Recently I had the opportunity to see Bruce Springsteen. It wasn’t just him mailing in a show. The man gave everything he had for three hours. When you look back at his story, in 1972 his career was going nowhere. Nobody outside of the Jersey Shore had ever heard of him. Somehow he had an agent, and he got him a meeting with the legendary record producer John Hammond who had sparked the careers of some big-time legends, among them Bob Dylan, who famously sang, “If you ain’t got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.”

Springsteen went to perform for Hammond at the Columbia Records office. He didn’t have a guitar, so he borrowed one from a friend and was riding the subway with the guitar slung over his shoulder and then through the streets of New York City. He walked into the building and started to panic a little bit. Kind of like a lot of us do. Maybe you’re brought into a game in a late-inning situation. Maybe you’re in a sales meeting and you have an opportunity to sell to a client who is the biggest client your firm’s ever worked with, or maybe you’re walking into the SAT. Regardless, you have that sense of panic.

Springsteen, while riding the elevator, performed on himself what he calls mental jujitsu. He said, “I’ve got nothing, so I’ve got nothing to lose. I can only gain if this works out. If I don’t, I’ve still got what I came in with.”
Springsteen went in, and Hammond said, “Play me something.” Springsteen played an acoustic version of the song It’s Hard to be a Saint in the City, and when he was done, Hammond said, “You’ve got to be on Columbia Records.” Springsteen reminded himself that he still had to be the same person regardless of the outcome. He walked in nervous, but he also walked in confident in his own abilities. So Springsteen, in that moment, thought he had nothing to lose, but also thought, “I’m going to blow his socks off.” And he did.

So Springsteen walked in with absolutely nothing, performed to the best of his ability, cool and calm, and somehow walked out of there with a record contract. Now he’s worth 600 million dollars, sells out every show, and is one of the biggest icons of American rock n’ roll. But 53 years ago, he walked in with nothing, told himself he was going to blow the guy’s socks off, and went and did it, and that launched his career. He’s had to do things to sustain his excellence, he didn’t stop right there, but that was his stepping stone.

The next time you’re in a situation where you feel everything is on the line, it might be, but you’ve also got nothing to lose. You’re going to walk out of it exactly where you walked into it.

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The Competitor’s Brain, a podcast hosted by Loren Foxx, takes years of experience in sports psychology, including working with greats in the business like Ken Ravizza, Brian Cain, and Dr. Rob Gilbert, and assembles the highlights into an easy-to-digest three minute daily podcast.