EP 219 | From NFL Star To Psychologist: Julius Thomas On Sustainable High Performance

What if you could chase big goals without burning out your brain, your team, or your life? I sit down with Julius Thomas, former NFL Pro Bowler turned Health Psychologist and founder of Optimal Performance Systems, to map a science-backed path to sustainable high performance. His story starts with a leap: walking away from the NFL at 30 to pursue a doctorate and build evidence-based systems that help people win without losing themselves.

We unpack some amazing things such as The 4 R's, the 5 keys of performance and striving for 100. Each framework is amazing and easy to adapt into your life. 

If you’re tired of the false choice between hustle and health, this conversation gives you a third way: align goals with behaviors, build environments that protect focus, and let performance and well-being rise together. 

Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a review with the one habit you’ll change this week.

Chapters:

• 7:40: Faith, Identity, And Choosing Purpose
• 12:45: Life After Football: Doctorate And Reinvention
• 18:10: Zone Of Genius Vs Excellence
• 21:13: The Dual Mandate: Performance Plus Well-Being
• 28:12: Calling Out Broken Performance Models
• 37:20: Four Rs For 1% Leaders
• 41:00: Evidence-Based Systems And Interfering Factors
• 45:24: Presenteeism And Culture Change
• 49:10: Balance Explained: Cognitive Limits And Time
• 54:00: Striving For 100: Five Daily Behaviors
• 1:03:20: Goals And Behaviors Must Match

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Transcript

Cold Open: The Brain’s “No Pain” Problem

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The brain does not have pain receptors. So I'm gonna let that sit in with you for a second. Okay. Because when you work with professionals, the brain is their muscle. When you work with athletes, the the hamstring, the the peck, the tricep, the bicep, the quads, those are all the muscles you need. But thank goodness they have pain receptors. So you can look at your coach and be like, hey, coach, coach, my leg is in so much pain right now. But when you don't have pain receptors in your brain and you're going off to work every day, and you think I can multitask and I can do 75 things, and what's happening is your damages.

Meet Julius Thomas And His Pivot

Walking Away From The NFL

SPEAKER_04 0:40

Welcome to the Confident Podcast. I am Lisa Tarkington, your guide to mastering confidence and leadership. As a business and leadership coach, keynote speaker, and the founder behind the Nonprofit Lead, I am here to equip you with the confidence, clarity, and strategy to create game changing results so that you can step into your power as the person that you are made. If you press play today, it's because you're ready for something bigger. Each episode, I'll bring you real, raw conversations and technical insights that will empower you to redefine your leadership, reclaim your confidence, and transform into the unstoppable form is always a known. This isn't just another podcast. It's your journey that we're on together. So buckle up and let's dive into this transformation. Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Competent Podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Tarkington, and I am really, really excited for today's conversation. We're going to be talking about um high performance from every angle, physical, emotional, and how do we optimize that performance? And I'm not going to be talking alone. I'm I, you guys are, I hope, loving the guest as much as I am. I'm bringing on someone who understands this from every angle. He's an athlete, he's a founder, he's a psychologist. Julius Thomas is a former NFL Pro Bowler, a health psychologist, and the founder of Optimal Performance Systems, a human performance science company bridging peak performance and personal well-being. And let's be honest, I started following him because if you don't know this about me, I'm a huge, huge Denver Broncos fan. And he was a tight end in the NFL. I'm a huge Broncos fan. Um, you know, I've loved them since the era of John Elway. And so what I really loved was learning his story, right? Of how he retired from the NFL to find a calling into what he was meant to do next, which is really about optimal performance. And so I'm excited to have this conversation with him. It's really eye-opening. I love his frameworks. I love the way that he thinks and what he's going to do to help us look at how do we look at balance differently and how do we look at our behaviors and our motivations more? And again, how do we look at the future of leadership so that we are not burning ourselves out, our teams out? How are we having this strong relationship so that when one day we retire, we can look back and say, like, yeah, like I am so proud of myself for moving the needle forward, but I didn't lose myself in the middle of it. So let's dive into this conversation because it's one that I don't want you guys to miss out. Julius, welcome to the Confident Podcast. I am a big, big fan of your work. I'm very excited to talk about all of your work, everything around performance, but I'm gonna start by asking like a question about, you know, not everybody wakes up every day and knows exactly how their life is supposed to go. And I read somewhere that you retired from the NFL at the age of 30. Um, and if, you know, making sure that that's true, if that is true at the age of 30. Um, I'd love to start at that point of okay, your life is about to shift and change. Take us through that. I'd love to hear that process for you.

Faith, Identity, And Choosing Purpose

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Yeah, no, awesome. Number one, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to join the confident podcast and just talk about some of the things that are most important and enjoyable to me in life, you know, performance, well-being, um, what makes this life well lived, which is kind of like a core theme that I kind of stole from Socrates, to be honest. It didn't really come from me. But, you know, he has this quote that says, you know, the unexamined life is a life not worth living. And that's a quote that really sat with me for a long time. And um, as I was going through this journey of self-discovery, so I'll go a little bit before age 30, which is correct, when I did decide to chase a calling for my life. But um, leading right up to that, I realized that there's this myth about performance and success and fame and status that um this should be the ultimate goal. And if you grew up in the States like I did, that's what we're all chasing, right? It's it's a cultural thing. But the concept that is if you get there, everything will be all good, it's incorrect. And I learned that in my own life, and I had all the things, um, but I didn't feel all the things on the inside. And I was wondering why it was empty and what was happening and why the achievement didn't result in the fulfillment. And so after going through a kind of journey of self-discovery and trying to make sense of my own suffering and how I could make this misattribution that got me all the the financial things I wanted, but not the internal ones. Um that self-discovery led me to realizing what my passion was and my purpose was, which is to help people. I I've always loved being in people's corner. I've always loved the one that being the one that people could come to when they got really hard in life. They needed somebody to be there and be supportive for them. And I'm a person of faith, and that's always been very central to my life. And so um when I felt that calling shift, it was a really interesting moment. Like imagine I want you to think about being 30 years old, starting tight end, one of the best players in your position in the NFL, but then feeling like, wait, I have this calling that's taking me away from this. I have this calling that's saying you were put here to go serve people. And I'm not gonna tell you how that's gonna look, but I think it's time for you to leave, walk away from this and go somewhere else. And it was like the most anxiety I'd ever had in my life. Because as I was coming to this decision, like we know things don't just happen, like right in just decide like this morning, that's it. I wish it happened that way. Yeah, it was a couple months of wrestling, like internal turmoil of, are you really gonna walk away from this? I remember the first couple people I told they're like, no one walks away from millions of dollars. Like, imagine calling your agent and being like, hey, um, it's time for me to go do something else. Like, do you think he's just like, oh yes, that's awesome? Oh, I so understand that. Good luck with everything. No, it's like, what the f are you talking about? What do you mean? This was a big existential moment for me in my life. And I didn't even know what I was going to do. I just knew that I wanted to help people. So when I decided that I was gonna be done, I was like, okay, what's the right way to start helping people? And I had a great mentor, still a good friend of mine and mentor that um was a professor at the University of uh Nova Southeastern. And he said, Okay, if you're sure you're really gonna be done. I said, if you want, you can just come sit in some of my doctoral classes if you want to learn more about psychology. Because I developed this interest in what's actually happening inside and the mind. And I would go sit in his classes because the first time in my life I'd never had anything to do. Um, I mean, before I'd never had like free time. Yeah. And so one day after one of the classes, he goes, Julius, did you ever think about getting a doctorate in psychology? And I'm like, no, I was actually really thinking about like this close to saying maybe I should just go travel the world for a year and like go experience. And I was like, Well, now I'm thinking about it. And it took me about a couple months, and I decided, like, oh, that sounds like a good new pursuit. And so at age 30, after I had retired from the NFL, a couple months later, I decided that I wanted to pursue a doctorate in clinical health psychology. And seven years later, got that thing wrapped up.

SPEAKER_04 8:24

Isn't that crazy? I like, and first off, congratulations on following the calling. How many times have people heard the calling and been like, yeah, I'm gonna ignore that? Right? We've we've all done that. Or that's crazy. Why would I go do this when I have a sure thing here? Right. Or something that you've worked so hard to get to. That's the other thing. It's like, not everybody makes it to the NFL, right? Like you were in a top percentage of people that that's usually everybody's dream. And so for to have that feeling, I can't imagine the anxiety. But also, would you say, did you question yourself or do you feel like it was just very calm? Like you said anxiety, but like tell us a little bit more of like those feelings that came up.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

Yeah, no, when I mean anxiety, like if anything, if I mention something, it's usually pretty high on the Richter scale. Like as a football player and as an athlete and growing up in a place like Stockton, California, like a lot of stuff doesn't really hit the radar. But the stuff that does, you're like, okay, this is probably pretty significant. No, for me, the anxiety was um sleepless nights. It was going to bed um with that feeling of anxiousness, thinking about like, how am I gonna tell people? Right. That was the first thing. It was like, once I started to realize, like, okay, I'm actually gonna do this, I couldn't tell anyone right away. Who would I tell? And then I told you earlier, like the first couple people I told, like, no way, you're joking. You're not doing this. Like, that's everyone's first reaction. So then you're more anxiety. You're like, well, now everybody thinks I'm making a bad decision. Uh, then you start to have this inner anxiety about going to work. Because now you're at work and you're like, hey, I can know that this is kind of coming to an end, but man, am I letting my coach down? Like your coach isn't gonna want to hear that. If this guy, he he wants to work with you, he appreciates you, you're a veteran, you you bring something to this tight end room. And so now you've got this inner anxiety about okay, I'm gonna let my coach down, I'm gonna let my agent down, I'm gonna let friends and family. Like how much people love football. And football is much more than just a watching it. What about all the friends and family I had that loved coming to the games, that loved being around what the NFL had to offer? All of that was gonna change, and all that was gonna change for a different reason than for changes for most people. Most people they get an injury or they they just don't have it anymore, and so it's kind of a natural resolution.

SPEAKER_03 10:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

But to walk away, yeah, it's an that's not a common thing. It's not something that people do. And you asked about the why. You asked about how to why made me follow a calling.

unknown 10:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

And so I had an interesting journey. Um, a lot of people don't know that I was a college basketball player. So when I left high school, I went to Portland State University to play basketball as a div on the division one scholarship. And so I played basketball for four years in college.

SPEAKER_04 11:15

Wow. What?

Life After Football: Doctorate And Reinvention

SPEAKER_00 11:16

But while I was playing basketball, I always had this feeling that I needed to give football a try. And so this is how it ties into faith. And I actually got such an interesting message yesterday, and I'll share it with you because I think it kind of lends itself to the story. Um, a guy reached out to me on Instagram, he sent me a direct message and he said, Hey Julius, um I just want to let you know I've been seeing your content lately and it's really resonating with me. And I still remember when we used to play open gym, and that's like something in basketball. Like, you would just go play like other schools, you guys are gonna just play hoop, free hoop, and just have a good time. And he was like, I remember we were standing outside that bar, and you were telling me that you were gonna try to be in the NFL, and I thought you were crazy, and you did it. And I just want to tell you, congratulations, and like thank you for all that you're doing now, right? So I'd already been crazy once. Like, I've already done crazy. But the the spiritual question was you trusted God to follow a calling when you were broke, had nothing, and then there was all the the things that football and professional being a professional athlete could offer. Now you trust him enough to lead it. And for a person that reads the scripture and has read the scripture for a long time, that is a huge test of faith. It's one thing to trust when you're going towards the good stuff, but it's 4X to walk away and then trust that man, there's something out there that you don't know, but it's gonna be good for you and the world. And that was really what gave me the strength to walk away when I did, and to send me in this direction to want to serve people and help people to have a very well-lived life.

SPEAKER_04 13:03

Wow. I love all of that. And I think um I can resonate a lot with that because I'm an entrepreneur and you know many times I've been called crazy, more times than not, and not in a bad way, just when you can't explain it. That's I think the hardest part is you can't explain that feeling that comes up. You're like, I know that I'm being told to do this. I can't tell you why. I can't even tell you what it's gonna look like in five years, but like I'm just gonna like trust this faith out there, knowing that if this, if I don't take care of this burning feeling, it's not gonna go away and I'm gonna drive everybody else crazy as well. You even said that like showing up to work. Like I've had even clients and myself, you know, you show up to the job and you're like, I know I'm not supposed to be here anymore, but I gotta do it well. But also like I've got to figure out what the next thing is. And that's tough.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

100%.

SPEAKER_04 13:52

You know? Yeah. And so, you know, now you are seven years out from that. You've gotten your doctorate. Like, tell us, like, what where are you now? Like, what does it feel like to be seven years out from making one of those biggest decisions for yourself?

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Wow. That's a good question. And and I would say that the um the feeling of being done is coming in waves. Like at first, you don't feel done, right? You've been on one of the highest paced, most stressful experiences that you've ever been on. And for me, um, I was humbled by what it takes to get a doctorate. Uh, I've done hard things. I mean, played college basketball, done NFL training camps, right? Like, some done some really hard stuff.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

But this was its own level of hard because the pace of it, the continuousness of constantly taking classes and writing papers and having advisors and having um supervisors and all this the speed of it. And then when it's done, you don't feel done. You don't really like I'm still waiting for an email to come through, like hey, Julie, it's like you missed this paper, or like, hey, you know, you need to be at the clinic at this time. You know, hey, your patients are there waiting for you. So for me, it's it's really just trying to open myself up to letting it sink in that I'm done. Um, it's uh an achievement that I feel very proud of. One of the things that I really struggled with as an athlete was I felt like people, well, it's kind of the way I've been saying this lately is I feel like every individual has some parts of them that they feel is a strength that's being overlooked. Like you know that there's some things inside of you that you know are your strengths that the world doesn't see. And the world's telling you, no, these are your strengths. And you're like, No, I I feel something in me, yeah, but I haven't been able to manifest it. And so one of those things was the intellectual side. Like everybody saw me as a six-five, 260-pound athletic specimen, and everything was like, Oh man, you're so fast. Oh, you do this so well, oh, you do this so well, but it was all physical. And I felt like my gifts were the internal ones. It was how I showed up for people, it was the intellectual abilities that I had. And I wasn't able to um manifest that as an athlete. And I even had this story that was like some of those times you know when where you're working now, it's coming to an end by the things that people are saying and the way it hits you. And so I actually had a a couple coaches as I started to push for more ability to like, I want to get in the planning, I want to get in the decision making. And they're like, No, no, no, that's our job. And then I had a couple different moments where a coach essentially said, Hey, you know what, we don't pay you to think, we pay you to run. And I'm like, damn. At first you're hurt by it, right? Because you feel like, wow, that's demeaning and that you belittled this gift that I think I have. And then the next one was okay, be in reality, accept it and recognize that you're not gonna get to show that here. If you want to build that, if you want to grow into that, you gotta plant that pot somewhere else.

unknown 16:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

And that was one of the things that I'm happiest about now is now I've had the last seven years to push myself in the most strenuous way you can intellectually, and then to overcome that. And then now to have this really cool skill set that I get to help a lot of people with.

Zone Of Genius Vs Excellence

SPEAKER_04 17:08

I love that. And as you were talking, I I teach all the time zone of genius and then zone of excellence, right? Zone of excellence is really about like something that everybody sees you as a strength. You get asked to do all the time, and you're like, I don't want to be asked to do this anymore. Like, I'm good, I know I'm good at it. I don't see, and the zone of genius is like, where do you want to focus? And that's where you want to your strengths and your passions intersect. And I love that you bring that up because I think many times we put ourselves in a pigeonhole of, okay, I'm I'm excellent at this. I can keep running, I can keep doing this, I'm, I know I'm going to be great at it. I'm going to excel. People see me there. It's the shift that's the hardest of like, actually, I know this is my zone. This is where my gifts are that God's given me. How do I spend 60% of my time there? Right. And you're able to do that now. But I think you have to go through those moments of like, this doesn't feel right. This didn't fit well for me. It was great, but here's where I want to go. And so, with that, tell us more about, you know, the methods that you teach within your company to help people. I'd love to hear those.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

No, that's awesome. And I'm I'm really gonna sit with after this conversation um the zone of excellence versus zone of genius because I think that that's that's a really meaningful conceptualization, right? We can all choose to do the things that we're really good at. And I work with a lot of executives. And sometimes I tell my story and they come up to me and they say, Wow, that really resonated with me. I've been in this role for the last 10 years and the last four, I've known it it's not for me anymore. But it's just a good, comfortable place. Like they're excellent there, but it's not feeding them, it's not bringing them anything. But the the courage that you need to step into the vulnerability of going, where's my zone of genius? I can't tell you how many times people come up to me and they say, Hey, I'm struggling to step into my zone of genius to use your concept. And so that's really it's cool. You're on to something there. I hope you continue to teach people that. I think that that's that's an awesome way of looking at it. Um Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 19:13

Yeah, it's been fun. Yeah. Well, and there's four zones. So I'll just share all four so that anybody listening. So the first one is zone of incompetence. It's the thing that like anybody can do better than you, right? It's the zone that like you shouldn't be doing. Then there's the zone of competence where, yeah, I'm good at it, but a hundred other people can do it better than me. And then that's where the zone of excellence and zone of genius. So there's four zones that compete for our time every day. And it's really important to know, okay, what zone am I in today? Where did I focus my time? Because the goal is that 60% of the time you're focused in your zone of genius. We can't be in it all the time, as you can imagine. But the more that we can come back to that. So yeah, when I work with my clients, it's really cool when they say, like, this is my zone, but you don't know it right away sometimes. I didn't. And then once I started to really dive into the research and, you know, the backing of the zone of genius and all of the zones, it's very open, it opens my eyes to be like, yeah, that's not that's a zone of incompetence for me. Why don't we hire that out? Or let me call someone else. You know, and once you realize those things to the your point about those executives, it's a game changer because then you can uplift people. You know, you get to help them find their zone. And usually your zone of excellence is probably someone else's zone of genius. And then your ripple effect really is powerful. So, yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

Thank you for sharing that because um I'm a big believer. Like I've I've done so many different things, and so I love learning other people's orientations, right? The way they're looking at it. Because then we can find common language, and now we can really dive into this conversation. Because to go to your zone of incompetence and confidence, I tell myself as an entrepreneur. Um, every year it's my job to fire myself.

SPEAKER_04 20:54

Amen. I love that. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

And so I need to fire myself from my zone of incompetence immediately. Yes. And then I need to be working to fire myself for my zone of confidence because there's just somebody better. And so, yes, you're you're I'm I'm picking up what you're putting in. Love that.

SPEAKER_04 21:08

Love that.

The Dual Mandate: Performance Plus Well-Being

Five Keys Of Performance And Health Buckets

SPEAKER_00 21:09

To tell you about some of the things that I work with, it really starts with a dual mandate. And I'm really um, I'm really adamant about trying to break through um the consciousness of people that want to be high performers of high performance is broken. Like, I really want people to see like we should not continue to stack more and more performance on the model of performance that we've been working under in the United States of America. And the way that it really started to land with me was to see that we have the highest gross domestic product in the world. If the United States is number one and we've remained number one, and that fits American exceptionalism. I am an American exceptionalist. I want America to be number one. I want I love that we attract people around the world to come here because it's the place to go be number one. Yeah. But it's not exceptional to be. The lowest in health and well-being of all the developed nations. Amen. To me, this is a disparity that means you're not as awesome as you think you are. And so, what my focus is, is to help leaders and individuals and teams and organizations create the environments, create the styles of working where they can create a dual mandate in their culture or within themselves. Maximize your performance plus maximize your well-being. Because I know from personal experience and my story, it doesn't matter if you have maximum performance, if you're not good on the inside, you will not be able to enjoy and be thriving and feel fulfilled with maximum performance. So I wanted to help people realize they have to have both. And so once you can start from that conceptualization, then we go in deeper in that. And it depends on if I'm helping an individual or it depends on if I'm helping an organization or team. So one of the things that I like to do for individuals is start to find out where are you with your optimal performance? Where are you with your mental performance piece, which I know to be very critical, it's gonna allow performance? Like the five keys of performance for me commitment, discipline, guidance, quality support, and resilience. Like if you have those five, I promise you're gonna be able to go do most things at a really high level. But then the other piece is where's your mental health? Where's your emotional health? Where's your physical health? Where's your relational health? And where's your life satisfaction? If you don't also have those five right, it doesn't matter how well you're performing, you're not gonna say, My life is awesome. And that's what I really remember from my own experience is one day I looked in the mirror and I said, You you call yourself wanting to be the best, and you've spent so much time and effort over-indexing on your physical health. That's all about being an athlete. But what have you done for yourself mentally? And for me, it was what have you done for yourself emotionally? And so I started to look at them as buckets, and like I had a swimming pool of effort in my physical health. Like that's all I was doing. Then I had like a nice, like good Home Depot size, you know, little utility plastic bucket with the little handle we all played with as kids. That was what I was doing for my mental health effort. But then my emotional health, that was like a little solo cup with a couple drops in it that the wind could have blown ever if there was ever a strong wind. And I was like, oh wait, I'm not performing at a high level on the inside. And so when I started to look at life and the world that way, that became a conceptualization that I like to help individuals with. Because if you don't have a comprehensive performance approach with your performance stacked on top of your well-being, it's not sustainable. How many stories, how many great performers and executives, and athletes, and entertainers do we know that some of them didn't want to be alive? Like keep it I'm known by millions and I'm trying to check out of this life because I'm not right. And so that I think that's an important concept. And then on the team and organizational side, it depends on which thing I'm doing. Am I co consulting? Am I doing executive coaching? But one of the things I'm really excited about now is uh four R's of leadership for 1% leaders. And this is a way of teaching a comprehensive performance plus well-being, um corporate structure for the leaders that I work with, and then down through the verticals of their teams. So uh it's the four Rs. I'm trying to find ways to make things more memorable.

SPEAKER_04 25:34

Yeah, totally. Frameworks.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Um, the four Rs are regulate, relate, refocus, and reinforce. And if you can combine all four of those R's into your team, then the leader has an opportunity to be able to create maximum performance plus maximum well-being.

Calling Out Broken Performance Models

SPEAKER_04 25:52

I love that. Well, and I think so. You brought up a few different things that came up to my head as you were talking. And I first off, both are really important. I love that you're teaching both of those. I also think as someone who had burnout at one time in her life after leaving corporate. Um And that's on me. Like a lot of that was on me. It wasn't on the corporate job. It was on myself, is I didn't have both, right? I didn't have that mentality. I also didn't know how. So now that's what I do. And same with you, right? Like now we teach it because we didn't have the tools. I think the other thing that came up as you were talking is sometimes we we overextend in one spot. So when you were talking about like the physical piece, I think that that's one thing if from an outside perspective, I would have had the assumption that an NFL football player would have been good in both, because I also look at, you know, like when a kicker misses a field goal, um, that's mental, right? Like afterwards. And so I think about like, oh, they have to fill up those different buckets. But to your point, when you are so good at something that it can overmask everything else. And you can be like, yeah, I'll deal with that later. I'll deal with that later. I'm really good at here. And then those aren't even anymore. So I love that you shared that. I think the other thing that came up for me as you were talking is, you know, the United States, right? Like what we're known for. And I used to work in corporate and I remember Europe always being jealous of the time that they had off and like they didn't care. And not in a bad way, but they were like, well, this is my time. They had the boundary that I didn't have, nor did I understand it. But as you were talking, the one thing that kept coming up for me was when I scroll on social media, I am bombarded every day with here is how you can make$100,000. I was just talking about this on another one of our recent matters,$100,000 a month. And so then you go down that rabbit hole. And then it's like, okay, you need work-life balance. And then you go down that rabbit hole and your brain is like, wait, what am I supposed to be doing? Winter has a way of slowing us down. Maybe your routine slipped, maybe your energy dipped, or maybe you just felt off. Spring is such a natural reset point. More daylight, more movement, more momentum. And here's what I will always say: prioritizing your health doesn't have to be complicated. In fact, the more complicated it is, the less likely we are to stay consistent. And that's why I love microhabits in the morning. Small decisions that compound. And for me, that's one simple scoop of AG1. Most supplement routines are overwhelming, five different bottles, confusing times, things that you forget when your schedule shifts. But AG1 simplifies it for me. It's a multivitamin, pre and probiotic and superfood all in one scoop. The superfoods and B vitamins help provide nutritional support for steady, consistent energy. And it's not the spike and craft kind, but the kind that helps keep job clear and focused. It's part of how I reset, retard, and step into the season ahead, feeling intentional instead of reactive. So if you're ready to simplify your mornings and support your health in a way that actually fits your life, go to drinkag1.com slash the confident to get an AG1 flavor sampler and a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K23 in your AG1 welcome kit with your first subscription order, only while supplies last. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash the confident. A great reminder, start small, stay consistent, and let this be your reset. And I think your four R is really helps that, right? Like how do you relate, regulate, and missing the other two as you were talking? But like those, like there are so many pieces where those are important just as humans in general for us to take care of. I don't know if there are any thoughts on any of that.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

No, I have so many thoughts on that. And um, you know, one of the things I really want to touch on, right, is the assumption that we're we have good mental performance because we have good performance, right? Ooh, that's what you're saying. It's like, yeah, you know, you're a kicker, you miss a field goal, you have to have some type of mental performance, right? To bounce back.

SPEAKER_04 30:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

Right. But if you start to look at a lot of athletes, and really a lot of the insights I have is just because I've been blessed to be around it, right? Like some of the things that I'm saying, it's not like I had this epiphany, right? It's just from the observing. Yeah. And yeah, we have resilience, right? Like I play with a bunch of people that know how to get their leg broken in half, go have surgery, wake up a week later and start trying to do anything they can to get back and go out there on the field and be courageous. But the mental side is so much bigger than that. What do you do about self-sabotaging thoughts? What do you do about emotional traumas that you've been through in the past? What do you do about the times when your mind's not working in your favor for you and it's not being effective? No one is training us in that, no one is helping us through that. And one of the real reasons, like you always have to look for evidence for if something was developed or not. And that's why you see such a big strain on professional athletes when they retire is because we didn't have the mental skills to handle all these challenges. The the the environment was protective. Number one, you're you're operating in your zone of excellence, and so the amount of of armor that is, right? To know I'm one of the best in the world, right? That that feeling is protective in and of itself. You're around a bunch of people your age that do your things, they listen to the music you like, right? There's all these protective factors in football or basketball or baseball. And then when you leave that environment, they're gone. So there's that piece. But then there's the piece of how do you make sense of all this information we're being bombarded with? And this was one of the reasons why I wanted to start optimal performance as to become a signal in the noise. And everyone's well-meaning, and everyone is trying to provide people with something that could be of value to them. But the problem is, is if it's just performance or it's just well-being, what do you do?

SPEAKER_03 31:55

Yeah.

Multitasking, Context Switching, And Burnout

SPEAKER_00 31:55

And then there's this guy that keeps popping up every time I watch a YouTube video and he's got 7% body fat and he's running 13 miles an hour on the treadmill, and he's saying if you're a man and you're over 40, you don't have a six-pack, you're out of shape. No, that's not exactly what we would define from a health perspective is what's physically healthy, right? So on social media, you have these ideals. Okay, that's great. But if 20,000 people started doing that, only five are gonna get there. Yeah, there's just a statistical piece that you can't avoid. And so with optimal performance, I wanted to help people be able to have a system that's comprehensive, that works for both performance and well-being of that, personal life and professional life. And it's a system that you can trust because it's evidence-based. And that was one of the most important things that I gained from that seven-year journey of becoming a doctor, is to be able to create systems and frameworks and strategies that are built on the actual science, which is repeatable findings. And so when I work with a company or when I work with a leader, they can be confident that what we're learning is actually based on evidence and not just based on my experience or the things that I like to teach people or that I found to be effective. And some of that gets mixed in. But um, when you find a way to start thinking comprehensively, now we'll see the health metrics change. And that's the big gap I see in performance right now. We all know that there's like some of the best performance coaches in the world, and I think they're missing two things, and I'm critical, and yes, I'm gonna call them out, and they can call me out too, and I'm I'm happy to go into that debate. But the two things I think they're missing is number one, there is this ability to tell people what they need to be doing. But I learned in psychology and I learned in therapy that doesn't always work. If it was super easy to just tell a person do A and then they do A, parenting would be much easier.

SPEAKER_04 33:57

Much easier, yes.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

The key is how do you peep help people get through the stuff that's interfering with them doing that behavior? And so in optimal performance, we really focus a lot on how do we help people move through the interfering factors, how do we help teams move through the interfering factors? A leader says, I want higher engagement, I want higher commitment, and I want higher effort. I want to find a speaker to come in and tell my team that. And I go, that's great. And there's some great people that are gonna do that. But you've never asked your team why they can't do that. You've never asked your team what's in the way of you being engaged, of you having commitment, of you putting in effort. And so at Outline Performance, I really focus on the interfering factors. I think that's a critical piece. And then the the other piece is can you teach me a comprehensive system? Like I I can't be leaning one way or the other because now I've created a a vulnerability. And that's really what it came down to for me, is like, okay, I gotta come in and teach people a performance system that works, that they can count on, it's gonna help them thrive and be their best. But I I also gotta teach them how to do health the right way. Because if performance really works, then we should see health metrics improve. And that's my way of knowing that performance is broken as we do it currently in the US, because anybody that's popped the hood and looked at the chronic disease burden, looked at the mental health burden, would be shocked, dismayed, and say that we need to have a change right now. Because our mental health uh statistics and burden, it's not decreasing, it's increasing dramatically. And we're gonna hit a point of critical mass where we can't keep performing this way we're doing it without creating so much illness and disease burden that people aren't gonna be able to do it. And when one in every two corporate employees in the US says I'm about to be burnt out, that's letting me know that we're probably at max capacity for how much internal strain we can continue to take.

unknown 35:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:00

50%. That's crazy, right?

Sponsor Message: AG1 Reset

Four Rs For 1% Leaders

SPEAKER_00 36:03

Just imagine if 50%, like I know you're a Denver Broncos fan. What if 50% of the Broncos players were like, I feel like if I do one more sprint today, my hamstring is gonna pop off the back of my leg. I feel like if I do one more drill today, uh, I'm gonna tear a peck. Hello? What are we gonna do? I mean, yeah. Engagement numbers, like I'm sure you you might think about this, but if not, like we should start talking about this more. Presenteeism. The concept of presenteism has been sitting on my head and my heart so heavy. If I was a leader and somebody told me, hey, there's this concept called presenteism, that means that people are coming to work every day, knowing that they would like to leave, but they can't because there's no other jobs to go get, and they're not being productive, they're not being engaged, they're just sitting there on the clock. Every leader is looking for how do I grow my revenue? How do I motivate my team? Hello? What if we started to help reduce presenteism in your teams? Like there's so much value that we can get to increase our performance by taking care of the well-being of people, but we haven't that hasn't broken through the the old models of leadership and performance. But when it can, we can have a win-win.

unknown 37:23

Totally.

SPEAKER_04 37:28

I love that. Well, and I resonate with all of that. I think that that's just a very, very key. I I actually have never heard that stat about 50%, like the one in two. And I'm like, holy moly, because I also, you know, I have a keynote coming up, and I was just talking to someone about we really were talking about like letting go of old systems and old ways in which we do it so that we can allow ourselves to have these new new ideas. And one of the things I was telling them is, you know, we also have to get let out let go of the concept of multitasking, right? Like I used to pride myself and I can do all these things at one time. And then once you look at the research and you look at the stats and you understand like uh multitasking and contact switching, we lose 500 hours a year, 13 weeks, 13 work weeks we lose a year from contact switching and multitasking. And it's really since I've done that research and I've done a lot of that pieces, I'm like, oh, that's actually probably caused my burnout too, because I was trying to do too many things at once. You even said that earlier of like, we add so much. And it's like back to the zone of genius, zone of excellence. Once you know your zone of genius, you're more aligned. And then you can start to say no to things. I I teach a lot also about executing with intention. And that's the other piece that I think really came out when you were talking too is like when we're intentional, when we're focused, versus like, I got it, I got it. And we're just like carrying this load, we're saying, like, you know what? I'm just gonna carry these groceries today. I'm gonna take this on, not all of this. And then I'm gonna delegate, or you know, we can't always delegate, but also we have to say no to things. And I think as you were talking, like those pictures were coming up for me of like, yeah, if I had two people in my in my um my workforce, and then you like keep adding and you're like, okay, if I split that in half, half these people are gonna be burnout. I I so I'm pick like I'm I'm wanting productivity from 10 people, but I'm only gonna get it from five. Like that's a big deal, you know? And I and I think the word burnout, I've had to be careful how I use the word burnout because everybody's like, I'm sick of hearing about burnout, but it's not going away. And I think that's true. Yeah, and I think we have to like find new ways. And you know, one of the other things I've heard a ton. So we're just in the beginning of the year. But one of the things that I continue to hear from people is we were very big on like go hard. We were teaching everybody like go hard, go after your dreams, give it your everything. If that means you're working 80, 100 hours, go. That was like past. Then we went into we need to slow down, we need to have boundaries. Like we went to very light. And so now people are saying to me, like, Lisa, I want a new balance. I really want to hustle, but I don't want to be stressed and burnt out. But I also get bored when people are like, go for a walk and meditate, like all of these things, they don't want to do all of those. So, like, how do we find that balance? And I guess like as someone who has a business, who spent seven years learning, who has a family, like, what does that even mean to you? Like, what does balance look like for you?

Evidence-Based Systems And Interfering Factors

SPEAKER_00 40:20

Yeah, no, that's awesome. I'll start the first part of this concept, and and and I'll give you a really important brain fact. The brain does not have pain receptors. So I'm gonna let that sit in with you for a second. Okay. Because when you work with professionals, the brain is their muscle. When you work with athletes, the the hamstring, the the peck, the tricep, the bicep, the quads, those are all the muscles you need. But thank goodness they have pain receptors. So you can look at your coach and be like, hey, coach, coach, yeah, my leg is in so much pain right now. But when you don't have pain receptors in your brain and you're going off to work every day, and you think I can multitask and I can do 75 things, and what's happening is you're damaging your brain. Your brain cannot do that workload. And now you're putting it into a place where like you're trying to do it every day. It's the same as if I took you and I put you on a bench and I said, okay, start off with a 25 on each side. A lot of people can do it. Now let's add another 25. It's not going to be long of adding 25s before you realize, like, okay, this bar is going to drop on me and hurt me, or I'm going to tear a muscle. And that's one of the things that we don't have that ability to recognize how important cognitive fatigue is, how important cognitive limits are. I've done cognitive testings, like sat in front of people and and saw through varieties of people. How long can we really remember strings of numbers? Like, like how far out can we go? Is it six numbers? Is it nine numbers? Is it 11? How long can we actually sustain our attention on one task? It's not very long. We're not, we don't have the cognitive abilities that we all think they can, that we have. And and so those are things that we don't understand if we're not aware of that. What are we putting our most important organ through every day? And then can we really be upset when we have dementia? And the problem we have with a lot of corporate leaders is when you don't know the health, you go, I'm so so tired of hearing about burnout. But are you tired of hearing about cancer? Are you tired of hearing about strokes? Are you tired of hearing about heart disease? That's a continuum from health to disease. Along the way are these metrics and these things that happen as this goes down. And so when I talk about leaders, and I tell them you have a responsibility to keep your people healthy. You're talking about how you want more output, you want more working hours. But what if I told you that you are now leading to depression? The environment that you create creates tremendous anxiety. And now you're disrupting marriages, and you're disrupting parents' ability to connect with their children. So here you are just so focused on output. A great leader says, I want output and I want well-being. And I'm so thankful that I've found the leaders and the executives that have become my clients that see it that way, and then we can build that together. But when you were asking about balance, it really sits with me because I think about that all the time too. Like some of it is a little pansy, some of it is a little, you know, throw a pillow at it, is they would say in sports.

SPEAKER_02 43:32

Yeah.

Presenteeism And Culture Change

SPEAKER_00 43:33

And what are people needing? People are needing a comprehensive system that can teach them how to go for what they want in life without burning out, stroking out, or creating the mental health that makes you want to check out. And so that's really what I had to sit with when I was building optimal performance. I'm obsessed with performance. I am going to be a lifelong high performer. I am looking for the next mountain to climb at all times. That's true. But if I burn out in this process, if I feel unfulfilled, if I get depressed, anxious, or if I create health problems that get in the way of me being able to have the fulfillment on the back end, it was all for naught. I'll tell you a story from one of my clients that I was working with that works as a high-up senior executive at the NBA level. I asked him, What is it that you want your life to look like when you're 65? I want a great connection with my wife. I want to be healthy enough to travel the world. I said, that's awesome. What are you doing today? How often do you sleep? Four hours a night. How often do you guys spend time together? It's really hard to do. How often do you exercise? Maybe twice a week. How are you eating? Not as good as I should have. And I went, whoa, whoa. How in the world do you think you're gonna get towards that goal if your behaviors aren't matching? And so this is the disconnect we have. And we have so many disconnects that we can't keep asking why things are broken. And I maintain balance by keeping a focus on where's my personal life, where's my professional life? How's my performance? How is my well-being? And then I break it down into sub-buckets, and I make sure that I'm balanced with my daily efforts. I'm making sure that when I try to be the best performer that I can be, I'm applying the striving for 100 program to my own life, which I really credit for allowing me to be able to finish a doctorate, start a business, and raise three young sons all at the same time.

SPEAKER_04 45:36

I love that. Well, and I appreciate that you shared that because I think balance looks different for everybody. And I also think I was picturing as you were talking about my own life, right? And I think about we all have these plans one day when we're retired. What do we want to do? And what does that look like? And it's beautiful. But it's like to your point, I teach a lot in my keynotes, like what's that 1% that you have to do today to move that needle forward? And to your point, that's exactly it when it comes to balance and how does that look? And as you were as you were saying that, I literally was also picturing my life as, you know, uh a new mom, you know, um, you know, a husband that travels a lot, like, and and also building a business, like it doesn't always look perfect, but also that recognition and that self-awareness of today, maybe one took more than the other, but then how am I gonna shift back versus keep it that way? That's the other thing that, you know, or like the time that I have with my son, you know, when I pick him up from daycare versus like when he goes to bed. How am I not using my phone during that time? Right. And I will say, like, there was some, there was two months where that phone got out more than I like was spending time with my son. And then like my husband, he's amazing, would always say, like, what do you what do we think we're doing here? Right. And having that accountability partner too, to say, like, I know this is important, but what about all these other things? And it's and you sometimes it's that self-awareness checkpoint with yourself of like, does that phone call actually matter right now, or does being present matter right now? And that's hard.

SPEAKER_00 47:06

It's so true. And it's hard, and it's hard because we don't have those systems in place. Like, I know when I'm doing coaching with my MBA guys or my NFL guys, exactly how to tell them the system to follow to manage their health and their performance as a pro athlete. I know when I'm working in a hospital exactly the program and the system for the patients to follow to manage the goals that they have.

unknown 47:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:36

But we don't have that system as working professionals. And that's what I've been out to build and develop through optimal performance. And so I've done it several different ways. The striving for 100 program. How do you know when you're actually healthy? How do you know which things you're doing? What have you done today to make sure that happens? And the striving for 100 program is five daily behaviors. It's the same five daily behaviors that if more of us did it, we could reduce illness and disease, both physical and mental, in the United States by eight zero percent.

unknown 48:09

Wow.

Balance Explained: Cognitive Limits And Time

SPEAKER_00 48:09

When I read that line in a research paper, I went, what are we doing? And how do I go teach that for the rest of the year? Yes. Only 7% of Americans complete the five daily recommended healthy lifestyle behaviors. Sleep, exercise, nutrition, stress management, and healthy substance use. If we could hit those five more days than not, you would be able to go to bed every night and say, I'm living in a healthy manner. Much less complicated than is being taught on social media. Seven or nine hours of sleep. If you're not getting seven or nine hours of sleep, no excuse, no, I had this, no sleeping's hard, no, but but no, if you're not getting seven or nine hours of sleep, you're not taking care of your brain and your body, and doing the most significant influential thing to be healthy. I don't care about your supplements. Don't tell me that I'm having struggles with my attention. What supplement should I take? Sleep. You're sleeping four hours a night. Don't tell me you're surprised that you're having trouble focusing. Exercise, 150 minutes a day. That's not crazy, I mean a week. That's not a crazy amount, but mix in some resistance, some endurance, right? Do some things where you get your heart rate up. Do some things where you actually feel the strain of weight, bone density, lean muscle mass, that kind of stuff is important. Healthy eating, right? Follow your what diet do you like? Mediterranean, Dash, keto, find one of them, follow it. Stress management. 20 minutes a day. What's your practice? If you're not ever using the brakes on your nervous system, and your nervous system was designed as a gas and brake, we just are all gas, then you're gonna burn out your nervous system, which is gonna burn out all the systems of your body that are connected to it. Cardiovascular system, pulmonary system, like all your systems. And the last one is we abuse substances, and when are we gonna stop acting like we don't? Right? Like this culture is the quickest. We're so quick to be like, hmm, I'm feeling down today, I'm gonna reach for this. I'm feeling stressed, I'm gonna reach for this. Oh, I need to focus today. I'm gonna call my friend and get their pill so I can, you know, get some hard work done for the next four hours. Well, if you abuse substances, you're gonna abuse your health. So those are the five things. And I created the striving for 100 program so that the people that work with optimal performance, they know the five that they need to do to be healthy. And let's talk about work-life balance because I'm always ready for that fight. I'm like, no, work-life balance is doable. But work, sit around your house all day and do nothing is not work-life balance. And so I've created like a 24-hour clock, but I block out seven of those hours because mandatory that needs to go to sleep.

SPEAKER_04 50:46

I love that.

SPEAKER_00 50:47

So really there's a 17-hour clock. And the question that I would ask if I was a person that wanted to strive for performance while being healthy is well, what do I do with my 17 hours? Well, the first thing you need to do is go, how much of that are you gonna commit to work? Is it eight? Is it nine? Is it ten? No judgment. Yeah, but whatever it is, the rest of that clock is what you have left. And so for most people, so they do a 10-hour workday. I do 10-hour workdays. I've got seven hours left. What am I gonna do with my seven? How am I gonna make time for fun? Why is the country so depressed? No positive affect.

SPEAKER_02 51:23

Yeah, we gotta play.

SPEAKER_00 51:25

Yeah, yeah, no fun. What am I gonna do for self-care? So, some of that self-care should be some of the things you do to stress management, some of the things that you do for your exercise, right? Make time for that in your days. Then what are you gonna do for growth? Because you're not a true high performer if you're not making time for growth. And what do you do for growth? And then the last one is what are you gonna do for relationships? But if you're telling me that you can't fit growth, self-care, fun, and relationship time into your last seven hours, that's a long time.

SPEAKER_04 51:55

That is a long time.

SPEAKER_00 51:56

Oh, I don't have seven hours. Well, go on your phone, click settings, click social media usage. The average human being is spending what 17 hours a week.

SPEAKER_04 52:07

Yeah, that's disgusting, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 52:10

What if you just repurpose the time? If you in that 17 hours, you could take care of your fitness, you could take care of your nutrition, you could go see people, you could put your phone down, hang out with your kids, go to their practice, go in the backyard, throw the ball back and forth. It's all doable. But the reason why we don't have work-life balance isn't because we don't have the time for it, it's because we don't cut out the BS. And so when I teach people, here's how you can have striving for 100 to be confident that if you get 100 points, so each five areas, I say that's 20 points. So at the end of the day, go back and chart it.

SPEAKER_02 52:46

Oh, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 52:49

I don't get 100 points every day. Yeah, I don't go a week of 100s, but if at the end of the month I got a bunch of hundreds and eighties, that was a good month.

unknown 52:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:57

If I got a bunch of 60s and 40s, I'm putting myself at risk for the downstream effects of illness and disease. And so some of these are the ways where I'm trying to teach a comprehensive performance system for working professionals that allows them to go after. Like I am relentlessly attacking what I'm trying to achieve in life while also not losing sight of what it takes to be healthy and well.

Striving For 100: Five Daily Behaviors

SPEAKER_04 53:21

Yeah. Well, and I think that that's what everybody says that they want. Right. And then to your point, you're actually doing it. That's the difference. We've talked a lot on this podcast over my past episodes of like, okay, we we can talk a good game, but like, what's your action behind it? And I love how simple you make that too, right? It is simple. We just overcomplicate things so many times. And I love your your stat on social media too, because I was literally picturing myself last night. Like I was telling my husband, I'm like, I need to wake up earlier because I know no matter what, what time my son's waking up. Like I know, like no matter what, like it doesn't matter what time I go to bed. He's still waking up at the same time. So I have a choice, right? And how do I show up and how do I stop my scrolling? Uh, put on a meditation. We have the hatch in our bedroom. And I literally last night was like, okay, I'm just gonna put on a meditation. I'm not a big meditator, but I was like, I need something to turn my brain off because I had an Americano at 4 p.m. Like, knew better, still did it. And that was my moment this morning when I was up before my son. I was happy about that because I knew that like I set the discipline the night before of, and then this morning I got everything done so that when he got up, I wasn't like, stay there, eat your bottle, I gotta go get ready, or like because I was by myself. And I think that that is just another piece too of like, how do you take that stress off yourself and set yourself up for success, which is sometimes easier said than done depending on energy, but also the discipline that you just shared? I love that.

SPEAKER_00 54:50

100%. At the end of the day, I tell people, it's really I have this really simple way to evaluate if you're full of BS or if you're actually trying to do the things that you say you're after. And it's really simple. Do the goals and the behaviors match? I I have been around some of the highest performing people in the world, people that are more performing than me, and it's that simple all the time. I want to be an all-pro. Okay. Do you have all pro daily behaviors? If it's a if there's a mismatch, that's insanity, but it's okay. Lower your goal. And people look at me like, lower my goal. I'm not lowering my goal. Well, looks like we only have one direction to move here. Looks like we have to raise our behaviors. And so a lot of times people have goals that they're not willing to commit to. Not goals that they're not willing to say. A lot of people have goals they're willing to say. A lot of people have goals they're not willing to commit to. Yeah. And that's where the five keys of mental performance comes in for me. And this is how I help people get the performance right. Starts with commitment. Like can you do what you say you're gonna do? Can you sacrifice for it? Can you can you immerse yourself in the things that are gonna help you get better at that? Can you be disciplined? Can you bring a high level of effort consistently? Be where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be there doing the thing you're supposed to be doing. That's discipline. Do you need guidance, right? Do you not have the skills required to get there? Do you need to find somebody with more expertise than you? You need to find somebody that has been doing it longer. If you start to do those things, that's gonna speed up the rate in which you get there. Do you have supportive people? Right? Even in performance. If you don't have quality support in your life, how do you get through the hard times?

SPEAKER_04 56:31

100%.

SPEAKER_00 56:32

Who are the people that give you attention, words of belief, quality time? Make time for that. Those people are crucial. Those are those people are just as important to your success as your behaviors. And then the last one is okay, you gotta be resilient because doors are gonna get closed, you're gonna get um rejected, tough times are gonna come, and you have to sit in that and step in that and move through that. And so I've really spent a lot of time over the last four or five years thinking through what are the interfering factors. I can't just tell people to go do these things. I have to think about where they might get stuck, and then I have to have solutions for them through that. And that's really what myself and my team are focused on building.

SPEAKER_04 57:13

I love that. Okay, so we're gonna end with some because I feel like we could be talking all day long because I love all of this. Uh, so fast questions. I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask you. So, what is a life lesson that you kept getting handed until you learned, until you learned it?

SPEAKER_00 57:30

Finish strong. Um, one of the things I recognize about myself is I have this tendency to coast towards the finish line. I did it in in grade school, I did it in middle school, right? Oh, the semester's coming to an end. I got an A. I don't really need to do those last couple assignments. I'll just take a low A, you know, whatever. It who cares? Um, and then you start to see how that shows up in life, right? And then so even now, even in the very last semester of completing my doctorate at 37 years old, after being a pro bowler, after doing so many things, I'm reminding myself, no, do not just lay it out there at the end. Finish strong. And so part of it is just learning you and your personality, and then learning how to combat that. So that's one lesson that I'm still trying to learn and force myself to do is uh finish strong.

SPEAKER_04 58:20

Love that. Okay, so then I we talked about zone of genius. So, like if you had to explain your zone of genius to someone, what would you say now?

The 17-Hour Clock: Designing Your Day

SPEAKER_00 58:28

I would say that my my zone of genius is really understanding and how to look deeply into a lot of different things and then develop the mastery of them. I think that when I look back on my life, it was basketball was the thing I was doing, football is the thing I was doing, psychology, neuroscience. My zone of genius is being able to say, I'm at the very bottom of a mountain right now. I suck in this area. And I can truly say that because I was on the bench. When I started playing basketball in high school, I was at the end of the bench as a freshman. I had to work my way up to get a college scholarship. When I got to play college football, I sucked. And they used to yell at me from the from the sidelines about how I needed to give this up, and I was terrible. When I got to NFL, I spent my first two years not playing, right? And my zone of genius is understanding the components that it takes to develop mastery. And that's one of the reasons why I like to teach and why I like to coach. So now growing a business, I'm in the same space. I'm at the bottom of a mountain of being a founder and trying to learn how to break into an industry and build a brand. And I have to figure it out. And so mastering things with very little experience through learning mental performance and those skills. I think that's my zone of genius.

SPEAKER_04 59:44

Oh, I love that. Okay, and last one, what would your walk-up song be?

SPEAKER_00 59:50

Oh, my walk-up song. I know it because I always have them play it. It's uh sacrifices. Um I can't tell you how important it is to sacrifice. Like I don't glamorize performance. When I speak, I don't tell people everybody should want it because I know what it costs. Um if you want performance, I'm gonna cheer you on. I want you to go get it. But I also want you to know what this is gonna take and it's not gonna be fun all the time. And uh there's a story. Um I was in a in the weight room and I was talking to Chris Paul, who is somebody that I I came to really respect because um just what he's done in his career. And one morning we were just talking about sacrifice. And he was talking about how much he'd given up to try to become the the the basketball player in Hall of Famer that he is. And that's why I play sacrifices when I walk up on stage and do keynotes when I get the chance is because then I've given up things that I'm sad about that I had to give up. I missed so many things. Um I I didn't get to to have the experiences I wanted sometimes. I mean, I from the moment I was 14, I was missing birthdays to be playing basketball.

unknown 1:00:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:58

I was missing family, I was missing friends. Um the sacrifice to become the the peak and the highest in any industry is tremendous. And um I don't want to dissuade people from from chasing it, but I want people to know that it's gonna it's gonna require a lot of sacrifices.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:16

Yeah, I love that. It's actually funny that you say that we were just talking last week as a family. I was saying to my husband, um, we were just talking about like our our son is very young, not even a year old yet. And we were like, what do, you know, what do we want for him? And I said, I really hope he doesn't want to be an entrepreneur. And he looked at me because I love my life. I love what I do, but I also know what I've sacrificed to get to these points. And and then I like took back that message to my husband. I said, you know, we'll support him whatever. But um, you think about that and you try to protect your kids from all of those moments. But also I've learned a lot of resilience and I don't want to take those moments away from my son either to learn those things. So I love that.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:56

No, you know what's actually funny, and I'll I know they were ending and I'll say one thing. And one of the things I've learned from being around the highest performing people on earth is most of those people, the one thing that they regret and the one thing they want for their children is the ability to choose. I feel like some of the highest performing people, because they needed to survive, because they wanted to make a better life for themselves, they had to spend a long time in their zone of excellence because it was providing in a way that created a possibility for their kids to follow their zone of genius. And so I think that that's what you want for your son. And you you want him to be like, okay, follow your zone of genius. I don't even ever want you to have to think about just doing what you're excellent at because that helps you survive. Like you've done it, you sacrificed it. Amen. You're gonna you and your husband are gonna put him in a position where he can choose his zone of genius from the beginning. And I think that's what I want for my children. I want them to have hard. I want them to like, I don't even like the words hard or easy in my house. I'm like, let's just throw those words out. But I truly hope that my boys get to follow their zone of genius and not have to do their zone of excellence.

Goals And Behaviors Must Match

SPEAKER_04 1:03:04

Amen. I love that. Uh well, I loved chatting today. Thank you so much for teaching us frameworks, the conversation, just like the stories too. I think that that's what I love about frameworks, they are important. Um, but also the point of, hey, I've been there. And now I'm on the other, kind of on the other side. Like, let me help you come along. So thank you again for everything that you've given um all of our listeners. And I'm excited to see what comes next for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:31

No, that's awesome. Thank you so much for having me. Good luck. And I want to continue to send you support and anything I can do to help you with what you're doing and how you're helping um other people that are on their own journeys. I really love how you shared the zone of incompetence, confidence, excellence, and genius. I'm gonna spend some time thinking about that. So thank you for expanding my perspectives in my consciousness today. And um, this is a really great conversation for me. And uh I'm glad we had it.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:58

Yes, me too. Thank you. All right, thank you so much for tuning into today's podcast. I hope that you took away so many amazing things like I did around the four R's of leadership, around um how to have um a hundred percent goal by end of day, of how you can have performance and striving for a 100 on those. I loved how Julia shared his stories of where he where he was to where he is today, as well as the frameworks behind it. I think both are important. I love evidence-based stuff. I love stories, and how do we tie those together? So I would love to hear from all of you what is one thing that you took away from today. So be sure to subscribe to our podcast on YouTube. You can check out our YouTube channel, go to our website at podcast.lisaTarkington.com and message me, DM me on Instagram to let me know what you thought are one thing that you took away from today. Again, as I always say, continue to spread love and kindness to everybody that you have a great day. Thank you for joining me on this episode of the confident podcast. If today's episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear about it. So send me a message at podcast.lisacharking.com. Don't forget, while you're there, to subscribe to our newsletter, subscribe to our YouTube channel. And don't forget to spread the good by sharing this with someone in your life. Remember, you have the power to be confident every single day. Keep showing up, keep striving, and keep believing in your potential. I'm carrying you on and up to you.