Jim Loria / Sports Career Mentor

  For this piece, I encourage you to set aside five minutes in your day to watch this fantastic video we are sharing from Tom Brady , the 7-time Super Bowl winning NFL quarterback! He takes time to tell you his secrets about reaching your Dreams. Tom talks about how as an athlete, he was not blessed with the physical traits that scouts seek in a prospect. That he was told by some coaches and scouts back in his early days to look for a new career. That he just wasn’t good enough. He will tell you that he had to find other traits to help him achieve his Dreams … traits like discipline, work effort and perseverance to overcome skills that he might have been lacking. He speaks about working to be one percent better than the day before. To take care of your body - it is your #1 Asset. That the Magic you’re looking for is in the Will of Trying. That WILL always Finds a Way! This is a highly motivating video from one of the great winning athletes of all time! Jim Loria Tom Brady Video Link:

For this piece, I want to share with you some words that really hit home to me. They were actually spoken by a Priest at a Mass my wife and I recently attended. I feel the meaning of these words truly do have much impact in all that an athlete does on a day-to-day basis and with the reputation he or she establishes with their coaches, friends and family - today and throughout the future. These words came at me while seated in a church during a Homily where this particular Priest was very motivational in his delivery as he preached about "BEING DOERS OF THE WORD AND NOT HEARERS ONLY. It was religious in nature as you’d imagine but there was much an athlete of any competitive level should take from those spoken words. One of the points in the talk that forced me to reach down to my pocket for a post-it note & pen so I wouldn't forget them came just after the Priest stated to his congregation that "He who is no 'Hearer who Forgets' but a 'Doer who Acts',

I was watching some reruns of the old “X Games” on cable television and admiring the daredevil skills of the guys and gals involved in Snowboarding. When I did some research, I came across a story on one of the past athletes I wanted to share that was about the ultimate in desire and perseverance to pursue a childhood dream. This tells the story about Justin Reiter , then age 33, who was chosen for the Alpine Snowboard team that would compete in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. This piece is not going to be about the Olympic result but rather the incredible Mission he took to get there! Justin left home in California at age 18 to make the move to Colorado so that he could train and race against the best competition in the U.S. and around the world. Twice he would fall short in his first two attempts to make the Olympic team at the trials; once because of injury in 2006 and the other by just one qualifying spot in 2010. Before you read further, know that for most of the U.S.

  With this week’s piece, it's about an athlete who was hardly noticed in high school, some thought he was physically unimpressive. Passed over by all of the well known college basketball programs, this player would find himself at a small school with a total student population less than 2,000 where he grew and developed his game. For the many that ignored him, today he is a global superstar and one of the faces of the NBA: Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors . It was his time spent at little Davidson College in North Carolina and the relationship he forged with his basketball coach, Bob McKillop , that was the birthplace of his brilliance out on the court. “He gave me all the confidence in the world, in terms of what I could be -- in terms of being a man, the balance of on-the-court and off-the-court expectations," Curry said. "He told me when I was a freshman that I had license to shoot any shot I wanted but I'd have to work for it meaning I'd have to put

"The difference between the Possible and Impossible is merely  the measure of his or her Determination"   This quote was stated by airplane pilot James Thain  who was behind the controls in the Manchester United Soccer team crash that took place in Munich, Germany back in 1958. Thain would spend the next 11 years of his life researching the cause of the accident and digging up evidence to try and clear his name from the charges of pilot error. Through much determination, Thain would be completely absolved of all charges by the authorities in Great Britain.

For this piece, I am going to dip into the movie industry to illustrate the point about the “PROCESS”, a term every athlete hears and has engraved in the back of his or her mind on a yearly basis when competing in team sports? This will show you that no matter the sport or the profession or regardless of your experience, that you have to be totally prepared before the lights ever get turned on in order to achieve the results necessary to advance in your trade? So let's look at the Process Hollywood actor Rami Malek subjected himself to when he got the leading role in “Bohemian Rhapsody” where he played legendary frontman Freddie Mercury of the famed rock band QUEEN back in 2018. This actor took an entire year to learn every single aspect about Mercury’s life and left no stone unturned. He quickly took up residence in London where much of the movie would be filmed and had himself fitted for prosthetic dentures to replicate the unique bucked teeth and shape of Mercury’s mouth. He