That's what has always been good about track. The goal is very clearly defined: Try to win. Get the gold medal. And I'm able to put my energy toward that.
To change history you have to have very simple goals.
The more clarity you have, the more powerful your goals are.
I was very driven in high school. I worked a bunch of odd jobs. I never partied. I never drank. I was just a theater geek who was obsessed with movies.
I knew from an early age exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a musician and that was it. It made life a lot easier knowing what I was aiming for.
I said to my agent, 'I want short, sharp, well-paid jobs because I haven't got time for anything else.'
If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it. Only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.
There are few things more powerful than a life lived with passionate clarity.
I suppose I had these concerns but I really felt that I had to keep my scope very, very concentrated.
I have always maintained that my concentration is only on my career and on nothing else.
Do it! People who succeed don't just sit and think about what they want to do. They take meaningful, purposeful, directional action consistently and persistently. Every step they take puts them toward the outcome they're looking for.
I'm too old to be farting around with stuff that isn't precisely what I want to do.
My ambitions were already very clearly fixed by the time I was 6 or 7.
I'm not allowed to celebrate as normal eighteen year olds probably would but I'm going to save it for after the Olympics!
When you are shooting action, there is a satisfying thing because your objectives are very clear.
I'm not one of those people who needs that gratification of doing, like, 10 films a year.
An average person with average talents and ambition and average education, can outstrip the most brilliant genius in our society, if that person has clear, focused goals.
