Jerry Rice: Stay Afraid
The Hall Of Fame induction ceremony isn't the first place you look for when hunting for insightful life wisdom. Then again, not every year is a player like Jerry Rice inducted. I personally found his comments insightful having grown up in the age of "only positive thoughts" self help rhetoric. Fear. Fear isn't the mind killer, it's apparently the ass kicker:
"I'm here to tell you that the fear of failure is the engine that has driven me throughout my entire life. It flies in the faces of all these sports psychologists who say you have to let go of your fears to be successful and that negative thoughts will diminish performance. But not wanting to disappoint my parents, and later my coaches, teammates and fans, is what pushed me to be successful ... The reason nobody caught me from behind is because I ran scared. People are always surprised how insecure I was. But I was always in search of that perfect game, and I never got it. Even if I caught 10 of 12 passes, or two or three touchdowns in the Super Bowl, I would dwell on the one pass I dropped ... If I have one single regret about my career standing here today, it's that I never took the time to enjoy it.''SI journalist Peter King calls it "sad" that Rice was so driven that he forgot to appreciate his life, though I'd call it wholly American. And while letting fear dominate your life for the sake of performance is not the most Zen approach to living, you could argue that playing a sport where your head can potentially be ripped off -- and excelling -- isn't exactly the kind of chess board that gives you the luxury of practicing meditative thinking.