Monica Martin Bailey @monicambailey

Romans 12:12 gives three postures for the Christian life. Hope that rejoices, not because circumstances are good, but because what is coming is certain. Patience that endures. Prayer that does not quit. Paul is not offering a mood. He is describing a way of life.

swayman kissing hellebuyck on the cheek 😭

McAvoy is all of us

Team USA just won its first Olympic hockey gold in 46 years. On February 22. The exact anniversary of the Miracle on Ice. Forget the storybook narrative for a second. What happened today is a masterclass in what performance science teaches us about pressure, identity, and legacy. Consider the pressure this team was under. They walked into today carrying 46 years of near misses. The US hadn't won Olympic gold since 1980. They lost the gold medal game in 2002 and 2010...both times to Canada. Last year at the 4 Nations tournament, Canada beat them in overtime. That loss was still raw. The 1980 hero, Mike Eruzione, was in the building. He told the players before the game: "It's just a hockey game." It wasn't. And everyone knew it. Canada outshot the US 41-26. They dominated the second and third periods. Nathan MacKinnon missed an open net. Macklin Celebrini had a breakaway and couldn't convert. Devon Toews had Hellebuyck beaten and somehow the puck stayed out. Then Charlie McAvoy cleared a puck off the goal line with his glove. This was not a dominant performance. It was a team surviving enormous pressure and refusing to break. That distinction matters. How does a team perform under that kind of weight? It starts with the environment the coach creates. Mike Sullivan is now the only American-born coach to win multiple Stanley Cups AND Olympic gold. When he took over the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2015, the team was loaded with talent — Crosby, Malkin, Letang — and completely broken. His description: "There was a dark cloud over the locker room." His first move wasn't a new system or a motivational speech. It was a reframe. He told the team: "There are certain things in life we can control and certain things we can't. We needed to focus on the things that we could control and not dedicate any cognitive resources or worry to things we couldn't control." The team adopted a two-word motto: "Just play." Six months later, they won the Stanley Cup. Tonight, he helped USA do it again on the biggest stage in the world. Sullivan builds what he calls a "safe zone for learning." His video review sessions are explicitly NOT about blame. "We don't want a player walking into our video room on eggshells worried about 'Am I going to be in the film? Is Coach going to yell at me?' It's a game of mistakes. Our responsibility is to learn from them." His guiding principle from his college coach: "Before players want to know what you know, they want to know that you care." It's the difference between compliance and buy-in. Buy-in wins championships. Research backs up Sullivan. Fear-based environments don't produce peak performance. Especially when pressure is already high... They produce anxiety, risk-aversion, and choking. When people feel psychologically safe — when they know mistakes won't be weaponized against them — they take smarter risks, recover faster from errors, and perform better under pressure. We could see it in how Sullivan framed this moment in the weeks before the game. "What an incredible opportunity we have in front of us." Not a burden or expectation...Opportunity. He took the unusual step for a hockey team and kept the team in the Olympic Village instead of a hotel. His reasoning: "The Village is part of the experience." The Hughes brothers roomed together. The Tkachuk brothers roomed together. He didn't try to ignore or isolate them from the pressure. He was embedding them in it, together. And then there's the guy who scored the goal. Jack Hughes came into the Olympics injured, underperforming, slotted on the fourth line. Sullivan moved him up mid-tournament because, as he put it, "We thought by moving him and getting him more ice time, he could impact the game more." Hughes's response: "I believe in myself more than anyone. Wherever I was slotted coming into this thing, I knew I was going to play well." A coach who believed in him when results said otherwise. A player who believed in himself when the lineup said otherwise. Then two teeth got cracked in half by a high stick in the third period. And he scored the golden goal anyway. Everyone's going to remember this as the night the US ended a 46-year drought. On the anniversary. In overtime. Against Canada. But the real lesson is quieter than that. The environment you create determines the performance you get. A safe zone for learning. A focus on controllables. Relationships built on care, not fear. Pressure reframed as opportunity. That's what it looks like when a team is ready, with the right environment and support to tackle the ghosts of history. They built a culture where a team could survive 41 shots and a kid with two broken teeth could score the biggest goal of his life. The 1980 Miracle was about belief overcoming talent. Today was different. Today was talent, preparation, identity, and 46 years of accumulated hunger arriving at the same moment. -Steve

Black & GOLD in Red, White & Blue 🥇

keyboard_arrow_left Previous keyboard_arrow_right Next

Chasing the dream 🇺🇸

None 👏 of 👏 this 👏 happens 👏without Aerin Frankel. She had 30 saves in gold medal win for @usahockey and kept Canada from adding to their lead -- and given how things were trending for USA, I'm not sure they recover from a 2-0 deficit. Clutch, championship performance.

Just a couple of guys living out a childhood dream 🇺🇸 #WinterOlympics #MilanoCortina2026

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

NHL @NHL

5 months ago

Celebrini cinema 😮‍💨 Czechia vs. Canada is LIVE at the #MilanoCortina2026 #WinterOlympics on @peacock, @USANetwork, @cbcsports, & @cbcgem! (🎨: @nba_paint)

299 5K 46K 5.9M 3K

@NOYK1847 @BellaBaddie__ Me toooo! We were just talking about this in my house...

Hamburger helper only works if the hamburger is ready to accept that it needs help.

When new dads in Canada are left unsupervised.

Kicker scores 17 points but doesnt get MVP...dumb

Peace coming through the screen to millions tonight. 🕊️ Well done to my friends Antonio & Allison. God is using your gifts & anointing! 🙏🏽

🔥 Absolutely LOVING some of these pro-America Super Bowl ads Great job with this one by Budweiser. A lot of patriotism in this one 🇺🇸

The always amazing Brandi Carlile. And those ladies on strings...beautiful.

BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ @mmpadellan

5 months ago

Brandi Carlile out here SLAYING America The Beautiful. Wow! 🇺🇲💙🇺🇲

237 1K 14K 202K 307

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm

5 months ago

Ben Affleck stars in a ‘GOOD WILL HUNTING’-themed #SuperBowl ad for Dunkin’ Donuts.

307 2K 20K 2.6M 3K

I love this commercial every time. Brady is hilarious.

Pizza Hut @pizzahut

6 months ago

Pro Tip: Always pizza before the HUT! Get the $10 Big New Yorker pizza for game day.

235 159 2K 15.3M 300

#SBLX AIRPOWER!

NFL @NFL

5 months ago

The Super Bowl LX flyover ✈️ Super Bowl LX on NBC Stream on @NFLPlus + Peacock

285 1K 8K 1.8M 628