"My mother had become my best friend and most loyal ally. She was my organizer and my motivator, a dynamo. "If you can't give 110 percent, you won't make it," she would tell me.".
This life lesson is very practical also I think. What Lance's mother was telling him was to always give all that he had, that he had to be motivated, but that he always had to do his best at everything he did if he wanted to succeed, and I think this concept reflected on Lance by looking at some of the things he achieved and did later on in life.
The next lesson that I think that Lance learned is on PG: 70 in his autobiography.
"I thought I knew what fear was, until I heard the words You have cancer. Real fear came with an unmistakable sensation: it was as though all my blood started flowing in the wrong direction. My previous fears, fear of not being liked, fear of being laughed at, fear of losing my money, suddenly seemed like small cowardices. Everything now stacked up differently: the anxieties of life- a flat tire, losing my career, a traffic jam---were reprioritized into need versus want, real problem as opposed to minor scare. A bumpy plane ride was just a bumpy plane ride, it wasn't cancer.
"One definition of "human" is as follows: characteristic of people as opposed to God or animals or machines, especially susceptible to weakness, and therefore showing the qualities of man. Athletes don't tend to think of themselves in these terms; they"re too busy cultivating the aura of invincibility to admit to being fearful, weak, defenseless, vulnerable, or fallible, and for that reason neither are they especially kind, considerate, merciful, benign, lenient, or forgiving, to themselves or anyone around them. But as I sat in my house alone that first night, it was humbling to be so scared. More than that, it was humanizing.".
I think in this life lesson, Lance realized that no one is invincible, that we are all human, and hence, we all have weaknesses.