In Relentless, author Tim Grover explains the qualities you’ll need to become the best in your field—qualities that he collectively calls “relentlessness.” In this guide, we’ll first define relentlessness. Then, we’ll explore the two main qualities Grover argues are essential to relentlessness:
Grover defines “relentlessness” as a state of mind in which you’re fully dedicated to becoming stronger, surviving, and overcoming obstacles to achieve your goals. Being relentless, Grover asserts, is how you can become the best at what you do and succeed time and time again.
(Shortform note: In some ways, relentlessness is similar to what psychologists call “conscientiousness” or the ability to make and work towards goals consistently while delaying gratification and overcoming obstacles. However, there’s one major difference between relentlessness and conscientiousness: While conscientious people plan ahead to avoid impulsive behavior, relentless people rely on impulsive behavior to help them succeed (which we’ll explore in Part 3).)
Grover explains that anyone can be relentless in pursuing any task or discipline—relationships, your job, an art form, and so on. This is because relentlessness isn’t about what you do, but about how you approach what you do. In addition, he says that anyone can be relentless because relentlessness is natural and instinctual. All animals, even humans, are born with an instinctual drive to overcome obstacles and survive—in other words, we’re born relentless.
How Much Does Evolution Inspire Behavior?
Grover’s argument here—that relentlessness is instinctual—is similar to that of “evolutionary psychology”: A framework that argues that human behavior is heavily influenced by instincts gained through evolution. However, scientists and scholars heavily debate the merits of evolutionary psychology. Its main critics argue that experiences or environment inspire behaviors more than instinct does. They also argue that it’s impossible to test the hypotheses of evolutionary psychology because even if researchers observe an expected behavior, there’s no way of knowing if instinct inspired it.
Note that Grover isn’t using this method of psychology to make his arguments—in fact, at one point he argues that science can’t ever explain relentless instincts. However, his ideas are similar enough to evolutionary psychology that these criticisms are still worth considering.
After defining relentlessness, Grover notes three categories of people defined by how often they act relentlessly: Rarely or never relentless people are “Good,” people who are relentless in specific circumstances are “Great,” and people who are always relentless are “Unstoppable.”
The Good, according to Grover, are rarely or never relentless due to a fear of failure. This fear prevents the Good from fully committing to a task—therefore preventing them from relentlessly pursuing success. Because of this, they can be good at what they do but will never be the best or even great. (Shortform note: Seth Godin (Purple Cow) agrees with Grover that fear of failure prevents success and offers further explanation as to why. Godin argues that being afraid holds you back from taking risks—which are essential for success because they help you stand out from everyone else playing it safe. This makes other people more likely to remember you and offer you opportunities.)
Grover explains that fear of failure also makes the Good freeze up under pressure. Pressure causes the Good to focus on the possibility of failure instead of on what they’re trying to accomplish—in other words, they’ll freeze up because they overthink what they’re doing.
(Shortform note: Psychologist Sian Beilock agrees that overthinking leads to paralysis in Choke and offers a scientific explanation for why this happens. Beilock argues that once you learn to perform a task, your brain approaches that task without needing to think through each of its individual steps. However, overthinking makes you go back to consciously thinking through each step like a beginner would. This shift in approach confuses your brain, causing you to freeze up and fail to perform.)
One step above the Good, there are the Great—people whom Grover says can be relentless under specific circumstances. The Great can be relentless only in specific situations they have prepared for extensively. This preparation gives the Great a clear planned approach to the situation, which allows them to avoid overthinking and commit their focus to action. However, if circumstances unexpectedly change, creating a situation that the Great haven’t prepared for, they’ll experience the same self-doubts and fears that the Good have and freeze up. This is why the Great can only be relentless sometimes—their confidence is situational.
(Shortform note: Sian Beilock (Choke) explains the science behind why unfamiliar situations cause you to freeze up. When you’re faced with a situation you know well, you experience stimulation in the portions of your brain responsible for the actions associated with that situation. However, in an unfamiliar situation, those parts of the brain aren’t as active because your brain doesn’t have associated actions, and therefore, you can’t respond as quickly. Since the Great only plan for specific situations, it follows that their brains can only respond with immediate action to those specific circumstances.)
Now that we understand what relentlessness is and what can hold you back from it, we’ll look at those who are consistently relentless: the Unstoppable. For the rest of the guide, we’ll discuss the two main qualities Grover says you need to be Unstoppable: the need to succeed and the ability to direct your instincts. We’ll start by defining the need to succeed through three different principles that support this quality:
. Grover says that constantly seeking improvement is a crucial part of doing everything you can to achieve your goals and therefore is crucial for acting relentlessly. In addition, by constantly pushing as hard as you can to improve, you’ll better understand what you’re capable of and how you can use those capabilities to succeed.
(Shortform note: Psychology suggests that constantly pushing yourself hard, as Grover encourages, can lead to burnout—a kind of emotional exhaustion characterized by disinterest and cynicism in regards to your field. The risk of burnout suggests that there are moments when not pushing yourself will actually better enable you to succeed in the long run, since it’ll make you healthier and keep you motivated to succeed. To avoid burnout while still pushing hard, experts recommend you learn to recognize when you’re pushing yourself out of habit versus when you’re doing it for a worthy goal. Ease off if you’re acting habitually, and keep going if you have a good reason to do so.)
Grover recommends two methods that will help you constantly improve: not defining the impossible and surrounding yourself with relentless people. We’ll now explore why these methods push you to constantly improve.
Grover emphasizes that an important part of seeking constant improvement is never claiming that something is impossible because it places a limit on you that may or may not actually exist. By calling things impossible, you naturally start focusing on what you think you can’t do, which is the kind of thinking that leads to fears and self-doubts that hold back the Good and the Great.
To avoid thinking about what you can’t do, Grover recommends you redefine failure. It’s not a lack of success—the only failure is giving up and no longer working towards success. By using this definition of failure, you won’t focus on what you can’t do and will instead focus on how you can improve and overcome setbacks.
(Shortform note: You might think that not acknowledging the impossible or failure like Grover recommends means not being in touch with reality and exaggerating your own abilities. Carol S. Dweck (Mindset) argues that this is not the case and that those who believe they can improve to overcome challenges actually have a better understanding of their abilities. This is because focusing on improvement requires knowing your shortcomings and testing your limits. On the other hand, giving up or declaring you can’t do something means not discovering your full capabilities.)
Grover’s second method for seeking constant improvement recommends you surround yourself with other relentless people. Relentless people know what’s needed to succeed, and will keep you accountable to those standards and be totally honest about areas for improvement. Non-relentless people can’t offer this level of accountability and honesty, because they’ll be uncomfortable pushing you harder or worried about offending you.
Organizing Your Relentless Support
For practical advice on what kind of relentless people you should surround yourself with, look to Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles. Canfield recommends creating three categories of collaborators, each fulfilling a different role:
Achievement group: Make an achievement group of five or six people and meet with them to discuss how you’ll accomplish your goals.
Accountability partner: Have one accountability partner, and meet regularly with them to make sure you’re both doing the work necessary to reach your goals.
Support team: A support team consists of experts dedicated to helping you excel in your field. Meet with members of your support team regularly in a one-on-one setting.
Grover’s second principle for developing the Unstoppable need to succeed is constantly putting intense pressure on yourself. Grover agrees with the commonly observed phenomenon that people perform better under pressure, and that being under pressure forces you to find ways to rise to whatever challenge you’re facing.
(Shortform note: While many psychologists agree that pressure under certain circumstances will improve performance, it’s often in the context of short-term high-stress situations like a basketball game. However, in a longer-term context or in a field that doesn’t require immediate and precise action, psychologists disagree with Grover on the benefits of pressure. For example, one study found that increased pressure correlated with worse performance in math students. This research suggests that the extent to which pressure will benefit you is dependent on what your discipline requires.)
Constant pressure allows you to avoid fear of failure and self-doubt in two ways:
(Shortform note: Psychological research agrees with Grover’s argument that using stress as a tool helps you succeed, and suggests that, beyond helping you avoid fear of failure, it also benefits your mental and physical health. One study found that those who think of stress as a positive and motivating force focused less on negative emotions and had less cardiovascular stress.)
While pressure can help keep you relentless, Grover warns that you need to recognize the difference between productive and unproductive pressure. Pressure from your drive to succeed will help you stay relentless, while pressure from something like forgetting to do your work comes from a lack of commitment, and therefore doesn’t help you stay relentless. Grover suggests two ways you can pressure yourself productively: leading others and reframing your successes.
1) Leading others: When you’re Unstoppable, others will naturally see you as a leader—this can add productive pressure, since doing everything you can to succeed often requires helping the people around you perform at their best as well. A leadership role also adds the pressure of needing to accept responsibility and blame if things go wrong—being at the top means no one else is capable of picking up your slack if you fall short.
(Shortform note: Marshall Goldsmith (What Got You Here Won’t Get You There) agrees with Grover that leaders should accept responsibility when things go wrong, but his reasons why differ: While Grover argues that you should accept blame to put pressure on yourself, Goldsmith argues you should accept blame because it’ll earn you the trust and respect of your followers. He explains that accepting blame earns trust and respect because it shows your followers that you have integrity, courage, and modesty.)
2) Reframing success: Grover explains that success should increase the pressure you put on yourself instead of being an excuse to relax. The principle of constantly seeking improvement means that each success is merely a step on your path towards Unstoppable dominance in your field—not the destination. After each success, you'll have to set your sights on the next, larger success instead of relaxing.
(Shortform note: Grant Cardone recommends a similar reframing of success in The 10X Rule, but he takes his argument further than Grover by claiming a one-time achievement shouldn’t even be called a success—real success is only gained through many accomplishments over a long period of time. By adopting Cardone’s mindset, you might make it easier to frame one-time accomplishments as single steps on a journey to success, allowing you to keep up pressure on yourself.)
To truly push and pressure yourself as hard as you can, Grover argues that you must follow the third principle behind the Unstoppable need to succeed: seeking success by any means necessary. Grover provides two methods for following this principle: making sacrifices and accepting discomfort.
Grover insists that you can only be Unstoppable at one thing and that you’ll have to make sacrifices elsewhere in your life by spending less time and energy on everything else. If you split time and energy between multiple disciplines, then you aren’t giving everything you have to any of them and therefore aren’t pursuing success relentlessly. Not only will you have to avoid spending time and energy on other disciplines, but you’ll also have to avoid spending too much time and energy on your family and relationships.
(Shortform note: Gary Keller supports this idea of total commitment to one area of your life in The One Thing. He explains that extraordinary success comes from intentionally focusing your time on actions that carry you toward a specific goal—not from spreading your focus across everything you feel you should be doing and treating every area of your life as equally important.)
The sacrifices mentioned above might make you feel uncomfortable, and further suggest that the life of the Unstoppable can be unpleasant. Grover doesn’t argue with this and says that you must experience and accept this discomfort to be Unstoppable. Anyone can follow a clear and painless path toward success. But when success requires confronting fear, uncertainty, or even physical pain, discomfort holds back the Good and Great while the Unstoppable relentlessly push through it.
(Shortform note: Psychological research agrees with Grover’s argument that accepting discomfort helps you pursue success and goes even further by suggesting that doing so will lessen discomfort in the future. Studies suggest that accepting discomfort without judgment leads to increased peace of mind, increased willpower, and increased emotional management skills. According to this research, accepting discomfort doesn’t just allow you to stay relentless, but will actually reduce your discomfort overall as you continue to pursue relentlessness.)
We’ve just explored the first main quality of the Unstoppable, the need to succeed, and discussed how you can productively fulfill this need. Now, we’ll explore Grover’s secondUnstoppable quality: the ability to direct your instincts—that is, the ability to use your natural animal instincts to accomplish the complex goals required by your field or discipline.
(Shortform note: You might assume that your animal instincts are so hardwired into your mind that you can’t tell them what to do. However, this isn’t the case—the rational part of your mind can actually train your instincts. After all, memory and experience can inspire instincts—for example, a child touching a hot stove will learn from that experience, and later will have the instinct to check if a stove is hot before touching it.)
In this section, we’ll examine three areas Grover says to direct your instincts—knowledge, emotions, and your primal self as well as how doing so will help you become Unstoppable.
Acting on instinct, argues Grover, means acting without consciously thinking—this allows you to better use knowledge of your discipline because you can just act on your knowledge without having to think about the best way to use it. Thinking opens you up to self-doubt and fear, damaging your confidence and, as a result, your ability to be relentless. On the other hand, by directing your instinct to use your knowledge automatically, you’ll be able to act immediately with no distractions or self-doubts holding you back.
(Shortform note: Research supports Grover’s argument that you can “train” your instincts to rely on the things you know or believe. A study on people who had performed heroic acts by risking their lives to save others found that the majority of these people hadn’t considered if their action was the right thing to do, but instead acted intuitively on their existing moral beliefs. This suggests that your more “rational” thoughts and beliefs inspire instinctive action.)
To instinctively use your knowledge, you need mastery: an understanding of your field so deep that you can access and use knowledge without taking time to think about it. Mastery allows you to address any situation and to remain calm if circumstances suddenly change. Mastering your field requires a lot of hard work over a long period of time, and Grover says there are no shortcuts or easy ways to get it.
(Shortform note: Anette Karmiloff-Smith explains the brain science behind mastery in Beyond Modularity. She suggests that once you’re skilled enough to perform a task automatically, your brain puts less effort into the task and can use that effort on other things. Your brain can then use this “freed up” power for a more flexible and creative approach.)
Grover explains that acting on instinct also helps control your emotions. This is crucial for consistent relentlessness because as we’ve discussed, strong emotions like fear and uncertainty can cause you to freeze up or doubt yourself—preventing you from acting relentlessly.
Grover explains that acting instinctively helps you control your emotions because it activates intense focus: a state of mind where you block out all emotions except for focused, determined anger. Acting instinctively activates intense focus because you’re acting without conscious thought—you don’t have time to let in distractions or emotions other than determined anger.
(Shortform note: While Grover argues that blocking out emotions will help you act decisively and confidently, psychological research contrasts with this idea. In Descartes’ Error, Antonio Damasio explores the role of emotions in decision making. He researched people unable to experience emotion due to brain damage and found that they have trouble making simple decisions, often taking hours to do so—unlike Grover, Damasio concludes that emotion actually benefits decisiveness.)
Once you’re able to direct your instincts to properly use your knowledge and control your emotions, Grover declares that you must access your primal self: the person you are when acting entirely through instinct. Directing your instincts productively is the foundation for this step because it ensures you’ll still relentlessly pursue your goals even when acting impulsively.
Grover explains that to access your primal self, you must indulge primal desires: things you impulsively want, but keep secret because society tells you to (like sex, drugs, or gambling). Indulging primal desires allows you to practice accessing your primal self even when relaxing, making it easier to access when seeking success in your field.
(Shortform note: The primal self Grover speaks about is quite similar to what Sigmund Freud called the Id: the part of your mind dedicated to fulfilling impulses, needs, and desires. However, the two have contrasting beliefs about how you harness this animal, instinctual part of yourself: Freud believes that impulsive sexual desires motivate all great achievements, while Grover claims that the desire for success in itself motivates achievement.)
However, Grover also emphasizes that you need to make sure that indulging your primal desires doesn’t take priority over succeeding in your field. If your desires take first priority, you’ll spend too much time and energy on indulgence and won’t be able to relentlessly pursue success in your field.
Grover does acknowledge that there will come a time when you have nothing left to prove and are ready to finish up your career or lifelong commitment. He notes that in order for you to do so, your self-control will have to triumph over your primal self, or else you’ll never feel satisfied and won’t stop seeking success until you’re dead and gone.
(Shortform note: Going from relentless to retired is a difficult transition—research shows that highly gifted individuals end up less happy later in life, stuck wondering if they fully lived up to their potential. However, there is a solution to this unhappy decline: helping others. By transitioning into a mentor role, you can continue using the wisdom you’ve developed over the course of your life. Scientists call this collected wisdom “crystallized knowledge,” and believe that it peaks far later in life compared to other mental faculties—meaning that you still have opportunities to “live up to your potential” in various ways, even beyond retirement.)
In Relentless, author Tim Grover provides a mental framework that will help you become the best in your field or discipline—a framework he calls relentlessness. This framework involves committing everything you have to overcoming obstacles and finding success.
Connect with Tim Grover:
Publisher: Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster
Tim Grover originally self-published Relentless through Relentless Publishing LLC. in 2014—Scribner published the book later that year. (This guide covers the later Scribner edition of the book.) While Relentless is Grover’s first and best-known book, he’s written two additional books since its release: personal training guide Jump Attack (2014) and self-help guide Winning (2021).
Tim Grover wrote Relentless 15 years into his personal training career working with basketball legends like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Dwayne Wade. He claims that working with these players helped him understand what being the best requires, and aims to share that knowledge through his writing—Relentless is the first book in Grover’s “Winning Trilogy,” which also includes Jump Attack and Winning.
While Relentless isn’t strictly a sports psychology book, it shares many similarities with the genre, which includes other books like Michael Sheard’s Mental Toughness (2009) and Sian Beilock’s Choke (2010). Grover’s book differs from others in the genre in that it’s based on his personal experiences and observations of excellent athletes, rather than on psychological research.
Relentless is the number one bestselling sports training book on Amazon. It’s received positive reviews from celebrity athletes like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, who speak to Grover’s ability to encourage success in his clients. Since the publication of his book, Grover has built a larger Relentless System brand, which involves lifestyle coaching, a blog, online virtual training, and public speaking.
The majority of reviews of Relentless are positive, noting that the book is easy to understand and promotes a mindset that encourages success. Positive reviewers also appreciate the book’s direct and declarative approach to self-help, which tells readers to stop making excuses and start pursuing success.
Negative reviews tend to criticize the book for not offering practical advice on how to become relentless and for relying too heavily on anecdotes to make arguments. Some also take issue with Grover’s recommendations, claiming that they promote working too hard at the expense of mental health or are unethical. They cite in particular Grover’s argument that relentless people shouldn’t apologize for misdeeds and his use of aggressive language like “attack” and “kill” in his discussions on achieving success.
Grover’s approach continually connects his recommendations back to his overall definition of relentlessness—putting everything you have towards reaching a goal. When he recommends a method or principle, he’ll explain how his principle allows you to fully commit yourself to pursuing success. He tends to argue via declarative statements backed up by anecdotes and experiences from his or his clients’ careers.
The extent to which Relentless makes recommendations is unclear—in the introduction of the book, Grover says that he’s not trying to tell readers what to do. This claim, combined with the book’s use of the third person to describe relentless people, suggests that the book is less instructive and more observational. However, Grover describes his book as a guide to being relentless, which suggests it’s more instructive than observational.
This question of instruction versus observation is important to consider when thinking about criticisms and defenses of Relentless—a critic might say that Grover makes bad recommendations, but a supporter could say that Grover isn’t explicitly making recommendations.
Grover organizes his book into 13 sections covering the main qualities that consistently relentless people demonstrate. However, the 13 sections tend to overlap in their focus. This overlap allows a reader to fully understand what a relentless mindset is, but also means the book often repeats the same ideas multiple times.
In our guide, we’ve reorganized Grover’s 13 principles into the two main categories that all his qualities fall under: being motivated by success in itself and acting on instinct. We’ve done this to avoid repetition and to streamline the connections between each of Grover’s suggestions and relentlessness. We’ve also chosen to frame Relentless as instructional rather than observational, directly referencing the reader instead of making observations about what relentless people do. By doing so, we can better explain how to apply the book to your own life and career.
Our commentary supplements Grover’s ideas with supporting and contrasting psychological research. In addition, we’ve provided practical advice on how to apply Grover’s recommendations and clarifications of his arguments that contain conflicting information.
In Relentless, author Tim Grover explains the qualities you’ll need to become the best in your field—qualities which he collectively calls “relentlessness.” He came up with these qualities by learning from his own personal training career, training and getting to know some of the all-time great basketball players. Grover argues that by acting relentlessly, you can become an all-time great yourself no matter what your career, field, or discipline is.
This guide will explore relentlessness in three parts:
Grover defines “relentlessness” as a state of mind in which you’re fully dedicated to becoming stronger, surviving, and overcoming obstacles to achieve your goals. Being relentless, Grover asserts, is how you can become the best at what you do and succeed time and time again. He references his own experience training basketball legends like Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant, highlighting them as examples of the kind of field dominance that relentlessness can lead to. However, Grover explains, relentlessness isn’t just for a select few elite athletes—it’s universal.
(Shortform note: In some ways, relentlessness is similar to what psychologists call “conscientiousness,” the ability to make and work towards goals consistently while delaying gratification and overcoming obstacles. However, there’s one major difference between the two—their approach to impulsivity: While conscientious people plan ahead so they can avoid impulsive behavior, relentless people rely on impulsive behavior to help them succeed (which we’ll explore in Part 3).)
Grover explains that anyone can be relentless in pursuing any task or discipline—relationships, your job, an art form, and so on. This is because relentlessness isn’t about what you do, but about how you approach what you do.
In addition, he says that anyone can be relentless because relentlessness is natural and instinctual. All animals, even humans, are born with an instinctual drive to overcome obstacles and survive by any means necessary—in other words, we’re born with relentlessness and just need to learn how to access it.
How Much Does Evolution Inspire Behavior?
Grover’s argument here—that relentlessness is instinctual—is similar to that of “evolutionary psychology”: A framework that argues that human behavior is heavily influenced by instincts gained through evolution. However, scientists and scholars heavily debate the merits of evolutionary psychology. Its main critics tend toward two arguments:
1) Learning and changing: One of the main arguments made against evolutionary psychology comes from evidence that the brain physically changes in response to changes in environment or experiences. These changes would suggest that many behaviors are inspired more by what you learn, rather than what’s hardwired in you.
2) Testability: Another major criticism of evolutionary psychology is that it’s very difficult to test its main hypotheses. Even when researchers observe expected behaviors in studies, it’s difficult to definitively prove that instinct inspired them. Because of these difficulties, many critics argue that evolutionary psychology often relies on common sense principles or observations, rather than testing and research.
Note that Grover isn’t using this method of psychology to make his arguments—in fact, at one point he argues that science can’t ever explain relentless instincts. However, his ideas are similar enough to those used by evolutionary psychologists that these criticisms are still worth considering.
To help clarify his definition, Grover notes several criteria that you might mistake for relentlessness and explains why they aren’t necessary to a relentless mindset.
Being talented or skilled isn’t the same as having a relentless mindset. Just because you’re talented doesn’t mean you’ll use your talent to its full extent, or that you’ll constantly work to improve. On the other hand, if you lack natural talent, you can still act relentlessly by doing everything you can to overcome that lack.
(Shortform note: Given Grover’s argument here that talent isn’t enough for relentlessness (and the success it brings), you might wonder why people emphasize its importance. Angela Duckworth (Grit) explores two reasons why people overrate talent’s role in success. First, when you see others succeed, you only see the results of their hard work and therefore assume their success comes from natural skill. Second, many people overrate talent as a defense mechanism—assuming success comes from innate talent gives you an excuse for not succeeding: “I just wasn’t born talented.”)
While you can earn fame and fortune with relentlessness, it shouldn’t be your end goal. Relentlessness means caring about success itself, rather than what success might bring. There are plenty of rich and famous people who aren’t relentless, and plenty of relentless people who aren’t rich or famous.
For example, a businessman can be a millionaire from inheritance alone and never put effort into his work, while a teacher can relentlessly do everything possible to help his students succeed and have very little money or fame to show for it.
(Shortform note: Many rich and famous people share Grover’s belief that fame and fortune aren’t the cause of success. A survey found that a large majority of wealthy families worried that their money would reduce their children’s ambition instead of inspiring them to succeed.)
When you learn to access your relentlessness, you don’t change who you are. Grover repeatedly insists that nobody can change. Rather, he says, pursuing relentlessness means accessing the instinctual part of yourself that’s existed since birth.
(Shortform note: Research contrasts with Grover’s point here, suggesting that personalities do change, whether it’s because of aging, a major life event, or a concerted effort. This suggests that adopting a new relentless mindset like Grover recommends would change who you are.)
After defining relentlessness, Grover creates three categories of people defined by how often they act relentlessly: Rarely or never relentless people are “Good,” people who are relentless in specific circumstances are “Great,” and people who are always relentless are “Unstoppable.”
In this section, we’ll define what it means to be “Good.” The Good, according to Grover, are rarely or never relentless due to a fear of failure. This fear prevents the Good from fully committing to a task—therefore preventing them from relentlessly pursuing success. Because of this, they can be good at what they do but will never be the best or even great.
(Shortform note: Seth Godin (Purple Cow) agrees with Grover that fear of failure prevents success, and offers further explanation as to why this happens. Godin argues that being afraid will hold you back from taking risks—which is essential for success because it helps you stand out from everyone else who’s playing it safe. This makes other people more likely to remember you and offer you opportunities. Therefore, since fear of failure prevents risks it also prevents success.)
Grover offers two ways that fear of failure and lack of commitment prevent the Good from succeeding.
Fear of failure makes the Good unable to take initiative—even when they know exactly what they should do—because they fear making a mistake if they do. Instead of taking initiative, the Good tend towards two behaviors:
The Good Must Focus on Others
You might think that Grover is criticizing the ability to support and mediate because he associates them with the Good. However, remember that Grover says you can approach any skill with a relentless mindset—including those two abilities.
- As an example, there are careers and organizations available for professional mediators—a profession in which one could pursue conflict resolution relentlessly.
For clarity, it might help to consider Grover’s explanation of the Good from this perspective: Doing these things doesn’t make you Good—having to do those things does. You can apply this perspective to both examples:
The Good have to provide support because their fear prevents them from taking charge.
The Good have to mediate conflict because they don’t want to take sides for fear of being wrong.
Grover explains that fear of failure also makes the Good freeze up under pressure. Pressure causes the Good to focus on the possibility of failure instead of on what they’re trying to accomplish—in other words, they’ll freeze up because they overthink what they’re doing.
For example: A Good dancer is in a competition. They’ve practiced extensively, and have natural talent. However, once they’re about to start, they worry they won’t be able to pull off the backflip at the end of their routine. They try to remember all of the advice their teachers, mentors, and peers gave them about backflips. Now they have a ton of information and self-doubt in their mind taking their focus away from the actual dancing, and their performance suffers.
(Shortform note: Psychologist Sian Beilock agrees with Grover’s argument that overthinking leads to paralysis in Choke, and offers a psychological explanation for why this is true. Beilock argues that once you learn to perform a task, your brain approaches that task without needing to think through each of its individual steps. However, overthinking makes you go back to consciously thinking through each step like a beginner would. This shift in approach confuses your brain, causing you to freeze up and fail to perform.)
One step above the Good, there are the Great—people whom Grover says can be relentless under specific circumstances. While the Great have more control over their fears and self-doubts than the Good, these fears still plague them from time to time. Grover says that the Great attempt to compensate for their fears with two different methods.
The Great can be relentless, but only in specific situations they have prepared for extensively. This preparation gives the Great a clear planned approach to the situation, which allows them to avoid overthinking and commit their focus to success. However, if circumstances unexpectedly change, creating a situation that the Great hasn’t prepared for, they’ll experience the same self-doubts and fears that the Good have and freeze up. This is why the Great can only be relentless sometimes—their confidence is situational.
For example: A Great musician doesn’t overthink or freeze up as long as they’ve spent a long time studying the specific pieces they’ll play. However, during a performance the musician loses their place, their confidence shatters, and they freeze up.
(Shortform note: Sian Beilock (Choke) explains the science behind why unfamiliar situations cause you to freeze up. When you’re faced with a situation you know well, you experience stimulation in the portions of your brain responsible for the actions associated with that situation. However, in an unfamiliar situation, those parts of the brain aren’t as active because your brain doesn’t have associated actions, and therefore, you can’t respond as quickly. Since the Great only plan for specific situations, it follows that their brains can only respond with immediate action to those specific circumstances.)
Grover argues that the inconsistent confidence of the Great also means that they crave recognition—they try to ward off their fear and self-doubt by having others acknowledge their successes. However, other people can’t get rid of the Great’s insecurities; truly doing so requires developing Unstoppable confidence and focus.
Boost Your Confidence With Self-Validation
If this need for recognition is something you struggle with, psychologists recommend developing self-validation: The ability to accept your emotions and experiences, encourage yourself, recognize your strengths, and accept mistakes. By developing self-validation, you’ll judge yourself less harshly when you don’t perform your best and be able to give yourself positive recognition—as a result, you’ll need fewer positive judgments from others.
One effective way to practice self-validation is to talk about mistakes or underperformance without inserted judgment—that is, talk only about the facts of the event. For example, if you screw up a presentation at work, don’t think, “I’m such a failure and I’ve ruined everything.” That’s a statement grounded in harsh judgment rather than your actual experience. Instead, think, “I feel frustrated because that presentation didn’t go how I wanted it to.” This statement helps you accept that the mistake happened, without discouraging you with harsh and untrue judgments.
Think about how often you act relentlessly, and how that enables or prevents success.
In the past week, were there any moments where you didn’t take initiative because you worried you’d make a mistake?
For each of those moments, how could you have more fully committed yourself to the task at hand? How would that have helped you?
Now that we understand what relentlessness is and what can hold you back from it, we’ll look at the qualities of the Unstoppable: those who are consistently relentless.
For the rest of the guide, we’ll discuss the two main qualities Grover says you need to be Unstoppable: the need to succeed and the ability to direct your instincts. We’ll start in this part of the guide by defining the need to succeed through three different principles that support this quality:
This chapter outlines the first principle: Never stop improving. Grover says that constantly seeking improvement is a crucial part of doing everything you can to achieve your goals, and therefore is crucial for acting relentlessly. In addition, by constantly pushing as hard as you can to improve, you’ll better understand what you’re capable of and how you can use those capabilities to succeed.
(Shortform note: Psychology suggests that constantly pushing yourself hard, as Grover encourages, can lead to burnout—a kind of emotional exhaustion characterized by disinterest and cynicism in regards to your field. The risk of burnout suggests that there are moments when not pushing yourself will actually better enable you to succeed in the long run, since it’ll make you healthier and keep you motivated to succeed. To avoid burnout while still pushing hard, experts recommend you learn to recognize when you’re pushing yourself out of habit versus when you’re doing it for a worthy goal. Ease off if you’re acting habitually, and keep going if you have a good reason to do so.)
Grover recommends three methods that will help you commit to constant improvement:
Grover emphasizes that an important part of seeking constant improvement is never claiming that something is impossible because it places a limit on you that may or may not actually exist. After all, there are plenty of things that seemed impossible until somebody did them—going to the moon, for example, or running the 100-meter dash in under 10 seconds. By calling things impossible, you naturally start focusing on what you think you can’t do, which is the kind of thinking that leads to fears and self-doubts that hold back the Good and the Great.
To avoid thinking about what you can’t do, Grover also recommends you redefine failure. It’s not a lack of success—the only failure is giving up and no longer working towards success. By using this definition of failure, you won’t focus on what you can’t do and will instead focus on how you can improve and overcome setbacks.
(Shortform note: You might think that not acknowledging the impossible or failure like Grover recommends means not being in touch with reality, and exaggerating your own abilities. Carol S. Dweck (Mindset) argues that this is not the case and that those who believe they can improve to overcome challenges actually have a better understanding of their abilities. This is because focusing on improvement requires knowing your shortcomings and testing your limits. On the other hand, giving up or declaring you can’t do something means not discovering your full capabilities.)
Even though it isn’t explicitly giving up, putting in only partial effort or settling for “good enough” means no longer having a relentless mindset: As soon as you settle, you stop putting in everything you have.
Grover also points out that each time you settle for doing less, you’re only making it easier for yourself to settle again in the future. This means that not only do you fail to act relentlessly in the moment, but you also have a high risk of not acting relentlessly later on. To avoid this, Grover recommends you seek out new responsibilities and ways to improve without anyone asking you to.
(Shortform note: While Grover suggests you never accept where you are in your process of improvement, Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck) argues that doing so is crucial for good emotional health. Manson explains that when you always expect yourself to be exceptional, you set yourself up for stress and disappointment when you inevitably don’t meet your high expectations. By lowering your expectations, you won’t judge yourself by too harsh a standard. This helps you better appreciate your own abilities and feel less inadequate and insecure. However, keep in mind that while lowering expectations might be preferable for mental health, doing so will also prevent relentlessness.)
Grover’s third method for seeking constant improvement is to surround yourself with other relentless people. These people help you improve by offering accountability and honesty that you can’t get from non-relentless people. Grover explains why accountability and honesty are necessary for relentlessness, as well as why only relentless people can offer them:
Due to the high pressure that comes from being Unstoppable, you’ll sometimes feel tempted to give up or take the easy route. But the relentless people around you will make sure you stay the course and continue giving everything you have—they understand what success requires and will hold you accountable to that standard. This accountability means recognizing where you can put more effort in and pushing you to do so. On the other hand, non-relentless people don’t understand how important total commitment is or might be uncomfortable with pushing you harder, so they can’t offer this accountability.
Organizing Your Relentless Support
For practical advice on what kind of relentless people you should surround yourself with, look to Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles. Canfield recommends creating three categories of collaborators, each fulfilling a different role:
Achievement group: Make an achievement group of five or six people and meet with them to discuss how you’ll accomplish your goals. This group can be personal or professional, and can relate or not relate to your field—what’s important is that everybody works towards a shared purpose and provides each other with new perspectives and resources.
Accountability partner: Have one accountability partner, and meet regularly with them to make sure you’re both doing the work necessary to reach your goals.
Support team: A support team consists of experts dedicated to helping you excel in your field. Meet with members of your support team regularly in a one-on-one setting.
Other relentless people will also be honest with you, giving you a reality check when you need it. Honesty is crucial for improvement because it’s how you learn what needs improvement and how you can improve on it. Relentless people don’t care about offending or upsetting others while pursuing success, and so they’ll tell you exactly what you need to hear. This could mean telling you what you do poorly, why you do it poorly, or how to stop doing it poorly. Non-relentless people can’t offer the same level of honesty, because the fear of being offensive or upsetting holds them back.
Using Feedback Well
While Grover recommends improving by surrounding yourself with people who give honest feedback well, Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen (Thanks for the Feedback) argue that receiving feedback well is even more important for improvement. To receive feedback well, they recommend a three-step process:
Avoid trying to prove that the feedback is “wrong.” If you do this, you’ll automatically dismiss what they say and won’t look for ways you could improve.
Instead of looking for what’s wrong, look for what’s different between your perspective and theirs. Consider why the two of you might have different perspectives, without dismissing either one.
Start looking for what’s right about the feedback—points you agree on or lessons you can learn from it. Even if you disagree with the feedback giver, you still might find they have valuable insight on areas where you can improve.
Consider how you can constantly continue improving, and who in your life can relentlessly help you do so.
In your field, where are three areas where you can improve the most?
For each of these areas, explain how you can improve over the next week, and how you can improve over the next month.
What people in your life will be honest with you and hold you accountable to your goals? List three, and explain your answers.
You now understand why always pushing hard to improve is necessary for an Unstoppable need to succeed. Now, we’ll explore Grover’s second principle: To develop an Unstoppable need to succeed, you must constantly put intense pressure on yourself. In this chapter, we’ll look at Grover’s explanation for how putting pressure on yourself makes you consistently relentless, as well as how to apply this pressure productively to help you succeed.
Grover agrees with the commonly observed phenomenon that people perform better under pressure and that being under pressure forces us to find ways to rise to whatever challenge we’re facing. In other words, constant pressure forces you to be constantly relentless—putting in everything you have to overcome obstacles and succeed.
(Shortform note: While many psychologists agree that pressure under certain circumstances will improve performance, it’s often in the context of short-term high-stress situations like a basketball game. However, in a longer-term context or in a field that doesn’t require immediate and precise action, psychologists disagree with Grover on the benefits of pressure. For example, one study found that increased pressure correlated with worse performance in math students. This research suggests that the extent to which pressure will benefit you is dependent on what your discipline requires.)
Constant pressure allows you to avoid fear of failure and self-doubt in two different ways:
(Shortform note: Psychological research agrees with Grover’s argument that using stress as a tool helps you succeed, and suggests that, beyond helping you avoid fear of failure, it also benefits your mental and physical health. One study found that those who think of stress as a positive, motivating force focused less on negative emotion and had less cardiovascular stress.)
While pressure can help keep you relentless, Grover warns that you need to recognize the difference between productive and unproductive pressure. Pressure from your drive to succeed will help you stay relentless, while pressure from something like forgetting to do your work comes from a lack of commitment, and therefore doesn’t help you stay relentless.
(Shortform note: In addition to pressure from a lack of commitment, Sian Beilock (Choke) identifies another source of pressure that’s often unproductive: support from others. You might expect that support would inspire you to succeed, but Beilock argues that a supportive audience makes us pay more attention to the fact that others are watching us. This additional self-consciousness leads to worry and self-doubt, negatively impacting your performance.)
Grover suggests two ways that you can consistently put yourself in situations of productive pressure: leading others and reframing your successes.
When you’re Unstoppable, others will naturally see you as a leader—Grover notes that this is a great source of productive pressure. That’s because doing everything you can to succeed often requires using this leadership role to make sure the people around you perform at their highest possible level as well.
This leadership role also adds the pressure of needing to accept responsibility and blame if things go wrong—being at the top means that no one else is capable of picking up your slack if you fall short. If you make a mistake or lose your mental composure, it’ll negatively affect the people around you as well. Because everything falls on you in this way, you’ll also feel the pressure of having to make sure things don’t go wrong again (part of your constant search for improvement).
(Shortform note: Marshall Goldsmith (What Got You Here Won’t Get You There) agrees with Grover that leaders should accept responsibility when things go wrong, but his reasoning differs from Grover’s: While Grover argues that you should accept blame to put pressure on yourself, Goldsmith claims that you should accept blame because it’ll earn you the trust and respect of your followers. He says accepting blame earns you trust and respect because it shows your followers that you have integrity, courage, and modesty.)
The second way you can put more pressure on yourself is by changing the way you think about success. Instead of viewing it as an excuse to relax, success should increase the pressure you put on yourself. The principle of constantly seeking improvement means that each success is merely a step on your path towards Unstoppable dominance in your field—not the destination. After each success, you'll have to set your sights on the next, larger success instead of relaxing.
(Shortform note: Grant Cardone recommends a similar reframing of success in The 10X Rule, but he takes his argument further than Grover by claiming a one-time achievement shouldn’t even be called success—real success is only gained through many accomplishments over a long period of time. By adopting Cardone’s mindset, you might make it easier to frame one-time accomplishments as single steps on a journey to success, allowing you to keep up pressure on yourself.)
Consider the pressure you’re currently under, and how you can use that pressure to help you be relentless.
What was the biggest source of pressure for you in the last week? In the last month? Explain your answers.
Which of these pressures were productive (that is, encouraged you toward success)? Which were unproductive (that is, came about due to distraction or lack of commitment)?
How can you increase productive pressure? (For example, you might ask to take the lead on a few projects at work, so their success depends on you.)
How can you decrease unproductive pressure? (For example, you might feel pressed for time because you always get out the door late in the morning. You can reduce this pressure by committing to preparing the next day’s clothes and meals before you go to bed.)
Pushing yourself hard to improve and pressuring yourself are two essential principles to satisfying your need to succeed. However, to get the most out of these principles, Grover argues that you must follow the third principle behind the Unstoppable need to succeed: seeking success by any means necessary.
In this chapter, we’ll explore the three methods Grover argues are crucial for following the principle of using any means necessary to succeed:
Using any means necessary to succeed in your field requires you to make sacrifices in everything else you do. Grover insists that you can only be Unstoppable at one thing and that you’ll have to spend less time and energy on everything else. If you split time and energy between multiple disciplines, then you aren’t giving everything you have to any of them and therefore aren’t pursuing success relentlessly.
(Shortform note: Gary Keller supports this idea of total commitment to one area of your life in The One Thing. He explains that extraordinary success comes from intentionally focusing your time on actions that carry you toward a specific goal—not from spreading your focus across everything you feel you should be doing and treating every area of your life as equally important.)
Not only will you have to avoid spending time and energy on other disciplines, but you’ll also have to avoid spending too much time and energy on your family and relationships. Ultimately, this means that being Unstoppable comes with isolation. You’ll spend less time with the people you love and care about, and since there are so few other Unstoppable people almost nobody will understand what you’ve gone through to get where you are.
(Shortform note: Grover’s recommendation here seems to argue in favor of isolation, saying that spending too much time developing relationships impedes success. However, studies contrast with Grover by suggesting isolation negatively impacts mental and physical health, which could prevent success by damaging your motivation or your performance in your field.)
The sacrifices mentioned above might make you feel uncomfortable, and further suggest that the life of the Unstoppable can be unpleasant. Grover doesn’t argue with this and says that you must experience and accept this discomfort to be Unstoppable. Anyone can follow a clear, painless path toward success. But when success requires confronting fear, uncertainty, or even physical pain, discomfort holds back the Good and Great while the Unstoppable relentlessly push through it.
An example of this is a protester on a hunger strike. They feel intense discomfort and constantly face the temptation to give in and do what’s comfortable. An Unstoppable protester accepts this discomfort, knowing it's unpleasant but necessary for achieving their goal.
The Power of Accepting Discomfort
Psychological research agrees with Grover’s argument that accepting discomfort is productive, and goes even further by suggesting that doing so will lessen discomfort in the future. Specifically, psychologist Marsha Linehan discovered this when creating a method for accepting discomfort called dialectical behavioral therapy, or DBT.
One of the main theories behind DBT is that emotional suffering comes less from feelings and more from how you think about your feelings. DBT reduces this suffering by using a method called “radical acceptance”: Acknowledging your discomfort and accepting that it’s there without passing any judgments on it. More and more research suggests that radical acceptance leads to increased peace of mind, increased willpower, and increased emotional management skills.
The success of DBT suggests that accepting discomfort doesn’t just allow you to stay relentless, but will actually help reduce your discomfort as you continue to pursue relentlessness.
One kind of discomfort you might experience at some point when becoming Unstoppable is judgment from other people. Grover recommends ignoring these judgments because acknowledging them creates self-doubt, which prevents relentlessness.
(Shortform note: While Grover recommends you ignore judgments, psychological research suggests that even indirect judgments you might not consciously notice still have a significant negative impact on performance. Studies of “stereotype threat” show that members of groups associated with negative stereotypes face increased performance anxiety, even when others only passively mention those stereotypes. This increased anxiety often leads to worse performance. Research on stereotype threat suggests that Grover’s advice to ignore judgments might not prevent them from negatively impacting your performance.)
Grover explores two judgments you might get from others when pursuing relentlessness and explains how acknowledging them holds you back.
Grover explains that the intense confidence needed for avoiding fear and self-doubt will often come off as arrogance to others. Acknowledging or believing this judgment will damage this confidence, though, and will make it easier for you to feel fear or self-doubt and freeze up under pressure.
Furthermore, you shouldn’t acknowledge this judgment because it’s not true. Grover explains that there’s an important difference between relentless confidence and arrogance: the ability to acknowledge errors and mistakes. Because an Unstoppable person always seeks improvement, they admit when they’re wrong and work to make sure it doesn’t happen again. On the other hand, an arrogant person doesn’t acknowledge their mistakes and blames others or makes excuses instead of working to improve.
(Shortform note: Psychologists expand on Grover’s distinction between arrogance and confidence further by arguing that confidence and arrogance are mutually exclusive. This is because arrogance is actually a person’s attempt to overcome a lack of confidence by comparing themselves favorably to others. Following this argument, the Unstoppable can’t be arrogant because one of their defining characteristics is confidence in themselves.)
The sacrifices you must make to be Unstoppable, as well as the indulgent ways you might unwind or release pressure (which we’ll explore in Part 3), might lead others to make the judgment that you’re a bad person. This judgment claims that you value success too highly, which makes you do morally questionable things. Acknowledging this judgment means questioning your goals and everything you’ve put towards them, and will shatter your confidence. Grover insists that you need to ignore this judgment and that you should never apologize for the things you have to do to succeed or that make you who you are. If you do, you’ll feel self-doubt and won’t be able to relentlessly pursue success.
(Shortform note: Many critics have ethical concerns with this advice, saying that Grover argues against self-reflection and repentance for bad behavior in favor of succeeding at a task. Critics claim this seems like Grover values success more than he values living ethically. That being said, there is room for interpretation in whether Grover is telling people how they should live, or if he’s just writing about how the Unstoppable are. If you interpret Relentless as the latter, then Grover is just making observations instead of arguments.)
We’ve just explored the first main quality of the Unstoppable, the need to succeed, and discussed how you can productively fulfill this need. Now we’ll explore the second Unstoppable quality: the ability to direct your instincts—that is, the ability to use your natural animal instincts to accomplish the complex goals your field requires. In this part of the guide, we’ll examine three areas where Grover says you’ll need to direct your instincts—knowledge, emotions, and your primal self—as well as how doing so will help you become Unstoppable.
(Shortform note: You might assume that your animal instincts are so hardwired into your mind that you can’t tell them what to do. However, this isn’t the case—the rational part of your mind can actually train your instincts. After all, memory and experience can inspire instincts—for example, a child touching a hot stove will learn from that experience, and later will have the instinct to check if a stove is hot before touching it.)
This chapter covers the first area Grover offers: directing your instinct to best use your knowledge. We’ll explain why instinct-driven knowledge makes you Unstoppable, as well as how you can start using this type of knowledge to pursue your goals.
Acting on instinct, argues Grover, means acting without consciously thinking—this allows you to better use knowledge of your discipline because you can just act on your knowledge without having to think about the best way to use it. Thinking means opening yourself up to self-doubt and fear, damaging your confidence, and, as a result, your ability to be relentless. On the other hand, by directing your instinct to use your knowledge automatically, you’ll be able to act immediately with no distractions or self-doubts holding you back.
(Shortform note: Research supports Grover’s argument that you can “train” your instincts to rely on the things you know or believe. A study on people who had performed heroic acts by risking their lives to save others revealed that the majority of these people hadn’t considered if trying to save the person was the right thing to do. Instead, they acted intuitively on their existing moral beliefs without taking time to think. This suggests that your more “rational” thoughts and beliefs inspire instinctive action.)
Grover says that to instinctively use your knowledge, you need mastery: an understanding of your field so deep that you can access and use knowledge without taking time to think about it. Mastery allows you to address any situation within your field, and to remain calm if circumstances suddenly change. Mastery is better than the analysis and preparation of the Great: The Great can only prepare for specific situations, and so if circumstances change they can’t adapt quickly.
(Shortform note: Anette Karmiloff-Smith agrees with Grover that true mastery allows you to address any situation, and explains the brain science behind this in Beyond Modularity. She suggests that once you’re skilled enough to perform a task automatically, your brain puts less effort into the task and can use that effort on other things. Your brain then can use this “freed up” power for a more flexible and creative approach.)
For example: A Great mechanic repairs a car by researching what they think the problem is and how they can fix it on that specific model. On the other hand, an Unstoppable mechanic knows cars so well that not only can they identify what’s wrong right away, but they can also change up their approach to fixing it as needed, depending on the model of car and the extent of the damage.
Mastering your field requires a lot of hard work over a long period of time, and Grover says there are no shortcuts or easy ways to get it.
(Shortform note: If you’re wondering how you might achieve mastery, author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell provides an answer in Outliers. Gladwell suggests that mastering a skill requires 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice”—time spent making specific improvements to perfect each part of your discipline, rather than time spent practicing your discipline as a whole with no specific improvement in mind. However, some of the researchers he cites for this number have taken issue with Gladwell’s interpretation, arguing that the number of hours necessary for mastery depends more on the specific skill one is trying to master.)
Determine whether or not you have mastery in your specific discipline, and make a plan for how you can work towards or maintain it.
Are there any skills related to your discipline that you feel that you have a level of mastery in (that is, you can use those skills without consciously thinking about it)?
What situations have you faced in your discipline that required you to consciously think through your actions or the solution? (For example, if you’re a chef, you may have had a new kitchen hire make a mistake that threw the entire staff off their schedule one night.)
What kind of knowledge do you need to prevent those circumstances from surprising you? How can you obtain that knowledge? (For example, you might commit yourself to working with more people new to the field, who are prone to mistakes—this will give you practice in finding quick, creative solutions.)
In addition to directing your instinct to use knowledge, Grover explains that you can also direct your instincts to help control emotions. Directing your instincts to control emotion is crucial for consistent relentlessness because as we’ve discussed, strong emotions like fear and uncertainty can cause you to freeze up or doubt yourself—preventing you from acting relentlessly..
(Shortform note: While Grover argues that blocking out emotions will help you act decisively and confidently, psychological research contrasts with this idea. In Descartes’ Error, Antonio Damasio explores the role of emotions in decision-making. He researched people unable to experience emotion due to brain damage and found that they have trouble making simple decisions, often taking hours to do so. This contrasts with Grover’s argument that fewer emotions will make you more decisive. However, one could view Grover’s argument as a recommendation to avoid emotions that prevent decisiveness (such as fear) rather than to block out emotion altogether.)
In this chapter, we’ll explain Grover’s guidelines for how you can direct your instinct to control both your emotions and the emotions of others.
Grover explains that acting instinctively helps you control your emotions because it activates intense focus, a state of mind where you block out all emotions except for focused, determined anger. Acting instinctively helps you activate intense focus because you won’t have time to think and distract yourself. Intense focus only allows anger through—Grover argues that anger motivates you to overcome obstacles and succeed, so it helps you instead of getting in your way.
(Shortform note: Grover suggests that acting on instinct will help you avoid strong emotions, but many psychologists provide a contrasting view. Research around panic suggests that it comes from a “fight or flight” response—our natural, instinctual response to potential danger. In other words, instinct can create strong fearful emotions if you’re not able to direct it into intense focus.)
Grover says that activating intense focus involves a different method for each individual, but tends to involve one of these three: getting angry, staying calm, or staying positive. We’ll now explore how these three can help activate intense focus.
Grover explains that you can activate intense focus by finding a challenge that stirs up anger in you and forces you to focus intently on beating it.
For example: Grover mentions that he would often insult Unstoppable people he worked with or bring up their insecurities. This would challenge them to prove him wrong—a challenge they would meet by activating intense focus.
Using Anger to Overcome: The 2,500 Year Debate
Grover’s claim that you can channel anger towards productive action touches on a long-running philosophical and psychological debate on the subject. Philosophers all the way from ancient Rome’s Seneca (On Anger) to modern day’s Martha Nussbaum (Anger and Forgiveness) argue against the use of anger, claiming that it's a destructive and selfish desire that will get in the way of any productive action.
On the other hand, works ranging from Aristotle’s Rhetoric to bell hooks’ killing rage argue that anger allows you to recognize obstacles and inspires you to overcome them. Psychological research also suggests that anger plays an important role in motivating you to survive and overcome adverse situations. By suggesting that you can use anger to activate intense focus, Grover seems to align himself with the latter group.
To help yourself focus intensely, Grover recommends you work to stay calm instead of getting excited or hyped up. By staying calm, you can more easily control your emotions to focus intensely. Grover recommends you stay calm by keeping consistent routines and avoiding new people or situations if you know you’ll need to focus intensely. This way you don’t have to deal with anything unexpected that might make you emotional.
For example: If it’s the night before a big presentation, stick to your normal nighttime routine instead of trying anything new or being around different people. This way, you won’t have to deal with any extra emotion or pressure from new situations.
(Shortform note: Chip and Dan Heath (The Power of Moments) further expand on Grover’s argument that routines are important for staying calm and acting instinctively. They explain that routines help you stay calm because they prepare automatic responses to high-pressure situations. These prepared responses mean that when you experience tense moments (like a big presentation), you’ll act out your response on autopilot. This way, you won’t have to plan while in a tense moment, something that often leads to panic and uncertainty.)
While not thinking is the goal of intense focus, if it’s not possible in a given moment then Grover recommends instead focusing on positive thoughts like happy and relaxing memories. These allow you to stay calm and prevent emotions like fear from holding you back.
(Shortform note: Grover’s recommendations in this section might confuse you, since feeling happy or calm conflicts with being angry. To clarify, Grover claims that each person has their own way to activate intense focus, not that everyone should use all three methods.)
You can also control the emotions of your competition by intimidating others with the decisiveness that comes from mastery and directed instincts. Your mastery will intimidate competitors because it allows you to adapt and deal with whatever they do. Additionally, the instant and decisive nature of your instinctive action will intimidate competitors by forcing them to deal with situations they didn’t expect. This intimidation will instill fears and self-doubts in your competition that will prevent them from acting relentlessly.
(Shortform note: Not every discipline would benefit from the kind of intimidation Grover recommends—many disciplines are more collaborative than they are competitive. For example, child care and teaching benefit extensively from collaboration in most cases, while competition only helps in specific circumstances. So, while it may benefit you to direct your emotions to intimidate in a competitive setting, you may want to direct your emotions to inspire or encourage in a collaborative setting.)
Once you’re able to direct your instincts to properly use your knowledge and control your emotions, Grover declares that you must access your primal self: the person you are when acting entirely through instinct. Learning to direct your instincts productively is the foundation for this step because it ensures you’ll still relentlessly pursue your goals while acting entirely on impulse. Once you can direct your instincts, accessing your primal self will help you succeed by blocking out all distraction. Blocking out distraction is essential for relentlessness by allowing you to focus and commit yourself entirely to achieving success.
(Shortform note: The primal self Grover speaks about is quite similar to what Sigmund Freud called the Id: the part of your mind dedicated to fulfilling impulses, needs, and desires. Both Grover and Freud recognize that you can harness this part of yourself to accomplish great things. However, they have contrasting beliefs about why you might harness this animal, instinctual part of yourself: Freud believes that impulsive sexual desires motivate all great achievements in society, while Grover claims that a desire for success in itself motivates achievements—in other words, the need to succeed.)
In this chapter, we’ll explain Grover’s recommendations for how to productively access your primal self.
Grover explains that to access your primal self, you must indulge your primal desires: things you impulsively want but keep secret because fears, inhibitions, or society tells you to—things like sex, alcohol, drugs, or gambling. Grover points out that many successful and powerful people practice primal indulgence—this is why so many of them often get caught up in scandals.
(Shortform note: While Grover suggests that impulsively indulging desires leads to success, some psychologists argue that it’s the other way around: Power and success make people become more impulsive and indulgent, often due to their more favorable attitudes toward greed. One study found that people in higher social classes were more likely to display unethical behaviors like breaking traffic rules or taking candy from children.)
Grover explains that primal indulgence has two important roles: It encourages relentlessness, and it encourages instinctual action.
Indulging in primal desires allows you to find “success” (that is, something to conquer or exert control over) even outside of your discipline, according to Grover. This way, you won’t get out of practice or lose your commitment to constantly seeking success even while relieving pressure or seeking pleasure.
For example: An Unstoppable politician’s primal desire is sex. At the end of a long day when he needs to release some pressure, he’ll seek sex out as a way to find a conquest and satisfy his need for “success”. This way, he stays relentless by still seeking “success” even after he finishes his job for the day and even while seeking pleasure.
However, Grover also emphasizes that you need to make sure that indulging your primal desires doesn’t take priority over succeeding in your field. If your desires take first priority, you’ll spend too much time and energy on indulgence and won’t be able to relentlessly pursue success in your field.
(Shortform note: While Grover suggests that indulging in your primal desires will help you succeed in other parts of your life, psychological research on impulsive behaviors provides a contrasting viewpoint. One study found that impulsivity correlated with lower levels of academic achievement in college students. This suggests that indulging your desires consistently doesn’t help you succeed and therefore doesn’t contribute to relentlessness.)
Because the primal self acts entirely on instinct, indulging primal desires allows you to practice instinctive action even outside of your field. This practice means you can more easily tap into your instincts later on in the area where you want to relentlessly pursue success.
For example: An Unstoppable businessman follows his instincts and indulges his primal desire for drinking. By doing so, he continues acting instinctively even outside of work and has an easier time continuing to act on instinct at work later on.
(Shortform note: Though Grover advises indulging desires to encourage acting on instinct, this behavior resembles medical definitions of addiction. This resemblance would suggest that the more you participate in this cycle of indulgent behavior, the harder it is to control your impulsive desires—potentially to an extreme degree, where it interferes with both your ability to be relentless and your life as a whole.)
While you need to access your primal self to become Unstoppable, Grover still concedes that you’ll sometimes need to exercise self-control and avoid acting entirely on instinct. You’ll have to put on a “filter”—a public persona that covers up your primal self in front of the rest of the world.
He suggests keeping this filter on in two cases: First, it helps in professional settings where dressing and acting in a respectable way will demonstrate the professional and dedicated manner with which you approach your work. Second, it’s vital to keep it on at home—the relaxed and safe environment of home and family does not mix well with the intense drive and instinctive impulses of your primal self.
However, Grover encourages you to remove your filter when you need to tap into your primal self to activate intense focus. To be truly relentless, you can’t care about your inhibitions, and so keeping a filter on would only hold you back and prevent relentlessness.
(Shortform note: Grover’s recommendation to conceal your primal self in different contexts might confuse you—it seems to clash with his earlier suggestion to ignore the judgments of others during your search for success. Following that argument, it isn’t clear why the Unstoppable would care about covering up who they are in front of the rest of the world. It might help to think of it this way—the filter isn’t meant to help you with relentlessness, it’s meant to help you maintain your existing personal, familial, and professional relationships while being relentless elsewhere in life.)
Grover does acknowledge that there will come a time when you have nothing left to prove and are ready to finish up your career or lifelong commitment. He notes that in order for you to do so, your self-control will have to triumph over your primal self, or else you’ll never feel satisfied and won’t stop seeking success until you’re dead and gone.
Going From Relentless to Retired
For advice on how to transition from relentless to retired, experts elaborate further on what this process might look like and how to best approach it. One study found that highly gifted individuals end up less happy later in life, stuck wondering if they fully lived up to their potential.
However, there is a solution to this unhappy decline: helping others. By transitioning into a mentor role and teaching the people around you, you continue using the wisdom you’ve developed over the course of your life—rather than leaving it behind and ruminating over “what ifs.”. Scientists call this collected wisdom “crystallized knowledge,” and believe that crystallized knowledge peaks far later in life compared to other mental faculties—meaning that you still have opportunities to “live up to your potential” in various ways, even beyond retirement.
Identify what your primal self might want to indulge in, as well as how you might keep those desires in check.
Identify one of your primal desires, and explain how they help you keep your “pursuing success” instincts sharp. (For example, you might go on lots of dates. The constant practice of flirting with women, making a good impression on them, and getting them to want to go on a date with you is the way you choose to seek and achieve success.)
Make a plan for how often you can indulge that desire without having them negatively impact your life. (For example, “I can go on as many dates as I want every week, as long as it’s not causing any significant impact on my health and I stick to my monthly budget.”)