Have you ever seen this happen? Someone hits one big goal and thinks they’ve made it. They coast. They lose their edge. The hard truth is, it’s happened to me. I’ve had to learn (over and over) that a win isn’t the end—it’s just the start of the next push. Bill Belichick, one of the most successful coaches in history, lays this out perfectly in the article below. His secret? Keep showing up. Keep working. Keep winning. He just took his own advice and became the head coach at UNC at 73 years old.
Here are the lessons I took away from the article—they’re ones I’ve learned a time or five:
— The Win Is Just the Beginning: A Super Bowl ring, a big client, a career milestone — it doesn’t matter. That win isn’t the final destination. Like Belichick says, “A big win isn’t the end of anything. It’s the beginning of trying to win the next one.” I couldn’t agree more. Celebrate? Sure. Then get back to work. Success is rented, and rent is due every day. The quote above reminded me of my favorite quote by Eliud Kipchoge, the GOAT of marathon running. He said “I chase one rabbit at a time. I only focus on my next race.” This quote highlights his singular focus on the immediate challenge, rather than dwelling on past achievements.
— Don’t Abandon What Got You There: Belichick admits his biggest regret came when he deviated from the system that built his success. One impulsive decision—one departure from the process—cost him a championship. Big moments aren’t the time for reinvention. It’s time to double down on what works. Discipline wins. Flash doesn’t.
— Train to Win All the Time: As Belichick states below, “You cannot think of big tests and triumphs as final… When we prepare to win, we prepare to win all the time.” You want to be great? Then show up like it every day—when it’s boring, when it’s hard, when no one’s watching. Prepare like every day is the big game. Because one day, it will be.
This is what living the Fantastic Life looks like—winning with consistency, humility, and a relentless drive to keep going. If Belichick can own his biggest mistake on the world’s biggest stage, we can own our daily slip-ups and get better. That’s the mindset I’m still chasing.
Here is a great Bill Belichick quote I love to end this LIFEies:
“Helping the team win doesn’t look warm and fuzzy. It looks like work—usually hard work—if you want to outcompete your opponent.”
The Fantastic Life Rule #10:
Take the Decision Out of the Moment
When you build a life based on consistency, discipline, and determination, you never have to worry about what you do next. When you build a life based on winning, then winning becomes second nature.
Sustained success, writes former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, requires sticking with what you’ve practiced and being ready to admit your own mistakes
Belichick reacts as the Patriots win the 2005 Super Bowl against the Philadelphia Eagles in Jacksonville, Fla. Photo: Amy Sancetta/Associated Press
By Bill Belichick
April 25, 2025 11:17 am ET
I was born into football. For years my father, Steve Belichick, was an assistant coach at the Naval Academy, and by all accounts, he was the best game scout anyone had ever seen. I still use techniques I learned from watching him.
For the last half-century, I have been a football coach, and I have never stopped learning about the game and competition. I have learned about what makes human beings excel and want to excel. I have led men through months of mental and physical preparation, then into months of the most intense athletic competition in the history of the world.
As I began to succeed as a coach, first with the New York Giants and then the New England Patriots, I started to establish in my mind a series of principles, rules of thumb, habits and philosophies that I understood to be fundamental to our teams’ successes. Somewhere, someone came up with the phrase “the Patriot Way,” I assume after our first two Super Bowl wins. I think they made some money off it. Good for them. Here’s something you should know: The Patriot Way does not exist. When we won, I kept what worked. When we lost, I threw out what hadn’t.
Belichick (right), then the defensive coordinator for the New York Giants, at a 1984 playoff game with head coach Bill Parcells. Photo: Arthur Anderson/Getty Images
One important principle is realizing that a big win isn’t the end of anything. It’s the beginning of trying to win the next one. You cannot think of big tests and triumphs as “final” in any respect if you want to keep winning. When we prepare to win, we prepare to win all the time.
To do that, we have to master a winning process. Sometimes, the pressure and hoopla surrounding a big game can cause some coaches and players to forget what got them there in the first place. Sometimes they think they need to meet the moment with something dramatic. It’s the biggest stage, so they pull out a new plan, a surprise play, something that’s going to shock and awe. At a more basic level, instead of one energy drink, you might have three to triple your energy.
Have you ever gone out and bought new shoes or a new suit before a big day at work? You want to make an impression, of course. But then by lunch you have blisters because the shoes aren’t broken in, or the suit jacket is too tight-—and then you lose track of all your careful preparation.
Belichick looks over his rookie and free agent players at the team’s practice facility in Foxborough, Mass., in 2009. Photo: Stephan Savoia/Associated Press
Take it from me: It doesn’t work like that. Big moments are won by winning all the small moments that come before them. We won our first Patriots Super Bowl in 2002 in part because we didn’t do anything we hadn’t done before.
People focus on the fact that we developed a new defensive game plan, but they forget that we also developed a new game plan against every team we played. We were following the same process that brought us there, but that didn’t mean doing the same things: Our consistent process also included consistently adapting.
Another thing we need to do consistently is take responsibility for mistakes. That brings up one of my favorite pieces of football dialect. Football coaches, like any other workforce, conform around a certain way of saying things. For every “let’s circle back” or “looping you in” that you might see over and over in your emails, we can match you: “At the end of the day, it’s all about execution,” or “It’s all about fundamentals.” It’s a little weird sometimes, but it’s also human nature.
There is a four-word phrase that has been in heavy usage in any high-functioning team I’ve been around. It should be a part of your lexicon too. Four words that are essential to a healthy operation that is all about sustained success: “I messed that up” (though I must confess that my usual locker-room version uses a much more vivid verb).
Belichick, with quarterback Tom Brady, left, tight end Rob Gronkowski , right, and other team members during Boston’s rally to celebrate the Patriots’ victory in the 2017 Super Bowl, the fifth of their six under Belichick. Photo: Stan Grossfeld/The Boston Globe/Getty Images
They’re also four words that will delight your colleagues—until they realize that the expectation is that they reciprocate when it’s their turn.
It’s especially important for people to hear it from their boss. As head coach, it stands to reason that I should say it the most, and loudest. I have the most responsibility and should be the most accountable. My mistakes affect the most people.
But everyone else has important responsibilities too. “I messed that up” can become a normal part of our daily conversations, and we can be better for it. It’s about honesty and accountability, yes, but it also sets a standard that mistakes get ventilated instead of hidden.
Simply saying that you blew it doesn’t erase the mistake, but it gives other people trust. After all, who is likely the person who first realizes that you made a mistake? You know it happened, and you probably know why. And once you start, others will follow.
Let me tell you about one of the more agonizing “I messed that up” situations that I have been part of.
David Tyree (left) of the New York Giants catches a late-game pass against his helmet to help narrowly defeat the Patriots in the 2008 Super Bowl in Glendale, Ariz. Photo: Andy Lyons/Getty Images
The 2008 Super Bowl was supposed to cap off an undefeated season for the Patriots. We were “supposed” to go 19–0. But David Tyree’s miracle “helmet catch” famously fueled a comeback victory by the Giants, my former team. With less than two minutes left, Tyree leaped for a pass from Eli Manning and pressed it against his helmet to keep control of it; that enabled the touchdown that followed and the Giants’ 17-14 win.
But long before that, I made a decision I would regret. Even though our record-setting offense had put up 38 points against the Giants a few weeks earlier, the Super Bowl became a defensive struggle, with neither team sniffing any points for a long stretch. Nursing a 7-3 lead midway through the third quarter, we found ourselves with a fourth-down situation. We were 13 yards short of what we needed to keep the drive going, and 31 yards from the Giants’ end zone.
Sometimes you get to big moments and don’t like any of your options. Option one, we could kick a field goal, but our kicker had little experience then with pressure moments, and it would have been a very long kick for him; the Giants would get the ball with great field position if we missed. Option two, punting the ball away, would be of little value that close to the end zone. Nobody ever wants to punt from there.
Option three was to go for the first down on a fourth-and-13. In my entire career, I have decided to go for it in that kind of situation just that one time. I didn’t follow my own principles: It wasn’t what we were prepared to do, it wasn’t part of our process, it didn’t adhere to treating big games the same way as the others.
Above all, I hadn’t adapted to what I was seeing in front of me: I still hadn’t accepted that the Giants defense was playing at the level they plainly were. I held on to my confidence in our passing game too long. I should have attempted the field goal.
I messed that up. Nothing more to it. I learned my lesson. I wish I hadn’t learned it in the Super Bowl.
If I can admit that, you can admit that you forgot to remove the watermark from that one PDF before it was sent to a client. You can admit you were the guy who left his coffee mug on the conference room table and it left a mark. You can admit you were the last to use that jammed copy machine. One hundred million people didn’t watch your mistake—and get to watch it again and again and again on YouTube.
Bill Belichick coached the New England Patriots for 24 seasons. This essay is adapted from his book, “The Art of Winning: Lessons From My Life in Football,” which will be published by Avid Reader Press on May 5.
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Appeared in the April 26, 2025, print edition as ‘How to Win Six Super Bowls? Don’t Relax After the First One.’.