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What: “That’s Outside My Boat”

Authors: Charlie Jones and Kim Doren

Publisher: Andrews McMeel

Price: $16.95

Jones, the veteran sportscaster, covered track and field at the 1988 Summer Olympics and swimming at the 1992 Games. So he wasn’t thrilled when he learned that his sports at the 1996 Olympics at Atlanta would be rowing, canoeing and kayaking.

“Let’s face it, when I arrived a week before the Games I wasn’t the happiest camper in the world,” Jones writes.

But as he began interviewing rowers, he learned a new phrase: “That’s outside my boat.” Jones began to understand these rowers worried only about what they could control, what was going inside their boat.

It dawned on Jones his assignment was “outside my boat.” His boss, Dick Ebersol, didn’t ask him what he wanted to cover, he had simply given him the assignment. “What I did with it was up to me,” Jones writes.

That lesson resulted in the third book for Jones and Doren, a former corporate marketing and advertising executive. But this one is different than their other two--”You Go Girl!” and the golf instructional book titled “Be the Ball.” This is a 194-page compilation of 55 essays from business executives, athletes and a variety of people who have been able to decide what is important and what they can let go.

One essay comes from Frank Shorter, the winner of the marathon at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Shorter’s victory came after 11 Israeli athletes were killed by Arab terrorists. “I think one of the reasons I won the gold medal was that I was able to keep all distracting thoughts and fears outside my boat,” Shorter writes.

An essay by Craig Masback, head of USA Track and Field, offers this advice to air travelers: “I fly thousands of miles worldwide every year, and I have found a way to keep my blood pressure from climbing off the charts. I call it T.W.E, ‘Travel Without Emotion.’ It’s very similar to T.O.M.B., ‘That’s Outside My Boat.”’