How Elite Performers Build Toughness - Steve Magness

Steve Magness is a world-renowned expert on performance, an author and a consultant on mental skills development for professional sports teams. All elite performers have the rage to master their chosen pursuit. But the difference between the ones who continue to succeed and those who fall away is their toughness and durability. Thankfully, Steve has spent his career deconstructing the mental habits of the world's best athletes and executives. Expect to learn how to accept your achievements without believing your limitations, why Steve blew the whistle on Nike Oregon Project's unethical practises, why your emotions are messengers, how obsession can be both a tragedy and a gift, the difference between responding and reacting to difficulties and much more... Sponsors: Get 10% discount on all Optimal Carnivore’s products at www.amazon.com/optimalcarnivore (use code: WISDOMSAVE10) Get 15% discount on the amazing 6 Minute Diary at https://bit.ly/diarywisdom (use code MW15) (USA - https://amzn.to/3b2fQbR and use 15MINUTES) Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and Free Shipping from Athletic Greens at https://athleticgreens.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Buy Do Hard Things - https://amzn.to/3QwNupI Follow Steve on Twitter - https://twitter.com/stevemagness Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #resilience #toughness #highperformance - 00:00 Intro 01:56 The Nike Whistleblower 11:33 Becoming Elite at a Young Age 19:23 How Advantageous Is Obsession? 28:43 Self-Awareness of Elite Performers 35:39 Fascinating Studies in Steve’s Book 49:21 The Importance of Picking One Thing 1:01:02 Where to Find Steve - Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Listen to all episodes on audio: Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  We often think confidence and we think certainty. It's not certainty. It's confidence in knowing what the task is, what the demands are, and then what are your capabilities? The capabilities to know that win, lose, or draw, I can navigate through this thing.

• 0:18Chris Williamson?

  Talk to me about your background. For people that aren't familiar with your work and what you've done in the past, what is your career up to this point?

• 0:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. So I was a high-level runner. So I was a four-minute and one-second miler. Just missed that four-minute barrier growing up. So that was kind of my background. Went to university and college expecting to go entirely the sports route and be a professional athlete. And I completely bombed. I never improved on my kind of junior best. So I quickly realized, oh, I have to pay attention to academics and figure out what in the world it is I want to do. So I did the logical thing, which was I'm going to get into coaching. So after university, I got into athletic coaching and track and field and did that for a very long time. Well, for over a decade.

• 1:11Speaker 00

  Early on in that, I actually worked for Nike for a couple of years and went through a big whistleblowing experience and had to leave that and then went into collegiate coaching here in the US. And then from there, I've kind of expanded out into, okay, performance is performance. Yes, I want to help people run faster on the track or perform better in sport. But you know, the same skills that athletes are utilizing, so are executives, so are entrepreneurs, so are physicians. And really, you know, exploring that more holistically. So in the last, gosh, three, four years, I've kind of expanded out to, you know, just try to help people perform better.

• 1:56Chris Williamson?

  How much can you talk about the Nike whistleblower situation?

• 2:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, we can go down however far you want.

• 2:04Chris Williamson?

  Tell me the story. I didn't know about this.

• 2:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it actually, it actually is funny because it started or it exploded in the UK first, actually, because there was a BBC program that kind of broke the story. But essentially, what happened was I was working with a group of professional athletes. I was assistant coach for the Nike Oregon Project. And I witnessed in the year and a half I was there, some things that, you know, kind of rang alarm bells. So after I was there, I, or after I, I was done, I went and called US Anti-Doping up and said, hey, here's what I've witnessed. Here was my

• 2:48Speaker 00

  experience. I have no idea on if this breaks the rules or not. But it seemed kind of sketchy to me. And there was a lot of things like, you know, injections of various supplements and like, all sorts of crazy stuff. There was like, not blatant, like, hey, here's some steroids, use it. But it was, it was shady or enough where there were questions around it. And then US Anti-Doping spent, gosh, almost nine years investigating it. And then ultimately found that the, the head coach and the doctor there had violated anti-doping rules and they were,

• 3:28Speaker 00

  they were banned. So I spent, again, nine years of my life while I continued working and coaching and like, writing and all that stuff. But for nine years, I was, you know, at the beck and call of going in to testify and like, do all sorts of, you know, talk to law enforcement and all sorts of crazy things as part of that.

• 3:51Chris Williamson?

  Dude, that story is wild. Nine years of you constantly being this sort of whistleblower behind the scenes. Is it the Nike Oregon Project that had, weren't they putting undue pressure on athletes to lose weight or do some other stuff?

• 4:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, so they were. So I also reported that.

• 4:13Chris Williamson?

  Oh, fuck, that was you as well?

• 4:15Speaker 00

  It was, it was me and then Mary Kane and some other athletes who, who really did that as well. Cara Goucher, who spoke up. So it was a bunch of us on that. But like, I, you know, the story that I can tell you there, and this might get across. That part of it is, I remember sitting in a meeting with the, the head coach after a, uh, it was after the world indoor championships. And the athletes we were working with had all competed and we were talking about one athlete. Who had done really well for herself and had made the final of the championship and it was her first international competition. So in my head, I'm thinking like, great.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  Like they made the final. This is a good step. Like all that good stuff. And the head coach, Alberto Salazar, you know, sits down and he said. Essentially said, that athlete was like. So big that she looked like she could barely lift her legs. And this is a world-class like distance runner. And I remember being like, what? This is strange. So I, you know, I pulled out the, the body fat testing that the Nike, you know, that they'd done at the lab at Nike. And I said. Well, you know, according to the science and data, you know, her body fat percentage was, I forget it, but it was something like 10%. Which is incredibly low for a female. It's about the lowest you can go without, you know, having any sort of medical problems.

• 5:39Speaker 00

  And I remember he just, he just turns to me and says, you know, I don't give a damn what the science says. I know what I see with my eyes. Like. They need to lose weight. Like we've got to tell them to lose weight. They're too fat. And I'm just sitting there like. What in the world is like, what bizarre world have I entered? So you know, I'm glad that eventually. All of that came out and people like Mary Kane and others who, who spoke for it on their experience, uh, what they had to go through because it was, it was wild.

• 6:10Chris Williamson?

  How culpable are athletes if they are under the jurisdiction of coaches and doctors that are giving them certain substances? How culpable are they for, um, being popped for PEDs down the line?

• 6:25Speaker 00

  So that's a great question. I think that's one of the under discussed aspects of, you know, anti-doping, performance enhancing drugs is generally what happens is athlete gets banned if they test positive and then they're gone. But we forget about the entourage, the coaches, the doctors all around them. And often what happens is these athletes are young and almost taken advantage of because, you know, especially in sports, Olympic sports like athletics is it's not, it's not like, you know, the NFL or NBA or soccer, football where it's like they're making millions and millions and they're okay. You know, most of the athletes are not making

• 7:10Speaker 00

  that much. So there's a lot of pressure to perform and to, you know, stay relevant so you can continue in the sport. So what happens is often the athletes, the power dynamic between the coach and the athlete is so heavily skewed where the coach or whoever in charge like essentially controls the purse strings, especially in these situations like where I was in where it was, it was, you know, supported by a major shoe brand, which, you know, gave the athlete the salary. So in situations like this, I feel really bad for athletes because you get in

• 7:51Speaker 00

  this environment where it's like you either do what the coach says or you're kind of, your contract is gone and you're, you know, you're not making any money anymore. So what happens is people comply. And then I think also is coaches, doctors take advantage of, you know, the fact that these are often young athletes who are almost like desperate to perform.

• 8:17Speaker 00

  So it seldom is, hey, here's some steroids and take it. What often it is, is like, oh, like, I want you to try these supplements that might be a little sketchy. Oh, you did that. Oh, I want you to try this, you know, injection that is, that is kind of legal, might not be legal.

• 8:36Chris Williamson?

  Slippery slope of PEDs.

• 8:38Speaker 00

  And it just goes down the, you know, the rabbit hole. And then by that, by that time, you're, you have an athlete who's like taking something and they, they often don't realize how they got to that point.

• 8:49Chris Williamson?

  That's very interesting. I imagine as well, in non-professional sports, there are fewer controls and sort of inner regulations because it's not being operated quite so much like a business. My housemate back in the UK is the physio for Newcastle Falcons, which is a Premier League rugby team. And, you know, rugby is nowhere near the level of our football, soccer for you. And even there, there's so many checks and balances and there's a million people. There's no way that you'd be able to contain any of this fuckery going on. Another thing, young athletes, you've basically got, especially if you're living on site, training on site. If you live and breathe the sport, if this is existentially what you feel connected to. Basically, the coach is a surrogate parent.

• 9:31Chris Williamson?

  And what you want is approval from them. You want praise from them. You want to be told that you're doing well, all this sort of stuff. And then if the parent, the surrogate parent says, well, you've got to get stronger, you've got to get bigger, you've got to lose weight. You've got to take these drugs, you've got to take these supplements or whatever. Not only are you going to say yes, probably without thinking, but you're also going to have a lot of undue trust in someone that doesn't have the same level of investment or care that a parent actually would. But I imagine, you know, some 16, 17, 18 year old phenomenon runner is going to struggle to distinguish between the two. They're just going to see parent figure.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  Exactly. I think you're spot on there. And I think that, you know, the other part of it is these athletes are often so good, so young. So their identity is entirely wrapped around the sport and that is all that they know. While their peers were, you know, off experimenting and figuring out like, what do I actually want to do with my life? These athletes are like, you know, I'm great at this sport. This is what I'm good at. This is my future. Like, go ahead. So I think that makes it even more where they're vulnerable.

• 10:39Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  Because it's like, if you fail, it's not, oh, I failed at running or rugby or football. It is like, I am a failure myself. So that puts it even more where like, you're going to see that coach or authority figure as the person who you trust as the parental figure, who's going to guide you in the right direction. And we know when you do that, it's almost like you have these blinders on. And you, you kind of stop seeing reality for reality. And instead you see like, you know, this is the person I've entrusted my future with. So if I want to make it to this promised land, which is my entire world and identity, then I have to go and follow his directions or path.

• 11:23Chris Williamson?

  It's going to be tantamount to destruction, right? Complete just annihilation of the ego, sense of self. Everything is completely wrapped up in that sport. Yeah, it's so interesting. What are your thoughts around the fact that young athletes, as they're coming through, or anybody really that finds success or obsession with something young, is both at a competitive advantage, but also a vulnerable, a vulnerability disadvantage. So the fact that they don't know anything else, basically, means that they are just completely blinkers on and focused towards this one goal. That means it's going to be significantly easier for them to outcompete the person who knows what it's like to have a girlfriend,

• 12:03Chris Williamson?

  knows what it's like to go out partying with their friends and take a holiday on a summer vacation with the lads or the girls or whatever. But on the flip side, there's this increase in vulnerability. Do you think if you can control for the vulnerability, that that sort of unbelievable focus is an advantage? Or are there still some externalities that are negative that come out of that as well?

• 12:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I'll just give you my own life and then the research as well. So as I mentioned, I was, I was very much a phenom. I mean, when I was, uh, I don't know, 14 years old, I was like the third fastest miler in the country for my age. And then by 18, I was the fastest, uh, you know, high school miler in the, in, in the US.

• 12:45Chris Williamson?

  No way.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  So I was the phenom who was obsessed, just like you said.

• 12:51Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  Blinders on, couldn't see anything else. Like, high school didn't care about academics, didn't care about going out. I was like, running, running, running. And that, in some sense, allowed me to be really, really good. Because I was going to put in the work and forget everything else and put track and running first. And I think that works for a limited amount of time often. But inevitably, what happens is you get confronted with reality, which is if your entire world is in this obsession, then inevitably, when you face

• 13:33Speaker 00

  some sort of struggle or failure or setback, it often pops that bubble. And you're looking around being like, I devoted everything to this, and now I can't even like, reach this goal, this goal, this goal. And that can be, it's almost like you have an identity crisis when you're, you know, you're an adolescent or teen or like, early twenties trying to go through this. So I think what it is, is yes, that obsession can be incredible. But it needs to almost be directed and have some diversity or constraints set around it so that you kind of don't lose your mind.

• 14:14Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, I guess the, the alternative or the, the other danger that you have is, if you start to introduce this young athlete to other things, you begin to see them become distracted by those other things. So it's very much a balancing act, I guess, between the focus on training, the life being revolved around the sport and the pursuit, but the... Sense of self, sense of self-worth, that being a little bit more distracted. So my only equivalent, I wasn't as elite as you, but I played county cricket, which is the equivalent of like Premier League cricket all the way through, from the age of 10 till the age of 18, that was all I did. Four, five, six games a week throughout all of summer training. It was all I thought about, it was all I did. Took time out of college, our high school to go and do it. And then I had the choice of, do you want to go to university?

• 14:59Chris Williamson?

  Or do you want to make a go of this cricket thing? I didn't think I was a good enough cricketer to commit to that. But as soon as I went to university, I fell in love with running businesses. So I started running a business at 18 years old and I, I got my grade. The only reason I even got into uni is because my grades were reduced because the director of the program that I was joining, the business school was in love with cricket and knew that I was going to come and play for the university team. So I got three Bs at A level. It was A, A, B to get in and I failed. I didn't get into my first choice and my second choice, the only reason I got it is because he'd reduced the grade. So cricket literally got me into university and I don't think about that enough. But as soon as I got there, I sat next to my business partner in my first ever seminar

• 15:42Chris Williamson?

  and we started running a business that day, basically. We started working together that very day and I became obsessed with running a business and making money and getting success and acclaim and status and stuff like that. But that completely destroyed my sporting career. I, I didn't want to play for the first at uni. I wanted to play for the seconds because it meant I had more time to go to work. They played on a different day, which actually worked with our portfolio of events that we'd started running and all this other stuff. So I saw in front of my own eyes, my athletic obsession dissolve because of other stuff that came through. And if you have that focus and that obsession previously, you've already got a trained

• 16:25Chris Williamson?

  style of living and that can quickly sort of be moved. You're applying the same energy, but to a different pursuit. And then the first pursuit that you had just gets completely fallen away. It's the same reason, I think, that when people get out of relationships they've been in for ages, they jump straight into another one because they just take the same energy they were working on in the first relationship, remove the partner, but keep going with the same energy.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think you're spot on, and I think that's a great story. And then that final analogy is wonderful, because it really is where you direct it. And the way I like to think of it is, it's almost your little superpower to have this kind of obsession. But the key is, like, how do we stay in control of it and keep it in check? And as you said, like, have just enough space between our sense of self and this thing that we do, so that it doesn't turn negative. And if you look at, actually, you know, decades ago, there was a wonderful psychologist, Ellen Winner, who did some research on prodigies, you know, and like chess and math and all this stuff.

• 17:29Speaker 00

  And she she called it beautifully. She said, "They all have the rage to master", which is that obsession, right? And it can be applied to math, chess, sport, business, whatever have you. They all have that rage to master. But the difference between the ones who were able to carry it through and maybe didn't like fail or burn out is that that rage to master came from like this intrinsic place of I want to do this, of this brings me joy. And yes, it might be tough and I might go through struggles, but I just love that process. Hmm. And that's what it's all about. And in fact, I was talking to American coach Tom House,

• 18:11Speaker 00

  who's famous for coaching American stars like Nolan Ryan and Tom Brady and throwing. And he put it, he put it this way, is like, the greatest of all time, like, they are obsessed and in love with that process. It's not necessarily like, hey, I'm doing this and obsessed because I want to, you know, achieve X, Y, and Z outcome. It's that, man, this energy, I'm directing it towards something. And yes, if I keep directing it towards something, I'm gonna achieve some great outcome. But that's not the center focus. And I think there's a clear, again, a clear but subtle distinguishing line between that.

• 18:52Speaker 00

  And the way I almost like to think of it is, like, maybe the obsession you kind of directed towards business versus maybe, you know, someone like Elizabeth Holmes in the US, who...

• 19:03Speaker 00

  Was by all accounts obsessed, but because she was so obsessed, took that towards like fraud and cheating because she had to like have that status and win instead of being about like the discovery, the exploration, the process in creating what you know, something great.

• 19:23Chris Williamson?

  How familiar are you with the Stoics and Stoicism as a philosophy?

• 19:27Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm kind of familiar. I've read Ryan Holiday's work.

• 19:31Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so I'm gonna butcher it and Ryan's coming on the show in a couple of weeks, so he'll tell me off. But there's four Stoic virtues. I want to say it's temperance, something else, wisdom and something else, right? And I'm pretty sure that Ryan said that wisdom is one of the ones that's most important because it is the one that ensures that the actions of the other three are being directed towards something which is good in and of itself. And this is the difference between Elizabeth Holmes and that guy that's trying to clean up all of the plastic from the oceans, right? They both had an obsession, have an obsession, but one of them was filtering their momentum

• 20:12Chris Williamson?

  through a effective strategy, right? Through something that they knew would be good, genuinely good for the world. And you know, people can be obsessive human traffickers, or they could be, you know, obsessive drug dealers or gangland bosses, mafia bosses and stuff. I imagine that if you were able to take those skills and apply them to something legitimate or altruistic, you would have an unbelievably effective person. Problem being that it's just being directed in the wrong way. So I think, I think you're very right there. And also to talk about the fact that a obsession is a competitive advantage is so, so true. I know that you mentioned that you can become pretty obsessed with stuff and I think that I do as well. And from the outside looking in, it is, there's something kind of romantic about it,

• 20:56Chris Williamson?

  but then there's also something kind of tragic about it as well, right? That you're constantly going to play this battle with yourself, this desire for more, this desire to be more effective, this sense of existential connection between whatever it is that you are and whatever you're doing and the results of that. There's ways that people can manipulate that. There's ways that you can be thrown around in the turmoil and buffeted by the turbulence that is the success or failure of whatever you're getting into. How good is the book? How many Substack subscribers do you get? All of that stuff, right? But it wouldn't do for everybody to perhaps exist in that way, but it's certainly pretty effective for some people, especially those that are trying to do new things and build stuff.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I think you're spot on. And I think, you know, what we're getting at here is, you know, I think in this world, we often think of things as like good or bad, black and white. But it's the nuance of it is this great thing, this great obsession or passion can fuel, it's almost like rocket fuel. It can fuel you in a number of different ways. And some of those might be good and some of those might be bad. It just kind of depends on the context around it. And to me, you know, knowing that I have that tendency or ability, it's just making sure in my life and for myself, I have those checks on myself. So that I'm pointing things in the right direction, or that I'm not getting

• 22:23Speaker 00

  obsessed or compulsive on the wrong things. Like you said there, you know, the book sales or the followers or the subscribers, all of those things which you can, especially if you have this tendency, you can drive yourself nuts on, and you can start assigning your value as a human being, being based on these like numbers and things like that. So it's very important to set your life up so that you have those checks and balances. And also things I think in your life that keep you humble and grounded so that you can, you know, use that wisdom to use the stoic idea. Because often if you don't have that humility, what often happens is like you get blinded to it. And then that wisdom decreases and

• 23:08Speaker 00

  then you find yourself doing crazy things that you know, you never wanted to or should.

• 23:14Chris Williamson?

  You've been talking a lot about doing hard things recently. This is your current obsession, I guess. And one of the very interesting conversations that I had with Jocka Willink a few weeks ago on the show was, he has radical responsibility and extreme ownership, right? Like, even if it's not your, even if it's not your fault, it's still your responsibility. So he's talking about the absolute maximum amount of leaning into discomfort of taking responsibility for stuff. And I mentioned to him that I wondered whether there would be such a thing as taking too much responsibility, where people Put on their own shoulders responsibility for things which they were in no way responsible for, they weren't at fault for, and it can actually cause those kinds of people with

• 23:58Chris Williamson?

  that type of mentality to be less effective because they're, it'll feed into self doubt, it'll feed into imposter syndrome, it'll make them move more slowly because they're terrified about making decisions because they're going to overthink things before they do that. And I wonder whether doing hard things is similar to that as well, that at the moment, it's very easy to kind of point the finger at victim culture, look at all of these fucking snowflakes, like you need to man up and get after it and blah, blah, blah. And for maybe the widest area under the curve, that might be right, that genuinely might be true, and I would probably be tempted to say, yes, for most of the normies, that would be true. But when you apply that same logic to people who already have a disposition that causes

• 24:43Chris Williamson?

  them to be type A go-getters that are over-delivering and over-achieving and over-attempting, that can actually be more of a negative. And most of the people that I know and a lot of the people that I hang around with in Austin, if I was to, if I was able to give them one skill, it wouldn't be the ability to work harder, it would be the ability to switch off more.

• 25:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I think that's, I think you're spot on here. And I think that, again, is why we need nuance on these conversations, and that's what I tried to bring in this new book, is that, you know, doing hard things is, is important, it's valuable, obviously. But at the same point, for certain people, it can get in the way. And the way I like to look at this is looking at it through the sporting lens and the lens of choking in sport. What happens there? Well, we know from decades of research that the people who tend to choke in sport are generally the type A perfectionists who are incredibly driven. And what happens is, for whatever reason, like that pressure, that judgment, just kind

• 25:49Speaker 00

  of knocks them for a loop. And then what do they do? They try to double down, work harder, put more effort in to force things, and that backfires into them having this negative doubt spiral or this, you know, overthinking spiral, when the reality is they need to learn how to let, let go. To, you know, care maybe a little bit less. And I understand that sounds sacrilegious in some avenues. But I'll give you an example from an athlete who I worked with for a while is American distance runner Sarah Hall. And before Sarah Hall, very good for a long time, but never up at the top, upper echelon.

• 26:33Speaker 00

  And then this past year, at the age of 38, set the American record in the half marathon. And then recently went on to get fifth at the world championships in the half marathon, or in the marathon, excuse me. So phenomenal breakthrough late in life. And when you talk to her, she says, "I had to let go. I had to care a little bit less and realize that win or lose, it wasn't me out there that was like, you know, I'm not putting all of my self-worth into running. Win or lose, the people who love and support me are still gonna love and support me.

• 27:14Speaker 00

  I'm still gonna work very hard, but it's not the only thing in my life. It's not the only thing that defines me." And then she has this phenomenal breakthrough. And I think for people who are those type A kind of pushers or strivers, extreme strivers, what happens is we can often get in our way. And actually, the work I've done with elite athletes especially, is often to do just that, is how do I make sure that they don't get in their way, that they don't like keep striving, pushing, etc. And the other, you know, the analogy that sometimes helps to get this across to listeners and readers is, think of, you know, the sprinter Usain Bolt.

• 27:57Speaker 00

  If you watched him compete, he is, again, world record holder, greatest sprinter of all time, you watch him compete and he is trying to relax in order to run his fastest. He is not trying to dig down, grit his teeth, you know, whatever have you. I'm sure he does very hard things in practice. But when it comes to race day, he knows he's ready to perform and he knows to put himself in that position, he has to let go, relax, when everything around him is telling him to fight, to push, to do all these things. And I think that analogy works for most, uh, most everyone else who is in that kind of striver, pusher category.

• 28:43Chris Williamson?

  Is this based then, is the effective strategy that people, whether they be high performers in business, technology, creativity, sport, is it a case that you need to do a little bit of introspection, work out who you are, and then have the strategy that comes in? Because there will be somebody for whom the aggression, heavy metal music before you step out there is the way to go. It's also going to be sport-specific. I wouldn't want a powerlifter to go out as relaxed as possible, you know? It's a very different kind of sport. It's a very different kind of pursuit. Podcasting, for instance, if you were to go and do a huge podcast and you were super nervous about it, you want to be as relaxed as possible because you want to be able to have access to all of that width, that agility to be

• 29:28Chris Williamson?

  able to move between your thoughts. But again, the same might not be true if you're a Formula One driver, perhaps. I don't know. My point being that it's person-specific and it's domain-specific.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Exactly. And I think that introspection piece is really important. And actually, what I found in researching and writing the book is that the best performers tend to have this internal sense of awareness and self-awareness that, that lower-level performers don't. And that even goes with understanding the emotional experience and their thoughts and whatever inner signals their body is sending in preparation to do very difficult things. And this often runs counter to what we teach people, especially in sport, which is like, hey, you know, forget your doubts, ignore your emotions, like, push it away.

• 30:18Speaker 00

  But the reality is, that all provides feedback that we can utilize to understand what kind of state am I in versus what kind of state do I want to be in? And I think the way I look at it is, are you prepared? For the demands that you're going to face and what kind of performance state allows you to, you know, take on that task. You're spot on. If I'm going to do, you know, one rep of bench press or something, I want to be incredibly fired up. But for other avenues, I don't. And that's where we get this idea in sports psychology that they call it the

• 30:57Speaker 00

  individual zone of optimal functioning, which is for each individual in each task, you're going to need a different level of physiological arousal and often a different level or type of like emotional response. And here I think the, the example of, of Michael Jordan is, is perfect because like he is known as this like hardcore competitor. And if you know anything about Jordan, the basketball player is, he would almost like create insults out of things that people said in order to fuel his fire. And for 99% of people, this would be a horrible strategy because we couldn't handle it. Because what

• 31:42Speaker 00

  would happen is it would push us to playing out of a place of like fear and low status and like anger and mess up. But because he's Michael Jordan and his psychology was wired just a very unique way, that actually fueled him. So again, I think the self-awareness piece is really important is you have to figure out what works for you and your type of, you know, individual versus, you know, what you see on TV and might work for somebody else.

• 32:13Chris Williamson?

  Dude, you nailed it. I'm very, having had, you'll be episode 515 or something of this podcast and blanket coverage, this is the best way to do things, statements.

• 32:28Chris Williamson?

  Seem less and less true, the more episodes that I do. It's so individualistic and I've learned this with myself that there are times where I need to be more fired up. There are times where I need to relax a little bit more. Really cool example of this, I got told by a friend. So Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy were playing in a charity golf game and they were partnered up with ones with a comedian and the other ones with a rock star or something like normies, normies. Maybe the normies play golf, but they don't play golf like Tiger Woods or Rory do. But they were miked up the whole time because it's for charity. And usually you don't get to hear what the caddie and the golfer are saying to each other, especially as they're walking down the fairway. And one of the guys said that he was listening to what Tiger and this dude are talking about.

• 33:12Chris Williamson?

  It's for charity, right? Tiger and this guy are walking down and Tiger's coaching him on his swing. He's talking to him about the current weather conditions. He's saying that there's this like issue that we're going to have to get past. So we might have to actually use a slightly higher loft club in order to be able to do the whatever, whatever. Talking to his guy and then it cuts to Rory McIlroy. Rory McIlroy is explaining the precise domino's order that he likes to do, like exactly what toppings he wants. So you have two sports stars in the same event that compete at a very similar sort of level with completely different mentalities, completely different headspaces while they're doing the same thing. So that's what you said, the individual zone of optimal performance. What was it?

• 33:56Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 33:56Chris Williamson?

  Yep. That is individual because it relies on what is your mentality? What will work best for you and then domain specific as well? Yeah, I love that.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  You know, and it's, it's funny. There's actually some interesting data. It's preliminary, but it's fascinating that shows that

• 34:15Speaker 00

  part of the reason that is, is because people are sensitive to stress hormones in different ways. So for some like that stress hormone, let's say cortisol goes up and someone might like experience it X fold. Maybe because they have so many receptors for it that they just like freak out. Others. You know, experience the same level of stress hormone, but it's just like it doesn't hit. You know, it's not a big deal. So there's like underlying biology here that tells us that it's really important. If you're that that sensitive person to the stress hormone, then you might need to work really hard how to calm yourself down because you only want like a little hit of that.

• 34:59Speaker 00

  If your brain just, you know, isn't sensitive, it's like, you know, whatever, throw more stress hormones at us for whatever reason, then you might have to like get fired up and like find your way to get there. Or in Jordan's case, like make it seem like, you know, everybody's out to get you so that you feel a little, little something there. And I think that's, that's what's so important. So to me, what is, what's the takeaway there is like, be open, be aware, and then put yourself in different situations and really try different things to see what actually works. And, you know, take note of it and you can really develop the skills to, to do so over a while.

• 35:39Chris Williamson?

  Man, I adore studies like that that come out and show us interesting things. So going through this book, doing your research, what were some of the other studies that made your jaw hit the floor while you were looking at insights around toughness and resilience?

• 35:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, so there was, I'll, I'll give you two that were really fascinating to me is one was a study of, of they took expert meditators and monks and they compared, you know, the meditators to normal people, so normies, and they, they took a very hot probe and just put it on their wrist. Okay, so it was like very painful. Well, the monks and the normal people had the rated the same level of pain. You know, it was like a seven or eight out of 10, so very painful. They rated it the same, but in their brain, how it handled that pain was completely different. So before the painful probe was applied, the monks were just chill.

• 36:36Speaker 00

  Their brain gave off nothing. The normal people, their pain reception was almost preparing for the danger.

• 36:45Chris Williamson?

  Did they know what was going to happen?

• 36:46Speaker 00

  They did. They knew what was going to happen. They told them. So it was, they could, they knew the, the probe was coming. So what happened is the anticipatory response was sounding the alarm. Okay. So they had this hyper response before anything happened. And then after the probe was removed, what happened is the monks went back down to zero. The alarm got turned off. The pain perception went down to normal again. The normal people, it lingered. It stayed pretty high for a very long time. And what the researchers said is, they said, you know, the problem here is we have one stressful stimulus.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  The monks are responding it to, to that only. To me, that message was how do we respond to reality? Which is the stressful thing itself and don't let it linger or don't sweat in, in terms of anticipation. And in the monks, kind of, they went through it and in the book I go into more details. But it was really about like, accepting what you were gonna face. Knowing that it might be painful, but that you have the tools to kind of work your way through that. And then when, once it's over, having that ability that you talked about earlier to switch off. And often we neglect that last part.

• 38:09Chris Williamson?

  How much of a role does confidence play here? How big of a contributing factor? Because what it sounds like with each of these different steps is faith in self, lack of self doubt, conscious awareness that you have the ability to overcome stuff like that. What, what, what have you learned about confidence? What it means, what it is from a sports science perspective?

• 38:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's huge. It's absolutely huge because confidence changes our perception of how difficult something is.

• 38:40Speaker 00

  Is it will actually change our biological reaction or response? So for example, if we are going into a into a game and we have actual inner confidence that we're going to play well, our testosterone level tends to go up and our cortisol stress hormones go down. If we're faking it and we're just trying to say, oh yeah, I'm confident I got this, but there's like no substance or evidence behind that and we don't actually believe it, the opposite occurs. Testosterone doesn't budge, cortisol goes through the roof. So when we look at confidence, the most important thing I think is that confidence needs evidence and that evidence needs to be founded in doing the work in some sort of reality.

• 39:25Speaker 00

  So your your brain is almost smarter than we'll call it your mind in the sense that faking it only works on really simple tasks that we could we could do anyways. Would low stakes tasks also contribute there as well? Exactly. Low low stakes tasks, all that stuff. But in things that matter where the stakes are at high and when something is on the line, then like you need that inner confidence that has to come from some sort of evidence. And the other part that I think is really important here is we often think confidence and we think certainty. It's not certainty. It's confidence in knowing what the task is, what the demands are, and then what are your capabilities?

• 40:09Speaker 00

  Not necessarily I have the capabilities to master this 100%, but the capabilities to know that win, lose or draw, I can navigate through this thing, almost like those those monks experiences, they they didn't know exactly how painful it was, but they know I have the skills to withstand some amount of pain. I've trained for this. It will be okay.

• 40:33Chris Williamson?

  So experience, reality reflecting, prediction, testing of the hypothesis around your prediction, and then a summary of what happened, whether it went well or badly, and then what your intuition around what was going to happen and how accurate that is. But there is a threshold. Different people have different amounts of reality that they need to be given in order for it to alter their own self-image. I imagine that some people may have overconfidence, and it actually takes a lot of negative experiences to bring that down, and the reverse happens as well. I think I'm perennially an under-confident person, which means that I've always felt, how would you say, not triggered by people with ego, but I've always

• 41:15Chris Williamson?

  been maybe a little bit jealous. I've certainly been jealous of some of my friends that seem to have undue confidence. Like, yo, you suck. You suck at this thing, and you believe that you're going to be good at it. And I can compare it to things that I know that I would be good at, and the fact that I'm just completely riddled with self-doubt around them. So what's the element there? Is that like a psychological profile that's going on where people need different amounts of reality to come and tell them that something's going to change?

• 41:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I think that's spot on, and that's also mirrors what the psychology shows us is that, you know, we essentially craft our own stories. We're like storytellers. And, you know, just like a good writer does, like, you don't have all the details. You selectively get to internalize whatever it is. So some people tend to almost be blinded or biased towards remembering the good things that they did, or the successes they had, and not everything else negative that came along with it. And other people are the opposite, right? And I think it's learning to work with that a little bit. And one of, you know, my favorite examples from history, actually, is someone who, you know, displays this perfectly, is

• 42:30Speaker 00

  the former American president Abraham Lincoln, who was like this guy who was, if you read his letters, he's kind of like so pessimistic in the moment.

• 42:42Chris Williamson?

  He suffered with depression, right? Lifelong depression?

• 42:45Speaker 00

  Exactly. Lifelong depression, like, just kind of a sad guy, sad dude. But over the long haul, he had so much hope. Meaning, I think we're going to win this war. I think we're going to put an end to slavery, all of this stuff. But if you just read his day-to-day communication, it's like all negative. It's like the world is ending. What are you doing? Like, how, what, what happened here? And I think it was this, this interesting balance of he figured out how to, like, you know, he wasn't a very confident person. He wasn't a glass half-full type person. And that allowed him to get through the, the day-to-day, but somehow he cultivated enough

• 43:27Speaker 00

  hope that allowed him to persist in that long enough to be able to, you know, obviously succeed.

• 43:35Chris Williamson?

  Very, very interesting. Okay. What was the second study that blew your mind?

• 43:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. So the other one was the study in the NBA, so on professional basketball players. And some psychologists, what they did is they looked at the coach's behavior of all these coaches who played or coached during like a six-year period of, of, of, you know, in the NBA. And then they looked at how their players performed and they classified the coaches. They essentially classified them in terms of, you know, were you kind of a player's coach? Or were you on the opposite end, like this abusive authoritarian style coach? And what they found is that whenever a player played for that authoritarian abusive

• 44:22Speaker 00

  style coach, their performance declined. And then their rate of technical fouls and aggression increased. Okay. But it wasn't during just that season. That effect lasted for the rest of the player's career, even when the coach was gone. So what that told me, or, you know, the reason that blew my mind is I'm thinking like, oh, of course it impacts people when you're coached by them. But just the lasting effect for the best athletes on the planet that a coach for a single season and then they move on to someone who has a completely different approach can impact their play and then also their level of aggression and fouls for the rest of their

• 45:07Speaker 00

  career is kind of mind blowing. And to me, it tells, you know, me is with whoever I'm working with, or if you're a leader or a coach, or you're managing people, like your impact can potentially last for a lifetime or a career. So like be very intentional on on what you're communicating and what you're showing that you value and and how to do the things that you're doing.

• 45:30Chris Williamson?

  Wasn't there a story about a Texas A&M football team that had some, it looked like their performance had changed, but it hadn't?

• 45:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. So this was one of my favorite stories to tell. I'm a native Texan. So this is a famous story in the US, which is in the in the 1950s, there's this famous football coach, college football coach, and I'm Paul Bear Bryant. And he took over the Texas A&M football team. And as the popular story goes, both in books and movies, is that he took all these players, he took them to the middle of nowhere, Texas, and he put them through this like training camp from hell. You know, we all have heard and experienced things, you know, you just punish the players and you weed out the ones who don't make it. And the strong survive. And the popular story goes, you know, and it allowed them

• 46:24Speaker 00

  to, you know, win championships and do great things. But what the story omits is this, is that season after the camp, the team was one and nine. So they sucked. They were horrible. Okay. It was only three years later, I believe, that they they had a very good season. But the couple of years later, when they had a good season, I think, out of, you know, the hundred or so players that went to camp, only, I think, seven or eight players were left on the team, you know, a couple of years later. So it wasn't the guys who went through the camp from hell. And then the second thing on this story that I think is really important is, we often think about this, you know, when we put people through difficult things,

• 47:09Speaker 00

  that it's like sink or swim, throw the eggs against the wall, see what ones, you know, don't break. And the ones who stick around, they're the toughest. Well, if you looked at the accolades of the players who decided to quit, like they were phenomenally talented athletes. One quit football and went over to baseball and won a championship. A couple just said, forget college football, I'm gonna go play in the NFL and they made it. You know, a couple were literally guys who quit and then went on to become war heroes. And like, you know, captain and commanders of like naval ships and airplanes and all that, that crazy stuff. And I think if you look at why they did this and then what the research says,

• 47:54Speaker 00

  often people quit during difficult things, not because they're not strong enough or tough enough, but because they have the skills to do something better and to find themselves a place where they can thrive and utilize their skills successfully. And the ones who stick it out aren't necessarily tougher. They're actually just, they're like, you know, actually one of the football players in that story put it, put it best and he said, and I'm paraphrasing, he said essentially, "I had nothing better to do. It was either survive and go to college and play football or go back home and work in the fields, which isn't what I wanted to do.

• 48:38Speaker 00

  So of course I was going to stick around."

• 48:41Chris Williamson?

  People who have fewer other options are actually going to be more boneheaded when it comes to surviving difficulty.

• 48:48Speaker 00

  Exactly. And I think we discount that so much because we tend to, again, assign it to our character and have this negativity around maybe quitting when sometimes quitting is just like changing priorities, just like you did when you went from cricket to, "Oh, I'm gonna start this business." It wasn't that you, you know, quit cricket. It was, here's this other thing that gets me really enthused, that I can pour my energy and motivation towards, that is probably more meaningful in this moment and that was the right decision and, and you did it.

• 49:21Chris Williamson?

  There was a quote that I came across last week that I've just been, I haven't been able to get out of my head around, "You can be anything you want, but you can't be everything you want." And what we're talking about here is the single thread of obsession that, or hard work, or grit, or determination, or conscientiousness, or whatever, that is pulling somebody through all of the different things that they do in life. But they're not trying to do all of those things at once, and they're also not trying to spread themselves too thinly when they do it. And this is something that I wish, maybe that I'd realised earlier on. Your highest point of contribution, the thing that you can do which contributes the most to the world, or your progression, or your growth, or whatever your goal is right now,

• 50:04Chris Williamson?

  is at most probably two things. Realistically, probably one thing. And in a world where we've been able to put a man on the moon, and we can Amazon Prime ourselves a brand new desk seat without having to leave our house, it feels like we should have more mastery. And what people presume, I think, is that they can just ratchet up their productivity, down-regulate their sleep, improve their efficiency, and I will be able to fit more into my life. But in order to pick something up, I think you have to put something down. For the most part, people are operating somewhere close to their maximum capacity in any case. And one of the biggest lies about productivity is that there are quick fixes to being able to get more time. There are not. It takes so long for you to be able to open up any more time, because it is arduous.

• 50:49Chris Williamson?

  It is you reprogramming what your presumptions are around your work patterns, or around doing Pomodoro time, or around time blocking, or whatever it is that you end up doing. My point being that your capacity to work now is what you should be working off. You can't add more stuff into your life under the presumption that tomorrow you'll just get more done. It's like, no, no, no, no. This is how much you have to get done, and then when you get more headroom, that's when you can add things in if you choose to. But far more people than realise it are trying to do three or four difficult, very difficult projects and make progress at the same time. You can't find a wife by going out three nights a week whilst being the leanest person you can, whilst saving a tonne of money, whilst trying to go to the gym. You can't. You pick a thing, and it doesn't have to be a thing forever. You can periodise it, right?

• 51:34Chris Williamson?

  Six months, gonna get in shape. Six months, find a wife. Six months, do whatever. It might take longer, it might take less time, but... You can do that. What you can't do is try and do all of them at once because you will make zero progress in any of them.

• 51:47Speaker 00

  I agree 100%. I am a big fan, and you mentioned it there, of periodizing your life. Is I think everybody gets this wrong. They're like, oh, I want to be balanced. I want to be balanced. And that they often think like that means everything all at once. But balance to me means periodizing so that I am choosing the things that are important to me at the right time.

• 52:09Chris Williamson?

  You're a serial monogamist with obsessions.

• 52:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, that's what it is. I love that because that's what you're doing. And actually, you know,

• 52:19Speaker 00

  when I've talked to world-class performers, for instance, Shalane Flanagan, who won the New York City Marathon a couple of years ago, she said, oh, I'm horribly imbalanced. But what I do is my family knows, like, you know, hey, for this 12 weeks leading up to this marathon, like, the marathon's kind of kind of be a priority. But once that ends, I'm shifting my focus, like, husband, you are back to being my priority, etc., everybody else. And we're gonna shift those things around. And that's how people, you know, good people get things done. And it's the same here. Like, I, when I go into writing mode, you know, I tell my wife, hey, like, this is it. I'm not saying you're not important. I love you, all this stuff, but like, I've really got to get this done and focus on this. And like,

• 53:04Speaker 00

  I try and put constraints around it and all that good stuff, but you have to actively make that that choice. And I think where we go so wrong is when we try and do everything all at once. And the modern world often like sells us a fake story that telling us that we can. And if we go look around on social media, we actually, we often think that, oh, look at these people who are great at everything, but it's all, it's all a facade. You talk to really good performers, as you do all the time on this, and you realize that, no, they're really good at prioritizing. And then also, I think with that is having the self-awareness task. Do I still want to be doing this thing? Or do I want to shift my attention to somewhere else? And I think that's a very important piece as well.

• 53:49Chris Williamson?

  The self-awareness, knowing.

• 53:52Chris Williamson?

  That something is about to come, knowing and having the trust to be able to communicate to friends or family, people that you need support from, people that you need to be aware that you're not going to be able to give them as much support or whatever. That's something that has really only started to come up very recently for me. And I think a lot about performance and assess the way that I'm going about my life. But all of these things, I wonder how much of them just come along for the ride as a byproduct of getting older? I always think about this, that how much of the actual work that we put in and the introspection and the self-development, how much of that would just be here naturally? Because I'm now 34 and four years ago I was 30 and four years before that I was 20. So do you know what I mean?

• 54:37Chris Williamson?

  Like that a lot of this stuff is, don't get me wrong, I'm adamant that you can design your life, right? You can consciously have agency, sovereignty, you can take control, do all of that stuff. And it does have an impact. But you can also probably put too much pressure and too much responsibility on your shoulders. And the people that are listening to this show are definitely going to be in that kind of a cohort. You're probably going to get the results in life that you were meant to get in any case, because trying to stop yourself from being as driven and conscientious as you are would take an ungodly amount of energy. You can't stop yourself from working as hard as you can. And this is the friends that I need to say, if I could give them any gift, it would be to be able to have an off day. Like that, that's what I would give to these people.

• 55:19Chris Williamson?

  But yeah, I wonder how many of the insights we really care about just come along for the ride as a byproduct of aging?

• 55:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, I think there is something to that. I remember, you know, I'm going to butcher this a little bit, but there's one theory of intelligence that is essentially crystallized for fluid intelligence. And, you know, I forget which is which, but it's essentially one is the things that you, your kind of capacity you have. And then the second is like that wisdom that just develops and develops and has to like, you need age and time and perspective to experience it. The one caveat on that I'd say is, I do think you have to be open and willing to hear these lessons. As you age and gain this experience, because I'm sure you have and I I have as well, you know,

• 56:08Speaker 00

  people in your life who, you know, aren't as receptive to some of this experience and wisdom that comes with that that age. And often it gets in their way. And often you look at them and you're like, you're still repeating your twenties over and over and over again, when, you know, and these other things are hitting in your you in your head, but you're not receptive to it. So I do think, like, having maybe, I don't know, the humility, awareness, like the ability, the introspective ability to like, listen to the lessons that life is giving you is really vital.

• 56:40Chris Williamson?

  I agree. What are what have we not said about misconceptions that people have around toughness and resilience? What's missing?

• 56:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, if you want to know what's missing, read the book. But in all seriousness, I think the other part of it is, you know, we treat emotions wrong, and I hinted at this, is we're we're often told, you know, don't listen to your feelings, emotions and thoughts. And we're told to like, push away those negative thoughts or that self critic. And often what happens is that backfires. And instead, what we want to do is like, learn how to accept, navigate, and experience them, so that we know the nuance between them. I'll give you a quick example on it on emotions. So, for example, my wife is elementary school teacher,

• 57:34Speaker 00

  and for a while she taught kindergarten and first grade, so younger kids. And I'd always ask her, is like, why do kids throw tantrums? And she's like, they all do. Well, think of it like a kid's experience. You experience this barrage of emotions that you often have no idea where it came from. And you freak out, you throw a tantrum, because you don't know how to process And you ask the kid, what's wrong? And she's like, nine times out of 10, they'll tell you the same thing, which is sadness. I'm sad. And sadness, like, that could come from, you know, uh, getting pushed at the, the playground, getting your pencil stolen, not getting selected for kickball. It applies to everything.

• 58:16Speaker 00

  But as we grow and develop, we, we create the nuance and understanding that sadness could mean loneliness. It could mean jealousy. It could mean like all sorts of things. And to me, like this toughness is about developing that emotional skill and intelligence and awareness. So that you can split apart. Okay, is this an emotion, a feeling that I should listen to? Is it one I should pass on by? Is it one that is giving me important information? Like, maybe like the feeling of loneliness, it is pushing and probing me along to go like, interact with another human being and create connections so that I don't feel this.

• 58:57Speaker 00

  And I think that ability to, again, sit with, experience those emotions and develop that nuance is vital. And often goes against the common, you know, advice to like, just ignore everything and push through.

• 59:10Chris Williamson?

  Yes, so Ethan Cross, who is one of the world's leaders when it comes to managing your inner voice and having a better relationship with that, you know, you'll, you'll be aware of this is distancing, you know, talking to yourself in the third person, giving yourself advice as you would to a friend. Those for me are, are really, really good tools. And if you think about what mindfulness is, mindfulness is noticing a sensation arise, noticing that it's arisen and letting it go. It's the noticing bit, right? It's the mindfulness gap. It's not being swept up in the thought. It's noticing that you and the thought are separate. It's noticing that you are not the emotion, you and the emotion are separate. Rogan said on Monday, he was saying, uh, people often confuse their thoughts with themselves.

• 59:55Chris Williamson?

  He's like, you're not your thoughts. Your thoughts are just passing through that. They are the weather and you are the sky. They're a state that you're in currently. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's a bit shitty, but it's just passing through. And the point is to be able to distinguish between the two and also to be able to notice when there's weather.

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  Exactly, and I think, you know, that's actually how I look at and define toughness is like, how do we create that space? Because if you can create that space and realize that you're not your thoughts and there's a little gap there, or that, you know, your emotions are messengers, but they're not dictators, right? If you have that space, then you can deal with the difficult moment. If you don't have that space and it collapses, what often happens is we have that negative thought and then we jump straight towards like disaster, spiraling, rumination, can't get it out of our head. So to me is, you know, just like that mindfulness is like, how do we create that space? And some of those tools, as you said, Ethan Cross does a great job elaborating on as

• 1:00:55Speaker 00

  well as like, anything that creates that, that perspective, that distance allows us to deal with things a lot better.

• 1:01:01Chris Williamson?

  Steve Magness, ladies and gentlemen, if people want to check out your work and get the book and see everything else that you do, where should they go?

• 1:01:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, so you can find me all on social media, at Steve Magness, Twitter, Instagram, all those places. And then my website is stevemagnus.com.

• 1:01:17Chris Williamson?

  Dude, I appreciate you. Thank you.

• 1:01:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, thanks a lot for having me.