Now that LeBron James has returned to Cleveland, everyone is hoping for an NBA championship. However, LeBron himself knows that winning at the highest level requires overcoming serious failures and adopting world-class mental frameworks. It is these very frameworks and lessons that he is providing for his teammates so that they can win games. Here are two remarkable strategies utilized by LeBron that we can apply in our own lives to turn imposing obstacles into amazing opportunities.

The first strategy is related to “The Decision.” As an unrestricted free agent after seven seasons with the Cleveland Cavaliers, LeBron James accepted an invitation to host his announcement on national television. Broadcasted live on ESPN, over 13 million viewers tuned in to hear where James would sign in free agency. It was appropriately titled “The Decision.” And on July 8, 2010, at 9:28 pm, he made his announcement: “I’m going to take my talents to South Beach…” With that one sentence, LeBron James became the most hated athlete in America.

Cleveland Cavaliers fans were the most outraged, even burning his jersey on national television. It was the immediate reaction of fans who felt betrayed by their hometown star. LeBron James became the villain of the NBA for the entire season that followed—jeered in every NBA arena he entered, except Miami’s. He was even ranked low in favorability after The Decision.

However, according to LeBron’s recent interview in GQ magazine, The Decision was the best thing that ever happened to him. “I needed it. It helped me grow as a man. As a professional, as a father. At the time, as a boyfriend. It helped me grow. Being confined, I spent my whole life in Akron, Ohio. For twenty-five years. Even though I played professionally in Cleveland, I still lived in Akron. Everything was comfortable. I knew everything, everybody knew me—everything was comfortable. I needed to become uncomfortable. Now I’ve seen everything on and off the floor this league has to offer.”

What LeBron needed was to become uncomfortable, and that’s exactly what The Decision offered him—an opportunity to transform and evolve. He reversed a bleak situation into an opportunity for complete freedom by mentally reframing his circumstances and manipulating his responses to them. This simple reversal gave him more power to control his own fate and be free from the opinions of detractors.

Here is the paradox of a reversal – you mentally transform a negative event into an opportunity or challenge, providing you with more internal power and motivation. As a result, you care less about what people think about you, paradoxically causing them to admire you more. The negative publicity is then turned around.

LeBron learned that people were going to dislike him anyway, despite how he acted or didn’t act in accordance with their expectations. So he figured he would act as himself and live with the consequences since it wouldn’t alter public opinion anyway. Only winning, he felt, would do that. It was crucial for him to overcome his fear of being uncomfortable, and he did.

The second strategy LeBron employs is called “micro-steps.” The goal is to develop new, more productive habits by breaking them into micro-steps that are small, actionable, and easy to achieve. LeBron’s trainer, Mike Mancias, revealed that every single thing LeBron does is broken into micro-steps to ensure that every performance factor is accounted for.

For example, LeBron’s pre-game stretching routine is broken into micro-steps, ensuring that every single component of his body is stretched in the right way. His workouts are broken into micro-steps, ensuring that every aspect of strength and conditioning is accounted for. His meal plans are broken into micro-steps, ensuring that he consistently has the right nutrients for optimal performance.

LeBron takes this to the next level as he approaches the game; he focuses on one possession at a time. He has a goal of winning each quarter, and with every possession, he tries to win that possession without thinking of everything else that could go wrong in the game. He breaks down the game into micro-steps so that winning each quarter leads to winning the game.

What can we learn from LeBron? The two most important lessons are to reverse the negative and to break down your action steps into micro-steps. Reverse the negative by mentally transforming a negative event into an opportunity or challenge, providing you with more internal power and motivation. Break down your action steps into micro-steps, ensuring that every single component of your plan is accounted for.

These strategies have been effective for LeBron and can be applied to our own lives to overcome obstacles and turn them into opportunities. It’s important to realize that even the mistakes and failures can offer us opportunities to grow, learn, and evolve. It’s up to us to learn from them and adopt world-class mental frameworks to succeed after difficult losses.