, and now he was starting from scratch, standing a few feet from the hoop, trying to generate power to get the ball up and over the rim in a completely different way. It was at least a month before he could make shots consistently from be