The Athlete's Attitude: It's No Longer Optional in the AI Age

You can plan all you want, but if you crumble when the pressure hits, none of it matters.

Michael Jordan was the guy you wanted with the ball when the game was on the line. Pressure didn’t change how he played. It revealed how well he’d trained.

Most entrepreneurs haven’t developed The Athlete’s Attitude.
In a world moving this fast and with stakes this high, you need more than strategy.
You need a system that keeps you in flow when pressure peaks and turns that state into profit.

In this episode, Dr. Dave breaks down how to build The Athlete’s Attitude, a mental performance framework for entrepreneurs who are feeling the pace of modern business:

• Pressure Alchemy: Turn stress into signal. Learn how Stanford-backed training rewires your response so pressure becomes focus fuel.
• Micro-Win Momentum: Stop waiting for motivation. Build unstoppable traction through small, stackable wins that reprogram your brain for progress.
• Core Calibration: Anchor to your principles when chaos hits so you act like your future self, not your frantic one.

The pressure’s not leaving. The speed’s not slowing.
You either train for it, or it trains you.

Listen now to master pressure, stay in flow, and turn composure into profit when it matters most.

🧠 Want profits that grow stronger as AI gets smarter? Every Friday morning, FlowCode delivers you a GPT-powered profit prompt rooted in flow science — the same edge Navy SEALs, elite althletes, and top founders use to outperform. Subscribe for free: FlowCode.news

Transcript

In October 1995 Lincoln Nebraska, the Chicago Bulls were in town for a preseason game against the clippers. Jordan had just unretired, Rodman had just joined the team, and I a 21 year old athletic trainer at the University of Nebraska was selected to help host them in junior high. I wrote a paper about Michael Jordan. I collected his cards. I spent a good chunk of money. I made working on the farm one summer on a pair of Jordan fives, black with a silver tongue, because I wanted to be like Mike. So being on the same court that night, in the same locker room was bigger than I ever could have imagined from the moment they arrived, the arena lit up. 1000 camera flashes followed every move. Everyone wanted proof that they were in the same room as greatness, and through it all, Jordan never flinched. I spent the night supporting bulls trainer chip Schaefer, making sure he had everything he needed before the game. A few of us set up a table with jerseys and posters, and I brought the most expensive basketball I could find. Sharpie was ready. My hopes were high, but not a single signature, just a quiet reminder we were there to serve not to connect. After the game, the gym cleared. Most of the team was already on the bus. I ran back into the locker room to grab that ball that I'd brought, and when I turned around, there he was, Michael Jordan, freshly showered, Carolina, blue suit, no entourage, no noise, all by himself, standing between me and the door, I walked up and asked, Mr. Jordan, would you mind signing this? He looked me in the eye and said, Thanks for your help tonight. Then he signed it. Best Wishes Michael Jordan, that ball now sits in a glass case in my home office next to a photo of me from that night, Navy jacket, red tie, on the same court as the Chicago Bulls. The whole night was unforgettable, but what stuck with me was his presence, calm, steady, completely unfazed by the pressure. Needless to say, Jordan is one of the greatest of all time at what I now call the athlete's attitude, regulated, relentless and composed under chaos, and that's exactly what most entrepreneurs are missing today. You've got the strategy, you've got the skills, but if your nervous system spikes every time pressure rises, you're building on a shaky foundation. So here's the question, what if your composure is more valuable than your calendar and your state, not your strategy is what actually is scaling your business? That's what we're talking about today. Let's get started. Welcome to flow driven. The number one problem in business today is flow deficit disorder. You see the symptoms everywhere, burned out, teams, high turnover, employees, sleepwalking through their work and profits that never rise to match the effort proof the old way of work isn't working at all. For a century, business ran on industrial age rules, efficiency, consistency, compliance. Then came the information age, where knowledge processes and titles define value, but those rules no longer apply, because we've entered the transformation age, an era of relentless change fueled by AI. And if you're still using the old playbook, you're experiencing a very bumpy ride. The Cure, of course, is flow. Flow is the state where high performance and deep enjoyment collide, where human flourishing meets business excellence, and it's the only way to keep up in the transformation age. Your host and coach is Dr Dave Maloley, former Army officer, retired dentist and now a flow obsessed performance coach. And let's be clear, if you're an entrepreneur who's okay wasting your team's potential, this show isn't for you, but if you're committed to unleashing genius and building a business that wins in the transformation age, you're in the right place. Each week, Dr Dave shares strategies, stories and science to help you beat flow, Deficit Disorder, grow profits and reclaim your time freedom. Want to go deeper. Go to flow code, dot news and subscribe to flow code, your weekly prescription for flow deficit disorder, one sharp idea, one strategy and one GPT prompt to help you build a high profit business that makes people better, all at no charge. The link is also in the episode description. You. So here's what I've been thinking a lot about. Business today moves faster than the human body was built for. There's the speed, the complexity, the volatility, and so pressure isn't a moment anymore. It's the environment. And as an entrepreneur, we're expected to make smart decisions at high speed, communicate clearly under pressure, and lead teams through this uncertainty without losing your edge. Most entrepreneurs today aren't struggling because they lack knowledge or talent, at least not the ones that I know. They're very driven and very intelligent, but they struggle because they haven't built the capacity to stay composed when it counts. All that to say mental performance is not a luxury anymore has to be taken seriously if you want to run a business in a world that doesn't slow down. And this is where the athlete's attitude comes in. It's how entrepreneurs stay clear, steady and effective, especially when things get fast, messy and unpredictable, as you know, Michael Jordan and many other great athletes welcome pressure, and they do that because they've trained for it. Modern entrepreneurs have to do the same. So today we're going to talk about some principles that help you do that. So let's be honest, if you're growing a business, pressure is not something rare that just pops up once a quarter. It tends to be more like everywhere and always. And of course, the higher the stakes, the more it shows up. It could be the moment before you speak the decision you can't take back the hard conversation you wish someone else could handle. And most entrepreneurs strategy is just get through it. They clench, they push, react, they regret, and then they spiral down and what they don't tell us, or at least they didn't tell me when I became an entrepreneur, is that you don't rise to the moment you fall to whatever you've practiced. And if what you've practiced is white knuckling and overthinking, that's exactly what shows up. So what I want to discuss is pressure alchemy. It's how you stop treating pressure like something to fear and start using it as a cue to focus. It's about knowing exactly what to do when things tighten up. Step one, notice the signal. Pressure is not the enemy. What the enemy is is ignoring the pressure when you feel it build, that's your cue. So pause, get your feet under you, breathe with purpose, respond like the version of you that you've been training for. It's simple, but it's not easy. At Stanford, Alia Crum studied how people perform under stress. What she found was simple yet profound. When you believe stress is bad, it is when you believe it can help you focus. It does. She called it the stress is enhancing mindset, not toxic positivity, just choosing not to treat that pressure like a poison. At Harvard, Allison wood Brooks found that people who said, I'm excited instead of I'm anxious perform better. You have the same human but a different story, and you get a better outcome. And decades ago, Richard Lazarus, a guy who basically wrote the playbook on stress, said it's not the event, it's how you interpret the event that's at the core of pressure alchemy. And why does this matter? Because in business, your ability to respond under pressure is the difference between leadership and damage control. When the stakes are high, you don't want your old habits or your emotional child running the show. You want to be the one who steadies the room, not complicates things and adds to the noise. You stopped reacting from emotion, and you start using pressure as a prompt to focus, to lead to act with intent. Now let's talk about momentum, because after the pressure passes, after that high stakes moment, you still have to move. And this is where a lot of business owners stall. They can hold it together when things are intense, and then they fizzle out in the follow through. But if you've been playing this business game long enough, you realize that you can't wait for motivation. You have to create it, and the way you do that is by building micro win momentum, one clear win at a time. Step one here is win something small on purpose. You don't need a breakthrough, you don't need perfection. You just need something meaning. Full and real. So make the call. Have the difficult conversation. Whatever it is, make sure it's a decision that moves you towards your most important goals. That's your win. Step two, let your brain notice. Our brains run on dopamine prediction loops. It looks for signs that progress is happening, and when a wind feels even slightly better than expected, your brain reinforces it. Psychologist Ian Robertson studied this. He calls it the winter effect. His research showed that even small wins change the brain's chemistry. They increase focus, they build confidence, and they improve performance over time, not because you're grinding harder, but because your system has evidence. It says we're on track. Let's keep going. Step three mark, the win. I usually use the word celebrate, but the celebration doesn't have to look like you won the Super Bowl. You just need to close the loop. Let me give you an example. There was a time where working out every day was hard for me. Currently I don't miss workouts. I usually train twice a day, but back when I was building momentum, my celebration was sitting down and taking off my sweaty socks. I always took notice of that. That was my finish line. That was my signal, that mission was accomplished. So you don't need a bunch of hype. You don't need a pat on the back, just you did what you said you would do. And that's really what a celebration is, in this context, a simple, repeatable signal that you kept a promise to yourself, and when the brain gets that signal often enough, it stops needing motivation and it starts trusting the system. That's what we refer to as a habit, micro win. Momentum is what helps you move forward when you can't find the motivation, it's how you turn consistency into identity, one clear rep, one signal, one stackable win at a time. So far, we've talked about pressure, how to hold steady when it hits, and we just talked about momentum, how to move without waiting to feel motivated. But here's the one piece that most high performers skip, what keeps your actions aligned when everything around you is speeding up? That's what core calibration is for. It's about making decisions that match your principles and staying guided by your future self, not just the stress in front of you. But here's the catch, you can't expect to figure this out mid crisis, when you're under pressure, the part of your brain that handles reflection and long term thinking, that's the first thing to go quiet. So core calibration isn't about pausing and philosophizing when everything around you is on fire, it's more of a pre commitment on how you act before the intensity hits. Here's how it works. When things are calm, you create a short list of personal principles, simple, clear rules for how you want to lead your business, stuff like, if I feel rushed, I buy time and space before I decide. Or if I feel reactive, I ask, What would my future self do here? Or maybe it's if it doesn't line up with my long term mission, it's a hard no. You train those principles until they become patterns. So when life speeds up, you don't have to think you just go back to your rules that you set when you were clear. Core calibration is how you make sure that you act with integrity when you come up against challenge, because you're prepared for it, and that's the final layer of the athlete's attitude, pressure, Alchemy will make sure you hold steady. Micro win momentum will make sure you're moving forward. And core calibration make sure you stay true. This is how you win in business, without drifting, without reacting or losing who you're becoming. The pace of business is not going to slow down, and the pressure isn't going to let up. The complexity is not going away. So as somebody who really wants you to win, I want to remind you that you don't need more hacks. You need a way to show up when it really matters, and that's why mental performance has to move to the top of your priority list, not someday, right now. Because no matter how good your business strategy is, if your composure consistently breaks down under pressure, nothing will hold Michael Jordan said, I never looked at the consequences of missing a bit. Big Shot. When you think about the consequences, you always think of a negative result. That's someone who trained himself to be fully present, especially when the game was on the line. And that's the mindset you need as a modern entrepreneur, not just confidence, but calibrated, trained execution under pressure. Thank you for being a part of flow driven the movement to build high profit businesses that make people better. If this episode brought you value, share it. It's an act of generosity helping other ambitious entrepreneurs navigate AI disruption and thrive in the transformation age. If you want the upgraded experience, make sure you're subscribed to flow code. At flow code, dot news, until next time, stay focused and flow driven.