About Trevor Moawad
Trevor Moawad (1973–2021) was a renowned mental conditioning coach and the former President of Moawad Consulting Group, as well as CEO and cofounder of Limitless Minds. He gained widespread recognition as the mental coach for Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson and collaborated closely with top NCAA football programs, US Special Operations forces, Major League Baseball teams, and NBA players. Moawad also authored influential books on mindset and performance, including It Takes What It Takes and Getting to Neutral, where he shared his philosophy and practical strategies to help individuals develop mental toughness and achieve peak performance under pressure.
About The Book
“Wanting leads to questions. Those questions make us look at the role choice plays in our life relative to the things we want. That pushes us to make a plan. From there the barriers become clear, and the solutions quickly follow. When our mind sees solutions, we begin to adopt the best behaviors. We can approach life neutrally and do what we must do to produce the outcomes we desire. Once we reach this point, we know. It takes what it takes.”
If you’ve been following Parentotheca, you probably know my husband Dawid was a professional rower with a degree in sports psychology. I’ve always been fascinated by how he applies the champion’s mindset to life and work, so at some point I decided to get a sneak peek into the world of elite athletes – through books.
It Takes What It Takes has been sitting on my Kindle for a while. I picked it up during a deep dive into sports psychology top books like The Champion’s Mind by Jim Afremow and Elite Minds by Stan Beecham (check out our notes). Another book, Every Moment Matters by John O’Sullivan, is patiently waiting for it’s turn (it’s on my 2025 reading list!).
I was drawn to It Takes What It Takes because Trevor Moawad was one of the most trusted mental conditioning coaches out there – working with top NCAA football teams, US Special Ops, MLB, NBA, and elite athletes like Russell Wilson.
Moawad’s wisdom comes from his career highs and personal setbacks. He’s known as the go-to “whisperer” for elite performers, blending calm clarity with ruthless honesty. His signature idea – “neutral thinking” – is all about ditching automatic negativity (or positivity) and replacing it with a clear, nonjudgmental mindset that lets you assess challenges calmly and act decisively.
As you might guess from the subtitle, this mindset isn’t just for athletes – it can transform your entire life, even if the only sport you play is chasing after your kids.
The book is packed with inspiring stories, practical insights, and powerful lessons. I’m excited to share some of them with you.
Let’s dive in.
Key Insights
It Takes Neutral Thinking
“Neutral thinking is a high-performance strategy that emphasizes judgment-free thinking, especially in crises and pressure situations. It is the cornerstone of what I teach the athletes and teams that employ me. The thing about neutral thinking that resonates with so many elite athletes, most of whom are deeply skeptical of any self-help, is that it’s real. It’s true. It acknowledges that the past is irrevocable, that it can’t be changed with mantras or platitudes.
Neutral thinking shuns all attempts at illusion or outright self-delusion, which are often the foundation of other motivational systems. Neutral thinking strips away the bull and the biases, both external and internal. […]
A mistake at work, in a marriage, as a parent, in a big-time college football game – it’s real. It happened. I don’t believe in pretending it didn’t. I don’t believe in telling yourself it’s anything other than what it is. But I also don’t believe in enlarging it, in viewing it as the end of the world, which is what so many of us do. What happened happened. Okay. Fine. What happens next has nothing to do with that. What happens next will be determined solely by what you do next, and what you do next will be the absolute right thing, I promise, if you focus on that thing and that thing alone.”
Neutral thinking is the core idea of this book and it’s all about focusing on facts rather than feelings or lables.
Moawad explains that most people slip into two traps: negative thinking (“I can’t do it”) or overly positive thinking (“Everything will magically work out”). Neutral thinking avoids both. When you think neutrally you look at a situation exactly as it is – without any drama or sugarcoating – and deciding the next best action based on reality. For example, instead of saying “I’m terrible at this” or “I’ll crush this no matter what,” a neutral thinker says, “This is what happened, this is where I am, and this is what I need to do next.”
In other words, you press pause on the emotional noise, focus on what you can actually control, make a game plan, and keep moving forward (so useful for parents!).
I love this short video that explains the concept visually:
And yes, your past doesn’t define your future. Whether you’ve failed or won before, what matters now are the next steps and choices that move you closer to success.
P.S. This reminded me of Rethinking Positive Thinking by Gabriele Oettingen. Her WOOP technique is a brilliant, practical way to put neutral thinking into action in everyday life.
Plan Your Success
“It takes a plan to achieve anything of value. When you plan, you identify an end goal and then chart out neutral behaviors that can help you reach that goal. That may sound overly simplistic, but a lot of people say “I want to do this” without thinking about the behaviors and benchmarks required to reach that goal. Choosing not to plan is actually a plan around not planning. I don’t recommend that.”
Simple, but so true. A goal or a wish without a roadmap is just wishful thinking. Once you set the target, you need clear, practical steps. AND the discipline to follow them. Writing down your goals and plan makes it easier to stay on track and make the right choices along the way.
That brings us to the next insight.
The Illusion Of Choice
“A lot of times we feel as if we have choices to make about where we want to go and WHAT IT TAKES to get there. The REALITY is that what it takes to succeed is not REALLY a choice. WE GET tired of talking about it. […]
There is no choice. It takes what it takes. […]
You don’t have to live like a monk or train like an Olympian, but you do have to make the only choices that will lead to success. You’ve got people out there training to beat you. Maybe it’s someone at a competing firm. Maybe it’s a co-worker who is eyeing the same promotion you are. Correct choices don’t help only when competing against other people. You can make choices that lead to behaviors that make you a better spouse. A better parent. A more physically and mentally fit person. You can win even when the opponent is your own previous choices.”
This gave me goosebumps. It takes what it takes. The illusion is that we get to “choose” an easier way, but we don’t. There’s only one real choice: to do what actually leads you closer to your goal.
It reminds me of Darren Hardy’s wisdom in The Compound Effect:
“Choices are at the root of every one of your results. Each choice starts a behaviour that over time becomes a habit.”
And those choices? They become your system – the engine that drives your success. As James Clear puts it in Atomic Habits:
“The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It is not about any single accomplishment. It is about cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.”
So here’s the question worth sitting with: What choices do you need to make today to move toward your goals?
Elimination Is The First Step
“So how do you shift from negative to neutral? Think of it in dietary terms. The first step to being a better eater is not in being a good one. It’s not in dominating broccoli or mastering a plant-based diet. The first step is not being a bad eater. Maybe it’s eliminating between-meal sweets. Maybe it’s swapping potato chips for an apple. Eliminating behaviors is like ordering food from a drive-through. The contemporary philosopher Matthew McConaughey – who also acts a little – says the “process of elimination is the first step” to any serious improvement. One less bad option opens the door for a new and better option to appear more clearly.”
I love this idea because it makes change feel doable. Want to be a better parent? Start by cutting out the “bad” habits: put the phone down and actually connect with your child, stop yelling and practice non-violent communication, stop being overly permissive and start setting healthy boundaries. You get the idea.
Now think about your own goal and ask: What are three habits I need to eliminate? Once you’ve named them, you can lean on James Clear’s Atomic Habits or Darren Hardy’s The Compound Effect for practical tools to replace them with stronger, better ones.
Pressure Is A Privilege
“Greatness is available to anyone – including your opponents – and the pressure is on you to snatch it first. This is true on the field, on the court, or in your office. You may be intimidated by that pressure you feel to perform every day. Instead, try embracing it. Pressure isn’t a burden. It isn’t something to be avoided or minimized. As tennis great Billie Jean King said, pressure is a privilege. What does that mean? If you’re under pressure, it means someone gives a shit what you do. If you’re under pressure, it means someone relies on you. That is the ultimate privilege.”
I absolutely love this reframe: pressure is a privilege. When you combine that with a stress-is-enhancing mindset, you supercharge resilience, build antifragility, and become unstoppable.
One of my favourite mantras to teach my kids is “No pressure, no diamonds” (I wrote about it here). But as they’re getting older and facing more responsibilities – and yes, more pressure from school – I’ll be adding this one to the mix: pressure is a privilege. And I love that.
Your Life is Not A Rental Car
“The key is to be ready when the pressure comes. When you’re willing to jump over three chairs and grab the pen and take ownership, you’re ready. Many of us live our lives like they’re rental cars. We don’t clean rental cars. We can ding them up without consequence. When we own a car, we tend to worry more about jumping curbs or scratching the rims. We wash the car. We wax it. We vacuum the floor mats. Your life isn’t a rental car. You own it. And that means you must engage in the behaviors that keep it in good working order.”
I absolutely love this metaphor. Ownership is everything. Opportunities are everywhere, but only those who are ready to own their choices and their effort can seize them when they show up.
The Cure For Psychosclerosis
“Atherosclerosis is a hardening of the arteries. Psychosclerosis is a hardening of the attitudes, and it might be just as dangerous. No one does this to us. Life doesn’t wear us down. We do it to ourselves. But there is a cure. It’s inside all of us. That cure is the comma. The late comedian Gracie Allen said to never place a period where God has placed a comma. The idea of living neutral is putting a comma at the end of an event – good or bad – and knowing that the next words will determine how the sentence continues. I have the most powerful chance to keep writing my sentence for myself. If I don’t, someone else will write it and I’ll be forced to live it.”
Psychosclerosis. Do you have any symptoms?
It creeps in quietly. It shows up as the voice that says, “this is just who I am,” or “things will never change.” It’s when you stop trying, stop asking questions, stop believing there’s another chapter to write. That’s when life feels smaller, harder, and heavier.
The cure? The comma. Refusing to see any moment as the end of your story. Every failure, every win, every twist is just a pause before the next sentence. Challenge yourself. Step outside your comfort zone. Keep learning. Keep adding commas.
Because the moment you stop writing your story, someone else will happily take the pen.
Action Steps For You:
- Practice Neutral Thinking: Catch yourself when you slip into negative self-talk (“I always mess this up”) or blind positive thinking (“It’ll all work out somehow”). Instead, ground yourself in the facts: What happened? Where am I now? What’s the next best action? Write it down if needed – this stops the spiral and brings clarity. Model this to your kids – they’ll learn it from you.
- Eliminate One “Bad” Habit: Start small. Maybe it’s putting your phone away at the dinner table, lowering your voice instead of yelling, or following through on boundaries you set. One less unhelpful habit can create space for stronger connection and trust.
- Reframe Pressure as Privilege: Whether it’s school projects, sports tryouts, or daily routines, teach your kids (and remind yourself) that pressure means that somebody cares about what they do and it’s a privilege. A simple mantra works wonders: “No pressure, no diamonds.”
Quotes From The Book:
“The past isn’t predictive. The past isn’t prologue. If you can absorb and embrace that belief, everything can change.”
“When you’re elite, you need to be holistic. You need to have a plan for everything. You need to train it all.”
“Behaviors are not only what we do, but what we are willing to not do.”
“Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear a word you say.”
“More important than believing in yourself is believing in what you are doing for yourself and those you are serving. And the leader is supposed to serve the subordinates. Part of that service is a willingness to listen and learn.”
“Attitudes are contagious. Do you want people around you to catch yours? You can’t make footprints in the sands of time if you’re sitting on your butt. And who wants to make buttprints in the sands of time? Who wants to be average? Average is that place in the middle. It’s the best of the worst or the worst of the best.”
“No matter what situation you find yourself in, there is almost always a behavior you can easily identify that, if you eliminate it, will set you on a better path.”
