Yankee great Yogi Berra once famously said, "Baseball is 90% mental; the other half is physical." It's one of many famous Yogi-isms, but it jogged my memory of some other people who have referenced the 90% idea. Inventor Thomas Edison was reknowned as a genius, the "Wizard of Menlo Park," but he recognized that, "Success is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration." Pastor Charles Swindoll notes that, "Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it." Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage, reports that, "90 percent of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world, but by the way your brain processes the world."
So when you start to look at it, the 90% covers the mental game, hard work, attitude, and outlook. If we take care of those, just about everything else falls into place. Unfortunately, most people swap the percentages. They might spend 10% of their time on what should be the 90%. Now, I'm not discounting the importance of skills, conditioning, and strategies, but it's the 90% that is the difference maker. It's what separates champions, and it's a key part of having the PROmindset.