Here’s Kobe Bryant on flow state, meditation and feeling supremely confident. Learn what made the Black Mamba so effective on the court.
Kobe Bryant (August 23, 1978 – January 26, 2020) was an American basketball player, widely considered one of the greatest to ever play the game. He won five NBA championships, was an 18-time All-Star, the 2008 NBA Most Valuable Player, led the NBA in scoring twice and ranks fourth in league all-time scoring.
One of Kobe’s greatest assets was his mindset, what he called the Mamba Mentality. He was a fierce competitor with an incredible work ethic who understood the power of focus, presence of mind and flow.
In a 2019 fireside chat with Patrick Bet-David, Kobe shared a funny moment from training and spoke about the mindfulness culture that coach Phil Jackson cultivated:
“He [Phil Jackson] had a Tai Chi Master come to practice. We walk out there and the Tai Chi Master is standing there center court. He tells us to take our shoes off and I’m pissed because I’m ready to like play basketball man.
He’s standing up there and he says everybody close their eyes, and he does stuff like monk gazing at moon, and talks about the fingertips barely touching, and the spirituality of all that.
And I’m peaking around like, ‘Is everybody doing this shit? What the hell’s going on?’ And you know, big ass Phil, Phil’s there doing it himself, doing all this stuff, and I’m like, ‘Damn, OK I’m gonna try it!”
But honestly, I bought into it. I bought into the meditation. I bought into the deeper connection that exists within the game.
And so when you watch our games, and you watch any of Phil’s teams, or Chicago teams, game six against Utah. You watch our games, you know, game seven against Boston, we were never rattled ever because we were always in the moment, always in the present, always extremely calm, always looking at the reality of the situation and not letting our emotions cloud our execution.
And that comes from that meditative state that he would teach and preach from day one.”
Many athletes are sceptical about meditation at first but the ones who embrace it unlock a deeper connection with the game. Meditation increases focus, calms the monkey mind and allows us to make better decisions in the moment. No matter the sport or gravity of the situation, mindfulness can improve performance and trigger the flow state.
Here, Kobe explains what it’s like being in the flow state:
“When you get in that zone it’s just this supreme confidence that you know it’s going in. It’s not a matter of if, or this and that, it’s going in. Things just slow down. You know, everything slows down and you just have supreme confidence.
But when that happens you really do not try to focus on what’s going on because you can lose it in a second. Everything becomes one noise. You don’t hear this or that, everything’s just one noise. You’re not paying attention to one or the other. You just stay right there. You have to really try to stay in the present, you know, not let anything break that rhythm.”
Kobe attributed much of his success to the Mamba Mentality and his ability to get into flow. Watch any of his games and you’ll see that intensity in action.
The Mamba Mentality: How I Play is Kobe’s personal account of his life and career on the basketball court. In this book he shared detailed insights on how he developed mentally and physically, and how he rose to the top in such a competitive sport.
I also recommend watching The Redeem Team (Netflix), which follows the U.S. Olympic Men’s Basketball team as they campaign to win Gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
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