How Nike’s sports psychology can help your writing

Last night, I watched Air (now on Amazon Prime!), which, if you haven’t heard, is based on the true story of how Nike signed a rookie Michael Jordan to be the spokesperson for their struggling basketball shoe line.  

If you’re a sucker for 1980s nostalgia, as I am, you’ll love Air for its costumes, sets, soundtrack, and familiar, now middle-aged stars. 

The movie really isn’t about basketball or Michael Jordan. It’s about Sonny Vaccaro, the marketing executive tasked with finding a couple of lower-ranked basketball players to represent lower-ranked Nike’s basketball brand, and how he sees something in Jordan that requires him to risk his job, his reputation, and the company’s money in pursuit of the thing that he thinks matters more.

I got a little emotional in an early scene when Phil Knight, the CEO and founder of Nike, says about running, “The illusion is that the finish line is the destination. But the act itself is the destination.” 

It’s the same with writing: the act is the destination.

I thought for sure I’d have a bunch of published books by now, because four years ago, I said I was going to write and publish some books. 

And, four years later, no additional published books. (Yet…)

When I coach writers, we talk about outcomes and what they want for their books. How they envision publication; what their goals are. 

I believe this is important. We have to have a vision first, an imagined future state to aim towards.

And yet. 

We also have to let go of the outcome, because we have no control over it. I cannot control who decides to publish my books (unless I do it myself – and then I have no control over who buys it. But publishing decisions is another email for another day.)

The only thing we have control over is writing the very best books we can. And so we write.

Here’s the full quote from Phil Knight, from his memoir, Shoe Dog:

“For that matter, few ideas are as crazy as my favorite thing, running. It’s hard. It’s painful. It’s risky. The rewards are few and far from guaranteed. When you run around an oval track, or down an empty road, you have no real destination. At least, none that can fully justify the effort. The act itself becomes the destination. It’s not just that there’s no finish line; it’s that you define the finish line. Whatever pleasures or gains you derive from the act of running, you must find them within. It’s all in how you frame it, how you sell it to yourself.” 

You have to (ahem) just do it, regardless of the outcome. 

It’s about changing the focus from the finish line to the practice. Just focus on writing because you have a story to tell, because you have a message someone needs to read. 

Measure progress by the act, not the outcome. This, my friends, is writing.