The Playbook with Colin Jonov
Formerly The Athletic Fortitude Show.... Colin Jonov’s Athletic Fortitude Show has rebranded to The Playbook with Colin Jonov, evolving from a sports-centric podcast to a universal guide for mastering life’s challenges. While retaining its foundation in mindset and performance excellence, the show now expands its scope to empower everyone—athletes, entrepreneurs, professionals, and beyond—to live life to its fullest potential
The Playbook with Colin Jonov
Justin Su'a- Why Success Feels Empty & How To Engineer Your Identity Beyond Achievement
We explore the curse of competence, the quiet emptiness that creeps in when winning becomes the minimum, and map how elite performers reclaim joy through systems, identity work, and productive self-talk. We define process receipts, pre-mortems, and habit stacking so you can perform by design, not default.
• redefining success to serve well-being and performance
• building a performer self and an off-field self
• setting intensity ranges and creating reset/ignite mechanisms
• anchors, breath work, and directing the focus spotlight
• productive vs positive self-talk for execution
• hard work as necessary but not sufficient
• separating decisions from results and reviewing without bias
• drawing the process, creating process receipts, and weekly checklists
• starting small, habit stacking, and making habits unbreakable
• pre-mortems, when–then plans, and priming for adversity
• manifestation as visualizing actions and sacrifice
• pivoting vs persisting and identity beyond sport
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When a player you're coaching is talented, driven, and has high standards, there's a hidden cost no one talks about. They start to believe that they should always do well. They feel that success isn't something to celebrate. It's just the minimum. Victory isn't exciting. It's expected. And anything less than winning feels like a failure. This is the curse of competence. They're capable of a lot, so they never stop raising the bar. But the higher the bar goes, the harder it becomes to feel good about clearing it. It's important to be aware of this as a coach. You may have players crushing it on paper but feel empty inside. Not because they aren't performing, but because they've trained themselves to believe that success is only doing what they're supposed to do. When this is the case, it's important to remind these players not to feel they have a bar, they have to raise the bar, but to raise their awareness on what's driving them, raise their gratitude for how far they've come, raise their permission to enjoy the game. They're not just here to meet the standard, they're here to set it and to feel proud when they do.
SPEAKER_01:I remember when I wrote that. I remember where I was, I remember the context of it. The every day I'm having conversations with elite athletes or coaches. And that particular day, it was with an athlete who on paper is dominating and dominating on a large scale, and the world knows it. And what was interesting is in our conversation, he just felt empty. He felt like the this the bar kept going higher. He felt that the finish line was kept getting kept getting pushed back further and further away. And he started to think to himself, is it how long can I go? Where is the finish line? Where is the endpoint? Is all I'm doing is chasing some standard that I'll never be able to achieve. What's interesting is that is very common among elite amongst elite athletes. And I even elite athletes. It could be a high school student who's driven, it could be an insurance agent, people who are highly competitive, they want more and more and more. Sometimes we have the curse of more. And as leaders and as coaches, it's very while you love that kind of person on your team, it's also very important to be aware of this pursuit of more, because sometimes you have to help that athlete or help that person not be their own worst enemy to be able to catch, help them catch themselves winning, help them catch themselves making progress. Because sometimes, sometimes they don't notice it themselves. They don't see the growth. All they're looking at doing is looking ahead and don't take time to pause and look back and to see how far they've come.
SPEAKER_00:How do you get them to maybe see it in real time or redefine their relationship with what success looks like? Because when you wrote this, I remember sending it to you and being like, this like spoke to me personally and how I felt throughout my playing career, maneuver is that and as I maneuver through my professional life, what can you do to tangibly deepen or redefine your relationship with what success is? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So actually, I'm actually curious about you. What aspects of that really resonated with you when you read it at that time?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So I just like I looked back, like particularly like over my athletic career, I very rarely actually enjoyed playing. Even though I would say like playing sports was like the best thing I ever did in terms of like pure, like what it was supposed to be enjoyment. Like I loved it. But I never actually got to enjoy playing. No matter how much success I had, didn't matter when I was all conference, didn't matter when you know I had like a sports center top 10 play, didn't matter that like I was a true freshman starting defensive back. None of that really mattered. Like I never feel like I really achieved anything. And it was like this constant, like, I need to do more. If I don't do this, then I'm a failure. And so when I evaluate my own career, like I always say I never lived up to my own potential, really not even close. Whereas I would say probably 99% of people with my athletic profile, if not higher, I would have overachieved. But like it's hard for me to just like accept that. Like that, that doesn't feel like success to me to just be like brutally honest about it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. What did that, now if you could look back, what did that do to you? And what did it do for you? This two-part question. What did that approach to performance do to you? And also, if you look back, what did it do for you? And the reason I'm asking this is because I do have some thoughts, but I just wanted to hear what did it do to you? What did you do for you?
SPEAKER_00:So I would say what it did to me was I did have like a lot of performance anxiety. Like it I got insanely nervous before games. I would get nervous before practice because I felt like if I didn't have a perfect practice or a perfect game, you know, you know, whatever perfect looks like, I felt less of myself. Now, what it did for me was I worked hard, right? Like I was, you know, one of those guys. Uh if you asked any of my coaches, like I was a coachable guy, they loved me. I was the hardest worker in the room. They knew what I was bringing to the table in terms of all those intangible attributes. Um, but nobody really talked about or saw the performance anxiety side because I never talked about it at the time.
SPEAKER_01:I and I appreciate you sharing that. And what there might be somebody listening to this thinking, oh my gosh, uh that is exactly how I am, what Colin just described. One thing people don't realize about top performers is in addition to making adjustments to their tactics, to their strategies, you know this. Everyone knows that the higher up you get, your opponent is trying to expose your weaknesses. And so you adjust. And when you adjust, your opponent tries to expose those ones. And then you adjust. There's this constant chess battle between you and your opponent. One thing that I love to see is when an athlete adapts and changes their mindset and their approach. When they come to this crux of performance and end up realizing that the attitude and approach I am I have been taking my whole life no longer serves me. This chip on the shoulder that worked for me in high school, that worked for me in college, that may have worked for me in the beginning of my career, actually is no longer serving me. My anxiety has increased, my frustration has increased, the joy has been dampened from what I do and is actually turning me into a shell of myself. I've seen this happen with athletes. And then they have to decide okay, this is what this approach used to do for me and used to be productive. It used to serve me. But now some athletes are like, I've gotten older, I'm more mature, I'm changed, I want longevity in my career, I want more positivity, I want more joy in my life. Okay, where do I need to change? What do I need to change? I need to change my approach. I currently am working with an athlete who has 10 years experience at the highest level, and he is just now learning to have joy in his journey. If I asked him, I said, if I would have, if we would have had this conversation 10 years ago when you were first in the league, what would you have thought about it? He would have been like, I would have taken that and kicked it to the curb. I wasn't uh trying to find joy in my journey. I was trying to prove my naysayers wrong. But now, married, kids, he signed a monster contract, and now he's like, okay, I need to start finding joy and be more grateful. And and what it's doing for him, it's allowing him to show up with more energy, more positivity. He feels like he's a better leader now. He feels less pressure, and he's able to be a different version of himself. And so if anyone is listening to this, I would invite them to ask themselves the exact same two questions that I just asked you. What is my current philosophy and mindset to my performance? How am I approaching it? And then, number one, what is it doing to me? And what is it doing for me? And as you take a look at it, and then you ask, is this productive for you? Now, I am not anti-chip on the shoulder. I am not anti-dog mentality. However, you got to look at the shadow side of it. Is it creating, producing too much pressure? I love to tell people, pressure isn't bad. I there's nothing wrong with pressure. Pressure is good until it's bad. There is a moment pressure and performance, it can sharpen your focus. It can make you work harder. It could give you strength. It can be a fire under you to propel you. But too much could burn you down, create a little bit too much anxiety. It can cause you to neglect relationships that are important to you and that matter. It can make you so obsessed that there's fractions in your relationships. And now all of a sudden, you are willing to do things that you will take away from effectiveness. And so I think it's important to understand that and take a look and constantly take the temperature and notice, okay, what is it doing for me? What is it doing to me? And then adjust accordingly based on if you don't like what it's producing.
SPEAKER_00:Can you operate in both mindsets simultaneously, or is it you have to operate in one full time and then another full time, or is there a way to operate with both at the same time? Uh both what? So both like mindsets, like that, my like that, you know, chip on the shoulder mentality, like you the basically the hedonic treadmill version of I gotta keep doing more and more while still being like, okay, I can enjoy this, I can, you know, focus on some of my other relationships in life and find ways to take off pressure. Or can you not have one, or can you only have one or the other, or can you serve both?
SPEAKER_01:I love that you asked that question because I think we live in too much of a world of black and white dichotomies, like where it's like you're one or the other. And that's not how life works. That's we are complex, adaptive human systems, human beings, and and it's it's there's a scale. It's up and it's down, it depends, it's situational, it's contextual, it's environmental. And so I think you can, and I've seen people be able to do it. I saw one athlete who wanted to tame his monster, and he ended up, he ended up dividing, he created a performance self and an off-field self. And he loved the chip on the shoulder. He loved that dog mentality, but it was bleeding into his home. It was bleeding into his relationships, it was bleeding into his life outside of sport. And what he ended up doing to the point where it consumed him, and he did not like the version of himself outside of his sport. And so he created his performer self. He walked in with his street clothes, and the moment he started taking off his street clothes and started putting his football gear on or his baseball gear on, he turned into that monster that he loved, that he was familiar with. And maybe he didn't love it, but it was just the character that he that he needed to put on in order to be the best version, a performer version of himself. And then when he ended showering and put his street clothes back on, he turned into the husband. He turned into dad. He turned into somebody, the more human factor of him. And so he would tell you he was able to carry both. Now, another thing you can do is you can just take a look at the elements, like what is what kind of athlete do you want to be? What are the different elements of that athlete? And what are the downsides of this? And then you create some systems or processes to be able to get to that state or that mindset that you need. And then you also need to create some systems to protect yourself from the shadow side of it. Some people want to play with a little anger, but how are you going to protect yourself from being too angry? Some people want to play with some urgency and speed. How do you protect yourself from playing too fast to where you're not thinking and not making good decisions? And so it's taken a very intentional approach to how you go about your business, how you think, how you behave, how you make decisions, how you show up with your emotions. And it's a very um, you want to be very deliberate. And we say you want to play and live by design and not default. Because if you're not doing these things on purpose with purpose, the default mechanism is more emotional. And all of a sudden you default to the worst version of yourself. You default to what's easy, and you just kind of go off the rails. And then you that only then you look back and say, wow, I've deviated far from what I want to be. And so you want to establish a standard, create definitions around it, and then create systems to meet and also mechanisms to be able to catch yourself when you start to deviate off course a little bit. And so I don't think it's one or the other. I think you want to define it. Where do you want to establish these types of mindsets and then creating systems to be able to make sure that you are the right version of yourself, the ideal version of yourself, where and when it matters most?
SPEAKER_00:What type of systems can you use for that character invention? How do you use your systems to channel that whatever you want to call it on game day? And then when you get home, be able to channel and turn it off.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So let's do an example. Let's just say me and you. Let's go back to your playing days. Okay, so me and you are sitting down. I'm your process coach. We have a blank sheet of paper out in front of us. And my question would be ask you the title is the call-in performer self. That's what that's we're gonna write that in pencil because that's that title is about to change. How do you wanna think? How do you want to feel? How do you want to act when you are on the field? How would you answer that?
SPEAKER_00:Oof. So I you're dating me. I got to go back seven or eight years ago now, back to my point days. I would say the big the two big things I love to feel on game day is I I like my intensity to be revved up, but I also want to be clear of thought, meaning I want to know exactly what my roles and responsibilities are. I want to know, you know, I was a football guy. So be able to confidently be able to go through my checks and balances before each play. But I want to be able to be revved up so I can play fast, I can play intense. As a small guy, I can take on bigger blocks, right? I have to have my heart rate pumping, but I want to be in control of my mind and my thoughts.
SPEAKER_01:Love it. Okay. So now we're gonna take intensity. So now if we hear intensity, and that's a great word. Now we're gonna get more nuanced and more deliberate on a scale of one to 10, using your intensity scale. 10 being the highest, nothing higher than 10. Let's say 10 is off the wall, wild intensity. One is getting ready to go to sleep intensity. What is the ideal intensity range? Not specific number. Give me a range that you're like, I know I am locked in when I'm in this level of intensity. Not too much, not too little, but just a sweet spot for you. I'd say six to eight. Six to eight, perfect. Six to eight. Now, now, nine to ten, nine and ten, describe that guy to me. What's that like if you're in the nine to ten?
SPEAKER_00:Nine to nine and ten, I would say, is the guy who has lost control and the emotions are overboiling to the point where I'm either picking up stupid or selfish penalties post-nap, I'm letting jawing with the opponent get in uh or be a distraction to what I'm supposed to be doing uh from a defensive perspective with my teammates. I would say that's the person where he loses control, can't rationalize thought, and it is no longer or his intensity is no longer serving him. Perfect. One to one to five. Describe that intensity. I would say that type of intensity would be more of I don't want to say like I'm sleepy, obviously, but like I'm not locked in. I don't have, feel like an extra sense of adrenaline coming in. I feel like I'm working and operating off of fumes or fatigue and trying to play catch up.
SPEAKER_01:Awesome. A lot of times, like when we're in that range, we're sloppy. We're thinking sloppy or physicality. We don't have eye discipline or we're not executing the fundamentals, we're a little bit sloppy. What we're doing, so I'm kind of I'm gonna pause, we're establishing this, the definition of okay, instead of saying, oh, I want to go out there and play, we're getting very specific. So we've identified your your numbers, one to a six to eight. This is the ideal self. Then we've also created some awareness. What is too high look like? What is too low look like? And for the sake of this interview, what we would then do is we'd create mechanisms. If you were at a nine or ten, you would create a process to get you back down to a six to eight. It might be slowing your breath down, it might be locking your eyes apart in a stadium when you're not on the field to just you relax. When you're at a one to five, it might be self-talk that you say to yourself, words to trigger words that you say to yourself to get you into that. And then this is where the magic happens. After the game, I would send you a text or we'd meet and we sit down, and then I would say in the in in we would decide decide how this would work. How well did you stay in that six to eight range? And if you did lose it, when did you lose it? And then we would just continue to take create checks and balances. And then we'd identify the six to eight guy, the six to eight intensity. What's his name? If you were to give him a character, what would we call that guy? What would what would you name him?
SPEAKER_00:Oh man. What would I name him? I don't have a cool one like the black bar anything.
SPEAKER_01:We would come up with a name. It would be anything. It could be the monster, it could be, it could be whatever you want. Let's just say it's the monster. We'd call him the monster. And then we'd identify when does he come out and when do you put him back in his cage to create a very specific moment. Now, this doesn't just have to be football. This could be a sales agent when you walk into when you walk right before your phone call. This could be a teacher right before you teach class. It could be a coach right before now the person's gonna, your your approach is gonna be different. And it could look different for everybody. But this was just an example, an example of what it could potentially look like being specific on creating systems and processes and being deliberate of what kind of guy do you want to show up when it matters most?
SPEAKER_00:What is it specifically? Because one thing that that really works for me now and some of the things that I do, anchors and breath work. Like, what is it specifically about using a visual anchor or just controlling my breath that allows like my nervous system to kind of lock into the present moment and what I'm doing.
SPEAKER_01:So I'm gonna ask you after my answer, what does it do for you? Like, what does it do for you? But to answer that question is number one, the brain thinks in pictures and in images. And it you were literally leveraging our how our brain is hardwired. So we always say if if I tell you think of how think of a house, think of think of a house. What would you say? What would what do you if I say house, what are you thinking about?
SPEAKER_00:So when I think of house, right? I I think of like the foundation, I think of rooms, I think of like roof attic type stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Like literally, what are you what do you see in your mind? Are you seeing a diagram? Are you seeing your literal house?
SPEAKER_00:I'm seeing my house, yeah. My current home.
SPEAKER_01:The current one or when you grew up? My current one. Okay. You're seeing your house. What you didn't see, so some people would see a picture of a house, like a drawing of it. Some people would see a diagram, some people would see the White House, they would see their childhood house. You see an image. Very few people literally see the letters H O U S E. They will see in images. And so what's great about mental hooks is you're directing your focus to something. It's an image of something. Two days ago, I was literally sitting down with an NFL head coach and we were talking about focus. And we say, obviously, oftentimes we say, you got to have focus, you got to have focus. Yes, we do, we do. But a sticky hook that I use, I love to say is focus isn't something you have, it's something you do. Focus needs to be directed towards something, aimed at something. So you want to imagine your focus as a spotlight, and your mind is a stage, and you are controlling the spotlight. Where are you going to put it? And so the best in the world are able to identify where do I want to point my focus? Where do I want to point my spotlight? I want to point it on the things I can control. I want to point it on what I have versus what I don't have. I want to point it at the present versus the past or the future. Now, if we were not controlling the spotlight, the spotlight is going to start pointing going for itself. And what it's going to aim at is negativity. It's going to aim at the past failures. It's going to aim at what we don't have versus what we do have. It's going to aim at the things that we can't control versus what things we can control. That's why it's so important to have our hands on our attention wheel to be able to direct it where it needs to go. So that's that's why it's important to have these cues. Now, when it comes down to breath work, our breath work is it's our physiological, it's the way that we could, it's our it's our brake pedal. I once heard a NASCAR driver say the way to the way to go fast is to know how to go slow. And I love that. He goes, the fastest F1 drivers, NASCAR drivers, they are masters at the brake pedal. They know how to navigate around curves and navigate around other cars. And that to me, that is the breath. That is being able to slow things down, to center yourself, to be present, to be able to oxygenate the muscles, oxygenate the brain in order to be an elite, an optimal decision maker. And so with that, so that's the behind the scenes, in addition to a number of other things. For you, what does having a mental anchor and breath breath work do for you?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So the visual anchor, I would say, just for whatever reason, it just gives me the ability to be in the present moment. And it's no longer about stuff I'm public speaking, right? It's no longer about the audience and it's just my ability to articulate the things that I want to say. And then the breath work, I would say it's able to just calm my mind in the sense that when your mind can catastrophize, I take that deep breath or a series of box breathing, and then I'm able to recreate the internal dialogue that I want to have and I put myself in power as opposed to listening.
SPEAKER_01:That's great. I really like that. And what I also like is I love nuance to answer. So I know players, I know people who don't like breath work and don't like who are opposite, like they don't like visualization or anchor. Not that they don't like it, it's less effective for them. So I know somebody who, when they do public speaking, it's a coach. And when he thinks he feels more confident and more relaxed when he focuses on the audience and not himself. He does opposite. So he feels that when he's focused on what he's gonna say and how he looks and what his words are, it creates this tension, like, oh no, I need to go and perform, which works for some people. And that actually helps them. He's opposite. He finds more peace and comfort when he focuses on the audience. How can I help them? They are the heroes. They, it's their journey. What can I do to support them? And I'm just here to, they are the Luke Skywalker. I'm just the ugly green little Yoda, and I just want to provide weapons and resources, information to support them on their journey. It's not about me, it's about them. And so someone who listened to this, what I love to say is test it. Go use what works best for you. I have another athlete, breath work for him. For some reason, it creates more pressure, more anxiety. The reason he says, he goes, if I tell myself, okay, I need to relax, calm down, calm down, it actually drums up even more pressure for him. And so what he does, he does opposite. He just says, I'm nervous, great, I love this, I feel it. It doesn't matter how I feel. He uses more self-talk and he uses his feelings as a compass, as this is good. And I want this pressure, I want this anxiety, I want to feel it because that's what I'm gonna feel in my profess performance. And some people, they would hate to do that. They want some kind of slowing mechanism to slow them down and to bring them to the present. He tried that and he does not like that. He's like, no, that doesn't work for me, which is going back to it's very interesting and find what works for you. And that's there's not one silver bullet or or or one fix for everybody. And it can change over time for people. What used to work for you in the past might not work for you in the present. I know an athlete who used to hate journaling and now he journals. I used to know an athlete who hated box breathing and diaphromatic breathing, and now he does it. And so it depends on the person.
SPEAKER_00:We like to think that if we put in the work, success will follow. But reality doesn't always play by those rules. The hardest worker doesn't always win. The team that does everything right can still fall short. The reality is that in some cases, someone seems to get the break with half the effort. It's frustrating, but the truth is that success isn't something that we're owed. It's something we position ourselves for. Instead of asking, do I deserve success? A better question might be, am I building the habits that increase the probability of success? We often hear just work hard.
SPEAKER_01:Just work hard. Working hard is going to bring success. And all I'm trying to convey is that's not necessarily true. It isn't an XY variable. It's not binary. Hard work is necessary, but not sufficient. Execution is necessary, but not sufficient. Grit necessary, but not sufficient. It's a combination of multiple variables that will lead to success. And sometimes it is a lucky break. Sometimes it is something that is completely outside of your control that helps or hurts your odds of success. And I think it's important to take that into consideration. Sometimes we will lose or have setbacks and think, I just need to work harder. And that might not necessarily be the case. And some people will read that and they're like, oh, how dare you say something like that? Because there are people out there who are working incredibly hard and they're not achieving the success that other people are achieving. And you hear that phrase, I don't work hard, I work, I don't work hard, I work smart. You need both. You need to work hard and smart. Working hard is incredibly important. And that is the bare minimum. That is, that is the floor working hard. And there are so many other things that that go into long-term consistent success. And there is a phrase I love is hard work. You want to increase the luck circumference, increase the probability and odds of success. If you don't work hard, you shrink the probability of being successful. So, yes, work hard and work smart and be collaborative with your team and be good at decision making. And all you're doing is increasing the probability of success. But what's interesting about increasing the probability of success is it doesn't guarantee winning. You can't ever guarantee anything. And so that's why we I always say there's a difference between in in poker, they call it resulting, where you you focus there's a difference between decision making and results. You can make a great decision and still get bad results. You could make a horrible decision and still get good results. You could make good decisions and have bad luck. And you can make bad decisions and have dumb luck. The simple analogy I always use is going through a red light. You could run a red light and pass through the intersection unscathed, like no problems. That doesn't mean it was a good decision. That means you got lucky. Or you can go through a green light, it's a green light, and you're driving, and then all of a sudden get T-boned or get in an accident because somebody else made a dumb decision. It doesn't mean that was a bad decision to go through the green light. It was just simply dumb luck. And so what happens a lot of times is after a loss, we might go back and think, oh, that was a bad decision. We did terrible at this and did terrible at that. My recommendation is to pause and to say it wasn't necessarily a bad decision. What did we do well that what did we do well that put us in the in increase the probability of success? But also, what were some things that were outside of our control that decreased the probability of success? Of success that that led to our failure or our mistakes. Now, on the flip side, winning as well. What I see a lot of times with winning is they'll take a look at their systems and they'll think, oh, we're winning because of this. And that might not necessarily be the case. You might be succeeding not because of your systems, but in spite of your systems. You might be experiencing dumb luck rather than rather than falsely thinking, oh, we are winning because of these certain things. Oftentimes we have something called hindsight. We have a comp uh it's called survivorship bias. And we'll look at the winners of anything and we'll think, oh, I need to do what he's doing. We need to do what that team's doing. And the reality is they might be not, they might not be winning because of that. That might be, they might be winning in spite of that. And they that might be a system that works in their system. But if you go and try to apply it to yourself, you go and try to apply that routine to you or your circumstances, it might be the worst thing to possibly that you can possibly do because your personnel is different. Your personality is different. Your situation is different. I can't do what Tom Brady did. Yes, I can take some clues, but I need to adapt it differently for my circumstance and my situation. And so I remember when I wrote that is it was just a reminder to coaches and athletes that you can't beat up on yourself and think, oh, I'm working hard, why am I not getting results? I'm working hard, why am I not getting what I want? Chances are there are many other variables at play and hard work, although very important, is just one of the many variables that contribute to not just success, but long-term success. What was it from that from that writing that that resonated with you?
SPEAKER_00:It's a space I've been diving into recently, right? Is understanding that just because you do X, Y, and Z right does not guarantee that you're going to have success. And that when you do X, Y, and Z right and you don't get the result that you want, it's not time to abandon that. You just need to evaluate it. And it's something that's really hard to rationalize the more competitive you are at the highest level or as you grow on levels, because the difference between winning and losing is in such small margins. And if you allow yourself to just caught up, get caught up in that outcome space, you'll go crazy. And so I've been really trying to understand or put myself in learning, just because you do everything right does not necessarily mean that you're going to win. And that you still need to do everything right more so just because it's a function of of who you are and what you do, as opposed to doing something for an expected outcome. And I'm really looking to just understand that space between, okay, when is not that losing is okay, but when can I put it into perspective that it's not necessarily what I'm doing? And maybe there's some other factors, and how can I curate and create the highest probability of success on an ongoing basis?
SPEAKER_01:I love that you said that. And I think that is that's one of the hard things of performance in any domain. How do I know this system, this process that I've created is moving the needle and closing the gap from where I want to be to where I want to go, especially if you're not getting the feedback immediately that it is effective? And we see this all the time. You hear that phrase, trust the process, work the process, which is something I do believe. However, are we taking a look at the process? Are we curating the process? Do we know that this process is actually headed in the direction that we want it to go in? If we eventually stick with it, although the results aren't there right now, are they going to come? And how do we know? How do we really know that? I just, I'm working this process and I just have three horrible games. How do I know if game four is going to be great and the process is going to reveal itself? Or I need to abandon ship and change the process, which makes professional sports difficult. The higher you up you get in sport, the smaller the time horizon you have to work with. And so we say trust the process and water the bamboo and the time's gonna come. Well, in the NFL, you don't have that time. Major League Baseball, you don't have that time. In PGA golf, yeah, we don't have to we don't have time to trust the process. We have Scotty Scheffler who is going to expose you if you don't, if you don't uh shape up right now. And so that's what becomes very, very difficult. And so my invitation and my recommendation is again, one thing you're gonna see it's gonna be a common thread in all of my answers, is doing things by design and not default. Doing things on purpose with purpose. Literally, when guys are like, yeah, trust the process, I will literally say, Okay, what is your process? And they'll be like, uh, if and hand them a blank sheet of paper and a pen, draw it, draw your process or write it. Let me see it. That will, if you can't draw it or write it, that tells me or tell me why you have it or what you're doing to what you do to know if it's working or not, then you don't have a true process. You don't have it. And we obviously throw that many times throw that word out, just we throw it out all the time. My role primarily is to literally sit people down and we come up with it. What do you want to build a process around? So, to your point, we will sit down and say, okay, what is your process for culture? What is your process for performance before the game? What is your process? Let's say football. Let's say football. To prepare for Sunday, what is going to be your process from Monday to Saturday? And what I love about football is every day has its day. That's the cool thing about football. What are you going to do in order to for that guy, that monster that we just talked about earlier, to show up on Sunday where he can look in the mirror and said, I did everything I could to be ready for this moment. We sit down, we rewrite a checklist. Okay. And then it comes down to things you can control. Okay, I'm this is going to be my approach for film. This is going to be my approach for practice. This is going to be my approach for weight room. When any discouragement comes in, I'm going to remind myself this. These are the teammates that I need to talk to. I need to have this conversation with the coach and go over these plays of last week in order to tighten certain things up. I need to take my wife or my girlfriend out on the date night on this day to strengthen my relationship. And we have it all down. And then it's, and then we ask, if you do these things, what do you hope you predict the benefit of doing these things will be? I'm going to do this in the weight room. I'm going to work on my mobility. I'm going to get some body work done. I'm going to eat this certain way so that I get this benefit. So that I get bet this benefit. And then you write it down. Then Saturday night, we sit down. I'll sit down with the athletes. And throughout the week, they'll they'll constantly check up on it and they'll look and say, yes, I ended up doing all of these things in order to, in order to be ready for Sunday. And what's cool about this process is these become, I call them process receipts or performance receipts. Because once Sunday comes, your mind is going to start to bubble up and say, Did you pay the price for greatness? Did you pay the price to be ready to face this team right here, right now? And what's great about having a process for the week and writing it down and documenting it and going over it, you can look back emphatically and say, yes, with certain, I have documented, I have the receipts to show my negative self-talk that I'm ready for this moment. And then your brain's gonna be like, all right, let's go get it. And it frees you up. And then on Monday, you and I would sit down, or the player and I would sit down and we say, let's look at last week. Is there anything we need to tweak, add, eliminate? We don't need, we do need. And then as you can stay consistent with it, you have this nice, tight, fresh system that you know helps you to increase the odds for success, whether you or not you get the results you're looking for.
SPEAKER_00:I think my favorite thing that you said in that entire piece was when you get there on game day, you'll be able to emphatically say, Yes, I was willing to pay the price for greatness. Because something I I've learned the hard way as well is when you get in those higher pressure moments, you can't fake it. And that's where like I go back to self-talk and the importance of self-talk. I could never be the person to like lie to myself. I couldn't tell myself I'm prepared for this moment if I wasn't. And that entire reflection process that you just created is something that I learned too late in my career to where I couldn't really receive the benefits from it. But it's something I encourage every single athlete in the world to do. It's just shocking to me how few are actually willing to go through a process like that that is so defined, precise, and invariably will serve you some type of greater good, even if it doesn't get you this precise result that you want.
SPEAKER_01:That is such a great point. And how you said it is great. The athletes and the coaches I work with know that I say this all the time. We're always after regret minimization minimization, minimizing regret of your future self. The question I will always ask is let's think about the Sunday call-in. Let's think about calling on Sunday or in Monday right now. What do you need to do today through Saturday so that calling could look in the mirror with confidence and say, I am ready. We want to really take care of that guy right now. And so we want to use the 84,000, 86,400 seconds today, and then on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday, so that that guy, so we set that guy up for success. And that's what a lot of people struggle with. They are they are too busy looking back to their past self and not looking out enough for their future self. Sunday is coming. It's like uh Game of Thrones. Winter is coming. Sunday is coming. What are you doing today to put hay in the barn so that when the storm comes, you can say, I am ready for this moment. And I've prepared the previous days for this because I knew, I knew that this guy was going to look in the mirror and he's gonna take an accounting for the mind is gonna take an accounting for the previous week, and we're ready for that moment. Regret minimization. Always look out for the guy, for the for the guy one week down the road and and engineer your week this week to be able to set that guy up for success.
SPEAKER_00:The athletes that I think football is an easy one because there's a lot of guys that are just supremely talented that have zero real work ethic or zero real systems in place, but at some point it catches everybody. For the super talented athletes that need to create a whole lot of processes really quickly before they're about to be out of the league. Is there such a thing as starting too much at once? Or can you really build all those processes at once, or do you need to start small and expand quickly?
SPEAKER_01:I'm a fan of starting small things for a couple of reasons. The more nodes you add to a system, the slower the system goes. To that point, there was a time where a guy was like, Oh, I want to build this system and this system and this system, and it just clogs the processing speed. The example that I use is imagine a laptop, the more tabs you have open, the more to-dos that you have or tabs you have open, it slows the speed down. Same thing with our brain and with how we operate every single day. The more things we do, when you create a system, it takes effort. And until those systems become automized, with elite veteran athletes, before we create systems, we explore the systems that they unconsciously have. A lot of them already have them. And all we do is unearth them, we dig them up, and we name them. That's all we do. That's what I've noticed a lot with coaches and athletes who have been playing the game for a very, very long time. They have them and now we do them deliberately. And so now they're like, oh, I don't have to create a system. I just need to execute the system I already have. Now, if there is any friction or if there's a new skill or habit they want to develop, then we'll create one. But we want it to, we want to reduce energy expenditure. Every system you add, it just takes time, energy, and attention. And my job is to help them reduce and minimize time, energy, and attention. And so we do it little by little until it becomes automized, and then we move to the next one.
SPEAKER_00:Your habits will tell you how committed you are. At first, creating a habit is unbearable, then it's uncomfortable. If you stick with it and are consistent, then it becomes unbreakable. That's exactly what we were talking about.
SPEAKER_01:That's what we want. Behaviors that you practice over and over and over again. Actions that you execute consistently become your instinct. You don't have to think about them under pressure. You don't have to think, worry about them when you don't feel very good. I was talking to a buddy of mine who is a surgeon, and I asked him one day, I said, How do you have the confidence to do what you do? Because if he messes up, a life is at stake. Literally, a life is in his hands. And he said something really profound to me. He goes, confidence. I mean, kind of enjoy it. Confidence is for the birds. He goes, I focus on competence. He all he does is focus on, he goes, all I need to know is that I'm really, really good at executing what I do. It does not matter how I feel. He said, I he goes, I produce, I have done surgeries going through a divorce. I've done surgeries while I was depressed, I've done surgeries while I was in pain. I've done surgeries on little sleep, on a lot of sleep, when I'm happy, when I'm sad. It does not matter how I feel, only what I do. He goes, if I focus on my feelings and sorry, I can't do this surgery, I don't feel confident today. He goes, Are you kidding me? He goes, I'd never do surgery. It doesn't matter how you feel. And I think habits, so what he does, he's created habits and a skill set that are reliable under any circumstances. It's like driving. You and me, and many people listening to this, we have driven a car angry. We've driven a car sad. Some of us have driven a car with tears streaming down our cheeks. Some of us have driven while we're like yelling at the person on the other line. We've been happy. We've been distracted. But what do we do? We still drive because we've done it for so many times. Now, I'm not saying it's ideal to drive distracted or these ways, but we get the job done. We're able to get from point A to point B. And habits are exactly the same way. What we want to do is we want to create these habits until they become unbreakable, until you don't have to think about them any longer. Another driving example I get, I give, is when I'm speaking to people, I say, How many times have you driven to a destination? You get to the destination, you pull into the parking lot or the driveway or your garage, and you look around, you're like, How did I get here? You were so locked in on whatever you're doing, whether it be the conversation or the song or lost in thought, that you made all of these turns, you sped up, you slowed down without even thinking about it until you arrived at your destination. And the only one thing that I know for certain is that the place that you arrived is probably a place that you've been many, many times. That route that you took is probably a route that you've taken tens, 20, 100 times. And so, because as a result, you didn't have to think about it. Those resources used for decision making, you didn't need them. You can direct them towards other things because your body just knew what to do because it was a habit. But if you're in New York City driving for the first time, or if you're in a new environment driving for the first time, you are your attention is on your MapQuest, or MapQuest, I don't think MapQuest even exists anymore, but your your Google Maps or your iMap or whatever, or Apple Maps to get you there and you're watching, you're noticing, you're listening, you're so locked in, you can't even talk. You tune the music down on your speakers so you can focus because it's not a habit yet. And so and at first it's gonna be hard, but then it gets to a point to where your habits become unbreakable to the point where you don't have to think about it, like brushing your teeth. It's not even, it's not even discipline any anymore. You just do what you just brush your teeth. It's just what you do because now it's a solid habit.
SPEAKER_00:How do you get over those early stages when it is difficult? It is just absolutely unbearable, but you know you need it to serve you a greater purpose. How in those moments do you stick to it and continue and force yourself to build that habit?
SPEAKER_01:You actually the answer, my first answer is embedded in what the question you just asked. You have to understand and know why am I building this habit? Like what is the what is the utility of this habit? There's a purpose for a habit. Why am I doing this? Okay. And then what is the purpose of it? Number one, you you said it exactly right. What is the destination I hope this habit generates and creates? And then number two, you need to be honest with yourself on how long it's gonna take and how hard it's going to be to establish this habit. You literally need to tell yourself and remind yourself this is going to be hard. And to have some self-compassion and know that I need to get back on the horse if I don't execute this habit. And know that, okay, if I'm gonna wire some new synapses, if I'm gonna create some new grooves in my brain to make this a habit, I need to have self-compassion to know this is going to be hard. This is going to be difficult. Let me stick with it. And when I miss a day, I need, I can't miss two. I can't miss two. I'm going to do it. And you need to tell, you need to understand the arc of habit building. It's going to be hard. I'm not going to want to do it. I'm going to try to talk myself out of doing it. But no, I'm going to stick with it. Another thing is you want to make sure when you're in the habit building process, at first you want to make it so easy that you can't not do it. So easy you can't not do it. It's got to be something where you start unbelievably small. So someone who wants to get incredibly fit, lose 10 pounds, start with one push-up a day. Literally one push-up a day. It's like, no, that's too small. No, start with that. And then go two push-ups a day. And then go three. Okay, then the next stage, start with push-ups and setups, and then you slowly build. Again, time horizons matter, what the habit is, what the goal matters, but can you start small? Another thing I was sharing with somebody, you can do habit stacking, where let's say somebody wants to practice meditating or doing breath work or being present. There's a player I was working with who he just couldn't meditate. He just couldn't find time to meditate. He he hated it. He's like, man, I just can't find time to meditate. I and he starts beating up on himself because he can't do something so simple and so silly. And so all we did, I said, do you shower every day? He goes, Yeah, of course I shower every day. Meditate while you shower. He's like, oh my gosh. Said, you're already going to shower. Just shower while you meditate. Or meditate while you shower. You're already going to brush your teeth. Meditate while you're brushing your teeth. Focus on the bristles, on your gums, and on your teeth. Just be present for those two minutes. Meditate while you're driving. Don't close your eyes. It's a different type of meditation, but bring presence to your hands on the steering wheel, presence to your breath, presence to your foot on the gas pedal or on the brake. Notice the cars that are around. Be fully present. And so that's called habit stacking, where you attach a new habit to something that you you're already doing. There's a guy who wants to read more. He's like, I don't have time to read. I don't have time to read. Well, do you drive to the stadium? Yes, I drive to the stadium. Okay. Put a book on, an audio book on while you're driving there. You're already going to drive, just put an audio book on. Oh, okay. Now you're starting to read while you're or listen while you're driving to the stadium. So where can you find some opportunities to stack a new useful habit on top of something you already do?
SPEAKER_00:You mentioned something that I think is important to discuss, and it's like the preparing for the adversity part. Like I'm going to prepare that this is going to be really hard and really challenging. At what point do you, or maybe are you, spending too much time and talking about the potential adversity as opposed to focusing on the benefits or how well I'm going to perform if it's like that type of thing? I think that is a really tough dichotomy of space between, hey, I want to prepare for adversity, but I don't want to just focus on the adversity. I also want to focus on I am capable, I am going to be successful. Where do you find that balance in those two spaces?
SPEAKER_01:For me, maybe I'm looking at it wrong. There is no balance. The most effective way is you literally stare at them and then you identify, what am I going to do about it? It's like it's peanut butter and jelly. It's like you can't have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich if you don't have both of them. It's like you need both of them. So many people are afraid. It's almost like we're superstitious. No, don't bring up the adversity that can possibly happen. No, don't talk about it. Don't talk about negativity. Don't talk about the other team being successful. Don't talk about the referees or the umpires making bad calls. It's not going to bring good luck. And in elite sport, that's for the birds. It's like, no, we are going to talk about that. How are we going to respond when our opponent comes out hot? How are we going to respond when we make a mistake? How are what are the all and so it's called priming, or um you can call it a running a pre-mortem. So a pre-mortem, we see this happen all the time with coaches. You go into the decision room, the coach's room, and then you fast forward, you say, okay, let's let's imagine that this game is a complete disaster and we get destroyed by our opponents. What are all the reasons why? We lacked communication, too many penalties. We we didn't have eye discipline. We didn't play uh complementary football. We didn't execute the fundamentals. Okay, great. Then you're gonna get stuck with the, you're gonna stuck with, but you're gonna generate a list of two groups of things. Things that you need to prepare for, or things that you need to just be willing and able to deal with, like mentally and emotionally be able to deal with. For example, bad calls from officiating, things that you cannot control, bad weather, bad bounces, whatever it may be, unlucky things. We might not be able to prepare for it, but we need to mentally and emotionally be ready to deal with it so that when it happens, we are emotionally stable enough to be good decision makers and not feeling sorry for ourselves or overly angry or sad or frustrated. And then once you identify these are all the potential failures that can happen, we are going to focus on what we are going to do about it. Okay, how do we prepare? Okay, we're gonna prepare for this, we're gonna prepare for this. Happens all the time. Me and you standing up in this conversation, I literally just got a text message. I'm I'm gonna read it. I'm gonna read it I'm gonna tell you who it is, but I'm gonna read this. Um, I'm gonna read this. Literally, just came in while we're talking. Professional athlete, prepare preparing myself for tomorrow. When I start to get negative, I will smile and think of a new pattern. When I make a mistake, I will continue to go after my execution. I'm not gonna give this sport away. When I get angry, I'm going to focus on what I can control and smile at it. When I feel I just got a bad call, I will focus on what I can learn from it and move on. This is literally a text message I just got while we are talking. That is what it looks like. When then? When this happens, then I'm gonna do this. When this happens, this is how I'm gonna respond. Because if you don't identify that ahead of time, we're gonna go in a default mode. We're gonna get emotional, we're gonna get sad, we're gonna get frustrated. All of a sudden you're not a good decision maker, you're too irrational, and then you're gonna beat up on yourself, and then you're starting to get into that 9-10 mode on the intensity scale, or you're gonna start feeling sorry for yourself, start tanking and giving up, and as opposed to saying, I expected this. This is exactly where I want to be, and I knew this is going to happen. We say everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Mike Tyson said that. We plan for the punches. You can't be a firefighter and complain that it's hot. You can't be a boxer and complain that you're gonna get punched in the face. What are you going to do about it? You plan for it and then identify what are you going to do about it. And so where people get stuck, I call it the Dave and Goliath, I call it the Dave and Goliath uh effect. Whether you're religious or not, it's just we all know about Dave and Goliath. There's most of the army was afraid to fight Goliath because they were focused on what Goliath was going to do to them. They were afraid of the fear of what is Goliath gonna do to me. And then we got David, who he didn't focus on what Goliath was gonna do to him. He was focused on what he was gonna do to Goliath. And that right there is just a completely mindset shift. When fear becomes paralyzing, what's the future gonna do to me? What if this happens? What if that happens? And now you're on the defense protecting yourself from adversity versus, all right, I'm expecting the storm to happen. What am I gonna do about it? How am I gonna punch back? How am I gonna learn from it? How am I gonna respond to adversity? That mindset is what sets people up for success.
SPEAKER_00:I absolutely love that. I because I get very I call it kind of the positive polys of the world. I don't like the positive polys where we can never talk about an unexpected outcome or something not going our way or some type of adversity where I do believe that, and you just articulated it better than I ever could, the importance of preparing for adversity, preparing for the chaos that may come. You may not know exactly what type of chaos is coming, but knowing that some type of chaos will come and you have to have some type of response plan. And Kurt Warner talks a lot about it with uh quarterbacks and what he calls having a pressure plan. If you get a pressure on a certain play, what is your immediate plan? And you need to have one every single play. You need to have an immediate thought process. If I get pressured, it doesn't matter where it's, well, it does matter where it's coming from, but for the sake of the conversation, it doesn't matter if it's middle, doesn't matter if it's edge, doesn't matter if it's a corner safety blitz. I need to have some type of pressure plan to where I can get rid of the football. I can avoid a major negative play. And I I think that I think the pendulum's starting to swing a little bit back, but I think the pendulum swung too far to where a lot of what I was reading, a lot of what I was seeing was what I call kind of that positive poly, no negative talk, no uh negative outcome realization that I think really waters down what it means to perform at a really high level. I'm glad you said that.
SPEAKER_01:There are some people who, even myself, I if you write see my writings or hear me talk, I don't use the word be positive or think positive a lot. And the reason is, and I I believe in positivity. I believe in, I think it's more important to be positive, but my spin on positivity isn't everything sunshine and rainbows, everything is great. My view on positivity is being able to stare the brutal facts in the face and focusing on what you're going to do about it. That to me is positivity. Positivity is not what you said, oh, everything's great. Oh, no, it's this is awesome. This is no, that's not when things are not. It's it's staring at the brutal facts, knowing that things are not good. Okay, what am I going to do about it? How am I going to respond? And to your point, there's an athlete I work with. He told me he doesn't like the word being positive. He just feels it's too soft. And so I said, What word do you use? He uses productive. He likes productive thinking, productive thoughts. And I said, Well, what does that mean? He goes, if you heard my what I say to myself, to the average person, might not sound positive. It might not sound positive, but for me, it's productive. It gets my mind to where I need to be. He goes, I'm not going to tell myself, oh, you got this, you're good. I believe in you. You're good. For him, for him, that doesn't work. He needs to say other words that I'm not going to say publicly to himself in order to get himself to the right state. Now he and he he's the first one to say it's productive. It's not positive, but but it's useful for him as a performer. He wouldn't want to talk to himself outside the field or off the field or off the court. He doesn't want his kids talking to themselves like that. But he has specific utility for this type of self-talk, which is productive for him. Another kind of thought that I was thinking about, there's an athlete I was working with who creates a post-game system where, regardless of how the game is, if it's a good game, if it's a bad game, if he performed well, or if he didn't perform well, he asks himself the same set of questions. What did I do well? What did I learn? And what am I going to do better next game? Or what do I need to work on to do better next game? The reason he asks those three questions is it becomes, it dampens the emotions. It protects him from getting too down on himself when things are bad because he's in a high failure sport. Protects himself. So what did I do? Well, because he's very hard on himself. High performers, people listening to this, no one is harder on themselves than themselves. There's no one who can put a standard on you that is beyond your own standard for yourself. And so that's why this guy was the same way. He literally needed a question to look for the good because he never looks for the good. Number two is what did I learn? And what was good about not what did I do bad, because he can bump inundate himself with what he did bad. What did I learn? He wants to turn in the white belt mentality. You can learn from your failures, you can learn from your successes, you can learn from your teammates, you can learn from your opponents. And so that's a powerful question for him. And lastly, is what am I going to do better? Essentially, that's he's in the driver's seat. What can I control and what am I going to do better next time? Not only does it help him stay above water when things go bad, but it also brings him down the earth when things, when he had a great game. So what did I do? Well, he names a couple things, but what did I learn? That's when he's like, you know what? I learned he starts poking holes in some of his success. I learned that I got lucky today. I learned that some things happened in my favor that I couldn't control. And then what am I going to do better? Meaning that he still has room for improvement even after a good game. And so that's an exercise. And it doesn't have to be those questions, but I love having a set of questions post-performance in any domain to help you kind of give yourself feedback to come back to a better version of yourself next time.
SPEAKER_00:With myself, I really try to avoid using the words positive and negative. I really like that productive and useful language that you used. Because to be honest, I really don't like to swear um ever. I rarely swear on the podcast, but I'm going to swear because I, you know, that type of language does work for me sometimes. And there'll be times where I'm pouting or making excuses or find myself in that victim mindset. And I have to sit back and say, Colin, stop being a bitch and just go do what you need to do. Right. And where I found that first work for me was in high school. So my uncle's a head coach at a Division III college football program. And it was the first TV football game I had ever played in in high school. And I was upset that my head coach was giving props to someone else and not me after I'd played really well. And he, I forget the exact language, but he he ended it with Colin stop being a bitch. And it, I don't know why. It just clicked for me. And I was like, you know what? I am. I am acting like that. And then anytime I find myself since then in that kind of, you know, victim mindset spiral, I just have to stop, say that. And then I can channel my direction and my actions into a way that is proper, properly aligned with the type of person I want to be.
SPEAKER_01:Productive versus unproductive self-talk. That right. Someone listening to that, someone still listening to that might email you and be like, no, don't be so hard on yourself. But for you, it's productive for you. And you're not saying everyone should think like that. You're saying for you in that moment that was productive for you. It wasn't positive. I wouldn't say that's quote unquote positive by the self-help gurus of the world out there, but it was productive. And that is exactly that exact example is what we're trying to illustrate here. What is productive for you versus what is unproductive for you. Now, that same statement for somebody else, that might be unproductive. There's like another athlete might be like, believe in yourself. That sounds positive, but for another athlete I work with, that is unproductive. That is not a useful statement for them to say to themselves. And so finding out what works best for you to, and I always tell them, like, you don't have to share it with anybody, like, but what is your productive self-talk sound like? That that's a perfect example.
SPEAKER_00:You started unpacking this one a little bit already, but I'm gonna say it anyway because I love it. It's simple. What we see what we've trained ourselves to look for, just a one-line banger.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. You give power to what you focus on. And the story you consistently tell yourself is what shapes everything. It shapes your mindset, it shapes your attitude, it shapes your mood, it shapes your actions. And training yourself on what to look for is so powerful. And just going back to the spotlight analogy. It's knowing what is out there and where, and I'm using this, where am I going to direct that spotlight? What am I going to look for? Because what's interesting is there's something called the negativity bias. Now, this is where I will talk about. That's an actual statement. Negativity bias is where the negative, the unproductive, will hunt you. Behavioral economics teaches us that a loss feels two times worse than a win feels good. Losing$100 feels two times worse than finding$100. So understanding how the brain works, negative moments, adversity, failure, mistakes are more sticky. We remember those more. You can have a hundred positive comments in your comment section and one negative comment, and you're going to remember the negative. It's just sticky. They're much more sticky. And so training yourself to hunt the good stuff or hunt the positivity or hunt for the lessons or hunt for how the situation made you stronger. And then the question becomes, how do you do that? My invitation is to generate it through asking yourself more effective questions. I always do this exercise where I tell people, I say, I can control your minds. And they're like, what are you talking about? I said, I can literally control your minds right now. And do you want me to show you how? And they're like, yeah, I want you to show us. I said, okay, but before we do, before I show you how, share with your teammates what you had for breakfast, and then I'll show you how I do it. So everyone starts talking about what they had for breakfast, and then I said, Okay, all right. Now you guys ready? And they said, Yeah, I said, I just did it. They're like, What are you talking about? I said, I told you to share with your teammate what you had for breakfast. What you did is you went back in your mind, you directed your spotlight to breakfast, and you were able to look back at the tape and say, I had cereal or I had eggs, I had sausage. You I directed your attention there because that's what I told you to look for. I told you look for your past breakfast. And the question, if you want better answers, ask yourself better questions. If you always ask yourself, you sit back and you're like, Why do I stink? Why am I so terrible? Your spotlight is like, okay, say less. Let me look for reasons and evidence why you are so bad. Remember that moment? Remember how you were raised? Remember this. Look at this. Wait, why, why am I so bad? Okay, spotlight, let's go pull out all the evidence and look for reasons why you're so bad. You're telling yourself what to look for. But if you start asking yourself questions like, how can this make me stronger? What can I learn from this? You're training your spotlight to look for those things. And so it comes down to asking yourself more effective questions. The common analogy, you see it all over the place. If you look around your room and say, okay, count how many red things you see. And you're counting, counting, counting, and then you say, and then you ask the person the question, all right, how many blue things did you see? You're gonna be like, What? I didn't see any. Why? Because you were looking for the red. And so it's training yourself what to look for. You ask people, hunters of the world, those who like to hunt. They, whether they're hunting a duck or elk or deer or whatever you're going to hunt, you need to set up systems and have the right equipment. There's certain ways to hunt different animals. You put yourself in the position to hunt those things. Fish. You're gonna have different bait for different fish that you're going, you're gonna set the conditions up in order to hunt and to gather and uh catch the fish that you're looking for. Same thing with our minds. How are you engineering your mind to find the things that you're looking for? And if you don't do it by design, you do it by default, those negative things and unproductive things are gonna hunt you. And then they're gonna hunt you to where you think there's nothing I can do about it. And that's when we get into the danger area.
SPEAKER_00:When people talk about manifestation, exactly what you did, what you described is actually what I point them to in what I view manifestation is. It's when you seek things out, they typically find themselves towards you. And like you said, it's either by design or by default. So if I'm constantly looking at outcomes that are confirming my own negativity bias, then I'm going to keep having those things happen. If I'm constantly seeking things that lead me to where I want to go, it's not because I say, oh, I'm, you know, the I'm a Hall of Fame NFL cornerback. I don't just become that. It's that when I'm focusing on the things that align with that, that help me get there, then my body and mind will be attracted to those things and I'll only be able to see those things and do those things that give me, you know, the price of admission. Whereas if I don't talk about those things, I'm only talking about how inadequate I am or all the obstacles that I have to overcome without an action plan, then those will consume me. And it's that that hunting the good. Clint Hartle was on my show and he said the same thing. And I just I love that outlook because that to me is what real manifestation is, not just again, going to that positive poly, happy go-lucky. Oh, I'm gonna be a champion. It's the hunting the good and understanding what that actually means by design.
SPEAKER_01:I am glad that you explained the nuance behind that. I think there's a danger when we talk about manifesting or attracting or visualizing. What a lot of people will do is they'll all they'll do is envision and manifest the end result. They'll just see themselves holding up the trophy, see themselves in arriving at the quote unquote destination they want to achieve. Now, the danger behind that, and there's some research out there that shows that what you start to do is you activate the reward center of the brain, making you think that you already achieved it. And it's a dopamine release where you're like, oh, I'm there. But the reality is you don't want to activate the reward center. You want to activate motor neurons. You want to activate the get after it mechanism. And so, in addition, so yes, you can envision, I'm not saying don't visualize the outcome. In addition to visualizing the outcome, what you also want to envision and to manifest and to visualize in your mind is see, you said this. You said, I just want to, I just want to um highlight what you said. The actions that it will take in order to get there. You want to visualize yourself getting up early in the morning and working out with nobody around. You want to visualize yourself and envision yourself eating healthy and doing the body work that's necessary to put your body in position to achieve what you want to achieve. Visualize yourself doing all the minute details. Visualize yourself embracing the boredom of consistency because that's what a lot of people don't want to do. Envision yourself sacrificing. You're going to have to sacrifice time, energy, and attention in order to get where you want. It's not for the faint of heart. It is not going to be easy. But sometimes like, oh, it's going to be easy. And the first sign of difficulty, I don't feel like it. This is hard. People just fall out. They just, they just they just fall off. And so when you are, in your words, manifesting or visualizing or seeing the future or goal setting, you also have to visualize how hard it's going to be. I said this earlier in our conversation. You cannot underestimate how hard it's going to be and how long it's going to take to get what you want. And when you get there, or you're running into problems getting there, you either have to lower your expectations or increase the sacrifice or increase the work effort. And ask yourself a lot of times when a player comes to me or somebody comes to me or a coach or whatever, oh, this is hard. This is difficult. Oh, I'm not going to get what I want. The first question I ask is, okay, when are you going to quit? Like, give me your quitting points so we know when is too much. And when you say that to an elite alpha athlete, they'll look, they look at me like they want to punch me in the face. Like, wait, what? I was like, no, let's just get this. When are you going to quit? Are you close to quitting and just giving it up? They'll be like, no. And so then I'll ask, okay, so quitting is off the table. That button is not there. Like, oh no, that button's not there. Oh, okay. So, bare minimum, you are going to keep going. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. All right. So all we're going to talk about is what you're going to do about it because you're not going to give up as like, no, I'm going to keep climbing this mountain. All right. Now, there are other people who are like, I am willing to quit. Okay. If you are going to quit, because there may be some people listening to this, like, who are on the brink of pivoting. And they're like, you know what? Maybe it's not worth it. And I'm not saying that you have to stay in it. There are some people like changing paths is exactly what you need to do. And so then we say, okay, at what moment are you going to pivot? I got to give it three more months, six more months, one more year. Okay, great. If one year is the finish line, let's create a system or let's create some things to give yourself the best so that when that year comes up, you're going to be able to say, All right, I'm going to continue on. Or you know what? I did everything I possibly could. I'm going to pivot. I'm going to go into something else. I spoke to an athlete recently who ended up going the pivot route. He had a great career and he can continue on or he can pivot pivot into what he calls civilian life. And he ended up pivoting. But he had no regrets because a year ago we ended up planning all of his landmarks and he did everything that he could. And when he got to the year, he's like, okay, I did everything I could. Nothing changed. I'm going to go, I'm going to go pursue a different career. It was very difficult, very, very difficult. Didn't make it easier, but he had no regrets because he knew that's the direction he needed to go. And so I gave you two examples of I'm not saying there's some people who are like holding on and like, I'm just going to go until you rip this jersey off my back. And there are some circumstances where that could be great, wonderful. Then there are some people who are, there are many out there who are like, you know what? Let me take the bull by the horns and pivot into an environment I'm not very certain of, but I am certain that this is the next step for me.
SPEAKER_00:I love that you pitch it as like, hey, we change our expectations or we change our commitment level or work ethic. And then also understanding without judgment, and maybe there is a time to quit or to pivot or to look at something new. I think that that is an underspoken about thing is the lack of judgment, just understanding what your real priorities are and when it's time to change or make a pivot to understand that it's not always quitting, it's just a pivot. It's this didn't work out the way I thought it was, and I need to change the dynamic of my life.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. And what makes it hard for some people, it rubs up against their identity, especially if you're an athlete. Your whole life. The question you've always been asked by fan friends and family is how's football? How's baseball? How's tennis? Their whole life. Every family reunion, every Christmas outing, every birthday, every Thanksgiving, how's football? How's life? How's dancing? How's music? And then when you come to this point in your life, in your late teens, your early 20s, your 30s, you said it. Sometimes your priorities change. Sometimes things end up and you hold on to it because it's your identity. Wait a minute. Who am I if I don't have ball? Who am I if I don't have this? And it becomes unbelievably difficult to depart from something that's been a part of your life the whole time. And we would rather sit in it and grind through it when we have no joy, no happiness, but we're more from we'd rather face the demon that we're comfortable with and we know versus the demon that's unfamiliar, the demon of going in a different direction and hosting a podcast or getting into business. That is unbelievably scary. But that might be the better option. And it's coming up with a framing around yourself. No, you're not quitting on this. You are pivoting. You could take that same competitiveness and you could aim it towards something else. All these lessons you learn, that competitive edge, that tenacity, that that attention to detail, that teamwork, that leadership, there is a new performance you could target it towards. There are new metrics you can aim it towards. And that becomes very, very hard for people to do. And it is something that I have seen over the course of my 15 years doing this all the time. And it is it. And we say, hey, when you do that, get ready. It's going to be very, very difficult because while things go on, the texts are going to come in a little bit less. People are going to reach out to you less. They're not going to return your calls and not going to return your texts. You're thinking, wait a minute, I gave this guy free tickets all the time. Or these guys, people always hit me up when I was playing. And now I'm not. And I'm getting, I'm getting crickets. And not even friends, even from loved ones. You don't even know what to talk about anymore because it's it's now we're it now I'm in business now, or I'm in school. And it's it's a hard process and a hard transition many times, but it's very common.
SPEAKER_00:You know the number one reason why I started my my podcast to answer that exact question, the identity question. Because that was the number one issue I dealt with throughout my career is every loss, every failure felt like an attack on my identity. When I left the game, I felt like I didn't know who I was. And how you articulated it again is exactly how I articulate it is all you've ever been asked. All I've ever done is sports my whole life. I come from the holidays. How's football going? Right? You talk to anyone randomly, you see someone on the street, oh, you're the football player, right? And then all of a sudden it ends. All of a sudden, everything that you ever done your entire life is now gone. And it's something I had to learn or unlearn was my identity is not just rooted in football. And one of my like key things that I want to embody is tenacity. Funny that you bring that up, and just how to learn how to aim those to different avenues of life and how to create an identity or engineer an identity. That's a word you keep using that I love, is engineer the identity of the person that you want to become, right? And how to use that in different lives and in or different domains of life. And that's where it's shifted from just a podcast about identity to a podcast about the complete human experience, because the complete human experience ultimately will help reveal your identity. That is beautiful. And I love that.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for sharing that. Thanks for really sharing being open and transparent and vulnerable about that and your own journey in solidifying your identity outside of the sport that you played for so many years. And it's it's interesting talking to athletes, how there's some who try to do it while they're playing and try to define their sport as something they do and doesn't define who they are. A little bit more difficult because the feedback loops they get is constant praise or or attacks for what they do. So it's just constant. There are some athletes I'm and coaches I'm currently working with who they're really working on creating an identity outside of their sports because it can bring undue stress and undue pressure. Hit the nail on the head when your whole life and identity is wrapped into your sport or your performance or your leadership or your job or your title. It's no wonder we feel so much pressure and anxiety. And it's it's who I am as a person rides on how I do as a player. And that is a slippery slope. And it's uh very common, but it's it's an important aspect to to talk about because if you don't play, it's it's if you're not in it, it's it would be a surprise to a lot of people how many athletes experience that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, hey, Justin, I appreciate you, man. This has been uh awesome. I know you know my listeners are uh you know definitely gonna enjoy this conversation. I can't thank you enough for coming on, man. Um if people want to reach out to you or if you have anything to promote, uh, where can people get at you and what are you working on?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I'm really excited about the new newsletter that I created. It's called the Increase Your Impact Newsletter, and it's where I share strategies and stories that I'm using with athletes and coaches and players. You have a story and then you got a technique, and it's all for free. And it comes out every Monday. And I I'm so excited about it's where I get to finally share these uh these insider experiences that I don't publicly share, and I'm I'm loving it. So you can find it at Pag P A G P R O S PagPros dot kit k I T dot com. And um, I I love it. But I'm all I know I'm social media as well Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, easy to find.
SPEAKER_00:Awesome. Hey, I can't thank you enough, brother. Listeners, thank you for tuning in. Tune in next week. Check us out, athleticfortish.com, download the pod, subscribe to our YouTube channel, five stars only, baby. Appreciate you, Justin. Thanks, man. Thanks, Colin.
SPEAKER_01:Appreciate you, my man.