The Fearless Warrior Podcast

003: Becoming a Better Coach Through Mental Performance, How to "Push the Rock" with Brian Cain, MPM

• Amanda Schaefer, Brian Cain

Share episode

Brian Cain is the creator of the mental performance mastery, the MPM coaching certification, 30 days to MPM for athletes program.  He is a best-selling author, speaker and consultant. He's a number one international best-selling author and highly sought after speaker and mental performance coach and is regarded as the world's foremost authority on mental performance coaching. His client list includes coaches and athletes and teams at the Olympic level, major league baseball, NFL, NBA, NHL, UFC, the PGA and the LPGA tour, as well as a resume full of hall of fame athletes, including for major league baseball, Cy Young award winners, a Heisman trophy winner, eight UFC world champions, world series and super bowl champions. And over 1000 professional sports draft selections. 

Highlights of the Episode:

  • Brian's daily success checklist routine
  • Coaching softball programs like Florida State
  • How he defines confidence 
  • A time when he had to deal with failure
  • The myth of Sisyphus
  • What he would tell himself if he could go back in time

Interested in becoming a certified Mental Performance Mastery Coach? See all the details below:
https://ki128.isrefer.com/go/MPM-Cert/ambeeso0/

Follow Brian Cain:
Twitter -  @BrianCainPeak
Instagram - @BrianCainPeak

More ways to work with Fearless Fastpitch

Follow us on Social Media

I am so excited to be bringing you an interview with one of my greatest mentors, Brian cane. He is the creator of the mental performance mastery, the MPM coaching certification. Which I have myself. And the 30 days to NPM for athletes program, he is a best-selling author, speaker and consultant. He's worked with so many different softball, baseball programs beyond the softball and baseball world. He has worked with so many amazing athletes and he's the number one international best-selling author and highly sought after speaker and mental performance coach. So he knows a thing or two about mental performance. And he is regarded as the world's foremost authority on mental performance coaching. His client list includes coaches and athletes and teams at the Olympic level. Uh, major league baseball, NFL, NBA, NHL, UFC, the PGA and the LPGA tour, as well as a resume full of hall of fame athletes, including for major league baseball, Cy young award winners, a Heisman trophy winner, eight U S sea world champions, world series and super bowl champions. And over 1000 professional sports draft selections. It is truly incredible to watch him work. I love the energy and the fire that he brings to everything that he does. And he truly is a great friend and mentor of mine. Like I said, I cannot wait for you guys to feel his energy and feel his passion for what he does. And I can't wait to jump into today's episode.

Amanda:

Caner. I am so pumped to have you on the podcast.

Brian:

Welcome. Yeah. A B, thanks for having me. I'm fired up to be here. Let's get fearless.

Amanda:

I'm super excited to have an authentic conversation with you. And I see you on the MPM coaching calls and how electric you are. I love the energy that you bring. And so the College World Series just wrapped up. I know that this conversation can be around, you know, softball. I know you're working with baseball and so many other high performers. The first question I have to ask is what is a day in the life of a mental performance coach? What is, what is it on your radar right now?

Brian:

Oh, well, I mean, for me right now, you know, it's, I mean, and I try to really identify what my ideal day looks like. And for me, my ideal day starts the night before shut it down and get in bed at eight 30, get up at four 30. And the right now on my night stand where I go to bed every night, I try to read 10 pages before I go to bed. Read the mental keys to hitting by Harvey Dorfman. So that's how my night stand next to me as is discipline equals destiny by Ryan holiday. get up at 4 30. First thing I do is I go into our home gym and try to get into my 45 minute sort of mobility slash workout. Then I'll go out and try to get 45 minute run. So now it's about, you know, six ish. And at that point, my 15 month old daughter, Carolyn starting to move. So I go wake the angel up, put her in the stroller. Boom. We're going for a walk. As we're going for a walk and she's hammering a woven up binky, usually a duck or a dog, depending on the day. I will go through and do my morning reading. My morning reading revolves around a page from Jocko discipline equals freedom. Ryan holiday, the daily stoic. I read a page of my 30 day athletes program. I read a cliff notes. I've written on the ABCs of pitching by Harvey Dorfman. I then go into my morning journal and I verbalize instead of writing down, cause I like to move. I verbalize three wins, three gratitudes, my most important task for the day and a start, stop, continue from the last 24 hours of my behavior, my life. Then I go through what I call haggle statements. And every day I say I have, I am, I give, I love, like I have an amazing opportunity to be with coach AB. In her program today, I am world class mental performance coach. I give present moment focus to the task at hand, no matter what it is. And I love mental performance. So I say those things that kind of like prime me for the day and create and create some consistency. And I call success hotline with dr. Rob Gilbert. I listened to an app called imagine golf, which is like a. Three minute daily on the mental game and golf, which I'm obsessed with. And then I listened to my own podcast, mental performance daily to get me fired up. Cause if you're not listening to your own podcast, why are you recording it? If it's not good enough for you to listen to twice after recording it, don't share it with anybody else. Right? That's the morning routine. Then we get home at that point. It's around seven 30 ish. At that point, my wife, who is now seven months pregnant at the time of this recording, she'll get up, come join us, and we'll kind of walk around and play with my daughter a little bit, into breakfast, shower, nine o'clock, try to get into the office. Then I have what I would call a deep work block, which goes from about nine to noon, where that's going to be recording podcasts, doing marketing, email, planning agendas for my upcoming trips if I'm traveling, working with a program. Then from 12 until about six, it's usually one hour or 30 minute zoom calls. Boom, boom, boom. One after the other six to six 30, I kind of shut down admin close up the day, six 30, seven 30. You know, I try to go back, uh, take my daughter into the pool and then we give her a bath. Then I read her a book, get her a bottle. She goes to bed 7 I kind of clean up around the house, hang out with my wife. I sleep lights out, 8 30 rinse and repeat. That's my daily life Monday through Thursday. Now in the past, I've then gotten up Friday, jumped on a plane, gone somewhere to a university. Oklahoma State, Florida State, Women's College World Series, TCU and the Men's College World Series. Oregon was one game. I got Wake Forest and Oral Roberts. So I used to work with networking this year who are in the College World Series. I work with a pitcher on Tennessee who's there. So exciting to watch those guys. Um, and then I would kind of go do that on a weekend or go see one of maybe the 25 major league players or so that I'm working with and go see them in person, videotape their routines, meet with them in the hotel. I usually try to go to places where I got multiple guys playing in a game against each other. So I'm doing multiple guys in a weekend. Come back, rinse and repeat. That's kind of what a daily day in life and the routine of at least me as a mental performance coach looks like. Um, slowly changing here as I have kid number two coming in August. Yeah.

Amanda:

Yeah. Fire me up. And you practice what you preach and everything that you described for the followers that are listening and the fearless fam. I mean, you're listening success checklist and start, stop, continue. And all of these techniques and skills that you are teaching to your athletes. You are practicing, you're involving yourself in the same things that you ask your athletes to do, which is incredible. Well,

Brian:

if I'm asking them to do it, why wouldn't I do it? I mean, what we're teaching here is how to be the most optimal and best version of yourself. So Matt, if I'm asking my athletes to do something, I'm not doing it myself. That makes me a phony. And I will tell you coach AB for a long time. That was me when I was a high school athletic director in Vermont for seven years and I weighed, you know, uh, 60 pounds more than I do right now. I had a waist that was 12 inches bigger than I do right now. I didn't exercise. I didn't sweat before screens. I didn't read. I was grinding. You know what I was doing? I was giving the world my damn B game because I wasn't investing in me. And the best investment that you can make is not a financial investment. It's an investment into yourself. And even though we talk a lot about in pillar eight time management and organization, We're really playing the energy management game. And when you want to look at the energy management game, if you want to be an elite level softball player, you want to be an elite level parent, you want to be an elite level coach, it comes down to mastering what I call E M M S. How you eat, how you move, your mindset, and how you sleep. So some basic fundamental principles that I used to make my transition, or I call it transformation, 60 pounds lighter, better energy. I feel better at 45 than I did at 25. Here's what I would kind of give you a simple framework for. So for eating, Start, start at nine and at five. Don't care what you do. Just don't eat, don't eat before nine. Don't eat after five. Not nice. And then it's maybe not for athletes, right? This is more for like for just general people, transformation wise, and then have a liquid cutoff time. Pull off your liquid at least two hours before bed. So you're not waking up to go, to go, you know, to the bathroom when you're sleeping. That's the eat process for me. Drink a gallon of water, do it between nine and five. Get my calories down nine to five. Give me a better time to process before I go to sleep. Movement swept before screens. I try to do two 45 minute workouts, one inside, one outside. Thank you, Andrew, for selling 75 hard. I've been doing that. That has served me well. It doesn't matter what the workout is. I just need to move. To me, movement grounds my mind. It's more about mental health and physical health, but a double down does both. And then the mindset piece, do a journal every day. verbal or writing, read something every day. 10 pages of a book. You do that. You get through a lot of books in here. Listen to some inspirational podcast, fearless, fast pitch, softball podcast, mental performance, daily, whatever you're going through to educate yourself. And then the sleep piece. Here's my number one thing on sleep, go to bed and get up at consistent times. So my goal, 8 30 to 4 30, it's usually somewhere within about an hour, 8 30 to 9 30, That's my ideal window. I don't hit it every day. I try to, I try to be intentional with it. Sometimes life happens and you got to stay up later. But if you don't know what your ideal day looks like, goes back to our first thing. If you don't know what your ideal day looks like, if you don't know what your ideal week looks like, you can't have one. And as I work primarily in Major League Baseball with starting pitchers, they're on a five day routine, as you know, right? So they got, they come off the mound, They got 120 hours until they get back on the mound. Show me where every one of those hours is going, and I'll show you what your season's going to look like. That's amazing.

Amanda:

Yeah. Success leaves clues. Absolutely. So I love how this conversation is flowing. Tell me more about, you mentioned FSU and LSU and all of these amazing programs that you've worked with. What's been your favorite part of that, and how has that relationship kind of unfolded as you've grown your

Brian:

career? The favorite part, I think of all of that is the relationship and the connection. You know, I mean, going to Tallahassee since 2009 to work with Florida estate, staying at Kalani ADA's house, you know, considering her family, I mean, she sent me a, a. It was pretty cool. It was like an offer letter where my daughter was born that says, you know, we offer Carolyn Kendall Kane a scholarship for the class of 2040, you know, and obviously it's not real, but it was pretty cool. And it's framed up above her crib, like, let's go be an old, you know, let's go play softball somewhere. But then to see like Ellie Cooper, who I had as a camper first time I went to forest state, I was working their softball camp. I think Cooper was in like 10th grade. And she's at the camp and, you know, I know she's committed to Florida State. So I spent a little more time with her and make a connection. And then she goes and plays at Florida State. And then she's a grad assistant there. And then she goes to coach at East Carolina. And now she's back there like 15 years later. And 15 years later, she's the full time mental performance coach with Florida State softball. And when Michaela Enfield gets interviewed on the field in Oklahoma City and is saying, you know, I did a lot of work with our mental performance coach. She has helped me to stay more present and do this. I'm going. they're now not seeing me coach. They're seeing Cou there. That's what it sho be the shadow warrior wor empowering the coaches to then get out of the way, to make sure that they have that was o The World Series. My wife was like, Oh, they just mentioned she's working with Cooper. I go, it's the greatest thing I've ever heard because that's the way it should be. I'm not there every day. She is, she's the one who's doing the empowering. I'm working behind the scenes to make sure that she has the support she needs to work with her team. So to me, the relationships are the most important thing. Uh, you know, the winning, I mean, it's like when you, I want a national was a part of Alabama softball, you know, and uh, 10, 11 and 12, three sec titles, a national title. Um, And then, you know, Alabama or for a four state and 18, I mean, on the college baseball side of things, coastal Carolina, Vanderbilt, Oregon state, Cal State Fullerton. Um, I'm missing somebody else in there. Ole Miss last year, you know, like, um, so sometimes you just get desensitized to the winning, like the winning. The winning to me is not as important as much as the losing hurts like TCU punched her ticket to go to the College World Series. I was fired up for him. I was depressed more for Oregon when they got knocked out by Oral Roberts, you know, this year in the Super Regionals because he's like, you know how much that hurts. So, um, I've kind of become desensitized to the outcomes, uh, and really try to focus on the relationships, the education and the process and the empowerment. That's what really fires me up about it. Because the thing is, like, You know, at some point, we're all gone. At some point, we're all going to die. And when that day comes, and I really think looking at your mortality and saying when that day comes, what do I want on my tombstone? And for me, it's educate, empower, energize other people to be their best. That's what I did. And if I can do that on a daily, on a Today I'm like, by being on your podcast, having a great day, right? So if you don't know the game you're playing, you can't have success. And if you don't know how you define success for yourself, it's going to be done by a scoreboard, by a bank account, by a win loss record, and that's a terrible way to live. So you have to define what success is for you. And for me, success is, did I live in alignment? With my MVP process, my mission, educate, empower, energize others to be their best. My vision, what my plan is for the day that I execute that, that, you know, 24 hour plan, then really my core principles and my core principles like Florida State has FSAC, LSU has Tigers, right? Oklahoma State has the Calgary Way. I have Apples. And if you look at my social media, I usually see a couple of green apples. I know what that stands for. There's three of them educate, empower, energize, but the green apple green means go and apple stands for accountability, present process, love, energy, and service. So for me to have a great day, it has to be revolved around educating, empowering, energizing others. And it has to be revolved around doing it with accountability, a present moment focus, creating a process people can follow, have be loving of the people you work with, bring the damn juice and the energy and serve. You do

an

Amanda:

incredible job at a lot of it. And so that, so part of this podcast is having authentic conversations and hearing you say that you get desensitized to winning and that the scoreboard doesn't matter as much. At what point do you look at your athletes that you're coaching, either one on one or with teams, and they have that realization where, wait, these are life skills. And we, as coaches knew this all along, but they kind of that epiphany on their own, or these, these self realizations and actualizations after working with us. Talk about like an impact. So if you could boil it down to, you know, if I'm sitting across the table from an athlete in a coaching session, or somebody comes to you and says, Caner, I'm struggling with my confidence, how do you define that?

Brian:

How would I define confidence? Yeah, I should have like off the top of my head. Well, talk about

Amanda:

like the skills that you teach. If you need to move the needle and they're, they're coming to you and they're saying, Keener, I've lost all confidence for help. You've kind of talked about this on our MPM calls of like, yeah, confidence is a choice. Like, how do you teach that? And what are those favorite skills that you're like? Yeah. We're going to hit this hard.

Brian:

Yeah. You know, I, I mean, to me, to me, confidence is an action. It's not a feeling. And when you understand that you unlock your potential because I've been around. I've been fortunate and blessed to be around the best athletes in the, in the planet. I mean, Kat Osterman, Monica Abbott, you know, I've had on my podcast to talk about this very, this very topic, but I've been in the UFC corner for world championship fights for men and female fighters. I've had four Sayonara winners. Eight UFC title holders, a Heisman trophy winner. I've lost track of NCAA national pedals because I think it's around 10 or 12. I don't even know anymore because I've gotten desensitized to it. And it's, it is what it is. Um, the confidence piece, most of the athletes I work with, they're looking for two things, consistency and confidence, and to me, confidence. You have to understand that it's not a, it's not a feeling it's an action. And Jake Arrieta, when he won a Cy Young, and when you win a Cy Young, and you're one of my clients, you get a bobblehead up on that shelf. But what he has, he used to write underneath the brim of his hat, which we started doing at TCU back in 2006, he'd write the word ace. And ace stood for acting changes everything, right? Just like you have up on the poster behind you, act big. And act big is acting changes everything, right? Like, act how you want to feel, and you'll start to feel how you act. And Amy Cuddy, who's a social psychologist at Harvard, wrote the book Presence, has the TED Talk seen by probably about 50, 60 million people now, the science and power of body language. And she talked about power posing, right? And the whole thing was, you have to learn to not let how you feel dictate how you act, but let how you act change how you feel. And when. You unlock players with that understanding. And then you say, Hey, when we go walk into home plate, we're grabbing the bat by the barrel in our dominant hand. We're pulling our shoulders back. We're 10 feet tall and bulletproof. And we're walking to home plate. Like we're Rhonda Rousey or Rose Namajunas walk into the octagon, Amanda Nunez who pick your poison. And then when we get to the, I went to the batter's box. We feel the dirt under our feet. As we take possession of the batter's box, we clean it out. We look at a focal point in our bat, take a breath, and then we're attacking the pitcher on that pitch. Right. And same thing for the pitchers. I mean, you look at Jordy ball. picture for Oklahoma now Women's College World Se language and energy in th what it looks like, you k Not during the process. And then afterwards, when she gets interviewed after they went and they're like, Jordy, you threw 72 in the seventh inning, you had to be having the state of Oklahoma behind you and all the fans and all the energy goes early. I was trying to pitch at 70%. I can't believe I threw 72. That's great. You know, and then all the deflection to her teammates. Like so many little nuggets of wisdom in there, you know? So I think the confidence piece is it's gotta, it's gotta be in you before it comes out and what you do, but being in you is not a feeling being in you as an action. And then to enhance that action, we understand that confidence physiologically comes on from what I would call BFS. So the first thing I go to work with an athlete on the one lock confidence is identify your BFS body language, focus, self talk when you're, when you're rocking and rolling, letting her rip and playing good, what's your body language? Like what's, where's your focus? What's your self talk like when you start to struggle and you get the yellow lights, red lights. How does that change? So we have a worksheet, green, yellow, red B. F. S. And when they write that down and they look at it, awareness kicks in and awareness is the first step to growth. What I'm aware of, I can continue to do consistently or I can eliminate from my life. What I'm unaware of is going to control me. So I feel like our hardest job, but our most important job is mental performance coaches is to increase the awareness of the athletes we're working with. As to what they need to do when they're performing their best and how to get back there when they start to struggle, because it's not that you're ever going to avoid red lights. You're not Jordy ball gets in red lights, right? The best athletes in the world get in red lights when they do, they have something to go to, to get back to green. And when they do, they don't show it. You'd never know.

Amanda:

Love that. Fire me up. I was hoping that you would talk about stoplights and failure recovery is huge in softball. So I'm so glad that you mentioned that. I digress from the questions that I wanted to ask you, but you know, we've talked about confidence and how do you define that? Um, tell me about a time. And part of this podcast is building these interviews around everyone talks about success. And you've talked about how we're desensitized as we start to wrap up these, um, you know, outcome accolades instead of focusing on the process. And so. What I would love for you to share is, was there a time in your career or as a coach that you failed and what you learned

Brian:

from it? You know, it's interesting you asked when you failed. And I think, I think part of the benefit of becoming desensitized to the outcome is it works both ways, right? Like you don't get overly excited when, when you win, it's cool that you come back down to earth more quickly, but you also don't go as deep when you fail. And I've always looked at failure as like taking a sword. When you take a sword. in a samurai sword and they stick it in a kiln, they burn it and they take it out and they hammer it with a hammer and they stick it back in and it burns and take it back out and they hammer it. They call that forging, right? Like forging the piece of steel to go from being a piece of steel to like a deadly samurai sword. So I've always had this acronym and I don't know where I got it. So thank you forever. I got it from, but it's called fail forged again in losing. So I try to seek losing opportunities, right? I try to seek those events where like, like, like, Oh, it's why I do a hundred mile runs and iron mans and 60 hour hikes. Cause I'm like, can I do this? And I want to fail because I want to learn and I want to find out where my breaking point is. So there's a lot of times where I've failed, you know, I mean, I've gotten fired by clients and fired by teams. Um, you know, I've, I've, and sometimes that's because they get what they want. I say fired. I just, usually it's not rehired because they get what they want. They're like, Hey, we got it. And we don't have the budget, but we got what we need. Thank you. You know, but there's, um, You also get fired. I mean, it happens, right? And when, and I look at it that way. And then sometimes that's a narrative I tell myself, cause I want to stay edgy. And I tell myself like, Hey, this guy who said he got what he wanted and we're good. He doesn't want to work with anymore. No, he just fired your ass. And he fired you because you weren't good enough to keep him. Cause you weren't giving him enough value. When the reality is I gave him enough value real quick. Did he got exactly what he wanted and solve this problem and he didn't want to pay and he's moving forward respect. But I changed the narrative to myself and I say, you got fired, get better, work harder, become more process oriented. So that I stay, uh, hard on that course. Um, but yeah, failing. Failing, you know, I mean, I tell you, the first time I did an Ironman event in New thousand 16, I jumped into Tempe Town Lake in Arizona. I had been training for a hundred days When I started the training course training plant, I didn't own a bike and I didn't know how to swim. I didn't realize you're supposed to exhale in the water. Like I was going, I was this guy. Now you're not swimming two and a half miles like that, you know, head out of the water. So hire, so what do you do? You reverse engineer a plan. Hired a coach. He took me to get a bike. He taught me how to swim. I basically like hired a meal prep service. I hired an administrative assistant. I'm like, I need to get everything taken care of other than training and sleeping and doing my job. And. I remember showing up to Tempe Town Lake in November of 2016, jumping in the water in Ironman, Arizona, 2. 4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26. 2 mile run, going, I don't know if I'm gonna finish this thing. I've not been able to put all these together in training, and I've not really been able to finish my long trainings, like I just get crushed. And my Ironman coach, he goes, I've had over 100 people cross the finish line, you're gonna do fine. Trust. So I go out there and go, Hey, I don't know if I'm gonna do this, but I'm gonna die trying and finish the race, cross the finish line and go, that was easier than I thought it would be. And I remember saying easier than I thought it would be. And I was excited. I, you know, you hear Brian, you are an iron man. Like it's what you've been visualizing and you're excited and you cross the finish line and you, and it's like, you almost, almost immediately go what's next. So I'm really working hard to get better at celebration and also working hard to get better at. You know, not always going into what's next, but really focusing on what's now, I think what's next, and I'm reading a book called the practice of groundedness by this guy, Brad Stolberg, really, really good about this concept called heroic individualism, which is like the disease of one eye is what I would call it that when I become a head coach, when I get a million downloads on my podcast, when I become a division one college softball player, when I fill in the blank, then I'll be successful. That doesn't happen. That's a, that's a lie, right? It's, it's got to become whether I, whether I get a million downloads, whether I become a head coach, whether I get a division one college scholarship offer, I will be successful because I'm giving it everything I got in alignment with who I want to be and how I want to serve the world. So it's a different perspective on it. That's a great

Amanda:

perspective. I talk about it as dangling the carrot that you never get to eat. You become disinterested in chasing the carrot. And so what you're saying is you're finding those moments to savor the carrot. It's okay to savor the carrot and then find the next carrot. That's great. That's great. So I could not have this conversation go by without asking you about this. And I know you've talked about this on our coaching calls as well. The myth. Of Sisyphus. Please tell me. Yep. But we got to get into it. I would love for you to tell that story to the fearless fam and we'll get a YouTube video of this out too. But, um, this is, you know, one of your favorite stories to tell. And so I would love for you to share it.

Brian:

Well, you know, coach, it goes all the way back to July 4th, 2000. I walk into a Barnes and Noble in Boston, Massachusetts across the campus from Fenway Park and my microphone is now or my camera is no longer focused. Let's try to fix this. Here we go. I pick up this actual copy of this book right here, Heads Up Baseball by Ken Reviza. And the page is falling out of here. I got my name written on the side of it. Like almost everything and every page is underlined. And somewhere in this book, I can't find the exact page. I should notice off the top of my head and I saw it, is the myth of Sisyphus. And that's the first person I ever heard talk about Sisyphus was Dr. Ken Reviza, the guy whose face I have tattooed on my chest, who's my daughter's middle name is Kendall, named after him. But on page 16, Sisyphus here, you see pushing, pushing the rock. A little hard to see here, but you can see pushing the rock up the mountain. And the idea here is that this guy, this moral Sisyphus overheard these conversations of the gods in old Greek mythology. And then he started telling everybody and what they had heard, right? What he heard was the meaning of life, the meaning of success, the meaning of softball. And he went and told everybody and the gods were like, man, you should not be eavesdropping on our conversation. And you sure should not have told everybody what we were talking about. So, you know, we're going to do Zeus, obviously the king of gods, right? The head of the gods was like, we're going to behead this guy. And everyone said, Zeus, no, no, no, no, no. It's too easy. Make it harder. Put them at the bottom of that Hill, give them that rock and have them push that rock at the top of the mountain. And when it gets to the top of the mountain, we'll roll the rock back down and the guy will go crazy. Cause we'll never be able to accomplish the goal of getting the rock to the top of the mountain. So Zeus liked that idea, you know, more punishment and Sisyphus pushed the rock. And the first time he did chest press, the next time he put his shoulder into it, then he put his shoulder into it, then he put his back into it. And he started pushing the rock up the mountain a lot of different ways. And as he got closer to the top of the mountain, he actually would take the rock right to the top, and then he would actually kick it back down the mountain. And the gods looked at him like, what is wrong with this guy? And Sisyphus said. My goal is not to get the rock at the top of the mountain because once I do, then the task is done. I don't want the task to be done. I want to keep learning. I want to keep growing. I want to keep finding different ways to push the rock, different ways to challenge myself. So he found a lot of enjoyment in pushing the rock. And he shifted his goal from get the rock to the top of the mountain to how good can I be? pushing the rock. How many different ways can I find to push the rock? And that's ultimately what I believe is the foundation of process over outcome, which outcome is get the rock to the top of the mountain processes fall in love with pushing the rock. And I think if you actually want to get the rock to the top of the mountain, metaphorically win a national championship, state championship, get your college scholarship, whatever your outcome is. The process to get there is fall in love with what you're doing. So it's interesting as I, as I, this season, you know, pick up, uh, just this past week, I've had, I picked up three new clients playing major league baseball. My number one job is get them to fall back in love with baseball because they have a love hate relationship with it when it becomes a job and there's a lot of money at stake and there's a lot of scrutiny and there's a lot of pressure and the opponent, if you go to the opponent's parking lot, they drive nice cars too, right? So like the pressure and the adversity is heightened. You have to have a better skill set to deal with that. And that first skill set I think is gratitude that you get to do it and falling back in love with what you're doing, because that's only going to help you handle the adversity and be more resilient. So good. I

Amanda:

love when you share that story and I cannot wait for the fearless fan to, to understand that, that story and just all the lessons that can be unpacked with that. So thank you. So the final question that I want to ask all my guests is. This is the final question. You are a time traveler and you can go back in time and give your past self one message. What would you tell yourself?

Brian:

Oh boy. Here's your podcast host. Anytime you ask a question and someone goes, Oh boy, or that's a good one. Ask that question all the time. That's a really good question. What would I do if I could time travel back? Um, I would, I would, it depends where I went, how far I went back different stages of life. But if I looked at all those stages, like back to high school, college. It would be this. It'd be number one. Control what you can control. Let go of what you can't. Number two, care less about other people's opinions and more about your principles. And with that, I would say live out of principle, not preference. And if you don't have a set of core principles, which I have apples, then you don't have, then you don't have principles. So you can only live out of preference. So you start getting into the comparison game of what is that person wearing? What's that person driving? How many things are they getting? What's she doing over there instead of you truly identifying who you are. Um, and we always are told that, right? You got to know who you are. Well, how do I do that? That's a set of core principles. Your principles are who you are. Your behaviors are who you are. And if your behaviors are not in alignment with a set of core principles, there's, you're, you're building a house on sand. So you have to first identify your principles. Then you have to work to intentionally live in alignment with those principles. That's who you are. You're not who you say you are. You're, you're who you behave. You are. Um, so I'd say control what you can control about a principle, not preference. And then ultimately I would probably say this too shall pass like as hard as you think it is compared to what it's not that hard, as hard as you think it is. It's only going to get harder as you go. So stop wanting the path to stop. Stop wanting the path to be prepared for you and start preparing yourself for whatever path you're going to face, because our goal, our goal is, is not to make it easy. Our goal is to allow you to be able to handle whatever hard comes your way. Right? Like our goal is not that you have good habits. Our goal is that you know how to make and break habits so that for the rest of your life, you can create good habits and you can break the ones that you need to because your entire life, you're going to have habits. You need to create better for wherever you're at. At that stage, you're going to have habits you need to break. So good.

Amanda:

And, and Brian of the past is looking at you with giant eyes. I need a notebook. That's amazing.

Brian:

He's looking at you going, who are you? Yeah. I'm looking back at him and going, who are you?

Amanda:

I love your energy. I love our conversations as always. I know we've got your Twitter, your Instagram at Brian Cain Peek, your Mental Performance Daily Podcast. Is there any other place that you're really active right now that we can follow you along your journey?

Brian:

Yeah, I mean, mental performance daily is kind of kind of the number one because they get to hear my voice every day. And if I'm doing anything new, like, if I'm running a softball group coaching program for players or for coaches, I'm going to mention it on mental performance daily Instagram. I'm going to mention it there as well. But ultimately, if you're a coach. If you're an athlete listening to this, the other only thing I would suggest you do is go to briancain. com and then I click on my free courses and I have a free course for coaches. It's three days, free course, free course for athletes is three days, not like 72 hours, three days or how many hours that is like, like 20 minutes a day for three days. And then I have, um, Baseball masterclass working on a softball masterclass, but that that baseball masterclass will give you a really good understanding of my 10 pillars of mental performance mastery system as it relates to baseball softball. And those two sports are so similar outside of the pitching piece that you know, the, the, that masterclass will be beneficial until we get the softball one done.

Amanda:

Yeah. Love that. And if you are a coach that wants to learn more about this too, I know I am an NPM certified coach. I've got my, I've got it in the background and, uh, I love, I love what I get to do and I'm, I'm passionate. And a lot of that comes from the, the tactile illness and the 10 pillars. And again, going back to the beginning of this conversation of we practice what we preach and I'm just so thankful. For you and, and for the certification and the time that I've, I've literally got to witness in the front row, your work. So I am incredibly thankful for your time today. And as always, you're all your time. Um, but yeah, we'll, we'll link some show notes below and, uh, just wanted to say, thank you again for your

Brian:

time. Thank you for having me. It's been a, been a privilege to sit here and get to know you better and have a chance to chat, you know, both online and offline and look forward for us to continue to collaborate and do some more work together. So thanks for having me. Amazing. Thank you. My pleasure.

People on this episode

Contributor

Amanda Schaefer

Host