The Fearless Warrior Podcast

121: How to Be More Consistent by Building Better Systems with Justin Su'a

• Amanda Schaefer

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Today, I go behind the scenes with Justin Su'a, Podcast Host, Author, and CEO of Performance Advisory Group, to show how elite athletes design simple systems that hold up under pressure. We unpack environmental design, feedback loops, and why competence beats confidence when it matters most.

Episode Highlights:

• Systems by design vs systems by default
• Separating life from sport with a "mental locker"
• Environmental design that makes good habits easy
• Defining and owning a real process
• Guiding youth athletes through tiny starts and constraints
• Preparation receipts to anchor confidence

Connect with Justin:

IG: @justinsua - *DM the word "IMPACT" to join his newsletter*

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Meet Justin Sua And His Work

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the Fearless Warrior Podcast, a place for athletes, coaches, and parents who know the value of a strong mindset. I'm your host, Coach AB, a mental performance coach on a mission, former softball coach, wife, and mom of three. Each episode, we will dive deep into all things mental performance, mindset tools, and how to rewire the brain for success. So if your goal is to gain the mental edge and learn the secrets of mental performance, you're in the right place. Let's tune in to today's episode. If you've spent any time around elite athletes, coaches, or high performers, there's a good chance you've heard or seen Justin Sua's work, even if you didn't realize it. He has worked behind the scenes with some of the highest performers in professional sports, helping them create elite systems, stay grounded under pressure, and win at the highest level. Justin Sua is the CEO of Performance Advisory Group, a special advisor to elite athletes, coaches, executives, and the host of Increase Your Impact, Digging Deep, and Losing Control. He's the author of Parent Pep Talks and Mentally Tough Teens, and his work has been featured by ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Forbes, CNBC, and The Athletic. I consider him to be a great mentor and someone who I have followed from the very beginning of my career. Justin, welcome to the Fearless Warrior Podcast.

SPEAKER_01

Coach AB, thanks so much. That was uh quite the introduction. So happy to be here with you.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I'm excited to jam. You and I have uh kind of had a chance to prep this, and I'm ready for you to pull back the curtain of what it's like to work with some of the world's greatest and you know, the day in the life of the career that you've had, right? Of you've been in the game and you've got some great things that I've held on to for a long time. One of my favorites, little by little, a little becomes a lot. I hear that in my head a lot. So I'll let you kind of take it away. For those that don't know you, where are you at? What are you doing? What's the day in the life for Justin Sue?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, no, that's a great question. And uh, oh, we can, there's so much to talk about. I'm I'm sure we're gonna get to it. Essentially, a day in the life is spend as much time with my wife and kids as possible. I I I live in Florida, and um, as you said, as the CEO of the performance advisory group, what I do is I help these professional athletes, primarily 99% of the athletes are elite professionals from every sport, from Major League Baseball to the NBA to the NFL, PGA, ATP, you you name it. And it's helping them design systems of consistency. So I'll either fly to them and join coaching staffs and talk about how to design a system to uh give better feedback to players, and then go to the next place and be with a PGA golfer for the week and design a system of how to quiet his mind and focus on his commitments to uh jump in on a phone call and and supporting another athlete with uh creating a post-performance routine or uh communication between um her and her caddy, whatever it may be, but it's uh in and out of a lot of different clubhouses and locker rooms and and um and a lot of times on a phone and Zoom. And so it's it's been a lot of fun.

Systems Behind Elite Consistency

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And selfishly, we have a lot of softball athletes, and I'm sure a lot of baseball fans. And I know you don't like to disclose, you know, who you're working with, and we see it, right? We get to see and follow along. But in this past year, what's it like to be in the dugout with some of these teams that have reached, you know, World Series and championship level of play where everything is on the line, they're chasing the ring. What I mean, what is that like being with those teams? Can you give us a behind-the-scenes peek?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, what's really interesting that a lot of people don't realize is number one is a phrase I always say, and we're going to talk about this entire episode, is wherever you see consistency, a system is in place. I always say, wherever you see consistency, a system is in place. And a corollary principle to that is your system is perfectly designed to get the results you consistently get. And so when I'm in these organizations, it doesn't surprise me to see that every single athlete, every single coach is executing a set of systems. They have their routines, they have their processes, whether they feel good, whether they don't feel good during the playoffs, during regular season. It's they always execute these systems. And it is amazing to watch how they how they do that and what it entails and how they're able to execute these systems at the highest level of stress and under pressure. And also at the same time, they're human. It's it's so fascinating to hear these conversations to hear them say that yes, they have some fear, but they focus on their system and what they're gonna do about it. Yes, they have some nerves, but they have a system on how to channel those nerves. Yes, they get frustrated if they're not playing as much as they want to play, but they have a system on how to prepare themselves so that they'll be ready when it's their time to play. And so it is just so interesting to see all of these different athletes in whatever sport execute their systems uh to help them and their team be successful.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And what's the fine line between system and superstition? Because we see it, right? Some of our favorite players. And if we're not in the system, we assume, oh, well, they click their bat twice on their left cleat, and this player does this every time, or a pitcher does this before he throws every pitch. And we assume, oh, that's they're just doing that because it's a superstition, but you're seeing it as a system. What's that conversation like?

System Vs Superstition

SPEAKER_01

Uh sometimes it's not a system. It is a superstition. Yeah. So there is there are superstitions. And I don't think clicking a bat twice or it, I mean, it could be a system. Uh, I I think anytime about a system essentially is a collection of a collection of behaviors you can control that you can execute under pressure under any moment that increases the probability of success. That's what a system does, increases the probability of success. But if you think you have to tap your bat twice to increase the probability of success, then that's more of a superstition. And that's okay. There's a lot of athletes with superstitions. I can't step on a line. Okay. It doesn't mean that if you do step on a line, that's going to indecrease your probability of success. And so, again, these are professional elite athletes, and there are some who they just do it just to do it. And so I think it's it's understanding and having a conversation and saying what it is is, oh, if I don't eat that chicken, for them to realize that, hey, okay, that doesn't mean that I'm not going to go out there and I'm not going to perform well because I didn't eat that piece of chicken. Um, yeah, that's more of a superstition, which some players, I don't take those superstitions away from them. If that works for them, we'll call it like it is. It's their lucky rabbit's foot, and that's okay if that supports them. But I wouldn't say that's a system.

SPEAKER_00

So a great example of a system is long before game day, long before they get even to the clubhouse. What are some systems as an example for some of these athletes and parents? What what is a a good system example?

SPEAKER_01

Awesome. I'll give you an example. I give it right with some multiple examples.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

Building Systems By Design

SPEAKER_01

So every system starts with a purpose. It starts, we we work backwards. So there's outputs and inputs. Output is your desired state or what you want to accomplish. And so what I say is, what do you deem as successful? Well, we what we talk about often is what do you want to be more consistent in? That is the initial conversation. I'll sit down with an athlete and I'll say, okay, what do you want to be more consistent in? And systems have two, we talk about two blocks. There are systems by design and there are systems by default. So default systems are the path of least resistance. If you don't do anything, where does your body, your attention, your time, where do you naturally gravitate towards? If you just observe that, it's gonna go towards a path of least resistance. And many times it's it's not optimal, it's not ideal. And so we're trying to design systems by design. So I asked that question what do you want to be more consistent at? Very specific example. We have a baseball player. He is a veteran, meaning he's played for a very long time. He's an older player, he has his wife, he has his kids, he has his contracts. He doesn't, he he told me he's like, I don't need mental skills, I don't need like Briaggy. I'm I'm gonna, I know how to operate, I know how to do this. I want to be more consistent in separating home from playing. I have a lot going on. I want to be a great husband, I want to be a great dad. Uh, we have things going on with health-wise, with my family and my loved ones. And when I get into the clubhouse and when I'm about to play, I just want to focus on baseball. He said, I'm good at it, but I want to get even better and be more consistent. That's where we need to design a system. And so the first thing we did, you can't change what you're not aware of. So for the first series, for the first few games, all we did, we is we analyzed his current system. We did nothing. All I did is every day I said, because I was with him, I said, okay, let's talk about it. Pay attention to when the outside world tends to creep into playing on the field. And as we continue to talk, he says it's right when he walks into the clubhouse. He it's still on his mind when he's in the clubhouse, it's still on his mind during early work, it pops into his mind during games. And again, he's still able to play. And so after analyzing the system, we thought, okay, let's create something. Let's start from the very beginning. And another thing about a system is you can't all you can't guarantee success of the system. And we have to also understand it's a lagging indicator. So, meaning there's leading indicators, things you can't control where you get direct feedback, and then there's lagging indicators, things like the best example I use is standing on stepping on a scale. You can't go and work out. So you might step on a scale, the number's gonna be a certain number, you go work out really hard, have a one good day of a diet, and then step on the scale and it's gonna drop. No, it takes time. So those are called lagging indicators. And so we said, great, what is one thing, one thing, that's another principle of the system, it has to be simple. What is one thing that you can do that will increase the probability of you separating home from work? I never say we're gonna guarantee anything because we can't. What can we do to increase the probability of it? And so what we landed on is he grabbed a book, we introduced something called the mental locker. So he grabbed the journal, and in his journal, he would just do a brain dump. So when when players come into the locker room, you change out of your street clothes and you put on your work clothes, your baseball uniform and your clothes. He wanted to do the same thing with his mind. So he took off, when he took off his street clothes, he also took off his street mindset. And he would literally write in his journal everything that's on his mind: financial things, grocery shopping, dry cleaning, uh, taking a kid, like things with his family, things he needs to do with for his wife, all of his honeydews and daddy's stuff. And he cares really a lot, all of that stuff. He would write it all down and he would look at it. And he would to himself say, I'll I'll be back to this. I'll pick this up after the game. And it was a physical cue. He wrote it, he looked at it, closed his book, and he put it in his locker, his mental locker. And then he went and he played. And then when the game was over, he'd come back and put his regular street clothes on, grab his journal, and look back at it and say, Okay, I'm gonna pick this back up as I go back to my family. For him, I'm not saying for everybody, but for him, that reduced the noise and helped him separate work life from home life. And that's just one example. I I can give you like 20 more. Um, but that is a simple system that he has created to increase the probability of separating work from home. That was that's an example of one. And a system needs to be able to be done under stress. It doesn't matter how you feel, it doesn't matter where you are, if you can't execute the system under stress, or if you can't do it when you're feeling bad, you don't you don't have a system.

SPEAKER_00

And can you go to that system? And one of the things that I had prepared for you is I wanted to ask you about this. Simple doesn't mean easy. You have to remember to execute it. I think we have this idea in our mind of that's so simple, Justin. I hired you to tell me to to brain dump in my journal. That's so simple. But if they're not executing on it, like you said, whether you're under stress, whether you're under pressure, you're not feeling like it, simple doesn't mean easy.

Environmental Design That Drives Habits

SPEAKER_01

So I will, so there's a caveat to that. So there is a caveat to that. So I'll give you an example. So in systems design, yes to a point. In some cases, yes. And in some cases, it is grit. It is, it is grind, it is uh discipline, is remembering. And when you're truly designing a system, you need to account for the human factors. Lack of uh we we will forget. Uh sometimes we're exhausted, sometimes we don't have energy. And so the system needs to account for that. Um, if in some of the systems that I like to design, we have to do it. If they're not doing it, it's the system's fault. You don't have a good system. And so it's that's a completely different. So that's why environmental design is so different. I'll give you a couple of examples. Uh let's say the grocery store you go, you go to, case of the grocery store. What's the name of the grocery store you go to?

SPEAKER_00

Ivy.

Feedback Loops And Simple Starts

SPEAKER_01

Okay. Um, so that doesn't exist in Florida. I've never heard of that grocery store. Um, so every state has their grocery stores. Okay, so but there's certain there's certain commonalities in grocery stores. So if you think about your grocery store, whoever's listening to this, where we obviously many times for those who drink milk and eat eggs, like milk and eggs like is something that you tend to need often. Like you get go through it in your families, and you would think a grocery store for convenience, the milk and groceries is right there in the front. You walk in, boom, right there. Where does the milk and eggs tend to be? Way in the back, right? Way in the back. Every single store. If you go down the cereal aisle, you tend to notice in the cereal aisle the kids' sugary, eye-popping, bright cereals are on the bottom, and the healthy, uh, more bland cereal is at the top. You just think about children. Kids are gonna look at the bottom, they're gonna be down at the bottom. It's gonna catch their attention. You think about the bakery. You walk in, the smell, the bakery is usually near the front on the left or on the right, to grab you with the smells of the the bread, or now they're putting them near the back sometimes. But you used to be like boom, like right there in the front. And then after you make all these decisions, decision fatigue, you go to the front, and what do we have right by the cash register? Your dopamine hit of candy. And to make that last minute, oh, you know what, I do need that Snicker bar. Oh, you know what, I do need that that uh whatever, that, the, th, those, uh, that licorice. This is environmental design. The environment is the invisible hand that shapes behavior. They do it on purpose called environmental psychology. Um, and so that is what systems design is as well. If we have somebody, if I have a client who is not executing the system, rather than saying, oh, you got to remember, you got to remember. That's my job to design a better system for them. Either say, we're gonna take that and throw it out the trash, or we need to figure out somehow, that's now a constraint. I don't want you to have to remember it. I don't want you to have to grind. I want to create the system so much that you almost do it by default, where it is almost so simple that you're like, oh my goodness, I can't, I can do this. I'll give you an example. I'll give you a very clean example. I'm working with an executive of a professional sports team, and he has this goal to work out. He, I mean, we talk about physio, just physiologically, just getting movement and so forth. And we designed a system. And at first he couldn't execute it. He didn't go, he couldn't go to the gym. We tried for an hour, couldn't do it. 30 minutes, couldn't do it. Okay. And he's like, Oh, I gotta, I gotta have grit grit and willpower. No, you don't. No, you don't. It's it's a fault of the system. Let's just design a better system. And so then let's do workout in a house. Let's do a workout in a house, couldn't do it, didn't do it. And then we said, okay, now let's just go for a run. Let's just let's just run. Let's run for 30 minutes. Couldn't run for 30 minutes, couldn't run for five minutes. I did this. Walk to the corner and come back every day. Couldn't do it, didn't do it. And so we're like, okay, we're learning about the system. Okay, interesting. Now we ended up for months trying to figure it out, trying to figure it out. We're collecting data, we're we're trying to understand why his time constraints, he's traveling, he's exhausted, children. There's just things that are derailing a system. And so then we came down to this. You know what? This is what we're gonna do. Before you shower, do one squat every day. One thing he's gonna do every day, one singular squat. And he's like, that is dumb. I was like, no, no. It said, well, we haven't been able to do this. Let's start from the smallest molecule, little by little, little becomes a lot. Let's do one squat. One squat. So we did it after an entire week. He's like, I did it. Great. Let's turn it into two squats. He did that for a straight week before he showered. And then we threw in one jumping jack and two squats, and then two jumping. Literally, we started sacking it. To this day, the man works out every day for an hour at the gym. It ended up, he kept adding to it and adding to it and adding to it. We were just, we talk every week, and he says, it's crazy. Now he has a workout execution every single day. And this is what he says. He goes, Justin, I don't have to think about it. I don't have to grind. I don't have to, it's not discipline. It's something that we slowly started to grow. So we designed the system slowly over time. And so, yes, it started very simple. And with my clients, if they aren't executing it, rather than beat up on themselves, I say, okay, we need a better system. And so that's that's the that's the philosophy that we use.

SPEAKER_00

And we're not talking about youth athletes. We're not talking about someone who's just starting in their sport. We're talking about elite athletes. And what I want our listeners to hear is we are all human. And if the most elite of the elite athletes that you're watching on TV, winning World Series, chasing rings, getting paid millions of dollars, we're the same. And so if we can apply these same principles, we all have access to it. We have access to design systems. Let me ask you this, Justin. One of the things I noticed with a lot of my clients is I send them notebooks and I take notes in the same notebook. And when I send out these notebooks to athletes, one of the constraints was a lot of the times they're taking sessions before hitting lessons. Or they're taking sessions. One of my athletes is constantly in an airport on the weekends, coming back from a prospect camp. And what I noticed was if they left their notebook in their check-in bag, or they left their notebook in the car, or they're in mom's car and normally they go to lessons in dad's car. I said, okay, well, what's what's a better way to do this? We created a digital format of the same journal so that they can log in on their phone, they could log in on mom's phone, and it's digital. Is that a system? That's an environmental change system.

SPEAKER_01

Is what I mean. That is what it looks like. Exactly right. It's like instead of beating up on yourself and oh, remember your book, remember your book. You are a systems architect. You're like, okay, let me let me make that let me make it easier to do the right thing. And it's about creativity. If we get mad at kids, it's like, oh, you're not working your pre-bat pitch routine. Well, that's a that's a system, then it's a system thing. So help them engineer something to make it happen. I'll give you an example. I'll here I'll give you another example. So I have a I have a uh I have a professional, I have a professional client who um who literally would not, he's busy, he's not gonna return my calls. Mind you, he doesn't return my calls, he doesn't return my texts. Uh, but he loves it, but he's he's in Germany, and then he's in Japan, and then he's in China, and then he's home. These athletes are all over the world. And so I thought to myself, okay. And then he started to feel bad. Justin, I'm so sorry. I'm so like, no, don't apologize to me. It's your system. We obviously need to design something that is appropriate for you. But he's like, Oh, I still need this, and when I want to talk to you, it's two o'clock in the morning your time. And so this is all we design. And he wouldn't respond to texts. So this is what we did. He wanted to optimize a system for composure. He wanted to be have more composure. And so this is all we did. At the end of every day, uh, me, him, and his coach are on a text thread. And I asked him, on a scale of one to 10, how well were you composed today? Like, how much were you able to uh how much composure did you have today? And all he did was send me a singular number. And now here's the thing: his coach was always with him. I knew that his coach is always gonna be with him. So I'm like, okay, here are the variables. His coach is always with him. He's not responding to me. He doesn't like to text, he doesn't like to talk on the phone until these sporadic moments, but we're not getting data points to understand the system's changing so much, I'm not aware of what's happening. He would send me a singular number and we would start plotting data points. And those who aren't watching, and this is all we did, this is what we would get. We now we see his composure rating, and what we would discuss every single day, I'd look at it every day and be able to say, Oh, on this date you're at a two, and then the next day you're at a nine. And then I would send an audio. What did you do, or what did you notice? Then his coach would chime in, and then he would kind chime in. And what was really interesting, if you look at this, for those who can who uh are watching it, like so. After this bad day, he created a new system, and then now his default is much higher. So he used to be like, he used to be up down, up down, up down, and then it got so bad, and it got so bad, and then he learned something there, and then once you know, he was able to stabilize up there. We didn't talk breathing one time, we said nothing about visualization, we said nothing about routines. It created this, the system was creating an awareness, and he ended up figuring it out himself just by being more aware, but that was a system we designed. Now he responds every single day with a singular number. To your point, just like you did, we designed a system that helped him learn from himself. That's that's all it is. And it looks different for everybody, it looks different for everybody. You just have to understand the constraints.

Hard Work: Necessary Not Sufficient

SPEAKER_00

You just keyed in on a point that I try to explain is I can't possibly know what your daughter needs, what your athlete needs. I'm not just gonna throw all these tools at them. I love at the beginning, I wrote this down. Analyze the system. Awareness is the first step. And I think that's a mistake for the parents listening, for the coaches listening, we immediately jump in and say, Hey, try this, do this, do some breath work, add this to your routine, tell yourself this. And the analogy that I always use is if I was a hitting coach and I said, Hey, Justin, you know, bring your kid, teach them how to hit, I'll be their hitting coach. And you bring them to me. And without looking at their swing, I immediately start changing things. What do you think of me as a hitting coach?

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. That's a great point.

SPEAKER_00

It's a cringe. You wouldn't like parents, you would never trust a hitting coach that just immediately started throwing things at your kid. So why do we do that on the mental side? It's the same thing.

SPEAKER_01

That is such a good point. Exactly right. Whenever a client reaches out and wants to work together, I said, I want to see you, I want to see you in your environment. Uh so I had a client, he uh I flew into his house. I stayed, I stayed in his city for about four days. I had dinner with him, his family. I went to sports event, he had like an event and he had like uh just did a whole I just I just wanted to observe. I just wanted to sit there. I I was at his practice, I was at his matches, um, I went in, yeah, and just hung out with him just to see him in many different places to see, okay, let's see what we're working with. Because to your point, exactly. Um, and systems are complex and adaptive, and what you what was happening at one moment might change completely in the next moment. So I love that you said that. Let's not jump to uh immediately coming in and fix you can't change what you're not aware of.

SPEAKER_00

So good. Well, for sake of time, I have so many questions I want to ask you, but this one I thought has been slightly controversial. And I can hear my lifting coach tell us constantly hard work creates success. And I know your take on this is that hard work does not guarantee success. And I would love for you to talk about this this concept, this idea that as athletes, we're told if you if you work hard, you put in the work, everything will align. And it's worse.

Trust The Process Only If It Exists

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. I I think so. There's a concept called necessary but not sufficient. And and I mean, there's a lot of things to discuss. Uh first of all, we got to define success. That's a whole nother podcast episode. Like, how do we define what do we mean? What do we mean by success? Um there are many, I mean, there are many teams. Like I'll just tell you, we I'm a member of a of a team. We just got knocked out of a playoffs. We work so, so hard. The players work so hard. And in many worlds, they failed. They would say they failed, and they worked hard and it didn't guarantee success. But in sports, I always I never say anything's guaranteed. It's always, how do we increase the probability of it? How do we I think hard world can increase the probability of success, but then there's hard there, then there's necessary but not sufficient. I think hard work is necessary, but it's not sufficient. Um, focus, necessary but not sufficient. Grit, necessary but not sufficient, resilience, necessary but not sufficient. And it's just a collection of all of these things that will increase the probability of success. And then, as you know, in pro sports, you can do everything right and still lose. And there could be moments where you don't work hard and you just you just beat the other team. There's been very a lot of moments, just individually, where there might be a player listening to this and they're working hard, working hard, even harder than some of their teammates, but they're not, they're not getting the playing time that their teammates are. They think to themselves, wait, why am I working so hard? And my teammate doesn't practice as hard as I do, doesn't show up to as many practices as I do. Is but they get they're the ones who are getting all the success. And so that's why it's sometimes hard to uh cause as a correlation and causation to say, oh, uh if I work hard, I'm guaranteed to have success. Not necessarily. And again, I'm more I I see where the coaches who say that, I under, I am a fan of hard work. Yes, I am not anti-hard work. I'm yes, work extremely hard to increase the probability of success. And there are other variables and factors, and we can't guarantee success. We there are many times in our lives where we worked really hard for something and then didn't get it, didn't get it, didn't achieve it. That doesn't mean our hard work was in vain necessarily. Um, we learned a lot from it, and and the the we can take that hard work because what I don't want us to think is we work hard. Here's the problem with that, that that mindset when you only think about that in a vacuum. If you work hard and don't succeed, work hard and don't succeed, work hard and don't succeed, what that's gonna teach you if you have that belief is if there's something that you want and the probability of achieving it is very difficult, you're not even gonna try because you're like, my hard work doesn't matter because I'm probably not gonna get it. And so that's why I not necessarily don't disagree with the statement. I just think it is um incomplete. I think it's incomplete. And you knew that about me.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I baited you, but I love it. So so we've talked about systems, and here's another one that we hear a lot is trust the process. Trust the process. It's a it's a huge buzzword. And a lot of the times we say, well, we've talked about systems today. If you don't have a system, it's gonna go to a default, right, instead of a design. And so, can you talk about what does trust the process mean to you? It kind of ties in with what we've been talking about.

SPEAKER_01

Yep. I I've actually heard people say that, and I've had coaches tell me they hate that phrase because it's so cliche, it's so vanilla. And I say when it is cliche and vanilla and is has no meaning behind it, yes, it is just empty words. Um, but whenever someone's like, trust the process. If a player, if I'm with a player or a coach, and like, yeah, we just gotta trust the process, I will literally ask, What's the process? And they'll say, Wait, what? I was like, what process are you trusting? And then they that just all of a sudden they're just confused, like, oh, like my process of like success, what is it? And if you can't answer that question, if I can't hand you a sheet of paper and a pen and you can't write it and draw it for me, whether it be in a flow chart or a list or a step-by-step or what it looks like, then you don't have a process. It's an empty phrase when you don't have one. But if you do have a process and you do have something that you work towards, then it is very valuable. You can't trust a process you don't have. And so, in order to trust a process, you need to have a process. In order to have a process, you like you need to create a process. You need to know where you need a process. And so, usually, if you're asking yourself, okay, where do I need a process? It's something that it you need to do every single day. If there's something that happens repeatedly, I would put a process around there. There's my thumb up emoji. I would put a process around there. If it's something that you you don't do well under pressure, I would put a process around there. Like I would, you would establish a process uh for that or a system for that. And if it's something that's you have to like you don't enjoy doing, if it's something like you just don't enjoy doing, you should create a system or a process around that. And so, like for us parents right now, we're talking about taxes this time of year, like, oh, taxes or something that you you hate doing, create a system or a process for you to do it, a checklist to move to move through it. And so, yes, I I think trust the process is great, but it is empty if you can't back it up with and show the receipts of what that actually means.

Coaching Youth Through Constraints

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and to speak even to our youth athletes, I think when you're looking at when someone's first starting, eight, nine, 10-year-old, and they're just starting to fall in love with the sport, that's an age where if you ask them to create a process, you're gonna have to be heavily involved as a parent or a coach. Yes. And then they get to their preteen years and their teen years, and then we say, Oh, why is my teenager not doing this? Why are they not doing the process? And I think one of the things that I could speak very loudly on is it's okay for parents to be involved. And if you want to delegate something to them, you want them to go to bed at a certain time, you want them to increase their protein, you want them to work out in the basement, you want them to get their reps in in the backyard. And we throw our hands up and we say, Well, my athlete's not they're not doing their process. What's your advice to parents?

SPEAKER_01

Yes, I very similar to what we were just talking about. Let's just take, give me one of those. Which one do you want to talk about? Let's get very specific.

SPEAKER_00

She's she's not getting her swings in. She's I want her to go to the backyard and get her swings in, the nets set up, the tease, all I buy her all the gear, she's got the bat, she's just not getting the reps in.

Confidence, Competence, And Receipts

SPEAKER_01

Excellent. So every single system or every process has constraints. So constraints is anything that blocks the person from executing the process. Constraints could be internal, it could be external. So it could be time. It could be uh the her daughter's uh desire to do it. That could be a constraint. It could be um her attitude, it could be there could be a lot of different things. So you got to ask yourself, what are the reasons? Not excuses, but what could be the reasons that this person does not do it? Like what my child does not do it? And then it could be maybe the expectations. I want you to get a hundred swings. Maybe that's just too daunting for the child. Maybe a hundred strings is ideal, ideal, but that's just too much. And then we, and then the question, if I'm the parent, I'm saying, okay, how can I start to create the habit? What if I go to tell myself, my tell, tell my daughter, okay, we just need to create momentum. So the thing about the process is the flywheel, it starts, we say bullets before cannonballs. And so what essentially what that means, cannonballs takes a lot of resources, time, energy, and attention. And so when I see a lot of players or people or parents trying to get their children to execute the process, it's daunting for a kid sometimes. Even if it's not daunting to you, you're like, just 30 minutes, just 30 minutes is not that big of a deal. Well, to that child who doesn't love it, who doesn't want to do it, maybe they want to do it, but they just don't have the habit yet. That is daunting. Like the CEO who couldn't even walk to the corner and back. Like he said, he goes, Justin, that's this is gonna sound ridiculous, but that is a lot for me right now. To walk 500 yards to the corner, uh 50 yards of the corner and back, he couldn't even do it. And so as a parent, I'm like, okay, how do I engineer this behavior? Okay, great. Let's try this. I would tell my daughter, one swing. Literally, let's just say five swings. Five swings on the T. Not even quality swings. Just I want you to get used to getting into the cage and taking five swings. And that's it. And then it's, and then every day, five swings, or maybe we can even just say one swing for now, just to get into the habit of it. Just like that one squad. And then here's the thing: you have to keep score. You have to keep track. And so I like the one of the reasons we love sports. So think it, think about this. It's there's practice games and real games. Practice games are a little bit boring because like the question is, what's the score? What's the score? And even though we're not keeping score, everyone's kind of keeping score in their mind. It's like we kind of know the score. And so with our kids, even with the athletes I work with, we put up our scorecard. And so we start tracking it. Did you do what you said you're gonna do? And you put up a little scorecard in your daughter's room. And then she checks off, yes, did it. And then the next day, yes, did it. And then the next day, yes, did it. All of a sudden they start gaining momentum. And then you sit with your daughter one week later, you said, you just did seven days in a row. Actually, on Saturday, you didn't do it. What what happened there? Oh, I had my I whatever. We you decide, okay, why did that happen? But you did six out of seven. Okay, great. Now we'll plan ahead. Okay, now if you're gonna go out with your friends, well, you should do it beforehand. And then they just get in the in the and she gets in the momentum of five swings. Okay, well, I wonder if you can now just do 10 swings. Okay, and then all of a sudden she starts gaining this momentum of designing this habit. It's automized. She's seeing the scorecard. You're checking in with her once a week. That's another huge aspect of it. A part of creating a system is feedback loops. So, feedback loops that happen in two conditions. Number one, it's the scorecard that she gets. And then number two, she's gonna know me and my mom or me and my dad or me and my coach are literally going to sit down or have a conversation. We're gonna look at my scorecard together and say, we're gonna go over it and to talk about the patterns that we see every single week. That's why the these athletes, that's how they're designing these systems. They'll send me their scale. Every day they get a text from me on a scale of one to 10, or give me a number, or did you do this? Every day. And they send it back to me and they know every week we're gonna have a tap-in of the week previous. And they just they tell me, they're like, I know I'm gonna meet you, and you're gonna ask me about it. And that helps them keep that system going, that accountability, because a system will always default to not doing it. It will, but if you just say, hey, just go work the process and they're not keeping score, you're not checking in, and then two weeks later you're getting mad at them because they're not executing. It's like, of course they're not executing. Like that's human behavior. They have no feedback loops, and so you have to close the feedback loop.

SPEAKER_00

I love that so much. And my favorite feedback loop of all time, my dad was a truck driver. He got up at 4 a.m. to be the first in line to haul. And there was a calendar right by his door. I pitched in the basement behind his desk. It was a Walmart calendar, and I had a blue clickable Sharpie, and I had to mark a checkbox for every bucket that I threw. And I knew every morning my dad would get up and he would look at that calendar on his way out the door. And I had to call him every morning. And if I didn't get my blue check done, he would go to bed really early because he had to get up at 4 a.m. And so he said, You have to get your pitching done before I go to bed because his bedroom, my parents' bedroom, was right above my target. And so some nights, if I didn't get my pitching in, he's laying his head down on the pillow and he's hearing wham, wham, wham, into the tarp. So I would give anything to go back just to be able to do that again with my dad.

SPEAKER_01

That is a beautiful story, first of all. I think that's a whole lesson on like the relationship with your parent and and and child. Like that's a whole no lesson. But you just taught a masterclass. You be you and your dad just taught a masterclass of that's what it is exactly what it looks like.

SPEAKER_00

It's just like we didn't know it was a feedback loop. There was no exactly, you know, we kind of razzed each other about it. Yes. But I wanted to have that relationship with my dad. And then every week when we went to pitching lessons, if I had a bad pitching lesson, he could go back and he would actually reference and say, Hey, you kind of had a crappy pitching lesson. You didn't have a whole lot of blue checks on your calendar. Do you think that correlates? That's a feedback loop.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly right. Here's an example. I mean I I know time wise, but you remind me of this. So in Finland in the 1970s, there was a cluster of houses built, and there were energy. Uh, there was an energy um uh meter that the the contractors, it was weird, they put Some of the energy meters in the front hallway, right by the front door, and some of the energy meters were in the basement. There's just on accident. They just ended up putting someplace, some in the front hall and by the front door, and some in the basement. And they ended up finding out this something wild ended up happening that they ended up discovering. The houses with the energy meter in the front hallway by the front door used way less energy than those who had the energy meter in the basement at the bottom. And what they ended up realizing is no family, the people who saved energy, they weren't told to save energy. They weren't taught how to save energy. They weren't questioned on their energy expenditure. It just happened every single one of those houses. And what they ended up realizing is it's just simple environmental design. The reason these people ended up saving energy is because they saw it every single day. They saw that little thing spinning and it was just top of mind because they looked at it. Versus the other houses, it was on the basement, out of sight, out of mind. And your dad and you, who had the check marks there, you got to see it with your eyes every single day. And so one thing I tell these athletes all the time is trip over your systems every day. Put it, don't put it in your phone, don't put it in a book that closes, like literally have something to look at and say, oh, there's my scorecard as a simple little reminder to look at it as a reinforcement system for you. It's an environmental design strategy. And so I have athletes who I under in their mirror, they'll literally have like, so all my athletes have that line grid with their whether they have it in their mirror and they just kind of like do their own dots and they can see their own, and we don't talk about composure, whatever their system is, we don't even talk about it. They end up designing it. It just kind of the invisible the environment is the invisible hand that shapes behavior, as James Clear has said. And it's so true. And that's what your and that's what your uh your you and your dad did. And so I'd recommend try it out, parents. Try try it out with your kids. It's it's amazing that what you'll see, how how it ends up happening. So it could be binary, yes or did it, didn't do it. It could be scale of one to 10. It could be good, better, best, whatever system you want, but having something consistent is uh is it's huge.

SPEAKER_00

I love that. I also love that you mentioned binary. I use binary a lot with the teams that I work with, especially male. I don't work with a lot of male sports. The first football team I ever worked with, I said, we gotta make this either yes or no. And binary code is either a one or a zero. And what I noticed is they were saying, well, we kind of did it. Well, we, you know, maybe. And it's like, no, either you did or you didn't. I love the you know, the yes or the no.

SPEAKER_01

So I I it's so funny you say that. So when I do with another guy is like, so this is his right here. Uh, if you I don't know if you could see it.

SPEAKER_00

Say yes, no.

SPEAKER_01

Uh yes, no. Oh, this is all blurry right now. Yeah, so it's just yes or no. And so he get he he texts, all he does is so I'll I'll show I'll show you. I mean, for those who are on. So this they're all pre they're all scheduled. It's all scheduled to go out the exact same time, day one, day two, day three, day four. And he sends me, he sends me a yes or a no, and then I send it to him. Okay, and so so we both have it. So keep just keeping track, just designing the system, creating the automized habit.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, I love it. This is so good. Okay. Again, for sake of time, I'm trying to think of the best question to leave you with. I think one of the things that we kind of hit on today is Justin, how do we be more consistent? And we've touched on systems, we've touched on tripping over your system, the environment of that. When it's all said and done, let's say you have an athlete that says, Justin, I'm doing the systems, I'm feeling good, I'm doing everything you're telling me, I've got the environment shaped. I just don't feel confident. How do you define confidence when it's all said and done? When they've put in the work, they've prepped. How are you defining confidence and how are you coaching them through? How does confidence relate to their consistency?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Um, first of all, there's a little caveat to like when uh I'm doing everything you're telling me. I don't really tell them anything. I I just explore and I just we just so that's that's a whole nother conversation.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um, we just we just work there, like we just uh yeah, so but confidence. Confidence is tricky. Um, you some people are not gonna like what I'm about to say. Um, one of the things I and you probably know what I'm about to say. I don't know, maybe you do, maybe you don't. Confidence is tricky. Um, here's the story, I to to just to kind of uh preface it. I'm with, but he's probably gonna be a Hall of Fame athlete. He's probably gonna be a Hall of Famer. He just finished, and so he's not he's not ready to be a Hall of Famer, major league baseball player. And I was watching him train, I was watching him pitch, uh uh bullpen, so in basement with practice pitching. And he was working on a new pitch, really, literally developing a new pitch, and it was ugly, it was all over the place, it would just affected all his other pitches. It was just he couldn't throw a strike. It was it was it was a very bad bullpen, but he didn't get frustrated, he was just up there working on it, interested, uh curious, open, just but he was like, huh, just just just doing it. And then it's over. Me, him, and his pitching coach, we're and then are talking, and then we're walking back to the locker room, just him and I chatting. And I said, Does a bullpen like that ever just like chip away at your confidence? Like, did that does that like derail your confidence and your feel for everything? Like you're about to pitch in a couple of days. Does that having such a bad bullpen, which he admitted he had, does that hurt you going into this next game? And he just kind of nonchalantly said, he goes, confidence is overrated. He goes, I'm not trying to chase confidence, I'm chasing competence. Now, for those who don't know what competence is, it's essentially your ability to execute your task, your ability to do what you do. And these elite athletes had taught me a very valuable lesson. It doesn't matter how you feel, it only matters what you do. And they don't chase confidence. Like they're they they understand that sometimes they're gonna feel good and sometimes they're gonna feel bad. They're gonna be there's moments where they felt confident and played terribly, and there's moments where they did not feel confident and they felt and they played great, and they end up realizing, oh, confidence is just a feeling. It's just like you can't you can't force a feeling. It'd be nice to have confidence. We would love to have it. We we'd love to have it, but if you don't have it, but you can lay your head on your pillow and say, I've put in the work. I've did everything I can. All right, I might not feel that's just my brain trying to trying to pull me and tug at me any which way. Okay, that's I don't have to believe those thoughts. I don't have to listen to it. I've put in the work and I've prepared. And so one of the things we do is we have athletes create, I've had an elite athlete create, we call them uh uh preparation receipts or confidence receipts, you can call them. And every single time she's an elite uh CrossFit athlete, and she would write down if she had eight hours of sleep, she'd write it down. If she had a good meal, she'd write it down. If she every single time she trained, she'd write it down, and she'd fill her sheets with all of her preparation, everything she did, mobility, stretching, workout, like great conversation with my coach, great um a process session with Justin, all of these things. And then when she showed up to the competition and all these doubts started to creep in, she'd pull out her preparation receipts and look at it and say, No, no, no. Get out of here, negative thoughts. I have receipts of all of the work and all of the preparation that I did. No, like I'm not gonna believe you. I know I put in the work. Now, if you didn't put out the work, if you didn't put in the work and all of a sudden these thoughts and she opens up the process receipts and it's a blank, yeah. Don't be surprised when uh you don't have confidence when you're going to struggle and if you don't perform at a very high level. And um, so yeah, those are just some of my some of my initial initial thoughts around confidence. We do want to build it. You can build it through preparation and productive thoughts and and having a purpose and and um and and and past performance and visualizing success. You could definitely build it through that. But if you do all of that and you still don't have confidence, just know that it's like the proverb a bird can rest peacefully on a branch. Not because not because of its confidence in the branch, but because of its confidence in its ability to fly. No matter how bad things get, you can say, you know what? I have confidence that I can learn from this failure. I have confidence that I'll get over this slump. I have confidence that in the end, my parents still love me and I still love this game. And okay, like great players have bad days too. They go through tough times. I have confidence that I'll be able to figure this out and this will make me better. And so having confidence in your ability to fly would be my recommendation.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Ultimate self-trust.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so good. Justin, this has been incredible. We'd love to have you back on the podcast, but for sake of your time and your clients and all that you're doing, soak up the sunny weather in Florida. Uh, I can't wait to air this episode. And for those that are listening, what's the best place to follow?

Where To Find Justin And Resources

SPEAKER_01

Uh I know you're Instagram. Instagram. I just go to if you go to Instagram, you'll at Justin Sua, you go to Instagram, and if you go to my in my DMs on Instagram and just DM me impact, I am P A C T, you'll be thrown into my newsletter. You'll get a newsletter from me where I'll give you systems tactics every Monday, and it's free. And you get these are all the tack strategies I use at Pro Athletes. You can have access to my my podcast there. And so we're gonna link all these.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you know, I love listening to Digging Deep. Digging digging deep is my favorite as a Royals fan.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00

I love listening to Digging Deep. Um, but yeah, increase your impact is incredible. Um, and it's bite size for family. So if you're listening for more podcasts to listen to, like this one, on the way to practice, in your morning routine, on the way to school. I love it. We're gonna link all those below.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00

Amazing. Well, Justin, until next time. Thank you so much for your time today.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you so much, Amanda. That was a pleasure, that was a blast.

Contributor

Amanda Schaefer

Host