According to Princeton records, Craig Robinson led the Ivy League in basketball field goal percentage as a junior and senior, and was crowned back-to-back Ivy League Player of the Year. He scored 1,441 points while he wore the Tigers jersey and was even selected in the fourth round of the NBA draft by the Philadelphia 76ers. Although he never actually played in the American pros, he signed with the Manchester Giants in the United Kingdom’s professional league for two seasons before retiring. He became an investment banker before going back to his true love, coaching college basketball teams. This was a risky decision. Robinson spent eight years as a Division I head men’s basketball coach – two seasons at Brown and six at Oregon State, then transitioned into management jobs at the NBA’s New York Knicks and Milwaukee Bucks.

Craig Robinson is currently Executive Director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, a former college basketball coach, and cohost along with the University of Arkansas Men’s Basketball coach John Calipari, of the Higher Ground podcast Ways To Win. He is also Michelle Obama’s brother.

Athletes have much to teach those of us in the business world. In honor of the start of the NBA Finals— and my hometown team the Boston Celtics, I interviewed Robinson and asked him about what anxious achievers can learn about mental toughness and peak performance. I want to share two pieces of wisdom from Craig.

Morra: One of the things that I admire athletes most for is that they don’t dwell on mistakes at all.  I was watching the Celtics last night— throwing a terrible pass, shooting a terrible basket, air ball, and then snap right back. Defensive rebound.

Can you teach that?

Robinson: Absolutely, absolutely. You know why most athletes don't have imposter syndrome? Because if you're sitting there wallowing about the shots you missed, you're going to get dunked on the other end. So we are taught to move on to the next thing. Why sit there and wallow it? All right, you missed a shot. You know what, Steph Curry has missed more shots than you've ever taken because he takes so many.

And we just learn as athletes, there are many, many mistakes that are going to happen. You can't let 'em break you down. I'll use your Celtics, I love the Celtics. They take so many bad shots because they're so confident that the next one's going in. Jayson Tatum must've missed four shots and then he hits that shot that pretty much wins the game last night. It's just, I love it because the great players will just keep playing. It's the mediocre guys who will be like, oh, I'm not taking that shot.

Morra: Here's another question with my Celtics. Everyone agrees, in Boston, in the world of sports seems to have agreed — and poor Tatum is what's 26 years old — that if they don't win it all this year, the Celtics are failures. How does Tatum sleep at night? How does he listen to ESPN and the pundits, and then show up for the next game as a champion in spite of it all. How do you externalize all the pressure and criticism and chatter?

Robinson: Well, that is much harder to do today than it was for me 30 years ago, because I would have to go to a newspaper to see somebody say something negative about me. Now, these kids open up their phones and they've got thousands of people in their mentions and they can't help themselves but to read 'em.

Really good athletes have learned how to hold that at bay. I'm not going to say that they don't listen to it. Somehow they hold it at bay so that they can get done what they need to get done. And the ones that can't do that get sucked into the vortex of negative media. And somebody like Jayson Tatum has been in the gym working on his craft so much; you cannot make him think that you know more as a fan or pundit than he knows as a professional. So he's somehow kept all of that at bay, and part of it is an understanding of the ecosystem- that the fans and the pundits are all part of what makes it work (and brings in the millions of dollars). That's the great thing about guys like Jayson Tatum, and I'm trying to think of people, a guy like Nicola Jokic who is the center for the Denver Nuggets, and we might be getting too granular for your listeners.

Anybody whose life is public enough where they're getting negative feedback: they're also getting positive feedback, but they're also getting a lot of negative feedback. You have to be built a certain way to be successful and to be able to say, I get what this is all about. This is all about the ecosystem. There has to be pundits on TV who are going to negatively talk about me. There are going to be fans and they don't know anything, but they're still fans, so I can't be negative to them. But I have to understand that they don't know all of the things that I know. Right? As a coach, I got to know that there are people out there gambling their mortgage, so when we lose a game or when we don't win by enough points, it has cost them their mortgage payment. And he has sent me an email saying that I am the worst, yada, yada, yada he's ever seen. That all happens, and I got to be able to understand, well, this whole ecosystem is set up for all of this to coexist, and I got to be strong enough to keep it all at bay and do my job.

Morra: For everyone who feels they’re in a big job and the weight of the world feels like it's on their shoulders, and everyone has an opinion… how do you step outside of the system? Because look, I'm no Jokic, right? I am sensitive. I don't have that terminator-like ability. Does that mean I can't be successful?

Robinson: No, not at all. I just think the more you understand your situation, I guess you're being sort of globally empathetic, so the more you understand the situation from those people who are shooting arrows at you, the more you realize it's not that bad. At least that's how I do it. That's how I stay above the fray and that's when I'm coaching or when I'm leading. That's how I try and keep my team above the fray. I try and help them understand that we're part of a bigger ecosystem here, and the more you understand that ecosystem, the better you can use it to your advantage.

Listen to our interview here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/craig-robinson-on-following-your-passion-forgetting/id1480904163?i=1000657912791

Morra

PS: Marian Robinson, the mother of Craig and his sister Michelle Obama, passed away this week. She would tell her kids, "Don’t worry about whether anybody else likes you. Come home. We’ll always like you here."