I’ve just started listening to the high performance podcast, which I thought would just be a time killing exercise while in the car. It has been so much more than that, I first listened to Eric Dier, the defender/midfielder for Spurs and England. As a football fan (I’m an AFC Wimbledon fan). I’ve always liked Dier, but haven’t ever thought of him as a fantastic player, more as a utility player for Spurs and England that is a really hard worker. That aside there have been some memorable moments not least scoring the winning penalty against Colombia in the 2018 world cup.
A lot resonated with what he said and relating it to my working world. One of his big influencers was Mauricio Pochettino, the former manager of Spurs and now PSG manager. When he was manager he would work them so hard on the training pitch that when it came to a playing an actual game it would be a walk in the park in comparison to what they did in training. The aim was to get every single little bit of potential out of each player. This reminded me of my first job in recruitment when my boss said to me it was always better “to bleed on the training ground than the battle ground”, probably one of my great takeaways from the role.
Dier also gives two pieces of advice I think are a great mantra for life in general. 1) Be the hardest working person in the room and 2) Control the controllables i.e. Diet and sleep. These are things that everyone can control in their life to make themselves feel a bit better and make sure they are performing to the best of their ability. One thing that gives me comfort if something doesn’t go my way in particular is to know that I have done everything I could absolutely do to make it happen. On the flip side you don’t want to be in a situation where you are thinking you could have done more.