# 85 - The Goal Setting Blueprint / Awareness

Coach Curtis returns to The Mindset U Playbook after stepping away since the end of March. Following a period of intense political commentary, he took time to unbecome versions of himself that were not aligned with real success. That deliberate pause produced Transfer EQ, a monitoring, coaching, and accountability system built to help athletes develop the habits, behaviours, and recovery capacity required to succeed once they reach college.

This episode is about installation, not motivation. It examines the difference between starting something and actually building a system that lasts. Between vague goals that decorate your ambition and a precise daily blueprint that forces honest behaviour. Between chasing distant success and confronting what sits within 10 feet of you right now.

Drawing on Carl Jung’s line, “Modern Man Doesn’t See God Because He Refuses To Look Low Enough,” Coach Curtis explains why real progress demands you stop looking to the horizon and start dealing with the immediate disorder at your feet: your habits, your thinking, your decisions under load, your capacity to regulate and act with clarity when it matters.

No hype. No slogans. Just structure, awareness, and the hard work of training behaviour under pressure. Talent gets you noticed. Behaviour gets you trusted.

If you are ready to move past wishes and build something that holds up, start with the blueprint. Look low enough. Do the next right thing.

New episodes coming regularly. Subscribe.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the mindset you playbook where performance meets purpose and mindset everything. The show isn't about hyperquick, it's about real strategies about stories science. Sports business recovery in life. Each episode is a look inside the playbook that separates the good from the great. Talk habits, self-talk, discipline, ego, recovery. And what it really takes to stay on offense in your life. Not just in performance, but in who you are, you're in the right place. This is the mindset you playbook. Let's get to work.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Alright, welcome back. Mindset you playbook. It has been a kid saying a minute. No new episode since end of March when I was. I guess I was on a bit of a political rampage. Needed just needed to say some things out loud. I thought some of them needed saying, but after it was all said and done, my energy was kind of cucked. I didn't, I didn't like I didn't like the path it was taking me down. I can see why people that dive into it go a little koo cool. Uh so I I took a step back, right? I kind of had to be, as I've I've always said, had to unbecome some versions of myself that were, I don't know, somehow being created and leading me down a path not conducive to to success, to personal success. My definition of success. You know, the the the pause, the pause of me not doing podcasts, it's it's not avoidance, I guess you'd call it necessary surgery. But out of that came a lot of work, a lot of me being able to dive in and was to really able to establish and build transfer EQ. I also start with with just talking about what it is. It's um it's monitoring, it's coaching, it's accountability. It's designed to help athletes, primarily ball players who I work with. Anybody could use it. But maintain habits, behaviors, recovery systems, the kind of systems required for long-term success, sustained success over long periods of time, especially once they get to college baseball, because we all know that getting to college baseball is one thing. Succeeding there is a very different, very different monster. Most athletes spend you know spend years earning the opportunity, right, only to arrive to campus with you know, with no parents, no structure, nobody watching them. And this is this is where a lot of them drift off. Shoot, I drifted off. I was introduced to cheap beer and cheerleaders of 17. Are you kidding me? You know, I I'm patient, you know, I'm I'm subject number one that needed this the most. And it's not because of lack of talent, not because of parents, not because of anything. It's because their systems can't carry load. New capacity, like new, new stressors. So we monitor everything. We monitor recovery, sleep stress, screen time attention, nervous system load, behavioral patterns, and we use Whoop, the old whoop strat, for the physiological data. And then we layer in some screen time tracking, opens, et cetera, and weekly coaching conversations. So every week the athletes get personalized reports, and it doesn't just show the numbers, right? It the numbers reveal story. So right now, currently, we're applying it with a strong group of college kids, high school athletes. Right now, we're in the story building phase. Yes, they're getting reports. Hey, don't do this as much, do this more, etc. But the program takes time because we have to we have to let the analytics tell the truth first. Then we can see where adjustments, you know, like where adjustments need to be made. Awareness without capacity is useless. Capacity without consistent behavior, we call potential. We are building the operating system that lets talent actually travel under pressure. At work is why I think this episode matters. Because Mindset U is starting. The summer program is starting. Like my my favorite part of what I do, summer mindset you programming, is starting. It started today. It's it's actually started yesterday. But it's not just starting, it's it's being installed. That's how I like to look at it. There's a big difference. Okay, starting something's easy. Everybody starts something, everyone gets excited. Post pictures, she starts schoolie by the notebooks, right? First page, say the right thing. And then, you know, two weeks go by, life gets uncomfortable, routines, all the old habits crawl back into the room. And it happens every time. Installing something is different. Installing means structure. Installing means you're not relying on mood. Installing means your goals are not floating around in your head like some inspirational quote fog thing. They're written down. Your goals are written down, they're mapped out, they're broken into days that are attached to your behavior. So that's where we're at. We're at the beginning, right? We're at installation. And it's not a big hypey thing. You can ask the athletes in it. It's dry. We're not getting fired up, we're not motivitying it. You know, not everybody's sitting around saying they want to play a bandy, right? D1. Very few are willing to live different than everybody else, and that's the point. And that's the point of this first phase of mindset. You begin, I'll say the word installation. We're starting with a blueprint. Blueprint, long-term goals, short-term goals, daily goals, training goals, recovery goals, mental goals, academic goals, family goals, baseball goals, character goals, all of it. Specific, very precise, and detailed. Okay, because vague goals, we hear them all the time, they're just decoration. They're more of a destination. They look nice, they sound nice, they make you feel like you're trying to do something, but they don't tell you what to do on a Tuesday afternoon when you're tired, frustrated, maybe bored, distracted, and your phone's sitting there. You know, just asking you to go scroll on. Real goals give you instructions. Real goals tell you what matter today. Real goal is going to tell you what to clean up, what to repeat, what to stop, what to stop pretending about. We've already the quote: you don't rise to your goals, you fall to your systems. But if there's no system, you fall whatever moon shows up. And we don't want that. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, you know, man, I don't know, it sounds like a lot of work. The blueprint is not homework, right? It's we have a goal blueprint. It's not homework. Homework is what you do because somebody told you to do it. All right, a blueprint is what you build because you're trying to become something. Big difference. All right, most athletes have goals, but they don't have a detailed map. They say things like, you know, I want to get stronger, I want to play at the next level, again, I want to play D1, I want to be a better hitter, improve arm strength, you know, all this stuff. Want to be more confident or mentally tougher. Cool, fine, awesome. Again, we hear it all the time, but it's very incomplete. It's not like telling your contractor you want a house and then handing him a napkin with a word written on it. You know, it's just big. Big what? How many rooms? Where's the foundation? What are the where are the beams? Plumbing, you know, electrical, what is, you know, all the stuff, right? And this is why blueprint is such a good word for this, because we've got to lay it out. We've got to really look at it, we gotta make sure it works. Not just asking you what you want. We're asking what the structure has to become. Because if you say you want to play at the next level, the next question is, how bad do you want it? That question has been abused to death. And the better question is, what does your day look like? What does your sleep look like? What does your phone usage look like? Food intake, training, towing routines, recovery, flexibility, everything. What does your body language look like when you go 0 for three? What does your behavior look like when nobody's watching? If I followed you around, didn't know your goals, would I have an idea that you are working towards something big? That's the blueprint. Because the goal is not the goal. The behavior that supports the goal is the goal. Write that one down. That's a good one. That's where most athletes lose the plot. They fall in love with the idea, the image, the future. But they resent the requirements, right? Of the present, what they have to do right now. Right? Again, love the idea of the next level. Love the idea of commitment. The post, the Instagram post, you know. I'd like to thank God and committing to D1 school, etc. Like everyone loves that. Everybody, we all love the idea of people talking and people say, man, he did it. Wow. God, the guy did it. But they don't always love the boring Tuesday, the early lift, the mobility work, right? The school shit that's gotta be done. The extra work, the recovery, the phone discipline, the uncomfortable conversations, the boring reps. The daily tracking, the humility of seeing the gap between who you say you are and how you actually live. Because that gap is, that's what the work is. That's where we start with the blueprint. Because a goal that does not change your day is not a goal. It's a wish. So we're talking about one of the biggest traps young athletes fall into. We think success lives somewhere far away. One day I'll be ready. After the season, you know, when I'm in when I'm a junior in high school, one day I'll be confident. One day I'll have the right coach, you know, to be seen at the right time, et cetera, et cetera. It's a tough way to live because you keep putting meaning into the future, and quietly you're insulting the present. You start acting like today is just something to survive. That's a tough way to live. Because when you keep putting meaning into the future, you quietly insult the present. You start acting like today is just something to survive, but but on like today is where your future is being built right now. It's not some dramatic, cool movie scene. Boring, it's honest. And it's right here, honestly, right here. One of my favorite psychologists, guys, great quote. Carl Yong. Modern man doesn't see God because he refuses to look low enough. Think about that. Modern man doesn't see God because he refuses to look low enough. What he meant by this is that we're we're out there chasing some grand vision. We're looking to the horizon for meaning, for glory, for some divine breakthrough. But we refuse to look down at our own feet. At a mess, a mess right in front of us. Some laundry that needs to be done. But the dirty, the ordinary, the immediate responsibilities that feel too small to matter. The foundation, the boring routes, the dirty bag, the text you didn't reply to, the the recovery you skipped, the undisciplined mind. You will not find real success or real growth by staring upward into fantasy. You find it by looking low enough. Low enough to confront what is actually there. The present is not beneath you. That's the material. Most success is within 10 feet of you. Alright, just honestly look around. What's near you right now that needs your attention? Is it your room, your desk, the shoes you're wearing? Are they dirty? Is it your baseball bag, your glove, your spikes, schoolwork, your damn body, your breathing, your relationships with your parents or your friends, or fuck your dog? The attitude towards a coach, your response to a shitty game last night. That's not small stuff. That is the arena. That is everything. People want massive success while ignoring the immediate disorder around them. They want trust from coaches, but they can't show up on time. They want confidence, but they keep breaking promises to themselves.

unknown 13:47

Right?

SPEAKER_01 13:47

They want performance, but you treat sleep like a suggestion. Guys want to be leaders, but they walk past a teammate who needs help because they're too busy staring at their own fucking feeling. Next useful thing is usually the closest. Clean your damn bag, clean your damn room, text your coach, make the phone call. Do your arm care. Finish you assumption. Help out a teammate. Apologize for something you know you got to apologize for. Eat something decent. Drink water. Drink the water. Put the goddamn phone down. Stretch. Read. Sleep. Breathe. Write the goal. It's not glamour shit. Good. Because glamour is usually where discipline goes. It's not glamorous shit. The present is not an obstacle to the future. The present is the material. You do not get to skip it if you want to reach your goals. See here, and here's where people get confused. The present is the material. I talk about the presence all the time. So when I'm saying be present, be where your feet are, etc., all the good stuff. I don't mean float around like some monk pretending, you know, ambition and and and aggression is toxic or any of that shit. That's that's not the that's not the point. Presence doesn't mean you stop caring about the future. Presence means you stop abandoning the current moment because you're addicted to the fantasy of the future. Big difference. You should have massive goals. You shouldn't want things. You should pursue things. You got it, you should. You should be out there competing, competing your ass off, trying to win. You should try to become fucking dangerous in the best sense, right? Capable, articulate, disciplined, controlled, useful. But you cannot get so obsessed with one day that you miss the only place where action exists. Today, right now, this moment, this rep, this conversation, this breath, right? This about this pitch, this choice, this bullpen, this anything. Fill in the blank. Baseball teaches us better than almost anything. Yeah, you strike out now. What? Most players do one of two things. They either drag the last of that into the next inning, or they sprint mentally into the future and start panicking about the next one, trying to figure out what they need to do. Both are forms of leaving the present. Alright, you struck out, cool, fine, whatever. Well strike out. Now what? Can you breathe? Can you reset? Can you sit beside a teammate and help him with the picture? Let him know what you saw? Can you pick up tendencies? Can you cheer for someone else? Can you sit upright? Can you get your body out of the sulking position like anybody fucking cares? You just struck out? Can you stop making your failure the emotional center of the dugout? That matters so much because frustration is not the problem. Frustration's information. The problem is when frustration becomes identity. I struck out because I suck. I made an error because coach does not trust me. I didn't start because I'm being screwed. Maybe, maybe not. But under load, perception gets lazy. It grabs the most emotional story and calls the truth. And the heart press will get a lot of parents, people, and they're gonna, they're gonna agree with you. But that's why we train presence. Not because feelings are bad, because feelings are not always accurate, right? They're signals. All of this requires I don't know, call it lost art, but I think kind of is, it's not even an art. It's thinking, like really thinking. Not scrolling, not reacting, not not repeating the same tired thoughts yesterday, but like actually thinking. Most athletes, shit, most people knew it, they don't actually think. They feel and then call it thinking. They feel and react and call that thinking. They see a teammate get praised and suddenly their their entire future is under threat. They look at their phone for three hours and convince themselves it was just downtime. Okay, this is this is where EQ, the EQ OS comes in. This is where capacity matters. Your thinking is not some neutral background process. It's the operating system running your decisions every damn day. Under load, when stress is high, when recovery is low, perception distorts. You do not see reality, you see threat. You see evidence that confirms the worst story you already believe about yourself. That's why the EQ OS exists. The book, emotional intelligence operating system. It's not a bunch of fluffy mindset talk. It's training the capacity to think clearly when it matters, to ask better questions. When the nervous system is screaming, what am I actually carrying right now? Is this 40 true or is it just loud? What is the next honest action instead of the easiest one? You build that capacity the same way you build anything else, deliberately, daily, by examining what you do every single day and refusing to lie about why you're doing it. And Blueprint forces this examination. Your daily choices aren't small. They're votes. They're votes for the dude you're becoming. Every unchecked scroll, every skit recovery session. Every time you negotiate with your standards is a damn decision. And those decisions compound. So we think. We think cleaner. We think like our future depends on it. We think like we are somebody that really matters and that we really have to think long and hard about. Because our you gotta think like your future depends on it. Because it does. Every time you every time you think, every time you make a choice, it's paving it's paving the path. I don't want to get too deep with this, but we are working on thinking. I just had a conversation with a good friend. Son's in my program. So we we're talking about we're talking about thinking. It's it's it's a hard one. Is it's a hard you have to train it. You have to enforce it, you have to challenge it. I mean, I have to. That's my job with with the athletes and the people I work with is thinking. So I touched on helping teammates you know, post-strikeout, etc. This is this is something that I find very useful. And what I'm doing with this podcast is I'm just getting a lot of information on some stuff we're working on, some new theories. Um basically just sit and talk and get my uh get my voice back because the podcast's coming back. So we talk about helping teammates, okay, especially after a strikeout. You know, you realize you're frustrated. That's the big thing, is the awareness piece, right? I had a player ask me recently, do you have any good suggestions as to how to how to let out frustration when you're upset and not affect the team? And you know, like guys, you know, can I scream into my glove or can I go over here and do this? And my answer was no, I don't have a good suggestion because we don't know how it affects other people. Okay, I want to be frustrated, fine. Want to scream, fine. It might affect some. It might hijack the dugout. People might wonder what you're doing. It might create, you know, destruction. So the first thing we talk about is awareness, right? Awareness of the fact that you want to scream as loud as you can. Okay, awareness. Okay. Oh fuck, guys. I'm so frustrated. Awareness. We have a 10-second rule. Win the next 10 seconds. How am I going to win the next 10 seconds? This can be after any play. Bad play, good play, average play. Next 10 seconds, reset, next pitch. One of the most practical ways is to like to regulate is also one of the least sexy out there. It's to help someone else. That's it. Okay, when you're trapped inside your own head, everything becomes enormous. You're bat, your playing time, your shitty stats, your coach's tone, right? What your parents said before the game, your dad looking at you from left field, and you can feel the stare, right? Your social media future, your identity, your fear, your insecurities. It becomes you, you, you, you, you, you. All you. And yes, development requires self-awareness. We spoke about this. But self-obsession is not self-awareness. Self-awareness is accuracy. Self-obsession is noise. So the fastest ways to get out of your own emotional garbage is to serve. And with awareness, 10 seconds, knowing what you need to do when you're frustrated, boa. Go help a teammate. Go cheer for him. Bring up the energy. Go ask a younger dude how he's doing. Go pick up balls after BP. Go cheer for the next guy. Go talk to them about your bat. Hey, he threw this, he threw this, he threw this. Get fired up for other people. Go encourage them. Basically, go be useful because sitting fucking sulking is not useful. And it's not fake positivity. It's regulation through purpose. The aim of life cannot only be about happiness, right? Just to be happy all the time. Happiness is unstable. The aim has to be to the aim has to have purpose, usefulness, value, service, responsibility, meaning. You know, you know, as I'm saying this, you feel better when you help someone. And you feel better when you help because something in you knows that you were not built to orbit around yourself all day like a sad little strikeout planet. You're built to contribute. You're built to carry weight. You're built to become somebody other people can count on. That's it right there. It doesn't mean you ignore your goals. It doesn't mean you focus so much on other people that it derails your shit. It means your goals become connected to something bigger than your own emotional fucking weather. I guess that's what maturity looks like. You still want to win, you still want to perform, but you stop making every moment a referendum on your worth. You start asking better questions. What does the team need right now? What does this moment require? Who can I help? Go back to what is within 10 feet of me? What can I control right now? Sure as fuck can't control your next bat. That's how you get grounded. Not by pretending. Not by pretending you're not frustrating, by being useful, by doing something useful when you're frustrated. That's the game right there. When we talk about the goal blueprint, when we talk about these, these massive aspirations kids have, athletes have, I don't want lazy answers. And this is something it takes a long time. It takes quite a while to actually establish this blueprint. And you know, there's a lot of people that look at it and go, gosh, it's 36 pages, man. Like, this is a lot. Yeah, yeah, it is a lot. Because your goals require everything is a lot. I mean, there's one thing about my programs that they're they're a hard ass sell. Because it looks like a lot. And they say, because it is a lot. Requires work. Like it requires a lot of work. And I don't tiptoe around that, I don't dance around that. So, you know, we we don't, when we when we're working on the blueprint, I don't want answers. Like, I want to get better at hitting.

unknown 26:24

Right?

SPEAKER_01 26:25

Like, no, no, better how? Against what pitch? In what count, with what swing decision, with with are you hunting? Like, what pitch are you hunting? What approach? How are we measuring it?

unknown 26:35

Right?

SPEAKER_01 26:35

What when are you training that? How often are we reviewing that? I don't want to, uh I I don't want, I want to get stronger. Stronger where? Right? Lower half, grip, rotational power, pull, strength, like mobility, mentally, emotionally, durability-wise. Okay, and that other common one is I want to be more confident. Cool, awesome, great. We all do. But confidence isn't magic dust. Confidence comes from evidence. I talk about this all the time. You need proof. What evidence are you building? What evidence can you see? Where's the proof? Where are the reps? What are the routines? Are you keeping promises to yourself? Is there preparation? Are you preparing yourself? The last thing you want to do before you go to bed, and you're just burnt, but you're preparing for the next day. There is some evidence in there. There is some proof of it. Confidence requires proof. I'll say it over and over. Behavioral evidence. The blueprint forces detail. Long-term goals are the direction. Short-term goals are the next measurable target. Weekly goals are the checkpoints. Daily goals are the bricks. And your day has to match the thing you claim you want. And this is where honesty enters because a lot of athletes don't need more motivation. They need a goddamn mirror. They need to see that their stated goals and daily behavior are not even in the same fucking neighborhood. They say the next level. Their screen time says a recreational hobbyist is probably gonna, you know, maybe play men's league one day. They say confidence, they say leadership, their body language says victim, their preparation says hope. I hope. Their sleep says chaos. They say, I fuck, man, I want it. Their calendar says no. I don't you don't. You really don't. I can't see it. And then this is not an insult. This is, I don't even call this feedback. This is this is the point. Right? The numbers reveal the point. The evidence reveals the point. The proof is everything every day. Go back, right? It's at your feet. The proof is at your feet. It's everything around you, dial. So we come back. EQOS, emotional intelligence operating system. Yeah, I I know I sound like a fucking lunatic sometimes talking about all this stuff, but it's once you once you buy in, once you think about it, once you once you really, really understand what we're doing here. This this the EQOS, the transfer EQ, all this stuff, it starts to make sense. It starts to really make sense. Because I think I think mindset, you know, we talk about mindset, you know, yes, mindset you. It's the name of name of my company. Mindset coach, mindset this, mindset that. I think mindset, honestly, is one of the most overused words in sport. Everybody talks about mindset. Very few can explain what it actually is. I listen to podcasts, I talk about I listen to all kinds of things. I see coaches and people talking about, you know, mental strength and mindset and mental performance. And there's no definition, it's just words. Mindset's not enough here. You need an operating system. That is, in my opinion, you can create an operating system for yourself. That is, I mean, that is your mindset. That's just it. It's built around a simple idea. People do not fail only because they lack desire. They fail because the system they have cannot carry what life is demanding. That's massive. This moves us away from moralizing everything. It's not always laziness. It's not always weakness. It's not always bad character. Sometimes the system's just fucking overloaded. And that's what a lot of kids are dealing with right now. That's what the EQOS talks about. That's what transfer EQ talks about. Overload. Sometimes the load exceeds capacity. We have a simple, simple equation in EQOS. Outcome equals capacity times awareness. Very simple. 100 out of 100 awareness. Zero capacity. Zero times 100 equals zero. That's your oak. A lot of times the athlete has tons of awareness. A lot of athletes do, a lot of smart athletes out there, but no tolerant. Most of the time they know exactly what they should be doing, but they can't hold the discomfort long enough to choose it. You start to understand it. The language does matter. Awareness and capacity, load and storage, regulation, behavior, perception before decision, decision before execution, all these things. Because under pressure, perception changes. You do not see the world clearly. You see the world through threat. A coach's correction becomes an attack on you. A bad game becomes a full-on identity crisis. A teammate's success becomes evidence that you suck. A slump becomes doom. Outcome, outcome, outcome, outcome. Everything's outcome-based. There's no accuracy to any of this. It's all distortion. Distortion under pressure is where careers start leaking, is where goals start falling off. So the EQOS asks better questions. What am I carrying? What is my system reacting to? What story am I telling? What do I actually know about this? What can I control? What is the next honest action? I spoke about unbecoming at the beginning of this. Okay, I had some awareness there. I was caring too much. My system was reacting to things I couldn't control. I was telling myself, I started telling myself stories. I'm right, I know this stuff. Yeah, listen to me. No, no. Just massive amounts, like it was just load, load, load. I was running out of capacity at that time, so I'd unbecoming art to stop it. But that required awareness. So that's it, you know? It's not feel better, it's not see better, it's not hold more, it's choose cleaner. It's choice. If you get my emails, you can go look at them. They're as, you know, my mom and wife say that they're they're big reads, you know. They always treat me because I I I write a lot and I always come back to this. Yeah, it's a lot because it is a lot, because it requires a lot, and when I write it is a lot, because there's a lot to be said. But I'm currently finishing up a blog series on the big five, big five um personality trait. The point of all of this is awareness, not to change traits. It's to be aware, it's it's to understand who you are and have some awareness around it. Awareness as to why you react the way you react doesn't mean you're stuck that way. Doesn't mean you can change it. It means you can have awareness. Okay, it means you can you can pause, you can win the next 10 seconds. Like the point of the big five series, you know, it's we're not trying to turn athletes into walking psychology labels. Like that would be useless. We don't want to turn anybody into that. It just the big five series gives us a better starting point. And I think it's very important to understand who you are, right? We focus on openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neurotic. Not as excuses, as tendencies, as patterns, as ways to understand how athletes, how you, how everybody, parents, coaches, experience the world. Because a lot of this is environmental, a lot of this is is is pre-conditioned. We're certain ways because of our conditioning. And when we can understand that, and we can we can be aware of that. Again, we're not trying to change it, we're trying to be aware of some examples. Like if you know you are low in agreeableness, you can stop pretending you're easy to coach and start building the skill of receiving feedback without turning every correction into some dramatic fucking movie scene. If you know you're high in eroticism, you can stop acting like every emotional spike is truth and start training regulation. The trait, our traits are not a sentence. The trait is data. This is where shadow work comes in. If we're properly doing the work, the trait you judge hardest in someone else is often the one you've not properly confronted in yourself. Right? Your reaction is data. The shadow is not something you remove, it's something you train. And that's just raw awareness. It's not, it's not fucking pretty. It's not journal your awareness and make it cute. Like this is this is real awareness, the kind that says, why does this teammate bother me so much? Why do I hate that coach's tone? Why do I resent this player's success? Why do I need everyone to notice how hard I'm working? Why do I call it leadership when really I'm just managing my image? Those are real questions. And those are those questions require real thought. Sometimes you gotta go deep on that, but it's worth it, you know? And again, people are like, Curtis, God, it's so deep. Like, yeah, they I do get there sometimes because I know it's what's required to move forward. Why do I call it leadership when really I'm just managing my image? This is this is a very true one. This is big. There's a type of athlete I like to call the eye wash leader, right? The player who does they do visible leadership. So failure has has you know a defendable reason. He's the first step of the dugout when people watch, and he says all the right things, but they they perform commitment. Okay, that's not leadership. Leadership is responsibility, leadership is what you can carry when nobody claps. Leadership is 10 feet in front of you. Leadership starts with yourself. So, what are we training at mindset you? That. It's not not just we're not training confidence, it's not just goals, it's not just mindset, training at behavior. Behavior under load. That's the game. Can you stay consistent when you are tired? Ask yourself that right now, even if you're a parent lesson. Can you stay honest when the numbers are ugly? Can you stay present when the future scares you? Can you recover properly when nobody forces you to do it? Can you reduce screen time? Not out of compliance, right? Especially when your brain wants to escape. Can you do the boring shit without needing it to become content? Can you build days that actually match your goals? Can you become a person who can be trusted? That word matters. Trusted. Coaches recruit trust. They notice tools, they like VLO. They like to get bat. But eventually they ask, can I trust this guy? Can I trust him to show up? Does his talent transfer? Can I trust him to handle failure? Can I trust him to live away from home? Can I trust him to make our team better? This is where a lot of players lose opportunities, not because they can't play, because they can't be trusted enough to survive the environment. Again, this is why we track the boring stuff. Because boring stuff is not boring. It's predictive. Sleep predicts recovery. Recovery predicts mood. Mood affects decision making. Decision making affects preparation. Preparation affects confidence. Confidence affects performance. Performance affects identity. Identity affects behavior. Behavior affects opportunity. And there we go. We've laid it out. It's all connected. It's not just baseball. Baseball will reveal the system. And if the system is unstable, baseball will eventually find the crack. It always does, man. It's like water. It's always going to find. And in that process, in that process of in that connection process, there's a little trap. This is, we gotta catch guys here. We have to be aware of it. Athletes get themselves into trouble by looking too far ahead. And then using the distance as an excuse to do nothing. We've talked about this, right? The future feels far away. So today starts feeling meaningless. We went over this, but I want to go over it again because it's very important. This is how true drift starts. Drift rarely feels traumatic at first. I'll do it tomorrow. I'm tired. Doesn't matter today. I already worked hard this week. I deserve a break. I'll start it on a weekend. I just need to relax and wind down. You know, mom and dad are like, yeah, you're right. Man, you work hard. You need to chill out. Man, just check your phone. Get serious in a bit here. I just want to see some stuff. Let's have future success gets stolen right there. A couple decisions. It's never one giant collapse. It gets stolen in tiny trades. I'll say this again. The future gets stolen in tiny trades. It's a little attention here, a little sleep there, a little honesty here, a little discipline there. Then, man, one day you look up and realize you are behind kids who are not more talented. They just didn't negotiate. They didn't negotiate with shit themselves. They didn't debate every simple thing. We say simple. Simple's not easy, right? Simple, simple. They did the warm, they did the lift. They had the clean bag. They texted the coach. They stretched, they slept, they studied, they recovered. They asked for feedback. They applied it. They got back to work. They were not perfect, but they were pointed. They were aimed. That's what we're building here. Aim. Precise aim. Pointed athletes, clear direction, clear standards, clear routines, clear recovery, clear awareness, clear response to failure. And that's what the blueprint does. It removes some of the negotiation. It's crystal clear. Because without a plan, every day can become a debate. And you're debating with how you feel. And the tired you is a terrible, terrible lawyer. The tired you is going to argue for comfort all day. The bored you will argue for distraction. The embarrassed you will argue for avoidance. Angry you will argue for blame. The anxious version of you will argue for control. That's why you build the blueprint. That's why you build it when you're clear. That's why you do it with me, with people. You make the damn thing transparent. You show people, you show your parents. Again, not out of compliance. But it's like, hey, man, this is what I'm doing. So when you're not clear, because trust me, there's gonna be times where you're not. The structure will carry you. Your calendar will carry you. So let's talk about let's talk about frustration. I'm gonna be doing a zoom on frustration tomorrow morning. Yeah, group Zoom, public zoom. If you want to watch the Zoom, well, I don't know if this will be live yet. So anyway, doing a uh a zoom on frustration. I will record it. So if you want to hear it or see it, shoot me a message and I can send it to you. I'm happy to. You know, we have a bat at bat. This is usually offensive. Pitcher is usually, you know, on the bump. I'm not a pitcher, so I use more I use more hitting analogies, right? I'm just not set the scene. You have a bad at bat. You're mad. Good. Because you should care. I'd rather guys that throw helmets than, you know, giggle with their buddies after a strikeout. I don't want I I don't want athletes who don't care. But caring without regulation just becomes Bad theater. Helmet slams, poting, screaming into their gloves, walking away from teammates, sitting, sulking, refusing eye contact, dragging your failure into the dagger like everyone else now has to fucking deal with you and help you carry your emotional furniture. No, that's not competitive. That's immature. Real competitors reset faster. Not because they're less intense, because they're better trained. They practice. They work. The question after failure is not, am I frustrated? That's fucking obvious. Of course you're frustrated. The question is, what does frustration do to my behavior right now? Does it narrow me? Does it make me selfish? Does it make me quiet in a bad way? Does it make me loud? In in some fake way? Does it does it do I blame? Do I disappear? Does it make me stop helping others? A bad at bad is not just a hitting it. I'm gonna get deep here. It's an operating system test. Can you breathe through the spike? Can you look around? Can you notice where you are? Can you get out of your own damn head? Can you help the guy beside you? Can you watch the picture? Can you prepare for what you have to do next? Can you stay connected to the team? Because if your failure makes you useless for the next 15 minutes, we got a fucking problem. All right. Big problem. And this is why teams collapse. But we can train this. This is what we do. We train this. We train it. We do breathing. It's not breathing's not everything. God, breathing is important sometimes. And we do, we train it. Not right away. We've got to learn how to do these things. You gotta look at something outside yourself as well. Ask yourself, what's the next useful thing I can do? We talked about this before. I love being repetitive. You serve, you reset, you return. And it's not soft. It's just advanced, boy. Emotional regulation is not weakness. It's a weaponized maturity. That's the at that is the kind of athlete that can survive. And parents, okay. This matters for you too. Okay, we don't just watch the stat line. Fucking game changer. Like, it's just cool, great. We can see the stat line. Watch the patterns. How does your kid respond to failure? How does he talk after a bad game? How does he treat people when he's not getting what he wants? How's he handling correction? How does he handle boredom? Right? Manage his phone, sleep, prepare when no one's forcing him. How does he carry frustration? You know, I know this is hard. This is difficult. I have three kids. Because at the end of these, at the end of the day, these things travel. All these things travel. You can hide poor patterns for a while, right? When the talent gap's big enough. If you're some stud out there hitting bombs against weaker players, but as the level rises, the gap shrinks. Everybody can play. Everybody's got the tools. Everybody has, you know, the videos, the data, everybody has access to help and hidden coaches, etc. So what separates? Okay, stability, coachability, attention, recovery, emotional control, daily habits, ability to take feedback, ability to live independently, ability to handle not being special for five minutes. That's a big one. Some players compete. Some players crumble. Some players blame. Some disappear into partying, gaming, scrolling, gambling, excuses, private resentment. Not because they can't play, but because they didn't build a system before the environment changed. No, let's talk about like let's talk about something that we needs a real system. A real system. Goddamn phones, man. Talking about phones, but nobody seemed to be doing anything about them. Your phone is competing with your future. It's not because they're evil, because attention is finite. You only get so much of it. Every hour you hand is scrolling is an hour you're not going somewhere else. Training, recovery, learning, mobility. We say all these things over and over. Reading, schoolwork, sleep, helping, thinking, being bored enough to hear your own thoughts. Try that one. Well, that's a big one. A lot of athletes can't tolerate boredom anymore. They can't sit, they can't wait. They can't be alone with themselves. They can't do things on their own. Always need somebody there to do shit with. And the second there's space, they fill it with something. Notifications, YouTube, messages, fucking TikTok and all the stuff. And this absolutely destroys attention. Attention is a performance skill. If you cannot hold attention off the field, do not act shocked when your attention leaks on the baseball field. Baseball's slow. Baseball gives you space. Baseball gives you time to think. And if you don't know how to fucking do that, you're gonna be in trouble, right? It gives you time to doubt yourself. Time to spiral, time to imagine so much failure before it happens. I mean, shit, so many kids have already struck out their second at bat, half an hour before it even happened. So your attention system matters. Mechanically, it's not about being a good kid, it's about protecting the thing you need in order to perform. Attention. The price of big goals is your attention. Not occasionally, daily, all the time. I want to add in a little piece about enjoyment. I enjoy this. I enjoy what I do. I enjoy helping a lot of service involved here. Enjoy um the field I'm in. Because I, you know, and this is something I talk to the players, I talk to all the athletes, talk to everybody I work with about, because we don't, we don't, we're not turning this into some, you know, miserable grind culture cult, right? There's there's more to life than chasing the next level. There's more to baseball than the next opportunity. If you if you're building your whole life around one day I will enjoy this, you're gonna miss the whole fucking thing. Right? You have to enjoy parts of today. Not because it was perfect, because today is your life.

unknown 51:04

Right?

SPEAKER_01 51:04

The car ride, the field, what's on the radio, we even listen to the radio, the the teammates, jokes, dirt, right, shitty uniforms, the the sun, the bad hops, all everybody else's weird parents. You know, the the coach who says the same stupid ass things hundreds of times. We don't want to postpone our life until achievement gives you permission to feel alive. Achievement's not gonna do that. So once you get there, it's gonna be the next thing, it's gonna be the next thing, it's gonna be the next thing. It just moves the line, right? You make the team, then you want to start, then you wanna hit higher in the order, and you know, then you get to hit higher, then you want to go to the next level. That line will always move. And I'm not saying, again, we're not stopping the pursuit. What we have to do is learn how to be present while pursuing. That's the balance. Ambition without presence becomes anxiety. Presence without ambition becomes drift. We need both. We gotta aim high. We gotta be local, we gotta be where our feet are, we gotta look around again, 10 feet. Sure, we gotta build the future. But do today very well. Compete your ass off. Enjoy what's right in front of you. Do the simple shit really well. That's something I talked to. So if you're, you know, if you're not in mindset you, you wanna, you've you've made it this far. I mean, I think we're almost an hour in. You want to end a little assignment? Here it is. Write out the blueprint. What is it? What does it look like? Do it properly. Don't rush it. Don't write answers that just sound good. Okay, right. What is true? Where are you going? What do you want? What has to change? What are your current habits? What are your biggest leaks? What are your controllables? What are your daily standards? Do you have daily standards? What does your week need to look like? What does your environment look like around you? Do you need to clean some shit up? What do you need to stop doing? What do you need to start doing? Who do you need to become easier to coach for? Who do you need to help? Where are you avoiding responsibility right now? Think about it. Like really think about it. But you know, you think about this. You got to be prepared to give the answer. I think you already know the answer. And that's the work. We map the days. We connect the goals to actions. We build daily awareness. We build attention. We build recovery. We build emotional regulation. We don't hope it happens. These are routines, right? We routinize them. We build reflection. We think. We learn how to think. We build the ability to tell the truth before life has to tell it for you. Because that's usually how it works. Either it's like out with it early, the truth early, or reality is going to tell it louder later. We're dialed into mindset you here. If you're interested, holler, text, email, DM, whatever, however, you want to get in touch with me. All right, we're building it with structure. We're building it with awareness, behavior, with goals that actually end up on the calendar. So I'm happy to be back. Mindset you playbook. First episode I've done in a few months. But we're gonna rock and roll. We got some good guests lined up. Um if you have any suggestions or anything you'd like me to talk about, please let me know. Let's get to work. Get in touch if you uh if you need help or if you're interested in any programs.