Put the success formula of a champion into everything that you do, by Brad
Kearns.
"Brad Kearns has a refreshing perspective on peak performance that he captures eloquently in his writing. While being intensely competitive and focused on winning is great, Kearns reminds us that our greatest rewards come when we are motivated by the pure love of the experience." --Lance Armstrong
About
the Book
Articles and Other Resources
Media - Stories
Media - Audio
About The Book
"Lance hates losing, but is not afraid of it." This fearless approach gave Lance the freedom to take the risks required to achieve peak performance and to continue to seek improvement even while at the top of his sport.
--from How Lance Does It
What drives someone like Lance Armstrong to consistent and phenomenal success? Is it something you’re born with, or is it something you can acquire, develop, and perfect? Lance has faced monumental obstacles on his journey to the pinnacle of the sports world as the record seven-time Tour de France champion. While his genetic gifts and killer instinct are superior, it’s his exuberance for life that sets him apart as an athlete, a celebrity spokesperson and an international icon for hope and “living strong”.
Author Brad Kearns, a longtime personal friend of Lance Armstrong and former national champion professional triathlete, offers a unique “insider” perspective as an athlete/author. In this intimate and inspiring book, he gives you direct access to Armstrong’s secrets of success through revealing one-on-one interviews with the champ himself and with his inner circle of friends, family, and business associates.
This multi-dimensional portrait shows you how a strong leader brings out the best in himself and everyone around him. How Lance Does It will help your experience peak performance by mastering these four Success Factors that Lance embodied as the world’s greatest cyclist:
- Positive Attitude: Overcome difficult circumstances and maintain a winning environment by choosing to interpret your past experiences and present circumstances in a positive light.
- Clarity of Purpose: Develop the deep commitment and focus you need to align your behavior and pursuit of goals with your ultimate life purpose.
- Specialized Intelligence: Cultivate your smarts by learning and improving from mistakes, making intuitive decisions and adopting a big picture perspective about your life challenges.
- Pure Confidence: Develop a belief in your abilities that transcends tangible results by connecting with your most powerful motivator – a pure love of the process of pursuing peak performance. By doing so, you will awaken your inner strength and banish the fear of failure forever.
By understanding the factors that make Lance Armstrong a champion, and applying them to your own personal and professional goals, you can realize the highest expression of your talents—whether it’s in a bike race or the rat race, in the board room or the living room—and cultivate an unbeatable joy for living every day.
Book Review
How Lance Does It is a new book by Brad Kearns that details the champion attitude and behavior qualities of Tour de France legend Lance Armstrong and how you can apply them to your own peak performance goals. Kearns, a former national champion and #3 world-ranked professional triathlete, offers a unique insider perspective as an athlete/author, revealing Armstrong’s secrets of success through one-on-one interviews with the champ himself and with his inner circle of friends, family, and business associates.
In the first couple chapters, Kearns introduces the reader to the real Lance, with revealing and humorous backstage stories quelled from following the champ on some hectic off season days of corporate appearances. This effort successfully challenges the typical media characterizations as superficial and an incomplete picture of the person behind the celebrity image. Then, the qualities of a champion athlete are quantified, with a detailed account of the genetic, environmental and psychological components required to reach the highest level in sport.
The meat of the book is Kearns’s compelling theory of the four Lance Armstrong Success Factors, with a chapter devoted to each. The goal is to help you apply Lance’s refined pattern of thinking and living to every challenge you face, from business to parenting to stress management. The detailed descriptions of the four factors - Positive Attitude, Clarity of Purpose, Specialized Intelligence and Pure Confidence – go far beyond the oft-repeated superficial characterizations of Armstrong's winning formula, such as “cancer made him tougher”. While his genetic gifts and killer instinct are superior, Kearns argues that it’s Lance’s exuberance for life that sets him apart as an athlete, a celebrity spokesperson and an international icon for hope and “living strong”.
The powerful conclusion pulls everything together and provides a tremendous inspirational boost for you to create dramatic change in your life, understand and take ownership of your ability to always choose a positive attitude and derive your motivation internally from the pure love of pursuing peak performance. With the definition of success defined poorly in many ways today, you are encourage to not settle for one dimensional superficial achievement, but to be a champion in all areas of a well-balanced, healthy, happy life.
While many anecdotes in the book are related to Lance and other observers commentary on his cycling exploits, the book is written to a much broader audience than the cycling fan. Unlike nearly all previous books about or by Lance, you need not be familiar nor interested in the sport of cycling to understand and become inspired by the message of How Lance Does It. The example of Lance’s peak performance attributes as applied to cycling are beautifully woven into relevant insights about all types of athletic and career aspirations, parenting, interpersonal relationships and generally leading a positive, happy, healthy life.
Considering the typical banal far that fills jock books, How Lance Does It is a refreshing departure – offering a deep and thought provoking analysis of Lance’s character and suggestions for how to adopt the character traits of a champion in general. While Kearns takes great pains to speak to the broad audience throughout, the hard core Lance fan will be especially delighted, for the book offers a totally different look at the champion than has been presented in the past – including humorous and deeply revealing backstage stories about his days in Lance world.
Kearns commented, “In the course of my work on this project, I have read virtually every book and lengthy magazine or newspaper article written about Lance. One might even argue that the image and story of Lance – cancer survivor turned dominant champion – has been overexposed. However, much of the Lance commentary, particularly in the mainstream media, offers only a narrow view of his character. The ‘Lance is so tough because he beat cancer, so he can beat riders up the hill’ thread is only the tip of the iceberg about what makes him tick. The doping suspicions and accusations he has had to endure are symptoms of the superficial, sound bite mentality of the average person and sports fan. I believe that after reading How Lance Does It, readers will have a much better picture of the secrets of true peak performance and champion character, and how they can apply the inspirational example of Lance into their own lives and whatever goals they aspire to.”
Written by Duane Spotteman
Content
Outline - How Lance Does It
Introduction - The Magic Glasses. Enjooy a backstage glimpse into the incredibly grand and complex life of Lance Armstrong. We'll follow Lance on a whirlwind corporate appearance day in Palm Springs, where he charms everyone and impossibly squeezes an amazing bike ride into a jam-packed schedule - thereby revealing the most profound secret to his domination of seven consecutive Tour de France races.
Chapter 1 - Who Is Lance Armstrong? Is Lance a ruthless dictator obsessed with winning, or a mellow dad and loyal friend who devotes incredible time, energy and financial resources to fighting cancer? The lives of celebrities like Lance are so magnified that it's easy to get a distorted image that obscures the real person. We will learn how Lance and his inner circle operate their business, driven by honesty and good "juju". Lance's mom Linda Armstrong Kelly will weigh in with candid insights about Lance's upbringing and the independent spirit they share. And we'll discover how Lance successfully blends the conflicting goals of being a champion athlete, leader of a business empire, cancer advocate and parent.
Chapter 2 - The Mystery of What Constitutes a Champion. Are champion athletes the result of one in a million genes (like the stunning genetic statistics from the rankings of the world's top sprinters and distance runners), the powerful influence of culture and lifestyle (as with the legendary African distance runners or inner city basketball players) or something more intangible - the so-called X Factor of a fantastic will to win? Here we will look beyond the hype and often inaccurate blanket statements to learn how all three factors blend together to create the greatest champion athletes.
Chapter 3 - The Success Factor Theory. Today, with massive popularity, worldwide acceptance and financial incentives in big time athletics, we should see a parity of excellence at the highest levels of competition. Instead, against astronomical odds, we see a handful of truly dominant performers (Lance, Tiger Woods, Annika Sorenstam, etc.) who rise above the competition again and again. Utilizing a killer instinct, a pure love of competition and giving ones best effort every time out, these special performers can acquire slight edges over the competition and exploit them into years of dominant performances. Compelling parallels will be drawn to competition in the business arena by former Silicon Valley CEO Martin Brauns, who presided over the world's fastest growing technology company (Interwoven, inc. as named by Investors Business Daily in 2000).
Chapter 4 - Positive Attitude. Enjoy extensive and never before published commentary from Lance about the #1 most important element for peak performance - whether it's fighting cancer, winning the Tour de France, or pursing a healthy, happy life. We will reframe our perspective from a victim mentality (attitude is a reflection of what happens to you) to harnessing the power to choose our attitude every day, regardless of external circumstances.
Chapter 5 - Clarity of Purpose. Learn how Lance evolved from a young athlete driven by money, fame, glory and a "boxer's mentality" (kill the competition, strategy be damned) into a tactical genius driven by the highest ideals of his pure love for the sport and the lifestyle. Practical tips will be provided for you to get past frailties like impatience, guilt, fear of competition and experience clarity in your own life.
Chapter 6 - Specialized Intelligence. While general intelligence (IQ) is of course useful for all competitive goals, specialized intelligence is the key to achieving peak performance in your chosen endeavors. To win - in sports, business, school or elsewhere - requires emotional skills (suppression of ego, patience, handling pressure), intuitive skills (connecting with and acting upon your internal voice), a big picture perspective about your challenges, and the ability to be flexible and learn from experience. In this chapter, we will gain inspiration from Lance's application of Specialized Intelligence and the consequent impact he had on his teammates as a leader. Finally, you will learn a three-step process to cultivate specialized intelligence for your particular peak performance goals.
Chapter 7 - Pure Confidence. Putting it all together generates a powerful and unshakeable Pure Confidence in your abilities. We will learn how to transcend the situational confidence that plagues many performers, where opponents and external circumstances can throw you off your center of power. We will appreciate the example of Lance able to race without fear of losing despite monumental pressure. You will learn how to disengage from the harmful influences of a results-obsessed society, freeing you to take the risks required for breakthrough performances.
Chapter 8 - Conclusion. Be prepared to blow your mind and expand your horizons with a provocative conclusion that goes far beyond the superficial themes of success and the typical self-help book template of "connect the dots and you will be successful." By defining success with the proper perspective, you will not blindly achieve great things with a disregard for a healthy, balanced life. From Lance's shining example of devoting his life to a cause greater than him and his personal glory with his cancer work, you will reflect on what being a champion really means and how to express your potential even in mundane arenas like being a good parent, neighbor and friend.
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