E129 | Mental Fitness Monk | Nimrod Mon

Discover the extraordinary journey of Mon, a trailblazer in performance and health intelligence. From a professional fencer to a pivotal member of the Israeli Special Forces, and now a key figure in the Rajasthan Royals IPL team, Mon's life is a testament to continuous growth and adaptation. We uncover how his remarkable experiences have shaped his approach to leadership and mental resilience, blending cutting-edge technology with ancient wisdom to revolutionize mental performance coaching.

Gain profound insights into the unseen link between personal and professional realms as Mon shares his transformative story. His DNA framework—Detect, Neutralize, Act—offers a fresh perspective on managing mental capital, crucial for corporate athletes facing relentless pressures. Through the lens of his unique experiences, Mon illustrates the importance of balancing technical skills with mental fortitude, showing how self-efficacy and resilience become the bedrock of high performance.

Join us as we explore the essence of mental strength with Mon, diving deep into the realms of resilience, trust, and self-discovery. His anecdotes and reflections on emerging technologies provide a roadmap for turning trauma into growth and embracing discomfort as a path to self-improvement. With references to influential works like "The Rise of Superman" and the "Huberman Podcast," this episode offers valuable strategies for those striving to transcend their limits and nurture both personal and professional growth.

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Transcript

Challenges and Growth in Special Forces

Mon 0:00

I can say that this might be the best four years of my life, in the sense that it's a daily challenge, that whatever you think you are, whatever you think you can do, every single day you find out that you can do more. You are better than what you thought, and I think this is one of the most exciting things that I experienced in the special forces. If you want to be a high performer, your technical knowledge and your ability to execute the technical part of your performance has to be the highest level cybersecurity, HR. You need to take certain management decisions bank-related, stock market or IPL player on India cricketer. Your technique, the level of your skill, have to be at the highest level for the one simple reason reason.

Sri 1:10

Welcome to Inspire Someone Today podcast, a show where we dive into the stories and insights that has the power to create ripples of inspiration in your life. I'm your host, srikanth, and I'm thrilled to be with you on this journey of inspiration. Hey, my dear listeners, welcome back. Yet another episode, yet another guest. Joining us today is a very, very special guest, somebody who specializes in the field of performance and health intelligence. He is a Behavioral Foresight , a company that integrates advanced technology with ancient wisdom to enhance health, wellness, and performance. More importantly, he has worked with Israeli special forces. He comes from a family of Olympians and, for all the cricket lovers out there, he is the chief mental performance coach for the IBL team, Rajasthan Royals. It's an absolute joy to have Mon Balkman on this episode of Inspire Someone today. Mon, lovely to have you on the show,

Mon 2:19

Thank you for inviting me, it's my pleasure.

Sri 2:21

I'm so, so excited and have so much to ask you. To start with, you're someone who felt bored staying at the same place and decided to come over to India and have made India home for the last seven years. Yes, how did that thought process happen?

Mon 2:40

I will start from almost the beginning. From a very young age, the age of six, I started training in fencing and quite early I took it professionally. So all my childhood, until the age of 18, I was in one place doing the same thing. Also, I had the luxury to travel the world and represent Israel as part of the national team, and it was very you know one place and I could tell you five years from a single day what will happen, where will I be and what will I do.

Mon 3:12

Israel military is compulsory and I needed to choose if I'm staying at my profession as an athlete and joining the military partially, or I'm taking more responsibility and taking more forward position in the military.

Mon 3:31

Eventually, thanks to my parents, I decided to do something more relevant for the country and almost in less than a week I gave up 12 years of training and you know gyms reaching to the Olympics, and I would say I was less than lucky enough.

Mon 3:45

12 years of training and you know dreams reaching to the Olympics and I would say I was blessed and lucky enough to get qualified and selected to the Israeli Special Forces as part of the search and rescue unit Over there, all my life changed because from being so organized, knowing everything, what's going to happen, how it will happen. In one day, I put uniform and I had no clue anymore what's going to happen to me for the next four years. Every day, you wake up in the morning or in the middle of the night and you keep on going. Interestingly, I got addicted to that. I really enjoyed living this kind of life that you're constantly looking for new things to do and challenge myself, pushing myself to edges, reaching the comfort zones, and then try to look beyond. So, 2016 after working with the Israeli Olympic Federation preparing for the Rio Olympic Games, I decided that it's time for me to push it one more time, and I just left everything behind and decided that India is my next destination. Oh what?

Sri 4:56

a story out there, mohan, and you didn't just join the Israeli forces, you joined the Israeli special forces. That's not something that everybody kind of will walk into. What was your experience like being part of such an illustrative regiment and what was the challenges and what were your leadership lessons being part of the special forces?

Stress Management in Corporate Athletes

Mon 5:19

Interestingly, I can say that this might be the best four years of my life, in a sense that it's a daily challenge that whatever you think you are, whatever you think you can do, every single day you find out that you can do more. You are better than what you thought, and I think this is one of the most exciting things that I experienced in the special forces from the physical level, the mental level, cognition and ability to improvise, creativity and eventually, for us, at the end of the day, we were rescuing people and saving lives. So you know, we had a really high reward for pushing ourselves. So, even from the ethics and the moral behind it, you know, if I push myself and if I'm overcoming something between me and myself, this will be my X factor to save someone else's life.

Mon 6:22

And, very interestingly, my first operation was exactly that. I needed to rescue a person that was in a hill with a very steep downhill, and I needed to carry something like a 60 to 70 kilo bag and be able to run and climb all of it as fast as I can. So the whole team had equipment to be able to manage the operation and the initial thought leaving the helicopters and putting the bag. I was like how will I do it? But this is exactly where training came and it was like I just do it. I think less and just do, and obviously all worked well. So I think this is for me the best experiences from those days that you're constantly on the edge and then you figure out that it's actually not your edge and you have more and it will prepare you to kind of push the boundaries.

Mon 7:14

Exactly. I'm just adding that later on and in the kind practices I'm using this kind of method to work with our people, how can we push them and then they recognize that they can actually do much more than this, or they can?

Sri 7:28

Yeah. So before we get into that point, you also mentioned about a conversation that you had with your Olympian dad on the decision that you had to make either to continue your journey in Sensi or to join the armed forces For the benefit of our listeners. What was the conversation like and how was that game changing for you In?

Mon 7:50

Israel. It's a big junction For the rest of the world. This is a transition from high school to the first degree, which is a big decision to make For us. We are going for another bubble which is called military, and I said with my dad I actually wrote a letter asking me to come for the trials for the special forces and I wanted to decline and leave it and not participate.

Mon 8:15

And I think the conversation started from that point and he mostly shared his experiences because he was a professional athlete in the military he served as a sailing instructor, which allowed him to participate professionally and as a sailor, and he continued his career also, of course, after the military, and he just, you know, shared how did it turn out for him? And also we were in two different sports. Both of us picked slightly niche sports and I think the moment that changed everything that I understood that you know, if I will keep on pursuing only the sport, I'm doing it only for myself and eventually, because it's a niche sport, it would be also very difficult, you know, to influence others or to create any impact. But if I join the special forces, I'm kind of, you know, giving my ego away and willing to do things for others, and I think this is the moment that I said let me go for it.

Sri 9:19

Great and fast forward. Now you are working with so many athletes, so many high high performing individuals to challenge them from their status quo and achieve what they had not thought of before we get to that particular point. A few episodes back, we had your good friend on the show, john gloucester, and he mentioned a very interesting comparison between the athlete and the corporate athlete, since this show is all about the corporate citizens, the corporate athletes, listening and helping them to get better. And in the area of work that you do, is the intersection of managing burnout and the intersection of performance and stress. If I were to ask you something around this, stress can both hinder and enhance performance. How can one work with good stress and what are the things one can do to avoid bad stress?

Mon 10:18

So I would start with the statement that, when the corporate won't, we need to perform every day. In the sports world, you perform once in a while, once a week, once in two weeks, maybe like a cricketer in the IPL season, they will have two matches a week. But in the corporate world, and especially in the high-level management, your decisions are daily and your performance counts every day, and it's not just the statistics that later on will sum up, know, sum up to zero, because you start a new match or you start a new competition, your decision from three months is still in play, even three months later, six months later, and the ball is keep on rolling. So to some extent I see that there's much more pressure, or continuous pressure, on the corporate world and the high executives.

Mon 11:07

Where we are doing, the message that we are trying to bring into that world is the economy of behavior. In simple words, we are making you a banker. You own a bank of your mental capital. You can choose how much to tax yourself and the more you react with heavy emotions like anger, frustrations, irritations, you are willing to pay heavy taxes. As more you are able to neutralize yourself and choose efficient action plan. It will be like hitting on the right stock market that the Nvidia nowadays, that you go to your 300, 400, maybe 1000%, but you can do it and you are not dependent on anyone. So through this method, people understand that there's a constant mental capital that keep on moving and if we are able to be more economical, you're able to maintain your performance consistent and high.

Sri 12:09

How do one identify the usage of their mental capital? What techniques would you recommend people to kind of follow through?

Mon 12:17

So over the years and through my personal story, I was trying to pick up things and simplify, understanding that maybe athletes have more time to train, but especially business people or people who work in the corporates have less time to train. And we need to figure out micro-interventions, things that you can do on the road and things that you can do on the side. Maybe you learn a tool and then, once you know to use it efficiently, you can just use it on the go. We created a simple framework called DNA Detect, neutralize and Act, where we train people to first detect. If you look on military methods, they all have very high tech, for you know radars and ability to detect from short distance, long distance, at night, at day. So we have to be able to detect and if we'll be even more if you'll dive a little bit into the science, we have five senses. Some of us will say we have more than five and all that job is to detect. So my vision I need to detect information. So my hearing I need to detect information. So all our system eventually built up to detect different information and segregate it to two options safety, secure or a threat. If it's safety and secure, we just keep on going, nothing happens. And this is why sometimes it's more difficult to be happy for a long time because the system is like okay, everything is okay, we don't need to do anything. But if it's a threat, the system immediately ringing the bells of the alarm and now we need to do something. This is what we call fight or flight, the sympathetic activation.

Mon 14:12

Once this happens, if we succeeded to detect it and there's different ways, because we can detect it through the senses we can also detect it through the internal senses. We can feel heart rate, we can feel certain pains and ache or even, for this example, heat like a fever. We can feel those things and, of course, we can hear our own voice with thoughts or emotions that might repeat again and again the kind of ringing the bells and telling us there is some threat, taking all of this information, what our mind and body is doing, creating a quick perception. The situation is a threat because of and there is a story Because of my post, because of my employees, because of the company, because traffic, because of my boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, husband, I put the quick story and the system wants to react as fast as possible to get rid of the jet.

Mon 15:14

However, sometimes, and especially in the corporate world, that it's not really a life and death situation. What we want to add is the neutralized part, where we call it Zen Zero. I'm putting myself in a zero space where I don't rush to react. There is certain breathing exercises, there are certain visualizations that we can run, there is certain cognitive ways or exercises to reduce some of the noises and bring us to the zero.

Mon 15:49

We can explain certain emotions and understand different perceptions of the story and because every story that we create there's thousands of perceptions that we can choose out of and basically we choose one perception. Once we use any of those exercises and we also like to measure those things with different technologies and we know the person succeeded to put himself or herself in this zero state. Now we give ourselves a great opportunity to act much more efficiently. We can build an action plan related to the situation without all the biases of the real or the fake threat that our system detected. For example, someone shouted at us.

Mon 16:34

Our first reaction is or to shout back or to flee, and you know for the introverts to go away and feel really shame, and you know for the introverts to go away and feel really ashamed.

Mon 16:45

But if we are able to neutralize, we'll be able to answer in an accommodating and pathetic way that will help us, or to solve the problem or, if the other person don't want to solve the problem, at least we didn't pay heavy taxation for someone else getting angry for no reason.

Mon 17:04

Otherwise, their anger costs us, and this is what we want to neutralize and put a better action plan as a response to the situation. So if we are doing that and it sounds like a very long story and people may ask themselves how do I do all of that while While the boss is now shouting at me. If you practice it a little bit, we saw that people are able to do it very quickly in a matter of seconds because you are able to automatize the system and now your nervous system just immediately going into that block of functionality and you just run it quickly. We saw it on athletes that they have ability, you know, in a few seconds to move on A wrong decision or wrong execution, to flip it and we able to perform good again. And we saw it on business people, stock market people, that were able to do those quite quickly and able to help themselves on the sport.

Sri 18:08

So, anyway, what you're saying is, using the dna framework, you can help people to reprogram the way they look at situations they go through, emotions or the perceptions coming out of it. And closely aligned with stress is burnout. How important it is for the early detection of burnout and how do you differentiate between stress and burnout?

Mon 18:32

I'm sure that all of you know when your phone is working and when your phone is. Have no battery better not mean that battery is good. There are certain symptoms for that. To try and generalize it a little bit, we might fall sick very oftenly, more often than our usual. Cognitively, tasks that used to take us x time, taking us much more time. A simple message used to take me five minutes. Now I'm struggling for two hours. I can't find the words. People are talking to me, oh, there's a meeting, and I just feel blah, blah, blah. I can't gather the information properly and organize it and participate. We become very short. Our patience is gone and every small thing we react way too extreme to the situation and for other people they might shut down Socially. They don't want to see people again and we always need to compare it to the previous self because they're introverts that anyway don't necessarily like to socialize with too many people. It's a different situation. But if you like to see, to meet people, you have lots of friends and suddenly you're hiding at home. This might be another symptom that your system cannot deal or tolerate with what's going on, and so there are different symptoms of having zero battery.

Mon 19:52

We also need to understand that, basically, we can look on two types of stress One is acute and one is chronic. In the acute, we can also divide the acute to positive and negative. And when I say positive and negative is again how do we perceive the stress or the stressor? The stressor can be anything. The question is, are we able to perceive it as something that will help us perform better, or are we perceiving it as a big threat and we are now in this uncontrolled fight or flight or even freeze? Whatever it is, the next phase will be chronic, which means that I'm carrying with me different stressors, I'm not letting go of them and I keep on accumulating, which will be similar to you know.

Mon 20:41

You open many tabs on your phone or on your computer.

Mon 20:45

They keep on updating. You don't even need them, but they keep on running in the background and your battery is just running out very fast and there's no reason, because your phone may be even in your pocket, but batteries keep on going. And this is chronic one to the level that and this is where we see lots of sleep issue While you're sleeping, which is the most important part of the 24 hours to recover do all the rehab processes. Some people communicate so much stress during sleep time that they might be sleeping, but the recovery process of the recharging is not happening, or it's to that level that they are not even able to sleep. The system keeps them awake because there's so much arousal and they're carrying so much stress, and then the system is unable to switch off the conscious and shift into the recovery processes. And then they carry it out with them day after day during the nights and it's just accumulating, which at some point will lead to a burnout, because you don't put yourself at any point of time in the charger.

Sri 21:55

I'd say that's a great explanation of the kind of stress stressors and what kind of practices would you recommend for people either to be aware of the stress that they're going through or some work that they can do by themselves to manage stress?

Mon 22:13

So one of the trickiest things with stress including myself with all my training, with all my awareness many times you won't even notice that you're stressed. Why? Because we moved into a certain hemostasis, certain balance between the mind and the body that got used to this type of functionality and therefore for us it feels like, okay, now we are on zero, but actually we are not, and it's very difficult to recognize it consciously. It might be from a past trauma, it might be from, you know, add-on of things at work, it might be, you know, there is some family situation that we keep on thinking about and keep on anticipating what will happen. We keep on thinking about and keep on anticipating what will happen. So all of those will put us in a state of stress that is very difficult to re-token with. And this is where, after almost five years working with top athletes, I figure out that I need some objectivity, because if I tell them that they are stressed, they may or may not agree with me. At the same time, I may be wrong thinking that they are stressed or thinking that they are calm, but it's very difficult to recognize what's going on inside. So this is where I moved my practice to use technologies and to help us more objectively see trends of ART subconscious functions. We are able to read the autonomous nerve system telling us if you are on a calm, relaxed, clear state of mind, which is called parasympathetic. We also digestion happen more smoothly and your gut is able to deal with digesting food correctly. And you have the other system, which called the sympathetic, which is the fight or flight, and nowadays they are even talking that it's one more nerve system which is separate from the two which related to the freeze those of you that maybe experienced blackout or some intense trauma that you just frozen and you couldn't move. It happened even to me once in a world champion that I knew what I want to do in my brain but my legs didn't move according to what I wanted. So all of those things happen automatically in our autonomous nervous system and this is the main. I would call it Wi-Fi to generate information mostly from the body to the brain and in return from the brain to the body.

Mon 24:51

If we are able to detect all of this kind of communication objectively, we are also able to do more objective training to recognize symptoms, and I had lots of business people that they will see it very comfortably looking really relaxed. But then I see that the meter of the fight or flight is really high. So then it's helping me to say, hey, you see the meter, there's something internally that happened. What is it? Sometimes they will know very quickly I just came from a very hectic work or something happened in the business, we lost some deal or something happened.

Mon 25:32

And sometimes they'll say I don't know, I feel okay, and then we need to dig a little bit more to understand and maybe again it's something in the past that they have no clue. And then we need to dig a little bit more to understand. And maybe again it's something in the past that they have no clue. And now they're just functioning on the stress. And for many people they just like the stress because it's giving them this, you know, heightened sharpness and they are able to do many things. So they want to stay the state without understanding that they are depleting themselves for too long. So technology really helped me, like that, to identify, keep it objective, and then we can accelerate the training through the different methods.

Sri 26:08

So what I hear from you is the good news is that there is technology available for people to access, understand what it is. The larger question is is it limited only to the athletes they have access to some of these technologies and techniques, or is it available for commoners like us, so that we know what is stressing us and how do we go about addressing those?

Mon 26:31

issues. Both the answers are correct. The technology is available. You will have two routes. Many people have smart watches, rings, wristbands all of that is part of those data collection. To understand physiology, I will be honest and I would say they are a great Indian company. Some of them is even a Bangalore based that came up with really great technology. Some of them are more accessible for the masses. Some of them is even a Bangalore based that came up with really great technology. Some of them are more accessible for the masses, some of them is slightly more expensive. Of course, will be related also to the quality of data collections and the insights.

Mon 27:12

What we also do. We like to measure all of those live and all those gadgets collecting data and you can see a trend so in 24 hours. How was I? It's not necessarily great for you for the moment. Now you're at the meeting, it not necessarily will give you an accurate measurement. Where you relaxed or stressed in that meeting, which for us, when we try to connect between tools and exercises to the data, we have to use the maximum accuracy and therefore we are using certain tools again open for different performance general population crowd.

Mon 27:52

I just came back from three days conference with neurosurgeons, where we're actually building a program for neurosurgeons and hopefully for other doctors to learn and train themselves how to deal with stress, and we could measure some of the doctors before they did some training operation, during that doing the operation and after try to optimize the economy In this case it was the economy of physiology which, of course, reflecting to the emotions and the decision-making and eventually to the overall behavior.

Mon 28:27

We just did a great workshop with a big woman organization. Today, actually, women need to be like superheroes. They are working full time, they are taking care of kids, they are taking care of the house, they need to be in three places simultaneously. So it was important for us also to share that. You know. It's important that they are taking care of themselves, and so we are building SMART I would call it the SMART an accessible program for teachers that hopefully, by the end of this year we'll have the whole program in an app that even teachers can, you know, address their well-being. So we are trying, you know, to take technology and not only give access to those who have the real capital, and trying to make it as accurate, so the insights that you are getting giving you an immediate action.

Sri 29:24

Wonderful, and all of this work is carried out by the Bangalore startup called Behavioral Foresight. Yes, yes.

Mon 29:32

I have a brilliant team with me that, of course, helping me to take it from teenagers to young adults, to adults, to the general population and to peak performance.

Sri 29:48

Wonderful Mon. We spoke about stress and burnout, the physiological changes that one goes through when they're subjected to stress or burnout. And we'll move to another critical topic, something that is close to your heart as well. You're the chief mental performance coach for many athletes, particularly for the Rajasthan Royals team. From a mental conditioning standpoint, from a mental exercise standpoint, looking back, what are some of those personal traits or habits you believe have been most crucial to the success of the athletes, or for the corporate athlete as well? So there are two layers.

Importance of Technical Skill and Mindset

Mon 30:28

One. As much as I am a big believer in training the mental capabilities, we have to accept and respect the technical aspect. If you want to be a high performer, your technical knowledge and your ability to execute the technical part of your performance has to be the highest level. It doesn't matter if you're an engineer, cybersecurity, hr. You need to take certain management decisions bank-related, stock market or IPL player or India cricketer. Your technique, the level of your skill, have to be at the highest level for the one simple reason this is what you are going to rely on and this is where you're actually building your mental trust, because if we are looking on the mentality part of performance, I need to trust myself blindly. At the moment, I have doubts, double thoughts creep, worries creep into my performance. This is where things start to go south. This is where lots of insecurities start to play a bigger role and therefore, as we mentioned earlier in the detect phase, our system will detect more stress or more threats than it actually should be. If our technical skill is at the highest and we now want to bring it, you know, express it in the right time at the right moment. This is where the second aspect comes, the connection between strategy or tactics and the mental part. And why am I saying that? Because we can learn everything by the book, and technically I can be great, the book, and technically I can be great. But the junction of decision-making when to do what, when to take a high risk decision, where to take a low risk decision, where to push the envelope a little bit, where to play safe, where to be arrogant, where to be nice All those, you know, uncertainties that you have in performance will be related to how much are you able to express your technique at the right time at the right moment. Now, moving more purely to the mental aspect, we said first is trust. I need to be able to back myself, understand that I can't trust or be dependent on anyone to back me. The second thing will be which, again, I'm building on top of the trust, it's self, anyone to back me. The second thing will be which, again, I'm building on top of the trust, it's self-efficacy. And this is something that you know Bandura spoke about it, I think, somewhere in the 80s or 90s, and for me it's a big, important thing that if I want to keep on climbing, you know the ladders of improving performance, the self-efficacy, the ability to build my edge and still believe that I can manage. It is where I'm able to move from a comfort zone to the discomfort and be able to spend time in this discomfort until I settle there and it's becoming my comfort.

Mon 33:38

I will just take a simple example from cricket the batsmen, every batsman, needs to settle. So just coming to the crease and the wicket is very uncomfortable, doesn't matter how many games matches that they play and how good they are. There is initial disqualify. This is why all batsmen are speaking about settling. Once they settle, they can start pushing to take a little bit more risks or, you know, to find more options that are a little bit less safe. Once they, you know, conquer that, they say, okay, now I'm safe here, now I'm comfortable here and I can push even more.

Building Resilience in High-Performing Athletes

Mon 34:12

Of course, understanding cricket and life is to this extent is similar and there's no linearity, because things will change around us and suddenly where we already been comfort will become a discomfort. We need to detect that, recognize that and able to utilize and give us time to settle again. So once we succeed to, we have this ability to self-efficacy and I would say that the next thing is resilience, understanding that no progress is linear and if you look at any successful person, from any sport to any business, they all fail, and not just fail. Some of them, or even many of them, failed miserably, but what they had is this resilience to get hit by this bullet, to stand up again and to keep on going. And there are many more things that you know. I can speak about what is important in the mental performance, but if I take three traits, it would be those trust, self-efficacy and resilience. And resilience. And resilience is not just look strong and be able to get a hit and keep on going. It's actually the art of letting go. When someone shouted, you were very busy. When you fail and you feel really miserable because the whole team or the team sport or the whole team in your business, or maybe even the whole company, were dependent on you and you failed them, it's a big hit. But if you are able to take the insight, understand, take the learnings, accept that you failed and then let go of all the negativity, let go of all the baggage that come with the failure, you are building a resilience that it doesn't matter what will happen to you because now you are not afraid to fail anymore.

Mon 36:08

Jordan is one of the famous athletes that spoke about that, that he missed more shots than he succeeded, and he used to laugh that he just succeeded more than the others. But if he will, you know, judge himself according to the time he failed, we'll never know who is. Michael Jordan Federer recently also stated the same thing that he said you know, although I won 80% of my matches, I actually won only 54% of the points, which means that almost you know it's equal how many points he lost and how many points he won, and only 4% actually 8% differentiated between how big of a player he was and be one of another tennis player. So for me, this is a big thing because we'll all fail and we'll need to be able to detect correctly what happened in this failure, to be honest and raise our hand. You know it was my mistake because of X, y, z. This is my learning and we are moving forward.

Mon 37:11

And, interestingly, you know, last thing, research even showing that, if we look on trauma, there is PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder which means that because of a very intense trauma, this stress has been accumulated in my mind and my body and now I have a disorder with very heavy symptoms that are disturbing my functionality in normal life. But there is also PTSD, post-traumatic growth, which means that the same trauma being perceived as an opportunity to grow. And this is exactly the point of resilience, that I'm taking great learnings and this was my jumping point in my career, my performance and so on to perform at my peak.

Sri 37:59

Now, I love the concept, particularly the phrase that you mentioned out here the baggage of failure, letting go of the baggage of failure there. To kind of wrap this up more, one of the stuff that you have been doing is working with a lot of these high performance athletes, particularly in IPL. If you were to share a couple of valuable learnings that you have seen watching some of these top athletes, what would that be?

Mon 38:23

Taking the three mental traits that I spoke about just self-efficacy and resilience and be able to crunch all of them into the present moment. Because eventually you will be, especially in a game like cricket, that you have one ball, one shot, which is very different than football or basketball or badminton, that you can do many mistakes and you are still in the game. Here every moment of yours has been counted, which means that there is much more mental pressure on a single moment and the successful cricketers have a very unique ability to crunch the technique and the sending of the game and bring out your own trust, self-efficacy and resilience to a single ball and of course, it's not one ball and they go home. They need to keep on doing it and keep on bringing it again to the present moment and again to the present moment, which is just a unique ability. And this is what differentiates good athletes, good players, that maybe physically they are gifted, maybe intellectually they are gifted, but being able to crunch all of it to a present moment, this is the mental gift which I experienced with some of them and just kind of left me oh wow, how he did it again and again and again and again.

Enhancing Mental Strength and Self-Improvement

Mon 39:48

And I know that maybe they have injury. I know that maybe they couldn't sleep properly. I know that maybe they are sick. There's so many excuses and so many reasons behind the scene that when you watch the game you expect ah, if he's playing, he needs to be at his best. How could he not play at his best? But there's so many background noise, especially on the captains of the teams, that you need to be able to block all of that and crunch all you have to moment by moment, and this stems from a lot of practice behind the scenes as well.

Mon 40:23

Of course. Of course it's lots of, I would say, smart practice. I saw lots of players practicing really hard but not necessarily smart or efficient, without analyzing what are actually the pain points for them in all the levels you know technical, tactical, mental and even physical to understand what they need to actually train. But this is again all the sports science that I'm sure that John also you know he's the master on that and he probably shared very good insights about how you curate the whole ecosystem behind them, trying to support them and and eventually, you know, especially in events like ipn, it's like a war zone. When you go out there, there's no excuses, there are no stories. You cannot, you know nothing will be justified. You need to go out and do your job.

Sri 41:20

Great Mohan, we are having some lovely conversation. I want to kind of keep continuing at it. These are some real, real golden nuggets. Okay, here we are with Mohan and the power of three round. The first of the power of three round question, mohan, coming to you is three micro experiments that you can recommend which will help to enhance mental strength that you can recommend, which will help to enhance mental strength.

Mon 41:51

The first one is go as far as you can where there is no one around you and experience yourself with yourself, eventually to improve mental health, performance or mental performance. It's about you winning yourself. The noiseless is only internal. I did it through Vipassana, which is a practice that I really appreciate and I did several times, but there are many other ways to do it. But if you want to improve your mental health, this will be the first answer. The second answer is to do exactly the opposite, is to put yourself in the most inconvenient, discomfort situations where you dislike, and prove to yourself that you can manage. To be a monk in the mountains, it's slightly easier, but put yourself in the situation where you try to avoid you don't want to be. And the third one smile.

Mon 42:40

I grew up as a very angry child. I used to almost enjoy fighting, but it's very taxing and very expensive. I learned the art of smiling, which is another technique of neutralizing. If you just smile to the situation, you already gave yourself another opportunity to perceive the situation differently. A very known yoga teacher said that you know the person that's rushing behind you in the roads and you know honking and overtaking very violently and you get pissed off and you try to teach him a lesson and you get really irritated. Maybe carry his pregnant wife to the hospital and she's about to abort, so maybe you want to smile and be nice to him. Carry his pregnant wife to the hospital and she's about to abort, so maybe you want to smile and be nice to him and let him overtake you so he can help his wife. So this will be the three things.

Sri 43:35

Great, good start. Mohan Mohan, if you were to give three advice to your future self, what would those three advice be?

Mon 43:43

When you are getting older, you tend to be more safe. The first advice is keep on pushing the envelope. I want to keep the adventure self of me and to find more uncertainties and conquer them. I would say maybe less physically that I used to do in rock climbing and ollie line, slack line, and maybe more mentally in different parts of my life. The second advice remember I need to walk the talk.

Mon 44:18

I have no excuses and whatever I tell others, I need to be the first one to execute and to practice. And I will admit that sometimes I also fail. And when I fail I need to raise my hand and especially to the people close to me, I need to say sorry, my mistake. And the third one opened my heart. The world now is very shaky. There's more opportunities to hate people, to find reasons to fight, but this not necessarily will bring solutions. I need to spread love in a way of respect, in a way of being able to be stable and a lighthouse for myself and for others. It's not necessarily the hippie love, even facing lots of discomforts, that is beyond my control.

Personal Transformations and Emerging Technology

Sri 45:13

What a beautiful thought there, Mohan Mohan, if you were to give three book or podcast recommendations, what would those three be?

Mon 45:19

The first book I would recommend the Rise of the Superman. The Rise of the Superman is about two scientists that wanted practically to explore their close state of mind, and the whole book is them interviewing extreme athletes, which is very fascinating. And you understand this moment of decision that you have no choice. You have only one choice so you survive or you survive. I am because when you're an extreme athlete or special forces, the choices of comforts are not there. You need to to survive, and more than survive, you need to try, then, how the brain alter itself to do that.

Mon 46:00

And the second book, um, a book that you know took me a little bit off guard and then I figured out that, you know, it's kind of my life story, the surrender experience or the surrender experiment. I get confused, but it was a normal person that studied economics on the mainstream and this noise in his head was unbearable. And he left everything and did what I suggested first, to go away from the world, bought a van and just left civilization. And his book is not about preaching what is right, what is wrong, it's about his personal exploration, and this is where I appreciate it the most. And he's doing lots of trial and error with life. He's, you know, very experimental. Some of those things working well, some of them less, some of the mistakes is actually leading him to the new, great insight and eventually he ending up with a huge company with a huge facility for spirituality. So this whole journey of letting go and just staying tuned to yourself and constantly I will put my framework, you know, detect, neutralize and enact upon the situation is a whole book about.

Mon 47:27

The third one, I will try to go with a podcast that maybe lots of you are familiar but I really like hoberman podcast, and because of the idea that he's able to bring day-to-day challenges with the very deep sides which I think today, with the unlimited information in all the social medias and all the internet, that you don't know what is right, what is wrong, to whom should I listen or not listen. Having someone that actually went and measured things, tested them, the articles, the research that he's using, they are always validated and he's giving eventually, practical, simple solutions that you can do for every day, it's something that you know, I really appreciate and we're also learning a lot from him.

Sri 48:18

Wonderful, great recommendations out there. The last of the Power of Three round question for you, vaughan, three personal transformations that you have experienced after making India your home.

Mon 48:29

The first one, I will go with something very personal, that in a very young age around the age of 10, I faced some kind of emotional trauma for my peer friends, when I've been rejected socially, which was, you know, very painful. It didn't help with my anger, my natural anger reactions, but it's also taught me the trust that you know, eventually I need to be able to deal with the world by myself. I need to trust myself and keep on going and I need to take several, you know, big decisions for this age which you know I could take and I could see the trajectory of that later on in my professional career as an athlete. The second one, which connected to the first one, the military decision, which you know I built my whole personality, my whole identity around I'm an athlete and I'm going to be an Olympic athlete. And to be able to burst it in less than a week after 12 years and the first 12 years of my life almost and to go to something that I have no clue, I don't know how the training will be will I even finish the training course and I will be an operator? There's a chance of 50% that I will. I even finish the training course and I will be an operator, there's a chance of 50% that I will not even finish the course and then I have no clue where they will post me in the military.

Mon 49:53

Compared to you know the non-fact that you know I'm a fencer and this is what I do was very transformational because, again, one, I needed to back myself and trust that what I do is correct. And the second, very quickly, I needed to develop a new personality. And it was interesting because military training is about breaking your personality, because they want to rebuild it in the way they want it to function. So it was, you know, very disoriented. Several months of you know who am I, what am I doing? Why am I exhausting myself, while I could be a professional athlete, but I'm not a professional athlete anymore.

Mon 50:34

So, and eventually it was very transformational because I could see myself not just as a social creature but also a leader and I needed to lead, you know, operations in the battlefield, and I would say the sad one was you gave me only three. I had a few more, but I will connect this with a very close friend of mine from my military unit and a roommate, a flatmate in my university days that led me to shift all my knowledge base from the Western psychology and shift both of my thoughts into the Eastern philosophies, psychologies, practices which led me to dive into Vipassana and take the 10 days course. Otherwise I would never do something like that, which transformed me. I lost most of my anger. Nowadays I know to use my anger when I need it, as a tool and not something that's controlling me. But more than that, it's opened up my whole mind-body connection, understanding through experience. That eventually also led me to India, thank you.

Sri 51:53

Thanks, Mohan, for being vulnerable. I know I put you on your spot, but I really appreciate you sharing these personal transformation examples, examples. You have been at the helm of a lot of technology changes, at the helm of a lot of human mental changes that is happening. What do you see as the emerging technology that will shape the future over the next few years? Which has the biggest impact on mental health?

Mon 52:21

I really believe that I will call it accuracy. The accuracy and the accessibility of being able to measure your self, your state of mind, enables you to improve yourself on a daily basis. Coming back from the new surgeon conference, I learned about new technologies that can help us map the brain, understand new ways of connections that are happening in the brain, and still now we saw the brain as anatomical functions. But recently, I would say the last decade, there have been a huge project and they figured out that it's not anatomical regions, it's the connectivity between the different parts of the brain. So we are able to see which networks are overworking, working too less working correctly, and be able to help you with a much more accurate training for what you are aiming to help you with a much more accurate training for what you are aiming. Then I think, of course also you know the AI the NLM were able to crunch lots of data in a very short time enables a very quick insight for you. Now, if before that we needed to measure, then we needed to write a research, then someone needed to read the research, then they needed to try and practice it.

Mon 53:45

It might take, you know, sometimes 20 years. You know, in a funny way. The world of yoga meditation came to the West only after the 2000s, which you know. For Indians it was. You learn it in, you know, elementary school, you know it from your family and it's part of the culture. So just imagine that you know we were living in some part of the world, that, although all the knowledge exists, we have no clue about it. But today, with the pace of a pattern, not just that I can know about it, I can also test myself and get a reference or an immediate action plan on how to address. What I need to address will be the next thing, and this is some of the things that we are trying to work for teachers and hopefully for other professionals, and we will have it with them.

Sri 54:34

So something to definitely look out for in terms of high performance and building the mental muscle. Great having you on this episode of Inspire Someone today. Like always, we wrap up this conversation, mazal. Great having you on this episode of Inspire Someone Today. Like all this, we wrap up this conversation with your Inspire Someone Today message to all of our listeners. This show is all about creating ripples of inspiration. What's your Inspire Someone Today? Message to all the listeners.

Mon 54:58

Enjoy looking inside. We used to look in the mirror or nowadays, on the phone selfies, and we see the outside. But if you will take a moment to look on the inside and you will decide to beautify the inside of you, two things will happen, and this is scientifically proven. Externally, you will become more beautiful and you will radiate you know these energies or frequencies that nowadays we are able to measure and you will become like again, like a lighthouse. The people admire you. They want to be like you, not because of your external look, because the inside of you is holding a very unique and beautiful treasure. So don't be afraid and look inside.

Sri 55:48

Wonderful. On that note, on that wonderful message if you want to attract people, start looking inside, start working on yourself, look inside and it will emerge outside automatically. Mohan, thank you so much. This has been one heck of a conversation. This is just not concepts, but this is science-backed concepts. Thank you for sharing all of those insights. I'm looking forward to having more conversations with you. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Inspire Someone today. This is Srikanth, your host, signing off. Until next time, continue to carry the repulse of inspiration. Stay inspired, keep spreading the light.