Justin Su'a: Peak Mental Performance

Justin Su'a calls on more than a decade of working with the world’s top athletes to discuss how to improve your mental performance. Su’a explores the strategies you need to be your best mentally with lessons that resonate well beyond the world of sports — including how to connect and build trust, the relationship between consistency and intensity, the fragility of confidence, the difference between success and talent, how to raise the bar of your own performance, and so much more. Su'a has spent the past three years as the Head of Mental Performance for the Tampa Bay Rays of Major League Baseball, where he works with players to optimize their mental performance and perform under enormous pressure. He has also worked for the Boston Red Sox as well as the NFL’s Cleveland Browns, and as the Head of Mental Conditioning Department for the IMG Academy, which develops star athletes of the future. He’s also written two books on the subject of developing mental toughness in adolescents. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Because losing is so painful, it's so embarrassing. It's attached with negative emotions. You remember them more. You think about them. You can't sleep. You can't eat, especially if they're compounding over and over again. But when you win, a lot of times you think, alright, yeah, that was supposed to happen. Okay, moving on. Instead of pausing and saying, what did I execute? What was out of my control? Where did I get lucky? Another question is, what did I learn today? Win or lose? That's a great question to ask yourself.

• 0:54Shane Parrish?

  Welcome to the Knowledge Project Podcast. I'm your host, Shane Parrish. The goal of this show is to master the best what other people have already figured out so you can unlock your potential. To that end, I sit down with people at the top of their game to uncover what they've learned along the way. Every episode is packed with timeless ideas that you can use in life and business. If you're listening to this, you're missing out. If you'd like special member-only episodes, access before anyone else, transcripts, and other member-only content, you can join at fs.blog/membership. Check out the show notes for a link.

• 1:30Shane Parrish?

  Justin Su is here today. Justin is the head of mental performance for the Tampa Bay Rays, a major league baseball team. Before that, he was a mental performance coach for the Cleveland Browns and a mental skills coordinator for the Boston Red Sox. I wanted to talk to Justin because he helps people be at their best mentally. And this episode is packed with insights that transcend sports. We talk about mental performance, how he measures the impact of his work, how he connects and builds trust, consistency versus intensity, the fragility of confidence, the difference between success and talent, and how you can raise the bar, and so much more. If you're interested in learning the things that you can do to be at your best mentally,

• 2:13Shane Parrish?

  this episode is for you. It's time to listen and learn.

• 2:25Shane Parrish?

  Let's dive into a little bit about what you do. In sports, we sort of spend so much time on the physical stuff, training and working out and eating right. Rarely do we give much thought to sort of mental performance. And yet you can't really train your body unless you train your mind. A strong body can't make a strong mind, but a strong mind can make a strong body. You're a mental performance coach. Let's explore that for a bit, starting with what is a mental performance coach?

• 2:52Speaker 00

  That's such a great question. And depending on who I talk to, I will change my answer or articulate it in a different way. I think just for the sake of this podcast, I have a, I could explore a little bit more and explain a little bit deeper. I think it's a very convoluted term. Sometimes you have these buzzwords, high performance, mental performance, mental skills. And I think one of the best ways to explain mental performance is to look at physical performance. Like, like you said, you're 100% right. And I think a very simple and in some circles and over, oversimplifying physical performance is

• 3:32Speaker 00

  the activation of motor skills to achieve a task. Now, if we look at mental performance, it's the activation of mental skills to achieve a task. And then the second question is, okay, so what are mental skills? Now, mental skills are what your guests speak about on this podcast all the time. It's, it's what knowledge workers will learn. It's your ability to zoom in and to zoom out to gain better perspective, your ability to conduct a pre-mortem, your ability to deploy gratitude in a difficult situation. It's your ability to talk to yourself instead of listen to yourself. And so my job is helping individuals and organizations or teams.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  How do you, how do you operationalize that? It's the application of mental models. It's the application of, of decision sciences and some concepts in behavioral science and some concepts in performance psychology and, and some mental models from physics or chemistry, whatever it may be, to help people essentially become better decision makers and also to streamline their mental process. How do they approach a game? How do they approach failure? How do they approach success? And so I'm involved in a lot of those different types of conversation, both in the micro with an individual person and then talking with a coach or, or a leader of an organization to try to create an environment where you help people do that for themselves.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  And so that's, uh, that's kind of my best definition of it right now, my current working definition.

• 5:05Shane Parrish?

  You said something that I thought was quite profound when you, you were talking there about talking to yourself, not listening to yourself. Can you dive in on that?

• 5:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think what happens to a lot of us is as humans, we have this constant chatter going in our, in our minds, constantly thinking, constantly ruminating. It's just, we're getting inputs from our own thoughts, from our interpretations, from what we're reading, from what we think other people are thinking. And it's easy to get caught into these traps, to get caught into believing some of these biases that we have, believing some of these thoughts. And we'll take these thoughts and these thoughts are closely coupled and tied to our emotions and which will, and our emotions will ultimately impact our body and our physiology, which will ultimately impact our behaviors.

• 5:57Speaker 00

  And so as humans, we need to learn how to look at our thoughts and to develop a relationship with them, understand what is signal and what is noise. And it will change from time to time, depending on what context, depending on what environment you're in. But basically what talk, what listening to yourself is, is looking at your thoughts and attaching. Truth to all of them and saying, yep, that's true, that's true, that's true. As opposed to pausing and debating your thoughts. An example that we do quite often is I'll have a room full of people. Let's say it's a team and I will tell every player to pick a teammate. Okay, this is your teammate and what you're going to do is you are going to do something that you do all the time.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  And this is something that is found in locker rooms around the world, debates. People will debate best food, they will debate best movies, they'll debate who's better, what sports are the best, and they're really good at it. And so what I have them do, I say, okay, you're going to debate. And I give them the topics. You're going to debate hot weather versus cold weather. And you hear them go at it. You're going to debate watching a movie in the theater or watching a movie at home. And they go at it. And then I ask the question, okay, who won the debate? And in a room full of highly competitive individuals, they all raise their hand and they laugh at each other. And then I ask, okay, how did you win the debate? What did you do to win? And they say techniques like, I didn't let my opponent talk.

• 7:26Speaker 00

  Or I listened to what they said and then I poked holes in their reasoning. Or I applied logic and I provided evidence and data against what they were saying. And then I come with the point. The point is, it's interesting how you can sit here and debate a topic like weather and sport and food. But you don't pause to apply those same principles to debate yourself. When you start doubting yourself, a lot of times we say, oh, that is true. I'm not smart. Oh, that is true. I'm never going to accomplish that. Oh, that is true. He or she is better than me. As opposed to stopping and saying, no, let me, let me look at that differently. Let me apply evidence against it.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Let me, let me consider the fault of my reasoning, the faulty judgment that I might be having. So that's what it means to talk to yourself instead of listen to yourself.

• 8:20Shane Parrish?

  I think that's really interesting. You mentioned sort of your emotions dictating your body and your body dictating your behavior and all of that seems to happen at this unconscious level. So this this internal monologue, it sounds like that's when we do bring it back up to the conscious level, but we're so often operating at the unconscious level. Talk to me a little bit about that.

• 8:40Speaker 00

  That is so true. And that model that you just described, how your thoughts affect your emotions, your emotions affect your physiology, your physiology affects your performance, and then it loops back around, this reinforcing loop is called a thought performance interaction. And this is one of the fundamental things that we discuss when you're working with an athlete or you're working with a team, just to understand how this chain works. It's very complicated, very complex, but when you're working with professional athletes in particular, it's got to be simple, it's got to be direct, it's got to be tangible, so they could refer back to it, fluid for them. Now, to your point, there are a lot of things that are happening unconsciously.

• 9:23Speaker 00

  And sometimes you don't even notice it. It's hard to, it's hard to change a system when you're part of the system. It's hard to see what needs to be adjusted when you can't tell. It reminds me of the commencement speech, and I can't remember, this is water, I believe it is.

• 9:43Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, David Foster Wallace.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  David Foster Wallace. And he tells a story in the beginning of the commencement speech, where this pool, these fish are swimming along, and a wise fish comes by and says, hey, boys, how's the water? And then he swims off, and one fish says the other, what the hell is water? And so that is just, that just explains further how sometimes you don't see the nuances and the intricacies of what's going on our mind. And so what my job is, or one of my job, what I try to do, is to provide an outside view to people, provide an environment where our relationship is so strong, it could bear the weight of truth, and they are comfortable enough to share what

• 10:27Speaker 00

  they're going through, to share their struggles, to share their internal dialogue with me, and not for me to diagnose. I'm not a clinical psychologist, not for me to go back and, and give them, give them.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  Knowledge and truth and dispense pithy conversate motivational quotes, but to help them look at their thoughts instead of through their thoughts. And I think if you have someone or something to serve as an awareness mechanism for you to be able, whether it be going back and reflecting and saying, what am I learning from this? Or to notice behaviors, you can't change what you're not aware of. So if you stop and say, oh, I keep noticing that I get angry in this situation. Huh, I wonder what's in there. Oh, hey, I noticed that when I'm in this environment, I seem to be the best version of myself. Hmm, I wonder, I wonder what I can uncover there.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  How about a latte?

• 11:24Speaker 00

  Maybe dark roast?

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Vanilla?

• 11:26Speaker 00

  Caramel?

• 11:26Speaker 02

  Blueberry?

• 11:27Speaker 03

  You could get them to agree on one flavor or give everyone what they want. With Keurig, there's over 500 K-Cup Pod varieties of fresh, flavorful coffee. No effort, no grind, no settling. Great coffee without the grind. Keurig.

• 11:50Speaker 04

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• 12:18Speaker 00

  And so my job is to ask questions to people and say, hey, what are you noticing? What are you noticing with your emotions? What are you noticing with your habits? What are you noticing with your relationships? Not for me to tell them, but for them to look out for it. And a lot of times it's priming them with a question. Sometimes you can ask a person afterward. I was in education for five years and one of the things they teach you in in in in school is the importance of priming. So I can have the class read a sentence or read a paragraph, rather. Go read a paragraph and then I'll say, okay, class, what did you learn from that? And what are the kids gonna do? They're gonna go back and reread the paragraph because they're like, oh, I was, I didn't know what to look for. But if I

• 13:00Speaker 00

  say, alright, class, we're gonna read this paragraph. I want you to look for how that what you think this character, character was thinking as this interaction is going on. Now, they're looking for it. They're certain their minds are primed to look for the answer in the moment. What I have found is when I go back to an athlete at the end of a game or a season and say, so what were you thinking? What was going on there? They have no clue. They didn't even know what they were looking for, to be quite honest. But if you give, if you prime them beforehand and say, hey, we're going into this season or you're going into this game. I want you to look for moments where you feel your heart rate really speeding up. And let's talk about it at the end of the series and

• 13:42Speaker 00

  see if you notice any patterns. Come back, sit down. And now they're looking for it. And so those are just some ideas, some ways that I look about, think about how to shine a light on things that people do unconsciously.

• 13:56Shane Parrish?

  So before asking you on the show, somebody recommended you and I was a little skeptical. I was like a mental performance coach, like that sounds a bit hocus pocus. And I ran your name by two Major League Baseball GMs and they both came back saying you're entirely legit. But how do you overcome, and maybe it's just my stereotype, but like the the notion that a lot of people in the trade are sort of snake oils people, or it's really hard to differentiate between good and great mental performance coaches?

• 14:24Speaker 00

  First of all, I don't know who you asked and I'm so grateful for for them saying what they said. My follow up question to them would be, how do you know? What evidence do you have? And so that's how that's my initial knee jerk reaction, to be quite honest. I think to your point, a mental performance coach, when you say that, a lot of people say, oh, so you're a motivational speaker. Oh, so you're an inspirational speaker. Oh, so you're a life coach. No offense to any of those things. However, With the circles that I work with, there is a, there's rigor that's involved. There are processes, there's complexities. The athletes that I work with, they don't need a motivational speaker.

• 15:09Speaker 00

  They don't need an inspirational speaker. It comes from within. Another part of this is just naturally, I'm an excitable person. Naturally, I have a lot of energy that flows through me. And naturally, from what I have been told, just my personality, I, in some circles, can be likable. I could be, my friendliness and, and let's say charisma or whatever it may be, can be perceived as, oh, this guy knows what he's, he knows what he's talking about. Now, and there's studies to show that. There's studies show that. Now, it's my job to be a true professional.

• 15:50Speaker 00

  If people are gonna get trapped in those biases and think, okay, this person knows what he's talking about, I need to do my due diligence to say, okay, I better know what I'm talking about. And, and I better truly respect the experience and the expertise of others. My philosophy is, is more of guide on the side rather than sage on the stage. The athlete who I work with, the group I work, they're the heroes. They already have tools. They already have, have values and tools and strategies that they've used to get where they are. These are some of the best athletes in the world. And so a question I always get is, how do you help athletes? What do you say to them?

• 16:33Speaker 00

  And I come back and I say, I don't say anything. What I do is I ask questions. If athlete comes to me and says, hey, how do I tighten up my focus? I immediately come back with a question, how have you tightened up your focus, focus up to this point? Oh, well, I do this, I do this. Oh, okay, well, have you been doing that? Has, do you need to change your result? Do you need to change your focus process? Or in what ways are you not exercising? Here, let me add another one. They try this off. And so a lot of times it's taking the tools they already have and polishing them up and handing them right back to them. And I think that's really beneficial. I asked a general manager of a sport one time early in my career.

• 17:17Speaker 00

  How do you measure my effectiveness? I asked him, right to his face, "How will you measure? How will you know that I'm good at my job?" And his answer was interesting. He said, "I'll watch how the players and the coaches respond to you when you walk into the clubhouse." And I thought that was intriguing to me. And I said, "Well, what do you mean?" He goes, "That tells me everything I need to know. If they run from you, that tells me what I need to know. If they come up and they approach you, that tells me everything I need to know." Now, I don't want to mistake likability for competence. Because sometimes people think, "Oh, he's really good." And the only reason that person is good at what they do is because they're likeable.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  And so I will ask players, I will say, "Okay, you like me, but in what ways has this helped you? What are you doing as a result of it?" And so another thing that we try to capture as well, or I try to capture, is quantifying the unquantifiable. And that's difficult. I think one of the best organizations in the world who does this is Google. And I have some friends over at Google in their people analytics department. "Okay, how do you quantify that? How do you measure this?" And a lot of times, it comes down to asking. It comes down to surveys. It comes down to measuring certain behaviors. And sometimes, as a result as well, is causation and correlation.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  Just because a player is meditating, that doesn't mean he's going to go out there and hit well. Just because a player is now visualizing and picturing it perfectly, doesn't mean he's going to go pitch great or have a great game, doesn't mean she's going to run a great race. And I've learned over time that a lot of what I do is refactoring. Now, refactoring is a mental model that I've learned from computer programming. And essentially, what refactoring is, if I understand it correctly, it's... It's basically a system where which you're not necessarily affecting the outcome, but you're making the the system more efficient and faster. The people who I work with are already resilient.

• 19:23Speaker 00

  But can these tools that they work with or this perspective they have, can they can it help them bounce back faster? They're already already really good at refocusing. But does teaching them diaphragmatic breathing and some locus of control strategies can it help them bounce back faster? Now, how to measure that? We don't know, but asking them and to hear them from from these anecdotal responses like, hey, that's helping me. And so I'll go by that.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  But yeah, it's it's a lot of it. I really enjoy it. But to your point, I'm always mindful that don't manipulate people's emotions. Don't make promises that you can't keep. Don't over promise things and say, and and table pound. If you do this, it's going to make you mentally tough. There are no five steps. There are no silver bullets. There are no quick fixes to things. This is trying to help them just comb out their own process. And I think that's been something that's helped me along the way.

• 20:24Shane Parrish?

  So one of the things you said there that I thought was really interesting, and you sort of alluded to this earlier, too, is that you help people see their blind spots because it's really hard to understand a system that we're a part of. It's really hard for me to understand what I can't see, even if I have the tools to see it. And so pointing that out helps me perform. When it comes to somebody like me, you know, who's below average, it's probably easy to get that incremental sort of burst of improvement. Anyone can really do that job. But when when it comes to sort of elite athletes or business executives at the top of the game or special forces, when you work with people who are, you know, the 99.99 percentile,

• 21:07Shane Parrish?

  that edge becomes harder and it becomes a lot more internal. How do people respond when you start pointing out areas that they might be blind to?

• 21:19Speaker 00

  That's a great question. And

• 21:24Speaker 00

  I don't think I would have been able to answer this question a while ago. And I think the answer to this question kind of dawned on me organically. Looking back and just taking, just taking inventory of all of my different experiences, whether it be working with NFL players or soldiers in the military or Major League Baseball players, I've had a number of different, multiple iterations doing this with different populations who are all high performers. And a common theme that I've seen is that my role, or anyone, even a coach's role is, to steal from Tim Elmore, and I've said it earlier, is to build a relationship so strong it could bear the weight of truth.

• 22:09Speaker 00

  And that's number one. To build a place where players feel safe. I think they understand whoever truly knows me, they know that I'm in a position to provide a safe space for them, to help them realize that I'm not gonna judge you. I have no, I have no say in, in your bonuses or in your contract, or whether you play or you don't. It's, it's, I want to provide a place for you where you have the freedom to speak out loud. You have the freedom to say something out loud and say, you know what? I always thought that, but now hearing me say that, I don't believe that.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  And for me to say, oh, okay, yeah, that's fine. You're okay. Yeah. And for it to let them literally walk through it and walk themselves through this process. And when I hear something, I'll be able to tug on it and say, oh, you just said that this stresses you out. Why do you think that stresses you out? What about it stresses you out? Oh, what, has there ever been a moment you've experienced something similar to this? What did you do there? And if you were to have a tape recording of some of our conversations, you would see a, a large percentage of it has the other person talking and a very small percentage of it has me talking. And when I am talking, it's more questions than anything. Because their answers aren't from me, but it's for them.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  And so rather than me pointing out their blind spots or pointing out what what I think they need to do. I've never been a professional athlete. I've never had to manage a major league baseball team. I've never ran a professional sports organization. And so I get to ask really naive questions. I but what's also unique about the position that I'm in. These organizations understand, hey, let's give Justin the ability to have be able to go around. Let me go sit with the analysts and talk to them about how they build models. I want to go and sit with athletic athletic trainers and talk to them and see what their environment is like. And and how to help a player reconstruct their ACL.

• 24:21Speaker 00

  Hey, let me go sit with the clubhouse staff to see how they design the environment and the music just to to to nudge certain emotions in the clubhouse. And so it's going around and understanding how systems work. And then asking questions to help players and people understand or to answer questions that they've never even really thought of. And what's really fascinating, too, is afterward, they'll say, oh, that was amazing. Thank you. And then I'll say, OK, what was your takeaway? And they'll say what their takeaway is, and I will remind them, just so you know, who did who said that? They're like, I did. I said, you're absolutely right.

• 25:01Speaker 00

  I didn't say a word here, just to help them realize that you're the one with the answers. You're the one with the experience. And all I provided was a space for you to speak, to think about it out loud to another human being who is not a family member, who is not a coach, who is not tied to your career, but who is in the system, who sees who's in the trenches in the arena with you, who sees how things go and how things are are how the system is navigate, how you navigate the system to ask questions that other people might not ask you or take into consideration. So I think that's how I do it. It's a very soft, gentle, subtle way of helping people through the use of.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  Hopefully effective questions.

• 25:49Shane Parrish?

  It sounds like you're really getting them to reflect upon themselves. And to do that, you hit on this earlier, you have to be open and you have to be honest with you and themselves in your company. What are the ins and outs sort of like about how you go about connecting with people and earning their trust so that they can be open with you? And open with themselves around you?

• 26:14Speaker 00

  I think that is the hallmark of the ability to build relationships. I think number one is organic. I think it wasn't from a book I read. It wasn't from a podcast. I think it stemmed from watching and copying my parents and how they were, number one. And then number two, it's the devil helix is in my DNA. It's just how it is. And so I think at first it was an unconscious competence that I had. Where it's like, oh, I just have an ability to make friends. And I think one of those reasons I can build connections is I first let's talk about the population I work with. Everyone's clamoring for their attention.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  They're incredibly competent at what they do and their BS radar is very high. They they're immediate like, what are you? What are you trying to put your fingerprints on me so you can put my face on a website and say, oh, you helped me with my mental toughness? Are you trying to sell something? You're going to use me a lot of professional athletes? That's where it goes. And so at first you can't shove anything. You are not shoving mental skills or tools down their throat. And so I can say all I want, but they're going to watch behavior. They're going to see how I go around, what I do. And so I think number one, it starts by being there. Being if it's hot outside, you're out there sweating with them.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  If it's cold outside, you're out there freezing cold with them. If it's a tough stretch, it's it's your it's tough stretch together. And I think that's number one is they see you, just the ability for them to see you. I think number two is is how.

• 27:58Speaker 00

  Are you used in your organization? So another thing that people struggle to give up now is time. Time, attention, and energy are finite resources. Nobody wants somebody, I don't want to go to the coach and say, alright, coaches, can you give me 20 minutes for me to do a mental performance session with the players? Of course not. No, I'm not going to give up this precious time to have them go sit in a room so they can do some mindfulness meditation. As good as it is, it's important, it's very important. And so I need to adapt and adjust and apply micro learning and nudge theory to their environment.

• 28:37Speaker 00

  So instead of doing, focus on a one session, 30 minute long intensity session, it's focusing on consistency over intensity. The players have meetings all the time. And it's me collaborating with a coach and say, hey, can I have a minute in the beginning to do a mental minute? Talk about a simple concept about how to refocus as they go about 60 seconds. They're already part of that meeting and this, I have a relationship with a staff member, like, yeah, of course, that'd be great. Now it's working, instead of doing a session on habit formation with all players, hey, let me connect with the nutritionist and let's build like a little habit formation program that you could deploy, that the nutritionist can deploy, and I'm not even

• 29:22Speaker 00

  involved. And so I was able to collaborate with them. It's diaphragmatic breathing with the strength and conditioning coaches. We talk with them and say, okay, how can we, how can we help the players do diaphragmatic breathing pre-game? Oh, let's incorporate it before stretch. We're going to do it this way. I'm nowhere to be found. And so I think the key is collaboration. So that the players and the staff and the organization realizes that this isn't the Justin Su'a show. I'm not going to come and mental skill everybody all, all day. It's how can I collaborate with incredible?

• 30:00Speaker 00

  With different departments, how do I collaborate with individuals so that it can be baked into the system as opposed to, okay, now we have to have mental performance time. And so now they just get it in different ways and it's just part of the environment and don't even realize that it's embedded in there already.

• 30:20Shane Parrish?

  There's two things that you said in that answer that really stand out to me and I want to explore a little deeper. What is the relationship between environment and our subconscious and performance? And what are the things that we can do to improve our environment, to improve our performance?

• 30:37Speaker 00

  I think James Clear, in his book Atomic Habits, says it best for me, and I always talk about it. The environment is the invisible hand that shapes behavior. If you want to take a look at someone's behavior, take a look at the system in which they function in. Take a look at their morning routine. Take a look at their home. Take a look at everything. Here's a simple little example about the power of environment is systems thinking, applying the model of systems thinking. I got a text one time. I got a, it was a call from a player one time, and he said, oh, I lack confidence. I'm lacking confidence right now. And we had been talking about confidence. He's like, oh, it's interesting

• 31:18Speaker 00

  how you, for some reason, I don't have confidence right now. And early in my career, I would have said, okay, let's do self-talk. Okay, let's talk about talking yourself instead of thinking yourself, whatever it may be. And instead of going there, environment design popped in my mind. Systems thinking popped into my mind. I thought, who did you talk to today? And he goes, oh, I went to visit my old school. I ran into an old coach. I had a conversation with my dad. And then as he was describing his day, it dawned on him, oh, my goodness. I hadn't been to that school until since some of my worst days,

• 32:03Speaker 00

  and that was a terrible experience for me. Oh, wow. My dad was harping on me about doing this. I need to improve on this. I need to do this better. And it was in this moment where he realized, oh, I don't lack confidence. It was just, I was in a bad environment today, and now it's all in my head. And so, again, not every situation or scenario is like that. It's not as clean, but it opened my eyes to, instead of Saying, okay, let's prescribe something, let's give a tactic to pause and consider the environment. We talk about that often, the music, the spacing, the wording on the walls, or not having wording on the walls, where players are situated in a clubhouse,

• 32:47Speaker 00

  all these little things, where the food is in a cafeteria, the healthy food is out in the open, and the snacks are hidden in their drawers to create a little extra friction in order to get to it. And so it's incredibly, incredibly important. If anyone is trying to improve, I think James Clear goes on to say, you want to make good habits easy to do, and bad habits hard to do. And that comes down to that environmental design. Take a look at your system that you're living in, that you've created for yourself, and where could you create friction to avoid doing bad things? And where could you avoid friction or diminish friction in order to do those things that you know you should be doing?

• 33:30Shane Parrish?

  I think one of the reasons the environment is so powerful is that it communicates with your subconscious and has a conversation that you're not privy to in your conscious mind. And if we break environment down, because people are like, what is environment? I kind of think of it as four main things. There's probably more, but the way that I think about it is, you have a physical environment, like if I'm trying not to eat potato chips and I see potato chips, it's easy for me to eat them. And so nudging your physical environment can shape your behavior, because it's having a conversation with your unconscious self. The people you hang around, right? So your friends, your family, the people you choose to spend time with, the people you admire in a way, too. What you read, so what environment

• 34:15Shane Parrish?

  is going on in your mind? So what you're consuming and putting in your head, because that becomes the thoughts that you draw on for what you build upon in the future. And then the other one is sort of organizational culture. What are the standards that are acceptable? What are the norms? What are the routines? What are the patterns? Because that's going to speak to my subconscious as well.

• 34:36Speaker 00

  Oh, you hit on so many incredible things there. One in particular that lit me up is this internal environment, this mental environment that you create. An analogy, a metaphor, we constantly use is this fountains and drains. Now, any metaphor has its limitations. We all know that and we could pick apart any kind of metaphor. But what I like about this is just the mental picture that it creates. Fountains are people who who leverage their values. They lean into what they're really good at doing. I think we all have people who are fountains in our lives. And it's when initially you think fountain,

• 35:20Speaker 00

  you think zest. A lot of times they think, oh, energy and positivity and extroversion. It's no, you can have people in your life who are fountains of perspective. You can have people in your life who are fountains of organization, a fountain of critical thinking. And these are those fountains, these people that you go to to help you with these problems. Now, you can have a fountain of humor, someone who just, who, their knack for levity, they have an ability to lighten the mood. And you call this person and you go around that person, they just, they're there when you need them. It's amazing. Now, there are some people who are like, oh, well, I don't have fountains in my life. I live by myself, or

• 36:02Speaker 00

  I live with my plants. To your point, Shane, fountains, in this 2022 social media world, you could find fountains in the form of poets, writers, scientists, artists, musicians, teachers, you name it, they're out there. Now, the opposite of that are drains. Now, these are people or concepts or ideas where it kind of, it's a problem for every solution. It's making excuses, people who are always complaining. Now, the caution with sharing the fountains and the drains is immediately, when I share this in public settings, whatever it may be, people will say, yeah, I know a drain, this person's a drain, that person's a drain. I say, wait a minute.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  We all have fountain and drain tendencies. I could bring my wife and kids in here right now, and they could tell you when I have had my drain moments, when I was not a fun person to be around. And so instead of labeling people as fountains or drains, it's identifying, hey, who are these fountains of mine? Really focusing on the fountains, who are these people I can surround myself with to positively influence my internal environment, as you were mentioning? And so that was just a concept that I absolutely loved.

• 37:18Shane Parrish?

  I love the notion of fountain and drains. I think that's a great way to conceptualize it. And I said I wanted to follow up on two parts to your answer a couple of questions ago. And the second part I want to follow up on is consistency and intensity. Talk to me about that relationship between the two.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  Yes, Bruce Lee has the quote, consistency over intensity. And I forgot, I'm cutting off part of it, but I think this is an often misunderstood concept. I think, especially in the new year, we have these desires to set goals and achieve these huge goals and to change our lives, to work out more, to play the guitar, to learn another language. And we think, and we have to overhaul everything. Now, that takes a lot of energy. That takes a lot of attention. And when you set out to do that, the moment you set out to achieve something like that,

• 38:18Speaker 00

  you also sign up for the process that's going to get you there. You also sign up for the effort that's going to get you there. And what happens to a lot of people, they try to make these huge overhauls of time, of energy, and introduce very difficult habits where

• 38:38Speaker 00

  At first, you're like, oh, I could do this every day. But if you're not used to working out an hour every single day, or two hours every day, or whatever it may be, that's going to be a shock to the system at first. Because it's going to have a domino effect on everything else. You can't just insert something. There's, there's, there's going to be adjustments made in the system, whether you intend for that to happen, or even unintended, unintended consequences of this new habit you're trying to create. Now, what you can do instead is what Jim Collins does, is fire bullets before cannonballs. Maybe start implementing something small and just be consistent. In the example that I gave early on in this podcast, we were talking about,

• 39:23Speaker 00

  instead of having an hour-long or 30-minute-long mental performance session with the players, which is, oh, that's what they did back in the days. That's how mental, what mental skills coaches did. Now, it's, no, we're not going to have a long session. We're going to have 60-second sessions, more consistency, more consistently throughout the week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And you do it the next week, and the next week where it's embedded in, and mental performance training is built into the system. It's kind of like meditation. There was somebody I was working with who wanted to implement meditation. And for some reason, he, or it was she, she couldn't find 20 minutes to do it. Like, she's like, I just can't do 20, 20 minutes.

• 40:07Speaker 00

  And she's like, let me try 10 minutes. And she couldn't do 10 minutes. Now, this woman was very, was starting to get frustrated with herself because she was breaking promises to herself, and she was going to give it up completely. I'm, okay, I guess I can't meditate. And then, we started talking about this concept of habit stacking, where maybe you could tie meditation to a habit that's already well-established. And as she combed over her routine in the morning, she said, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to meditate while I brush my teeth. I do it in the morning, and I do it at night. And wouldn't you know, she, instead of focusing on her breath, she focus on, focuses on the bristles going around her gums and her teeth. She puts her mind where, where she wants, when she wants. When her mind drifts...

• 40:52Speaker 00

  She notices it and brings it back. It worked. She, instead of brushing her teeth unconsciously, just kind of going through the motions, she would start to meditate as she was brushing her teeth. And it was really neat to see her go through this process. And to this day, she still does it. I actually asked her about it. It's just part of the process. And so she focused on consistency over intensity. She didn't need to sit there for 20 minutes every single day. Just two minutes, four minutes a day, the two minutes of brushing her teeth in the morning and night, and she's just consistent with it. And she sees how it helps her in every aspect of her life. So that's, that's a little example of how to apply the mental model of consistency over intensity.

• 41:35Speaker 02

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• 41:36Speaker 00

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• 41:38Speaker 00

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• 41:38Speaker 02

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• 42:30Shane Parrish?

  I think about this in sort of like in the short term, you're as good as your intensity. But in the long term, you're only as good as your consistency.

• 42:38Speaker 00

  I really like that.

• 42:40Shane Parrish?

  Let's explore confidence a little bit. Where does it come from? How fragile is it? How do you build it back up when you lose it?

• 42:49Speaker 00

  This is a topic that is discussed all the time. And I think it is often misunderstood in terms of people over-index its importance. And what I mean by that is they overestimate how important confidence is. I have learned through

• 43:11Speaker 00

  Talking to professional athletes, how many of them lack confidence? They will tell it to my face. They'll say, I don't have confidence. There are players who I will not name, but who all of us know, would you'd be surprised to hear how they would not

• 43:29Speaker 00

  consider themselves very confident? Then you ask them, okay, so how do you do it? So how are you successful? And they say, I don't focus on how I feel. I focus on my actions. I focus on actions, not feelings. And so I think a Russian proverb explains this very well. A bird can rest peacefully on a branch, not because of its trust in the branch, but because of its trust in its ability to fly. And I think where people struggle with confidence is it's obvious is often misplaced. It's instead of being placed on their ability to bounce back, their ability to learn from failure, their confidence based on something that's that's might not be there when they need it. The example I always give is,

• 44:13Speaker 00

  have there ever been moments in your life? Well, say, school. A lot of people listening to this have experienced school. Has there been a moment where you've gone in to take a test? And you're extremely confident, only to get your results back and you perform poorly? Yeah, that's happened to us. Has there been a moment where you've gone into something, gone and take a test and you didn't feel very confident about it? But you got an A, you did very well. Yes, that's happened. So what does that teach us about confidence? That confidence is an accurate predictor of future success. And so what the research also shows is, yeah, we'd like to, we'd like to have more of it. You'd like to have more of it than not have it. And the research is called self-efficacy theory. And this is Robert Bandura.

• 44:57Speaker 00

  Now, to apply the research, there are some things that you can do to increase confidence. And some of those things could be your level of preparation. It could be your current experience, success that you're having. It could be your past success that you've had. It could be the positive thoughts you have. It could be establishing a purpose. Having a why behind what you do can give you confidence to lean into difficulty and lean into obstacles. Now, what also happens is you want to be careful is that Poor performance derailing your confidence and these professional athletes who I work with, there are constant flows of input that lead the confidence and there are constant flows

• 45:40Speaker 00

  of outflows that derail confidence. And so what these players are focused on is they say, okay, I might not have a lot of confidence right now. I might not have a lot of, but you know what? I'm going to trust my training. I'm going to trust that I know what to do in this situation and I want to go out there and give it the best I can regardless of how I feel. And I think that is one of the hallmarks of anybody who's really good at what they do. They still have moments of fear. They still get really nervous. They still have are self-conscious and lack confidence and lack focus, but they're able to put it together and to go out there and execute to the best of their ability in that moment.

• 46:25Speaker 00

  And I think you'll, you'll hear a lot of athletes say that, yeah, there are moments where I lack confidence, but I go out there and do it anyway because I focus on my actions and not how I feel.

• 46:35Shane Parrish?

  Talk to me a little bit about that, that drive that goes into people. You, you sort of mentioned the fear. There's also the, you know, from the outside looking in and I'm definitely not a mental performance coach by any stretch, but like, yeah, you have like the Tom Brady's of the world who have this chip on his shoulder and it carries them, it fuels them. And then you have people who, who, you know, seek glory. We all have these different motivations. I'm curious as to what you see with athletes. Is there a difference in the motivation between average athletes, which are, you know, way above average in the world, but at your level, average sort of like baseball players and the elite baseball players? Is there a difference in that drive?

• 47:17Speaker 00

  You know what? That's a, there is actually a book called Drive out there that, that I think there are some physiological components attributed to it. There could be some, some nature part, some nurture part to, I think it's very complex. However, just some patterns that I've noticed is the Hall of Famers who I've talked to or who I've seen or the best of the best, there's, for a lot of them, there's this obsession, this, this point to where. They are almost obsessed with whatever thing they are trying to pursue. Now, some of them are very process driven and they're obsessed with the process. And the results are a byproduct of the process.

• 48:00Speaker 00

  There are some who are obsessed with results and they're driven by results. And I will never, I've tried it a few times to nudge a professional athlete who are, who are results focused, to be more process focused. That didn't work out with some of them. They're like, no, don't tell me how to shape and what, how I should view my goals. That, that won't work for me. So I learned very quickly that, okay, even though the research says that there, it'd probably be more ideal to focus on the process. It's the drive for the next contract, to win the Super Bowl, to win the World Series, to be a Hall of Famer. That is what lights their fire. Now, what I have also noticed is the goal gradient effect being very prevalent in these athletes.

• 48:42Speaker 00

  Now, the goal gradient effect is essentially states that a person will increase their effort the closer they get to the goal. And one of the things is, these people who are truly, truly driven, they have a vivid, bright image of what they want. It is clear as day and they are driven every single day as it's the purpose behind everything that they do. Now, there are moments where you start to struggle. There are moments where you go through slumps. There are moments when you don't win a game. I have been a part of that, where you do not win a game the entire season. And it's devastating. And your why and your purpose starts to get clouded.

• 49:26Speaker 00

  And so in those cases, when you start to struggle individually or as a team, it's somehow creating a temporary light at the end of the tunnel. Cause sometimes you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. You can't see the finish line. And so your motivation dips, your behavior dips, your drive dips. And so it's like, okay, how do we, how do we help you create a temporary light at the end of the tunnel? Because you're driven when you see something and the player creates a temporary one. What are you going to do this Sunday? Okay, what's your goal for right here, right now? And then applying, applying the, what do you call it? Newton's laws, an object in motion tends to stay in motion. They're building a little energy, a little momentum. And once you know it, they're back on track and they're rolling.

• 50:10Speaker 00

  And again, this isn't a clean fix and it's a clean trick necessarily. But these are some of the things that we try to implement to help players not only pursue their goals, but to stick with them and to keep the energy up when times get tough.

• 50:29Shane Parrish?

  Talk to me a little bit about the goal gradient effect and how it works its way into, does it work its way into contracts? Like instead of a performance bonus at the end of the year, is there like monthly performance bonuses where people can achieve it? And that way you're always closer to your goal, right? Like there's always that one thing right there. And then you're immediately incentivizing and rewarding it versus a yearly sort of like once a year. I think this is one of the reasons bonuses are largely ineffective. A, they're, they're not material for the vast majority of people and they happen once a year. And so you tend to get feedback once a year. And you know, in those three months before you get your bonus check, everybody's running around trying to make it look like they're doing a whole bunch of stuff. And, and they probably are doing a whole bunch of cool stuff,

• 51:11Shane Parrish?

  but they're working harder in that three months and they probably worked in the other nine. And why can't we just do that monthly? Like, why can't we, we set up that the short-term goals are even weekly in some companies?

• 51:21Speaker 00

  That's a great, that's a great question. And to answer the initial question, are contracts set up like that? I have not, I don't, I don't know. I don't know. That's, that's a circle of competence that I have, I don't have. And so with that, but to your point, you're, that's so true. Because a lot of times with incentives and bonuses like that in the professional sports world, there are so many uncontrollable factors. And when you are trying to control something that's uncontrollable, there are some unintended things that pop up. You may be perceived as more selfish. You may be perceived as a little more panic when the things that you try to control but can't end up controlling you.

• 52:03Speaker 00

  And I have seen firsthand where I see players a little bit more stressed out than normal. Their, their, their, their reference level or their set points, a little bit, their mood, a little more agitated, a little bit more chippy. And then he's like, hey, what's going on? Oh. I'm one stolen base away. I'm ten hits away. I'm and I'm like, oh, okay, all right. And so it's okay. How do I keep things in perspective? Just trust my ability. And so these are conversations that are had, not just with professional athletes, but even with people who are about to professionals about to close a quarter or whatever it may be as they're getting closer. It's like, okay, let me keep doing what I've been doing instead of trying to do a little more. Just stick with the process.

• 52:46Speaker 00

  I think we have a bias towards action. I think there are literally an action bias as opposed to, hey, just keep doing what you're doing. Trust what you're doing was right and trust that the that your process will yield the results that you're looking for as they had the entire time leading up to this point. I think when you see a bonus around the corner or or whatever it may be, you have this propensity to do something different. And it might end up hurting you in the long run.

• 53:17Shane Parrish?

  The world is full of talented people who never seem to succeed. What's the difference between success and talent?

• 53:23Speaker 00

  Everyone needs to find their own definition of success. What does death? What does success look like to you? I think people struggle when they allow the world or society to dictate what success looks like. That's where I have seen people, including myself, become the worst version of themselves, pursuing a goal, pursuing a definition of success that really doesn't matter to you. I can think in my own life, my definition of success has been has evolved over time, completely different now than than it used to be. And I think another thing is that one of the reasons for that is is how we view people in organizations that we perceive as successful.

• 54:08Speaker 00

  The books are written about the best in the world. The documentaries are made about world champions. The movies are made about these amazing, credible stories. But what we learn from survivorship bias is that a lot of these people who didn't win, a lot of them were doing the exact same thing. A lot of these guys and these men and women who were came in second place and third place had the same process and in some cases, even better process. What I have learned in pro sports is that winning masks so many things. You could win, but what's talked about is how great your culture is in your winning,

• 54:46Speaker 00

  but it over it just overshadows all of the deficiencies and the problems in the system. And then you look at a losing, a team who quote unquote loses. And what it overshooting overshadows the great leadership, the great strategy, the great, the great process that they have. And so that mental model that I actually learned from you is that the map, the map is not the territory is we can get enamored by the end results and say, oh, that's so successful. But if you take a look under the hood, you might find a different story. So I think a lot of it comes down to society. We love the win, we love a winner. We love stories of winners. We want to hear about how they did what they did.

• 55:30Speaker 00

  And so I think if you really want to gain even better insight is take a look at some of those who aren't winners and see what they did. And you'll notice that a lot of them are doing some of the exact same things that the winners are doing. And in some cases, in some cases, they might be doing some things even better than than what the winners were doing.

• 55:52Shane Parrish?

  That's a good segue, sort of into a broader question about standards. So often we sort of, we settle for good enough. You know, people get good enough at something and then they stop. I believe that part of the difference between good enough and great is explained by pushing through good enough and going beyond what you think is possible, beyond what other people, when other people give up. You need to find an extra gear. I think of this in terms of standards, the standards you have for yourself, the standards that come from the organizational culture, the standards that come from the people you're around. How do we go about raising that bar?

• 56:27Speaker 00

  Hmm. I think in order to whatever bar you have or whatever norms you want to create or standards in your term, what you said that you want to create. It needs to be supported by the system you create. I think a lot of, and we've been talking a lot about systems and environments in this conversation. I have seen organizations, not necessarily a professional sports organization, but just different organizations where the leadership wants to have certain norms, certain standards. However, their modeling, they don't signal those norms themselves and the system isn't built to satisfy those norms.

• 57:09Speaker 00

  How can you say, "We're gonna create..." The standard is gonna be psychological safety, where everyone feels safe to be creative and fail. But in a meeting, when someone comes up with this idea that might not work, you cut their head off and say, "That's a dumb idea." It's like, "Okay, what we're modeling and signaling is not in alignment with what the standards and the norms are." So I think number one is to, okay, what standards do you want? And what are the behaviors that will model or signal this standard? And then you look at the system. Where in our system does our system, can it support this?

• 57:50Speaker 00

  When you talk about the extra gear, when you talk about someone who wants to write a book, someone who wants to enter a fitness competition, someone who wants to start a business, those are very difficult things to do that are gonna take a lot of time. And a lot of times, people underestimate how hard it's going to be and how long it's going to take. And so if you set out to set a standard, you can't just put it on a shirt and say, "Okay, we're a positive culture now. We're a learning culture now." You need to understand that there's going to be a lag. It takes time to be able to create enough inflow to where all of a sudden, the stock of whatever you're looking for,

• 58:32Speaker 00

  whether it be psychological safety, it's gonna take a little while for that to be embedded, for that to be the norm. And I think that's where people struggle is they underestimate. The process and how long it's going to be, we, we come in and say, okay, we're just going to put a, this year, our, our, our, our year is going to be no fear. Everything's going to be no fear, no fear anywhere. And it's like, okay, wait, what, what are we talking about? Like how, and, and you got to define it, you got to create a system, you got to have behaviors, what does it look like, what does it not look like? And really create systems and norms that are low hanging fruit for you and then slowly build from that.

• 59:15Speaker 00

  And I think kind of all over the place with this answer, but it's, it, I see it all the time and it's such a great question.

• 59:21Shane Parrish?

  I, I, I think like I, I came at this just through the outside looking in, right? Like reading about people like Tom Brady and Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. And one of the things that it seems in common, they have different ways of, of going about it, but they all held themselves to a higher bar than anyone could imagine, even from the outside looking in. But they, they also held their teammates to that level of standard, that level of work ethic. You watch that MJ documentary on Netflix and it becomes obvious that they like hated him, but he made them better.

• 59:57Speaker 00

  Absolutely right.

• 59:59Shane Parrish?

  Like you can't show up at practice and give 50% effort and coast for even a day when MJ's on your team.

• 1:00:06Speaker 00

  When I hear stories of Jordan and Tom Brady and Kobe Bryant and just these elite athletes in their sport, Simone Biles, who just dominate. You see their habits, you see their desire, this insatiable desire to be the best in the world. And to your point, it's contagious. And if you're not with them, you better step up or you're out. And it's, it's true. And I think it's also true even in, in the workforce. You get around these people who have a higher motor, a higher cadence, a higher, does a passion and drive to be the best in the world.

• 1:00:47Speaker 00

  They're very unique. You don't see them all the time, but when you're around this kind of individual, this person to your, to your point, it does cause you to look at yourself and say, okay, I better step up. I better step up. There's another gear. There's another level. There's another level inside of me that I can get to. And that's why I love team sports so much, or that's why I love being surrounded by fountains. This is another example of a beam, a fountain in some way of another. It's, you have no idea when you are pursuing something, when your heart is on fire and you can't study it enough, you can't learn about it enough. And, and someone you might think to yourself, oh, I can't

• 1:01:29Speaker 00

  ever be like that. I can't be like Michael Jordan. I can't be like Tom Brady. Chances are there've been a moment in your life where you were so driven by something, so you, that you wouldn't take no for an answer. And you couldn't stop thinking about it. You couldn't stop researching it. And that's a form of being driven. That's, in that moment, you're experiencing what it, what it looks like. And your family might be saying, hey, relax. You're obsessed. What are you doing? No, I need to get this done. No, I need to study this. I need to write this. There might be someone listening to this who has done things and put so much time into a podcast, into a book, into something. And your family

• 1:02:12Speaker 00

  members, your friends are like, why are you doing this? Like, no one else knows about it, but you know about it. And you're driven. And that's what it feels like. It's when you are so set, heart set on something, that you want to do it the best you can. And it's, I don't think it's something you could force. It's something that's organic, that bubbles up, and you don't know when you're going to get bit by the driven bug, but when it comes out, it's a, and it's, it's an exhilarating feeling. It, it's amazing. And then you have people who like these elite performers, and even business professionals. Maybe Elon Musk has it. Maybe Sarah Blakely with Spanx has it. These people who found what they're passionate about, and then they were just driven to do it. And then, and it's like, all right.

• 1:02:56Speaker 00

  And they want to surround themselves with people who are at extremely, work at an extremely high cadence as well.

• 1:03:02Shane Parrish?

  My kids are definitely passionate about Minecraft, so I don't know if I want to let them listen to this. It's around me. Switching gears a little bit here, at 19, you were an all-American baseball player and you dropped everything to go become a missionary. Can you explore that with me and how it shaped the rest of your life so far?

• 1:03:26Speaker 00

  I never talk about this on podcast. No one really asks about this. It was a very difficult decision. And it was a decision. I wasn't forced. I didn't, wasn't told I had to do it. I didn't get paid to do it. I actually had to pay money to go do it. And it was just something that I knew I wanted to do. I knew, not even that I had to do. I was excited to do it. Now, I remember being told by a Major League Baseball scout, "You're about to make the worst decision in your baseball career if you go do this." And I thought about it and I said, "You know what? He's probably right." And I went. And

• 1:04:08Speaker 00

  it was, it was, it was torn. I was torn. So for two years, I'm dropped in Nicaragua. And at the time, it was a third world, third world country. I don't speak Spanish. I talk to my family twice a year. No TV, no baseball, no going out to parties, no movie, no music. You just go every single day. And in many cases, I have no electricity, no running water, with a companion, with somebody who is from another country, doesn't even speak English in some cases, and you go. And it was an unbelievable experience that I learned so much from, how to speak another language. Like, I'd learned how to speak Spanish. And

• 1:04:50Speaker 00

  now, when I work with athletes from Korea, or Venezuela, or Cuba, who are here, I, from firsthand, could tell them, "I know what it's like to be thrown into a different culture. I know what it's like to not be able to order food. I know what it's like to cry yourself to sleep because you're thinking, 'I don't have anyone around here. I don't have my family and friends here to support me through this difficult time.'" Another thing it taught me is that people have these preconceived notions about you. Like I've never been so loved and never been so hated in my life. I've had machetes pulled on me, rocks thrown at me, like people telling me if I threaten my, threatening my life, no clue who I was, but that was just how I was viewed.

• 1:05:34Speaker 00

  And I thought, wow, that's interesting. They don't even know me. And it was just, it was incredible. I learned teamwork. I learned how to be a leader. I learned how to navigate difficult situations. I learned how to communicate. How do you, I had to keep it simple there. I had to, I had to keep it incredibly simple. Not only because you want to keep things of, of the spiritual things simple, but I had, I didn't have a robust vocabulary, so I had to keep it really simple. And so it was trying to take something that in your heart and you want to share it with somebody, but you don't, you literally don't have the words for it.

• 1:06:13Speaker 00

  And so I had to learn how to navigate that and build relationships in a language with people of a culture that I was unfamiliar with. And so I utilize a lot of the things that, lessons I learned there in everything, really everything I do today, from being a parent to my professional life. It was, it was the best, not, it was not just the best two years of my life, it was the best two years for my life.

• 1:06:39Shane Parrish?

  You mentioned being a parent. Talk to me a little bit about how your experiences have shaped your approach to raising your children.

• 1:06:47Speaker 00

  Raising kids is so difficult. It, it blows my mind how, we have three, we have three teenagers, how your kids with the same parents, in the same home, eating the same food could be starkly different. One look to a kid, they get the feedback. Okay, got it. Another child, it's, it's just way different. And, and one thing that I have noticed is they've met these professional athletes. They've seen, they've been in clubhouses. They've seen me in these stories. They've seen World Series. They've seen me come home from an 0-16 season. They've seen, they, we've watched me in these different things.

• 1:07:32Speaker 00

  And, and one thing I know. That I have learned from these pro athletes is the role their parents played in what they do. And I would hear it for the better or for the worse. I worked at the IMG Academy for a long time, worked with hundreds, thousands of youth athletes, and I would hear stories of mom and dad for the better or for the worst. And I would learn these lessons and say, okay, let me, let me allow my kids to fail. Let me allow my kids to practice some form of autonomy in the house. Uh, let me allow, let me choose which battles I want. Let me, let me really, let me share with my kids my own failures. Let me push back on my own beliefs and have my kids, when they say, Dad, why do you believe that? To be able to say, you know what?

• 1:08:18Speaker 00

  You're right. I don't, that's not necessarily true, but that was, that's what I was taught. And so they have really kept me honest and my wife, both of us honest in, in, in how we go about. It's a very organic way. And so, um, just kind of a proud father moment. So my daughter, one day she's like, I want to be an actor. Uh, this is what I want to do for a living. And so we said, okay, if you want to do this, you gotta, we're gonna get you acting lessons and so forth. And she did it for a long time, passionate about it. We take her to Los Angeles, put her in front of an agent. To have an agent, agent says, no, you're out. I mean, no, like you're not going to cut it. I'm walking her to the car. She has these big crocodile tears coming down. I said, what do you think sweetheart? She goes, I think I need a better acting coach.

• 1:09:03Speaker 00

  And I said, okay, we'll get you a better acting coach. And so she works on it. Long story short, she gets an agent, moved to Los Angeles. She auditions hundreds of times, doesn't get any jobs until she gets a phone call from Dwayne Johnson's people. She becomes Dwayne, she co-acts, uh, co-starred with Dwayne Johnson on a movie called Hobbs and Shaw. And she plays his daughter in that movie. And it was neat to see her story and as she talks about it, just like she's gotten one role. Uh, she's had a number of roles after that, but it, it, it was neat to see her walk through that story. And then my son is now in, in, interested in music and he's working with some great artists around the world.

• 1:09:45Speaker 00

  But what we do is we always talk about probabilistic reasoning. And it might sound weird to, to talk about that, but that was a framework and model that we always talk about. And I always tell them, do you know what the odds of you getting this role is? Five, it used, they used to be ninety-five percent, ninety-nine percent. Now they've learned that, oh, five percent, and it's probably lower than that. But does that mean don't do it? No, Daddy, I'm still gonna do it. Why? Because I love it. And I learned that from these athletes. The athletes are the ones who tell me that the odds were against them. They sure, shared with me everything that they did, but, and they always had coaches and parents telling them, you should go do something else, you should go do this, you should have a backup plan.

• 1:10:28Speaker 00

  But none of them did, and I'm working exclusively with this top one percent, half a percent with people who overcame all these odds. And what they tell me is that what propelled them is their drive. Like we talked about, their love for doing what they do. And what would have been more rational is to pick something else. Because the odds of making it the highest level were not, was not there. Go do something else. But if you're, but they're, they know, hey, the odds are against me, but I love it. So I'm not gonna stop doing it. And so that's what we're trying to teach our kids. Many times unsuccessfully, we're fumbling, bumbling along, but it's been a fun process.

• 1:11:09Shane Parrish?

  That, that's, I remember watching your daughter actually in that movie in the cafeteria, uh, at the table. Now that you, I didn't know it was your daughter until now, and then I was like, oh, my God, that's, she's adorable, man. That's, she's awesome.

• 1:11:22Speaker 00

  Appreciate it, brother.

• 1:11:23Shane Parrish?

  I, I'm curious, like, you've talked before about sort of the difference between losing and being beaten. I'm wondering if you can explore that a little bit for me.

• 1:11:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. I was actually inspired by it from a question that you had with Chris, Chris Bosch. And for those who did not see that episode, I, I completely agree with him. Uh, in pro sports, at the highest level, there is no tiptoeing around like, oh, dude, we, we didn't lose, we got beat. No, you lost. An L is an L. Uh, and, and a win is a win. Sometimes you win in dominating fashion, and sometimes you win ugly. But you win. At the end of the day, we're trying to win the Super Bowl, a World Series, a championship, whatever it may be. However, context is huge. And when you're working with amateur athletes, and even sometimes in the professional realm,

• 1:12:15Speaker 00

  it's important to understand this dynamic between losing and being beat. Now, losing, you can frame it as,

• 1:12:24Speaker 00

  You didn't give your best effort. Losing is you beat yourself. That is truly, truly losing where you didn't do whatever it take. You lacked preparation. You, you just beat yourself from mistakes, from maybe it could be mental mistakes that for one reason or another, you just felt sorry for yourself. You're making excuses, mental mistake, whatever it may be. Being beaten, on the other hand, could be seen as you did everything that you possibly could. You checked every single box. You gave your absolute best. The other team was just better than you that day. And that is being beaten. The difference between losing and being beaten.

• 1:13:06Speaker 00

  I struggle with that sometimes, but I think in some contexts, it's very important to, to say and very important to, to distinguish a phrase that people who know me know that I do not like. There's a phrase out there that says, sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. I can't stand that phrase. And the reason I can't stand that phrase is because it implies two things. It implies that you can't learn from winning. Like you win or you learn? No, you, you can learn a lot from winning. Success leaves clues. What it also implies, losing is some word that no one says of, oh, I didn't lose, I learned. No, you lost. Own it. You lost. You got beat today and that's life.

• 1:13:51Speaker 00

  You're going to lose sometimes. And instead of flowering it up and saying, no, no, I didn't lose. I just ran out of time. I didn't lose, I just, no, like you lost. Now, I will say this, there are some individuals, I know an individual who was a major league baseball player. He never likes to say that the pitcher beat me. He'll never say the pitcher, pitcher beat him, ever, ever. No, that, that pitcher didn't, he, he didn't beat, I, he got lucky. He got lucky. I'm the one who struck out. I, I struck myself out. He didn't strike me out. And that's a confidence mechanism he, and I'm not going to tell him otherwise, but it's in. All I'm saying is to identify what works best for you. How do you need to frame winning and losing to help you learn lessons and come back a better

• 1:14:35Speaker 00

  version of yourself next time? Is it how Chris Bosch views it? Then great, if that works for you, great. Is it how Larry Gelwitz views it, who was the coach of the Highland Rugby Team, who you either lose or get beaten? Whatever works best for you. So that's why frameworks and framing is very important. And also be aware that your framing might change as you change, as you evolve. It could change over time.

• 1:15:01Shane Parrish?

  One thing you said there that struck out to me was success leaves clues. Tell me more about that.

• 1:15:08Speaker 00

  Because losing is so painful, it's so embarrassing, it's so, it's attached with negative emotions, you remember them more. You think about them. You can't sleep, you can't eat, especially if they're compounding over and over again. And so when you're losing, you're always thinking, what can I do to improve it? What can I do to get better? But when you win, a lot of times you think, I was supposed to win. Yeah, alright, yeah, that was supposed to happen. Okay, moving on, moving on. Instead of pausing and saying, what did I learn? What did I execute? What was out of my control?

• 1:15:53Speaker 00

  Where did I get lucky? What did I, what did the opponent, what mistakes did I capitalize from the opponent? What is something that I could take into my next performance? And that's why I think this self-reflection piece is so important to take the same set of questions after a win or after a loss and use this lens, this self-reflection questioning process to ask yourself, no matter if it's a success or a failure. So if you lose, if you ask yourself, okay, what did I, what did I do well today? Okay, what went well today? Win or lose, that's a great question to ask yourself. Another question is, what did I learn today? Win or lose, that's a great question to ask yourself.

• 1:16:38Speaker 00

  And then last question, what am I going to do better tomorrow? Win or lose, that's a great question to ask yourself. And I think sometimes...

• 1:16:48Speaker 00

  Because going back to what we said earlier, winning masks a lot of things. There's a lot of positive emotions triggered to it. Kind of brush the lessons of winning right under the rug and move on instead of pausing and saying, "Hey, let me collect some of these lessons so I can use them moving forward."

• 1:17:04Shane Parrish?

  One of the things I got out of that Chris Bosch conversation was that some people sort of accomplish their goals. They set for themselves, whether it's, you know, winning a championship or saving a million dollars or getting a promotion. And then something changes. They take their foot off their gas and they slow down. What's happening there?

• 1:17:23Speaker 00

  This is another part of that goal gradient effect. We tend, this is the problem with the 30 day, the 30 day weight loss programs. This is the problem with having finite destinations or finish lines to whatever you're trying to achieve. Because what happens a lot of times is you, once you achieve it, once you sprint past the finish line, what do we tend to do? We take our foot off the gas. And so, and a lot of times because you exert so much effort and so much power to sprint your way towards the end, like, oh, that's unsustainable. You can't sustain that amount of effort all the way through.

• 1:18:06Speaker 00

  And so what Chris mentions is, is so true is there is a time for rest and recovery. There is a time where you need to, okay, work like a lion and, and attack and then rest. Attack and then rest. How can you set your goal pursuits up just like that? It's not, I'm going to be happy when it's creating this longevity, these systems where you can keep going further and further and further. Because as the Haitian proverb says, behind mountains are more mountains. Behind goals are more goals. And if you prime yourself for that and say, okay, I need to be ready for the long haul.

• 1:18:47Speaker 00

  And a lot of times it's just a, a priming yourself, a mental, just mentally. Being ready for to say, hey, this, I'm not just trying to win today. I'm trying to win for the long haul.

• 1:19:00Shane Parrish?

  What can listeners do to improve their mental performance?

• 1:19:04Speaker 00

  This is always a difficult question because I, my initial question to myself is, what's the context? So speaking to a global, general audience, I have more questions to consider, some more considerations than prescriptions. So to improve your mental performance is the first thing you need to do, and we talked, you actually mentioned this earlier on, and I completely agree. Is the connection between your physical performance and mental performance. And one of the best ways to enhance mental performance is to make sure you have the physio fundamental mentals established. Make sure you're getting quality sleep.

• 1:19:44Speaker 00

  Make sure you are getting quality nutrition, fueling and exercise and, and strong relationships. I, that might, you might think, wait, that's, that's gonna help my mind. It absolutely helps your mind. It is the fundamental pillars of mental performance. And cognitive performance is sleep, nutrition, exercise and deep relationships, strong relationships. Number one, so establish that, how are those, quality of those? I think number two is then start to, start to do some exploration. Pay attention, start to collect some data on yourself. Just go about your day and notice, notice your energy, notice your focus.

• 1:20:26Speaker 00

  Ask questions about your confidence, ask questions about your environment. You can't change what you're not aware of. So pay attention, pick some aspects of your life and say, okay, let me look at my focus, my confidence and my mood. Let's just pick those three things or my response to stress, my stress levels. And then you just pay attention as you go throughout the day. Notice when your confidence is up, notice when it's down, notice when your stress levels are up and what you do about it when it's down. Start with collecting some. Personal data. And then you go and you say, okay, try and find some patterns. Oh, in the morning, I have tons of energy. I'm really good. Oh, once six o'clock hits, I notice I'm a lot more irritable.

• 1:21:11Speaker 00

  I'm a lot more impulsive. And then what you do is you go online and you start Googling things. Grab a book, listen to a podcast, okay, how to improve confidence and listen, find these experts out there. I love this because you can learn about yourself, but it starts by asking the questions. If you want better answers, start asking better questions. And that's what I love about this journey and mental performance and is that it's tied to so many things. And you could start learning about it right now.

• 1:21:46Shane Parrish?

  What are some of the best mental models for athletic performance?

• 1:21:52Speaker 00

  I think the ones that we organically talk about, don't explicitly talk about are feedback loops, uh, systems thinking. And one in particular, I'll give you a specific example, we'll take arousal control. So an athlete has a certain arousal control reference point. They have their set points. It's probably at a higher level than your average person because of they're playing under the bright lights in front of fans. Like their heart rate's up all the time, a lot of pressures going on. Now, they're used to that. They have a certain reference point and we even call it a number of intensity. On a scale of one to 10, what's your, what's your reference level of, of, of where you play at your best?

• 1:22:34Speaker 00

  A lot of players will say, I'm at my best from five to seven, from six to eight. They describe what it feels like and so forth. Anything higher is too much, anything lower is too small. And then what they create are these balancing loops. If they're too low, okay, what do you do to get your number up? And if you're too high, what do you do to slow it down? Now, what's often happens in the playoffs or in the World Series, uh, in high leverage stressful situations, players will recognize that their heart rate is up. Oh, there's a signal. I need to activate a balancing loop. I need to bring my heart rate down because mine, it is getting outside of my, my reference level. What do they do? They have been taught diaphragmatic breathing.

• 1:23:16Speaker 00

  So they know that, okay, if I focusing on the exhale, if I inhale. What's going to happen is my heart is going to expand and it's going to signal to my brain to get the blood pump, get my heart rate pumping. If I exhale, my diaphragm goes up, my heart starts to shrink, brain sends a signal to my heart, slow your heart down. And so the players know, focus on the exhale. Let me get some good, long, deep exhales and that serves as a balancing loop. So there's one. So we, and I don't use this language with the players, by the way, like it's a lot more simple than that. We do not talk like that, but that's what's going on in my mind to help the players. And then I think another one, common one is, we spoke about this earlier, is the map is

• 1:24:01Speaker 00

  not the territory. A player can have, let's say, baseball, it's such an easy one to talk about, a player can go 0 for 4 with 4 strikeouts. On paper, that's a very bad day, very, that's a rough day, and in some cases, an embarrassing day. But the map is not the territory. Maybe they had a plan, maybe they're right on those pitches, maybe an umpire made a bad call, maybe a player can have an 0 for 4 day with 4 strikeouts and still pull some very good things they did in those at bats. Not ideal, obviously, we're not saying it's great, we're not, we're not chalking it up as a true success, however, the map is not the territory, necessarily the territory.

• 1:24:43Speaker 00

  Conversely, a player can go 4 for 4 and say, oh, I broke a bat single, I, I hit a little squibbler away from the, the shift, and they can say, hey, even though I have 4 hits on paper, there are some things I need to do better next time. So those are 2 off the top of my head, mental models that I use personally as I'm working with people on an individual scale.

• 1:25:09Shane Parrish?

  That's excellent, thank you. I want to end with a question that we ask a lot of people, but what is success for you?

• 1:25:16Speaker 00

  Success for me, for me, is, is freedom. And not freedom that has to be given to me, but freedom that is earned through mastery.

• 1:25:30Speaker 00

  I think playing piano, for example, if you were to tell me to play Mary Had a Little Lamb, I would have no clue what to do. But if you would show me, I can pluck away, Mary had a little lamb, and I could do the best I could, given my level of expertise, which is nothing, very low. But then you bring a concert pianist in and have her play Mary Had a Little Lamb. She has all the freedom in the world because she understands the fundamentals. She's a master of her domain. And so her freedom is a byproduct of mastering the fundamentals. I'm in the point in my life right now where I'm trying to master

• 1:26:11Speaker 00

  different aspects of my life so I can experience the freedom that comes with it. And where freedom comes, creativity comes. I love creativity. I love to feel that I am coming at a problem from a different angle. And I feel safe to do so, and I have substantiated research and principles and models to support where I'm coming from. So I'm trying to leverage and find freedom of learning how to leverage my time in a very demanding job, to be able to be home more with my family. I'm trying to master and have more freedom over my energy by learning about nutrition and sleep.

• 1:26:53Speaker 00

  I'm trying to gain financial freedom by not just learning the financials and accounting of money and how to use my money, but the psychology of money. Morgan Housel's work and just understanding what it does and biases. And so right now, success to me is freedom, just trying to have freedom, which is a function of mastery.

• 1:27:22Shane Parrish?

  That's a beautiful answer, man. Thank you so much for a wonderful conversation.

• 1:27:28Speaker 00

  Thanks so much, Shane. It was a pleasure.

• 1:27:37Shane Parrish?

  The Knowledge Project is produced by the team at Farnham Street. I'd love to get your advice on how to make this the most valuable podcast you listen to. Email me at [email protected]. You can learn more about the show and find past episodes at fs.blog/podcast. To get a transcript of this episode, go to fs.blog/tribe or check out the show notes. Can you do me a small favor? Go online right now and share this episode with one friend who you think would love it. Thanks for listening and learning with us. Till next time.