The Legend Lives On
Kobe Bryant was an all American superhero and legendary basketball player. With a 20 year season for the LA Lakers, he inspired millions to do better. His tragic death on January 26th, 2020 shocked the nation, so we’re giving you the Mamba Mentality Kobe lived by.
The Mamba Mentality
Kobe started this catchy tagline on Twitter, but it grew into a strong mindset and the title of his book, The Mamba Mentality: How I Play.
Kobe’s ‘way of life’, as he calls it, is about the process of taking action rather than seeking a goal or result.
Bryant says, “I have self-doubt. I have insecurity,” and adds that “we all have self doubt. You don’t deny it, but you also don’t capitulate into it. You embrace it.”
Embrace your self-doubt on the way to your goals. Follow the process of your actions and have a routine that you follow no matter what. Along the way, embrace the doubt and do whatever it takes to win.
Kobe’s Routine
Kobe explains, “my routine changed over time; my approach didn’t”. Later in his career, Kobe had to change his routine because of injuries, family and obstacles in life that got in the way.
His approach and mindset, however, always stayed the same. Kobe said, “People just don’t understand how obsessed I am with winning”.
He goes on to say, “I focus on one thing and one thing only – that’s trying to win as many championships as I can.” This ‘one thing’ focus is the key to the Mamba Mentality and the reason Kobe was one of the all-time greats — possibly the absolute G.O.A.T.
Work Hard In The Dark To Shine In The Light
Kobe’s mindset was that if you want to be great at something, you have to truly care about it. You have to be obsessed.
This means practicing when nobody is looking. It’s putting in your 10,000 hours of practice when everyone else is partying or sleeping or wasting time. This work in the dark allows you to ‘shine in the light’.
Kobe explains this means “It takes a lot of work to be successful,” and “a lot of people say they want to be great, but they’re not willing make the sacrifices necessary to achieve greatness.”
Get Better Every Day
The simplest form of the Mamba Mentality is to get better every single day at whatever you’re doing. This practical and simple philosophy led Kobe to achieving legendary status.
In high school, Bryant would wake up early and start training from 5-7AM, when most of his peers were sleeping and before his classes began.
Kobe was always the first to show to practice and always the last to leave — sometimes showing up 4-5 hours before practice began.
Through failure and injury, Bryant always believed that repetition and tenacity were the keys to continually improving himself.
He knew it was all about putting in the reps, those countless hours of practice, and believed in the philosophy of Aristotle, who said , “These virtues are formed in a man by his doing the actions”.
Will Durant, author of The Story of Philosophy, rephrased this to say “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”.
Kobe Bryant believed in these philosophies and used them in his own life to become forever etched into the history books. He will be remembered and loved forever, and his hard work and life altering mindsets will inspire many to live the same.
