Scott Hamilton > Quotes

“The only disability in life is a bad attitude.”
― Scott Hamilton

“The only disability in life is a bad attitude. -Scott Hamilton”
― Scott Hamilton

“What's the point of doing anything if it's easy? It's so much more valuable when a challenge has to be overcome.”
― Scott Hamilton, The Great Eight: How to Be Happy Even When You Have Every Reason to Be Miserable

“Focus on building up others, and your own sense of self-worth will improve. Some call these random acts of human kindness. But the truth is, acting unselfishly is not random at all. Instead, it is a conscious, concerted effort to make the world better by making someone else's life better. The bonus: you will be happier by doing it.”
― Scott Hamilton, The Great Eight: How to Be Happy Even When You Have Every Reason to Be Miserable

“The only handicap in life is a bad attitude.”
― Scott Hamilton

“it doesn't matter what the challenge is -athletics, business, romance, health, academics, the arts- the rule for getting up is the same. you just get up!”
― Scott Hamilton, The Great Eight: How to Be Happy Even When You Have Every Reason to Be Miserable

“you always have to keep things fun. if you don't, no matter how many awards you win or how much money you make, you will never be happy.”
― Scott Hamilton, The Great Eight: How to Be Happy Even When You Have Every Reason to Be Miserable

“My job was to make sure that my pain was not visible to the audience. They came to escape their troubles, not to be drawn into my own pain.”
― Scott Hamilton, The Great Eight: How to Be Happy Even When You Have Every Reason to Be Miserable

“Have you ever stopped for a minute to think about how many things had to go wrong in your life for you to end up exactly where you are?”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything

“Each movement is only learned after you've perfected the one before it.”
― Scott Hamilton, The Great Eight: How to Be Happy Even When You Have Every Reason to Be Miserable

“The path to victory is the path you’re on. It becomes a path to victory the moment you decide it does.”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything

“Some bad things are going to happen, but more great things are going to happen. If you tend to see more bad than good, then you have to build that positive muscle in your brain much like an athlete does certain muscles to execute a certain move.”
― Scott Hamilton, The Great Eight: How to Be Happy Even When You Have Every Reason to Be Miserable

“This is the power of finishing first. This is the power of showing up, leveraging your strengths and weaknesses, and outworking everyone. My world would never be the same.”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything

“This is where grace lives - in the jumping in. In showing up, day after day. In trying and learning and trying again and again.”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything

“This is the power of hard work. You suddenly realize you can do things you never thought you could do. You have power you never knew you had.
There are endless stories of people who have been told, “You can’t, you won’t, you shouldn’t . . .” and who have overcome all the odds to do it anyway. Will you be one of those people? When you know who you are and what you are capable of achieving, why would you not finish first? Unrealized potential is some of the greatest pain in the world.
If you are suffering or hurting, there is a way out—work hard. We are wired for hard work. Some of our greatest pain in life is because we are avoiding work. Build your life in the way of a champion. Be memorable. Be unique. Be different. Be special. Be the absolute best version of you.
We get only one shot at this thing called life. If you’re not satisfied, there is a reason. It’s time to stop sitting around wasting time, waiting for what you want your life to be like; it’s time to start going after the amazing things you know are possible for you. It’s time to begin realizing the unique potential that has always been waiting for you.”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything

“But if you look at where you are and it’s not exactly where you want to be, then ask yourself what it would look like for you to show up—in mind, body, and spirit—to what you are wanting to do.
All you have to do is look around. Examples of people who show up every day are everywhere. Every athlete you admire, every businessperson you admire, every leader you admire shows up in ways you probably don’t even know. Because it’s not dramatic. There’s not a bunch of fanfare. Nobody gives you an award or a trophy for doing the work. It’s just commitment and repetition, a dedication to showing up and doing the same things, day after day.”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything

“Victories build on each other. Have you stopped to ask yourself what would make today a win for you? You don’t need to hit all of your goals today. You may only need to accomplish one small goal—and that can be the victory you stand on tomorrow to accomplish your next small goal. Small victories empower us for bigger victories.”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything

“We’re all dealt a different hand in this life. I don’t know what hand you were dealt. But I know that the only thing we can do with our hand is play it—no bluffing. You can make the choice. You can either waste the opportunities you’ve been given, waste away in your regrets and failures, waste your gift, waste your time and energy and effort, and wait for your participation ribbon. Or you can choose to finish first.
Which will you choose?”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything

“God never sees people as “too far gone.” There are thousands of stories in the Scripture that prove this to be true, but of all the stories, no one quite embodies it like Lazarus, whom Jesus raises from the dead.
Lazarus’s friends are very concerned for the apparent failure he is up against. He is sick and isn’t getting better, and so his sister goes to Jesus to ask if He will come heal him. They’ve seen Jesus perform healing, so this isn’t new to them, but they’ve never seen Jesus raise anyone from the dead.
Jesus assures Mary and Martha that Lazarus’s sickness will not end in death, but it quickly becomes clear that Lazarus is going to die. Jesus isn’t going to make it to him in time for the healing. In the face of this apparently permanent failure, Jesus tells the disciples, “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe” (John 11:14-15). Can you imagine? What a thing for Jesus to say. I’m glad I wasn’t there to prevent this failure—because then you would have all missed the miracle that followed, and that miracle strengthens our faith. How can you let Jesus into the failure in your story so that He can strengthen your faith?
What comes next would be the final time in Scripture that Jesus brings someone back from the dead until His own resurrection a few chapters later. In this moment, Jesus teaches us the most important lesson we can learn about failure. Failure builds our faith. It strengthens our resolve. There is no such thing as “too far gone” because the bigger the failure, the bigger the opportunity for us to prove what we’re made of and for our God to prove just how powerful He is.
What if we started looking at our failure this way, rather than seeing it as a reason to give up? Perhaps we would be done wasting our time and our potential worrying about our setbacks and how they disqualify us from finishing first and we would discover just how brave, resilient, and capable we have been all along.”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything

“Part of me wonders, in a world that seems so divided and divisive, if we’re really at odds with one another or if we’re just feeling entitled and lazy. Maybe we’re just so bored with our comfortable lives that we have to find something to fill our time. As humans, we are wired for a challenge, so if we don’t challenge ourselves, we’ll find petty drama and arguments to keep us busy. Spend time around people who are truly working to bring the best version of themselves to the world, and my guess is that we won’t feel much like arguing anymore.
You become like the people with whom you spend the most time. So it should be no surprise that spending time with people who beat me constantly didn’t deter me from finishing first. Instead, it helped me access my own will to win. Why is it that we get so caught up with thinking that beating someone is bad for them? What if winning is the kindest, bravest, most helpful thing you can do?
Healthy competition teaches us. It doesn’t hold us back. It pushes us forward. When we bring our best to the competition, it challenges everyone to dig deep and discover their hidden talents, their buried tenacity, their untapped skill. You were put on this Earth to do something amazing. Something nobody else can do. The only way you can do that thing is to tap into your deepest power, your greatest potential. Far too many of us are missing it because we’re worried about making a way for someone else.”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything

“When your goal is bigger than you and you realize, in fact, so little of what you do is about you, that no one is paying much attention to you anyway, suddenly you can get out of your own way. If you’re struggling with getting out of your own way, ask yourself who needs this that is not you. Do it for that person.”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything

“We haven’t even stopped to consider the fact that losing might not hurt anyone. What if, by shielding people in this way, we’re stealing the transformational power of both winning and losing in their lives?
The irony is that if you believe nothing matters in life, you will live a life that doesn’t matter.”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything

“If you finish first, your friends may become jealous, your family might think you’ve gotten too big for your britches, and your competition might put a target on your back. So it’s better to not compete. Better, that is, for your friends, your family, and your competition. But it’s not better for you.

Donald Miller”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything

“Maybe to you it seems arrogant or selfish to think of yourself on a podium. You were trained to hold the door open for others, to be kind, thoughtful, sacrificial, and helpful. You were taught that the last would be first. Nothing is wrong with any of that. And as an Olympic athlete, I can say with confidence that the best way to help people—maybe even the only way to help anyone—is to start chipping away at the part of you that worries you don’t have much to offer. Become someone who is worthy of winning, and you’ll have a wider, greater impact than you ever dreamed possible.
In addition to this idea that winners are selfish and losers are the good guys, we also have the idea that winners and losers are preselected, and that doesn’t feel fair. Yes, some of us are born with more resources than others, more access, more opportunities. But only one qualification makes someone more likely to win: they choose to win.
The number-one predictor for whether you will be a winner is if you decide to be one. It’s a choice only you can make. And once you make it, nothing will be able to stop you.”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything

“One of the very first principles I teach people about criticism is to consider the source. I tell my kids this all the time: consider the source. Not all sources are created equally. Is this the kind of person who tells the truth? Someone who wants other people to succeed? Someone who is fair? Someone who is knowledgeable about your field? If not, the source is not legitimate, and the criticism is tainted. Unless you want the character of the person criticizing you, don’t pay too much attention to it.
The second thing to consider is your critic’s motive. Of course, you can’t always know this, but if we think about possible motives, it may help us to dismiss criticism that is not only unhelpful but that also may derail us from finishing first.
Is the motive to distract you? Control you? Exert authority? Keep you down? Prevent you from passing him or her? Simply to be mean? If any of these motives seem true about this person, what good could possibly come from paying attention to his or her criticism? Once you start paying attention to who is criticizing you, you find a good deal of your criticism to be inconsequential. Unimportant. Simply a distraction from what you’re trying to do.
Here’s another thing to consider about a critic. For every bit of attention you give a critic, you can’t give that exact amount of attention to your program, your practice, the work it takes to win. Critics know this. So many critics keep doing what they’re doing because it’s working. It doesn’t help them to win, but it keeps you from winning, which is enough for them. Do you have enough integrity to stand in the face of criticism and not be swayed?”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything

“We do not get to choose all of the opportunities that come our way. We do not get to choose our entire path. But we do get to choose what to do with setbacks and opportunities that come our way. We do get to choose how we behave as we wait to know what is coming next. We do get to decide that no matter what happens, we will be ready. Are you willing to have a good attitude even when things aren’t going your way? This is the attitude of a winner.”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything

“I live every day knowing that today might be the day that my cancer returns. But rather than look at this as a horrific cross to bear, I call it my gift, a constant reminder of just how lucky I am to be healthy and alive. After all, what is joy without sorrow? What is success without failure? What is a win without a loss? What is health without illness? You have to experience each if you are to appreciate the other. There is always going to be suffering. It's how you look at your suffering, how you deal with it, that will define you.”
― Scott Hamilton, The Great Eight: How to Be Happy Even When You Have Every Reason to Be Miserable

“God has always promised to do more than we would ever ask or imagine. It's just that so few of us take Him up on His offer.”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything

“Losing is so much more familiar to us than winning. In fact, for most of us, I think losing is all we know. It’s easier. It’s comfortable. Very little is expected of those who lose. And the more we lose, the more we expect to lose, which sets us up for more losing. When you expect something to happen, for the most part, it happens. No wonder you keep losing—you see yourself as someone who constantly loses!
Can you relate to this? No matter how hard you work, no matter how many diet programs you try, no matter how many hours you put in at the office, you keep falling short. After all of that effort and all of the negative results over and over again, of course you would lose motivation to keep trying. That mentality is only natural. But what if you could move beyond what is “natural” to something supernatural? What if you could defy all odds to achieve your greatest, most hidden potential?”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything

“If you start asking the people you admire most for the stories behind their successes, you’ll find more failure than you ever dreamed possible.
This is why I teach the skaters who come to the Academy not to give failure too much attention. If they fall, I teach them not to make a big deal out of it. I tell them to get up and move on. Right away. Because the minute we start giving failure too much attention, we begin to move in its direction. Failed? No big deal. Let your failure fade into the background. Let’s get up and try again.”
― Scott Hamilton, Finish First: Winning Changes Everything