Athletic Fortitude Show
Athletes all over the world endure countless mental physical and psychological adversities over the course of their careers. We are here to bring you the solutions to those adversities with some of the top professional athletes, coaches, and sport and performance psychologists around the world!
Athletic Fortitude Show
The 12 Lessons I Wish I Knew Sooner
These 12 powerful life lessons from 65 podcast episodes deliver transformative insights about emotions, success, and authentic leadership. Each lesson offers practical wisdom for navigating life's challenges while staying true to your values and purpose.
• Emotions aren't good or bad—they're valuable data points that reveal what matters to us
• Master the basics before chasing 1% hacks—focus on sleep, nutrition, training fundamentals
• Don't compare yourself to others—use them as signals to understand your unique strengths
• Addressing stress requires action, not avoidance—develop routines to channel energy effectively
• Resilience builds through daily micro-practices, not occasional big efforts
• Meaningful relationships outlast and outvalue individual achievements
• Failure provides feedback, not identity—you are your consistent actions, not your outcomes
• Authenticity naturally attracts opportunities aligned with your true self
• Recovery is a competitive advantage—you can only hustle effectively when you rest effectively
• Purpose beyond your sport/career improves performance by reducing identity threat
• Leadership manifests through precise language and consistent action, not popularity
• Your entire environment—media, relationships, physical space—shapes your behavior
This episode is brought to you by All Black Everything Performance Energy Drink, the official energy drink of the Athletic Fortitude podcast, available in Walmart, Meyer and select GNC franchise locations.
Welcome back to the show everybody. On today's episode, it is just me. We're going to go through the 12 lessons that I wish I knew sooner. After 65 podcast episodes, these are becoming some of my favorite recordings. It gives me an opportunity to share everything that I've learned with all my listeners. I know all my listeners are not able to catch every single episode, so it's really important for me to be able to share some of the key lessons that I take. I could do 30 lessons, 50 lessons. To be honest, there's so many, too many to count, but I've narrowed this list down to 12 for today's episode, so let's get into it.
Speaker 1:Number one emotions aren't good or bad. They're data. We get too caught in society in general in wanting to label everything immediately. We want to say something is good or bad Instead of just saying this is data. My mind and my body are trying to tell myself something. It's trying to say hey, there's a reason I feel this way.
Speaker 1:If I am angry about something, it's not necessarily good or bad that I'm angry. It's understanding the source and root cause of that anger. Why do I care? Where is that coming from? Do I feel offended? Do I feel that I was wrong. Do I feel that maybe I'm defensive about something? It's the process of exploring the reasoning in root cause. Just because something happens doesn't necessarily mean it's good or bad. It's just hey, this is what I care about. If I play a game and I play poorly and I'm upset about it, it's not necessarily bad that I'm upset about it. That actually could be considered a good thing. If you explore and dive deeper and understand hey, I'm really upset about my performance because I know I'm capable of doing better Then it's not necessarily a bad thing that you're feeling upset in that moment. It's just a signal that it's something that you care about. And so emotions are just data points on a continuum of life. Everything that we feel has a reasoning and purpose behind it, and it's up to us to not necessarily label those, but to understand them and then use our energy and our attention and our actions to align purposefully with those.
Speaker 1:Number two master the basics. Stop chasing 1% hacks. It's very easy to get caught up in social media world. Social media will give you life hacks. They'll give you training hacks. They'll give you a million different hacks, well-being hacks.
Speaker 1:At the end of the day, if you are not mastering the basics. And what are the basics? Right? You have mental health. Physical health, you have recovery. You have purposeful training. If you're an athlete, you have purposeful training. If you're an athlete, you have purposeful training. If you're just trying to be in shape, you have sleep. You have diet. You have nutrition. You have supplementation.
Speaker 1:If we are not checking the boxes in all of those areas, if we're not eating healthy foods, if we're not eating proteins, fats, carbs at a healthy, programmable level, then doing 20 million affirmations and 20 million you know, cold plunges aren't going to take you to the level that you want to go right. Doing some weird, unique exercises aren't going to overcompensate for the fact that you're not mobile and you can't fully sit in into your hip right, or that you can't get to a depth that you need to to in order to, you know, change direction or jump higher. Or you know everyone wants to bench press. But if you can't do a pushup properly or a pull up properly, then doing all the bench press isn't going to work right. You have to have a structured routine in doing the basics. Structured routine in doing the basics If you are a competitive athlete and you are a basketball player, doing a million different trick shots, all these different crazy dribbling things, none of that matters if you can't get around the person in front of you and hit a crossover, if you can't go between the legs, if, If you can't make a layup right People you know, you see kids these days taking shots from half court and they can't properly make a layup or a contested layup. Master the basics. The things in the fundamentals. The fundamentals and the basics are going to take you significantly further than any 1% hack. Now, I'm not saying don't do other things right, Like not to take supplements or not to, you know, do red light therapy or not to do you know, the cold plunges right. I'm a proponent of those things, but you can't do those things if you're not mastering the basics, if you're not sleeping well, if you're not eating properly, if you're not, you know, resting when you need to rest, if you're not exercising when you need to exercise. We want to throw tricks at everything, but at the end of the day, it's going to be the basics that are going to take you to where you want to go and get you even further.
Speaker 1:Number three don't compare yourself to others. Use others as signals. So this one's a little bit tricky, in the sense that everyone says don't compare yourself to others. Right? The way I want to define this and take it a little bit deeper is don't compare yourself in the sense of every single accomplishment and every single action. You need to compare to theirs to see if it's the same. What I would say is use others that you aspire to be as signals, right, so you look at for me.
Speaker 1:I'll give a simple example that I talked about with Dr Julie Gerner. I love Joe Rogan and Chris Williamson in the podcast space, but I can't compare myself to them, even from a success standpoint, just because we're all three totally different and unique people, and so the way in which we approach interviews will be different and the way that we conduct ourselves will be different. And so to not compare myself to them, but to use them as a signal to understand how they leaned into their unique strengths and understand what they did well, to capitalize on what is very, you know, fixed to their personalities, and find my own way, with my own personality, to maximize those strengths as well. And you can always learn from others. Use others to learn from, pick up the success that they have, the work ethic that they have the habits, use their routines if those routines apply to you, but I'll never be Chris Williamson, I'll never be Joe Rogan, so I can't compare myself to them and the success they have. I can't compare myself to their interview style, except take bits and pieces that feel really unique and valuable to me that I can implement in my own strategies. So it's this dichotomy between using people as signals but not comparison points.
Speaker 1:If we use people as comparison points or other things as comparison points, then we're going to constantly drag ourselves down and beat ourselves up when we can't do something that's unique to someone else. We have to find what we're uniquely skilled at and we have to be aware of that and to build self-awareness. You have to be able to reflect, you have to be able to ask yourself tough questions and you have to be able to answer them honestly. Not everything is going to be easy. It's not going to be easy to ask yourself questions, but it starts with asking yourself basic questions, right? Why am I interested in this? What do I learn more about? What unique skills do I have? What can I notice when I'm coaching myself? That I think, oh, that really intrigued me or brought me in deeper to the conversation versus I could do without that question. Or hey, maybe that's a good place to insert a new question or a follow-up, or that's a good place to interrupt a guest into you know, dive, into a specific point. And so just understanding, analyzing those skills, asking those questions for whatever it is, whether it's podcasting or your sport or, you know, profession, whatever it is learning to analyze what you're good at, what you need to get better at, always be looking for that feedback, but not specifically comparing to individual people.
Speaker 1:Four stress requires action, not avoidance. Develop routines to channel energy when we feel stress. Again going back to point number one, stress is not necessarily bad, and the number one way to deal with stress is to take action. Stress is there. It's our body's signal that we care about something and that we want to do something. And so in order to relieve that stress or use that stress to your advantage, I should say it's we have to develop routines that, when we feel that stress, we can properly use that adrenaline to our benefit. Because when we get stress, what it's doing is it's our kicking, it's kicking our body into motion and it's saying I need to do something because I know there's something important that I care about, that I'm not doing, or it's saying I need to do something, because I know there's something important that I care about that I'm not doing or is potentially weighing over my head. And so when we get that signal of stress, instead of again labeling it as bad or trying to avoid it and not think about it, we need to read into it, we need to ask questions, we need to understand our relationship with that stress and we need to be able to channel that energy from that stress into the thing that we're stressing about in a healthy manner. That's going to again get us closer to what we want.
Speaker 1:In my own life, when I feel the stress of balancing the different components of being a father and running my own business and podcasting and writing and there's always a number of things that I have to do at any given time my routine is to do the absolute most important thing, that I care about the most, that needs the most done, and so always, you know, my priority is to be the best father and husband I can be. If I feel I'm lacking or I feel the stress of I haven't been with my kids enough, immediately, regardless of anything else, I'm going to stop what I'm doing and I'm going to go play with my kids. On the flip side, if I feel I'm not paying attention to my business enough, I don't feel that I'm writing enough, the immediate thing I'm going to do is drop everything and I'm going to go start writing. I'm going to go start DMing future guests. Or I'm going to do is drop everything and I'm going to go start writing. I'm going to go start DMing a future guest, or I'm going to start scripting questions for an oncoming guest. Whatever I'm feeling the most stress about on a particular topic, I'm going to immediately start doing work and action in that space. And sometimes that stress comes when I'm interviewing a big guest and I'm like, oh man, I have to nail this or else I'm going to be wasting my guest time. And so immediately I start researching the guest, I start putting together questions that I'm really intrigued about and interested about with the guest and then I can use again. It goes back to using that stress to drive my action and to feel more satisfied and fulfilled in the work that I'm doing.
Speaker 1:Five resilience is built through micro practices, not big swings. Again, going back to similar mastering the basics. Stop chasing 1% hacks. I think everybody overestimates what they can do in a day and underestimates what they can do in a year. We think that if we take big swings on one day, we're going to be able to accomplish and overcome anything, but at the end of the day, it's the minor things that we're doing on a daily basis that's going to build that resilience. And so, again, it comes back to the fundamentals what am I doing every day that I can always fall back on? That I can know, no matter what every day, that I can always fall back on, that I can know, no matter what when this day ends, I've built some form of resilience, right, Whether it's, you know, having those daily routines of writing every day, those daily routines of doing breath work every day, those daily routines of doing the work every single day, the daily routines of hitting the gym and exercising every single day.
Speaker 1:When I do the small things every day, or, more often than not, when I'm eating right, I'm eating healthy, I'm stretching, I'm doing my mobility, I'm hitting the gym hard, I'm watching film. If I'm an athlete, those things are going to compound. And so then, when obstacles and adversity inevitably hits, it's not thinking, oh, adversity is here I have to do all these things. Today for the first time, I'm going to swing as hard as I can and hit a home run. No, that's typically when you swing and miss and strike out. When you've avoided all the things necessary, you're going to hit a home to be resilient for an extended period of time and just taking big swings here or there, eating really healthy for two days straight and then not for another five, as opposed to eating healthy more often than not every single day and compounding that over time. We think resilience is this magical, mystical thing. In reality, you build resilience through daily action and reflection on that daily action.
Speaker 1:Six relationships outlast individual achievements. I had a really strong conversation about the hedonic treadmill and how oftentimes I can fall into that trap of never feeling satisfied. I reach an achievement and I have to do something else, and constantly moving that goalpost of what success looks like. That drives my perceived self-worth. But the reality is our relationships are always going to outdrive our achievements. Somebody's always going to achieve more, Somebody's always going to be better. Someone's always going to come after you and overpower, overcome the things that you did. It's just a fact and reality of life. However, relationships are always going to be there when you're 70 and 80,. Nobody's going to give a crap about what you did or what you achieved.
Speaker 1:The reality is, the only people that really matter are going to be the people at your deathbed. They're going to be the people at your bedside when you can't take care of yourself. They're going to be the people that you spend your Saturday evenings with your Saturday mornings with your Sunday mornings with. Those are the things that matter and those are the people that make you and those are the things really that make you feel alive. It's not going to be the winning the championship, it's not going to be the individual accolades, it's not going to be the money that you make. You know those things are cool and you should celebrate those things Absolutely. They are part of the equation. But the number one thing that's going to lead you to lasting fulfillment, joy, happiness, is having people that you love and can connect with around you, Because if you don't have those things, you're always going to have a void, You're always going to have a hole in your life. If you can't find people and friends that are deathbed friends, your achievements are going to mean nothing.
Speaker 1:Number seven failure is feedback, not identity, and this is something I've really struggled with. I probably still struggle with it a little bit to this day. But failure is not your identity. You are not your outcomes. Your identity is comprised of the actions that you take daily. If I decide that I want to be something or be someone, I have to put together a game plan of actions and reflection and communication to further bake that identity into myself. And so I've talked about this in the past.
Speaker 1:But if I want to be someone who is kind and empathetic, I have to define what those mean. I have to put together a game plan to live those things out. How can I be kind every day? How can I be empathetic every day based off of my definition? How can I deepen my relationship with those things? How can I go at a deeper level of being kind and empathetic? How can I go out of my way, other than waiting for opportunities to present itself in order to prove to myself that I am this and so that way, inevitably, in any domain of life, when I fail at something, I will always have that piece of my identity to fall back on.
Speaker 1:And so when I fail right, if it's something I deeply care about and I fail at it and I lose. Whether it's a game or a competition or a business sale, whatever it is, I lose it. Game or a competition or a business sale, whatever it is, I lose it. It's okay one to care about it. It's feedback in the sense of hey, maybe I'm not doing something correctly, Maybe I'm in the wrong space, meeting with the wrong people, putting my time and effort into the wrong buckets. So it's feedback in that sense where it gives me the ability to self-reflect, reevaluate. But I also know inherently I'm going to be able to move forward because I'm all these other things and I've proven it to myself over and over again.
Speaker 1:I've built a foundation. I've built a home of an identity and so when one room burns down, it's not the whole house burning down and so, yes, it sucks, yes, it hurts, yes, I want to rebuild that part of my house. It hurts. Yes, I want to rebuild that part of my house, but I don't have to rebuild the entire home. So I have again that foundation. I have my core values and characteristics as the foundation. I have the rooms of being a father, being a husband, being a business owner. I have all these different rooms and components that make up my value and who I am. It's not just a singular thing, it's not a singular outcome. It's the things I'm doing daily and the things I'm giving energy and attention to daily that make up who I am.
Speaker 1:Eight authenticity attracts opportunity. If we are constantly pretending to be someone else to fit in, it becomes extremely hard to get opportunities that we love and that we genuinely want. If I am pretending to be someone I'm not, I'm going to attract things that are not a core part of who I am. They're going to be somebody else's, and so if I want opportunities and things that I care about, I have to be authentic to who I am and what I want. And so a good thing for me is I am a devout Catholic. I go to church weekly, I live my days every single day in prayer and in Jesus's name. So if I were to go out there and pretend to not be Catholic and not live my life according to that way and chase things that aren't aligned with my faith, the types of rewards and opportunities I would be getting would not make me feel fulfilled. They'd make me feel the opposite. And so we have to live our life authentically according to who we are and who we want to be in order to attract opportunities in those lanes. Because then, when I can become that authentic version of myself, I will begin to be narrow focused and only see things aligned with the things that I want to achieve in the person that I want to become.
Speaker 1:And so, if I want to be a really good podcaster, I have to be authentic on my show. I have to be willing to listen to other opinions, I have to be willing to unpack and understand conversations, but I can't run from the core value and belief of who I am, because then I'll never get the opportunities that I want, I'll never have the type of guests that I want to have on, I'll never be able to learn the things that I want to learn, because I'm trying to be something for someone else instead of exploring my own curiosities, my own passions. That's the type of people I try and bring on, or people I'm uniquely interested in, not for someone else. Although I love when my guests recommend, or my listeners recommend, guests for me to bring on, At the end of the day, I'm only going to have people on that I'm interested in having on, because then that's going to take me to more of those people. I want to have conversations with Number nine recovery is a competitive advantage.
Speaker 1:Now, I'm a massive proponent of hustle culture. However, I'm putting a comma in there. Comma, but I'm only a proponent in the sense because I believe we define hustle culture wrong. Okay, Most of us, in generalizing here, probably don't work as hard as we think we do. We probably have another gear that we can hit on a consistent basis.
Speaker 1:However, part of hustling is mastering your recovery. You can't beat your body and mind into the ground. You have to recover, you have to rest, you have to sleep. If you can be really effective and efficient in recovery and sleep, you are going to outpace all of your competition because you are recovering quicker, which means you have more energy to give, which means you can be stronger and faster in the weight room and on the field and on the court to compound those effects. Because when you recover hard and you rest hard, then you have more energy to give when it's time to train hard. And then, when you train hard and you have more energy to train hard, you're just going to keep increasing your capabilities and your capacity.
Speaker 1:And so the problem with the hustle culture conversation is. We don't emphasize how important it is to recover, to sleep in the hustle part, because you can only hustle more if you have the energy to do more. And I understand this is a very tug and pull conversation, because I do think most people underestimate their capacity to work hard and they maybe put a little bit too much time in what you know rest and recovery. I would also challenge those people of what their rest and recovery activities are. I don't think doom scrolling on Twitter or Instagram or TikTok are healthy forms of rest or recovery. Um, that being said, I am a big proponent of hustle culture, as long as we include rest and recovery as part of the definition of hustle culture. And so if you are pushing hard and you are maxing out and you feel yourself continuously burned out and not having energy, that is a signal that you need to rest a little bit more or rest more effectively and put time into sleep hygiene and building those routines to go to bed and to fall asleep into a deep sleep, getting your REM sleep, getting your appropriate light sleep.
Speaker 1:But there's a give and take. There is a give and take. Your body's going to tell you and you have to listen and be self-aware and ask yourself tough questions. You have to use your resources. You have to connect with trainers. You have to connect with diet nutritionists. You have to connect with recovery experts. You have to use the holistic plan to understand what you need and when. But at the end of the day, if you're training hard, you need to recover hard, because if you recover hard then you can train even harder.
Speaker 1:10, purpose and meaning transcends your sport. When you have purpose and meaning outside of just being an athlete, you are going to perform significantly better as an athlete, as contradictory as that sounds. When you put your entire value and self-worth into your sport, your body goes into threat detection mode and then anything that is perceived threat against that identity right. If you're an athlete, if you identify as an athlete, then anything that could potentially threaten that identity, your body's going to shut down and it's going to protect. You can still care deeply about the outcomes of your sport, but you can come at it from a challenge mode, a challenge perspective.
Speaker 1:I can view this and throw the kitchen sink of my tools and skills and ability at that outcome or at that competition that I want, because my body's allowed to think freely, it knows that this is not a threat to who I am as a person. It's a challenge and something I want to conquer. And so I can go into that conquer mode and I can bring all that competitive energy and use that to my advantage and bring it in competition, Because I'm able to think clearly. My body and mind connection at that point is just in free flow. It's in that flow state, knowing I've prepared, I've reflected on my preparation, I've spoken about my preparation, I'm here for the moment, I'm ready for the moment. I'm ready to conquer this, I'm ready to get after this, as opposed to oh, I'm so nervous, I don't want to lose, I'm afraid to lose. What does that mean if I fail, if the outcome doesn't go my way? We have to learn to talk to ourselves, not listen to ourselves. And you can only do that if you have purpose and meaning outside of your sport, outside of your company, outside of your business, outside of your family, whatever it is. You have to be multidimensional and if you are singularly focused, you're never going to be able to compete freely and compete in that conquer attack mode. And that is such a competitive advantage to be able to go at things from challenge and conquer mode as opposed to threat mode. And that goes back to evolutionary psychology, which I've talked a lot about on this show with different guests. When we're talking about, hey, thousands of years ago, our negativity bias saved us from the saber-toothed tiger. Every time we heard the bushes rustle, I get it, but we have to take back that power because we are uniquely capable of handling emotions and thoughts and feelings in different capacities and understanding what they mean to us, unpacking them, asking the tough questions so that again, when that moment comes and there's pressure, I'm able to not treat it as a threat but a challenge and opportunity to go out and conquer something that I really want to do.
Speaker 1:Eleven, leadership is language and action. Leadership again hijacked conversation. We think of like leadership and cultures as kumbaya singing everybody loves me, we're best friends, I'm a father figure. At the end of the day, leadership in organizations, leadership on teams, comes down to the standards that you hold, the language that you use and the actions that you put in. Standards that you hold, the language that you use and the actions that you put in. You have to be incredibly definitive in the language you use, the definitions that you describe, your team goals, your team priorities, your team mantras, whether that's business or athletics. There should never be a doubt of what your culture and leadership exemplifies. I should be able to walk into a team meeting. I should be able to observe a team for a day and reasonably be able to guess the culture that their leader wants them to resemble.
Speaker 1:Tough teams, tough people that are mentally resilient, don't have to constantly say improve physically, we're going to be tough. No, being tough is responding to adversity, whether that's mental, emotional, physical adversity. Being able to respond to that in a quick manner, to where you're not dwelling on things, where I can use this energy in the right way. When things go wrong, we don't panic, we don't start fighting, we don't start screaming at each other. We understand, we ask questions. Yes, it can get a little fiery, but then we can shake hands, go on our way and make the right decision for the collective. I'm not with the kumbaya. I'm not necessarily with the coaches that need to be best friends with their players. If that works for you, hey by all means.
Speaker 1:But at the end of the day, leadership is just how you communicate and then how you live it out with your action. What standards do you have? How do you hold everybody accountable to those standards. That's not a free pass to be. You know an a-hole right, there's a difference. But you also don't need to be everybody's best friend. When you're a leader, you need to make decisions. Not everybody's going to like those decisions, but that's why you're a leader. If being a leader was easy, everybody would be one. You're there to do the tough things and make the difficult decisions that sometimes you know a certain group of people are going to be upset about it. But when you communicate effectively, you communicate clearly and then your actions back that up and lead the way. It actually is more important when your actions lead the way. When you use that language, everything goes together and there's a respect and understanding there, even if you disagree.
Speaker 1:Lastly, environmental design shapes behavior. This is an important one because we think of our environment as just the people we hang out with. Your environment is the music you listen to, the TV you watch, the feed on your Twitter, on your Instagram, on your TikTok, on your social media, on your Snapchat, whatever it is. The movies you watch, the TV shows, everything in your environment that you are putting around, how much sunlight you get, how much time you're spending outside, how much time you're spending outside, how much time you're spending with loved ones. Your environment is everything that encompasses and surrounds you, including diet too. Everything that is going into your body is going to shape and design your behavior.
Speaker 1:If you are constantly listening to negative things, you are more likely to behave in negative patterns. If you put everything into your body that aligns with things that you want to achieve, that speak things the way that you want to be spoken, then you are more likely to do those things. If I'm constantly listening to things again, I don't necessarily like saying positive, negative, I know I've done that on this part but if I'm constantly listening to things that make me feel that I'm capable and that I can do more and that I can achieve more, I'm more likely to take the actions and behaviors that align with that, as opposed to listening to negative talk shows, looking at sports culture debate show where they're constantly putting others down, Because subconsciously you're going to start to believe that you're not capable. If you're constantly listening to talk shows put down one of the greatest athletes to ever live, so you know you're not in the stage where you're not at that level as one of the greatest athletes ever, so, subconsciously, you're going to start to believe you're inferior as opposed to if you listen to podcasts, if you listen to people on some of these other on my own show, obviously, but like on the Joe Rogans, the Chris Williamson's, where they're talking about how to live a fulfilling life, how to achieve more and be happy at the same time those things are all going to dictate you and align you with the way that you want to go and surrounding yourself with people who will encourage you, who will keep it real with you, Surrounding yourself with the proper diet and nutrition in your home. All these things are going to get you to where you want to go. But if you put negative things in your environment or things that drag you down, it's going to make it significantly harder to increase the behavior that you want to live up to.
Speaker 1:That's all I got, guys. I appreciate it. Thank you for tuning in and got a shot. My sponsor. This episode is brought to you by all black everything performance energy drink, the official energy drink of the athletic fortitude podcast, available in Walmart, Meyer and select GNC franchise locations. Tune in next week, guys. I appreciate you. Like the podcast? Download five stars only, baby. See you next week, guys. Thank you.