All NBA, 2008 Team USA Gold Medalist, Head Coach, Milwaukee Bucks

Jason Kidd was known as a hard-nosed player during his career and now brings that to his position as the head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks. Listen to his words about what it means to be excellent and how to stay motivated to achieve excellence.

How do you define excellence?

“I think excellence is when you commit and do the hard work then you will shine. At the end of the day excellence is something that is attached to hard work. The final result from hard work is excellence. I am still waiting for true excellence, I am never satisfied. I am seeking pure excellence on a daily basis. Excellence is a journey and not a destination. You have to strive for it every day; that is the beauty of life”

What have been your keys to achieving excellence in your life and career?

“I think just maybe being stubborn or understanding that you are trying every day to become that perfect person or live your-life-the-right-way type of person. If at the end of the day someone gives you a compliment then you have done things the right way.”

If you are writing the story, what is your main point about excellence?

“I would start with work hard. Things don’t come easy. And if you don’t have failures then you aren’t working hard enough and taking enough chances.”

Define Excellence

That’s a very good question. For me, excellence would be to pursue each of my goals in an excellent way. And to pursue them by giving 100 percent and making sure I did everything I could to be successful and reach those goals.

Excellence is more than just winning. There’s much more than the result when it comes to achieving excellence. For example, you look at Adam Scott when he won The Masters. Adam Scott has been trying to win The Masters since the first time I met him at the Butch Harmon School of Golf 10 years ago. He has been planning shots that would one day get him the green jacket. He has been pursuing that goal in a very profound way for many years so excellence is much more than winning. It is the continual process and striving for that excellence.

Staying Motivated

It’s much harder of a commitment to actually do it than to talk about achieving excellence. To stay motivated, I set goals. I have weekly goals, monthly goals, and long term goals. And I have a great team around me and we talk about the goals and we are very open about those goals. It is important to be open and honest with everyone about what’s going on and about what happened last week that can help me this week. And after I came back from being sick, my goals were much different at my first tournament back different than just winning the tournament. I struggled to just get through the tournament so my personal goal was a bit different that week and I had things I was just trying to get through on a personal level. What motivates me is to set the goals.

Inspiration

My favorite quote was that “You can’t direct the wind, but you can adjust your sail.” It was a quote my parents put on a big banner on my door growing up and I will always remember that. It was a perfect quote because it had a golf element to it because there are so many different conditions on the golf course and so many different challenges off the golf course with traveling and injuries to moving luggage and everything that goes along with being on Tour. So you have to adjust and continue to move forward. That is a quote that I have always enjoyed.

xlete.com is THE PLACE where the world’s best athletes (xletes) and other leaders define excellence, share their secrets about what it takes to achieve success, and help instill a positive vision and motivation to help all of us reach our own personal X Level.

The pursuit of excellence is real for many, and in this edition we reveal how Cleveland Cavaliers superstar Lebron James and his former Miami Heat teammate Dwyane Wade feel about excellence, what it means and what they do to attain it. We hope you read their words and use them as motivation to go to the X Level in whatever you pursue.

 

What does excellence mean to Lebron James?

“Excellence can mean a lot of things: there can be an excellent play, an excellent person, or an excellent team. It means that the team or player you are watching is making you feel like what you are seeing isn’t true because it is so good. Witnessing excellence is like you are watching something that is beyond this earth and from a different planet.” Want more Lebron? Click to his official website. http://www.lebronjames.com/

Quote of the Moment: “The mind is everything. What you think you become.”–Buddha

What does excellence mean to Dwyane Wade?

“Excellence is the closest thing to perfection that you can get. It is really excelling at every part of life and the game. I think excellence is what you really shoot for. What you shoot for is to excel in life and sport.”

How do you define excellence?

“Excellence is the closest thing to perfection that you can get. It is really excelling at every part of life and the game. I think excellence is what you really shoot for. What you shoot for is to excel in life and sport.”

What have been your keys to achieving excellence in your life and career?

“Competitiveness is a must; wanting to be the best. You have to know that you put in the hard work and if you do, why not go out and give it your all. Winning is so much better than losing. The feeling of winning is a lot better than losing.”

A lot of people have similar talent so what separates you and allowed you to achieve excellence?

“A lot of people have even more talent than me. I know I don’t have the most talent. But there are certain things that separate guys and I think my will and determination separate me.”

Where did you get the will to succeed?

“It was my upbringing. I grew up in Chicago in a less privileged area. My hunger to not want to go back to that life and live that life is what kept me going. That has probably carried me farther than I should have gone with my talent.”

If you are writing the story, what is your main point about excellence?

“The main thing is I would say that excellence doesn’t come by you just showing up. Excellence comes by precision, repetition, hard work, and dedication to what you are doing. Excellence doesn’t just happen in what you are doing; you have to work very hard to achieve true excellence.”

Do you have what it takes to reach your personal X Level? Share your thoughts with us at our Facebook page at Facebook.com/xleteexcellence or tweet to us @xlete.

LeBron James and Dwyane Wade were interviewed during Team USA training in Las Vegas, NV.

 

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