In a captivating episode of "The Game Changers Podcast," Dale Dixon and Eric Boles explore the profound facets of sports psychology and its applications beyond just sports. The discussion underscores the importance of implementing psychological strategies at home, work, and various recreational pursuits, offering listeners actionable insights to elevate their daily performance. Eric, with his deep expertise, shares transformative techniques which Dale reinforces with real-world applications.
In a captivating episode of "The Game Changers Podcast," Dale Dixon and Eric Boles explore the profound facets of sports psychology and its applications beyond just sports. The discussion underscores the importance of implementing psychological strategies at home, work, and various recreational pursuits, offering listeners actionable insights to elevate their daily performance. Eric, with his deep expertise, shares transformative techniques which Dale reinforces with real-world applications.
Dale:
All right. Welcome to the great fight managing pressure to unleash your best in life and work. This is the game changers podcast. I'm your host Dale Dixon. I help leaders be their best on stage and in front of the camera. I'm the chief innovation officer for better business bureau Eric Bowles coaches trains and inspires leaders to unleash their potential and the potential of those around them. Today's topic comes to you courtesy of the golf course.
eric boles:
Hahaha!
Dale:
So
eric boles:
Love it!
Dale:
you are on the course with a few outstanding players. Tell the story.
eric boles:
Yeah, so I am on the golf course with Deerford and he's PGA Tour player. I think he finished at least in the top 40 on the money list. Got to play in the FedEx and got all the way to the, I think the week right before the Tour Championship. So his name's Andrew and he's a tremendous, tremendous golfer, tremendous putter, but more importantly, what I'm most impressed. about Andrew is his mentality, right? It's the mindset. And for those who are listening in, if you're not a golfer, here's the biggest difference between a team sport and an individual sport. And I put tennis in this category as well, even though it's a little more fluid than golf is. But the benefit of being on a team sport, no matter how talented and how great you are, your bad moments can be subsidized, right? by
Dale:
Mitigated.
eric boles:
mitigating, you know, minimized by really good teammates, right? Like, I mean, there's other variables involved and doesn't necessarily remove the pressure, it just, the pressure is now shared, right? It's a shared experience. Well, in golf and tennis and individual sports, there's no other person to blame. I mean, you don't even get to blame your caddy. You can try, but it doesn't look real good. And the other challenge with golf is, not just challenge, but I think it's the beauty of it too, is it really is a battle of between your ears. Now, for those of us who are hackers and amateurs like myself, I mean, don't get me wrong, there's other challenges with golf, like just getting the ball. to go in the direction you want and everything. But I am talking about the ones who have gotten to the place of a certain level of mastery. It is now what's going on between your ears. What it gets, the competency level is pretty even across the board. Now, I just use that for golf, but for every person listening to me right now, that's also true for the very things you have, in certain terms, mastered. And doesn't mean you're not still getting better. It just means your level of competency. is high enough that it will not be the reason greater levels of success will not happen. It's usually not competency, but confidence, right? Belief. Now, I know people hear that and they're like, oh, okay, you just got to believe more. But what people don't always understand is there's a process to belief. You grow belief. Belief is a muscle, just like all the other skills. that one takes on. There are certain athletes, certain people in various industries, that their greatest skill is their ability to believe. And people look at that and go, what? And I said, no, it really is. During my time in NFL, there was players who I know played 12, 14, 15 years in the league. And I promise you, their skill level or talent level was less than mine. If you just went by the measurables, mine were higher. You know. I'm 6'3 and a half, I was 220 pounds, I had a 40 plus inch vertical, I can run 4'4 or 5', 4'4 or 9', I got giant hands. I mean, all these, every measurable, I measure by. But what you couldn't measure is what was going in between my ears. And when I talk about those things that are going in between our ears, I like to be a lot more nuanced. It didn't mean I had a bad attitude, right? So we're not talking about somebody with a bad attitude. That's too simplistic. And I'm also not telling you somebody with a positive attitude. No, I am just talking about confidence has to do with more, with a confident attitude, with a clear picture of what you want to have happen. And those who are able, and I always just say the difference between high performers and low performers, is high performers are able to. focus on what they want to have happen. And if they ever do any dwelling, they dwell on past successful performance. Where low performers have a tendency to focus on what they don't wanna have happen. And when they reflect, they have a tendency to reflect on past failures. So the way the brain works though, the more I try to avoid some, the more sometimes I can be pulled in that direction. And so when I had this opportunity to spend time with, it's so fun, I enjoy just dissecting and asking and these questions, what goes on in the moment? What do you do when I say, Andrew, I understand a putt standing over a putt that's six feet, playing against your buddies, and I feel the pressure of that, and if it's just for $5, why? Because I just don't want to owe my buddies $5. But when I'm standing over another, that same putt, and if I make this putt, I'm on tour for the next year. If I make this putt, there's a difference between, if it goes in, between third place and fourth place. And the difference is $700,000. I mean, there's a, you know, what do you do? Do you think about the $700,000? Do you think, no, you think about the putt. I mean, you can't think about the future, and you can't think about the past. You have to be in the moment. And so the process of being in the moment is really even what we're talking about right now. But that's the magic, right? Like the ability to be fully present, being aware of the consequences either direction. But in the moment, none of that matters. One person asked me, if you can focus properly, and does it guarantee execution? I said, there are no guarantees, right? Like, but it does raise the probabilities significantly, right? Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right
Dale:
So let's dissect this. I mean, you use that word. So take us through the process. Well, before let's put some context to this. So we're talking to business leaders, let's quickly draw the parallel and the business application. I would tend to think it's pretty obvious in this case, but let's spell it out the business application of what we're talking about, because we're making difficult decisions on a daily basis. There's a lot going on a daily basis. So how does this translate, you know, the putt that's $700,000. How does that translate into day to day for a leader making the decisions making the tough calls on a daily
eric boles:
And
Dale:
basis?
eric boles:
the main way that, and I have this conversation with so many leaders, like the currency for us, especially in business is communication, right? Like the currency, what we use, what we do so often. But how often are we communicating? We're saying things out loud, but that doesn't mean that's all the conversation that's taking place in between our ears, right? Like there's a lot going on. And so, you know, sometimes the way we communicate or what we're saying or what we're afraid of or what we're looking forward to or whatever. the way it comes or oozes out of us, many times is not necessarily positive, it's a distraction. Like we get distracted so easily, right? And the way that I tell leaders this is, even if you're in a meeting with somebody, how often are you in that meeting and completely there? Or how often are you thinking about what happened before that meeting, what you gotta do after that meeting? And so, It's the distraction. So it doesn't even need to
Dale:
Hmm.
eric boles:
be negative. We're not even talking about negative. We're just talking about, are you getting out of everything you're doing in that moment? As a leader asked me this, he says, Eric, I wanna gain greater, and I want everybody hearing this, I want this mess. I wanna gain greater self-control. As a leader, I wanna have greater self-control. And I was like, that sounds good, that sounds like you're asking for greater discipline. And they say, yes, I am. But it's very important to understand what self-control is. Greater self-control is facilitated by better attention control. So if I can manage my attention, right? Like if I can get better at controlling that, that's the game. Like I call it a game, but I really challenge leaders to make it a game. Like make it a game to be where you're at, to be. We do the vision casting, we do the goal setting, we do all that, but once we do it, we now gotta like play the game, like play the play that's in front of you. And sometimes what we do is we're not playing the game in front of us, we're thinking about consequences of these actions so far down or we're still reflecting back or more importantly, we're not valuing the moment we're in because we're distracted by all kinds of this stuff. So our ability to Practice being in the moment more importantly practice managing our attention Who that's a game changer because one of the things that happens it was funny I was when I was talking to Andrew about this in the way that I referred to it Dale was well simply this way When you are able to truly manage your attention and lock in as an athlete we go through this, but in business, every leader knows what I'm talking about as well. You've had these moments. It's flow. It's stuff, there's a flow that it doesn't mean things become easy, it just means your focus is so clear. Things that were not obvious become more obvious. You tap into insight that you wouldn't have considered before, you see second, third, fourth level consequence or opportunity that you wouldn't have seen before, why? because you're completely locked in. And the reality as leaders is we spend so little time in those moments. And the reason I love talking about golf this way is it's what happens when somebody's playing really well and they get too quick to start assuming what their score is gonna be at the end and they still have holes to play. And then all of a sudden you start to press and you start to sabotage. Only thing got in the way. Nothing changed. Your ability didn't go away. Your talent didn't go away. Only thing that changed is you distracted yourself. You gotta get back into the moment. When you get to the end of the round, you get to the end of the round, but to be able to be locked in is everything. So quick thing, I know I've made a lot of this about golf, but I want people to hear this. So we had our club championship and both players are... They're, I mean, unbelievable golfers. Like I can't even relate to just how good they are. But it was amazing. Both of them on the very last hole, they were really close. I think one hits a chip that is that he can do, his eyes close, but he hits it thin and it rolls over the green. The other one just been opened up the opportunity to take it. He does something that he's never done. I mean, and people want to know like, like How is that possible? That's what pressure does. Like in sports, we say pressure busts pipes, right? But it also can make diamonds if you know how to focus it. And so this is why when I tell leaders often, man, there's some decisions that it's just a different level of pressure. There are certain things you gotta do. It's just a different level. But in those moments, you don't let the, it's just the pressure get to you. What you have to do is you have to focus it. Like you have to manage your attention in those moments more than you ever have before.
Dale:
So let's dissect it. How do we start creating the habit of the focused attention so that we can deal with and manage the pressure? And I'm gonna tell a quick story on myself. So I'm asking you to preach to me on this one specifically. I was in a meeting today. It was a 30 minute conversation and I had another meeting directly following and I look at my clock. and it's 3 58 p.m. and my mind started to go to the next conversation and I figured that I'd listened to about 15 seconds past and the person I had said something important and I'd completely missed it.
eric boles:
Man,
Dale:
So
eric boles:
okay, so
Dale:
full transparency,
eric boles:
full transparency,
Dale:
I'm, I'm living it.
eric boles:
yes.
Dale:
And, and so when we talk about this cultivating the, the attention in the moment, what are
eric boles:
Yeah.
Dale:
some of the steps? Like, so I caught that, but it was way too late.
eric boles:
Yep.
Dale:
And now it's awareness is the first, is the first piece.
eric boles:
Awareness is the first piece. And the other thing is for people to understand that focus doesn't come natural. It's a discipline. We're not naturally focused. We're easily distracted. Right? And the other reason that, you know, not only we easily distracted, we like things naturally that have timelines associated with it. Right? Like we need that. So if I have a 30 minute meeting, well, I promise you, the closer we get to that 30 minute timeline, like it takes a lot of work not to already be anticipating what's next, right? That's just a real thing. I've always said to one of the best tools to use when creating greater focus is to use the clock, but just make sure the people who are in there with you, you bring them on the same page. So it's not, I have an urgency of three o'clock or the 30 minute meeting, but the person I'm with doesn't have the same. They're not aligned on the urgency of the minutes. And the reason I bring that up is, the reason we enjoy games at the end of the game is because the clock's about to run out, right? That's great in sports sometimes. It adds a lot of pressure. Not necessarily great when we're having meetings or we're trying to get somewhere. So I always tell people one of the best ways to create greater understanding and focus is start the meeting faster. Start, start faster. What is the issue? How quickly can we get to it? Let's start practice fast. Let's not wait till the last five minutes of the game to create some high urgency. When we spent 25 minutes kind of dancing around, no, get to it. Now I'm not talking about a meeting you have with somebody you don't really know, and you're kind of, but you're valuing getting to know each other. But those meetings that we know, that we can do, we gotta get. Now here's one of the ways that also creates greater levels of. of focused DEL in a very real way. Anytime, like concentration is a result of subtraction, not addition. So if I got a 30 minute meeting, and I have it with somebody, in my mind, sometimes I play tricks with myself, I wanna get to everything done in 20. Now, I don't necessarily have to tell the person, but I definitely wanna tell myself that. And the value of that is that usually I'm gonna ask a deeper question than I would've. if I felt we had more time. Like it is just a, it is a built in, we naturally relax when we think we have more time than we do, okay? And so sometimes when it comes to even our ability to concentrate and really dive in is because I gave it shorter windows of time to really lock in. So when I know I've given that shorter window of time, now I can really lock in. Here's what the other thing I encourage people to do in a practical way from a business standpoint. Quit making your meetings adjacent to each other. So, because the reality is, if I make a meeting adjacent to each other, the probability that I remember a lot of what we just talked about is incredibly low. So I have to turn around and ask, what was the value in meeting in the first place? Now, if the value in meeting was simply just to be able to meet and make that person feel connected and appreciated and that they're heard, okay, more power to you, you shouldn't walk away feeling bad. But if you are in that meeting to get something from it. you need to extract something from it. And then you immediately go to the next one, the probability that you're gonna get everything you could out of that meeting is nil. So how much time can you put a buffer in between that meeting? Five, do you need five minutes to reflect on it? 10 minutes, and I always say this, not only do you have the meeting, oh, I got a little 10 minute buffer before I go in for the next meeting, use a little bit of that buffer time to manage your attention again, by doing what, reflecting on what you just got through doing. And in that meeting with deciding, what did we just agree to? We're on the same page, this is what I wanna make sure, so when we get together again, we get a return on my attention that I just poured into this. Now, I'm saying this in very practical way, but all of this is a, this is all discipline. This is disciplining my attention currency. This is disciplining my ability to focus. It's so important that, I even encourage people from a focusing standpoint, And, you know, I'm using, we talked about golf starting it off, but there's a reason why in golf, you know, it's just kind of frowned upon that people are screaming and yelling right before you hit a putt, right? Like that's not happening unless it's at the Ryder Cup, right? Like they're usually, it's pretty quiet and right, what, because you're locked in. But it's amazing how easy we allow ourselves to have every single distraction. We got notifications on, we have emails that are coming in, we're doing all this thinking that somehow we are different than every other person in the world that we can't be distracted by that stuff. It is so easy for flow to be broken by just a ding of a notification.
Dale:
Ding.
eric boles:
Ding, notification, go. And I promise you, whatever came through, one leader was like, well, you know, it's important. I want people to know I have access. I say, here's what I hear all that. The only thing I don't understand is, if you can show me right now, of the thousands of times notifications have come through that pulled you out of a level of flow where only great things come out of flow, but it's so hard to get there, you're either there or on the brink of there, and a notification comes through. Show me the number of notifications came through that have greater value or that were more important than what you were having the opportunity to call. If that's the case, more power to you. But the reality is you haven't eliminated distractions that you can't eliminate. Like there's some distractions, we can't do anything. We're all in business, we get it. But the ones that we just allow in, again, when I said before, what's the key to self-control, self-discipline? You know, people say, what's the key for self-discipline? Self-control. That's what basically self-discipline is. So how do I maintain self-control? By attention control. That means I'm in charge of my attention. But I just freely give it to everything? I'm easily distracted no matter what. And so not only, oh, I'm distracted by the next meeting, if it was sports, I'm distracted by, if we make this play, we are gonna win the game. Or if we make this, if we do this, we're gonna make it to the playoffs. man, you better stay in the game you're in. Like you have any, you got to, it's the third quarter, it's this, man, be present. And so when we talk about the importance of the mindset, like the ability to focus, to lock in, it is a discipline. So we got to practice it in little things. Like what the example you just gave is such a great example. The key though is the fact awareness. You're aware that happens. So the question is, as you review the film on that, what are some things I can do to stay locked in even more? And this isn't even about other people. Like, you know, people are like, oh, I wanna make sure the other person, no, this is for you, right? Right? This is for you.
Dale:
100% when we exercise this muscle and we work on being present in the moment, then what you're saying is as we started this podcast and talked about this idea of being able to manage the pressure when those pressure moments arrive, we that muscle is exercised and we're in the in a state where we were not thinking about well, what if I flub this up? What's what what's the outcome coming down? I get to stay 100% focused in the moment, making good decisions under extreme pressure. Because I have practiced this. I don't get the luxury. of being able to be present in the moment in a high pressure situation. If I haven't exercised the muscle leading up to it,
eric boles:
Oh,
Dale:
it's
eric boles:
well,
Dale:
not a flip a switch I get to flip
eric boles:
uh, priest, my brother, you just hit it. Dale, that is, it is a muscle that you must practice. Everybody's trying to be like, all of a sudden, when the situation arises, I'm ready. No, man, you gotta be ready. You gotta be ready and the only way you are, you can say I'm ready, it's because you train yourself to be ready. But you train yourself in the everyday little things that prepare you for the big thing. We wanna just show up for the big thing. Man, look, I know I keep going to sport but it's so important. Man, even in my football days, brother, we didn't get paid to play games. We had to play games for free. We were paid to practice, right? And so, This is the same thing, leaders. You practice daily, these little being present, being in a meeting, even managing your attention. When you feel yourself pulling out or you're sitting in a meeting and your mind wanders, pulling back is your mind. Like, just make a decision. Get more interested. It is hard, I get. Some things can be boring, right? But it's their job not to entertain you. Man, start taking notes, ask questions, lean in, dig further. I'm telling you, you can find all kinds of interesting things by intentionally driving your attention further into the person or the situation you're looking into, not finding another place to be able to send it. And the reason is when a major thing happens, it gets everybody's attention, but what also happens in those moments is everybody's emotion. when you can't think straight now We're here, but we're all over the place, but those who can remain calm cool collected in precious situations, and I got to tell you that is a Affirmation that I call all the time to myself. I'm calm cool and collected in precious situations And I sometimes just randomly correct precious situations like literally listening to somebody and not being distracted is big for me. I try to practice, I'm working on it. I'm not great, but I try to be as bright. And I find it in these situations. If I'm talking to somebody, and I'm one-on-one with somebody, I don't care who walks in. I go to enough conferences, I'm speaking at this or I'm speaking at that. And so I'll be talking to someone, and they bring the CEO, or they bring some other person of influence. over to greet me before I keynote or whatever the case would be, I make sure that I don't turn away from the person I'm talking to until I've been able to say bye or we probably I won't just be pulled over and go oh because that's a practice like how that's that is you don't do that right like and that's a chance to practice in the moment right like that's There's no, you know, there's somebody who might be more accomplished, but that don't make a person more worthy. And so whoever I'm talking to, I want them to know their worth because I'm investing my attention and I feel the same way. Somebody give me their attention and all of a sudden somebody who seems to come to be a little more important, they just turn the other direction and go away. Now I may understand it doesn't mean it feels good, right? And so sometimes we don't put value on Sometimes the distraction we have to avoid looks legitimate in other people's eyes. But man, it's a good practice to learn how to be present, finish that conversation, and then move on to the next one. Greet that person and thank them, and then move on to the next one.
Dale:
So intentional engagement in a conversation, great practice to build the muscle. And I'm thinking to an acquaintance of mine who talked about the importance of focus. And he would set a 45 minute timer to do a specific task or a 30 minute timer and trained himself to work in those bursts getting to the flow state. But as I look at that, I'm like, that is, that's a muscle building technique, timer on the desk, I'm going to put turn everything off, I'm going to click that kitchen timer over to 30 minutes, 45 minutes, whatever it is that where I'm going to give my 100% attention to this one thing. And I'm not going to look at the computer screen because it's I'm not going to get a ding every time an email comes in. I'm not the phone is in airplane mode, put in a drawer. It's not going to be digging at me every time a text message comes in 100% focus 45 minutes. I'm not doing anything else. And I think and as I look and think back to that advice that he gave me, I was thinking that's a muscle building technique in and of itself.
eric boles:
Come on, come on. Not only is that an incredible muscle building technique, but first of all, the return that he gets for every one of those 45 minutes. It's hard to quantify how significant that is. And I will say, it's also completely supported by just behavioral psychology. We can't multitask. I don't care what anybody thinks. We don't do that. We don't do it effectively. We don't do it well. To truly tap into, not only flow, but just a part of our brains that's the most creative problem solving. device on the face of the planet. We never get to the side of our brain that actually solves problems. Do you know there was a assessment done that it says the average manager spends less than three minutes on each issue going on throughout the day. And so I'm like, okay, so how many problems do you really think you're actually solving? You're not solving problems, man. You are just moving around chairs, right? Like you're just, you're just, it just feels like you're solving a problem. And the crazy thing about this is the danger of this kind of, I know we started, but we are talking about build, read, and focus to slow your brain down and lock on into a moment to really be there. We start defining being effective or successful with that kind of frantic energy. And it's easy to confuse what feels like a problem solving process isn't. It's just a, you just have a pattern of activity. And it feels like you're getting something done. But in sports, we call that wasted motion. You're just all over the place. And so being able to give uninterrupted, undivided attention to somebody or something that you're solving for, you will get to it. Now here's, I always like to say this. We're in with this one. But I never forget the story of a friend of mine who used to be a boxer. And he tells a story when he was in the military when he was younger. He got a chance to see Sonny Liston fight, because they would always come in and fight against a military boxer, one of the military champion boxers. And young Cassius Clay came in, as we know Muhammad Ali. And it was so great. So we fought Sonny Liston first and Sonny Liston, you know, he said, like you getting hit by a tree trunk. Like, you know, I mean, it's unbelievable hard. Sonny Liston hit. He goes, but what was fascinating was when we fought Cassius Clay and he was like, Cassius Clay, he said, I'm gonna hit you so fast and so often it's gonna feel like you're surrounding. Right? And now the running joke was when the guy comes back, he goes, that's exactly what it felt like. I mean, I never forget, he was like a mentor of mine when he was telling me, he said, that's exactly what it felt like. He goes, but you know what's funny? I said, what's that? I felt like I was getting hit by five different guys, but it was only one man. The problem is, I was trying to avoid, or I was dealing with all these punches, I could never see where the one man was. He goes, this is how most people live. This is why rarely do they ever solve an actual problem, because they're bouncing around. They never stay long enough to actually see what the root of the problem is. all they're fighting is symptoms. You just, you feel like you're surrounded by a whole bunch of problems. It might just be one problem. It just has a really quick jab, right? It's just hitting you for a while. So to be able to slow down enough and really lock into, you'll be able to see root causes a problem versus just dealing with the circumstance.
Dale:
For anybody who does not believe you that multitasking is not possible. I run audiences through an exercise and I'll try to describe this. It's a lot easier when you can see it. But we take a string of four to five words. And I put a timer up on the wall and I say, I'm going to ask you to handwrite these words, we're going to do it two different ways. The first way, you're going to write letter and then a number corresponding to that letter right underneath it. So, you know, if you were to write the game changers, you'd write T and then one H and then two underneath it E and then three underneath it. So you see that. So we set the timer and we time everybody doing the game changers or whatever the combination of words is. And then I say, Okay, take a clean piece of paper, we're going to do it a different way, you're going to just write out the th game changers, j me. And, and then underneath it, you're just going to put a number next to every letter. So you're going to have the same exact look when we're done. But you will have done it two different ways you'll go letter number, letter number, and then the second way, we're just going to do all letters and all numbers. And we run a stopwatch. And I have done this. with I don't know how many audiences and every single time we cut the time in half at least when you look at the average of the audience. Once in a while, you'll have that rare person like every three or four times I do it. And they can get within a couple seconds of doing the same time for that act those two activities. But 99% of the time, the audience will cut their time in half. when they stay focused on writing the letters, and then
eric boles:
been
Dale:
when they
eric boles:
writing
Dale:
focus
eric boles:
the numbers.
Dale:
on writing
eric boles:
Wow,
Dale:
the numbers.
eric boles:
wow.
Dale:
When their brain is going back between letter, number, letter, number, they double the amount of time that they have to spend on the task. And that is the most tangible
eric boles:
Ugh.
Dale:
way to see how we do ourselves so much harm in creating more work than we need to. That's not working, multitasking is not working smart. it's
eric boles:
Uh,
Dale:
working harder
eric boles:
yeah.
Dale:
because you will double the time that it takes to do anything if you are multitasking. If you're stopping to look at a phone, if you're tapping on an email while you're in the middle of a call, everything takes twice as long.
eric boles:
You know why I'm laughing? Even the just imagining doing writing a letter then the number, next letter, then the number feels tiring. Like it even
Dale:
Yes.
eric boles:
feels tiring versus just write the whole thing out and number it underneath. I mean, it's like, boom, done. Oh,
Dale:
Yep.
eric boles:
great example, brother.
Dale:
But the letter number is the equivalent of switching tasks in our
eric boles:
over and over.
Dale:
in our heads.
eric boles:
That's right.
Dale:
And, and that's the thing we know no human being the brain's not capable of doing two things at once. It does one thing and we can switch between the two.
eric boles:
That's right.
Dale:
But we slow things down.
eric boles:
That's so...
Dale:
And if you don't believe me, my wife can attest to that with me.
eric boles:
My wife always tells me, well, you get the luxury of not having the multi-pack. But anyway, that's a different conversation.
Dale:
All right, land is airplane. We've, you know, I think we've got some amazing things to think about when you talk about focus on what we want to happen. And we only reflect on the winds.
eric boles:
Yep.
Dale:
So as we're going into something and high stress situation, how do we channel that energy? And then concentration is the result of subtraction.
eric boles:
You know, for both of those, when we talk about focus on what you want to have happen and when you have to dwell or reflect on past wins, that really is different to a high performance and low performance. Because every person who's listening to me right now, don't get me wrong, you're going to continuously work on mastery. You're going to continue to work on competency. But I want you to know, it will not be competency that's going to be your challenge. it's gonna be the inability to concentrate, it's gonna be the inability to focus because all that mastery gets wasted when it can't be channeled, right? And so that's why when we were talking about a golfer, I promise you a golfer knows how to hit a six foot putt or they know how to do that. But what separates best is they're able to lock into the moment they're in. So remember when we said earlier, self-discipline is self-control. Self-control is attention control. So we work hard to manage our attention. So the practice of being engaged and present in the moments that you're in is everything. So it's not just like, oh, I'm sitting, no, we do it on purpose. Like, I'm going to be in this meeting and be here. I'm gonna be in this conversation and be here. If I can't be here, I will at least respect the person or the situation enough to say upfront. I cannot, this is what you have. You have five minutes, my undivided attention. After five minutes, I have to go. Those kind of doing it that way, valuing the attention to that degree is a game changer. I've watched entire leadership teams culture shift because of this kind of discipline when it comes to attention. Like, cause I say often when it comes to our attention, our attention is our life. And so we want to... Make sure where we invest it, we get a return on it. We want to make sure we don't allow distraction for no reason. We want to get the practice of, you know, it takes discipline to turn off notifications. It takes discipline to not be interrupted. It takes discipline and not feel like you're missing something. Like really, like the group texts I'm on with 99 other things, like I got to make sure I heard that text come through or that email come through. Really?
Dale:
And I'll say if somebody tells me, Hey, I've got five minutes to have a conversation, you have my undivided attention. I have so much more respect for that than the person who tells me they're gonna
eric boles:
Bye.
Dale:
they'll enter into a conversation and then within 30 seconds is looking at their phone.
eric boles:
Oh, come on, man. That's it. That's it. And again, there's a discipline to it. And there's such a value to it. To be recognized as that individual who values not only their own time, but it will cause you to value other people's time even more so. One last thing I'll mention on this, Dale, and we can dig into this later, and to go really in, but also... if you're the person who needs someone's attention and it's clear that you're not getting it, don't remain there. Don't just sit there and just don't. Just say like, you know what, I've come back at a time where I can have your undivided attention. Because what you do is you gotta value yourself, you gotta value the information you provide enough to bring it, because sometimes the person not giving you the attention It's not even about their intention, right? It doesn't mean they're doing it intentionally. It might just be a habit for them to never really pay attention because they're pulled all over the place. That's fine. Just don't let them do it with you. Right? That's... They're... Come on. Ha ha
Dale:
Stick up for yourself. Absolutely.
eric boles:
ha.
Dale:
All right. Well, we're significantly over time, but this has been worthwhile and a lot of things for us to consider and to put into practice immediately
eric boles:
tomorrow.
Dale:
at home on the job, on the field, on the course, wherever you're at. Fantastic bit of sports psychology.
eric boles:
That's
Dale:
Thank
eric boles:
it?
Dale:
you for that.
eric boles:
Yes, sir.
Dale:
You can reach out and make contact with Eric at the game changers inc.com that's his website all one word the game changers inc.com I'm at Dale Dixon media.com we would ask that you subscribe to this podcast if you haven't done so already, so that you are notified each and every time that a new episode pops and you know, when we're telling you to turn off your notifications, you can leave the podcast notifications on I guess. Also, while you're there, would you rate and review the podcast and doing so is a big help that pushes this podcast up higher in the search results rating. Hopefully, we've earned five stars from you a review. You know, how are you putting this into action? And what does it mean for you and your team? So and share it with anybody that you think would be would benefit from hearing this content. We would appreciate that. This is the Game Changers podcast, unleashing your best in life and work. Eric, you have yourself a fantastic week.