#47 - Cystic Fibrosis, Quarterback Dreams, Unstoppable Strength with Mike Pawlawski

Growth begins at the edge of resistance. In this episode, Marcus sits down with Mike Pawlawski to break down how challenges shape character and why resilience is the foundation of success. From mastering identity to building confidence through hard work, Mike shares practical strategies that help leaders, athletes, and entrepreneurs thrive under pressure. Packed with mindset tools and real stories, this conversation shows how to turn obstacles into opportunities for lasting growth.

Mike Pawlawski is a performance mindset coach, speaker, and bestselling author of Every Day Great. Known for guiding high performers and teams, he combines neuroscience, lived experience, and practical frameworks to help people reset limiting beliefs, unlock resilience, and achieve peak results in life and work.

Link up with Mike Pawlawski:
🌐 Website: https://mikepawlawski.com/
💬Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MikePawlawskiCoach
📸IG: https://www.instagram.com/mikepawlawskicoach/
▶️YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EveryDayGreatPodcast
💼LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikepawlawski/

👉 Ready to strengthen your mindset? Text GREAT to 55444 for free resources and tools to help you grow.

Episode highlights:
(2:01) Identity shapes purpose and growth
(7:39) Why are you always training?
(10:38) Overcoming illness through sports
(19:58) Coaching athletes and leaders
(25:07) Lessons for solopreneurs and founders
(41:39) Playing free Vs. Playing small
(46:40) The power of repetition
(54:18) If you can't teach, you can't coach
(57:56) The High Achievers Protocol explained
(1:03:03) Talent, work, and character
(1:09:52) Building other identities
(1:16:07) Outro

Connect with Marcus

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcus-arredondo/
• X (Twitter): https://x.com/cus

Scales of Success

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Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ScalesofSuccess

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Chapters

• 0:00 If you can't teach, you can't coach
• 2:01 Identity shapes purpose and growth
• 7:39 Why are you always training?
• 10:38 Overcoming illness through sports
• 19:58 Coaching athletes and leaders
• 25:07 Lessons for solopreneurs and founders
• 41:39 Playing free Vs. Playing small
• 46:40 The power of repetition
• 57:56 The High Achievers Protocol explained
• 1:03:03 Talent, work, and character
• 1:09:52 Building other identities
• 1:16:07 Outro

Transcript

Note: The transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors.

Mike Pawlawski

(0:00) Greatness doesn't come from your performance on the field. (0:05) Greatness comes in the early mornings in the gym, in the stadium. (0:10) Greatness comes in the film room when we do the work to get there.(0:15) And so the fear of that not working, of our work not working for us is a common thread, no matter who you are, that we will put in all this effort and in the end it won't work. (0:26) And then what will people think?

Marcus Arredondo

(0:27) Today's guest is Mike Pawlowski, a former pro quarterback whose earliest battles weren't on the field, but in the hospital. (0:33) Born with cystic fibrosis, doctors once told his parents, if he makes it through the night, he'll be okay. (0:37) He did more than make it.(0:39) He turned that weakness into his foundation, building strength through sports until resilience became second nature. (0:44) We talk about reframing failure as practice, why presence matters more than performance and how reinvention, whether as an athlete, broadcaster or entrepreneur, shaped his purpose. (0:53) His story is about grit, adaptability and turning life's hardest challenges into fuel for growth.(0:57) Let's start the show. (0:59) Mike, welcome. (1:01) Thank you for coming on.

Mike Pawlawski

(1:02) Awesome to be here. (1:03) I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to talk to you and your audience. (1:07) You know, we care about our audiences when we're on air and I know you care about your audience, so I appreciate you giving me the time to talk to your audience.

Marcus Arredondo

(1:13) Yeah, it's an honor to have you. (1:14) Your story is beyond interesting. (1:16) I'll go into a number of different aspects, including your pro football career, your television career, but the anchor of what I think I wanna just focus on is your book, Everyday Great, which we can see over your left shoulder.(1:31) And so I'm gonna kick it off with one passage that I think is really at the backbone of everything you talk about, everything you focus on and is really an anchor point for sort of the journey I'm on, I think we all are to some degree and I'll read this and then I'll pass it to you, but your identity creates your purpose and your purpose shapes your journey. (1:54) I wanna start out there. (1:55) Talk to me about identity and how you define it.

Mike Pawlawski

(1:58) So identity for me is what you believe you are and so much of what we do, so much of how we live, so much of the problems that we face are based in the stories that we tell ourselves. (2:11) And so as we grow up, we take on memories, we take on experiences, we take on scars, right? (2:20) And then we also take on robes or trophies from where we've won.(2:23) And those things help us identify ourselves in terms of who we are. (2:27) We also get our identity from our family. (2:31) Who is our family?(2:32) Where did they come from? (2:33) In my case, my father was a paratrooper, 82nd Airborne. (2:36) He was a tough guy, but he was sweet as could be.(2:39) He was voted citizen of the year twice in our hometown. (2:41) My mother is a World War II survivor. (2:44) She was a refugee.(2:45) She lived in seven different countries when she was young. (2:49) She's tough, she's a survivor, she got through things. (2:51) And so you bring those into your identity as well.(2:54) It's your relationships, it's your friends, and all of these things combine to help us define in our minds and in our nervous system who exactly we are. (3:03) And based on that, then we tell ourselves stories which dictate how we act and how we react. (3:10) And so if you can create a way to create the identity for yourself of the person that you want to be, and creating an identity is something that you can do through consistent work.(3:22) I will add to that statement of you are always training is one of the main points in there as well. (3:27) If we create the identity of the person we want to become or the person that we want to be, and we think of ourselves that way and we train ourselves that way, that allows us to act in the highest possible purpose for what we want to be, for what we've set our identity as.

Marcus Arredondo

(3:43) So I love that. (3:44) There's a lot of different ways that I want to take this, but you hinted at something which is, on some level, neuroplasticity. (3:49) The ability to morph into something that is not who we are, but who we want to become.(3:56) You reference within the book, when they challenged strongly held political beliefs, it produced increased activity in the default network, a set of interconnected structures associated with self-representation, otherwise known as identity. (4:08) Yet most people miss the mark because they see themselves as a finished product. (4:12) In a study published in Science, Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert calls this concept end of history illusion.(4:18) So I want to sort of talk a little bit about this because it's relevant to me, and that's part of the impetus behind starting the podcast, to be completely frank, was I grew up, and here's a little bit of a Venn diagram overlap between our backgrounds. (4:31) I have had nowhere near the athletic success you have, but I was an athlete growing up in high school, played a little bit in college. (4:38) I was primarily a basketball player, lacrosse and soccer.(4:42) I was Allstate when I was young. (4:44) That all being said, when I got out of college and into the real world, I struggled with, I didn't realize it at the time, identity, who I was going to become. (4:52) I got tethered into a real estate world where that became the full Venn diagram overlap of who I was.(5:02) And when my son came three years ago, it coincided with a really challenging time within my professional life. (5:08) I was also branching off into greater entrepreneurial endeavors. (5:12) I was also facing immense pressure and setbacks in many of those regards.(5:17) And I'm going to land the plane here, I'm not droning on, but the point of giving this background was it was a really resounding realization for me to understand that my identity was tethered to my past. (5:32) Who I was was about this person that I had become, but not who I was. (5:40) And once I started to, and to be completely frank, this had a lot to do with the removal of ego and the death of some sort, right?(5:48) I don't think we can ever grow. (5:50) I mean, muscles don't really grow without, it's a little bit of a flawed analogy because it's not entirely true, but the tearing of muscles is what causes growth in a lot of respects. (6:01) So the reason I bring all this up is when I started looking at it as an aspiration of who I wanted to become, there became freedom of who I was now.(6:11) Meaning if I tethered myself to say, for example, I'll just give it to you now, and I want you to criticize it or provide objections or feedback. (6:21) But my thought would be, my identity is entirely predicated upon by obtaining the qualities I respect the most. (6:35) And so the ultimate purpose may be to obtain fulfillment in life, not necessarily joy by itself.(6:41) Fulfillment comes from pain as well as success, but it's really the overcoming and actually being self-reliant to a large degree. (6:51) But in so doing, I also, I think in order to obtain that, I must first possess certain qualities. (6:58) Those qualities entail perseverance, the ability to adapt, and all of those things require a little bit of letting go of what I was to a large degree.(7:10) And so I offer that to you as a buffet to choose from on sort of what your take is, but how would you suggest someone identify the process? (7:23) What would the process be to find your identity, to find that drive as something that becomes your light post, your lighthouse, your goalpost that you are moving toward that adds to your meaning as you go through it?

Mike Pawlawski

(7:39) So there's a lot there. (7:41) You know, you went through like six different theories in there, including self-determination theory and what you were talking about, right, in terms of having some kind of agency in your life and to being able to change that stuff. (7:50) Concept, I think that you're talking about that you're looking for within these things, as we grow, we are open to new experiences.(7:56) I talked about it, and let me kind of reverse it for you. (7:59) People who have had trauma in their life end up, you know, major trauma, and it can be big T trauma, little T trauma, end up with PTSD, right, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which I actually hate that terminology for it. (8:11) PTI is better, Post Trauma Impression, right?(8:15) You've been imprinted with something. (8:17) And so that's your body learning. (8:19) That's your nervous system engaging with something that you have experienced.(8:23) It's a place at which you felt out of control, and so it learns behaviors based on that. (8:28) You grow, you change based on your experiences. (8:32) Your body adapts a lot without even having input from you.(8:37) You talked about the muscle analogy, and I mentioned it earlier. (8:41) You are always training in life, no matter what you are doing. (8:46) If you decide that you want to do hard things, if you want to face challenges, if you want to take on the world, if you want to, you know, take it to the next level, if you want to grow, then you have to be able to do hard things.(9:00) You are training yourself to face difficult times. (9:03) You are training yourself to learn to tolerate stress better. (9:06) You are training yourself to grow in an orderly fashion, in a directed fashion.(9:11) At the same time, if comfort is more important than competition to you, then you are also training yourself to shrink, to avoid confrontation, to avoid things that are uncomfortable. (9:25) And that's been the lie of modern society of a digital age, is that you can have everything and be comfortable too. (9:31) You can't have growth.(9:33) And growth is a huge part of the human need. (9:37) We are always trying to strive. (9:39) We are always trying to improve.(9:40) We are always trying to get better and to get to that next level. (9:44) And so it's in our human nature, but you can't do that without discomfort. (9:48) You cannot grow, to take it back to the muscle analogy, without resistance.(9:53) You have to have resistance because then your body finds what it needs to adapt to overcome that resistance. (10:00) And so as you're talking about that, adaptation is what we do. (10:03) It's our superpower.(10:04) When I talk, when I give my talks, when I speak to corporations and when I speak to elite teams, I talk about adaptation and how it's a superpower for what we do. (10:13) If we put in the time, if we do the work, if we face the resistance, and if we tell ourselves the right stories, we will grow. (10:20) It's just inevitable.(10:21) It's in our biology. (10:23) And so we have to face those things, but no matter what we're doing, we are constantly training. (10:28) Now, to answer the next question, finding your purpose is what are those things that light you up when you do them?(10:36) For me, early on, it was sports. (10:40) I loved competing. (10:43) I loved being able to go out there, control my body.(10:46) And it was two things because you talked about reading my book. (10:51) As a child, I was born with severe lung disease. (10:54) I was actually born with cystic fibrosis.(10:57) It wasn't diagnosed when I was young. (10:59) And they gave me what's called a salt sweat test. (11:02) And in that test, it came back inconclusive.(11:05) Had that test come back positive, my life would have been completely different. (11:09) But a doctor, after telling my parents if he makes it through the night, he's gonna be okay, a couple of days later told them, well, maybe you should put him in sports because it will probably strengthen his lungs. (11:20) And my dad was a paratrooper, like I mentioned.(11:22) My mom was a refugee. (11:23) They survived a lot. (11:24) They got through some tough times.(11:25) So they said, hey, if a little's good, a lot is gonna be great. (11:28) And so they literally put me in everything. (11:31) Started with baseball, then basketball, then soccer, then swimming, tennis, track.(11:35) I mean, everything, snowboarding, skiing, surfing. (11:38) I did it all. (11:38) I grew up in SoCal.(11:40) And so they knew that by putting me in sports that I could strengthen my lungs. (11:45) I learned by being in sports that if I put the effort towards something I wanted, I would grow. (11:52) I would adapt.(11:54) I would improve. (11:56) And so being in sports, all those sports, all the time, by the time I was 15, I never saw the inside of a hospital room for lung disease again. (12:06) Now, I had been in the hospital every single fall or winter from the time that I was born up until the time that I was 15 years old.(12:14) And my parents were there 10 days at a time, two weeks at a time with pneumonia, with the croup, with those kinds of diseases. (12:20) But because of sports, because of putting in the work, my body adapted. (12:24) It overcame this disease that had the potential of really being deadly.(12:29) And so I learned early on that when you do the work, your body adapts, you grow, you overcome things because that's what we do. (12:38) Our homeostasis is one of those laws that our body will rise to the level that it needs to to thrive in an environment. (12:45) And so I learned that early on through sports, through training, but I found my niche as well.(12:52) The thought process was, this makes me healthy. (12:54) This makes me better. (12:56) Playing sports was the sword that would slay the demon that had held me back, which was my lung disease.(13:02) And so I learned that, and that's why I loved it. (13:06) I was always battling that hidden darkness, you know, the illness of my youth. (13:13) I was in an incubator when I was born for two weeks, no human contact.(13:16) And so it was a way for me to overcome, and I knew that it was helping me to get better, to grow, because that's an innate human need. (13:24) So it's a long answer to your question, but to kind of get the framework there, you find the things that are purpose that light you up, the things that take care of your fears, the things that help us to feel bigger, stronger, that help us feel that we have control. (13:40) And once we do that, that's our purpose.(13:43) Those are the things that make us feel more. (13:46) I love now giving back to other people. (13:48) It's why I'm a public speaker.(13:50) It's why I do what I do, working with teams, working with athletes, because I have the answers that they're looking for, because I know I was looking for them when I was there. (13:59) And I know I can at least lead them down a path that can help them find those answers for themselves.

Marcus Arredondo

(14:05) I really appreciate you sharing that. (14:06) I wanted to get into your early illness, because you don't, do you have any of the symptoms anymore?

Mike Pawlawski

(14:11) I still do, yeah. (14:12) I've had five different sinus infections. (14:14) I still have to do stuff medically in terms of my sinuses.(14:18) I still, when I get sick, it always goes to my lungs. (14:20) And so I'll never be without the symptoms because genetically it's in my code. (14:25) But because I've strengthened my lungs, I don't have the severe illness like I did when I was young.(14:30) You know, big part of cystic fibrosis, you can't clear the mucus, it's a lot thicker. (14:34) And for kids of my age, if you had a severe case of cystic fibrosis, it was not a good prognosis. (14:40) Most kids died in their late teens or early 20s.(14:43) And so I was incredibly fortunate. (14:45) Mine wasn't a severe case of cystic fibrosis, but it was enough that I was sick every single year. (14:52) I knew what it was like to be inside a hospital room in an oxygen tent, which they don't use anymore.(14:56) But back then, you know, separated from the people I loved to go through emergency room, to have them stick an IVs on me, an oxygen mask, because I just couldn't breathe. (15:06) And so, you know, there's one thing, if you pull a hammy or if you injure a leg, you kind of limp around for a little while. (15:11) But when you can't breathe, it's a showstopper.(15:14) Like everything shuts down and it becomes code red. (15:18) And so I knew what that was like as a kid. (15:20) And there were three different times in my youth where the doctors literally told my parents, if he makes it through the night, he'll probably be okay.

Marcus Arredondo

(15:27) You mentioned breath quite a bit in your book, which I think has maybe three meanings that I could derive from it. (15:32) One is the literal grasping for breath for your life. (15:36) There's the breath of catching your breath before you decide what happens next.(15:42) And then there's sort of the breath of a meditative state where processing how to get through things. (15:48) You know, there's a common theme among almost everyone I speak to, certainly on this show, but also in my own personal life where their own inherent weakness, whether it's something that they've accumulated through their own trials or something hoisted on them, in your case, an illness, that really becomes the pathway toward your greatest strength. (16:11) In this case, breath as the gateway toward excellence and physical prowess, right, in athleticism.(16:19) I want to come back to that, and this is going to be a little bit of an odd question, but I couldn't in advance, when you and I were corresponding and trying to get you on the show, I read an article, I think it was out of the Wall Street Journal, about a company called Orchid Health. (16:34) Now, we are aware of certain companies now and genetic testing that can detect certain anomalies within babies. (16:47) This new technology extends the test quite a bit to actually look at a number of other different anomalies.(16:56) There's a lot of implications about potential, you know, greater immunities to illness, higher intellect, greater physical capabilities. (17:02) That's not where I'm going with this, but I am curious that a lot of these tests, I'm going to read here, while some screenings have become relatively available, like those for single gene mutations, cystic fibrosis and chromosomal abnormalities like Down syndrome, this is of another caliber. (17:19) I mentioned this because I'm just curious your take, having gone through it and seeing as this is such an anchor, a backbone to your strength, how do you view that perspective, that ability to remove the possibility of these types of ailments?

Mike Pawlawski

(17:36) Well, cystic fibrosis, as I just said, could be incredibly, it could be deadly, in terms of kids that have it really bad. (17:44) And I think if it's something that you could correct at an early age, it would be great. (17:49) For me, it wasn't deadly, and it became a huge part of my identity.(17:55) Being able to overcome, achieving, overcoming, fighting, became part of who I was. (18:01) It's part of why I was successful in athletics. (18:04) And so for me, I'm glad that, although it wasn't great going through all that, I'm glad that I was able to persevere through that because it taught me that the times that we feel are the worst in our lives are the times that we grow the most.(18:20) You have post-traumatic growth as well. (18:23) There's post-traumatic stress, but there's also post-traumatic growth. (18:25) When you go through something like that, you recognize those things that you want and those things that you didn't have in that moment that you would like to create for yourself.(18:36) It's part of why people, you mentioned it, like to go back and help those who have the issues that they've suffered through themselves. (18:44) I heard Rory Vaden say this, that you are best qualified to help the person that you once were. (18:50) And Ed Milet repeats it all the time.(18:53) And it's true. (18:53) You know the pathway through the forest that you just walked. (18:58) And so you are best equipped to help the person struggling with the things that you went through.(19:04) And I think at a basic human level, when we get to a point where we're really stressed out, where we don't know, where we feel out of control, our nervous system all reacts the same. (19:15) Genetically, we're all coded the same, we're human. (19:17) And so being able to help people in that state is curative to us.(19:21) It helps us to overcome those things that we felt, right? (19:24) The scars that are left on our nervous system from times that we went through those. (19:28) And not to mention the fact that human connection is one of the most powerful forces for people.(19:33) We are literally biologically built to interact and to connect with one another. (19:38) And so having the ability to connect with somebody, but not just connect, but then to help them to overcome the challenges that you face helps you go back and slay that demon.

Marcus Arredondo

(19:47) When you talk about coaching those people who've been where you were, what comes to mind? (19:52) Who are your best candidates? (19:55) At least within your own coaching world.

Mike Pawlawski

(19:58) The obvious is athletes. (19:59) I work with a lot of high level elite athletes. (20:02) One of my quarterbacks just signed a $4 million NIL deal.(20:06) And he literally, as soon as he called me up, he's like, there's no way I could have ever done this without you, like without what you give me. (20:13) And that's such a powerful feeling to know that you have changed somebody's life to that effect. (20:17) So obviously elite athletes.(20:19) It's leaders, people in the C-suite who are going through tough decisions and trying to understand how to lead teams, how to motivate teams, how to create a culture of winning within what they're doing at the same time that you're trying to be that servant leader, right? (20:35) Servant leader has become such a cliche term these days, but trying to find a way to be the leader that you would like to be led by. (20:44) The person who has that empathic understanding of what your team needs and to allow them and to help them to get to the next level.(20:52) So leaders, elite athletes, teams. (20:54) I love, love working in group settings with teams. (20:57) The connection and the synchrony that you can find in teams to change a dynamic in a company's culture is really special to me.(21:09) I grew up in teams. (21:11) I started playing sports from a really young age. (21:14) Before I was at the age cutoff, I was out there as the little brother running around with my brother Eric's teams, right?(21:21) So I've been on teams since I was five and six years old. (21:25) And sports are at the center of my identity. (21:29) I was a former quarterback, former soccer player.(21:33) I was actually, first and foremost, I was a better soccer player than I was a quarterback. (21:37) And I was a better baseball player than I was a quarterback in high school. (21:40) And so, but I've just been a part of teams my whole life.(21:43) And so if I can come into a room and talk to a team or do workshops with teams, or we do longer extended engagements with teams to help them grow, to build a culture in which everybody pulls on the rope, which everybody improves, everybody feels better. (21:58) Everybody feels more control, more agency in the situation. (22:01) That just lights me up.(22:02) I love that. (22:04) And so, you go in and you talk to a college team, it's one thing, because all of those people, all of those guys in that room are geared towards peak performance. (22:15) It's a completely different environment.(22:17) And so going in there, the energy's high. (22:19) You know, those speeches are very intense and those are strong. (22:21) But you go into a corporate room and it's different because people have different paradigms that they're working from.(22:26) They have different goals that they're looking to. (22:29) And so finding a way to get all of those diverse viewpoints to coalesce and to come together and create a culture that drives forward towards the company goals, it's pretty powerful. (22:39) And it's really cool to see that transformation happen.

Marcus Arredondo

(22:42) What sort of advice would you give to those who are maybe, let's say, like a tennis player, somebody who's on their own, or somebody who's been a part of a team that goes into a solopreneur endeavor, where they're a little bit more alone than they would be. (22:57) I mean, eventually they start to build a team, right? (23:00) But there's a lot of loneliness in, you're an entrepreneur, you've had to build things, you've paid your dues.(23:08) There's a anecdote that you share in the book about taking a sideline reporting gig for free because you wanted the experience. (23:19) And, you know, that allowed you to get 19 seasons on the Outdoor Channel in a variety of different capacities that you then learned to edit, cut, produce, direct, write, star in, so on and so forth. (23:36) But there was no rut there that you could follow.(23:41) You had to pave that your own way. (23:44) I'm curious if you could just anecdotally share with us, what advice did you give to yourself? (23:48) What advice would you give to yourself or someone who's in that category fighting what they feel like is in an alone world?

Mike Pawlawski

(23:55) Great questions. (23:56) As entrepreneurs, we are kind of on our own when we start everything out. (24:00) And so that's one of the biggest things that athletes will tell you.(24:03) As soon as they leave a locker room, the thing that they miss most is the locker room. (24:07) Did I miss game day? (24:08) Yeah, I love game day, it was great.(24:10) But I really miss the connection with my team. (24:13) You know, I love my guys and having that connection right there, you know, that somebody's got your back at all times, it's amazing. (24:20) When you go on your own, there is a lot of things that you don't recognize, that you don't see coming down the pike, right?(24:30) It's one thing you're going to practice every day, you know, you're looking at game film, you have a plan. (24:34) When you're building your own business, it is a very free form, very fluid thing. (24:40) And so you need to be prepared to make a lot of mistakes because you're going to, we all make mistakes and you have to gear your nervous system to understand that those mistakes are opportunities for learning.(24:56) You have to be fair with yourself about them, you have to understand where it was and then learn, you know, not to hit that pitfall again, but you're going to make a ton of mistakes. (25:04) The other thing, you have to find connection somewhere. (25:07) We thrive on connection, human beings thrive on connection.(25:10) And so if you are a solopreneur, oftentimes finding the connection with your customer, making it about your customer, making it about the team as a speaker, right? (25:19) You're up there on stage by yourself, but I'm not doing it for me. (25:22) It's not an ego trip for me to go speak.(25:24) It's for my audience, it's for the people that I'm speaking to. (25:28) When I broadcast, it's not for me, I'm doing it for the people at home to help them learn the game, to understand what they're seeing. (25:35) And so it's super important that when you do go out on your own, you find the places in which you connect and you pour into those because that's what makes us better as individuals.(25:47) That's what makes us better as humans. (25:49) And then be fair with yourself because you're going to make a ton of mistakes, but use those mistakes to learn. (25:54) And if you just do the work, see, we get to the point where when we're by ourselves, there's nobody to get our back, right?(26:00) Nobody to pat us on the butt and say, you got this, let's go. (26:03) We start to doubt and we start, you know, disbelief creeps in, and it makes us want to stop quicker because we feel that we're out there on our own. (26:12) But if you do the work, you're going to adapt.(26:16) It's your nature, it's your biology. (26:19) And so as a result, rather than quitting, if I just run the next one, I talk about it in my book, that's how I learned to strengthen my lungs. (26:28) I would stand up when my lungs would burn and I'd say, I'm just gonna run the next one.(26:32) I'd make that deal with myself. (26:33) And if you can put that into work, just run the next one, do the next thing, take one at a time and control the things that you control within that space, eventually you're going to grow, you're going to learn the mistakes will be less and the rewards will start to grow from that. (26:50) And it's a lot to get through.(26:53) And that's why you need the connection, be it your customers, being somebody there to encourage you, right? (26:57) I'm super fortunate. (26:59) I had my, you know, my mother and father, you read the book, but my mother and father were sensational at supporting me.(27:05) I had teammates around me and now I have the world's greatest wife. (27:08) My wife, Suzanne is just ultimately supportive and she's a phenomenal teammate for me. (27:15) I try to be the same for her, but finding connection somewhere, somebody who's there, who we can bounce things off of, right?(27:21) Emotional support, people who we can trust. (27:23) It can be mentors, any of that. (27:25) So solopreneurs, if you're doing that, find the mentors, find those people you can connect with, pour into your customers, pour into the people that you're serving because that connection makes you better.

Marcus Arredondo

(27:34) What are some of the common traits, or both, I would say, common challenges you see among the peak athletic performers and executives that you coach? (27:45) What are the common challenges and what do you see as among the more common responses that yield successful outcomes?

Mike Pawlawski

(27:54) So common challenges are self-doubt. (27:56) Everybody has self-doubt. (27:58) When you're trying something new, you know, when you've got to take that game winning shot, I was just thinking about it today as I was creating content, Michael Jordan didn't think he was great because he went out and practiced one day and took one shot and hit it.(28:11) He took shot after shot after shot after shot after shot, right? (28:15) He repped it. (28:16) Kobe Bryant was famous for his fanatical workouts that he would do at 4 a.m. He would add a workout during the day so that he could be better than everybody else around him. (28:30) Greatness doesn't come from your performance on the field. (28:34) Greatness comes in the early mornings in the gym, in the stadium. (28:39) Greatness comes in the film room when we do the work to get there.(28:43) And so the fear of that not working, of our work not working for us is a common thread, no matter who you are, that we will put in all this effort and in the end, it won't work. (28:54) And then what will people think, right? (28:57) We're very preoccupied.(28:58) Just the same way that we're built to connect, we are also built to worry about what people think about us because of that connection. (29:05) And so the worry about what people will think about us, the worry that our work won't work for us, two incredibly common threads. (29:13) Then the common thread on the successful side is that you are willing to step through that fear, that you are willing to step through that resistance and do the work and take the reps and find a way to make those reps work for you through failure.(29:34) Because I love the fact as athletes, we get to go to practice every day and that's work. (29:40) That's our work. (29:41) If I told most of the corporate executives, you're going to practice today when you're going into the office because that's what you're doing.(29:50) You're learning on the job. (29:52) You are taking your shots. (29:53) And when you miss, you're course correcting.(29:56) But when you get it right, you're also putting that in the databank and you're saying, okay, this is what works and now I'm building experience. (30:02) See, athletes get to do that. (30:03) I'm going to go out and I'm going to rep this route for the first time and I may miss it.(30:06) I may miss a throw. (30:07) I may miss a read. (30:08) I may throw an interception.(30:09) But I'm going to be able to put that in the databank and learn next time I'm going to find the right receiver. (30:13) I'm going to go through the right read. (30:14) I'm going to do things right.(30:16) And so I get to improve. (30:19) If we approach life in that way, that if I do the work, I will adapt. (30:23) I will learn.(30:24) I will overcome. (30:25) I will learn a better way. (30:26) Or I may say that way doesn't work at all.(30:29) Let's do something different. (30:30) But when you approach it that way, that everything is practice, then it becomes a much more palatable experience knowing that you're growing all the time, right? (30:38) That's the growth mindset that Carol Dweck talked about.

Marcus Arredondo

(30:41) I can't help but hear ego in this. (30:43) This is all based on ego and that we are fearful of how we're going to be judged. (30:48) That is our ego speaking.(30:49) And that prevents us from potentially doing things without looking at it as practice. (30:55) Because in practice, I just recently started taking jujitsu. (31:00) And in that process, there's no lying on the mat.(31:04) I mean, you cannot bullshit your opponent. (31:07) It is, there is no room for ego. (31:10) And I haven't felt this.(31:11) I haven't used yes, sir, more times in that short a period since I was maybe six years old, even to people who are younger than me because of the practice, the element of, one, it eliminates your ego, so you don't even have room for it. (31:31) But the idea that I'm able to go there and experience these reps without the loss of ego, because it's absent, has really accelerated a learning curve. (31:43) And I'm sort of going around the corner here, but the reason I'm bringing this up is, how do you coach, on one hand, ego is what makes athletes great, their drive to prove something in a lot of ways.(31:58) I think it's the same thing for executives. (31:59) Ambition comes from an element of ego, which I think can be a very positive component. (32:06) But if you allow it to really infringe on your ability to grow, which is ultimately the highest table stake to progress, it can thwart that momentum.(32:15) And I guess I'm just curious how you balance ego, because I think pride is elemental to good work and the process, but ego is something a little bit different, which is that how you view yourself in the context of others, I guess. (32:33) I think there's a better definition there than what I'm throwing out there, but what's your take on ego in that, in both athletes and executives?

Mike Pawlawski

(32:42) I know exactly what you're talking about. (32:43) I hear it talked about all the time, right? (32:45) The ego state and getting it out there and the ego is the thing talking you out of it.(32:49) It's everything for me, because I grew up as a sick kid, right? (32:53) Medicine fascinated me and psychology fascinated me because I always wanted to see the things. (33:00) I was always kind of reverse engineer guy.(33:02) I wanted to see if I poked A, what would happen? (33:06) And I learned the psychology of team. (33:09) I learned the psychology of winning along the way because I was very observant of it based on my youth.(33:17) And I think what we're calling ego is really our nervous system. (33:20) It's the stress response. (33:22) We have these things built inside of us.(33:25) And again, we learn based on our history, our memories. (33:29) As a kid who was in an incubator, much like adopted kids, you learn that you can't trust connection because you don't have that human connection early on. (33:39) And so you strive harder and harder to build those connections.(33:42) That's why connection is such a powerful motivator for me. (33:47) I know that. (33:48) I know my history.(33:49) We all have these experiences in our life that affect our nervous system in a certain way. (33:54) They put a circuit in there that when it's triggered, it makes us respond in a certain way. (33:59) Recognizing those things within us, you can call them ego.(34:02) You can call them fight or flight. (34:05) You can call them a bunch of different things, but it triggers that nervous system response. (34:10) Dr. Stephen Porges gave three stages, right?(34:13) The green light of connection and safety. (34:16) There's the yellow light of being alert. (34:19) And then there's shutdown, which is his red light, which is where you stop.(34:22) It's dorsal vagal shutdown. (34:23) It's what a lot of people are calling anxiety and depression these days. (34:27) So there's three different stages for him.(34:29) It doesn't matter what you call it. (34:31) It's your nervous system. (34:33) And it's something that you have had in your past, a lesson that you have learned, whether you knowingly learned it or not, that is now affecting your behavior based on an environmental trigger.(34:43) Our body is literally monitoring everything in our environment all the time. (34:51) And it's taking in all these senses and it's deciding to pass through those senses to the things that are important or most important in that moment to us. (35:00) But it has triggers in place that if it senses something that in the past it lost control or in the past was successful, then it's going to bring that to the top, right?(35:09) It's gonna upload that into your working memory. (35:12) And so it's overcoming those things, it's recognizing those things. (35:15) It's why therapy can be so powerful.(35:17) It's why EMDR is just an incredible tool these days, because you can overcome and reprocess some of those negative triggers that are holding you back. (35:25) But I mean, I guess the long-winded answer, to get back to your very first question, you create your identity so that the environmental stimulus, the pattern recognition of the things that you see drive you towards your goals. (35:42) You talked about the experiment down at USC, Jonas Kaplan did an experiment.(35:47) And he did it on, not to get political, but on political liberals. (35:52) Because he had people who were very identified with a certain thing. (35:56) He knew he could trigger them one way or the other.(35:59) And when he asked them questions, that went against their political beliefs, they would respond and their amygdala would light up because they would literally have a gag reflex to that question. (36:17) Our bodies, once we set our identity a certain direction, are designed to keep us safe by following our beliefs. (36:26) Our beliefs are based on our identity.(36:28) Our identity drives what we do. (36:29) And so, kind of to get back to where we're going, if we set our identity on page, on target for what we want to become, then we are giving ourselves the ability to pattern recognize, to overcome the learning in the past, to get through the things that have held us back and to advance those things that move us forward. (36:50) So almost like unlearning something to some degree.(36:53) Well, you have to. (36:54) So that's the trick for PTSD is that, and actually, by the way, I'm writing another book with Dr. C.O. Hernandez, who's an absolute genius, but working on PTSD as a kid who was in an incubator, who had, you know, I grew up, I had PTSD myself. (37:07) I've gone through those phases that they would, you know, dorsal vagal shutdown that you would call depression, anxiety.(37:13) I've had that stuff myself. (37:14) I understand what it's like. (37:15) It's being removed from your emotions.(37:17) But you have to reprocess those traumas who have literally become triggers within your nervous system. (37:24) But once you do that, then you drastically reduce or even eliminate those responses. (37:32) And it's amazingly powerful how you can control your behavior by regulating your nervous system.

Marcus Arredondo

(37:38) Yeah, well, can you give us an example of maybe a circumstance that you went through and what you found to be most effective at navigating that?

Mike Pawlawski

(37:48) Sure, so, I mean, there's a ton of them. (37:51) Sure. (37:52) Game film is the most obvious and easiest one for quarterbacks.(37:58) Quarterbacks specifically and elite athletes really drive hard. (38:02) And they are their harshest critics. (38:04) And so you can go into practice and you can do something and you can throw an interception that day.(38:10) I just talked to one of my quarterbacks the other day and he goes, man, I had a horrible practice. (38:15) I said, oh, well, what happened? (38:16) And we talked through it and oh, I threw this pick.(38:19) I said, well, what else happened? (38:20) And we talked a few plays. (38:21) I said, well, how'd your read go there?(38:23) It was great. (38:23) It was perfect. (38:24) I was on time through with anticipation.(38:26) Okay, great. (38:27) What happened here? (38:27) It was fine.(38:29) It was good. (38:29) I made the right read and this was a new play. (38:31) So it wasn't as clean, but it was this.(38:33) And so really his horrible practice came down to one interception. (38:38) He threw one interception in practice and that left an emotional mark on him. (38:44) And then the next day after he watched game film, he came back and I said, what'd you think?(38:47) He said, oh, receiver ran the wrong route. (38:50) He didn't stem it at the top. (38:51) The DB got the break.(38:52) It really wasn't my fault. (38:55) He watched game film and he reprocessed that emotion. (39:00) He was able to say, oh, that wasn't me or oh, it's okay to feel that way.(39:06) With PTSD, you go back, and that's why I say EMDR is such a powerful tool is that they go back and they take the amygdala out. (39:14) The amygdala is literally the alarm clock that fires up your emotion. (39:19) It hijacks your fight or flight and sends you into an alert state.(39:24) And EMDR inhibits the amygdala from getting your nervous system involved, from creating that stress response and allows you to go back and reprocess these emotions, these traumas that you've had in your past. (39:37) And you can go back to the things for me as a child, being separate, being alone, feeling that I had no connection, feeling out of control. (39:46) And to look at that and to understand what that young child was feeling, that trauma that he experienced back then.(39:53) And I actually, I call him desperado, right? (39:56) He was so desperate for connection. (39:58) He was so desperate for safety.(39:59) That you can go back, you can reprocess that, you can understand that, and you can now have empathy and sympathy for that young one and reprocess that emotion. (40:08) And so now that when that comes up, I don't feel that stress. (40:11) I don't feel that loss of control anymore.(40:14) Now I understand it and I can go back and kind of hug that young one and say, we're good. (40:19) We're fine. (40:20) We're not there anymore.(40:22) Because your nervous system wants to avoid those things at all costs. (40:26) It doesn't wanna go back to that place where it felt bad, where it felt out of control. (40:30) And so it keeps you from those things.(40:32) And it does it through various neurochemical and hormonal ways.

Marcus Arredondo

(40:36) I wanna talk a little bit about playing small and playing free, which is a meaningful sentiment. (40:43) I'm hoping you can define it for the audience and then get into your high achievers protocol as well. (40:48) But can you give us a sense of, and I had a concert pianist on not too long ago who is a friend of mine.(40:57) And he talked about how naive he was when he first started playing, but he played, luckily he interpreted a lot of what he played correctly and it got him pretty far. (41:08) He's a Juilliard graduate, got his doctorate and is now a professor and has performed all over the world. (41:14) But now he seems to have lost some of the freeness that he used to have to explore and to maybe create in a way that he felt more compelled to when he was younger.(41:26) And I'm just curious, first of all, if you could describe playing free versus playing small and how one might include playing free as an adult in more constrictive settings like corporate settings.

Mike Pawlawski

(41:39) Yeah, so playing free and playing small are the concepts that I talk about when we are, playing small is when your nervous system is engaged. (41:46) There was a study done by Moshabar and several others called States of Mind Theory in which they talk about the difference between top-down thinking and bottom-up thinking. (41:56) Top-down thinking, you're going based on past experiences, things that are known, things that you have done and you are focusing down when you are trying to solve a math problem, a known math problem, right?(42:09) Not Einstein's level stuff, but known math problems. (42:12) You have this top-down thinking. (42:13) If I'm using an algebraic equation, I have to go through these steps and this is how I do it and I get down to the bottom.(42:18) That's where top-down thinking belongs. (42:21) When we apply that to everyday life, it doesn't allow us the freedom. (42:27) It doesn't allow us the creativity that we need to solve a lot of problems that have more than one answer.(42:35) And so when you're playing small, you are stuck in that nervous system box of the stress and the cortisol and being scared to make a mistake. (42:45) You are inhibiting your own behaviors with your thoughts. (42:49) You are inhibiting your own behaviors within your fight or flight response because you're worried about what other people will think about you.(42:55) You're worried about the negative effects. (42:58) When you are playing free, you are open. (43:01) You've surrendered to the moment.(43:02) You've allowed yourself the creativity that it doesn't matter about the outcome. (43:08) I'm not worried about the outcome of this. (43:09) I'm worried about the experience of it.(43:11) I talk to my quarterbacks and here's a great tip for people, corporate world, in the athletic world, whatever you do, military, first responders. (43:21) Every day, I have my athletes set three goals. (43:26) And the key to the three goals is they can't be outcome goals.(43:29) It can't be, I wanna go out and throw 10 touchdowns in this game. (43:32) It doesn't matter. (43:33) You don't get to control that.(43:34) Your offensive line controls that. (43:36) Your receivers control that. (43:37) The defense controls that.(43:38) But it can be, I wanna pick up any teammate who does not look like they are at the peak of their game. (43:46) I wanna be the guy that connects with them and gives them the personal emotional power to get to where they're playing free. (43:53) That can be a great one because I can control that.(43:56) I want to have absolute focus in the moments that absolutely count. (44:01) And when I don't have it, I will bring myself back to that. (44:04) That's an input goal.(44:04) You can do that. (44:06) It can't be, I want to get the MVP of this game. (44:10) You don't control that.(44:11) People vote on it, right? (44:13) Every day I have my guys put out three controllable goals that they work on that day. (44:20) And when you have those controllable goals, now you can play free because you know that you can use creativity.(44:26) You can do those things that help move the team forward. (44:29) And you're not locked into, I have to get to this point. (44:31) Because what if you go out and throw nine touchdowns?(44:33) That's a great game, but it wasn't 10 touchdowns. (44:36) Does that mean that I failed? (44:39) Controllables and uncontrollables are a big part of playing free or playing small.(44:44) And so understanding the difference of those, but allowing your nervous system to have the creativity it takes to really enjoy. (44:50) And this is what they call getting in flow. (44:52) To be creative, to feel like you have enough mastery over the situation where you can just cut loose and go.(45:00) And when you're playing in that state, it's amazing. (45:04) For athletes, you can see it when you watch the Olympics. (45:07) Man, sometimes I watch the Olympics, I'm a little bit of a crier.(45:09) Like when I watch great athletes perform, it just hits me emotionally, it hits me in the vagus nerve. (45:14) And you can see the athletes that have this when they're out there on the field. (45:17) And those performances that you remember for your life is those people that are playing free.(45:23) And ideally, that's where we all wanna get to every day. (45:26) Not every opportunity is at the level where you can get there. (45:32) But when you're provided the opportunity, it has to have enough stress.(45:35) It has to have enough challenge. (45:37) It has to have enough history. (45:38) That is a requisite for flow.(45:40) 100%, it has to be challenging. (45:43) And if it doesn't have that, then you just wanna perform at your best and learn and grow. (45:47) But if it has those things, then you wanna be in that moment where you're playing free and it's just an amazing feeling.

Marcus Arredondo

(45:53) Have you found any successful ways to replicate flow, to call upon it more successfully? (45:59) I mean, I think of the greats, I mean, Jordan, LeBron, those types who, sure, they do great things, right? (46:06) They do amazing things at the end of the game.(46:10) But what I think people overestimate is are those amazing things? (46:14) What they do, what I think they underestimate is how few mistakes they tend to make, how there's just a greater, I mean, Tom Brady talks about he hated losing a lot more than he loved winning. (46:25) And so there's just like an element of, to your point, focus on the process, focus on what you can control.(46:32) Is there a way that you've been able to find to induce it? (46:35) Absolutely. (46:36) More repeatedly?(46:37) Yeah.

Mike Pawlawski

(46:38) Reps, right? (46:39) So this is what I talk about. (46:40) We see the end product.(46:42) We see Michael Jordan on the court playing in the championship game, right? (46:47) We see Tom Brady, we see Joe Montana making that throw to the catch for Dwight Clark. (46:52) We see those things.(46:54) That's the end result. (46:56) That's the outcome. (46:57) But what we don't see is all the work they put in, in practice.(47:03) Sure. (47:04) In the off hours, in the early mornings, in the training room. (47:08) So rep, rep, rep, rep, rep.(47:10) You have to have mastery of your craft, right? (47:14) I think one of the things to get into flow is you have to master the movement. (47:19) You have to master the event.(47:21) You have to master the technique that you're trying to use. (47:25) And then with that mastery, you apply it towards something challenging. (47:30) You know that you have success.(47:32) And so what you're not doing is you're not worried about my ability in that moment. (47:37) You're only worried about what's right in front of you. (47:40) When you trust your technique, when you trust your skillset, when you trust your training, now I can focus on the moment.(47:47) So work in practice, work outside of the arena to get to the arena. (47:53) And then once you're in the arena, trust your skills and focus on what you're doing, being present in the moment and enjoy it. (48:01) Know that win, lose, or draw, it's still gonna be a beneficial experience.(48:06) If you can do those things, now you get into flow all the time if you have, again, the requisite challenge in front of you.

Marcus Arredondo

(48:13) Yeah, presence. (48:14) I'm curious if you've encountered, you mentioned, I'm gonna quote from Simon Sinek, you have to be careful what you think you know because assumptions, even based on sound research, can lead us astray. (48:26) And this is a little bit of the top-down, bottom-up, you know, opposition.(48:30) Have you, on one hand, you don't wanna use past experiences to inform future potential outcomes because it can be limiting, but have you ever encountered an event where you push up against hubris or delusion? (48:44) Not you personally, but maybe somebody you coach? (48:47) All the time.(48:49) How do you navigate that, right? (48:50) How do you bring reality into the world? (48:54) Is it an outright negation?(48:55) Talk to me a little bit about how you process that.

Mike Pawlawski

(48:57) Well, I mean, so a lot of people use hubris to try to disguise their fear, right? (49:04) Their fear of failure, their fear of not being good enough. (49:07) One of the things that it starts early when we're kids is are we enough, right?(49:11) Did we get the love? (49:12) Did we get the attention? (49:13) Do we have the connection?(49:15) And that's, I think, all humans want to be enough. (49:20) And so using hubris, using all those things to kind of disguise that, to hide behind as a shield for feeling like you're not enough. (49:27) So you get that all the time.(49:29) I think at the point, though, is how do I kind of undress myself so that I can become the best version of me? (49:39) How do I set my target on becoming the person that I idealize? (49:47) Because we all have different goals in our life.(49:50) We all have different things that we are aiming for. (49:53) Your goals are gonna be different than my goals that are gonna be different than another quarterback's goals that I know, that are gonna be different than a corporate CEO's goals. (50:00) But how do I set the target for me and create the environment for myself that I can strip away all the false things from history?(50:10) That little kid for me who couldn't breathe in the incubator, he isn't fighting for breath right now. (50:18) That you talked about, how much I talk about breath in my book, that's the concept of just breathe. (50:24) Just allow yourself the space to do what you need to do in the moment.(50:28) And so if we can find a way to strip away those things that hold us back and then allow ourselves to do the reps and do the work on those things that move us forward, that propel us to become that idealized person of who we wanna be, that's where we're at the strength of it. (50:42) And so you have to use history, that's learning, that's training, that's where we learn a lot of our lessons. (50:47) But you also can't let that history hold you back.(50:50) Past failures can't hold you back from trying in the future. (50:54) Past problems that are in a relationship doesn't mean you can't ever be in a great relationship moving forward. (51:00) Past strife, I played for the Miami Hooters, they were the worst team in the history of organized football, they were awful.(51:05) It was traumatizing to anybody who was involved in that organization. (51:09) But I didn't let that stop me from continuing to play football to going on and winning a world championship. (51:14) And so you have to understand and you have to be able to siphon out what is good, what is bad and what memories do I need to use as experience and what experiences do I need to let go of because there are weights.(51:27) And if you can figure that out, right, and stop putting our ego first, going back to ego, that hubris that you talk about, then that's when we can become the best that we can become. (51:37) Know that you're always learning, know that you're always training, know that you're always improving and start telling yourselves the right stories that lead you in that direction. (51:44) Those are the things that are gonna take you to where you wanna be.

Marcus Arredondo

(51:46) So I do wanna talk about your time in Miami and in New York briefly. (51:53) I also wanna talk a little bit about your transition into getting in front of the camera. (51:58) But before we do, just to give some sense of what you were referring to, I wanna close that loop because you do refer to Roger Bannister having broken the four minute mile, which was an impossible task.(52:08) So it does benefit by not knowing certain things, but as it relates to maybe past experiences on a more positive note, I don't know if you're familiar with Pavot, I always butcher his name, Pavot Tzatzoulin. (52:22) He was basically, he's been coined as being responsible for bringing the kettlebell workout to the US. (52:27) He was a Russian trainer and he's responsible for training a number of people within our federal government.(52:34) But also he talks about greasing the groove, which is effectively doing certain lifts repeatedly, smaller lifts, less than your max, but instead of doing one set of 10, maybe you do several sets of one or two all throughout the day. (52:51) And as a result, your neural complexes start to allow less friction as it relates to doing that work. (52:59) And I bring this up as a backdrop for what you talked about earlier, which is doing hard things.(53:05) And I wanna sort of overlap that with agency. (53:09) The willingness, the mindset that you have control over what you can contribute, how you can choose your path forward, that you can change your current state. (53:20) But through the context of a coach or a father, for example, how do you encourage?(53:25) So you had to do hard things by virtue of your own situation. (53:30) And in so doing, I would suggest you probably greased the grooves quite a bit such that doing hard things became, not that they were easier, but the friction that would be required in order to do them, maybe you might be more accustomed to it. (53:46) And I think it's really important, Jocko Willett talks about this, how important it is to consistently do hard things, to embrace that discomfort.(53:54) How do you coach people who might be reluctant, particularly younger people who aren't compelled to do it because it's out of survival? (54:03) It's not out of necessity. (54:04) How would you encourage those who might be fearful or resentful maybe is not the right word, but resistant to embracing that component?

Mike Pawlawski

(54:17) Well, so one of the tricks to coaching, and I learned this from my good friend, Mike Blazkowicz, he's the head of all strength coaching at the University of California where I played football. (54:26) Genius, strength and conditioning guy, human performance guy, just phenomenal human being on top of everything. (54:33) But he worked with Coach Lattiser up at De La Salle for a long time.(54:38) And Coach Latt had a saying that if you can't teach, you can't coach. (54:41) So first you have to figure out who you're coaching to. (54:43) Am I coaching to a scientist type?(54:45) Am I coaching to an artist type? (54:48) Are they creative? (54:49) Are they engineering?(54:51) And then there are study after study that literally document that the ability to do hard things, to overcome life's problems, comes from learning to do hard things in our lives, right? (55:06) Learning to face challenges. (55:08) And so there are brain fMRI studies, there are clinical study.(55:13) I mean, there's just study after study that proved if we train ourselves to do hard things, if we face hard things on a regular basis, we find a more reward, more purpose, but also the ability to face harder things in our life. (55:26) And we end up with more success. (55:28) So if it's asking, how do you teach it?(55:30) How do you coach it? (55:31) It's understanding the person at the end. (55:33) Hard documentation is hard to beat, but having people go back into their history at times when they actually faced hard things, visualizations, having a highlight reel.(55:46) Again, another one of the things that I use with my athletes is a highlight reel. (55:50) When they start to feel that self-doubt (55:51) and they start to feel that pressure coming on, (55:55) I have them have a highlight reel, (55:57) mental training of the things they've done in the past, (55:59) the times they have done in the past, (56:01) and time travel back to those moments (56:03) when I felt this before, I succeeded before, (56:07) I overcame it before, and then think about the outcome (56:09) and really experience the emotion of that outcome. (56:12) And once you do that, you can recognize that the benefit of facing hard things is far greater in the reward. (56:22) You have to have a little bit of delayed gratification to it, but the reward of it, the response by your body is far greater than the stress of actually facing.(56:33) And then training yourself knowing that you are giving yourself agency, you are giving yourself control the next time you face something hard. (56:41) You are making yourself a better person, more bulletproof to the next time you face something more difficult. (56:46) It's also, it should be a great motivator for anybody.(56:50) Now, there's a dichotomy to us, right? (56:54) We wanna be comfortable, we wanna be happy, we wanna be all those things without work. (56:58) There's a certain restricting of effort because we're trying to conserve calories there.(57:05) But at the same time, we have this need to grow. (57:08) And so we have to balance those things, but knowing that getting through a hard thing is going to make it easier to get through the hard thing next time, plays into that need to preserve calories as well. (57:18) Because now, next time I face something hard, it won't be nearly as difficult.(57:21) I mean, it's long and I kind of got off the rails there, but if you face hard things, there's a response of success. (57:28) If you have a highlight reel when you face hard things, you'll realize it's not as hard and that the reward is at the far end. (57:34) And so train yourself to do those things and chemically, hormonally, psychologically, you respond better and it teaches you to face hard things and be successful.

Marcus Arredondo

(57:47) I wanna give you, before we transition off of this, can you tell us about, is it happy?

Mike Pawlawski

(57:52) Is that the proper? (57:52) Yeah, High Achievers Protocol. (57:54) So this is really the basis to it.(57:55) And the basis of the High Achievers Protocol is you are always training. (57:58) I've mentioned it several times. (58:01) Hustle, hard work comes first.(58:03) You have to do the reps. (58:04) You've heard me talk about that here several times today. (58:06) If you don't do the reps, you're not gonna learn the skills.(58:08) If you don't have the skills, you can't compete. (58:10) So hustle, A, adaptation. (58:13) When you hustle against resistance, right?(58:16) When you work hard, what we were just talking about, doing hard things against resistance. (58:19) When you lift weights against gravity, your body will adapt. (58:23) It's what we do as human beings.(58:25) There's a million examples of it, right? (58:27) Lift weights, you're gonna grow. (58:29) Run, you're gonna build cardiovascular endurance.(58:33) Any of these things are going to help you adapt to the environment, to overcome the stress that you're facing. (58:38) So hard work against resistance, you're going to adapt. (58:41) Persistence, you can't just do it once.(58:43) You have to do it over and over and over and over again. (58:46) You are a biological system. (58:47) So you're training your body through the reps, through facing resistance to adapt to the environment, to get to that homeostasis level.(58:56) And then the super important one is perception. (59:00) And this is what the High Achievers Protocol is all about. (59:02) Our stories dictate our outcomes.(59:05) And so if I'm telling myself that when I work hard against resistance, I will adapt if I am persistent, then I now have the right story to be, to have a growth mindset like Carol Dweck was talking about. (59:18) And I can go into any situation, any difficult task, and know that if I do the work for long enough and hard enough, that I will adapt to it and I will overcome it. (59:27) And then finally equity, E is for equity.(59:29) And equity is in two different senses. (59:31) One, equity like you own a home. (59:33) You have to own your shit, right?(59:34) You can't make excuses for what's happened in the past. (59:38) Here's what happened, here's why it happened, and here's how that didn't help me. (59:42) How do I learn from that?(59:43) But equity in the sense that you cannot beat yourself up over those things. (59:47) I knew what I knew at that moment. (59:50) And so I did what I did in that moment.(59:52) But now it's different because I have a different understanding. (59:55) I know when I work hard against resistance, and if I'm persistent, I will in the end succeed. (1:00:01) And so that story now gets us to a point where we can be fair with ourselves.(1:00:06) Forgive that guy. (1:00:07) I forgive the little guy back in the incubator who was scared for his life, who thought he was being annihilated, right? (1:00:13) Forgive yourself, surrender to that, move forward through it.(1:00:17) And if you put all those things together, you now have a protocol that you can win in any circumstance. (1:00:23) That's why my book is called The Playbook for Winning at Anything, right? (1:00:27) And so those things together, and then you could also use it as a countdown in that you count yourself in, H-A-P-P, and the E in this case stands for execute.(1:00:38) We had a bunch of Navy SEALs came on our show, but a couple of snipers came on, and I just love these guys. (1:00:44) They were teaching us how to shoot. (1:00:45) They're teaching what's called a command fire.(1:00:48) And in the command fire, you have two or more shooters shooting at targets at the same time. (1:00:52) For these guys, it's life or death. (1:00:54) For us, we were shooting at iron plates.(1:00:57) But you have to shoot at the same time. (1:00:59) You both have to be accurate and you both have to hit what you're shooting at. (1:01:03) And so I don't know if you've ever done this in life, but where you're like, okay, everybody's gonna jump in the pool on three, ready, one, two, and then all of a sudden you're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, is it one, two, three, and we jump on three, or is it one, two, three, and then we jump where the four would be?(1:01:15) Like, which one is it? (1:01:17) And he counted down and he goes, we're gonna go command fire. (1:01:19) I'm gonna say three, two, one, execute.(1:01:23) Go on the X. (1:01:25) And I'm like, oh, that just solved that conundrum that we've all been through our entire life, right? (1:01:29) We don't go on three, you go on the X.(1:01:31) And so with the High Achievers Protocol, knowing that this is what you lead to a success, hustle, adaptation, persistence, perception, and equity, I'm gonna go H-A-P-P, execute. (1:01:44) And if it's hard, I'm just gonna step into it, and I'm gonna run the next one on the X.

Marcus Arredondo

(1:01:49) I like the sentiment there because the paralysis analysis is a real thing, and we focus sometimes more on making the right decision than making the decision right, and I think we're better off just moving forward through action. (1:02:04) But on that note, (1:02:05) I wanna talk about your transition from NCAA to going pro, (1:02:11) and I don't wanna curtail it, (1:02:14) but I'm wondering if you could just share some highlights (1:02:16) and takeaways from what you learned being in the NFL (1:02:21) versus the XFL, what you learned in Miami (1:02:23) versus being in New York, (1:02:26) that the story in Miami is a great one (1:02:28) about the lack of preparation (1:02:29) between the coaching staff and the management, (1:02:32) and the juxtaposition between that and where you went, (1:02:35) and having to overcome sort of the reputation (1:02:40) that Miami had at the time, (1:02:42) which obviously sort of paints you in an unfavorable light, (1:02:46) and to fight out of that, (1:02:47) and to become a champion within the XFL, (1:02:49) I think is a true testament to what you're capable of (1:02:52) in terms of building a team. (1:02:54) But I'm just curious, pick any of those, or all of them, but I wanna hear a little bit about your transition as a professional football player.

Mike Pawlawski

(1:03:02) Yeah, so I mean, going from high school to college was a huge one, right? (1:03:06) I went from high school to Pac-12 football, and so what I learned was that everybody that I was playing with at that level was the best player on their team, right? (1:03:15) I was, we had four guys from my school that all got college scholarships for football.(1:03:19) We all considered ourselves the best player on our team. (1:03:23) Everybody in that locker room when I got the Cal was probably not just the best player on their team, they were the best player in their league, and likely one of the best players in their state, right? (1:03:33) So you go from this high school level competition up to Pac-12 level competition, it was the premier conference in the country at that point.(1:03:41) And so it's a whole nother level, and you learn that you have to really focus down on how you prepare, how you get ready, the things that you do, the way you take care of your body. (1:03:50) So that was great, that was one thing. (1:03:52) And then you move, and you see that some of these guys are super talented, and their talent carries them a long way but they don't necessarily do the work, right?(1:04:03) And the guys who don't do the work start to fall off. (1:04:07) Now the ultra, hyper talented guys continue to be top level guys because they just have so much skill. (1:04:13) They run a 4.32, right?(1:04:15) They're six foot seven, 290 pounds, whatever it is. (1:04:18) They have those skills that you just can't teach. (1:04:21) But even them, the further you go along, those guys fall away.(1:04:25) So now you get to the NFL, and you have all of the guys who have survived that first crucible, and they're now in the NFL. (1:04:33) And what you recognize there is the difference at that level, in terms of movement, in terms of skills, in terms of talent, the jump wasn't as big, but in terms of focus on minute details, on the littlest things that make you better. (1:04:49) Understanding in your diet, something that may make you perform a little bit less.(1:04:55) Understanding not getting an extra 15 minutes sleep at night may reduce your focus or your ability. (1:05:02) Like just finding the littlest things of improving your game all the time, you are constantly trying to harness your potential to become the greatest, the best that you can possibly be. (1:05:12) And so that's the process you learn there.(1:05:14) And then you get to a place like Miami, which I was in the NFL for a couple of years. (1:05:19) I got to see it, like most things in life, that there are more talented people than there are positions available for the talented people to fill. (1:05:30) Especially in the NFL, everybody wants that job.(1:05:33) And so you have a lot of really good football players who never got a look. (1:05:36) Kurt Werner didn't get a look, right? (1:05:37) He went, but he got cut right away in the NFL.(1:05:40) Ends up, he's wearing a gold jacket now, right? (1:05:42) He played in the Arena League. (1:05:43) I played against Kurt a bunch.(1:05:45) And so you get to the Arena League in Miami, and the coaches at that level, and our management at that level, thought that they could just kind of call it in and still win games. (1:05:54) They didn't have film, they didn't have anything else. (1:05:57) And I really saw the lack of preparation, the lack of professionalism, and how it affected a team.(1:06:02) I went down there because a guy that I knew in Tampa when I was with the Bucks had become a friend. (1:06:07) He was the general manager. (1:06:08) And he promised me that everything was gonna be great, that he was putting together a first-class team, and he didn't.(1:06:12) It was an awful team. (1:06:13) Like I said, it was the worst team in the history of organized football. (1:06:16) And so you see how much preparation plays into it, not just on the team level, the individual level, the player level, but also in management.(1:06:26) And you start to realize the dynamic that all has to come together. (1:06:30) It's not just the individual. (1:06:32) I can work as hard as I want, but if management is not prepared to win, if management is not ready to work as hard as I am to go out and win, you're not going to have success.(1:06:41) And so you have to surround yourself or build the people, the team that wants to do the things that you want to do, right? (1:06:50) To create that culture where everybody is pulling on the rope, doing the same things. (1:06:54) This is why I love building teams now.(1:06:56) This is why I love working with teams. (1:06:58) I finally got to a head coach in Albany with the Firebirds in the arena football league. (1:07:02) They hadn't won a world, they hadn't won a championship in their entire existence.(1:07:06) They'd been good. (1:07:06) They'd been in the playoffs. (1:07:07) They'd won a lot of games, but there was a lot of infighting there.(1:07:11) And my coach, Mike Daly, my favorite coach to this day, he called me in and he said, look, I want to build a championship team. (1:07:19) And I told him, if you build a team with high character guys, if you put high character guys in this room, in this locker room, I will win a championship with you. (1:07:28) We will do this together.(1:07:29) And he did that. (1:07:30) He put high character guys in the locker room. (1:07:32) He built that in his team.(1:07:33) Guys that were willing to work, that could see how to grow, that would come together and build this culture that was powerful. (1:07:41) And so he put high character guys, and then he, on the management side, drove our management, which wasn't necessarily prepared to win, but he drove them to be a winning management team. (1:07:54) And when you put those two things together, it creates greatness.(1:07:58) That team went on to become considered the greatest team in the history of arena football, because he built a locker room full of high character guys that were willing to do the work, to learn, to overcome, to come together, to connect with one another. (1:08:15) He, as a manager, was willing to drive the ship up the ladder to our general manager, to our owner, to make sure that we got the things that we needed to win. (1:08:25) I, as a quarterback, went on to become the highest rated quarterback in the history of arena football for five years in a row, while Kurt was there.(1:08:33) And so it's just, I saw in Miami, I was awful. (1:08:37) I was less than 50% completions. (1:08:39) And I get to Albany, where now you have an organization that's willing to win, that's willing to provide the opportunity, and my game changes entirely.(1:08:47) And so sometimes you're a product of your environment. (1:08:50) Sometimes you can play down to a level at which the product keeps you. (1:08:55) Or sometimes you can change the environment to create the opportunity for greatness.(1:09:01) And Albany was just the ultimate lesson. (1:09:03) It all came together for that, to find the opportunity to create greatness with my teammates, with my coach. (1:09:09) And it was just an amazing experience.

Marcus Arredondo

(1:09:12) How did you know it was time to walk away and maybe talk to us a little bit about the next step? (1:09:19) Because I wanna read the statistic that you had from your book, which is that studies estimate around 78% of former NFL players experience financial distress and life dissatisfaction within two years of ending their careers. (1:09:29) For NBA players, it's over 60%.(1:09:31) And their divorce rate is way higher than the general population. (1:09:35) These are guys who are supposed to have it all, money, fame, lifestyle, but somehow they can't find happiness or fulfillment. (1:09:40) So I'm just curious, that transition out of there, what was your mindset?(1:09:44) How did you figure out what your next step is? (1:09:46) Because that's been your identity for 20-something years.

Mike Pawlawski

(1:09:51) And that's why guys have problems when they step away from it, right? (1:09:53) Your whole identity. (1:09:54) To get to that level, your whole identity, like every fiber in your being needs to be geared towards being a professional athlete.(1:10:02) That's who you are. (1:10:05) And so at the end of that career, when that stops, then who do I become? (1:10:11) We publicly saw Tom Brady struggle with it.(1:10:14) We publicly saw Brett Favre struggle with it. (1:10:17) And I tell people all the time, the greatest job I'll ever have, I had coming right out of college. (1:10:22) I was a professional athlete for 11 years.(1:10:25) Phenomenal. (1:10:25) I went on to host outdoor television. (1:10:28) I got to hunt and fish all over the world.(1:10:31) Phenomenal job. (1:10:33) It wasn't as good as my job as a professional quarterback. (1:10:36) Like the fulfillment of being a professional quarterback, that was in my identity.(1:10:40) My identity became the outdoor TV producer, the on-camera guy. (1:10:44) But it's such a huge transition. (1:10:47) For me, I knew that football was finite.(1:10:50) My body would only last for so long. (1:10:53) Best case scenario, you're gonna play till you're 36, 37 back then. (1:10:59) And so I knew that I had to start preparing for my next career.(1:11:02) You alluded to it earlier. (1:11:04) Joe Starkey, who was, he is a legend. (1:11:07) He was our play-by-play announcer for the Bears radio for Cal.(1:11:11) He called me up as soon as I got in the Arena League because now the seasons didn't conflict. (1:11:18) And he said, we've never had a sideline reporter. (1:11:20) I think you'd be great.(1:11:21) And I said, oh, that'd be awesome. (1:11:23) I'd love to try that. (1:11:24) And I hadn't thought about radio.(1:11:25) I'd thought about coaching, but I was always good with the media and I was always good on TV, which is why Joe called me. (1:11:32) And to your story, I'd go back to Cal and I said, hey, they want me to be the sideline reporter. (1:11:35) And he goes, we're not gonna pay you.(1:11:37) The first thing was our Sports Information Director, Kevin Reneau. (1:11:40) He said, we're not gonna pay you. (1:11:42) First words out of his mouth.(1:11:43) And I thought, well, that's okay. (1:11:44) I've got to practice anyway. (1:11:45) I've got to take the reps.(1:11:46) I've got to do the work. (1:11:48) And so I did that. (1:11:49) I learned how to become an analyst, right?(1:11:53) An on-camera, an on-air personality. (1:11:56) And so I started building other identities, but from there I learned, okay, I need more skills. (1:12:02) I can't just be a sideline guy because there's no future in that.(1:12:05) So I learned how to be a color analyst. (1:12:09) And then I learned how to be a TV host. (1:12:11) And I learned how to, once I started getting into TV, it was kind of curious to me because I'm a creative.(1:12:15) And so I started saying, oh, let me start producing some segments. (1:12:18) And I learned how to do that. (1:12:19) And I started learning how to edit those segments as well.(1:12:22) So I learned every facet of television and radio production by doing the work. (1:12:28) I didn't go to school for it. (1:12:29) I just learned it by doing the work, by working with people who were in the field.(1:12:33) And I found out I liked it. (1:12:34) I liked creating stuff out of whole cloth, right? (1:12:36) It's my ideas who then I turn into stories.(1:12:39) I love telling stories, as you've noticed. (1:12:41) And then putting those out there for the world to kind of experience, to help them understand the game that I love. (1:12:47) I liked it.(1:12:49) And then I said, well, I told my dad when I was eight, he said, what do you want to be when you grow up? (1:12:53) I said, I want to be a professional baseball player because I hadn't played football yet. (1:12:58) And then he said, oh, okay.(1:12:59) Well, if that doesn't work, what do you want to be? (1:13:00) And I said, well, I'll just host a fishing show. (1:13:02) I was always a big time fisherman.(1:13:04) My dad thought that a father should teach their kids how to fish. (1:13:07) And so he started us fishing while we were young. (1:13:09) I had just watched Orlando Wilson catching massive bass on Lake Okeechobee.(1:13:15) And I'm like, I want to do that for a living. (1:13:18) Like that's, I want to do that. (1:13:20) And so I just said, yeah, you know, like I'll host a fishing show.(1:13:23) And he's like, okay, whatever. (1:13:24) You know, and we just kind of passed. (1:13:25) I was eight years old.(1:13:26) When my son was born and I had gone through and I played professional football, I became a professional broadcaster. (1:13:34) I started my own TV production company and now I was hosting a fly fishing show. (1:13:39) My dad looked at me and he smiled and he had these tears in his eyes.(1:13:42) He's like, you did it. (1:13:44) I'm like, what? (1:13:45) And he's like, you remember that conversation we had when you were eight years old and you said you wanted to be a professional baseball player and you wanted to host your own fishing show?(1:13:53) He goes, you effing did it. (1:13:56) And he was like so happy. (1:13:57) I'm like, yeah, I didn't even think about that.(1:13:58) But yeah, I guess I did do it, right? (1:14:00) Those are the dreams of an eight-year-old. (1:14:02) But I did the work to get myself to that position.(1:14:05) Those were my identity. (1:14:06) I was a fisherman. (1:14:07) I was a athlete.(1:14:09) I did the work to be really great at those things, at the craft. (1:14:12) And I found the solutions. (1:14:15) I found answers to the problems I didn't even know were problems when I was an eight-year-old and figured out how to get myself to the position where I could become a professional athlete and become an outdoor TV host, fishing and hunting.(1:14:28) And so you just overcome those things. (1:14:31) You find the way and you learn the lessons along the way that help you get to those points.

Marcus Arredondo

(1:14:35) Yeah. (1:14:36) Well, you are a great storyteller. (1:14:38) And I read this Noah Yuval Harari's Sapiens book and I think everybody gets something different from what they read.(1:14:45) But when I read it, I think the most powerful attribute that beyond fire and communities that we create, but is the power of stories, not only to influence those around you as a way of persuading and political influence, sure, but also inherently within our own self. (1:15:03) And I think you're a perfect articulation of what happens when you can shape your own story. (1:15:09) So I know we're coming up on time.(1:15:10) Any closing thoughts or things you think we might've missed?

Mike Pawlawski

(1:15:13) No, I think we covered pretty much everything. (1:15:17) For people at home, we've talked about identity. (1:15:19) We've talked about all those things.(1:15:20) They're based on decisions. (1:15:23) I like to, if people are looking for help in that, they can go just text GREAT to 55444. (1:15:31) And I literally have free resources for people.(1:15:34) I love having a chance to be on your show today. (1:15:36) I love getting a chance to talk to your audience, but they can get there, text GREAT to 55444. (1:15:41) And I literally have resources.(1:15:42) They can go there, figure out how to put together a bulletproof identity. (1:15:45) How to make a decision that sticks. (1:15:48) Once we make a decision, our body will rally behind it.(1:15:50) I have worksheets for you that you can get there. (1:15:53) How to put a game plan together, to be prepared for what you're doing. (1:15:59) It's all there.(1:16:00) And I'd love to help you out, see if it helps you to make that decision, to create that identity that helps move you forward towards success.

Marcus Arredondo

(1:16:07) Thank you, Mike. (1:16:08) We'll be sure to include that in the show notes as well. (1:16:10) Really appreciate you coming on.(1:16:12) It was great connecting.

Mike Pawlawski

(1:16:13) Absolutely. (1:16:13) I appreciate you having me on. (1:16:14) Thank you so much for taking the time.

Marcus Arredondo

(1:16:20) Thanks for listening. (1:16:21) For a detailed list of episodes and show notes, visit scalesofsuccesspodcast.com. (1:16:25) If you found this conversation engaging, consider signing up for our newsletter, where we go even deeper on a weekly basis, sharing exclusive insights and actionable strategies that can help you in your own journey.(1:16:35) We'd also appreciate if you subscribed, rated or shared today's episode. (1:16:38) It helps us to attract more illuminating guests. (1:16:41) Adding to the list of enlightening conversations we've had with New York Times bestsellers, producers, founders, CEOs, congressmen and other independent thinkers who are challenging the status quo.(1:16:51) You can also follow us for updates, extra content and more insights from our guests. (1:16:55) We hope to have you back again next week for another episode of Scales of Success. (1:16:59) Scales of Success is an Edgewest Capital Production.