7 Principles of Inner Excellence to Stay Calm Under Fire | Jim Murphy

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/f6c5152bd2961fdb

People come to me, they don't come to me for small small goals. They're they want to be world number one. You hit the New York Times best all that list. The book was five years of full time writing and research, but I came out of that with
A near mental breakdown. I had spent my life savings ninety thousand dollars in debt.
I wanna dive into this developing ourselves as a person and use this.
Episode as a a means to sort of teach people inner excellence and how they can perform under pressure and also live a life of more meaning.
Next, next, next. Like let's get another goal.
Trap.
Inner excellence is about expanding what you believe is possible. Everything is here to teach me and help me. It's all working for my good.
So we're gonna go look for those moments when you're most uncomfortable. Where does ego and sort of self centeredness
And self confidence in Iraq.
Confidence is super helpful.
But there's something even more powerful than confidence.
And that's
I wanna start
with this book, Inner Excellence. So you wrote this book. You wanted to put together a manual on mental toughness and performance under pressure.
And the first thing I highlighted in this book, it's it's not even on a page number, it's in the preface here.
Is the quality of your life is based on three elements.
Your inner world of thoughts and feelings, beliefs and desires.
your frame of reference mindset from which you see the world
And your relationships.
How did you hit on that? Well, I mean this was the book was five years of full time writing and research. And so that is a very holistic approach and that and I think that's what you need if you want human optimization. We need to be holistic. We need to get deeper than just the mind. We need to go
into the heart, into the subconscious. And so that's one of the in the five years of full time writing and research that became Inter Excellence.
That was one of the first things that I realized is that
If you want to really help anybody with your
Counselor, a parent, a coach, yourself.
We need to get to where your greatest fears are.
And your greatest dreams and that subconscious
Heart, spirit.
Neural levels where we gotta get to.
Is there a moment in your life where you realize this? Or was it this slow sort of
Awakening.
Well, I think my background kind of all played into it and I and I think everything that I've been through has been training me.
All the all the hard times, the really scary times and low times in my life, God's been training me. I didn't know it at the time, but now I can see it.
Much clearer now.
It was not just the five years of writing the book, but there was all my experiences and, you know, my mom's background.
And community background that my dad got into with the Hyderites and my brother and the spiritual background, all that.
The key realization of the book seems to be that the pursuit of extraordinary performance and the pursuit of the best possible life are the same thing. Yeah, that was that was really a life changing thing for me to realize in the desert.
So kinda how that happened was I I give away over half my possessions to go live in a life of solitude to figure out what

I wanted to find something that I could devote my life to. And when I was there, I decided to become a personal coach to pro baseball players and teach them how to have peace and confidence under pressure. And so then I started to put together this manual for future clients after my first two clients did amazing.
And what I realized in the research was that what good is it if I spend my life making people really successful
Whether it's
winning an Olympic gold medal or being world number one or making millions of dollars.
If it doesn't make a difference in their heart and in the world.
If it just makes them more successful.
Like that may not even be a good thing.
And then when I found out that
To teach someone how to have the most poise under the most pressure.
Is the same path.
as living the best possible life, a meaningful, fulfilling life with amazing experiences and deep enriching relationships where you're learning and growing and making a difference.
It's the same path, a wholehearted path. When I when I realized that, that's when everything changed.
That's what inter excellence is. It's to teach someone how to be wholehearted, how to walk in love and not fear
And develop yourself as a person and optimize that.
Become your true self.
And then you're better at every you're a better athlete, you're a better parent, better coach.
You're more present.
More gracious.
More aware.
I wanna dive into this developing ourselves as a person and use this
episode as a a means to sort of teach people inner excellence and how they can perform under pressure and also live a life of more meaning. But before we get there, I want to talk about the book. How did the book come about? Let's spend a beat on this for a second because my understanding is
You wrote this book.
And then almost nobody read it.
Yeah, that's right. So the book came out in two thousand nine.
And uh I wrote the book because
I wanted to write the best best book ever on mental toughness.
I wanted to use that as a manual for my clients to use that that I can give them and say, Here's how you train your your mind and your heart.
It worked great for that. It wasn't a big seller, but it worked great for that. And interestingly enough, I had on my phone I I I
recommend to all my clients that they they have these reminders, silent reminders that come up with these affirmations every day throughout the day.
And one of mine was that I'm a New York Times best selling author.
And it had been fifteen years, sixteen years, and so and that happened happened so after a few years I took it off. The book was
was doing great for what I wrote it for as this manual and and for other clients to to get other clients. So that was amazing. But it wasn't a big seller. And then so two thousand eighteen I got the rights from McGraw Hill and then I spent two more years of of uh part time maybe twenty hours a week.
Revising it. So that came out in twenty twenty.
The book I I thought it was gonna be fifteen percent different, but it turned out to be about eighty five percent new stories and same concepts but new stories. And then I assume most people found it the way I did. I was watching the NFC playoff game.
And saw A. J. Brown on the sideline reading this book, and then that became the focal point of
What everybody was talking about all of a sudden. Where were you? What happened there?
Yeah, so I was in Dallas, Texas. Um I was there to ride to do an interactional street treat.
And uh I'm in my hotel room.
What was amazing about that week, it was such an intense week for many reasons.
So January twelfth was that Sunday. My mom died January sixteenth. And she was ninety one. She had an amazing life, had a huge impact on my life and taught me so much.
So it was an answer to prayer because she was suffering.
But it was a very somber week. And also kind of a slow week, um in my life and and just
It'd been years of kind of my both parents died and my sister died and
Trying to care for them.
And things were slow and business was slow and I actually didn't pay off my credit cards in January. I had money in investments, but I didn't have any in my checking and
I look up at the skyscraper in downtown Dallas that Sunday afternoon and
And I've just written a book called The Best Possible Life, How to Live with Deep Contentment, Joy and Confidence No Matter What.
It's a a s a much smaller, easier book to read.
And on the spiritual life.
And kind of a summary of interexcellence.
And so that book had just come out and I remember looking at the skyscraper that afternoon and and the thought was, Jim, would you rather own that skyscraper for whatever hundreds of millions of dollars it's worth or would you rather have written the book the best possible life? And I thought
No, I wouldn't trade it for hundreds of millions of dollars.
And so I thought, Well, at least you got that.
That's pretty cool.
And then a couple hours later, everything changed. My whole life changed.
I'm watching Penn State playing Notre Dame, a bowl game that had already happened.
I look at my phone and I see all these texts and I thought my mom died because why all the text?
And then obviously someone said you need to turn on the the Eagles game. And so I turn it on and I see it. And that's when I found out with the rest of the world that that he was reading the book, you know, bringing the book to every game, reading it before games to get centered and reading it after every drive.
I saw him with a a picture of him with a book um on the sidelines a month before.
But I had no context.
And so yeah, that that's when the barrage of interview requests and and everything started happening.
It's interesting to me in a couple of things. Well, I wanna go back just for a second. One of your affirmations was to be a New York Times bestselling author. That sounds like an outcome.
The way I think about this is
So I get paid to help people achieve outcomes. They don't come to me to feel better or have a more spiritual life as far as my the way I've been paid the last ten, twenty years.
But we do it through a a a spiritual approach. When I say spirit, a heart focused
much deeper approach than the transactional world that we live in.
And so I have
what I call third world goals. I use I call the the world that we live in of of results and circumstances the first world, and the second world is your inner world, and then the first world is the unseen world.
That's uh eternal and has every good thing like love, joy, peace, inner inner strength, mental toughness.
And so the third world of results and circumstances. I have goals there. Like one goal was to be a New York Times best selling author. But the crucial thing is
Those are just temporary things that I don't even know if it's good for me.
I mean there's we all have goals, but are they good for you? Are they the best thing for you? We don't even know if they're good for you. And so I try to hold them loosely.
Knowing that
That yeah, I have these

But
They're nothing compared to who I'm becoming.
And uh to share God's good news with the world is love, wisdom, and courage. That's my purpose and and that's what God told me on day three. I was getting overwhelmed and stressed and like, Oh my gosh, what is happening? And God is like, Jim, you don't have to stress out. You didn't do this, I'm I'm doing it, I did it and
Your purpose doesn't change.
And so that was a big relief. It was like okay, I don't have to
stressed out about all this stuff and and I'm just gonna continue to do what I do and how did you feel after you made
So your goal came true. You you hit the New York Times by stall it was not only did you hit it, you were number one.
You sold a hundred thousand or more copies of the book.
Just a runaway success by any measure of any book ever. And it's sort of like this dream, right? Like you wrote this book, you went to the desert, you put your head down, and then nothing happened. And then one day suddenly somebody recognized how amazing this work was.
Did that feel satisfying to you or did it feel empty? Very very surreal and extremely
Incredible. It it it definitely didn't feel empty. It wasn't like oh now I'm somebody.
It felt amazing because
It was like
God and I are doing something together. And that's what was amazing. And so the most exciting part about all of this is the work we're doing in inner city Philly.
Specifically with Shane Clayborn and and potentially with with Bill Strickland's group. Um he's the author of a book called Make the Impossible Possible. He's got seventeen centers around the world that provide job training skills and and uh arts and crafts for inner city um youth and and adults.
And so that's been the most exciting thing about this and and
And to feel like wow, God chose me to share this message.
It's the most amazing thing. And look, I'm just the messenger. It's like
That first week there was so much talk about me.
Like I'll give you an example. I'm I'm in Philadelphia. I'm gonna go to the g next game
Um against the Rams, the snow game.
And I'm in the elevator and I see all these Eagle fans wearing all their gear.
I said, Hey, yeah, I heard one of your players was reading a book on the sideline. Is this true?
And they said, Oh yeah, yeah. And I was like, um, what's the name of the book? And they're like, Oh, Interrexless. I said, Well, is it any good? They're like uh I don't know. We haven't I haven't read it.
But
The guy he w he went from uh five hundred thousand or whatever to number one.
And I was like, Really?
And uh so now we're getting out of the elevator and walking away and uh and they're like Well, do you know how much money that guy made? And and
I said, Well, um whoever that guy is, I sure hope he does something good with that money.
Mm.
The reason I was starting to get overwhelmed on day three
looking at all the sales and everything that's happening because it was
I started to think about myself, Jim, don't screw this up and and
This is something that
I'm doing.
But then God said.
This is not something that you're doing or did.
And then so that was just this huge relief. It's not a Jim Murphy thing.
And just the lowly messenger.
When you tell me that story, I kind of feel bad, not for you, but for myself.
And I'll put this in perspective and maybe this is self centeredness and
You know, my friend Brent Bishore has this idea of clean fuel versus dirty fuel.
And how are you powered? And your fuel sounds very clean.
It's purpose driven, it's meaningful, and m my fuel is more a mix. It's dirty.
It's
I also hit the New York Times best selling list.
But the first thought that I had was not positive. It was I remembered a comment on an article.
In the New York Times from twenty eighteen.
Saying, you know, I hope Mr. Parrish is enjoying his fifteen minutes of fan.
And to me that's more of a dirty fuel. And I've been thinking about a lot about
clean fuel versus dirty fuel and motivation lately. And the people that I admire a lot is Tom Brady.
And you know, he's got a mixture of fuel, it sounds like. You know, there's definitely a chip on his shoulder from Michigan.
driving him and pushing him and what I find with

dirty fuel, if you will, at least for certain personality types, myself included.
It's it just never burns out. Like it never expires. I remember
Things that my grade nine teacher told me.
You know, back in the day they don't do this anymore, but they used to write with Actually Think and she wrote my report card that went home to my parents like Shane will be lucky to graduate high school.
And I like still think about that.
Every like few weeks that pops in my head.
What's your reaction to that?
We're all human and so our greatest need is for love and and acceptance. And so we all have a mind that's that's always
threatened, always comparing and never satisfied. The the what the part of the mind I call the ego.
And so
It's something that as humans we're always battling with. The ego says if you're more successful, you're gonna get what you want most. It doesn't say this out loud or or in certain words, but it's that's what it's always implying is if you're successful, you're gonna get what you want most, which is that love and connection. If you sell more books or get more followers or more money or more promotions.
you're gonna get this thing that you need most.
But the flip side is if you fail
you're gonna not only are you not gonna get that, you're gonna get the opposite, you're gonna get rejected.
And so
This is always something that every human battles.
And
I I try never to tell anyone what to do as a coach or a friend.
What I try to do is help people clarify what they want most and help them get it.
Because I know that
If you come to me and you want to be world number one in a sport
I know that's not what you really want.
I know because I was in the same boat. I I wanted to be a superstar major league baseball player or NFL player or NBA.
And I thought that was the best possible life was to
make millions of dollars and be rich and famous and have every guy wanna be me and every girl wanna be with me.
That's the best possible life.
I'm gonna live it, and so I obsessed about that.
But what I've learned since then in in the five years of writing and researching the book is that what I've always really wanted is to feel fully alive.
I had a single story for my life. That story was
If you get this
This American dream where your your uh
hitting home runs in the big leagues and on on the cover of magazines.
That's the best possible life.
And that's the life meant for you.
And of course I played five years in the minors and I did not get that life.
And I was completely devastated.
And so what I want people to do is I want their fuel, as you kinda you alluded to a little bit.
I want their fuel to be powerful, empowering. I want them to
Like Tom Brady, the most successful
Potentially football player ever.
And he wins a few Super Bowls and he's he says
Is that it?
In other words.
Reaching the very top, like like uh Michael Phelps, twenty three Olympic gold medals.
And feeling empty.
It's it's very, very common.
Because if that's your God and baseball was my God, when I say God, the the thing that you love most and fear most of losing.
You're only a stableist whate whatever you're worshiping, like David Foster Wallace.
Told us.
Everyone has a God. There's no atheists. Everyone worships something. There's something at the top in your heart of your heart.
And that's your God. And and for me it was it was um being the superstar and and you know, I lost it and lost everything. And so I was the stable as as it was. And so in other words, when I didn't have a good season
I didn't want people to tell others that I was a pro baseball player.
Because I was unstable.
And so interaction is to say, Hey, let's go for what's most empowering to feel your life and and specifically the control center of your life, your heart.

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It's a really interesting notion to me because it sort of
Contrary to everything I've ever been brought up with.
And that was part of the appeal to this book is I like reading things that challenge my
my world view or my way of thinking and you know, I my background is
sort of an intelligence agency and then starting a business and
You know, you
You set goals, you achieve them.
Then you forget about them like thirty seconds later and you're on to the next goal.
And the fire inside me
You know, I don't know if it continues to burn, but it's burned pretty hard for
Twenty some years.
I would imagine I'm very similar to most of the athletes you've worked with.
In terms of like
how far this has gotten me, but maybe it doesn't get me.
And maybe failure and you know, I've failed million well millions of times. I mean, my failures are public.
I know everybody watches them.
Uh everybody sees them.
And
In my mind, you learn from that and you just move on. You let it go. Like you don't hold on or attach to it, but you do the same with success.
So the variance between sort of like happiness and sadness is like so narrow.
Because it's like you never get too happy and you never get too sad and you just sort of like stoically
Go forward. What I've seen with people that are very talented like yourself
Is that exactly what you said. It's just
Next, next, next, like let's get another goal. Let's let's achieve something else. It's it's really like productivity is is really, really important.
Yeah, because achievement is is the whole the end goal. It's a dangerous
Trap.
The more talent you have, the more likely that you can get in this trap.
And the trap is
I set a goal.
I work at it.
I get a result.
And then I
process that result in my mind. Do I like it? Is it good or bad?
Did I win or lose?
And then after I process this into my mind, I'm gonna get a feeling.
And that feeling is gonna be if I got what I wanted, it's gonna be positive but temporary.
If I didn't get what I want, it's gonna be negative. And that's gonna impact my beliefs, because beliefs are feelings.
And then I'm gonna be like oh that belief will be, Oh, maybe I can achieve my dreams or maybe I won't.
But because if you're talented, now what are you gonna do? It's another goal.
And so say you achieve the first one, you're like, Okay, maybe I can you process in your mind, Yeah, I can do these things and and I'm gonna be somebody, I'm gonna achieve these things.
You set another higher goal and then you don't get it, then you process your mind like oh this sucks. So you get a negative feeling, impacts your belief, maybe I can't do this.
And but the the more talented you are
the more cheers you're gonna get when you do achieve these things'cause they're gonna be bigger than most people. And that sucks you in to just
The cycle of I just gotta keep achieving.
If I can feel okay about myself if I keep achieving. It's like Jerry Seinfeld, he's uh maybe the most famous successful comedian ever.
And uh he said, You know, why do I work? It's like Well I I keep working because
That's the only way I can kind of really feel
I don't remember the words he he used exactly, but it was it's the same story I hear over and over and over. Like when people retire, they lose their purpose because the work
in essence kept them distracted. And busyness is one of the biggest things that we do so we don't have to get deeper and face our fears and and look at life at a deeper level.
And that deeper level is what you alluded alluded to in the very beginning. We're created for relationship.
And when you understand that you're either walking in love or fear, then
Love is is this
Willingness to sacrifice for others and fear is this these walls that we naturally build. It's this self-centeredness that's inherent in human nature.
that um that is important to take care of ourselves and and be safe, but also we build these walls that imprison us.
So that's why it's it's so important to
think deeper deeper about your life and and get out of that business. Go into solitude and really
But why do I want
um these goals that I have and what is at the end that I that I want to look back on my life and and have
The busyness brought to mind something that I observed uh many years ago with certain people
And
They would dive into work as a means of escape.
They were escaping their family and their life that they've created. And it's the same as
You know, vacation. I often have these conversations with people and they're like, Oh, I can't wait to go on vacation and I'm like, Why? You know, for me, it's like why do you have a life that you've built that you want to escape?
And so that part I find interesting. And how do how do you
help somebody who's avoiding something. And I did this when I first got divorced. I mean, I avoided dealing with what I needed to process and what I needed to look at and how I needed to go through this. And the way that I did that was diving into work. And so I noticed it in other people as well.
How do you take somebody who's avoiding something like that? And you know, the avoidance could be I'm avoiding I've created this life that
either I feel I have to work to achieve for my family or
I just don't like my life and
I I can't acknowledge it. I'm unconsciously like diving into work as a means of avoiding going home and avoiding spending time with my kids and my family. What's interesting you missed a vacation because
The m second you said vacation, that's the exact same thing I was thinking about.
I wrote an article called
How to be on vacation.
And what I've experienced most people
It's actually it's interesting. So two years ago I had a friend of mine and his his wife had just died.
He invited me to be to go sailing with him in French Polynesia.
And
Um for two weeks.
And my first thought was I don't go on vacation.
But then I started thinking about it was gonna be him and his son who had just lost his mom and I thought, you know, maybe I could uh go and
maybe something positive in their lives.
But this this thing about vacation, the article, How to Be On Vacation
is the idea that most of you go on vacation to escape their lives, like you said.
They're
What they the common thing is I'm gonna go on vacation, I don't wanna think about work, let's not talk about work, let's not talk about anything back home, we're just gonna relax. That's a very common idea, right?
And it's it's kinda like escaping your life. And like you said, why do you why do you have a life that you want to escape from? So the gist of the article is
Rather than going to escape your life on vacation, the best vacation is one where you go to enhance your life.
Well, how do you do that?
Well, first of all we need we need to
to stop all the dizziness. So stop all the thinking and all the doing and and uh
Stop all that for a day or two.
And then think deeply about your life purpose and why you're here on this earth.
And how can you move towards that when you go back to your regular life?
There's a question that I like to ask at the end of every year is what good reason do you have
To not change every single thing in your life.
Because obviously if you don't have a good reason then.
Why aren't you changing it?
And not
To me that question says you should look at every single thing that you're doing and don't
Um just reevaluate it. W does this line up with my purse? Mo most most people don't have a clear purpose. So first of all, we need to have a clear purpose.
for your life. Otherwise you're gonna get so distracted and so busy because you can't it's too hard to sit with yourself and your thoughts.
What's your purpose?
My purpose is to share God's love, wisdom, and courage with with the world or with athletes and leaders around the world.
How did you find religion?
It's interesting you say religion.
I grew up in m my mom is full Japanese.
Her family.
became a Christian family.
When her
Father was
Dying.
And
Well it it kinda started with with
Um I talked about this in the book with the with the samurai.
And how
My
great great grandfather, his father was a samurai when the the samurai era ended.
he became an alcoholic because he lost all his power and so his son started to think about well what is the meaning of life?
And uh he realized that he wanted to live a life where he empowered others instead of having power over others. And that kinda changes the trajectory of my life. You know, obviously my mom's life. And so that was the big thing. And also my dad, he grew up strict Catholic, but without a lot of love. And then
he got injured and was in the hospital and someone prayed for him and he got healed right away.
And so he's like, Whoa I need to find out about this God.
And so that's kind of a journey that that happened for us. My journey was was I I believed in God my whole life.
But my life greatly changed when I met this homeless harpist in in downtown Denver in two thousand ten.'Cause I I spent five years full time writing in the writing interest, fifty to sixty hours a week, but I came out of that with a near mental breakdown. I had spent my life savings ninety thousand dollars in debt.
There came a point where I was speaking to these this high schools in Denver, Colorado
I was thinking, okay.
Yeah, the book is in bookstores around the world. That's great.
But
you've got no money to hire someone to market the book. You don't know how to do marketing and you don't like promoting yourself. This is not a good marketing plan.
If no one hears about the book, no one's gonna buy the book. If no one buys the book, then Barnes and Noble will pull it off the shelves and five years of full time work is gonna go down the drain, plus all that money. And I just could not see how that was not gonna happen.
And effectively that did happen.
Correct. The Barnes and Number pulling off the shelves? Yeah, like it did. Eventually the um I don't I don't remember how long it was on the shelves. It it didn't happen in a matter of weeks. After a while that they they pulled it. I was
Spiraling and and when you isolate yourself, we're creative for relationship. And when you isolate yourself and have no one to tell you the truth about who you are and what's possible for you, then then you can start to really spiral like I was.
So I called my friend Ricky uh Ricky Scruggs and I said, Hey
Tell me what to do. And he said, Find a homeless person and help him.
And so I f I find this homeless harpist around the corner.
This guy playing a full size trip really strange.
I listen to him play the music.
I look at my wallet, I had a hundred dollars, so I must have taken a cash advance out. Most of my credit cards were maxed out.
And s so I took all the money and I I gave it to him and and I leave I r go back to where I stand and run on the treadmill to try and breathe.
I come back to that same area in Denver. I'm sitting in the Starbucks just staring off into the the abyss.
so much anxiety and then the homeless harvest walks past me, stops in his tracks and says, Are you the guy that gave me that money?
When I was writing the book I asked this girl from my church, I said, Can you
Read this book and make sure it lines up with the Bible'cause I want to make sure it's filled with wisdom and it has no falsehoods in it. And she reads interaction and she says
Have you ever heard of the word Zoe? And that she said, I read your book. Have you ever heard of the word Zoe? I said, No. She said it's a gr a Greek word. It means life. It's in the Bible a lot.
It means
Fullness of life.
I said, yes, that's what this book is about. My whole life of obsessed about these transactions of be about being successful, one what I've always really wanted to feel fully alive.
So I started to revolve my book around pursuing fullness of life and letting everything else be added to you. And so I'm in the Starbucks and this guy, the homeless guy, he left and he came back and he
gave me a bracelet that he made and a a card and a box of chocolates and I opened up the card and it said, Thank you so much for caring for me. Love Zoe.
His name was Zoe.
Mm.
I said, Do you know what your name means? And he said, No, I said it means absolute fullness of life. I've studied that for five years. I just wrote a book about it. Grabbed a book and I wrote, Dear Zoe, thank you so much for sharing your beautiful music with me today. You don't know what that meant to me.
Love Jim. I give it to him and never see him again. And that was the start of a complete transformation in my life. April first, about six weeks later, I walk into this guy's house, a friend of a friend
starts to tell me about my life. I'd never met him before.
And uh it was really strange. And then this gal in the house had never met her before, she draws a picture of a kite, hands it to me, says, What's wrong with this picture? And I said, Well, your kite doesn't have a string and she said, Yeah, that kite is you and
I'd never even met her before and so I was like
What is happening here.
And they so they invited me to a Bible study that night. Like I believed in God, but I was just so lost.
And like I said, I had isolated myself.
And then that night I felt God saying there's nothing you've ever done or or would ever could ever do would change how much I love you.
And I felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders, had a million things to do. It all had to be done yesterday. I didn't know how to do it.
And that way to the the world fell off my shoulders that night.
Did it fall off your shoulders'cause you you're
Letting go to like a higher power. Yeah, I surrendered my I said, God, I'll do whatever you want. Just tell me what to do. I'll I'll move to Nepal, I'll give away all my possessions, live in an orphanage or whatever, volunteer the rest of my life. Just tell me what to do. I just don't want this anxiety anymore.
Isn't that the key to twelve step programs too? Yeah, yeah. Step three is surrender your your will and your life over to God as you understand Him.
Yeah, so that's why I mean twelve step program has changed millions of lives all over the world.
And it's because
I think it's so successful because it realizes that the ego, that part of our mind that's always threatened, always comparing, never satisfied.
Is our biggest challenge.
And surrender is is
It's so hard. Especially when you're talented. But w at that moment I felt like I had nothing.
And so
To surrender nothing is is much easier than to surrender a lot. You've got a successful life. It's very hard to surrender.
But that's the key, surrender your little po little power for the power of the universe.
Where does ego and sort of self centeredness
and self confidence interact.
Yeah, that's a great question because what happens to most most people, especially young athletes, is they have this confusion.
Like I know that for me to achieve my goals in sports
I need to be confident.
And so does that mean I need to talk about myself? Do I need to be brash and boastful?
I had this great conversation with a major league all star a year and a half ago.
I said
Pro athletes, they come to me because they want confidence.
And that's great. Confidence is super helpful.
But there's something even more powerful than confidence.
And that's being fully present.
I said
If you have two athletes
that are or performers that are the same talent.
I'll take the fully present person over the fully confident one every single time. Because when you're confident you can get careless.
And just look at how many times uh someone that's that's super confident.
Goes into a performance.
And they don't perform great. It's it's pretty common.
But it's way less common if you're fully present.
And so this major like All Star told me he said, I've experienced the same thing.
When I'm pitching.
And I'm in the bullpen getting warmed up.
And if I'm not dialed in.
Then my confidence isn't super high.
But so then I have this conversation with myself. I say you look, I don't care
what your outcome is, you can walk ten guys, it doesn't matter, but you are gonna be present out there.
And he said on those days.
A lot of times I perform better than I did when I was fully confident.
What does it mean to be present?
They take it they don't go far enough. They just like just
Don't think about anything but what you can see or be where your feet are and that's such a limiting
View. For me, it's super important if you're a coach.
to explain what this is, what is it what does it mean. And so what we're going for is this sense of freedom.
This sense that anything is possible, this heightened awareness.
And to get that freedom, what I call this flow of resonance.
Where you're in sync.
with you just feel really connected, grounded, centered. There's no concern for self.
Imagine that you're
You see the greatest piece of art.
Ever you've ever seen.
Or maybe that art is is the Grand Canyon.
Or Rainbow or an a great book or movie, whatever it is.
But you're enraptured, you're totally caught up in it.
Are you concerned about yourself? Are you self conscious? What what are people thinking about me? What if I don't do this right?
There's no thoughts of thought self when you're in that moment.
That's when we're at our best. There's no self it's
As Tim Kelly says, self forgetful.
That's why selfless is fearless. There's fear is the self in general, it's a self centered future thing. What will happen to me next?
after I do this performance, after I perform, play the violin, give this talk.
What will happen. What will people think?
It's the and but if there's no concern for self.
Then there's freedom.
And freedom was one of the biggest things that w that are lacking in uh performance today.
There's a book written in a while bag called The Courage to Be Disliked.
One of the key messages that I took away from that book was that
By default, a lot of people just organized their lives.
To avoid criticism.
Don't say what they actually think. They're worried about how they look. They don't want to look like an idiot so they don't try something. Because they don't try something, they don't fail, but they also don't sort of succeed and push society forward. Yeah, for sure.
What's your reaction to that?
Oh, that's super, super common.
The the greatest resource other than love and wisdom is courage.
Because we can all have it. Love is hard to sacrifice yourself and wisdom is is
It takes a lot of study and surrender.
Courage. Every single person on the planet can have courage. And that's what I found is the most common amongst the highest performers in anything.
They may not have a lot of wisdom.
Or love, but they have courage.
And that's business.
Sports
Music, anything.
And what I mean by that is they're willing to face their fears, they're willing to look foolish, they're willing to fail.
They're willing to be judged.
And w I always have whenever I work with a client, people come to me, they'll come to me for small small goals. They're they want to be world number one.
Or won the world championship with the gold medal.
And so I tell him, I say, Okay, so this journey that that you're telling me you want
It's like climbing a mountain.
As you climb and generally when we start, we're gonna go pretty fast and and you may ascend pretty fast.
But what's gonna happen is is you're gonna get more exposed.
There's gonna be a lot more people looking at you and talking about you.
And then you may fall.
And if you fall, you're gonna fall farther than you've fallen before.
Mm-hmm. And that means the judgment is gonna be stronger.
If you're not willing to do that.
Then don't pick that goal.
But if you want to achieve that goal that you're telling me you want.
Now you have to be willing to fail in a great way and be judged.
Mercilessly.
But it's no problem if you don't want that goal.
Pick a smaller goal.
That's fine.
How do we teach people to have courage or self confidence to to
Take that space. Like
It that's the selflessness.
That's that's the master of the ego. That's the willingness to look foolish and and understand. So here's how
I'll give you an example. So I was at this uh play off
Um PGF or playoff in this
And practice round and the golfer that I was with the playing hundred dollars a birdie and the other two golfers birdie the first two holes. Now he's behind. He has a short birdie putt on the third hole and he missed it.
And he said it was a short one and he said he was nervous. And I said, You missed that because of your ego.
And he said, What do you mean? I said, Would you have missed that in in practice, um your home course? He said, Probably not.
And I said, Yeah, you were thinking about them and you were concerned what they would think and y you really did not want to miss this in front of them and that's what caused the nervousness and the tension.
That caused you to miss.
Whenever you're in that moment when you're nervous and you really want something, obviously
Yeah.
Best
Performance comes when you have freedom.
But
It's easy to get attached to that because you're like thinking, Okay, this is really important and so get attached to it and have tension.
So what you can do is ask yourself, what do I want more in this moment?
To be successful right here this one time.
Or
To get better at these moments.
In other words, to master my ego, to not be so caught up in what people think.
So what happens to most people is that they come to these points in their lives.
where they're really uncomfortable.
Maybe they're giving a speech or
playing ping pong in from a a bunch of people. It doesn't matter what it is. You if you're nervous and other people are watching.
they come to those moments where they're really uncomfortable and they back away.
Because they're too uncomfortable.
They're too afraid of of looking foolish in front of others.
Whereas the most successful people, they're willing to look foolish. They're willing to make mistakes.
And so
I think a lot of people know that, but how do we get there? And so in that moment, it's ask it's realizing that when I'm the most uncomfortable, that's the moment that's the key for you. And it's it's principle number one for inter excellence. Everything is here to teach me and help me. It's all working for my good. So we're gonna go look for those moments when you're most uncomfortable.
And and say and remind yourself, this is my teacher.
And inter excellence is about expanding what you believe is possible.
There's three pillars of inter excellence, belief, freedom, and focus. To be fully engaged in the moment, have freedom to play like a child and and expand what you believe is possible.

To do things you've never done and become someone you've never been.
And
To expand what you believe is possible, kinda that crucial
Pillar is we need to
Find those moments where we're uncomfortable.
And we need to embrace that moment.
And the way we do it is we understand that the key thing here is not the outcome.
But it's my willingness to be in this moment and not back away.
It doesn't matter if you fail horribly.
You do that ten times and fail horribly ten times.
Eventually you're gonna get comfortable in those moments.
And then your skills will be able to
Match and and break through.
But people don't break through because they come to those moments and they shy away. I mean, this is we've all done it. I've done it way too many times.
What do you struggle with?
Today.
in in relation to that. Anything? Well it's the same thing everyone struggles with. When I come to those moments, I'm like, oh I'm so uncomfortable right now. And then I've sometimes I've forgotten. It's like I had this conversation with my spiritual mentor, um Nick Osbourne, and he said what God does
is he gives you a jacket that's two sizes too big and
That's what a loving parent does when you're four or five years old. You don't buy them a a jacket that's perfectly fit because they're gonna grow out of it too fast.
So they're gonna the parents gonna buy'em a jacket that's a little bit too big, right? So they can grow into it. And he said, That's what God does.
He gives you this jacket that's too big.
And then you put it on, you're like, Whoa, this is not good. This is not right. This doesn't feel right. What's happen? And that's what I felt so much. It's like okay, this is not oh okay, what's happening? I don't I don't get it. This is uncomfortable.
But God did that intentionally. He's doing that intensely.
Because that's where you need to self reliance is the biggest problem that I face.
And because I've got very little power.
I've got very little ability. I've only I've only seen the world through this little lens that I've I wanna be able to see all of reality. And so
To do that, I need to surrender my little power.
Is part of this reframing failure.
And to
There's no such thing as failure. It's just it's not a verdict. It's like data.
Yeah, redefining success and failure for sure.
Like the Hall of Fame linebacker Brian Erlacher told me that.
I asked him, What is the difference between you and the best performers that you've ever in NFL that you've ever competed against? And and he said most NFL players
They make a mistake and they get tentative. Mm.
I make a mistake.
And I don't get 10 of this.
And so that's that's that courage. That's that willingness to fail.
That's that relentlessness that's needed.
So that's what happens. I I mean it happens with people too. Like if you give a talk at work and
You know, it doesn't go quite right. It's in your head the next time you do it. So you're less likely to be successful in a way, but
the counterbalance to that would be, okay, well what do we do? We do more preparation, we
You know, we go through our mistake, we reflect on it, we learn from it, and then we sort of like let go of it and move on. So we don't make the same mistake again. Yeah. So failure that's all um obviously big part of it. And you know, and there's one of the principles, the presupposition is there's no uh failure only feedback. It's the emotional part is is the
The issue.
If there's no emotional aspect to it then then
You know, what does it matter if you fail and the emotional part is the self centeredness.
What happens with self centernist is that
I need to be thinking about my life in order to be
just to be safe. I gotta look both ways when I cross the street and feed myself and do all these things.
But the problem is w when I think about myself
My subconscious, which is designed to protect me, reminds me of all the potential dangers and all my mistakes. And that
That uh um discomfort causes me to think
Wan I want to feel better about myself, and so I would compare myself to others.
But then there's always someone that has more better things.
And so then I feel insecure.
And so that leads towards fear. This this thinking about myself leads towards fear.
How much do you think the modern world
has really played with that comparison. It used to be like I am just
You go back to like
Nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties. It's like your your reference for comparison was basically like your street. Maybe your town. People lived reasonably within the same socioeconomic status. George or Beth might have got a new car, but
by and large everybody's sort of in the same boat. But now we live in a world where
You flip open Instagram and these celebrities
Who are flying on private jets or
People like you remember the Scrooge McDuck thing, they're like fli they're swimming in their money or rappers burning sort of money on videos and how much does that mess with us?
Oh, it's huge. It's huge. Yeah. It's it's very, very difficult now. Twenty four seven comparison. And you can you can see what anyone's doing all over the world now.
It creates anxiety in somebody with too many th thoughts from too many concerns.
And that's what it brings. It's just way too many thoughts. We need
If you wanna be good.
uh anything for a long period of time.
We need to have way less thoughts.
And even way less breath. One of the things that stood out to me, you know, when I when I thought about this before reading your book, and I'm still mulling this over, sort of this conversation was part of my processing. I was like, Oh, I don't know if that's really bad on an individual level.

It's bad for mental health, you know, for Shane or for Jim.
uh but on a society level it actually results in really good outcomes because
it motivates Jim or it motivates Shane to work harder, to push more, to challenge more, to be more
aggressive to push our limits. You're talking about seeing what everyone is doing, that all connects it, you know, I wouldn't say envy, because I I don't necessarily think it's envy, but like wanting more for yourself. And you know, the comparison is part of wanting more.
It's like well somebody has this thing and you know, I want this thing. It's not because you want this thing.
as an individual, like you don't even think about it. It's like somebody's got a Rolex and all of a sudden you want a Rolex. It's like well no your watch tells time and the Rolex isn't going to do anything for you other than, you know, thirty grand or whatever it is. Rolex, if you're listening, I'll take any watch you want to send me. But I use a Bremont. But like
That drives the world forward in a way. Do you know what I mean? Like maybe I'm wrong about this. I think that's very well said. It drives the world forward in many ways.
But also so there's the benefit of technology. Someone has an idea in China and we can see it right away in America.
The ability to be more productive and efficient and and achieve more.
Is so much higher now. So that's amazing.
But it comes at a cost.
But it comes at a huge cost.
And the cost is individual, but the benefits are largely societable. Well, look at pornography. Now pornography is everywhere.
It wasn't like before the internet. It wasn't everywhere. You had to get it from a magazine.
This negative thing.
Now is
infiltrated every single place because of technology. Technology
can really help with productivity, but it can really spread evil fast. It can spread conspiracy theories and and uh negative ideas and falsehoods.
Yeah, I think about that a lot, right? In terms of
Things that spread or things that cause emotional reactions and w we subconsciously get programmed to

reach or, you know, we take any sort of self worth in that, then
we become we basically become an agent of the algorithm, if you will. And
We end up unconsciously. I don't think it's conscious for most people. Some people it probably is,'cause I don't think most people are malicious.
Uh, but we feed into that. We make things more provocative than they should be, or we uh disseminate
Things that we know are probably not true.
But we know it'll get a reaction from people. Well, another thing that happened is that now the uh fourteen year old teenager in their basement.
has the same platform
as the Harvard Professor.
Yeah. There now everyone is equal. You can't really tell. Like there's in the past it used to be
Yeah, and then there were there was this you you would look to people that had studied a subject for years.

What do they think about it? But now that's largely diminished
Now it's it's everyone is is even.
I guess the pushback on that though is now that fourteen year old has access to all the world's information and
you know, can do with that something that they never would have been empowered to do before.
And if they have a great idea, then they have more reach than they ever would have had before. There's nobody that they have to ask permission. And and so you have this dual you know, this negative thing and also this positive thing. It's like fire.
Yeah. Very powerful.
Yeah, definitely.
How would you talk to kids about mental toughness? Like
Uh I was talking to my kids about interviewing you and you know, one of their questions was like
What would he say to a group of twelve to four-year-olds about developing mental toughness? Like how can we go about doing that? Because
You know, we're so coddled.
You know, I think about what Simon Simon Seneck said once that if you're a violinist
And you're trying to play the violin perfectly and you have this concert. It's gonna be very stressful.
Because you could make a mistake. But if you think to yourself
I love playing the violin.
Mm.
With the audience.
Then you've got a chance to have a great concert.
And so the twelve to fourteen year old
has grown up in a culture that is
Obsessed with
Transactions success.
Followers.
And so it's a very
surface level transactional culture that they've grown up in.
And so to help them understand about sacrifice and love and creating relationships is the most powerful way that you can be successful.
And have mental toughness at the same time is is crucial. What's the process if I'm an athlete and I come to you or I come to you and I'm shame? Like what's that first conversation like Jim, you know?
I've been successful, but something doesn't feel right. Yeah. Doesn't feel sustainable.
What does that first conversation sort of look like?
I wanna know um
What you really want, like why did you why did you contact me? What is it that you really want?
Um besides being world number one or whatever it is.
I wanna know how you want to feel in your life and how you don't want to feel.
If we work together.
I'm gonna help you
Learn principles and tools.
And develop habits of thought and action.
And how to get that feeling.
More often.
What adds to it, what takes away from it.
Talk about your life for a second.
How do you want to feel in your life?
If we just had a couple of adjectives.
For example.
Fulfilled.
Okay.
Uh contributing.
And what about the mind or body? What does that
Like, do you like clutter up there or
Stress or tightness, or what what do you like the mind and body to feel?
I don't know. I don't think I've ever really thought about that, right? And you know, I think what do I want? I want peace. I want
You know, uh I want to be driven
Think I want to be driven more by clean fuel and yet
Just tying that back, it's like the dirty fuel's been very effective.
Yeah, and so that's such a crucial thing to understand is that the that quote right there, the dirty fuel has been very effective. Fear can accomplish a lot, so can anger.
You can that can really drive people, but the long term effect is something that a lot of people don't want.
For example, losing inner peace and joy. Yeah.
I don't tell people what to do. I try never to tell people what to do. I just want to help them clarify what they want most. And and this is a good example is
Is
People that are very talented.
they get caught up in what I call this competitor's trap. It's just I'm gonna be more productive because every time I achieve something, I'm getting that sort of love from like my kids are excited and my family
My co workers, the world.
They're like, Oh, great job. I get the cheers.
And that's the trap.
is that we we aren't able to think deeper about our lives. Like
On my rocking chair or on my deathbed.
what's gonna be the most important thing and and what happens to a lot of parents is they get caught up in the the illusion that I just wanna provide resources for my kids
like a nice house and trips to Europe or whatever it is, so they can do whatever they want with their life. That's a very common end like what do you really want for them? Well, I just want them to do whatever they want. I just want them to be happy. And so
When they t parent tells me that, I say, Well
If you want them to be happy, I could set up a program. It's kind of expensive, but
Every Friday I'll call your kid and tell'em a joke at three o'clock.
Is that what you want most of them?
A little laugh.
Once a week.
No, of course you want something much deeper.
Right.
And so I what I w uh tell parents is that if you want

To say you want your kids to live.
um a life with amazing experiences and deep enriching relationships or learning and growing and making a difference in the world, something like that.
Well, the number one thing is for you to live that and for you to live that
Now we've got a whole bunch of things that need to happen.
We need to clarify your life purpose. The only way you're gonna clarify your life purpose and and live that purpose is we need to get rid of what's not you.
So we gotta simplify your life and down to that one sentence, that one purpose for your life.
get rid of what's not you and everything that you do is gonna move towards that. And in that life purpose, the way we think about it is
You start with how do you want to feel in your life.
What do you value most?
Who do you value most? Who do you want to become like?
For me and I think for many, many people now, especially teenagers.
The role models are the people that have the most transactional success.
Hit the most home runs, got the most followers, make the most money, that sort of thing.
But obviously the problem with that is that real success, if you're if you have all that outward success, but your inside is is filled with with anxiety and and stress.
It's not super successful, is it?
I'm Matt.
you know, through this podcast and just through life have been fortunate in a lot of ways to meet what other people would
consider exceptional people or exceptional results. And and by any monetary standard it's true, but
There's a lot of them that aren't just happy.
Or content, I guess, is the
But I often imagine, well, if they were content, maybe they wouldn't be as driven and maybe the world wouldn't
sort of push forward as well. This is a really great uh
I do, thank you.
If I'm content, I'm gonna lose out on my, say, productivity.
I'm I'm not gonna be as motivated. So what I've shared of that with pro athletes is that so what you're telling me is that
Um, if we take away your anxiety
anxiety that you have, sorry, I I don't like to say someone's personal anxiety.
Take away the anxious feelings that you've had.
You say that now you've got all this talent and without the anxious feelings, you're just gonna sit on the couch and and not do anything?
I don't think that's gonna happen.
But the other part of it is this obsession with happiness and
Achievement. So
Say you win twenty three Olympic gold medals.
Or you become a billionaire.
What's the good?
If you won twenty three Olympic gold medals, like you've done that every day for years. So like
The good must be the process, I would assume for that. And that you know, the billionaire, I don't know, like may you can do a lot with that money for the world.
So if we look at the twenty three gold medals, it's very wisely said, focus on the process, not the result. No, that's that's what inter excellence is.
What is that process and what is it that we really want?
What are we trying to do with it? Forмі it's the process.
Of developing yourself.
To have
To walk in love, not fear.
To pursue wisdom above all else, to have more courage.
It's not about making money. Is making a billion dollars good for you?
And maybe the worst thing for you.
Because what happens um I think is pretty well documented that when people get more money that they become more of who they were.
If you were self centered, you're gonna become more self centered.
Because money is powerful.
I think it also changes you, you know, knowing a lot of incredibly wealthy people. One thing that I notice that's really interesting.
Is their social circles get smaller and smaller and smaller.
And I think in part like and people start asking you for things.
And then you create
This sort of like seed of
Distrust almost. But they're they might start out normal things. Like you and I uh would ask you for a favor, hey, you know, my brother's looking for a job or something, do you have anything? But when you do that with people who are who are wealthy, it's sort of like
Oh God, like everybody just wants something from me.
And there's nobody in my life who just doesn't
Wants something for me and doesn't
Uh ex or w accept me for who
While as a person.
You know, I seen that. I'd tell you a funny story about yesterday. I'm driving behind this this um vehicle
And it said stay fifty feet back. It was a correctional facility.
Um vehicle, yes. So I I'm assuming that there's uh inmates in the vehicle sometimes.
I'm guessing that it's to keep you safe from these
Criminals. That's
That's my guess.
And I was thinking about that. I was like, Yeah, that's how society is. It's like we've got the bad people, we gotta keep them away from us good people.
Mm.
And I thought, well, that's kinda like the opposite.
of interaction than what I'm trying to do with my life is I want to go be with the people that need it the most.
And who needs it more than a criminal?
That's how you make a difference in the world. That's how you live the most meaningful, fulfilling life is you make a difference in the lives of people who need it the most.
I'm not saying that I don't need it I'm I need it more than anybody, but
I share what I'm learning and
Try and serve others who also need it.
Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean I
I share everything to you publicly.
To varying degrees.
I wanna
Talk about
Guild for a second.
You know, coming back to me and like I think this applies to many people. So I'll use myself as an example, but I think it's relevant to
hundreds of thousands of people listening to this.
Which is I prioritize
Uh my kids.
And work.
That doesn't leave a lot of time for
Other things.
And that's a choice, a conscious choice.
And I'm okay, I think
By and large, with that choice.
Tell myself anyway, my inner monologue is like I can always be ambitious later, after the kids move out, sort of think.
But it causes a lot of guilt.
Uh when I say no to things or when people invite me to things and if I do go
I'm going'cause I should go, not because I want to go.
So you said the kids and work is kinda your priority.
We talked about this a little before. It's a hard question and sometimes the questions I ask are a little bit hard, but
What do you want most of your kids?
independents, contributing members of society.
I don't believe in the pursuit of happiness. I I think you know they need to find their own path.
For themselves.
To the extent that I have influence as a parent.
And I don't think we have
As much influence at some points as we think we do.
I want them to be contributing members of society.
However that look.
Uh for that. But that is generally a positive outcome. Okay. So say for example they become an accountant.
Pay their taxes.
And they're able to
Survive on their own.
Independent.
Contribute.
Is that
The highest aspiration for the highest, but I mean that that's like the the floor, you know, force for that.
I want them to just be content with life, whatever that means for them, because how am I gonna push on them my version of like what happiness looks like. That's not I don't think about it that way. I asked you this question because you mentioned guilt. The guilt is not from the parenting there. The guilt is social functions or events or birthday parties.
You work really hard.
To provide for your family.
And you want the best for them.
And sometimes do you feel guilty because some and when you do that, you have to say no to a lot of things. So that causes some guilt. Did I get that right? Yeah.
You know, at the end of a day of
taking care of two kids and working a long day. Sometimes I just don't have
I have no energy to give to other people. Right, right. That makes sense.
This is a very, very common thing.

that working really long hours to provide for your kids.
And I think what happens to people is that
They
in their mind is the best thing I can do for my kids is provide them resources
Spend time with them.
And then give them the chance to do whatever they want.
And I think that's
Amazing.
But it's a very low bar.
I think there's a much higher bar that that uh would be even more powerful.
And that would be to
Teach them how to walk in love, not fear. Teach them how to seek wisdom above all else. And uh define wisdom as an expansive vision that that has unobscured views of beauty and connections and possibilities.
And even on a deeper level to know who God is and therefore who you are, what he's doing in the world and and how you can join in.
So wisdom is very different than knowledge. To me, knowledge is how to take apart a lawnmower or um how this speaker works. It's great.
But it's temporary. It's not eternal.
Whereas wisdom is things that are gonna last forever.
And so it's just a deeper look into life. And I think that's the best thing a parent can do is help them learn wisdom and courage and things like that.
Much more so than the the low bar which is I don't wanna feel like I'm picking up. Oh no no please do. Yeah'cause I I want to I won't feel like you're picking up it. We're just doing this in front of like hundreds of thousands of people. So my goal is is to love you as best I can and and everyone that's listening.
And it's it's really how can we share the best possible life with our kids? That's that's what you want, right? And and to me that best possible life has has very um important things in it, like understanding that the best possible life has one foot in joy and one foot in suffering.
Go deeper on that. It's a hard thing for parents because parents are like, I just want my kids to be happy. I mean, I've got eight nieces and nephews and I love them so much. I want the best for them.
But there's this kind of running joke as now they're all they're age now, uh
Six
to twenty
One, I think.
And so as they're growing and hopefully
trying to teach them some things and and one of the kind of the one ring jokes is is that loving to give candy to a kid.
Because they love candy, my nephews. And so we have the short term
Good thing, which is they have good feelings.
But long term it's not good for them, not healthy, right? And so that's kind of the battle that every parent faces is how much time do I need to take off of my work and stop and think about my life so I can think about meaningful things that I can share with the kids. And how much time do I just well, that's that's hard to do.
Like where do I even start? Do I gotta go to the desert like Jim did? I've gotta work tomorrow. So but the first thing is you don't have to work tomorrow.
You're just
You know, you might lose your job, but you don't have to go to work tomorrow. That's your conscious choice. That's important to understand. As PJ Toard player told me when we first started, he said, Sometimes I just want to walk off the course and I don't want to come back. But I can't do that.
I said you can't?
I think it's really important for you to know that you can do that. You have choices. Every day you're making choices.
And what I want you to do next time you get that feeling, I want you to think it through.
Like I really want to quit right now, I want to walk off the course. And so
Think okay.
Well
Let's do that. But before we do it, let's think about what's gonna happen.
Okay, I'm gonna tell my caddy.
Pack it up. We're leaving.
You're gonna go to the tenth, say you're withdrawing.
And then you fill out the form, you withdraw.
You throw the
clubs in the trunk, slam the trunk, you go to Chipotle, you sit there and you talk to your your cat in Chipotle.
So picture that in an hour.
Is that what you want to do?
If that's what you want to do, then go do it.
But as you think it through, I think what's probably gonna happen is you're gonna think, Okay, do I wanna send Chipot with my caddy? In the back of your mind, you know, well
Even if I'm hating this, there might be something I could work on to get better.
Which is the essence of inter excellence, is to learn and grow every day. If you're if you're out of it, you don't have a chance to win and you know you're gonna miss the cut. Well now
You've got a great opportunity.
you can work on that one that one uh big draw that you wanted to work on.
You can work on that that uh chip that was really tough.
You can intentionally hit it to a really tough part of the course to to work on something. Instead of just like, Oh, this sucks. I'm my day's done. Wha why do I even keep playing? This is kinda like metaphor for life.
It sounds like a lot of what we're doing.
It's changing the area of focus.
from our mind. And I'll give you an example. I was talking with
Emily Bacaladas, she's a doctor, and one of the things that stuck with me about this conversation
Was
She talked about how runners who are running a marathon or athletes who are who are doing any sort of sport
And they hit a wall.

And what do you do when you hit this wall?
And she said the the world's best performers like
You know, in her research where
They change the area of focus. Like if you're halfway through a marathon and your legs start hurting and you're focused on the finish line, like you're never gonna make it.
But if you focus on the stop sign that's fifty meters in front of you, or the red light that you can see, or
the next invisible and then you you focus on the next thing once you achieve that.
you'll finish the race and you'll do it in great time. So what you're really doing is you're shortening the distance between
What you want, which is to finish the marathon.
And then
where you're looking to achieve. And I I think you had an example in your book about a swimmer who did this in the cold water. That's right. Yeah. Tell me about that. Yeah, Lewis Gordon Pew. He swam a kilometer at the North Pole.
And just a speeder, which most people said would would be impossible to die, and he didn't die.
One thing about the cold I think is very similar to the running when you're really hurting.
The problem with the cold
Is
The mind that's thinking of the future. If you're super, super cold.
But if I asked you, can you last one more second?
And then we're gonna put you in a uh hot tub or a sana.
What would most people say?
Or even five more seconds.
Okay, there's a sauna right there.
Can you go five more seconds?
I think most people would say yes, right?
It's the fear of
Oh, how long is this gonna last?
I don't it's it's this projection and the expectation and how all those circumstances do we look in the past and the pain that we've had and project to the future and what's gonna happen.
That's the problem.
But when we can be in this moment
and embrace whatever pain and challenge we have in this moment, right just right now.
And then take the next step.
That I that's the power that she was sharing.
You know, so what Louis Gordon Q did was
His performance coach said.
You're never gonna make it if you just think I'm gonna swim one kilometer.
We've got to break this down into smaller steps.
And so they had a flag every hundred meters that represented a group of people on his team. And his coach said, I don't want you to think about anything except for that flag. You just gotta get to the next flag, just the next flag.
I think there's a lot about life that that enables us to continue going forward.
But I want to tie it back to what you said. It it also enables us to
Just gonna work on this chip shot.
And to be present in that moment.
more than we're you know, in our head we're fast forwarding to the future, the finish line, the the milestone that's in the distance and
If that gap is too large, it can
It can prevent us from starting things that we don't want to start. It can prevent us from finishing things that we have started. You know, I did this with my kids last year. We w they wanted to run this
uh five kilometre race.
with the school they have to and so we're training in the mornings and
you know, you can see they want to give up and I'm like, your mind gives up before your body, long before your body, and this is a mental toughness thing. This isn't a physical like you're going to collapse thing.
And they hated that, but it pushed them at the same time to sort of go beyond.
One of the things that you said that's so powerful is is
the the challenge with with not wanting to start things.
This is the challenge that we all face.
The main issue with that is is that your first step is too big. We we need to make that make that next step smaller. And James Clear talks about this in Atomic Habits, that great book.
If you want to start running.
Can you put your shoes
You're running shoes by the door.
That's the first step. Can you just do that? Yeah.
And the next day, can you just put'em on and walk around the house.
And take these very small steps. It's like uh
Teddy Scotch, Scottish Shuffler's um wonderful caddy.
The world number one.
He's also a coach. And and he says
What I try to do with most of my clients is help them
lower their expectations to what they know they can do. It's kinda like how can I help them be present. Mm-hmm.
Can you if you're putting
Yeah.
Can you hit this on the center of the club face?
I love that a lot. I think that's super powerful.
Um the habit thing is is interesting to me. Jim is a good friend.
I have this idea of like things are hard when they're choices, but they're not when they're rules.
And so one of the things is for me is like I wanna work out every day. I wanna be healthy. That that enables the foundation of all the other things that I do. If I don't do that
But I hate.
Working out. I'm not one of those people who shows up at the gym and they're like super happy. Some guy at the tremble this morning at the gym he's like smiling.
I'm like, who are these people? Like, what is it's 5 a.m.? What is in your coffee? Like, this is insane. I want whatever you're having, but I definitely do not share it.
And so I just created this rule and I got it from Daniel Conman.
Not the work out rule, but creating rules for ourselves and then work out every day.
So duration or scope can change, but there's not a choice about whether I work out. Like a monitor you have.
Yeah, it's like a mantra.
Very powerful.
And those seem very powerful. And this ties into where I was going with this is your you have mantras.
And
One of them I've found really powerful, which is but I also have a question about you say give one hundred percent of what's available.
Yeah.
So if you have forty percent today, you didn't sleep well, you were up late last night, you had maybe too many drinks for different, whatever, you give a hundred percent or whatever that forty percent is.
The question that comes to my mind immediately when I hear that is like
Have relief.
That's my first feeling. It's like oh finally, like somebody understands me. On the other hand, it's like that's an excuse.
This morning I drove here from central New Jersey and uh the GPS said it was gonna take under two hours and it was all close to four hours and threw rush hour traffic into Manhattan.
And I've been working on a book and um
Not a ton of sleep lately.
And so
uh the thoughts on the way here. That one, I was really working hard and not getting caught up in my circumstance of rush hour traffic for four hours.
Um but the thought of what if I'm
forgetful or it doesn't go well and and I don't um share some good ideas.
And uh
I was in the bathroom as soon as I got here.
And then I thought about that idea of of goal number one.
Mm-hmm.
And I thought, you know, today could be today's like a thirty or forty percent day.
I don't have a lot to give.
But I'm gonna give the best of what I have.
And that was very helpful to me as I w just before I walked into this room.
It's empowering in a way.
And then there's the side of me that on the other side, like the two sides of my brain, if you will, like fighting about this this
Um mantra.
And I'm like you know, one side is like
Yes, this is perfect. And the other side is like Well if you do that like two or three days in a row, like what are you
What is that? Who are you? Like why would that be okay?
And so I think and well, there are sometimes some weeks, some months, some seasons where it's gonna be like that. And I think it's super important to know. But I think about your personality.
I think it reminds me of people that are um talented and driven.
And have
You called it guilt.
Whether it's guilt or some other the part of their mind says
You're slacking.
Mm-hmm. Like
Yeah, but that's it's constant.
And so I I find it very common, like people that are that are talented.
Here's an example of what happened to me.
Um something that's a little bit different, but I thought was I found very intriguing.
I went on this this boat ride.
So
Well I mentioned it earlier.
I get on the boat. Before I get on the boat
I I I was wearing an aura ring.
A whoop and a biostrap.
Three things every night to bed.
to track my physiology and share it with my clients and do some research.
And so um I've had a very perfectionist personality.
Very detail oriented and just
feeling like I just want to be the best.
And um if I need something on Amazon, just a couple swipes, okay, it's coming tomorrow. Well, get on the boat.
I as soon as we got on the boat, he said we're not gonna see civilization for two weeks and I was like
Okay.
He grew up on a farm. He had like one article of clothing. I had a suitcase. I mean I was in Tahiti for a month, but
I'm watching him.
We're looking in the cupboards of food and there's some bread, but it had mold on it.
And he's like, Oh no, no just pull off the mold. You know, it's just that that's fine, it's fine. He's eating it and I'm horrified.
And then food's falling on the f you grew up on a farm, food's on the floor. Oh, it's okay. You know, just eating it.
And after a while I'm watching him, like one article of clothing
And like
His life is a lot freer than mine.
I'm more relaxed. I've got to have things a certain way. I can't eat food off the floor. I'm not gonna eat
Take off the mold.
And uh
And I and I realized like
If I I was very
limiting my my life with that with that um perfectionism.
So since that trip.
Thanks to Chris, I've given myself a lot more freedom now.
I don't feel I I've noticed that limitation that I thought was uh
was um
Just a positive.
This this high bar that I've s this standard, and I've realized that was really limiting my freedom. What are your other daily mantras?
You know, one of the the reminder that I've had for years on my phone that's been the most powerful for me is God is with you, Jim.
Why is that powerful for you?
Well, it's like when I shared when this whole thing went down and er everything um happened that first week in um January.
At first it was overwhelming.
And then I realized
What is the best thing about this?
The best thing is that is that I get to go into Philadelphia and work with my hero, Shane Clairborne, this Christian activist who moved in with the poor twenty five, thirty years ago.
And do these
Amazing things.
for with with um amazing people.
In Kensington.
That's the most important thing.
The best part about this is not any
Um
other transaction that I'm gonna get.
Does it make you feel less alone?
Does what make me feel a smaller? If God is with you.
Yeah, this isn't for Jim Murphy to be successful.
The first week all the media was like, Jim Murphy doing this, look at this author, whatever. And I was like first I was like, Why do people t keep talking about me? I'm nobody. I
I'm insignificant. It's the message.
Selfless is fearless.
Then I kinda realized, oh, I guess that's the American dream to be rich and famous. I mean, it's an illusion that it's the best life.
But that's what everybody wants.
What I want people to learn is that the best life is not a life with good circumstances.
The best life is a life where you feel fully alive.
What happens in most people, especially in Western culture, they're they're just constantly trying to get better and better circumstances for themselves and their kids.
To make life easier.
That's what most people do, isn't it?
And that's the great illusion.
An easier life is not the best life.
I mean to push back on that just for a second.
'Cause my mind just naturally goes into yes and no again. Yes. Yeah. I there's a part of me that agrees with that. There's a part of me that looks at these cameras here and is like these would not exist without
people pursuing a dream and ambition. And doing that perhaps at the cost of
social relationships at the cost of being a parent, at the cost of being the best partner they could be. Yeah, for sure. And I don't advocate for those things for anybody unconsciously.
However consciously, they're the reason we have medicine. They're the reason like society people have sacrificed. Yeah, people have sa or you know, I look at
what happened where I used to work post nine eleven is like people worked sixteen hours a day, seven days a week for
Seven years and
In that process.
What they were doing was sacrificing for something larger than themselves. They felt a part of something, and it wasn't uh religion or God. It was
But there was meaning and purpose to it.
And the byproduct of that was sacrificing being a parent, sacrificing the relationships with other people.
In order to achieve that.
in order to push that forward. And so I have these like dueling sets to my mind where on individual level I'm like, you're one hundred percent correct, but on a societal level, I don't know.
If that's the best outcome for society.
But I do think on an individual level it it's probably the best outcome for individuals. Okay, let's look at the um the best possible life has one foot in joy and one foot in suffering.
First of all, this is not how I would prefer it.
I'm not a fan of suffering.
What I'm saying is that I believe that
This is just how the universe works. It's not something I'm advocating for. I'm just explaining what I found.
Um and first just
The basic one is is um physical fitness, okay, you're talking about.
If you want to build stronger muscles, you have to break'em down. This is how the universe works.
You ca you can't do it sitting on the couch. You have to you have to make the muscles sacrifice and suffer to get them bigger.
That's just how it works. And it's the same thing with wisdom and courage.
You can gain courage by constantly
Uh
Just making yourself more more and more comfortable. There's this quote, um, I can't remember who it was that that I loved.
I think it was a guy named Gary Brucker, but the quote is Aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort.
Oh, interesting.
So the if you want wisdom.
Then you have to go through things. You need that jacket that's too big two sizes too big.
You have to have trouble, you have to have adversity in your life. There's no way to you can't just read about it on the couch.
Why do you think we think about training our bodies, but we rarely think about training our mind? And it doesn't matter if you're an athlete or a knowledge worker or
you know, we think, you know, food, nutrition in, we think body
uh training muscles, but we rarely think about
Well we're led around by our eyes. We're we live uh this um transactional life, this third world results and circumstances.
So if I put in this effort I can see what happens. But if I gain wisdom, I can't see
That's
With my eyes, very easy.
If I'm w uh gain become a more loving person, that's hard to see with my eyes. But if I make more money, get a nicer house, et cetera, I can see that.
And that's that that service level transactional world that we live in that that we get sucked into.
That's a really good point. We always end these interviews with the same question. I'm so curious what your answer's gonna be, which is
What is success for you?
Right now there's so much um
Pain in the world.
suffering and starvation and and
Um
in in America so much division and and need. So I think of success for me in in two things. One is um

the person that I was created to become to live my purpose to to share God's love, wisdom, and courage.
With the world.
And then
In doing that.
To provide uh um
Tangible.
help to people that are hungry and and
imprisoned and and uh refugees and widows and orphans to help them.
That's a great answer.
Thank you so much for taking the time today.
You know, I was not expecting such amazing questions. Uh thank you.