A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential

Order your copy of The Let Them Theory 👉 https://melrob.co/let-them-theory 👈 The #1 Best Selling Book of 2025 🔥 Discover how much power you truly have. It all begins with two simple words. Let Them. — Today, you’ll learn how to control your mind and train it for extraordinary performance. By the end of this episode, you’ll know the exact mental training techniques used by world-class athletes, Olympians, and elite performers to overcome fear, build resilience, and unlock the next level of your potential. Mel’s guest today is renowned performance and mindset coach Steve Magness, who has coached Olympians, Division 1 athletic teams, and organizations at the highest level of performance. Today, Steve is breaking down the science of mental toughness — and teaching you how to apply it in your own life starting now. You’ll learn how to: Rewire your mind to silence self-doubt Perform under pressure Train your focus like an elite athlete Stop overthinking and take confident action Build real mental resilience (without burnout) Hack your mindset and unlock your personal power This is your roadmap to extraordinary performance — grounded in science and designed to help you rise above whatever is holding you back. Because when you change your mindset, you change the game. For more resources related to today’s episode, click here for the podcast episode page. Follow The Mel Robbins Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themelrobbinspodcast I’m just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is NOT intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I’ll see you in the next episode. In this episode: 00:00 Welcome 01:16 How to Win The Mental Game 14:49 The Science-Backed Strategy to Bouncing Back from Failure 24:25 Train Your Brain to Win 30:42 This Mindset Shift Creates Mental Toughness 37:42 The Science of Mental Toughness 45:55 The #1 Habit of Mentally Tough People 50:11 How to Build Your Mental Toughness 59:51 The Whistleblower Who Shook Nike’s Empire 1:11:35 The Mindset Shift that Makes Mental Toughness Simple — Follow Mel: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melrobbins/ TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@melrobbins Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melrobbins LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melrobbins Website: http://melrobbins.com​ — Sign up for Mel’s newsletter: https://melrob.co/sign-up-newsletter A note from Mel to you, twice a week, sharing simple, practical ways to build the life you want. — Subscribe to Mel’s channel here: https://www.youtube.com/melrobbins​?sub_confirmation=1 — Listen to The Mel Robbins Podcast 🎧 New episodes drop every Monday & Thursday! https://melrob.co/spotify https://melrob.co/applepodcasts https://melrob.co/amazonmusic — Looking for Mel’s books on Amazon? Find them here: The Let Them Theory: https://amzn.to/3IQ21Oe The Let Them Theory Audiobook: https://amzn.to/413SObp The High 5 Habit: https://amzn.to/3fMvfPQ The 5 Second Rule: https://amzn.to/4l54fah

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mel Robbins?

  Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

• 0:09Mel Robbins?

  Wouldn't you just love to have a powerful mindset that makes you unstoppable? And finally get that roadmap to success that you deserve? Well, today, you're getting it because Coach Steve Magness, who is one of the top performance and mindset coaches in the world. I'm talking a guy who has coached elite athletes, Olympians, D1 professional athletes. He is here in our Boston studios for one reason, to coach you and to teach you the exact same mental techniques that he has been using in the most elite settings that are rooted in courage, purpose, and excellence. And you're getting it all today for free.

• 0:50Mel Robbins?

  You're going to learn how to train your mind, just like the world's top performers do. Because when you change your mindset, you change the game. So what does that look like? Well, after the conversation today, you're going to know how to rise above any challenge, become mentally tougher and more resilient and able to easily handle any challenge that life throws your way or with the people that you love. And this is absolutely a conversation that you are going to want to share with everybody that you care about. Every athlete, every student, every person in your life that has bigger goals and a bigger possibility, they need to hear this. Because whether you're an entrepreneur, a parent, a shift worker, a nurse, teacher, working a desk job, or you're a student, what you're about to learn today will transform

• 1:35Mel Robbins?

  every area of your life and unlock your next level of potential. See, when Steve first started coaching elite runners, he noticed something fascinating. It wasn't just their talent, it wasn't just their fitness level. It was the way they trained their minds that set them apart. His mental techniques have propelled some of the best athletes in the world to extraordinary success, even when they were filled with doubt, uncertainty, and a string of losses. Today, he's teaching you how to hack your mind and achieve anything you want. So are you ready to be coached? Because Coach Magnus is ready to coach you and he's here. So let's do this.

• 2:27Mel Robbins?

  Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited for the conversation today. I am thrilled to be learning from Coach Steve Magness. I'm going to tell you about him in just a minute. And look, it's always an honor to be able to spend time and be together with you. And if you're a new listener, I want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. I am so glad that you're here. And because you hit play on this particular episode, here's what I already know about you. You understand the power of your mindset and how your mind could help you unlock the next level of your potential. And you're also here because you know that when you win the mental game, you win the game of life.

• 3:10Mel Robbins?

  And one more thing, if somebody sent this episode to you, here's what I want to tell you about that. I think that's pretty cool because it means you have people in your life that care about you. And they know you could be unstoppable. You could reach higher possibilities if you take to heart everything that our expert today is about to share with you. See, in our studios today, we have a really extraordinary thing that's about to happen. You and I are about to be coached by one of the world's top experts in mindset. His name, Coach Steve Magness. Steve has coached Olympians, professional athletes, D1 athletes, and some of the world's top performers. He's an elite runner himself, a Division One college coach.

• 3:53Mel Robbins?

  And you're also going to hear the riveting story of how he turned whistleblower at one of the most elite Nike training camps, an experience that forever changed his life and his perspective on what mental toughness actually means. Coach Steve has spent years helping the most elite runners in the world increase their athletic performance under pressure. He's also the co-founder of The Growth Equation, where he and his team teach the science, art, and practice of sustainable peak performance through groundbreaking research and interactive courses. Their work has been used by Ironman World Champions, heart and lung transplant surgeons. World-class coaches across every single major sports league,

• 4:36Mel Robbins?

  award-winning creatives and leaders at some of the world's most respected brands. He's written five bestselling books, including his latest, Win the Inside Game: How to Move from Surviving to Thriving. And here's what I love most about Coach Steve. Yes, he's coached Olympic athletes through the mental and emotional pressure of competing in the biggest arenas at the highest stakes. But you want to know what makes him truly different? It's how real, relatable, and accessible his tools, techniques, and strategies will be to you, to your life, and your goals. He is here, and he's got the cutting-edge science, compelling research, and real-world experience on the track, in the classroom, and in the game of life. Because the fact is, when you know how to win the mental game,

• 5:20Mel Robbins?

  you win the entire game of life. So, without further ado, please help me welcome Coach Steve Magness to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Coach, I am so glad you're here, and I also feel like I owe your wife a huge thanks, because I know you've got two kids under the age of two, and she said it was cool for you to jump on a plane, fly across country, and be here with us. So, huge shout-out to your wife, Hillary. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

• 5:48Mel Robbins?

  I'm thrilled that you're here. So, I want to read to you from your bestselling book, Do Hard Things: Win the Inside Game: How to Move from Surviving to Thriving and Free Yourself Up to Perform. And I'm reading this passage that really caught my attention on page 28. "We all get stuck. We don't reach our capabilities. We get in our own way. We feel trapped, like we can't take the action that, deep down, we know we should." This book is about freeing yourself up from whatever is preventing you from going on the journey to realizing your potential. It's allowing yourself to be courageous. For me, the journey started with realizing

• 6:30Mel Robbins?

  that everything I'd been taught about success was wrong. Steve, could you speak to the person who has made the time to be with us right now, who is so excited to learn how to win the inside game from you? Can you tell them what they might experience in their life that could be different, based on everything that you're about to share with us today?

• 6:55Speaker 01

  The lesson that really astonished me in working with elite performers, first athletes, and then across the board, is that all of us get in our own way. And all of us are capable of more, but we let fear, anxiety, self doubt, that voice in our head, tell us, hey, let's avoid this thing. Let's stop doing this thing. And what I promise you today is I'm not, I might not be able to fix all of your problems, but I'm going to give you the tools to lighten the load, to be able to navigate that inner voice, to be able to switch stress

• 7:39Speaker 01

  from seeing it always as a threat, but as something that can challenge you and propel you forward, and how to work with your brain and body instead of fighting against it endlessly.

• 7:52Mel Robbins?

  Coach, I believe you. I'm ready. I'm so glad that you're here. You know, the book is called Win the Inside Game. What does winning the inside game mean exactly? And why is it so important to know how to do this?

• 8:05Speaker 01

  I think let's start with the opposite, which is the external.

• 8:09Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  And I think the external is this, is when we tie our identity to our achievements. In fact, there was a meta-analysis, a study of studies, including 70,000 people, that shows that when we prioritize and emphasize the external more than the internal, it is, and I quote, universally detrimental to our wellbeing. So the inside game is opposite of that. It's having clarity in who you are, why you're pursuing something. It's understanding that you get to define what success means. It means that instead of just fitting in, you find deep, genuine connection and belonging to those who you're going on this journey with.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  And when we find that, when we go towards that, what happens is instead of insecurity driving the ship, we feel secure enough to take risks, to take on challenges, to see again what we're capable of, and you know, do the things that we want to pursue.

• 9:12Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, I think I just got something out of that. So I think we make the mistake of looking at people that achieve things on the outside and believe that it's those achievements that are what Make them good risk takers and make them able to go after these things that we in our hearts wish we would do for ourselves. But what you're actually saying is based on all of your experience, coaching, elite athletes, Olympians, studying this mindset toughness, and being a coach for it in highly competitive settings. You're saying based on that and all the research, it's actually the opposite. It's those people that have learned how to win this inside game and who are secure in themselves, who are actually able to take

• 9:56Mel Robbins?

  more risks. Is that right?

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I'll give you a story.

• 10:00Mel Robbins?

  Okay, give me a story.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  So Sarah Hall is one of America's top marathoners.

• 10:05Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  She's one of the best in the world. And she reached that level later in her career than normally, in her late 30s, early 40s, is when she had her breakthrough. And I got to work with Sarah for a number of years. And what I learned from her is the race she had her ultimate breakthrough, where she set the American record in the half marathon. So fastest half marathon in American history for a woman. And leading up into that race, she had this, I'm going to set this record. I'm paying attention to the outcome. I'm going with the the external thing. And about a month or two before the race, she said, you know what, this is getting in the way. I need to leave this behind. And to quote

• 10:46Speaker 01

  her, she said, it is stealing my peace. And instead, what I'm going to focus on is I'm going to focus on the feeling. And she defined the feeling is, I want to get in that race, be surrounded by a bunch of other women, not be threatened by them, but realize that we're all bringing out the best in each of us. And if I put myself in that spot, and I enjoy that, great things are going to happen. And to me, like, that's what it is. You're seeing one of the best in the world telling you that. The way that you set the record isn't to obsess over the record, but to let go just enough and focus on that internal feeling and sensation and that

• 11:30Speaker 01

  security, knowing that you can take that risk. And if you fail, it's not going to be the end of the world because you got to feel that experience. You got to go through that journey.

• 11:40Mel Robbins?

  You know what I hear in that story that is so helpful, and I think we can all relate to that, whether we're like, okay, I gotta get into that nursing school, or I've gotta meet the person by the time I turn 30, or I gotta be making this kind of money, like that external thing. When she made the switch, what I heard was actually the switch from pressure and performance to a sense of faith that if you put yourself in the right environment and you tap into the energy of what it's going to feel like to trust yourself there in that experience, that the rest of it takes care of itself. And a lot of that pressure

• 12:23Mel Robbins?

  that I would imagine can cause you to choke and get up into your head and kind of do things that you don't realize impact how you perform. But your ability to relax in and have faith in just being in the experience is what helps you win.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  It is. I mean, that's the essence of what we call flow in sports psychology, which is that feeling of like, everything clicks. You cannot pressure your way into flow. If you feel exceedingly amounts of pressure, you can't get in that state. So ironically, sometimes we try too hard in that trying, that wanting the thing is what is preventing us from actually getting that goal because we're trying to force it. I had a really good track coach who was a mentor, who was the track coach of Carl Lewis. And he told me one day, he said, Steve, most people have the wrong concept of effort.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  They think effort means digging down, trying harder and forcing yourself. And he said, no, no, effort is like Carl. And what he meant by that is if you watch Carl Lewis Brent or Usain Bolt, they are going all out, but their cheeks are bouncing up and down. Sometimes they're smiling a little bit. They're relaxed doing it because real effort is quiet. It's how do we get the most out of ourselves while being calm and relaxed doing it? And it's that, that kind of like paradox where we think we want to like try and dig. But whenever we do that, it backfires. It's probably the same if I sat down to write.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  If I said, hey, I need to write this wonderful paragraph that's gonna shock everyone and get them latched on to what I'm, I'm talking about. That paragraph isn't gonna be good. Right? I've got to put myself in that position on the chair and say, hey, I've done the research. I'm a pretty good writer. Trust myself to figure it out.

• 14:23Mel Robbins?

  Completely. You know, it also, all of that pressure for a lot of people also results in procrastinating and getting so obsessed with how it's gonna turn out that you don't actually even do the damn thing. And I think that's a very interesting thing for us to talk about because, you know, ultimately you create mental toughness in the athletes that you are coaching and in the companies that you go into and work with. How do you define mental toughness? And what do you think some of the common misconceptions around mental toughness is?

• 14:57Speaker 01

  So you mentioned that I have two under two.

• 15:00Mel Robbins?

  What's two under? Oh, two kids under two.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Two kids under two. So my almost two-year-old has hit the stage where she's throwing tantrums. And my wife is also an elementary school teacher. So she's an expert on kids throwing tantrums. And if we look at why do kids throw tantrums? Here's what occurs. Two-year-old maybe sees something that she wants. Mom and dad say, no, no, no. She doesn't quite grasp the concept of no. She wants it. She sees it. She gets frustrated or angry or mad. And because those emotions and feelings are overwhelming and kind of foreign for a two-year-old.

• 15:36Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Right? She goes into like freak out mode, which eventually runs its course and then she shuts down. Toughness is navigating that freak out.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  We experience the same thing as adults, except it has more layers. So we feel discomfort, or stress, or anxiety, or fatigue, or whatever it is, that emotion and that feeling. And then we bring in the layer of our voice tends to go with it. So our voice starts to get negative and spiral and talk, think about, oh, I can't do this. If I don't win this race, or finish this, or get this job, I'm gonna be embarrassed. We just spiral out of control. And what happens is your brain gets the message. It says, hey, we've got overwhelming emotions. We've got a negative voice that is spiraling. How do we escape this situation? And our brain doesn't go, how do we get the best result out of this situation? Right.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  It says, how do we get out of this right now? Yes. The quickest moment possible. If I'm running a race, the quickest thing is just slow down or stop. If I'm trying to finish my dissertation, or nursing exam, or what have you, the quickest thing is procrastinate, like leave this, don't come back to it, because that'll alleviate it in the moment. And what real toughness to me is navigating. How do we understand our inner world and those emotions so that they don't overwhelm us? How do we stop that spiral, or that rock rolling down the hill and gaining momentum? How do we stop it early enough so that we can do something about it? And I think the misconceptions around toughness is that our kind of old school model tells

• 17:14Speaker 01

  us only one path, which is that grit it out, like fight the thing, and often don't pay attention to your emotions or feelings, like ignore them. Well, sometimes that works, generally on easy stuff. On hard things where it actually matters, it backfires. Because if I try and avoid the thing, if I try and resist the thing, we have a saying, what we resist persists. How do we learn to listen to our body better? How do we change our self-talk? How do we change our focus to get us out of these spirals and navigate these situations?

• 17:50Mel Robbins?

  I think I get it, but just so I make sure that the person who's here with us understands kind of how mental toughness is an important thing in their day to day life. Like, how does having mental toughness help you navigate a job search or a breakup? Or, you know, we use the example of, you know, your wife's a teacher. And you've had a really, really tough week with the kids at school. How does mental toughness help you in just your day to day life?

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll start with the teacher one, because I see this all the time.

• 18:23Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Teachers have one of the hardest jobs. And it's sometimes a thankless job, but they do amazing jobs. So I love supporting my teachers out there. Here's what happens. Teaching is hard. You get home, you're overwhelmed. And the tendency is to be like, okay, I'm so overwhelmed that I'm just shutting down and I can't do anything else. Mental toughness is realizing that like, you're still gonna have to show up the next day. And because you care about your job and the kids, like, show up and teach them to the best of your ability. How do you get over that or get through that overwhelm and get yourself back in that position? So for a teacher, it could be something as simple as, what is my get home, shut down,

• 19:09Speaker 01

  and reset routine? That allows me to kind of deal with that stress, take it off, and say, okay, just for a couple hours, I'm gonna get myself in a place where I rejuvenate and then can get a good night's sleep and then tackle the job again tomorrow. With, I think you said job search, I think there is, it's handling rejections. It's because that feels personal.

• 19:35Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Right? You apply for the job, you do everything that you can to put yourself in the best position, and someone essentially says, you're not good enough or we don't want you. And in that moment, that can hit deep. And toughness is realizing and figuring out, how do I create the space? Between that almost failure in my identity and who I am, to be able to say, I get it. That person didn't select me, but that doesn't mean that I'm not worthy as a human being and that I'm not capable of doing this job. They just didn't see it. How do I get back on the horse?

• 20:15Mel Robbins?

  How do you do that with, like, let's say, since you coach such elite athletes, you've got an athlete, and this is kind of part of your story too, which we're going to get into, that just misses the Olympic team or just misses the world record intellectually coach. I get it, like, I gotta have a little bit of space for the rejection and the pain of coming just so close. But then there's that mental toughness skill that is your expertise. What are some of the things that you would say to an athlete that you're coaching in those moments that feel similar to a job rejection, right? Same psychological thing?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Same thing.

• 20:59Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  So here, I take them through a process. First, you can't deny that it hurts. You have to accept and sit with it and live with it and realize that this thing you cared about, you fell short in. And that sucks. There's no getting around it. There's no faking it. It just sucks. So that's number one. Number two is you've got to get your brain and body out of what I'd call stress and protect mode.

• 21:24Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Where you're feeling all of these stress hormones, which pushes your brain to be like, protect myself, you know, avoid the thing, shut down, which is our acute response to failure. And you've got to get it into, how do I almost get into like a learning and growing mode? And the best way to do this is simply socializing with friends.

• 21:45Mel Robbins?

  Really?

• 21:46Speaker 01

  When we're around other people, there's research that shows that

• 21:51Speaker 01

  When you're socializing with other people, you produce a hormone called oxytocin.

• 21:55Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  It's like a bonding hormone. It's what's actually produced when, you know, women have babies to help them bond with the child. Same thing occurs for us in adults. And what research tells us is it counteracts the kind of negative stress hormones that make us feel like worthless or alone or whatever have you after stress. So the best thing you can do is with athletes, I always tell them, after the game, if you lose, guess what? Go have pizza with your friends. Like, go eat. And what that does is it shifts you out of that mindset. And then the last part of this process is you've got to build yourself up. You've got to give yourself evidence that you are worthy.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  And here, I like to do it in two different ways. There's one, I like to have people have what I call an evidence journal.

• 22:48Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Which is write down things where you went through something tough and came out on the other side.

• 22:55Mel Robbins?

  Coach, I'm picking up on the fact that your evidence journal is also part of the training. It's sort of like the reps in a gym. So can you just tick off a couple of examples of some of the little things that people start to write down as evidence, right? That they've survived other setbacks that the person listening might be able to relate to?

• 23:13Speaker 01

  So some of the things I like to do is like, look at how consistent were you when you, you know, were preparing for this? Did you get your five days a week of training? And people can look back and say, I did it. I did the training plan. I showed up. Did you prioritize yourself? Did you, the day before the job interview, did you get the sleep in that you wanted to, to prepare for the thing? You were looking for, how do I give myself the evidence that I gave myself the best shot that I could? And the other thing that I like to do is look through past kind of experiences and moments where it's like, hey, I came through this thing. And the reason is pretty simple is our brain often has a negativity bias.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Where we just latch on to and remember the times that it didn't go well. Why? Because they sting. Like, we remember the things that sting more. We forget all the times where it's like, hey, we showed up for practice when it was raining. You know, we showed up for the job even when we were tired the night before and we still got it done. Those things just go out the window. So we've got to give our brain that information that reminds us like, hey, I've been here before. I've gone through some tough things. Like, you are capable of this and more.

• 24:28Mel Robbins?

  I think that's really important because I can say one of the things that I have to chronically work on is making sure that my relentless drive, right? To do better, to be more efficient, to have more fun in the way that we're working, to make a bigger impact, doesn't negate all of the amazing things that are actually going well. Can you give me an example of working with one of your athletes where their attitude or negativity was really starting to impact their performance?

• 25:02Speaker 01

  This is very common, even at the elite level. Because often you think like, oh, these people have bulletproof minds, right? It's not true.

• 25:10Mel Robbins?

  What do you mean it's not true? How do you get to the Olympics, Steve, and not have a bulletproof mind?

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Here's what I learned. I used to think that. I used to think, oh, there's something different about them. But what you realize is the same problems that I'll literally talk about with a high school kid navigating the SAT and basketball team tryouts are the same thing that I'll talk about with someone who's made the Olympic team and trying to show up to the Olympics.

• 25:38Mel Robbins?

  You're kidding me?

• 25:39Speaker 01

  No, it's because it's a human problem.

• 25:41Mel Robbins?

  What do you mean by it's a human problem? So the kid who's trying to make the basketball team and do well on the SATs and the person who's just made the Olympic team, achieved a dream, and now is getting ready to compete in the Olympics, they're both facing the same psychological problem?

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Our human stress response, which makes us see the negative, to think that we're not good enough, to think that we're going to be overwhelmed and freak out on the starting line and not be able to show up how we want to show up.

• 26:12Mel Robbins?

  What you're basically talking about is self doubt and choking.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is why choking happens to the best of the best. This is why Simone Biles got, you know, the twisties because it's not anything to do with her being weak or anything. She's the total opposite of that. Amazing. But our biology is wired the same. And although the arena might be different, our brain doesn't know the difference between what feels like a lot of pressure when we're at the high school gymnasium.

• 26:45Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Versus the Olympic stadium where we see hundreds of thousands of people. It's still pressure and we still feel it the same way. It's not like it's proportional to the amount of people who are viewing us.

• 26:59Mel Robbins?

  This makes so much sense. Coach, it's so cool what you do for a living because it does make sense to me that if you're going in for an interview for a job that you're really interested in, of course, you're going to feel pressure because you want to do well. That's human nature. If you're going in for an interview and for high school to talk to the coach, hoping that the coach is going to want to recruit you for their team. It's an interview that you care about. It's the exact same psychological setup. It's just that the place and the space is different, but you're feeling the same thing. It's about the scale of it based on your experience. And that I think is why mental toughness is everything.

• 27:42Mel Robbins?

  What do you do in those moments when it matters? Or when your emotions rise up? Because what you're also saying is it's not just a mental game. It's also a physical one. And in fact, there's something that you write about in your book that I wanted to just read to you because we're on the topic of mental toughness. So you write about this very interesting thing in your book, Win the Inside Game, and this is on page 123. "In the 1960s, scientists noted an interesting phenomenon when animals were pitted against one another in a lab, from rats to chicks to fish. When they were competing for resources, the contest results shifted the animals' subsequent behavior." The winner became more aggressive, attacking whatever opponent stepped into the cage next.

• 28:27Mel Robbins?

  The losers hesitated. They retreated and defended, hoping to avoid conflict. The behaviors translated into consistent outcomes. The winners kept winning at an alarming rate, and the losers kept a streak of their own. See, what was interesting about reading this is that you basically are starting to make the case, Steve, that it's not just your thoughts, but with the emotions and then the way that your thoughts start to spiral, there is a biology. There's something physical and probably neurochemical happening in your body that winners learn that they have to fight to gain resources. And losers come up with a different strategy. You might think that winners keep winning simply because they're better fighters. But research found that relative skill

• 29:12Mel Robbins?

  didn't explain the winning and losing streaks. It's about what changes in the animal's biology when they either win or lose. Can you talk more about this?

• 29:26Speaker 01

  This is some of the most fascinating research I've come across, and it's called the winner and loser effect. And what happens is we change our stress response based on the outcome of the event or even more so, our expectation of the event. What I mean by that is after you win, you tend to get a bump in testosterone. And this has been found in both men and women.

• 29:54Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  You get a bump in testosterone. And that increase in testosterone makes you think, hey, I'm going to be more confident coming into this next thing. I can take on this challenge. And what tends to happen is next time you step into the arena, your brain goes, hey, remember last time? We got that bump in testosterone. Let's do that again. So we're more likely to approach whatever it is we're taking with more challenge, more testosterone. And we have what psychologists call a challenge response. If on the flip side,

• 30:24Mel Robbins?

  Yep.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  is if you lose,

• 30:26Mel Robbins?

  Uh huh.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  and then especially if you stew in that loss.

• 30:29Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  You think it is like overwhelming. This is the end of the world. My life is over. I'm never going to be able to do this thing again. You have more cortisol. And what your brain learns is it says, hey, this, this, this place really sucks. So next time we face something similar, before you even step into the arena, your brain defaults to producing more cortisol to try and convince you to avoid the situation you're getting in.

• 30:54Mel Robbins?

  Okay, so hold on, let me just unpack this. Because I think this is so important. In real life, not that athletics is not real life, if you've just been broken up with, and then you're about to put yourself back out there. This is an example where cortisol might spike, and you might feel the uh-oh. If you've been laid off, and you're now starting to go for interviews, it might be an uh-oh, right? If you didn't get into your dream school, and now you're reapplying again. Your body is wired, because of the sting of that, to actually feel that hesitation and protection. Am I getting this right?

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Absolutely, spot on.

• 31:34Mel Robbins?

  And what do you want to say to those of us, to the person listening, who is either feeling this way now, or who has somebody in their life who now has this hesitation, or feels defeated, or is starting to really lose their edge? What do you want us to know, Coach, about these moments in our life, and what to do about it?

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Two things. One is, we can influence this to a large degree, based on our expectations.

• 32:07Mel Robbins?

  What?

• 32:08Speaker 01

  So what research tells us

• 32:11Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  is, if we set the expectations, which are based on, essentially, our brain goes, what are the demands that we're facing? And what are we capable of?

• 32:24Mel Robbins?

  Okay, what are the demands that we're facing? And what are we capable of?

• 32:26Speaker 01

  So if you're sitting there, and you're saying, I got broken up with, I'm putting myself back in the arena, I'm going on the date. The demands are, I'm gonna have to talk to someone who I don't know very well, and open up, and put myself out there. Now your capabilities, because last time it didn't go very well, your brain goes like, I don't know if you're capable of this.

• 32:47Mel Robbins?

  Right.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  I don't know. So what do you have to do in that situation? You have to, you have two options. You can say, okay, I'm going to set the expectations and sometimes lower them a little bit. Say, hey, this is my first date. I'm not trying to set the world on fire. I'm just going to put myself out there and go talk to them. Right? Lower those expectations.

• 33:06Mel Robbins?

  Okay, so that's step nine. So one thing you can do is lower, I don't have to get this job.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  I don't have to.

• 33:10Mel Robbins?

  Okay, gotcha. I can, I can just go and, and the fact that I'm getting out there, that's a win.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:16Mel Robbins?

  Okay, so lower expectations, step one.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  And the second part is improving that your capability side.

• 33:23Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Which is, in athletics, what do we do? We train.

• 33:27Mel Robbins?

  You practice.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  You practice. In life, you can do the same thing, right? If you are struggling and afraid of going on that first date, go call up a friend and say, hey, we're going to practice some conversations together. I'm going to talk about myself. We're going to role play this. And it sounds a little silly, but what it does is your brain goes, okay, I've been here before. If you're keep being afraid of that job interview, then you want to go do some mock job interviews. And the good thing is this, is when you control the environment, right? And you're doing with, with friends or family or someone who doesn't entice that fear around you, then your brain doesn't automatically default and you can train that.

• 34:13Mel Robbins?

  I love that. So I think I would, I would even say, I bet there's something else, coach, that you do with the people that you coach, is it's actually very helpful to know that it is a hardwired response and a sign that your brain is working as it should, that if I'm about to try something that I'm nervous about, or the stakes are high, or that I really sucked at, or got screwed over, or hurt by, that it's normal. To have your cortisol spike and it's normal to feel that hesitation, but I got options. So the hesitation now doesn't scare me because I should expect to be nervous. And then you just taught me, just lower your expectations. I don't have to kill this thing.

• 34:57Mel Robbins?

  I just have to like, I'm just going to put myself out there. And then the second thing is kind of obvious, but we avoid it if we're stressed out, which is just practice. This feels like the perfect moment to take a quick pause. Let everything that you have poured into us just really set in. I want to also give you a chance to share this with people that you care about. If you've got a high school athlete, you've got somebody that wants to do better at work. You've got somebody that needs to strengthen the mental game. Because what are we learning? When you change your mindset, you change the game. Share this episode with them. We all need a little Coach Steve in our life. And don't go anywhere because after this short break, we've got a lot more to cover, more tools, more tips. We're going to continue to win the inside game. So stay with me.

• 35:50Mel Robbins?

  Welcome back. It's your buddy Mel Robbins. I'm so thrilled you are here. Thank you for sharing this with people that you care about. You and I are learning how to win the inside game and get mentally tough with Coach Steve Magness. You have such a fascinating career and we're going to get into it. But you've transitioned from a, my opinion, world-class athlete, to an Olympic coach, to a bestselling author of not one, not two, but literally five books, to now being a sought-after and world-renowned elite performance and mindset coach, both with elite athletes, with, you know, some of the world's leading brands.

• 36:30Mel Robbins?

  How has your personal journey and the twists and turns of your career and the people that you have been coaching shaped your understanding of mental toughness? And how to build it?

• 36:46Speaker 01

  I think I've had a diversity of experiences that you outlined, which has made me realize that my early on view of toughness, which was only through sport, was kind of wrong. Meaning, I grew up in the like, you know, no pain, no gain, like just push. And that's what I thought. And the other thing that really, I think, was an aha moment, which was during my, I think, my first book, is I got to interview a guy named Matt Billingsley, who is a world-class drummer, who is now the drummer for Taylor Swift. And it was one of my first big interviews where I'm like, this is awesome.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Let's, let's go. And I'm like, just tell me about what it's like to be on stage with, you know, 100,000 screaming people and you doing your thing. And he starts walking me through how he's preparing. And as I'm listening to this, I'm, all I'm thinking in my mind is like, this is how I would mentally prepare for a race.

• 37:50Mel Robbins?

  What was he saying?

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Well, the thing that struck me is he said, I don't really drum much before the, you know, the concert. He said, I already know how to drum. What I'm doing is first I'm getting my body loose. I'm going through all these like, you know, stretching and things to get my body feeling good. And then I'm getting my mind right, which is like just rehearsing the beginning of, of a couple of different songs so that I can get in that groove and the state of performance that I need to get in. And he walked me through all that. And I said, I said, this is the same kind of stuff that I do for a race. And what it made me realize is that performance is performance.

• 38:32Mel Robbins?

  So, performance is performance means the thing that you have to do is the thing that you have to do, whether it's an interview, or a date, or a presentation, or work, or stepping onto a track and running in the state championship.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:47Mel Robbins?

  That's the thing you have to do. But the thing that comes before it...

• 38:53Mel Robbins?

  What is that, Coach?

• 38:54Speaker 01

  It's setting up your environment well.

• 38:57Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  So what that means is like you prime yourself to perform. This is why athletes put on their special race day shoes. They put on their jersey. Matt had the drumsticks that he used for, you know, concert times. He's got everything lined up where this is what it's gonna be. I put myself in the environment that's going to invite the action that I want to take. It's setting your mindset right. What am I trying to do? Am I seeing this as an opportunity to take on? Or is this thing that is causing this overwhelming anxiety or feeling like a threat? And I think what I realized, it's not just from Matt's story, but also others, is it's the same stuff.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  As I said, my wife's a teacher. Early in her career, she was a world-class runner. She represented the US at a half marathon world championships.

• 39:52Mel Robbins?

  No big deal.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  No. But.

• 39:55Mel Robbins?

  You two are gonna have really fast kids, you know that?

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Don't put the pressure on our two-year-old now.

• 39:59Mel Robbins?

  Sorry.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  But what I realized is that, again, when she got into teaching, she takes the same mindset. She's like, I want to be great at this. And what you realize is like, okay, what does that take? Consistently showing up, putting in the training, being prepared for the next day and priming yourself. Okay, how am I gonna get into the mindset where I am like enthusiastic and energetic? Because kindergartners, guess what? You gotta, you gotta keep their attention. And you can't do that by just walking in the door and being like, okay, I'm here. Like, let's talk about our colors and ABCs or what have you. You've got to think about the tactics that you're going to use.

• 40:43Mel Robbins?

  You know what I love about what you're saying, Coach? Is that I think we get so obsessed about the performance or the thing that we have to do at work or the thing that we have to do at school or the way that it's gonna turn out or the result, that we don't take the time to think about the environment or the steps leading up to the thing that actually allow you to step on the field of life and do the thing.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Who do you want to be? Who do you want to show up as? Like, that's, that's it.

• 41:13Mel Robbins?

  Is that what you ask the people you coach? Who do you want to be?

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Who do you, because here's the thing is, and this is something else that people often don't get, is if you look at some of the elite performers, is that who they are on game day, when they step out on the field, is a little bit different than who they are at home.

• 41:33Mel Robbins?

  How so?

• 41:34Speaker 01

  So I'll give the example of Aaron Judge, the baseball player for the Yankees, is he puts it like this, is on the field, I want to be 99, which is his number. 99, and I'm paraphrasing, is aggressive, he plays hard, he wants to win. When I take that jersey off, I'm no longer 99, I'm Aaron. You know, Aaron gets along with his family. He doesn't need to be hyper competitive at everything. He can let things go. But you see that all the time with athletes, because what happens is like, we all have kind of different states we can get into.

• 42:12Mel Robbins?

  Even just that invitation coach, who do you want to be? It's, it's a way that you can snap yourself into a moment of intentionality to basically, who do I want to be in the interview? Who do I want to be today at work? Who do I want to be when I show up at that parent teacher conference? And by asking yourself that, I would imagine that's part of the mental toughness, because you're cuing your mind, right? To start to think about these things.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  You're spot on. Who do you want to be in this situation? And I think too often, we don't put the thought and care to align ourselves with that action.

• 42:46Mel Robbins?

  When you were in high school, you as a elite runner, came extremely close to breaking the four minute mile, which is a goal that you had had forever. And the fact that you missed it by a second.

• 43:09Mel Robbins?

  Haunted you on one hand, but that failure also has fueled your life's work. What did not reaching that goal teach you about life and how you coach other people when it comes to mindset and performance?

• 43:27Speaker 01

  At that time, I think in the history of the US, only five high schoolers had broken the four-minute barrier. So it's something that basically never happened. And I came to shy. And I still can picture it to this day. There's four laps around the track. Every lap needs to be under a minute. So you're literally watching the clock and you're seeing it and you're like, I'm still under, I'm still under, I'm still under. And going into that last 100 meters, I can see that clock and realizing, oh no, I'm going to be right at it or just shy. And then I remember crossing that line. There's like 30 seconds before the results come out. I'm staring at the results board and then I see myself four

• 44:10Speaker 01

  minutes and one second. And it's just devastating because you see this thing that is your goal. It was literally written on the wall of my high school bedroom where this is the thing that I'm going to do that is going to define myself. I didn't care about anything else in high school, nothing. Parents couldn't get me to care about anything except running. And I fell short. And for a while, I think that got to me. I couldn't do it. I put everything into it and found out that I wasn't good enough. Everything I learned about performance came as a result of being like, okay, let's analyze this. Let's figure out how do we

• 44:52Speaker 01

  get on the other side of feeling this ultimate failure and making it into something worthwhile and good. And that's where my search for understanding the mental side of sport came from. If I didn't let go and pull the other way just enough, I wouldn't got to be able to fulfill my potential because every race was going to feel like life or death and it did. We all have our four-minute miles. We all have those things where we create that story in our head where it's like, oh, this is what I care about deeply. This is what I'm obsessed with. And we can't because we care about it. We think that if we just let go a little bit, that that means, oh.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  That means I'm weak. That means I'm not all in. That means that I'm not actually striving for that. But what it actually means is it allows that inner game to flourish because our brain goes like, okay, yeah, yeah. Like, the four-minute mile matters. Like, getting that job, selling this many books, whatever, it matters. Like, let's be real. But it can't be the only thing. We've got to have something else pulling in the other direction.

• 46:03Mel Robbins?

  I absolutely love this because you also say that the inner game is not about, like, checking boxes, that it's the process of chasing goals. And why does tying the achievement or landing that job or getting into that medical school or being married by this date or having that car that you drive? Why does those things on the outside actually end up screwing you over?

• 46:34Speaker 01

  What happens is when we tie our identity to that external pursuit, it makes us fragile instead of resilient. Because our brain goes, if I don't get this goal, then it literally is life or death. I am not worth anything. We don't perform best in that situation. We need to take the little bit of the pressure off. We need to have that robustness where you realize that I am secure in who I am. In win or lose, it might sting, but I'm still who I am. I'm still surrounded by those who love and support me. They're still gonna be here. And that's where we perform best at because we get to take those risks

• 47:17Speaker 01

  instead of feeling like, oh, gosh, here it is. I'm gonna fall short again. Brain freaks out.

• 47:24Mel Robbins?

  I just love listening to you. And I want to take a quick pause so that we can hear a word from our amazing sponsors. And I also want to give you a chance to share Coach Magnus's incredible wisdom with the people that you care about. Every one of us needs to know how to win the inside game, and that's exactly what we're doing today. And don't go anywhere because after this short break, Coach and I, we're gonna be waiting for you. I mean, we got a lot of ground to cover, and we're gonna do that when we return. Stay with us.

• 48:02Mel Robbins?

  Welcome back. It's your buddy Mel Robbins. I am so glad you're here today because you and I are getting coaching from one of the most respected and renowned mindset coaches on the planet. I'm talking about Coach Steve Magness. We're learning about how we win the inside game. You know, there's super fascinating research in your book that I think is really important to read right now because I was really surprised by this. And it goes to this point because again, I think it's super counterintuitive to think, okay, the world's top, top, top, top, top performers, whether it's in business who you're coaching or it is the world's like most elite athletes.

• 48:45Mel Robbins?

  They're maniacally focused. They're 1,000% disciplined. It's hustle, hustle, hustle. They're focused on the Super Bowl. They're focused on this thing. The research actually shows the opposite. And I'm reading from "Win the Inside Game," page 90. This is research that you write about from Michigan State University. I was blown away with this, that they looked at over 100 years of Nobel Prize winning scientists. And it turned out that what these Nobel Prize winning scientists did in their downtime away from the lab may have proved vital. The distinguished scientists, check this out, were 22 times more likely to perform, sing, or act, 12 times more likely to pursue creative writing,

• 49:29Mel Robbins?

  and about seven times more likely to participate in crafts like sculpting, painting, or glass blowing. Whereas their less accomplished peers were more likely to be entirely focused on their scientific research. And so this research, basically, you know, as you write in your book, is like that going all in... And attaching who you are to one achievement, or to the fact that you're the chief resident, or you're married to so and so, or you drive this, this singular focus actually hinders us.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  It does, and it runs counter to just about everything we're told.

• 50:10Mel Robbins?

  Completely.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  Just go all in, be obsessed, only care about this thing. And the research, as you said, on Nobel winning scientists shows it's different. There's research on entrepreneurs that the ones who are more likely to actually succeed, don't quit their day job early on. There's research on athletes that show that they generally, those who make it to the top of the top, are more diversified in both their sports early on and then their later interests. Because what it does is it makes us resilient. Because if we fail at the one thing, and that's all that matters, comes back to that, our brain and the alarm. We produce a ton of cortisol.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Your brain says, I'm losing, my identity is at stake. Like shutdown. If we have other things in our life that we care about, that give us something else to think about, give us other pursuit to kind of do interesting things on, then even though the loss stings, you still have that resilience in your life.

• 51:20Mel Robbins?

  It's sort of like being like a stool. So instead of being on a unicycle, you have three wheels, a tricycle, various things that give you grounding and foundation in your life. You know, in your experience, coach, especially with Olympic athletes, elite performers, what habits do mentally tough people tend to have?

• 51:38Speaker 01

  What you see is they prioritize consistency over intensity. Meaning they don't just shoot for like the magic day where everything aligns. They're like, hey, I've got to figure out how to show up day after day, even on the bad days, right? Even on the days when things aren't going well, where maybe we don't get the full workout in, but we get something in because they know that if they stack enough solid days after days, then that is what leads to greatness. In fact, way back when I was a college coach, I tracked this. I tracked, how many times did people show up to practice in workouts? And how many times did they miss them?

• 52:21Speaker 01

  And then I ran a correlation between improvement and who showed up. And guess what? Strong correlation. The people who showed up in Dinn Miss Days performed better. In fact, the person who showed up the most during that period was this young lady who came in. And I kid you not, her freshman year in a race of 100 plus people. I think she was 99th out of like 101. By her senior year, she was qualified for the first round of the national championships.

• 52:55Mel Robbins?

  Wow.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Huge jump. And if you looked at the data, out of everybody on the team throughout that period, she missed the least amount of practice. She missed the least amount of workouts.

• 53:05Mel Robbins?

  I mean, it's incredible.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:07Mel Robbins?

  And that is what mental toughness creates is the ability to meet those moments and process what happened and learn from it, right? And step back on the track and grow.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  And so much of it is the story that we tell ourselves in our head because we get locked in these, these negative stories that again, define us as I'm not good at this thing. And if you talk to, again, elite performers, could be athletes, whoever it is, what you realize is they start to tell themselves stories that are about like growth in agency, meaning taking control of the situation. What can I do about it? Versus stories that are kind of push us down and where we can't do things about it, where there is no path forward. So it's all about figuring out how to tell yourself that story.

• 53:57Mel Robbins?

  It's such great advice. And as a coach, you're already using their name and talking to them that way. But we can do that to ourselves by using, hey Mel, you can handle this. Hey Mel, it's shake it off. Like what, what are some of the things that you would say just reflexively to one of your athletes if you're trying to boost a shift in their mindset?

• 54:19Speaker 01

  So number one is I tend to give them an action.

• 54:22Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  Actions work better.

• 54:23Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  So instead of telling someone, hey Mel, you need to relax. Like in the history of the world, I don't think telling someone to relax has ever worked.

• 54:31Mel Robbins?

  Yep.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  So instead I say, hey Mel, shake out your arms. Get a little loose. And what happens is your body goes like, okay, I'm gonna let go some of this tension. Therefore, I'm gonna relax. Action is number one. Number two is, what do they need to be focused on? Because generally what happens is, is stress, like, either we narrowly focus on the negative, see all the bad things, or our brain goes like scattershot and it's like all over the freaking place. So what we have to do is say, okay, what matters? I'm gonna focus on that. There's research on this. If you're a field goal kicker and you're feeling pressure and your mind's all over the place, what you literally do is say, focus on that spot right there, stare at it, and kick it there. And that will help you perform.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  And we can do that in our other aspects of life, which is like, give it a narrow goal or narrow thing to latch on to and tell yourself to focus on that.

• 55:29Mel Robbins?

  In the third person.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  In the third person.

• 55:30Mel Robbins?

  Mel, just focus on the next right move. Mel, just focus on the phone call you need to make. We'll worry about that other thing later.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Bingo.

• 55:39Mel Robbins?

  Wow. So, Coach, how do you train yourself to handle like hard tasks? Like, you know, you find yourself not that motivated, you got something that you need to do. Can you train yourself? I mean, you're an elite runner, so I'm sure you can push through just about anything. But for the rest of us mere mortals who are having trouble getting up the stairs without feeling winded, like, how do you hack this? Like, let's say you're somebody who's, alright, a goal is, I really wanna get my finances under control. I need to create a budget. I need to cut some expenses. I need to get serious about what I wanna save. Like, it's time for me to stop jerking around about this. Okay? So that's your goal.

• 56:22Mel Robbins?

  But then you go, I don't wanna face my horrible spending habits. I don't wanna look at the fact that I literally have no savings. So how does it work in this scenario?

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Start with the smallest step forward where you can make progress.

• 56:37Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  So, in this example, it might be, take the thing that is staring you in the face that you spend money on, that you know you shouldn't, and just focus first on that. Maybe it's every morning you go get your special foam latte at Starbucks. And you say, this is what I need. This spending habit is, I know I shouldn't do it every day, so I need to fix this. That's it. Narrow in on that one. And you've minimum viable progress. So maybe it's instead of every day I say, I'm gonna, you know what? Next week, I'm gonna go two days a week. And that's what I'm gonna allow myself to do. And what happens is you make progress and you get these small wins.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  And small wins give us a bump in this like feel-good hormones that say, hey, look, Steve, you're making progress. And if we can stack enough small wins, then that allows us to take the next step in the next big thing. And that's all it is. It sounds almost ridiculously simple. But what prevents us from taking on the hard things is we only see the hard things. Right? Again, I love running, so too many running examples. But if someone who had never run came up to me and said, hey, I want to go to a marathon, I wouldn't say, great, we're gonna tackle a marathon. I'd be like, no, no, we're gonna go on walks.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  And then when you get to your street, I want you to jog the street home. Because all you're trying to do is say, simple, small progress. And if you can stack that day after day, that is what creates that mental muscle and gives your brain evidence of like, okay, I've made progress. And it stokes that motivational fire.

• 58:21Mel Robbins?

  So coach makes perfect sense. And you and I both know that the second you even do the small thing, that you're going to face discomfort. And even if we just keep it in the lane of personal changes, whether somebody, you know, just heard you say walk and they're like, you know, I do need to start to take better care of myself. I do need to move my body more consistently. And that's a goal of mine, to really make that a priority. And so you can break it down and say, okay, I'm gonna go for a walk. After a week of that, I'm gonna jog back down my block to my house. But you're going to face tremendous discomfort because you've never done it before.

• 59:01Mel Robbins?

  And you say that discomfort is an opportunity to train your mental muscle.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  If we want to train discomfort or train toughness, We've got to do the very small things that make us realize that, hey, this discomfort is just a signal. And sometimes that signal is like accurate, meaning we've got, you know, you sprain your ankle and you need to listen to that discomfort. Right. It's a pain signal that's like, fix this, get off of your foot. Like, take care of it. So here's a non-athletic example. We are all are kind of addicted to our phones.

• 59:36Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  Okay. And what happens is, I bet you, the listener, have experienced this, is that you feel in your pocket, your phone vibrate. And you're like, oh, there's that buzz. And you reach for your phone, you pick it up, and there's no notification. It's called phantom vibration. It occurs in about 90% of us.

• 1:00:00Mel Robbins?

  Huh. Wait, literally, the phone didn't vibrate?

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:04Mel Robbins?

  You're kidding me.

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:05Mel Robbins?

  90% of people experience a phantom vibration?

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  Depending on the research, but yes, about 90% of people feel it. And the reason is because your brain is saying like, hey, here's this thing you give a lot of attention to. And like, you feel good when it buzzes and beeps and you get a notification. So we're essentially like, almost mistakenly going to predict that because that's what we're locked on to. Okay. Now, if I take that phone away, what happens is you probably feel a little bit of discomfort.

• 1:00:38Mel Robbins?

  Oh, yeah, you get fidgety or like, where is the thing? You're worried, you start thinking that something might be wrong with somebody. And what if they can't reach me? And what am I missing? And I'm going to get trouble at work? And where did the thing go? And, oh, my God.

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  Your brain catastrophizes.

• 1:00:51Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  Your brain, your inner voice goes crazy. I experienced it, we all experienced it.

• 1:00:56Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Okay. If we wanted to turn down that alarm, what would we do? We'd take our phone for a small bit and we'd say, okay, I'm gonna, for an hour, I'm gonna leave it in the other room. And at first, what would happen? Your brain would go crazy. I'm spiraling out of control. What if someone's getting at me? But if you left it for that hour, at some point, your brain would let go and say, you know what? I'm gonna see it at an hour. The world isn't gonna end. And if, and that right there is training toughness for discomfort.

• 1:01:31Mel Robbins?

  You know what I love about this example is I think that at this point in time, every single one of us has a very conflicted relationship with our phone. Every single one of us wishes we spent less time on it. We all know intellectually we should. And we've also been told a million times that we should create boundaries. But none of that actually changes behavior. And what I really like about your invitation here, Coach, is that you're framing this as an opportunity to train mental toughness in yourself. And being tough enough mentally to not allow

• 1:02:13Mel Robbins?

  distraction, emotion, craving, anxiety, whatever it is, it's going to rise up no matter what, to derail you from staying focused and present, or just performing and doing what you need to do. What kind of person do you want to be? And I don't want to be a person that's beholden to my phone. I don't want the phone to have more power over me than I have over myself. And it's a powerful thing to build inside yourself this ability to not be rattled by something outside of you. And that's what you're actually talking about.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  You're actually training your presence and your mental toughness in a way that helps you not only for, you know, dealing with your phone, but everything else in life.

• 1:02:56Mel Robbins?

  You also talk about how listening to your body is a form of mental strength, rather than a sign of weakness. What is one, like, mental drill or a tool that the person listening can implement this week to start building this mental toughness and real resilience?

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  I think the most powerful thing you can do to develop mental resilience is time spent alone in your head.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  When we make our inner world seem foreign, when we make our inner world seem like a threat, like it's distant from who we are, then our brain reacts accordingly. And it says, oh, my gosh, I'm alone in my head. Because being alone with your thoughts is kind of foreign and threatening. If you're listening to this podcast, I'm going to tell you, pick something, doesn't matter what it is. Pick something where phones at the side. It's just you alone with your thoughts for a short period of time, because that's how you navigate things. And in fact, the late, great Kobe Bryant, put this brilliantly when he was talking about

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  youth basketball practices. He, at his daughter's youth basketball practice, someone was yelling at their kid to what to think about and what to do from the sideline. And Bryant said, I told that parent, this is the key moment. Your kid is learning how to be alone with their head and negotiate in their head. That's where we learn how to be tough. You don't want them to focus on external things, you, the parent screaming at them, because chances are they're not going to listen to you in the game. They need to learn this skill. So it doesn't matter if it's sport or life, figure out something where it's you alone in your head and give yourself just a little bit of time and space, and that'll create toughness.

• 1:04:54Mel Robbins?

  You know, we've talked a lot about not only how maniacally focusing on outer success and achievement and all the things that we chase can backfire on you. And you have given us tool after tool after tool and all the research on how we can not only win the inside game, but we can build the skill of mental toughness. And there was a time in your life where all of the things that you were chasing on the outside just blew up in your face. And I would love for you to take us back to what was probably one of the hardest moments of your entire life. You were 26 years old.

• 1:05:39Mel Robbins?

  You had your dream job and absolutely everything.

• 1:05:45Mel Robbins?

  Just flipped on its head. Can you just describe what the job was and what happened?

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  I got the job for what was then called the Nike Oregon Project, which was essentially Nike sponsored an elite track and field team, where literally the goal was to win Olympic championships.

• 1:06:07Mel Robbins?

  And you land this at 26, you're one of the coaches?

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  I was the assistant coach, 26, the youngest professional coach in the sport. Fresh out of graduate school, I thought I had hit the freaking lottery. And I was told, I was like, you know what? This goes well, you're gonna be, this program is going to be yours. You're going to lead these professional athletes. And let me tell you, in running, this is really rare, because there's only a handful of professional teams that do this at this level. And it was with the premier, you know, sporting goods company in the world. And I thought I had my dream job. And I told everyone I had my dream job. My parents were like, oh, thank God, like, we are set.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Like, Steve is killing it.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  And then, months into it, I started to see things that raised some red flags. Where I started to see some documents that suggested, from the sports scientists at Nike, that suggested like, there are some cheating going on, some nefarious things going on that didn't fit the rules of the sport. And at first, I remember calling my parents in the stairwell at Nike and saying, hey, I just saw this document that mentioned testosterone medication, which is a banned substance in sport. And they're like, oh, no. And at first, you rationalize it, because you're like,

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  This is where I want to be. This is it. But eventually, what happened is it just gnawed at me. And going back to asking that question, who do you want to be? I have a clear view of how I see myself in terms of ethics and morals and what I want out of sport, especially a sport like running where no one gets in it to become a millionaire. You get in it for the love of the competition itself, to try and make that Olympic dream that you have as a kid. And I came face to face where I had a decision where do I keep going? And keep my quote unquote, dream job?

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  Or do I stick to my ethics and morals and values? And quit and essentially blow the whistle?

• 1:08:32Mel Robbins?

  You know, what's interesting is you write about this moment. Because as you started to tell people, and you write about this moment in the stairwell, that you risked your career and your livelihood and you ignored advice from friends and lawyers, and even a prominent judge who told you at this time, it may be the right thing to blow the whistle on this. But whistleblowers seldom come out on top. You're risking your career before it even gets started. And you go on to write, after all, I was at my dream job. I was the heir apparent to the best funded professional track team in the country. One with a future Olympic champion and medalist. It was everything I ever wanted professionally.

• 1:09:16Mel Robbins?

  The advice family members kept repeating was, can you just stick it out through the Olympics? I was there for a year and a half before I'd had enough. We like our stories simple. The hero who overcomes adversity. The woman who values are hard earned and firmly held, who prevails against all odds. We think of ourselves in similar ways, crafting a personal narrative where we are the hero of the story. We even have a psychological immune system, a protective mechanism to thwart negative self evaluations. We want to think of ourselves as good, moral, decent people. We shove away the messiness. As you read this story, you probably believe you would have done the right thing immediately if thrust into that same position.

• 1:10:02Mel Robbins?

  What happened? Like, how long were you wrestling? With what to do?

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  Months. Yeah, I mean, it took me months at first to decide to quit. And then, once I left, it took me months to actually blow the whistle and tell somebody. There was this deep, inner feeling, this gnawing away, that just kept occurring, where I was like, "Gosh, I can't live with this feeling. This isn't who I am." And then, more so, I'd see other people who were, like me, young, and probably were sitting there thinking, "I got the dream job," and were headed out there, and I couldn't help

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  myself but thinking, "Oh, my gosh, they have no idea what they're getting into. They have no idea what decisions they're gonna face, or what the environment is like." And those feelings were what eventually pushed me to say, "Okay, what can I live with? Like, who do, again, who do I want to be? Do I want my values to be slogans? Or do I want them to be things that I can look at and say, 'Deep down, this is, this, they mean something.'" And eventually, what happened, again, I didn't even tell anybody this, I just said, "You know what? I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna blow the whistle." I wrote a long email to US Anti-Doping, who is a regulatory body, and said, "Here's

• 1:11:33Speaker 01

  everything I know. Let's talk. Let's start that process." And it was the most scared I'd ever been in my life.

• 1:11:44Mel Robbins?

  What was it like to hit send on that?

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  It was just this experience where you're like, "I kinda know what I'm getting into, but I have no idea. And my life is about to turn upside down, and I'm gonna lose a little bit of control over my life, because this other thing is going to..."

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  Potentially dominate it. And again, I'm some shy introvert who just wants to, you know, coach some people, help people perform well, and then go home and like, you know, sit at home and read a good book. And I was like, I'm about, that's, that's not going to be possible. And it wasn't. I had reporters who, you know, came to my house and stalked it to, followed me at work. I had the FBI show up as I was backing out of the garage of my house and knock on the, the car window and show me some badges like I'm in a movie. And it was just stuff that I was like, I couldn't even imagine, but you just, there was no other possibility, except I had to figure out how to navigate it.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  What happened? The head coach and the head doctor of the program were banned, had a ban from the sport. And positive change came out of it, where people, A, understood, and then I think some increased safety and guards to make sure that that didn't happen in the future, occurred. But it took 10 years to go from hitting send on that email, essentially, to when the final appeal happened, because like, there were lawyers and all sorts of things and evidence. And I had to turn over my computer and phone and have everyone go through everything I'd ever written. It was the most trying, more than any experience I'd

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  had in sport or life. Like, it pushed me to the max of, how do I keep my sanity and not lose who I am and not let that kind of negativity spiral take over? Because there are absolutely points where I'm like, I don't, I've lost control of my life. What did it teach you? If you would have outlined everything that I would have had to go through before I hit send on that email, I would have said, no way in hell. Because it was tough.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  But it taught me that like, we're always capable of more. And the other thing that I think it really brought home is that, two things, is that we get to write our own story. So even though it felt like I'd lost control of my life, I was in charge. I got to say, you know what, whatever, who cares what the external world sees? What matters to me? How am I judging myself on this? How am I defining my life based on this? How do I want to integrate this experience into the story I'm telling about myself?

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  And the last thing, and I think most important thing is, is that I realized that toughness is not the stoic, individual pursuit that we often portray it as. It is not the individual hero in the movie. It takes a village and it takes support. And if you don't have loved ones and the support and the friends who are gonna say, you know what, Steve? I see you're struggling. I'm here for you, whatever that means. I'd get those texts, I'd get those calls. And sometimes I'd take them up on it. And sometimes just seeing that text reminds you like, okay, I'm not alone. I've got people in my corner.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  And I think that's what it is, is that when we talk about doing tough things, is maybe the answer is, we talked about a lot of tools and tips, but it's making sure that you have genuine people who love and support you, surrounding you. Because if you do, like, they're gonna be the people who allow you to handle the challenges and who are there when you can't use any of the tips and tricks. You just need a shoulder, literally, to cry on, or a hug to support you, to make you realize that like, it's going to be okay. Life will work out.

• 1:16:08Mel Robbins?

  What are your parting words?

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  My parting words for you, the listener, is that you can do this. You've got this. You're capable of more. And that capability doesn't mean doing something heroic.

• 1:16:25Speaker 01

  It just means taking the next small step towards the challenge that you want to embrace. That's what it is, is consistency over intensity. And if you can take that small step, then you're gonna build the momentum to change, you know, who you are and what your pursuit is.

• 1:16:43Mel Robbins?

  Coach Steve Magness, you absolutely showed up and just dusted this thing. I mean, in the rankings of podcast interviews, I would say you broke the four-minute mile.

• 1:16:59Speaker 01

  Thank you. I try to do the best that I can and show up who I am and help people and how I can, so.

• 1:17:07Mel Robbins?

  Well, I appreciate how you got into that chair. And it was very clear that you asked yourself the question, who do I want to be? And you put on the coach and I'm gonna speak power into the person that's listening, and you delivered. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And I also want to thank you. Thank you for taking the time to listen to something that will absolutely improve your life. Like, this is a life-changing conversation. I'm so thrilled you were listening and watching all the way to the end. Thank you for sharing this with everybody in your life that you care about, because we all need to know how to win the inside game. And I am so blown away by what we learned today.

• 1:17:51Mel Robbins?

  I can't wait to see how it changes your life, because I know that it's going to. And in case no one else tells you, I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you. I love you for listening and watching this. I believe in you. I believe in your ability to create a better life, and you got a roadmap and tools today, so go use them. Alrighty, I'll see you in the next episode. I'll be waiting for you the moment you hit play.

• 1:18:17Mel Robbins?

  Let me find this. You're doing great. You're so good.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:18:21Mel Robbins?

  You're welcome. Killing it.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  She represented the US at a half marathon world championships.

• 1:18:27Mel Robbins?

  No big deal.

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:18:30Mel Robbins?

  You two are gonna have really fast kids, you know that?

• 1:18:32Speaker 01

  Don't put the pressure on our two-year-old now.

• 1:18:34Mel Robbins?

  I'm sorry. So will you just explain first, second, and third? Because I always mix those up.

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do too. And I'm a writer, so we're both writers. This is bad.

• 1:18:42Mel Robbins?

  You were incredible.

• 1:18:45Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:18:46Mel Robbins?

  You better get ready for a lot more podcast interviews because...

• 1:18:50Speaker 01

  That was fun. You guys, you guys make it so easy, though.

• 1:18:54Mel Robbins?

  Awesome. Good job, everybody. All right, now I can watch videos.

• 1:19:01Mel Robbins?

  Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.

• 1:19:36Mel Robbins?

  Stitcher.