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The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results Hardcover – January 1, 2013

by Bob Knight (Author), Bob Hammel (Contributor)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 736 ratings
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Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking, a classic bestseller, has inspired an optimistic perspective for millions of Americans. Now, in an inspirational and entertaining rebuttal, the legendary basketball coach Bob Knight explains why “negative thinking” will actually produce more positive results, in sports and in daily life. Coach Knight, the second-winningest coach in NCAA history with 902 victories, explains that victory is often attained by the team that makes the fewest mistakes. His coaching philosophy was to instill discipline by “preparing to win” rather than hoping to win. That meant understanding the downside and drilling his teams to prevent the things that could go wrong. And when his teams did win, he made sure they didn’t dwell on their success, but rather looked immediately to the challenges of the next game. He applies this lesson to business strategy as well.

Coach Knight has long been inspired by his grandmother’s words, "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” As the first person to teach Knight about the power of negative thinking, this book is dedicated to her pragmatic spirit.

Previous page
  1. Print length
    223 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    New Harvest
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 2013
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 1 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    054402771X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0544027718
  8. See all details
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  1. Discipline is recognizing what has to be done, doing it as well as you can do it, and doing it that way all the time.
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  2. Having the will to win is not enough. Everyone has that. What matters is having the will to prepare to win.
    Highlighted by 1,698 Kindle readers
  3. Success is a grind. It’s perseverance; it is operating at a high level of performance on a constant basis.
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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Knight’s success as a college basketball coach is unquestioned. He was college basketball’s Coach of the Year five times and won three NCAA championships. He’s currently a basketball analyst for ESPN. Knight’s success was built on preparation. Recognizing that offensive success could be fleeting, he always emphasized defense, which he describes as making the appropriate response to the negativity one can encounter on offense. So negative thinking about offense leads one to focus, as coaches and players, on defense. See? It’s a conceit that lends itself more to a catchy title than an application in sports, life, or business. What we’re really left with here is solid, commonsensical advice on preparation—how to move quickly from one success to the next challenge rather than basking in the afterglow, as well as how to use losses (failures) as inspiration while moving through life. Knight sprinkles personal anecdotes throughout to illustrate his points and concludes each chapter with a couple aphorisms he calls “Knight’s Nuggets.” (For example: “One more beer can’t hurt . . . unless you’re driving.”) This is an easily digestible self-help book by a very successful man. The advice is generally useful, except for the Nuggets. Hold the Nuggets, next time, Mr. Knight. There’s a negative you can build on. --Wes Lukowsky

Review

"It's an antidote to America’s kiss-the-booboo Little League moms — and psycho bleacher dads, too.”—New York Post

"If the book could be summed up in one sentence, it’s probably the short, italicized one found in the introduction: 'Victory favors the team making the fewest mistakes.' But, such a digest would preclude any discussion of theology, turkey mating calls and the upside of being hard to please."—Indianapolis Star

"What distinguishes The Power of Negative Thinking is that it is fun to read and wise."—The Wall Street Journal

“Brightly anecdotal. Legendary college-basketball coach Knight sings the praises of negativity [in] a quick, negative-to-achieve manifesto.”—Kirkus

“This readable book’s got plenty of game.” –Bookpage

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ New Harvest; 1st edition (January 1, 2013)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 223 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 054402771X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0544027718
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.02 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 736 ratings

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  1. Bob Hammel

    Bob Hammel

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  2. Bob Knight

    Bob Knight

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    In college basketball, the name Bob Knight is synonymous with greatness and winning. He is among the youngest head coaches to have won 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700 and 800 career games. He was the first men’s college basketball coach to have reached 900 wins and until recently was the only member of this exclusive club. When he was 62-years old, he became the youngest of the four coaches to ever reach the milestone of 800 victories. Coach Knight earned his 880th career win at Texas Tech on January 1, 2007 with a Red Raider win over New Mexico (70-68). Coach Knight completed his coaching career at Texas Tech on February 2, 2008 with a 67-60 win over Oklahoma State University and announced his retirement soon after.

    A native of Orrville, Ohio, Knight is a graduate of Ohio State where he was a member of the Buckeye hardwood teams that won Big Ten titles in 1960, 1961, and 1962 and the NCAA in 1960 while posting an overall record of 78-6. Many of the Big Ten team records that Knight's Indiana teams shattered were those he had a part in making as an OSU player. After graduating with a degree in History and Government, Knight was an assistant coach at Cuyahoga Falls (Ohio) High School one year before entering the U.S. Army where he was assigned to assist Coach Tates Locke at West Point.

    Bob Knight is the father of two sons. Tim is a 1986 graduate of Stanford University, and Pat, who played for him at Indiana University from 1991-95, is now the head coach at Lamar University. Bob Knight and his wife, Karen, were married in 1988. He is currently an analyst for ESPN College GameDay.

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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
736 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

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David Greene
5.0 out of 5 stars Bob Knight book
Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2024
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A very good book by Coach Knight on the benefits of negative thinking in life lessons and coaching tactics.
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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Good premise, marginal execution
Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2013
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Coach Knight makes a really good case for the basic philosophy, especially in the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the book. I had two problems with the later stages of the book. First, he cites examples of positive thinking from his career that were contrary to his negative-thinking approach, then unconvincingly rationalizes it - he in effect says, "it sounds positive, but it was really negative." Second, he spends a considerable portion of the book recounting tales of glory with only weak ties to the theme; this portion of the book gets tedious, unless those moments have special meaning for you and you can enjoy reliving them with him. Fortunately he recovers and gets back on point toward the end.

Overall, though, the message works, and Coach Knight does a good job of connecting the philosophy to business management without trying to make it a management book. In other words, he doesn't say, "this is how to manage, and here are examples from my coaching career." Instead he says, "this is how I coached, and it can be applied to management like this."

Bottom line, it's a relatively easy read and does have good lessons for business managers as well as coaches.
3 people found this helpful
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Finch
5.0 out of 5 stars It's really about being prepared for all contingencies
Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2014
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Over the years I've read a lot of books for "advice." I put this one at the top of them all. I don't think folks who don't like Bobby Knight will like it all that much. But if you're agnostic or supportive of the coach, this is a very engaging read. I like Coach Knight..always have. I appreciate the way his teams are always well-disciplined and now I know why. I intend to use his ideas in business, in life and as a parent. It's that good.

Having grown tired of the saccharin prescriptions in most books in the "positive thinking" for business and personal advice book categories, I had pretty much stopped reading them. This one caught my attention. I like the idea of always keeping it real, making accurate assessments and working to my strengths and my teams' strengths - and then taking commanding action.

I'll be reading this heavily-highlighted Kindle version again and again.
2 people found this helpful
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Folkie
3.0 out of 5 stars For basketball fans ONLY.
Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2013
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Don't buy it unless you love professional basketball AND it's on deep sale.

Bob Knight's life experience has been limited, by choice, mostly to the study of professional and college basketball. The game is well understood. The rules are well defined. The best strategies are studied, rather than developed. It's no surprise that he thinks games are lost by mistakes rather than won.

Life is not like playing basketball (with some rather obvious exceptions).

The rules are not always clear. The playing field isn't always clear. The referees are often absent, or not even trying to appear impartial. But most of all, we are not constantly at war with one another with only two possible outcomes: win or lose. More often, we work together or separately to achieve our common or individual goals. If the only way to succeed in life were to beat Bob Knight, somebody would have already hunted him down and eliminated him. Happily, Bob's success does not limit my own freedom to succeed, or that of anyone I know. (And I hope that doesn't change in a future world of: one internet search engine, one internet store, one physical store, one chip maker, one...)

I'm glad somebody has written a Captain Obvious book showcasing how some negative thinking is helpful and therefore important to success. I'm sorry that the writer was Bob Knight, who's lived in such a specialized little slice of the world all his life. His manic concentration on winning basketball games has been great for him, but is nearly as helpful as he thinks for teaching people how to get along with one another and live life to its fullest. This mindset SEEMS to be the sort that allowed coach Joe Paterno to ignore one of his assistant coaches raping young boys. It SEEMS to be the mindset that encourages excellent basketball players to ignore their other life skills so much that two thirds of the pros are broke within a few years of being cut from their teams. In short, it SEEMS to be a rotten mindset. But great for winning basketball games.

I only got 17% of the way through this book. All the general advise seemed blindingly obvious. All the applications of the advise seemed related to basketball, baseball, or when applied to real life, were dubious and/or vague. "Sometimes you only get one chance" to beat your Dad or your son at pool? Yeah. So that needed to be included?

But if you want to know how one extremely successful basketball coach thinks, give it a try.

Edit: Bob even disparages mother's kissing away hurts to make it all better. Living in the real world needs to start before kindergarten!
14 people found this helpful
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hmmm
5.0 out of 5 stars 6 stars
Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2022
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This book is so good that I would give it six stars but I can't; so I will give it five stars. The only thing I didn't like is that the author uses the word "a**" a few times.
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Cliente Kindle
4.0 out of 5 stars Punto de vista
Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2023
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Totalmente recomendado. Este libro es un acercamiento a otra forma de ver el mundo. Esto es útil para abarcar los proyectos de forma holistica.
One person found this helpful
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JB
5.0 out of 5 stars For the Eternal Pessimist
Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2013
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Love General Bob Knight or hate him, this book has many interesting points that, being an eternal pessimist myself and always preparing worst case scenario, I agree with.

The title is more of a satirical approach on Norman Vincent Peale's 'The Power of Positive Thinking' and doesn't necessarily reflect Knight's true feelings. Call the General a realist, if you will.

I'm certainly not going to spoil this book for everyone, nor will I share a philosophical moment, but if you don't believe life is full of unicorns and pretty ponies and do know your limitations as a human being--then this book is worth the time and money.

I definitely got something out of it. This book may have a lot of basketball stories, but used metaphorically these stories can be applied to life AND as a bonus Bob has a pretty good sense of humor in telling them.
17 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Amazon Customer
1.0 out of 5 stars It's basketball coaches book nothing like negative thinking
Reviewed in India on August 31, 2018
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This is book for people who play basketball and coaches,the writer is just talking about his coaching experience,the title of the book should be basketball coach 😄
3 people found this helpful
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Dan Ellingsen
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in Canada on April 29, 2016
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I've now given away 6 copies to people who have read 'The Secret' and believed it...
One person found this helpful
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Leonardo Silveira
5.0 out of 5 stars Unconventional yet brilliant
Reviewed in Brazil on March 5, 2015
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I was tired of the optimistic approach and happily ever after books, this one nailed it. Worth thinking about the ideas of Bob Knight.
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ALFONSO CARLOS
5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutamente necesario
Reviewed in Spain on June 16, 2013
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Es un libro muy facil de leer y muy facil de entender y seguir. Me encanta el coach knight y sus perlas de sabiduria tenian que ser enseñadas en todas las academias e institutos y federaciones de basket del mundo.
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John BLOCKSIDGE.
3.0 out of 5 stars Negative it is.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 4, 2013
Verified Purchase
If you like Basket Ball of follow it FINE. If not Don't bother. If you hope to explore a theory and compare it to other philosophies its a let down. It is more about the author his team's and other Basket Ball coaches.
8 people found this helpful
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