Every time the ball is snapped, Oliver wants his mind to be blank, and he wants to tune out the outside noise.
“I just want to be completely present in the moment, so that I can react to what happens,” he said. “In football, anything can happen. And if you're thinking, ‘Okay, I want to do this, or I want to do this’ — it’s not going to go well.”
Oliver, again, attempts to stay present in the moment by eliminating all other stressors and not letting anything loom over him. During a game week, he completes all of his schoolwork, he handles all of his appointments, he makes sure that there are no outstanding distractions or responsibilities — so that he can, in the moment of a game, be an elite football player.
“That way, when I go into the game, there's not a doubt — there’s not an, ‘Oh, I should have done this. I could have done this. And honestly, some of the games where I haven't done as well, there's been something on my mind. And that’s when I might miss something on the field.”
Oliver is constantly inspired by Eckhart Tolle, a spiritual teacher and self-help author. Each day, Oliver tries to read a small excerpt of The Power of Now, which he notes is widely applicable for any area of life, but especially in football.
“That’s his biggest teaching: The only thing that's real is this moment,” Oliver said. “And from that presence, really cool things can happen.”
Oliver’s beliefs about identity also come from Tolle — that people don’t necessarily have an identity, and the only thing that defines who you truly are is what’s present in that moment. Tolle’s teachings, Oliver notes, align closely with many of the same values held by Holy Cross football: speed to the next play, urgency, focusing on the moment.
“Whatever happened, or might happen, doesn't matter,” he said. “The only thing that matters is right now, because like that play that you just had, whether you succeeded or messed up — it has no effect on what's going to happen right now.”
