Inner Excellence

Elite athletes train for years to compete for mere moments. Jim Murphy — a former Chicago Cubs outfielder — has dedicated his career to coaching high-performing athletes, including PGA Tour players, the 2000 South African Olympic baseball team, and members of the Texas Rangers. Murphy’s central message is simple but demanding: Extraordinary performance depends less on physical training or strategy than on mastery of the inner life.

In 2009, Murphy gathered his insights and stories, along with takeaways from interviews with MLB coaches and general managers, in the self-published first edition of Inner Excellence. A 2020 expanded edition offered additional perspectives from Stoic philosophy, Eastern spiritual traditions, cognitive psychology, and neuro-linguistic programming while drawing on his experiences during his athletic career, his master’s degree in coaching science, and his BA in psychology.