Dr. Jim Loehr: What it Takes to Win

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/5caefc5c8961dc8e

I'm very curious, and I will be till my last breath.
That's the gift.
Teaching people to be excited about
What you could become
And what you might really find great joy in mastering.
If you can do that as a as a teacher, as a parent
That is a forever gift.
That will never stop giving.
Welcome to the Knowledge Project, a podcast about mastering the best of what other people have already figured out, so you can apply their insights to your life.
I'm your host, Shane Parrish.
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Today, my guest is Dr. Jim Lair, who's a world-renowned performance psychologist, co-founder of the Human Performance Institute, and author of more books than I can count, including one that really impacted me a while ago, called The Power of Full Engagement. Dr. Lair believes the single most important factor in successful achievement, personal fulfillment, and life satisfaction.
is the strength of our character.
I wanted to talk to Jim because his belief in matching energy and time had a fundamental impact on
how I spend my time and how I allocate my data.
In this episode, we talk a lot about the little voice inside our head, the one narrating life for us, the one writing the story. We explore when it powers us, when it limits us.
how we can recognize when it's serving us and when it's not, how to edit it, how what we say affects our kids' narrative that they're telling themselves, and the difference between what the best in the world tell themselves and other people.
We also explore the power of journaling, matching time and energy.
Decision making, and health foundations.
It's time.
To listen.
and learn.

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Let's start with how we tell stories about ourselves to ourselves. We tell stories around work, family
health, happiness, and friendship. And the story that we tell ourselves in reality are often different.
Sometimes our stories empower us and sometimes they limit us.
And I'm wondering if maybe we could explore a little bit about the story you used to tell yourself as a father.
It's an interesting uh question, you know. Um I have three sons.
And it wasn't until I became heavily involved in the field of psychology and mental health and performance that I began
To realize that just about everything we say publicly and
Privately in our head is a story.
We don't have direct contact with the real world. We have all this data.
Streaming in to our five sensory portals.
And then our big neural processor has to make sense out of that. And
There's a preference
For
making sense uh in terms of what's already been loaded in.
So
If you
Get information that might be somehow contradictory to what's in there.
You tend to just purge it, you tend not to listen, or you tend not to incorporate it and
The more I began to understand this, and as a father.
You know, I wish I had understood it.
Much earlier in my life, I began to realize.
That the way I spoke to my
Three sums.
Um my public voice
Бикама майже факт.
In the way they're
private voice would speak to them as they grew older.
When I realized that I stopped on a dime.
Because I didn't want something that I might have said haphazardly, you know, I said something off the cuff.
You know, that was actually not
aligned with my values or who I really wanted them
To think of themselves as
And yet you kinda think, Well, they don't really hear it.
But our brains are always listening.
And there are some people that get direct access into command center.
What I call command central.
And a father, at least for a period of time, and the mother
Have
direct entry into the sacred space
Where most of the meaning is created in our storytelling.
If as a father I say to my son, you know, I don't know what's the matter with you. You're always you're always screwing things up.
I really wonder if I'd have had your if I'd have had your opportunities, I would have been
A star.
And you say these things and you don't think they're really going to
have much of an effect, you're trying to motivate them.
But
The more we have learned about the power of this inner voice in directing traffic.
Your inner voice pretty much as we've learned it.
Determines your destiny.
So I am every time I speak to my sons.
Every time I speak to my grandsons.
I'm very careful that
Is this what I want them to say to themselves?
When they start maturing in life.
That was a game changer for me, big time.
What questions should we be asking ourselves?
to better understand if the story we're telling is empowering or limiting us.
Again, it's there's this a level of awareness and I have tried in my career to raise the curtain.
So that people understand
That there's something going on that, you know, maybe was purely automatic.
And maybe the voice you got you never really
intentionally acquired, but suddenly you have this critic inside yourself.
Or the storyteller that we all have and
You have to stop and reflect. This this I have rules of storytelling. They're not really rules, they're guidelines.
And the first thing is the rule has to be true.
І з реалісом.
Am I making stuff up here that just is convenient for the moment to maybe
Make me feel better or
Is this aligned with really objective reality? That's the first kind of principle of really good storytelling. Another one is
Is this storage that I'm telling myself is it aligned
With the best part of me.
Вид ву I really want to be in life, my values, my sense of purpose.
Does this story
Take me where I want to go in life.
Does it help me feel more optimistic and hopeful about my future?
Or does it in fact
Give me a sense that you know
I I'm not that capable. World is tough. I probably can't make it. Why am I doing this? This is stupid.
And so
I really want people to have this kind of automatic sensor.
Before you allow these stories to
Take
Yeah.
That you intentionally
Purposefully.
Orchestrate them so that these stories are aligned with the best part of you.
And if they were made known
publicly to all the people that you know or put on a jumbotron.
You would be proud of the way you have been.
Coaching yourself, talking to yourself about
What's uh the storm that you're in, or about the future that you're crafting?
And um
I'm very hopeful that the more we can bring an awareness
To people's lives. I have changed.
So many people's thinking about so many things in sport and outside of it.
And it's basically the question you ask.
Which is
How do we make our stories really, really help us navigate better in life?
You you work with a lot of world class performers. Is is there a difference between the story they're telling themselves and the story that the rest of us tell ourselves?
What's so interesting is that when they started
Often they just they had a love affair with whatever sport.
they were involved in. They never had any dreams or they just you know, they just thought these are
People who have become number one in the world. I've had
Seventeen people that have become number one in the world.
And when they look back, they're so astonished. Cause they never dreamed this was ever gonna happen. They dreamed of being maybe a great
Tennis player, golfer, speed skater, but they never dreamed they would have this kind of
accumulated success over so many years um
But as they get more success the
possibilities begin to
open up in their minds about what they can and can't do.
And all I can tell you is that the sense of joy in the pursuit.
And to be able to have parents who enable it, not force you.
But actually, give the opportunity to explore this.
In your own way.
And then be surrounded by great coaches who
I had a a great coach in
mm the early part of my
Athletic career in basketball, and he saw something in me that I never saw in myself.
Coach Guy Gibbs in basketball and
Uh, he came into my life at a very important time. I was kind of struggling with confidence, and somehow this guy that I really felt was an extraordinary human being.
And that's the way we look at most of our coaches. I mean coaches have a special place in our lives.
He really just took me aside and said, Listen, Lair, you can be really good.
And I'm gonna push you until you get there.
And I want you I believe in you more than you believe in yourself.
I will never forget it. I've written many books. I've he's now passed away, unfortunately.
But uh a lot of my books I credit him for
Yeah.
You know, coming into my life at an important point and
We never know.
When something that
We say or do is gonna impact someone in a powerful way, but
Most of the number one's and really high success.
athletes that I work with
Never never really dreamed when they they have to pinch themselves when they realize I'm number one in the world now. What the world?
But as they pursued a love affair with their sport.
It's very hard if you're forced.
To become number one in the world with a
parent hanging over your head, or it just doesn't last. It's just it's really unfortunate. And I've been there many times.
It's not like you're starting out saying I wanna be number one in the world and you really believe it and you start and you're just beginning with a sport.
There are a few that said they kinda knew
Novak Djokovic, who's probably the greatest tennis player is the greatest tennis player of all time.
One of his early coaches, her name was Yelena.
Set of all the young
Athletes that she had trained as a young little boy.
She told him that he had the the greatest potential that anyone that he had ever seen.
And I think that kind of changed his perception of himself.
Now what if she had told him that?
And he really didn't have.
All that potential.
You know, he would have continued to push.
As long as he had a love affair with the sport and really love getting better and learning.
If he didn't become number one in the world, if he never made a
professional career out of it.
І вші, у споку и била бер.
And if you become number one in the world in doing it.
You know, no one loses. I don't care how far you go.
I I try to send that message over and over again.
But when you start out, it's pretty hard to believe you're gonna be number one. If it is, it's probably just
You're blowing smoke into the world, that's all it is, to me, but you're trying to lift yourself up and maybe
Give you hope that some day you might be inspired.
To be like
Novak Djokovic or
The greatest athletes of all time in their sports.
But for me I I have to say that
I never thought I would end up
In the character space.
I'm a performance psychologist.
People come to me because they want to win.
And I wrote most of my early books on mental toughness.
It was all about
How do you
Get so strong mentally and emotionally.
That you could actu out compete anybody
Because the muscles between your ears are stronger than they'll ever have.
You have skills that they maybe don't have between their ears, and that's what I specialized in.
for most of my career.
But then I began to realize something
Very different.
And I began to notice that
The careers of those who really developed
These incredible what I what I call character strengths.
Be they performance or
really moral and ethical character strengths. I began to realize that
More important than what you achieve is who you become is a consequence of the chase.
that you're becoming a person, some kind of person, either brutal, warm, loving, caring
Focus, dedicated
Kind
You have integrity, you're honest, you're grateful.
And what I began to see is that
Піву девепт
These moral and ethical skills from their coaches and parents, along with the skills of the sport.
They were the true winners.
А не учморки чи сустей на сус.
Because everyone wanted them to succeed.
So I I know it's I still have to I wake up and think, how did I end up in the character space?
I had nothing in my training.
Whatsoever to take me there.
But I'm a data guy and we had
By the time we left the human performance institute, which a company I co founded, over four hundred thousand people go through.
And it was a massive data set, and I would look at this, and I love data trends, and we were so fortunate to have all these extraordinary people come through.
And that's where it led me. So I started going there and
I'm still a little bit shocked.
That I ended up in that space, but uh as more important to me than what you achieve.
Is the way in which you achieved it.
And who you became as the consequence of the chase.
That's a powerful message. When we recognize
Our stories.
Need editing.
Now what?
How do we how do we change them?
That is another great question, Shane. Um
So I wrote a book and it was called uh
The power of story.
And the subtitle was
Your story becomes your destiny.
And every book I've written, I've written nineteen books, and each one of them
Represents another insight that I never had before.
If it's new to me, maybe it would be new to other people as well.
Maybe I'm just a slow learner.
I began to realize that the stories we tell our selves.
And the stories we tell others
either enable us to fulfill and to have a great life or actually take us
In tragic directions, а на всі овер.
And uh
More important again than what happens to us in life is the story we craft around what happens to us.
And if we realize
That our story is faulty.
That we're making stuff up that's literally not helping us d really do not the the story elements.
Дуна фет.
What
I would say the
The principles, the guidelines of good story telling.
Then you've gotta edit that store just as you suggested.
And I again this will probably surprise
many of the folks who are listening, but we tried everything.
And we had a lot of very smart people. We had some of the smartest people. I mean, our faculty was one of the most brilliant faculties I think we'll ever ever assemble.
And we tried vizualization, we tried
Very interesting ways of
Kind of
Changing the way people actually process thinking and thought.
Over a period of time over and again, and what we find concluded.
Воздат Йор.
Your hand.
Writing.
Probably had the greatest
Impact on neurological functioning.
On the way in which these
Neural networks formed and were changed.
Than anything else we could do.
If I were to ask you if you needed to remember something.
What would be the most likely thing you would do to remember? You'd probably write it down.
What we call an executive functioning.
Prefrontal cortex and cortex there's
Something that's happening and moving the muscles of your hand.
that actually create um
А гретер імпрент.
And are much more likely to be
Sustained there's a brilliant researcher by the name of James Penebaker.
He's at the University of Texas, and
А мінець і кредит, протокол с ха.
Ілпінпилу оверкам трама.
With their hand.
with writing with writing skills
But we found that
Creating the story that works for you with your hand.
And rewriting it.
You know северо тайм.
From memory.
And then reading it.
And even using the voice
memo on your phone.
Where you actually
Tell your s you talk to yourself over the phone.
Your voice memo capability.
And then you play it back, and you listen.
to yourself coaching you
It's not having someone from the outside coaching you with their public voice.
You are
Taking your private voice and making it public and now listening to it.
And trying to get a new way of having these
Neural pathways in your brain transfer information.
And eventually over time
The story begins to change, so it might be
I hate putting, I've never been a good putter.
And sport
And if I if I could just be a great punter
I would be on the PGA tour list one of the top guys or women.
But and then the story you tell yourself is I just don't seem to have the ability to be a good putter. I've always
Had trouble potting and I think
This is the my greatest never so I say that you can't get there with that story.
That story is so limiting.
Here's the story that works for you.
At this point in my life the truth is
If you look at my stats
And one of the poor putters
On the PGA tour.
Or the LPGA tour. That's true.
But um
I'm an athlete, and I have to tell you, one day I'm going to become one of the best putters, if not the best putter.
On tour.
And I'll tell you why.
Because I am going to devote more energy, more effort.
I'm gonna make this the most important part of my game.
And I'm gonna love doing it.
And every time I see a green
I'm gonna light up and say, Ah, fantastic.
I enough I have another chance.
To practice my putting and to get it right.
And if I miss a putt?
Uh three footer for a birdie.
Алсимплісай, Саа, а гата о май систем.
Now I'm gonna get better.
And so you develop a running kind of narrative with yourself.
That builds confidence, builds belief.
builds this and you start
by crafting the perfect story with your hand
And the more your hand works, and it actually what we found.
James Pennebaker hasn't found this, though.
But with our data collection, we found that it's more powerful to do it by hand than it is on a computer.
And so we have everybody do it. You can print it.
Or you can
Cursive writing, however you want to do it.
But we prefer that you do it by hand and
Each new iteration.
You do
From memory.
And then you compare it with the last one.
And then those that you're putting new energy into this
network where stories are told around putting or around
your marriage or around
Your intelligence, your confidence.
And that's what we've done over the years. We've had so many astonishing successes.
And I I did I had no idea any of this was gonna surface. It all took
Years of
Practice and data collection.
To refine it, and I feel very grateful to have had that opportunity.
What I call a living lab for helping distill
A lot of the mysteries
Of how this
Miraculous
Human system is engineered.
I love the nature of writing. We encourage that with sort of decision journals and as the means by which we can reflect, or one of the ways by which we can reflect is
And one of the ways which we can learn to think as well. So not only we do we discover through writing that we don't know what we're talking about always, but we discover new ideas and we we come to a new understanding.
It's so powerful as a form. And if you look throughout history,
most of the people who would we we would consider the greats of history at one point or another have journaled.
I I completely agree and it was something that I started with
After learning about this with a lot of our clients and so forth.
I started journaling and
I mean I get up in the morning and I have to do it. It's almost like an addiction now, and I try to program my day and look at all the things and when anybody asks me
You know, how am I feeling today? My response is if I'm feeling a little
foggy and I have a
Headache, or whatever I'll say, you know I
I have a little I have a few things that are bothering me, but I gotta tell ya, I'm excited.
About having another opportunity to push the needle.
So learn a little bit more.
I'm grateful for this day. And if you put that down in writing, something magical happens. It's like it changes
The whole
Kind of template the screen the mindset you have
for, you know, dealing with all the storms that you are inevitably gonna face all day long so it doesn't become a nightmare day.
And that's it's a wonderful lesson. I'm a such a believer in journaling.
Are there particular questions that you come back to, whether it's when you're journaling or
Helping people identify
or modify their story that they can be asking themselves and reflecting upon.
Well one of the things again I
All these things I didn't m get from my
working on a master's or doctorate degree in psychology, so
You've got a degree in the real world. I got it in the real world.
But we began to realize that all the people that came there that the people that had the greatest success
Had a deep
Compelling reason.
Four
Expending all this energy in completing the mission that they had set for themselves during this intensive program.
So the we began to realize that there are some forms of purpose, if you want to call it that.
that
uh take you way beyond where you would normally go in terms of the effort and energy and expenditure and
It's almost like a mission for once it's tied to your success.
We ask people to
Really describe in their language.
What is the ultimate mission they're on in life? The mission for which failure is not possible.
If they're gonna be successful in life, and so we try to get them to understand that.
Врал гірфос.
You had no choice.
In terms of
showing up on
Planet Earth at this time.
But you do have a choice as to how you want to spend
The energy the precious energy you have and the time that you have.
While you're here.
And what would define ultimate success of your life?
So we began to
Ріли, рили диги та перпис.
And then we link whatever change they want to make.
to that purpose, so
In my own life.
І на майпость
I laminated it and put it in my wallet and you know
Now and it has continued to evolve.
And my probably the most compelling purpose
Is that
I live
What I teach.
Um
And that is that
I don't teach to others something I don't do myself or that I think is
Only for other people.
And so the question that I ask myself every day
I look back on yesterday.
And I go
Did I live what I believe is really the most important mission I'm on?
Was I consistent in terms of
Fulfilling what I believe my ultimate purpose is.
with my three sons, with my grandsons, with
My f with my colleague.
I'm trying to uh
Hold myself to account.
In terms of the
The purpose for which I believe I am here for.
And that resonates with me, and I'm willing to do anything and everything I can to make sure I don't fail.
And for me right now
I'm in a position where
You know, I don't really need to
Put the metal to the
To the floor, but
I'm more fired up now because I want to make sure that what I'm teaching is
What I'm delivering on this podcast.
If someone were to do an audit of my life
It would actually reflect this is how Jim Lair.
Акція з
It's not just something that
He speaks about
But he applies it first to himself.
And then hopefully by example
People will be interested in hearing more about it.
I wanna come back to something you said earlier about
As children and and grandchildren, we sort of inherit
the stories that were told by the people in our lives. And you know, you you had a great teacher, and that's that was a powerful
change of your story where he he or coach, I guess he believed in you before you believed in yourself.
And the story we tell as parents.
becomes the the inner monologue, I guess the inner narrative that our our children grow up with.
W what are
the things that we can do as parents listening.
to change that for the positive with our kids when they come home with a test that they uh, you know, maybe they failed or they're struggling with something, or
Um
H how can we change the story that we're telling them so it becomes a different story that they're
growing up with and a different story they're inheriting from us.
A lot of people are not even that aware of this inner voice.
Until someone makes them more aware of it. And
A lot of the athletes that we worked with
thought that whatever's going on between their ears is just like you're pushing air around.
There's nothing really happening. You can think something, but it doesn't really
doesn't seem to have any consequence, so it's just kinda like nonsense. It's like
babble between the ears that is
Just
Of no consequence.
But
We have come to an understanding that everyone has an inner voice, a private voice.
Everyone has a public voice, unless they have a speech issue. And uh it almost looks as if it's coded in the genes because one generation
passes on that inner voice to the next your public voice with your children
become their inner voice.
And if you talk to them in certain ways that are very destructive, demeaning
Critical, sarcastic, even though
Your your response is hey, I'm not I'm not trying to
Be anything but a good
parent that's gonna help them face a tough world. I don't wanna develop wusses.
I'm not gonna be all
kindness and love and all that garbage.
I'm gonna be a I'm gonna be like a drill sergeant.
Because life is tough.
And their parents before them.
They say kids today have it way too easy.
And you have to remember I'm the guy that wrote a lot of the books on mental toughness, so I'm not for the whissification of youth.
Trust me.
But what's so interesting is that the voice of your parents
Unless you became very aware of it.
And intentionally changed it.
You're going to bring that voice particularly under stress to your children.
So the verse the first issue is I want you to tune in
To what kind of coach are you?
To yourself.
What is your inner voice? Would you want your inner voice
To be
somehow incorporated into the head of your children.
The way you speak to yourself, are you proud of it?
Is it helpful or is it a very almost sadistic adversary that's all you're never good enough?
You never uh you never live up to what
You really should.
You're always falling short.
You are a dumbhead.
And if you look where that probably came from.
If you came from a very tough culture.
That may have been the way parents thought for a long time that's how you raise tough kids.
You just have a tough language.
not realizing that that's really
You know, it's not what the evident shows.
You want them to be
Truthful?
Straight up.
You may want them to have a voice that's
You know time's really tough.
And yeah, they pull themselves up by their bootstraps and they
They don't they're not wimps, they're gonna be strong and ha handle life's
Stresses
In ways that would make
Them very proud, but it's not this harsh inner critic.
Where they're actually fighting two battles all the time, one with the outside world and one with themselves.
It's an exhaustive
Two front battle.
Енсо, у Триндия.
What is your inner voice saying to you?
Mm-hmm. And be very careful if you don't think that's what you want in your son or daughter's head.
Be very careful what you're saying publicly to them.
Because your public voice
Will one day be
Their inner voice
Which controls their destiny.
Their belief in themselves.
Their joy and happiness in life.
That's where it all plays out.
That voice no one hears but them.
That will be the only voice that's in their head until their death.
Will come likely from you.
And when you realize that
You're probably gonna change.
The tone
And the message.
In many important ways.
I think that's so important. It's it's sort of like a realization that you you don't know you're having this impact in a certain way.
And then
When you realize that that's where you got your internal voice.
It sort of makes it uh head home a lot.
Sh.
Um
How how do we help our friends?
um identify and sort of like edit their stories like
Yeah, I'm thinking, you know, we all know
When I when the story our friends are telling themselves
Uh his
Is getting in the way of
Of them.
Being
The best version of themselves.
And you know, when I'm saying this, I'm thinking
We're so prone to being victims of circumstance. We like to
Absolve ourselves. And this is a common story. We all have it in moments.
Uh, I'm sure you've had it. Uh I mean I've had it, everybody else has it. How d how do we become a good friend in that moment and
help somebody or is it worth that? Or can you actually do anything when somebody's sort of blaming circumstance or I I'm thinking also my kids, right? They they come home and you know, they're like, I did the best I could and
they kinda shrug their shoulders sometimes and
uh, you know, absolve themselves of responsibility and and
How can I act in those moments?
So the the issue is how do you get through
To this
Inner core of a person.
to their inner voice to control central.
Because your kids can just shut you out. They hear you, but they don't really it doesn't register.
And
Sometimes they hear their peers
much more powerfully than they're gonna hear you, particularly after they reach a certain point.
Well
They're starting to strive for independent. They you know, they kinda lock out a lot of adult messaging.
But
What kids don't want to be
Is preached to.
They don't want to be preached to.
The great
wisdom seekers uh in in our history
When they were trying to let's say in the American Indian tradition, they would tell stories.
They tell stories that actually don't
bring defensiveness what defensiveness does
It means I'm locking you out.
I don't you're threatening me with your bloody
Preaching.
And so the more parents can say, I'll just give you a quick
Little anecdote here about my life.
That I learned.
And you give them a mindset, say you know, I I had I was not a good student.
I actually hated school.
And uh one day I had a teacher who
Took me
Aside and
So listen, I don't know what your issue is, but you seem to be
You know, angry every time you come in the classroom. Mm-hmm.
And you don't want anyone to call on you, there's no joy here.
And I would just like you to think about this. I've had lots of students like this.
Um
You know, there is a joy in learning if you if you can dig it out.
And you provide them with a little different
Perspective, you know, Carol Dwack, the brilliant developmental psychologist who developed this notion of mindset.
There's a way to look at something.
And they may not really
Look like they're hearing it the first time you say it.
But
It it may register
Because
Even when you're saying it, they may not allow it into the inner
recesses of this
Command center.
But you're hoping that
Over time that mindset will begin to change as opposed to being a victim.
Kids don't like me and what's happening on social media
For so many kids is actually
It's a tragedy.
They're getting so beaten up, their self esteem is so fragile.
You know, kids are not held accountable for what they say, they can't see them.
When this
Digital criticiz comes across.
They can't shake it. That's why so many kids today are
struggling their self esteem is like
So fragile.
They're only as good as
The last post that came up.
And when someone just
Give some um
Chilling.
source of feedback no no matter how untrue
You can't stop it.
Because it comes from their peers.
And they're so vulnerable.
Parents have to be very careful about, particularly in the early years, how much time they allow their kids on social media.
And they have to be able to put some counterbalances in there in ways
That
They don't get blocked out.
Um, because that's what happens. Parents
We're working on a I'm working on a
A board and a program for young people it's called the Youth Performance Institute.
And we're recruiting
Kids who've been through all kinds of really challenging moments.
And really have come through uh on the other side of it.
And we're using them as mentors for kids who are struggling.
And so we believe that the best way to get to kids.
Is through
The mentoring of other kids.
Who have been through the wars and have figured out
Answers.
You know, the more the more you realize that there is such a powerful destructive force
There are some positive benefits from social media, but it's like touching a hot stove. You can use a stove to cook and to do all kinds of great things with.
But it can burn the hell out of you.
And if you don't understand how to protect yourself and your family from that.
It can completely take all these
Very delicate.
impulses and stories in your head.
that actually seal your fate. You don't even want to live because
You know, you have no real meaningful connections to other people.
particularly our peers
After what's just happened to you.
W one of the examples that you used in your book I thought was really powerful and I I tried to use it this weekend and probably failed, but uh it was around video gaming and how parents talk to their kids about video gaming. And I think the example in your book was
uh stop, you know, uh you're playing too much video games, stop the worthless video game playing. And how do you go from that all the way to something like
I really want what's best for you because I love you and I'm
concerned that too much screen time is limiting
Your creativity, your brain power, your academic progress.
H how do you switch that?
Freezing.
So what you just said, Shane.
You were very careful in the way in which you presented the second version.
And that is the version you want
embedded in their heads.
That's coming from your
Public voice is apparent.
And you want that
to somehow be the way in which that young boy or girl now is thinking about it themselves.
That there might be some good things here.
And have them talk about how
How this might not be a good thing to spend too much time, and what might be
Oh white uh
Actually control the way in which this is actually dominating your life.
Um how how could we put some
And I'd like for them to be involved in that as opposed to me as
The parent just
Putting the hammer down and then they're sneaking around and they
Use other kids' phones and
I mean it's you've got to you've got to get their brain
Wrapped around the dangers involved, and you have to be so skilled.
In terms of how you're telling the story
And it may not work.
But you gotta keep trying because the risk is real.
And the way you presented it there.
probably is the best way you're gonna have as a parent is a c as opposed to
You're not I'm I'm taking your phone away. That's the end of that.
As as opposed to let's
Yeah, have you been hurt?
By what someone has ever said to you on
on your social media.
And wh why do you think you spend so much time on social media?
What is it doing to help you and what is it doing that might hurt you?
And you bring them into the conversation.
As opposed to being the no it all parent.
Because you didn't grow up with social media.
So they don't even think you understand it, and you probably don't.
Because you were never there.
So you have to really be very careful about how you present
A potential
solution to a crisis that could be really deadly.
And some of it like drinking and driving or taking drugs.
They're really, really dangerous areas to talk about, and
Just swinging a sledgehammer probably is not gonna get through a mission control central.
You're gonna have to spend
time getting them to think about this, what would happen
Just hypothetically.
If you were drinking and driving and
You were in an accident.
And someone got seriously hurt or died.
What what do you what's the impact that might have on the rest of your life?
Mm-hmm. Or if someone's just drinking and driving
Hit you.
And your best friend was killed.
How how would you feel about that?
And getting them to kind of look at it through those eyes.
As opposed to some mandate if I ever catch you drinking and driving.
Trust me.
I'm taking your keys away.
Uh I I think you know, especially with the drug thing, that's really hard. I have two teenagers, thirteen and fourteen and
You know, on the weekend we walk by somebody who had
Clearly overdosed, I think, on the sidewalk.
And
It's tragic. And and I felt
you know compelled to talk to them about this moment afterwards
And the only thing that I could really muster was
You know
I don't think
He thought he was gonna be addicted when he started.
One hundred percent.
Nobody thinks that that's gonna happen to them.
So
That notion.
There, but for the grace of God.
Go I yeah, go me, you know, it's like
Yeah.
You know, some of these folks are victims of mental illness. Sometimes they
We have
Very, very severe injury, maybe an accident.
And they started taking painkillers.
And they got addicted.
There we didn't know how addictive this
Some of these different classes of
you know, anesthesia's analgesics, uh all this, you know, that actually

Called the nucle the nucleus of Cubans and the release of dopamine.
And some people are just
far more likely to become addicted and
Even a single
You know, experiment with some of these drugs. And but they never intended, they never dreamed if they had known this was gonna be the consequence, they would not have gone there. And all of a sudden they have to get their fix.
And they have no money, so now they're forced into crime.
And now they're doing things they wouldn't even imagine doing, but they have to get it to
Satisfy this incredible
uh drive
to get another
Another fix and
It's really challenging, so any time you see that
That's a great opportunity.
With your children.
To have a conversation.
That sometimes
Mm-hmm. A single
Bad event.
I mean, I have some good friends who ended up with
I in really um
Painful situation and they ended up taking painkillers.
And they became addicted.
And it became an absolute war.
And there are
spouses wanted to divorce them, no one could understand it.
They had to go to all kinds of rehab for the third time.
And one of my
Cousins uh ended up in jail.
It's just a very, very and it's treacherous and it's it it seems like it would never happen to anyone in your family or any one of my kids, but
Any time you can prepare your
Loved ones too.
Be very careful.
You can save a lot of very, very sad.
Terribly unfortunate consequences in life.
You've worked with seventeen people who were the best in the world at what they did unequivocally. And you've worked with
Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of other people who would be considered sort of
In the top one percent of the particular domain or or field, whether it's in business or
Athletics.
What
Would you say you know about the highest performers that other people seem to miss?
When we come into the world
We just fight to try to get a sense of
You know, just hey.
I'm not a complete idiot.
You know, you're you're trying to just
Find some confidence, you're always put in situations
Where they be emotional, social
Classroom situations in math.
For science.
Or you're not a good communicator, good
writer and you're always pushed. You try to get into sport. You're not that good at it. You can't find the right thing.
The thing that's amazing to me
Is it?
Іно з фокус в биком сучнера е за гініс.
Most of them had no clue.
No clue that this is where they're gonna end up.
And they tended to end up in a situation.
Where they have the opportunity to flourish.
Or something that they uh a light went on inside them. Maybe they
They had no idea that they would be, you know, a genius in math.
They ended up with a teacher, a physics teacher that
They fell in love with, and all of a sudden
they started realizing I got some talents in this area of science and I love it.
And all of a sudden now they're on a whole interesting career path.
Everybody has strengths, but it has to be
discovered and it has to be aligned with what your interests are. What we found is that
You tend to like doing what you're good at.
Not always.
Mm-hmm. But um
You know, some people say I'm really good at that, but I hate it.
It doesn't happen that often.
If it's really that challenging and you find yourself it's almost like
Easy, it's seductive. You like doing things
That actually bring you great success.
So most of the people that I have had the opportunity to work with, every if I have an opportunity to sit down and talk with them.
They have to pinch themselves when they realize where they've ended up. They've exceeded by
multiples
Um
where they ever thought they could end up, whether it'd be financially or the prestige or their family or whatever it is.
And then there are all those that just never really caught fire, never really found that. And that's the beauty of a great
Teacher, a great coach.
Try to find out
How they can light the fire of a young boy or girl.
And help them understand that you don't know what you're good at.
Until you try a lot of things and
Eventually you're gonna
You're gonna land somewhere.
And life is so much better when you're in pursuit of something that you really
Um, are excited about and you love to learn. If I were to say one thing about myself.
I'm a forever lover.
I just I love to learn, and I wasn't that way in school.
I hated school.
Um, but I mean I'm
A reasonably intelligent guy.
My father was a brilliant mathematician engineer.
But I just I never found much joy until I found a few teachers who
Who actually brought joy out in the learning проце.
And then all of a sudden
I started to get on fire, and I am is on fire today about learning.
If you look at all the things I love to learn and read and
I just have I'm very curious, and I will be till my last breath.
That's the gift.
Teaching people to be excited about
What you could become
And what you might really find great joy in mastering.
If you can do that as a as a teacher as a parent.
That is a forever gift.
That will never stop giving.
It's definitely within the purview of of most of the
People we come in contact with on a regular basis.
Give them joy in the learning process.
They can't read, help them to find books that excite them.
I had a couple grandkids who were not that excited about reading
But their parents
Got them into Harry Potter.
And Harry Potter's not an easy book to read.
And all of a sudden
They had so much excitement, or Star Wars.
reading about that stuff and all of a sudden now they're reading books like crazy.
Because they got'em started into things they wanted to do.
And you know, maybe a music teacher.
want you to learn all the classical music and you just roll your eyes and go, I hate this.
And then you go, Well, let's learn something you would like to learn.
And so they start playing things that
Really excite them.
And all of a sudden the learning curve goes off the charts.
And maybe at some point they're gonna go back.
And wanna play
The classics.
But if you start with something they're not that interested in
You may kill the golden goose.
a real world sort of example of that.
in in a different way. We we used to buy books for classrooms and so
uh for for schools that wouldn't buy the kids the books that they want to read, because often the books in the classroom in grade two and three are sort of like hand me downs from like a decade, but they have no relevance to the kids. They're not the books they want to read. I realized this with my own son in grade three, which is a different story, but
Uh, and so we offered to buy classrooms like
All the books the kids wanted to read. So they just had a selection of them. And
Uh we did I think we did this for uh fifty or so classrooms per year for like five years.
And
I still get emails from those teachers saying how unbelievable
The difference in the children was
When the books change. That is absolutely brilliant. That's a brilliant way to intervene in a young child's life.
When they're so
Open to uh the possibilities
That they could become something.
That's exactly it.
And I got this idea from my son, who always uh never wanted to read. He was a huge reader. I think he read before he talked, basically, and still is the most prolific reader I know.
But he never wanted to read anything the school was telling him to read.
And I always asked him why because I always thought it was like an authority thing.
And for him, it was just like no, it's really boring. Like I don't want to read that.
And I thought that was well what would make it more and why aren't the books that you love to read,'cause you clearly love to read. And that was the that was the stimulus for you to do that for five years to bring all those books into the schools? Yeah,'cause I I was like, Well, if this impacts him that way, it's probably and
He was lucky'cause he had no problems reading. And I was like, Well, all these other kids who are struggling, what if he couldn't read? Then you pretty much locked him out. Yeah.
Yeah, pretty much. If he doesn't have anything that's interesting, he has no motivation to learn. Exactly. And anyway, I thought it was so empowering the results, at least, you know, not scientifically, but in the real world, I was like, Why don't schools do this? Like I don't understand. Like we spend so much money later on downstream
sort of like with people who are are literate or struggling to read, if we just spend a couple hundred bucks a year in grade two and grade three on books that kids want to read, whatever that year that is, whatever is whether it's Ninjago or whatever's culturally relevant in the moment that the kids are into
uh you'll save all this money downstream. And I always thought it was such a powerful idea that that never really took off. I love that example. Uh it's a real world example where you made a big difference.
At a critical time in a young person's life.
Well, one of the biggest things that I've
taken from your work over, you know, the last decade or so is
The
amalgamation of time and energy. And one of the things that you've said in your work is that time only has value in its intersection with energy. Therefore it becomes priceless.
in its intersection with extraordinary energy, something you call full engagement.
Talk to me about
Time and energy.
So when we set up the human performance institute, um I had come to understand
First of all, I wanted to set it on a science foundation, and almost all science is about energy.
Whether it's physics or chemistry or yeah, everything is fundamentally goes back to energy dynamics.
We are reservoirs of potential energy and
We're trying to figure out how to convert that into kinetic energy to have a big life.
You have to be a big spender. But if you're gonna be a big spender of energy, you have to this is a
system that has to be renewed constantly. It's not once you have energy
You know, the all energy comes from the same place.
From the mitochondria of the cells.
And that's basically the union of oxygen and glucose called the Krebs cycle.
Um
When you're depleted with
Uh with glucose or oxygen, energy dynamics start to
You know, decline.
pretty quickly. And so we decided to set up the whole system of training around energy. And the the impetus one of the big impetus
That I found when I was working with athletes prior to setting that up.
I was at the Nick Bolicherry Tennis Academy.
And I was there for six years as director of sports science and director of sports psychology.
And uh I watch um all of the
players there, we had two hundred and forty of the best players in the world.
Um
They would be completely on time because they were demanded to be on time.
I'm videotaped.
Everything when they show up on the courts, I had all this telemetry on all these kids'cause I
I wanted to learn, I wanted to figure things out, and what I began to realize
Is that even if you were there on time, there w no way guaranteed you were gonna learn anything.
In fact, we actually saw were some of the kids because they hated it so much.
They were perfectly on time.
They got worse, they were worse from all the practice.
And
They were not in the language I began to use later was
Engaged.
And engage for me was the intersection of whatever time you have.
With the infusion of energy
Aligned with what the objective was.
So if the objective was to have a better forehand or a backhand or sir.
Or to compete better.
Just the fact that you showed up and were in practice, but you never invested.
Extraordinary energy.
you're not gonna get much of a return.
Just kinda going through the motion. Exactly.
And so
Там менеджер was
I mien everyone was crazy about time management.
As the ultimate
Where I
We had Steven MR Covey on our board, who was Steven's son.
Mm-hmm.
And I knew Stephen Covey, a brilliant man, and his seven habits and everything else, and his son.
And I said, you know, I think you have to I this is how my brain tends to work. I said, you know, the
The whole time management industry
It's flawed.
Mm-hmm.
It's set on
A faulty premise. They said no, there's
It's a billion dollar industry.
Yeah, a lot of smart people. I'm sorry, Joe, I don't know what you're thinking, but that's not true.
And I said, Okay, I'm gonna give you this scenario, you tell me if I'm right or wrong.
Is that
Basic thesis.
of time management.
Is that the first thing you need to know what your values are.
What matters most to you.
In life.
And once you do that
You have to very courageously began to
Invest time.
In all those things that really make the greatest difference for you.
That will bring success as you define it.
And the more you do that, the more successful you will be.
But you must invest time.
in the things that matter most to you.
And that's why time management's so important.
And I said, How close am I?
to that thesis. Yes, no, that's basically it.
And I said, Well, I will tell you.
The investment of time time has no value.
Has no valence.
Has no force.
Until time intersects with energy.
You really have nothing, I mean, you're just there.
You can be present.
With your family?
But because you're there, is that going to move the needle forward being
A loving, caring mother or father, and the fact is, no, you're gonna have to invest energy aligned with a mission.
Time doesn't give you anything except the opportunity to make the investment.
Of the one thing that changes the needle.
That changes everything and that's your energy.
Whatever you invest your energy in you give life to.
And it's not time.
But energy. So I developed this notion
Oh
full engagement, which is investing, it's an acquired ability to invest your full invest energy right here, right now.
Regardless of what the situation is, uh, aligned with the mission.
And um
It's hard, it's difficult, but it's a skill set.
And uh you've gotta have it you've gotta have time.
But
You really have to make the investment of energy, and if your energy reserves are low.
Then people know you really care.
Because you're adding up your your
You're anti uh
Up to
the resource that you're very low on. You're not just
You know, hanging out because you don't have a lot of energy.
As a father, as a mother with your children, they know when you're tired.
Now you're coming up with a good
You are gonna deliver
On the one thing that people want.
Because they know you care.
You can invest time.
And don't really have much in it.
You develop extraordinary energy and invest extraordinary energy.
People know you care.
And that's the whole for me that was a major breakthrough in.
In the paradigm.
It's just a different it's a different paradigm completely than what most people have been exposed to. I mean we have this
almost this tradition of
Time management being everything.
I was home for four hours with my family. I should get some kind of an award with it.
But when we
Look at where your energy went.
You didn't have you know, you were watching the game, you were irritable, cranky, on and on and on.
And you didn't move the needle positively. In fact you got a reverse return on them thinking that you really care deeply about them.
For you to pursue that it actually is an indictment.
It's a little bit uncomfortable after you have been hoodwinked into believing
The time is everything.
Now you realize his energy is everything, and once you land on that
On that particular platform
Now
How much sleep I'm getting.
The quality and quantity, the frequency of my meals.
And to really look at how the system was engineered from an energy perspective.
We are oscillatory beings in an oscillatory universe.
Nothing is a flat, straight line, nothing is linear except death.
Every biopotential in the human physiology is oscillatory, everything.
And so we have to be wave makers. We have to understand that if we want to have a big life, we've gotta be
Spending a lot of energy, which means you've got to be recovering a lot of energy.
So in our training we put a lot of emphasis on training the mechanisms of recovery.
When you do intervals in aerobic an anaerobic capacity
What you're doing is basically uh training the system to recover more quickly.
No.
Fitter you are
The faster you recover.
Mm-hmm. And so if you wanna have a big life and be out there on the fast line, you gotta find ways to recover quickly and take care of yourself.
One of the big, big insights that we had at the institute, which was so embarrassing
When we finally we had all the evidence to support it was
That health ignites performance. Mm-hmm.
The healthier you are, the more energy you're gonna have. And the more energy you have aligned with the
With whatever performance arena you're in, you're gonna be better. So
Full engagement requires a lot of energy.
And if you're in an in an environment where it's sucking all your energy up, you have nothing left.
Like nurses who are on twelve hour shifts.
We worked a lot in medicine.
Whereas some of these emergency surgeries are very long and very they're brutal.
Well, how do you prepare for that?
How can you oscillate in that twelve hour shift?
How can a surgeon
oscillate effectively so that their blood sugar levels
Don't get so
Lull that in an athlete's life when that happens they bonk, they choke.
Well we don't want to choke.
When it comes to life and death.
We worked with a lot of military special forces and
Help them understand the
Importance of recovery.
And how can you get recovery in just a few seconds?
We developed a s what is called the sixteen second cure antennas.
We're in sixteen seconds between points.
W you ritualize it, you can get complete and total recovery.
And we validated that.
Um in using uh telemetry, heart rate telemetry. We looked at
Levels of cortisol and everything else, oscillatory frequencies of the brain, but you have to train it.
We have to actively train those capacities.
And it's very exciting because the system is infinitely trainable.
And I wrote a book called
Oh.
stress for success. It's like
It's not stress that's killing you.
It's chronic stress. It's stress unabated by
Recover.
And if you're in a high stress environment, you better start learning how to get the recovery and you'll start thriving in the stress. And in fact.
The hormones of stress are the hormones of life.
You take all the stress out of your life.
You're gonna start shriveling up and you if I surround you with marshmallows and pillows.
Eventually all you're gonna be able to deal with is marshmallows and pillows.
And the pillows eventually won't be soft enough and the marshmallows
Won't be sweet enough.
So you gotta chase, you gotta chase old man's stress.
You gotta go after that's when the life lights up.
When you're on fire doing something.
Making something happen, expending lots of energy
And doing it in a way
That doesn't compromise
Your ability to produce energy
Eating good food.
Getting your good recovery at night at sleep.
Drinking and hydrating a lot.
Doing all the things that actually enhance energy production.
So that you can be a big spender.
You want to be a big investor, just like Wall Street.
You gotta make a lot of deposits.
And if you don't do that
You're gonna bonk and you're gonna blame old man stress.
It wasn't old man stress that killed you.
It was that you didn't honor the recovery
That actually made
the expenditure of energy
Manageable and actually very exciting.
Walk the sixteen seconds between points.
And
Tennis.
So
Um, again all this data collection I was doing at the Nick Balateri Tennis Academy
I had them all hooked up to all this
Telemetry, looking at heart rate variability and
We did the same thing with voice recorders on
They wired them up so we could
They were supposed to put
Verbally
And and with their public voice, everything they were saying to themselves privately.
And uh we began to realize that
The between point time and tennis, which is roughly twenty to twenty five points, depending upon
The tournament or whatever.
Um and the time that
We started doing this work.
We began to realize that if I just took video
of people playing points
You couldn't tell how mentally tough or how
Effective they were under pressure.
But if I looked at the between point time only
You could tell.
who were those that were actually extraordinarily good competitors and who who
We're we're not and
You didn't even need to see the points.
And about
Seventy percent
Of a match.
Ізна
when people are playing points, there are it's actually between point time.
Which is major. And anyone that would think
That's seventy percent of what you're doing between points.
Does it affect what you're doing during point?
I mean you have no idea how the system is integrated.
When I started talking about the between point time and tennis, people thought I had duly lost my mind.
No one had ever looked at the between point time.
And so we began to I took as
A lot of the coaches would do you if you want to have a great forehand
You look at what are the common elements in the ten best four hands in the world.
And you teach those.
Those who were the best compet we took the best competitors
On the men's and women's tour at that time.
And looked at all those things that they did in common that were
Not just personality dynamics or anything else.
And we developed a training system between points based on those.
Sixteen seconds. We found that Steffi Graaff at that time.
took the shortest amount of time of of anyone on the tour. So we said you need at least sixteen seconds.
So some people would just walk right up and serve or just w right away jump into it. And we said, No, no, no, no, no.
The system has to recover.
You have to make waves.
And we began to realize that the fitter you were
The faster your heart rate would come down.
Mm and we actually c developed a computer that actually
uh determined what your ideal range of heart rate was
prior to starting a point. If your heart was too high.
Or if it was too low because you kinda gave up and there was no intensity.
You're not gonna likely perform well.
And anger would send your heart right over the top, fury, anger, frustration, all that stuff would block recovery.
We began to develop this concept and I made a video of it. It became
Maybe the best
Most widely watched video in tennis history.
But the sixteen second cure basically you start out with a positive physical response immediately when the
Point is over.
Then you go through a relaxation stage.
Then you go into kind of a ritual stage where you bounce the ball, then you
kind of go purely instinctive into the point.
And that will it that video will
show you in great detail
with all the best players in the world and they all do it. And uh but
They learned it by instinct.
Although now the coaches teach it regularly to everyone.
But I I felt
You know.
really positive that I may have made a contribution to the training of tennis players in their ability to manage the stresses of competitive tennis.
You mentioned a word there, ritualize and ritual. Why do you use that word?
The difference between a habit
And a ritual.
A habit is um something that just
you know, may or may not help you in life. You have a bad habit of
eating too much or you just don't hydrate enough, or
You drink sugary drinks all the time, and it destabilizes your blood glucose levels and
But you have a lot of bad habits, you sleep too late, you don't
You don't have a habit of
you know, really laying out your day very clearly. So you're kind of
floating around most of the day just trying to catch up with yourself.
Could be a we'd just call those bad habits.
And then you have good habits or positive habits that you've tried to acquire.
Some of them just show up and you've
been around a lot of people with good habits and you kind of acquired
A ritual
as we define it, is an intentionally acquired
How about
That serves the mission.
Whatever the mission is. So
To become a better tennis player between points.
to become uh to stabilize blood glucose during a match. What should you be eating? Maybe a banana?
Drinking lots of water and uh some
The specific
uh hydration elements
between uh between games uh on changeovers.
You can have a ritual for getting up in the morning.
That you intentionally develop. It's kind of a
Tiny habit.
That you decide is gonna help you navigate in life more successfully.
And the things that matter to you.
We need rituals. I will tell you it's called the unbearable automaticity of being.
Mm-hmm.
We are creatures of habit.
And some of those habits just destroy us. I mean they don't help us at all.
We don't even know how we got'em. We just some one day we w woke up and this is how it is.
We love to sleep late, we don't like to get up in the morning and on and on and on.
And a lot of things just
You know, they're just
happen but our days pretty much unfold automatically. You're gonna do tomorrow.
Pretty much what you've are wired up.
habitually to do. Now the beauty
of being human.
is that we have the ability to pause between the stimulus and response
And create a novel response.
And that takes a certain amount of time and a lot of energy in fusion.
Until we rewire the circuitry.
And it is a
It's basically uh neurological loop.
That enables you to
continue doing certain things and
The animal kingdom they're completely wired up with instincts and
Routines that
Enhanced survival.
But human beings actually can stop and reflect. I don't wanna be forty pounds overweight, I don't
And then you have to link
This mission, which is maybe very difficult to get off of drugs or whatever.
You have to get a purpose that is so powerful that it just
It just grabs and
Ushers you into the storm.
And you will not surrender.
And most of the time it's these little tiny habits.
Getting up at a certain time, setting the alarm.
having breakfast always at a certain even if it's a small amount, you get yourself started rather than
Having a big lunch and then a huge dinner and going to bed.
You start
Understanding
You know, you don't have to be a victim of your environment. You actually can intervene, but it takes a lot of heavy duty lifting.
And it's all
Made possible.
by your energy.
investment intentional.
And the other thing I wanted to come back to that you mentioned uh quite a few times is mental toughness. How do we
Increase our mental toughness.
Well again I
I didn't have it wired upright. I was
Just getting started trying to figure it out.
And I did develop a construct that based on all the players I interviewed
Athletes from twenty one different sports and
Ask them to describe
What they feel like when they're playing at their absolute best. Something that sometimes referred to zoning.
When what they could do and what they were doing were one of the same.
It's an exhilarating feeling in everyone who's been there.
And uh I just I asked him for the descriptors.
that they would use
And I was blown away because they all used it look like they all copied from each other.
They
They were
We're calm.
Physically relaxed, emotionally confident.
Lots of positive energy.
Um there was a whole constellation there were twelve of them that sh surfaced and I used that as
I refer to it as their ideal performance state.
And whether it was a linesman in football or
A gymnast, uh it was like
Levels of intensity might change, but the feeling
That they had
When they're performing from inside was similar across all sports.
So that led me to understand that there is a there's an internal chemistry that's bubbling up.
That actually drives those feelings and
Emotions.
There's a physiology that's allowing this a very delicate balance in the neurophysiology and in the physiology of the whole
Body this b mind body connection.
And so the question is how do we
train to actually get
All of this chemistry to line up when we want it most.
If you get a little too much cortisol, which is
Fraud, which is more of a defensive survival based
hormone
It throughout Kilture. All of a sudden the brain waves start going faster, you get tighter.
You get f tunnel vision on and on. And so it's a very delicate balance and you never master it.
You get close, you get better.
And you have to do everything right and you have to follow your rituals to do that.
When I started, I called it mental toughness.
And I began to realize that metal is only one component.
Emotions also are huge huge driver of this chemistry.
And maybe more important than what you're thinking.
And what you're analyzing logically
Emotions probably drive
More of a chemistry than anything.
And your mindset that you set, um, obviously the mental side is really important.
But you can just completely come apart because
Your fitness, you you haven't really achieved the right fitness, so now your cell are not getting enough oxygen.
Or you're having eaten properly, now you're really in a glucose challenge.
And maybe you don't even want to play motivationally, maybe
You know, maybe this is something your parents wanted you to do.
But you don't really have a purpose that's your own.
Which will unwind so that for this
Delicate chemistry to rise up.
You have to really want it, you have to really have.
The system has to bring out this amazing
Chemistry
Uh formula which is not easy to
To mobilize, particularly in the context of pressure. So
It's not mental toughness, it's mental emotional, it's physical, it's actually spiritual as well.
We are a fully integrated species.
And we've gotta understand that everything we do affects everything else.
And even the way you speak to yourself, the way you walk, the way you carry your shoulders.
I flew all the way to Spain because I got a fabulous opportunity to interview.
One of Spain's most famous bullfighters.
Martine Vasquez, he's now just passed away, but he was
A superstar.
And I begged for the opportunity to meet with him because
I wanted to know
How a matador
controls fear when they know that there's this massive bull
who is going to do everything possible to kill them.
And to subdue this potential threat that the bull is seeing.
How do you control fear?
How do you keep
From being paralyzed
Because when you choke
You're very likely gonna get gored and can very possibly die.
And he smiles and he says, Is it not obvious, Jim?
And I said, No, I came all this way, it's not that obvious.
And he said
Have you ever seen
A bullfighter in the ring.
Show anything but supreme confidence.
You ever see them mope around with ch rounded shoulders?
Saying I'm having a bad day. I don't feel like I'm on my game today.
the you know, being negative or a little bit pessimistic and irritated at the ball because the ball is just not cooperating or whatever.
You see nothing every step, every movement. You said we start training.
As a young boy
At a very early age on how to walk.
How to turn
How to carry our shoulders.
We're to put our eyes.
Every single detail is done meticulously.
And he said the ball
Can s
And knows
That you have no fear
And that you dominate the ball.
By your presence.
We control fear by our physence.
I was mesmerized by
the whole thing and we looked at videos and it was really quite so I brought it back to the States.
to the Nick Bellateri Tennis Academy.
And we showed all this video.
Of both fighters.
And we developed what I call the Matador walk.
And I would take
Uh, tennis players out on the court and teach them how to walk.
How to turn
how to look, how to control their eyes.
And I will tell you it had a profound effect. They thought it was a little weird in the beginning.
But they saw the results they were getting and how they felt.
Much more if you wanna be f
Fearless.
You look fearless.
If you want to control the chemistry
You have to look on the outside.
The way you want to feel.
On the inside.
And that was the insight.
It's powerful. It also relates to the stories that we were talking about earlier. It sort of comes full circle.
Right, exactly. You can control your chemistry from the inside out or from the outside in.
You can work with meditation, with thoughts, with ideas.
with private voice
You know, or you can work from um the outside working with your actual physical muscles
And the way in which you carry yourself all of it.
Can either contribute
Or undermine your ability.
to achieve your potential.
That's a really powerful
Way to take control.
No matter where you where you are in this particular moment.
You can always do something to sort of move forward.
Uh I wanna end with the same question I always ask, which is uh what is success for you?
I I j I wanna make a difference, uh, in the lives of other people, and I have a very
Opportunistic um
kind of stage where I
Can help people if what I am saying is true.
Success in my life is helping other people be successful.
And things that matter to them.
And that's why for me my місін is to live.
What I teach so that
If I t it
It's not something I'm just voicing, they actually see it in my life, and I feel like
If I didn't get it right, at least I did the best I could.
А формі сус і май.
He's using the opportunities I've had to learn.
To help other people be successful.
In whatever way they define success.
That's beautiful. Thank you so much, Jim, for taking the time. I uh hope uh some of this resonated. I um uh appreciate all the work you've done, all the contributions you're making and um
I hope we move the needle forward.
Uh uh.
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