How tough? Well, not glass-eating, phonebook-ripping tough, but tough enough to do this: Coughlin once asked a player to give him a top-to-bottom list of all the things he needed to do to become a better coach.

Could you imagine yourself ever doing that? Inviting someone to give you a complete critique of your performance? Most of us could never take it.

But that’s what Coughlin did, when faced with the chance that his fierce coaching style would get him booted out the door. As detailed by sports writer Doug Farrar on the Shutdown Corner blog, Coughlin asked quarterback Kurt Warner for a complete review. Warner played for Coughlin and the Giants in 2004.

“Go home and make a list of all the things you think I need to do better as a coach,” Coughlin told Warner, “and don’t hold back.”

Warner didn’t. Himself a class act who had won a Super Bowl with the St. Louis Rams, Warner didn’t take the opportunity to rip Coughlin. He took the opportunity to help him.

Well, feedback is the breakfast of champions. Warner gave the critique, and Coughlin took it to heart.

Sure enough, Coughlin began to change. He didn’t change his principles or his standards, but he changed the way he talked about them. He found a way to reach his players. And the result is history — Super Bowl history.

And all because Coughlin was tough enough to ask what he needed to do better.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

Over the years, the press corps has used the preview week to pose some questions that have gone down in history.

Try this one, offered three decades ago to Oakland quarterback Jim Plunkett, who came from two special needs parents, one of whom had died.

“Jimmy, I want to make sure I have this right,” the reporter said. “Was it dead mother, blind father, or blind mother, dead father?”

Then there was the reporter who asked Dallas running back Emmitt Smith, “What are you going to wear in the game Sunday?”

Hmm, my uniform?

Anyway, reporters aren’t the only ones who ask stupid questions. As peak performance guru Dave Cross points out, we ask them of ourselves all the time. And these questions keep us from becoming great.

Here are some stupid questions, as laid out in the mental training masterpiece “Volleyball Cybernetics.”

Why does it always happen to me?

Why can’t I get better?

What’s the use?

Why is life so unfair?

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Here’s the problem with asking yourself stupid questions. Your mind is a powerful computer, and once you ask the question, it will work hard to provide an answer. But, as they say, “garbage in, garbage out.” If you ask a powerful computer a stupid question, it will give you a stupid answer.

For instance, if the question is, “Why does this always happen to me?” then the answer might come back, “Because you’re a loser.”

And that’s a really stupid answer. So instead, ask yourself smart, productive questions like:

What have I learned?

How must I change to get the results I want?

What must I do today to take action?

Whom have I helped today?

By asking the right questions, you can start getting the right answers, whether it’s Super Bowl Sunday or any other day.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

It lasted five hours, 53 minutes, nearly as long as the marriage between Kris Humphries and Kim Kardashian.

Both Djokovic and Nadal gave everything they had. At one point, after losing a 31-stroke rally, Djokovic lay prone on the court, seemingly spent. Within that moment he gave us a clue to help us through difficult times.

“Thousand thoughts going through the mind,” Djokovic said. “Trying to separate the right from wrong.”

Djokovic was describing something that he and all of us have in common. We all have thoughts racing through our mind. Some of them are good, some are bad. It’s our job to separate the two.

For instance, you can be tempted to think about the final score. It’s much more productive to think about the next point. You can worry about what happened, or you can keep your mind in the present. It’s all choice.

Djokovic, in other words, conquered his own thoughts as much as he defeated Nadal. It was mental toughness.

My favorite quote is: “Some people think the battle is against others. Winners understand the struggle is within the self.”

If you can win the struggle to stay focused on productive thoughts, the battle with others will go much more smoothly.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

“Tell me,” Williams said. “When you swung and missed that ball, did your bat go over the ball or under it?”

“What difference does it make,” the teammate wanted to know. “Either way, I struck out.”

It makes all the difference in the world, Williams explained. Knowing how you missed was the first step in preparing for the next time.

Williams was an expert on the art of receiving feedback. He examined what happened and used the information in his next attempt.

Feedback is available everywhere. Often the result of our actions will tell us what we’re doing right or wrong. For instance, if a golfer consistently hits a slice, the ball is telling him something about his swing.

You can bet that both the New York Giants and New England Patriots will be using feedback to prepare for Sunday’s Super Bowl. They played each other during the regular season, and they’re in a race to see who learned the most from that game.

Herb Brooks, mastermind of the U.S. Olympic hockey team’s gold medal in 1980, used feedback to make history. After the Soviet Union trounced his team 10-3 in a pre-Olympic exhibition, Brooks simply said, “We learned some things.” Two weeks later, the teams met again, and this time the U.S. won!

So if you’d like to be a champion, you must first do what Brooks, Williams and other did — become experts at receiving feedback.

We all love to dream. But we also need to make a living.

It takes strength to keep your eye on a distant goal when there are needs in the present. But ask yourself, “Can you give up what you want now for what you want most?”

Champions do this all the time. They ignore the distractions and temptations of the present. They have their feet on the earth and their gaze toward the sky.

My friend Gary Pritchard alludes to this way of living when he says, “Make your decisions based on the person you want to become, not the person you are.”

That means looking past outward circumstances and listening to something within the self.

Said Steve Jobs, “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

I told her I had no wisdom of my own, but that there was plenty in this article from the Gold Medal Squared Web site.

Written by Loyola-Marymount volleyball coach Tom Black, the article tells of a team that faces a huge fight in every match. Black says a coach must do three things: 1) teach students how to learn, 2) remember you’re part of something bigger than yourself, and 3) celebrate growth.

Black really motivated me with this article, because — unlike the scores of games — all those three items are things I can control.
In fact, when I read the article I was wishing I had seen it during my own season. And that’s the point. Get all the motivation you can get! Don’t wait until you are way down in the dumps. Daily motivation helps direct your energy and focus toward the right thing.

And motivation is doubly important for students and athletes, because you can’t build real skill without it.

Motivation is where you find it. You can ask a friend, like my coaching colleague did. You can read a book, see a movie, look up a daily quote. Or you can listen to a daily motivational message from sports psychologist Dr. Rob Gilbert. It’s called “Success Hotline,” it’s free and the message changes every day. The number is (973) 743-4690. My friend Karin Abarbanel finds it so valuable in her field — writing — that she dedicated a post to it on her blog, Karin Writes Dangerously.

Keep in mind that real motivation begins with and within you. You have to look for it. Staying motivated is a big part of your mental game.

“The best motivating is self-motivating,” said speaker Jim Rohn. “The guy says, ‘I wish someone would come by and turn me on.’ What if they don’t show up? You’ve got to have a better plan for your life.”
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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

“I imagined this last night,” Tynes said after his 31-yard field goal 7:06 into overtime gave the Giants a 20-17 victory over the San Francisco 49ers. “It was 42 yards.”

No matter about the distance. The point is that Tynes previewed his own success. And he wasn’t the only one. According to this blog item by ESPN’s Dan Graziano, Giants’ special teams player Devin Thomas saw himself making big plays. And he did, recovering two fumbles, including one that set up Tynes’ game-winner.

“I knew I was going to do it,” Thomas said. “I was just thinking today was one of those crazy days where something crazy’s going to turn the game. And I had a vision in my mind that I would be the guy who did it.”

Charles Garfield, author of the widely acclaimed “Peak Performance” trilogy, has noted the effect of previewing success

.“I’ve discovered that numerous peak performers use the skill of mental rehearsal of visualization,” Garfield said. “They mentally run through important events before they happen.”

Aided by all this visualization, the Giants now enter Super Bowl XLVI for a rematch with the New England Patriots, who advanced when Baltimore Ravens kicker Billy Cundiff failed where Tynes succeeded.

“The timing was just a little off,” Cundiff said after missing a 32-yard field goal attempt that would have sent the game to overtime. “I’m disappointed. I let my teammates down.”

Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis disagreed. “Not one play won or lost this game,” Lewis said. “There’s no ‘Oh, Billy’s the fault. Billy missed the (kick).’ There’s no freaking ‘Billy missed the kick.’ It happened. Move on.”

For some people, it will be harder than for others.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

“For you,” said the pig, “bacon and eggs are a donation. For me, it’s a full commitment.”

As the AFC and NFC conference title games unfold today, coaches, fans and teammates will be able to separate the pigs from the chickens. Some players will offer total commitment, while others will make a donation now and then.

“If you don’t make a total commitment to whatever you’re doing, then you start to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking,” said former college and NFL coach Lou Holtz.

It’s one thing to enter the game with commitment. It’s another thing to hold onto it when you’ve been drilled with an NFL-style hit, say, from Ray Lewis.

It reminds you of what ex-heavyweight champ Mike Tyson said about strategy in the ring. “Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth.”

The San Francisco 49ers can take a punch. They are in the NFC game because they stayed committed even after the New Orleans Saints stunned them with a go-ahead touchdown with just 97 seconds left.

They will face the New York Giants, who showed some commitment of their own by going to Green Bay and dominating the NCF’s top seed.

In the AFC, the Baltimore Ravens and New England Patriots will find their resolve tested as well. Whether on the line or in the open field, they will be tested in ways that would make other people walk away.

Whoever survives will get a chance to test their commitment one more time, two weeks from now in the Super Bowl. There they will play for the Lombardi trophy, named after a man who knew a little about commitment.

No matter what your interest or life pursuit, it will turn out better if you are the pig, not the chicken.

“The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor,” said Vince Lombardi, who coached the packers to victory in the first two Super Bowls.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

Aspire. Plan. Inspire. Execute.

“Great leaders do not aim for the easily achievable,” says the article, written by Matthew Swyers. That’s what he means by “aspire.”

The more lofty your goal, however, the more you need to do the other three things: plan, inspire and execute.

“Aspiration without a plan is simply a dream,” says Swyer.

As for inspiration, you must give those around you a sense of what they can achieve if they follow the plan. You must get them to see the opportunity. You must motivate.

Finally, you must execute. Hockey coach Pierre Page once said, “You can chop wood all you want. Sooner or later, someone has to build the house.”

Aspire. Plan. Inspire. Execute.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

A reporter approached Cobb and asked him, “If you were playing in the modern era, what do you suppose your batting average would be?”

Cobb replied, “About .300.”

“Only .300?” said the startled reporter. “You have the highest batting average in major-league history, .367. Do you honestly think that if you played today, you would hit only .300?”

“Well,” Cobb said. “You’ve got to remember that I’m 70 years old.”

That quote sums up Cobb and a select few other athletes. Even years after leaving the game, Cobb never lost his passion for it. He burned. It’s a lesson for all — great achievement begins with passion.

“When you set yourself on fire, people love to come and see you burn,” said 18th-century evangelist John Wesley.

“Anyone can dabble,” said comedian Bill Cosby. “But once you’ve made that commitment, your blood has that particular thing in it, and it’s very hard for people to stop you.”

It’s a great life lesson. Passion can take you much farther than you would ever get without it. Passion is how people win.

Will you be committed or a dabbler today?

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Total Game Plan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.