Michael Strahan quotes: on fear, parenting, tackling more than one project, happiness, burnout, and more.
“Just thinking about it ain’t gonna make it happen. Wanting it to happen, ain’t gonna make it happen. Expect it to happen, and work every day to make it so.”
“We’re our own worst enemy. You doubt yourself more than anybody else ever will. If you can get past that, you can be successful.”
“It’s natural to have doubts. But hit pause before you out-and-out quit.”
“If you do hard work, a lot of good things go your way.”
“Ask yourself, ‘Am I the man or the woman that I hoped to be?’ If you want to be more, then you’ve got to do more.”
“Believe it and it will happen.”
“There’s more power in your attitude than in your bank account.”
“Other people can spark a vision for your life, but until you can hold that dream in your own head and your own heart, it’s never going to come true.”
“Too many of us count ourselves out before we even get a chance. We can be our own worst enemies. Do the work. Be excellent. You’ll find your place, and it may just be where you least expect it.”
“You have to know that things won’t happen overnight. Make small changes every day and give yourself room to make mistakes.”
“Don’t ask anybody to give you anything, just ask them to give you an opportunity. You can be anything you want to be, just know you’re going to have to work for it.”
“Don’t approach your personal renovation without the right partner in your corner, not only encouraging you but also telling you the hard stuff, someone who will be brutally honest with you.”
“You have to find what makes you happy. You have to. And then do that. It’s quite simple. Fear is complicated; it’s good and bad. Fear is bad when we let it dictate our lives and prevent us from reaching our fullest potential, but it’s great when it pushes us to overcome and achieve.”
“You have to take risks in life, educated risks, but risks nonetheless.”
“Prepare as if every day is the best day of your life and be open to what comes your way. You know the saying, ‘You get what you give.’ Well, I also think it means that what energy you put out into the universe is the energy you attract. If you’re negative all the time, you’re going to attract negative situations. If you’re thinking positively – if you are hopeful and you are happy – you will attract the good.”
“I try to navigate my life as if it were a Ferrari. The more conscious I am, the more I process the information I’m given and readjust based on what I’ve learned, the smoother my ride in life becomes.”
“Actually, I’ve learned something from everybody I’ve ever spent time with. I am constantly learning and growing. I love that.”
“I’ve learned how to turn self-doubt into an energy source and to metabolize fear into a result-producing adrenaline.”
“Everyone thinks because you’re on a show that you’re totally confident. It looks easy. Far from it. It’s a constant evolution until you figure out how you fit in. How can I keep my personality and my strengths but make them vibe with everybody else’s? That’s the great thing I learned from football: it’s not all about you, it’s about what you do to help everybody else succeed. If the team is winning, I’m winning.”
“Mentally rehearse the big moment. Be it a job interview or a presentation or any other kind of high-pressure task, picture yourself completing the task. Take your time, find a quiet space, and imagine how you will look, what you want to say, how you want to feel. Scientists say that the more you picture yourself doing a task, the more your brain begins to believe that the task is easy and manageable. By the time the moment comes, you walk into the room with more confidence and the feeling that you’ve been there before, because mentally you have. Do more than see it. For visualization to be even more effective, don’t just use your sense of sight, use all five senses.”
“I was scared every time I put on a uniform and stepped on the field. I’m scared every day I go into the studio and I come on stage because I fear that I will not live up to what is expected. I fear that somebody who spent a lot of money to come into our studio, to come to New York, and they’ll walk away and go, ‘I could have stayed at home.’ I feared that as a player a fan would come to the stands and I wouldn’t perform well. Just the way I’m built. I’m more scared of failure than I am excited about the accolades that come with success.”
“You can’t change other people, but you can change how you are around them, and sometimes, a lot of times, that’s more than enough.”
“The great thing coming from sports is you understand the concept of a team. It leaves no room for being selfish, and that’s something I picked up from home.”
“I started working out with my father the summer I was 13, which was incredible for our relationship. Those were my summers: working out with my dad, hanging out with my brothers, riding my bike. Pretty simple.”
“My dad always said to me, ‘When, not if.’ When I get a scholarship to college. When I get drafted in the NFL. When I win a Super Bowl. When I get into the Hall of Fame. When I get Live. It was never if. He always believed in me, and that never allowed for any doubt. I always believed in myself because I knew he believed in me.”
“Of course there are things I can’t do! But I focus on the things I can do and I try to do them as best as I can.”
“When you’re a 20-something-year-old athlete and you’re getting a six-figure check every week, you’re not thinking about next week. You’re not thinking, ‘I’m going to be broke,’ or ‘I’m going to need another job.’ But I’ll tell you, there are a lot of broke athletes out there – I know plenty – and I didn’t want to end up as one.”
“I don’t do anything I don’t want to do. There are so many opportunities that come my way, but if there’s something out there that I don’t want to do, I truly don’t do it, because I have to maximize my time. If there’s truly an opportunity to be quiet and be by myself, I do it.”
“My craziest ambition is to take John Madden’s job and salary.”
“Thing is, I don’t really like free time. People are always warning me that I’m going to burn out. But the truth is, the only thing that tires me out is hearing people tell me that.”
“I like to accomplish things. I look at football and what I had to go through to make it there. And I think to myself, ‘How could I complain about my schedule now?’ I feel very fortunate to have these opportunities. They make me want to prove that I’m capable.”
“I’m constantly studying, because I don’t ever think that I have it. That’s where you have to guard yourself. It’s like golf – once I think I got it, I go out and play the worst round of my life.”
“I love being the person my kids depend on to learn. Everything they learn, for the most part, comes from you – how they treat people, how they look at the world, how they process things. I love being that example for them, just like my parents were for me.”
“I believe in my kids 100%. When you have confidence in them, they have confidence in themselves.”
“People seem to think that once you do one thing well, that’s the only thing you can do and there are people out there who are so talented, who can do multiple things. Hopefully, by seeing what I’m doing, people might take a chance on something that doesn’t seem conventional for them. You can change. You can be anything.”
“Play it by ear, go by your gut and do what you feel is right. That’s the only way to have a happy life.”
“If you believe you are ‘The One,’ then you can be.”
“This is who I am. I’m not perfect. I don’t want to try to be perfect.”
Also see Bill Belichick quotes.
