The Final Cut
The Final Cut is a bold and insightful podcast exploring the latest in film and television. Hosted by Professor John Cook and filmmaker Charlotte Bjuren, each episode dives into new releases, classic gems, and the stories shaping screen culture today.
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The Final Cut
Brian Hite When Your Life Depends On Mental Clarity
The line between triumph and disaster often comes down to one thing: mental focus. In this eye-opening conversation, veteran Hollywood stunt performer and performance psychologist Brian Hite takes us behind the scenes of blockbuster films to reveal the psychological dimensions of high-risk work.
Few people occupy the unique intersection of practical danger and academic study like Hite.With over 100 film and television credits including Superman, Twilight, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, combined with a PhD in organizational psychology, he offers insights that challenge conventional wisdom about performance under pressure.
"Pressure comes from a focus on consequences," Hite explains, sharing how a seemingly simple rooftop stunt became terrifying due to a 50-foot drop on one side. This perfectly illustrates his revolutionary approach: rather than learning to cope with pressure, eliminate it entirely by redirecting attention to the present moment. His four-phased performance method provides a practical framework for anyone facing high-stakes situations.
The conversation weaves through fascinating behind-the-scenes stories – from learning stunt work at a Batman theme park show to establishing mentorship networks in Hollywood and working with military personnel on resilience training. Haidt's experiences demonstrate how the mental game applies equally to dangerous physical feats and everyday challenges.
Most profoundly, Hite offers liberating wisdom about life's journeys: "There is no path. Every step that we take, the path manifests underneath us." This perspective frees us from the anxiety of missing predetermined routes to success and reminds us that our unique experiences shape who we become.
Ready to transform how you handle pressure in your own life? Connect with Brian at brian@brianheidt.com or visit brianheightglobal.com to discover how performance psychology can help you thrive when stakes are highest.
Hot lights fade, the curtains rise.
Speaker 2:New stories waiting behind our eyes. Charlotte and John with the final say, breaking down the screens in their own way. This is the Final Cut.
Speaker 1:Where the real review? Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Final Cut Podcast, and this week's episode is going to be action-packed Literally action-packed, because we're talking to a very distinguished stunt performer, what used to be known in the business as a stuntman, but I guess in these days as a stunt performer or even stunt actor, and that is Brian Haidt. Now, brian is not only a professional stunt performer, he's also a PhD and an academic. So, uniquely, he combines both the world of academia and stunt performance. And he got his start, I think, since the mid-1990s, working in over 100 film and TV programmes, many of them that you will know of, stretching back to the 90s and 2000s, with Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, 24, for which he was nominated as part of the stunt ensemble for a Screen Actors Guild Award and, I believe, won an award. And he has also, more recently, been working on films such as the Twilight Saga, haunted Mansion and bang, up to date on the new Superman movie, which has just been released. So I'll be interested to get the lowdown from him on that which has just been released. So I'll be interested to get the lowdown from him on that. So, in addition to these many, many credits that he's got working in Hollywood as a stunt performer.
Speaker 1:Brian, as I say, also moved into academia, and he holds a PhD in organizational psychology as well as a master's in sports psychology, and so, very interestingly, his life as a stunt performer has segued into looking at the ways in which performance across all various fields can be enhanced through aspects such as resilience, motivation and mental toughness In other words, all the things you really need as a stunt performer to be able to function in a high stakes, high pressure environment. Not only that, brian's also spent over a decade of experience teaching US Army soldiers and other military personnel mental skills for resilience and performance enhancement, so very much taking the world of fantasy, of the movies and and bringing it bang into into our reality. As well as that, brian's also a senior dissertation chair at Grand Canyon University in Arizona and also is the founder of Brian Haight Global, which helps to sort of provide resilience and performance management training for all sorts of different clients. And not only that, he co-hosts a podcast called Poking Holes in Blinders. So a very, very busy man, and so we're delighted that Brian can join us today.
Speaker 1:So welcome Brian, to the Final Cut Podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:No problem at all. So, Brian, can we take you right back to the very beginning? How did you get into this world of stunt performing?
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting. I got into stunts when I was in college and I had a friend who was the company manager of the Batman stunt show at Six Flags, a theme park in New Jersey where I was going to college, and he got his tickets to see the show and I went in and from I don't even know how to describe it from the first minute. I mean when the show first started, this big explosion went off and these motorcycles jumped out of this place and I just I was captivated, I was mesmerized and at the time I was, I was about halfway through college. I'd gone for two years, I had another two years to go, but I had no idea what I wanted to be. When I got out of college, I had no idea what job I wanted to pursue. I'd spent a lot of time trying to figure that out and, you know, being halfway through and having no clue, there was a little bit of anxiety building up with regard to, all right, well, what's next? And as soon as I saw that show, I knew what was next and I went backstage and I talked to the performers. I said, how do you get this job? And they described what I needed to do.
Speaker 2:I did it and the next summer I was performing in that show and it was the best summer of my life. I learned so much. I got really good on a motorcycle, I learned high falls, I learned fights, I learned some driving stuff. I learned how to perform in front of a lot of people a lot of times, because we were doing five shows a day in front of 2,000, 3,000 people and it was a live show.
Speaker 2:Things go wrong sometimes, so I was able to learn the skills of. It doesn't always go perfectly, and when it doesn't, what do you do when there are 3,000 pairs of eyes on you? It was a really, really good experience on a lot of levels. I met a lot of great people doing that show and and then it ended and I went back to college and was it was a huge letdown and and because I'd realized that stunts was what I wanted to do I just I couldn't get motivated for college and I somehow or another made it through my, the beginning semester of my senior year, but the second semester I was failing everything, so I just dropped all the classes, stuck around for long enough to do the show again one more summer and then moved to la to to begin doing film and tv stunts.
Speaker 1:So how did you get that break? I mean, there's one thing moving to la, but there's quite another to actually get jobs within the industry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, luckily for me, la also has a Six Flags and it also had a Batman stunt show and it was the same one that I was doing in New Jersey. So I was in a unique position not unique but certainly rare position where I could just transfer from New Jersey to LA and I got hired in the LA show and in there that's where I met my cohort and it really is that's like it. It's like a class in college. You know, it is a cohort. We've come up in the business together.
Speaker 2:The people you mentioned, superman the only reason I was on that show was because one of the stunt coordinators I met him at the Batman show. He was Batman, I was Robin. Stranger Things is another TV show I've worked on that stunt coordinator, second director Again, we met at the Batman show. We were roommates for two and a half years I worked on. There was a Star Wars show too that came out. I forget what the name of that was Skeleton Crew, the stunt coordinator, assistant stunt coordinator on there Again, really good friend of mine and co-host now on on poking holes and blinders, colin fallen wider he, we met at the batman show. So it's it's all of these people haunted mansion same thing. Tom williams, colin, all those it's just people that that I met in that show and we, just we.
Speaker 3:We came into the business together and and we've continued to move up the ladder together, to varying degrees oh, if you want to be a filmmaker, it's quite clear that you go to film school and and that there is a quite clear career path, Whereas I feel, with stunt thing, that that isn't the same with stunt school or that you know getting into the yes, I understand your question now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and it's interesting you put it like that too. Yes, I understand your question now. Yeah, yeah, and it's interesting you put it like that too, because I have a talk called Always on the Path and it addresses the concept that you talk about right there, which is there's a clear path to becoming a filmmaker. You can go to this school they to talk to the professional filmmakers out in the world. I would argue probably a very small percentage of them took that path. They came out of high school, they went to university, they went to a film school, they graduated, they got into film.
Speaker 2:Most people get into it a different way, just like I did. With stunts. There is no.
Speaker 2:I get asked all the time how did I get to be a stuntman? I still don't know how to answer the question. I can tell you how I did it and that's what I just did. But I mean there are people who were professional athletes, there are people who were in the Olympics, there are people who were in the military or who were in the police. I mean just, people come from a variety of backgrounds and, for whatever reason, they gravitate towards stunts and they're lucky enough. Luck plays a huge role in it, because stunts isn't a popular thing. It's not something you can just, you know, look online like, okay, you know, give me the phone number of a stuntman who can tell me all about how to be a stunt person. That doesn't exist, so you have to be lucky enough to run across somebody in your life who can provide that information who can? It's very much a mentorship business. You have to link up with somebody in it who already knows, who's already established and who can guide you and introduce you to different people it's interesting.
Speaker 1:Do you feel? Um? Clearly, there is a community of stunt performers, but do you feel that that both the public but, more particularly, the film industry, doesn't give the stunt profession as much recognition and acknowledgement as perhaps it should do, for example, in terms of incorporating stunts into screenplays or when directors are visualizing movies?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, it sounds like there are two different questions in there. One is to what degree does the public recognize or even know about stunts? And I would say that that's probably pretty small. They don't, and it's starting to change now. The movie the Fall Guy it just they don't and it's starting to change now. The movie the Fall Guy David Leitch was the director on that.
Speaker 2:I've worked with David before, we've known each other, for you mentioned eyes to the fact that stunt people do exist. We are a big part of the film industry and if you're going to recognize people within the film industry with awards, you might want to consider doing that with stunt people too, and that's starting to happen. The Oscars just announced a new category. The Emmys had nothing for a while and then they just had stunt coordinator, and then they now they've got. Uh, I think there are actually individual stunts that I I saw in the I'm part of the tv academy and they sent me something about that and I didn't realize it, because I did a stunt on a tv show that I totally would have submitted for that if I hadn't known that they've changed their rules and now individual stunts were getting awarded. So I don't know the next time, I guess. But yeah, so that's the reward thing.
Speaker 2:Now, whether or not that's important, to what degree stunt people care, that's a different discussion. Because I'll tell you, one of the things that I really enjoy about stunts is flying under the radar. I enjoy not being the center of attention all the time. When you're on set and you're about to do a thing, everybody's looking at you and it's a big deal and you are the center of attention all the time. You know, when you're on set and you're about to do a thing, everybody's looking at you and it's a big deal and you are the center of attention or can be at least among some of the people who are being attended to. But but after that you just sort of are able to blend into the background and I like that. I don't need any cameras in my face, I don't need to do any interviews with anybody, I don't need the recognition. I really enjoy just showing up at work doing the thing I love doing and going home with none of the hassles that some of the actors have to deal with down the line. So that's the rewards the actors have to deal with down the line. So that's the rewards.
Speaker 2:The other piece that you brought up was the knowledge of the people within the business of stunts, particularly the newer people getting into the film industry the directors, the producers, the actors, the writers, all of these people and I would say that that also isn't what it ought to be. Wherever the, it depends, well, it depends on where they're being trained. If they are people who are coming up kind of like stunt people do where it's a mentor thing, where they start as PAs, a production assistant, and then they move up into the AD world, the assistant directing world, and then from there they, you know, there's a path that you can do working from the bottom up, and many people do that. If you happen to find yourself on some shows that have stunts, then you're going to be more knowledgeable about what that looks like than if you come up that way in shows that don't have stunts. For example I'm not going to mention the show, but it's a new one that has come out and I've been working on it, and one of the departments, it seems clear to me, has no experience with stunts whatsoever and this is a big budget show, it's got a lot of money, so I'm sure that they've hired somebody who runs this department, who is good and has a lot of experience, but just the way that things are going, it's very clear to me that the experience with stunts is just not there. So I really do believe that film schools, training programs, even within you know, the Screen Actors Guild, if they have training programs, or whatever the unions are over in Europe if they have training programs, the Directors Guild, producers Guild, I don't know, they all have different programs and I'm not familiar with what they are.
Speaker 2:But yes, if people could be educated about what is a stunt, how do I even know if the thing is a stunt? Or you know what is a stunt coordinator and what does the stunt coordinator do? How do I know if I need a stunt coordinator? How do I use a stunt coordinator? If I'm a producer or director? How do I budget for stunts? How do I try to calculate how much time scenes are going to take when they involve stunts? All of these things are and even from a writing standpoint.
Speaker 2:A lot of times writers are forced to write to budgets. It's like we got this amount of money, so write me a script that we can actually do for this amount of money. Well, if you're putting in stunts and you don't know how much that stuff's gonna cost. It's very hard to write the script accurately, so we can save everybody a lot, of, a lot of time, effort and energy if they just knew out of the gate that if there's a car chase, then it's going to cost probably about this much money if you're shooting in this location and and that would be easier, so I don't. That sounds like that hit what your questions were, but if I didn't, please let me know no, that that was, that was exactly it, so because I wanted to ask you about your approach to stunts, because apparently you have an interesting approach to combine psychology and stunt performance.
Speaker 3:Or is this something you teach? I'm interested because I'm a psychologist and I think there is a lot of psychology behind stunts and how people interact together and that sort of thing. I wonder if you could elaborate on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's been an interesting journey because when I started doing stunts my experience with psychology was a high school class and majoring in psychology in college. That I didn't graduate from and that's when I started doing stunts. So a lot of the mental aspect of stunts, not only on set but in between jobs this is an important concept that I don't think a lot of people really think about. If you're in the film industry, it's a constant job search and when you're working in a job like stunts where there are a lot of, you're working for a day and then you're done. You're unemployed again. It's time to look for the next one. You're not even on a show for the whole run of however long that might be Usually. Sometimes it's the case If you're the stunt coordinator, maybe you get several months, but jobs in terms of years just aren't a thing for stunt people or a lot of other people in that industry. So it isn't just about how do we get our minds right to do our jobs in the moment when we're on set. It's also about how do you keep your mind right in between jobs so that you can be ready for and even be asked to work. So that was just stuff that I kind of had to figure out. Now it was about, I guess I moved to Los Angeles in 1996, and I started my master's program in 2004. So it was about eight years of that Now.
Speaker 2:Once I started the master's program, then it's like going from black and white to color. I had all of a sudden new information that was broken down systematically and where I had frameworks that I could filter my experiences through and different skills and concepts and techniques that I was learning that I could apply immediately in that work environment, and that was a pretty amazing experience. So it was not academics for academics' sake. It really was something that I was. By the way, I enrolled in the master's program because I enjoy psychology, I enjoy the mind. It's really interesting to me. I had no intention of ever working in any field related to psychology. I just I was going to do stunts for the rest of my life.
Speaker 2:But I enjoyed the material. So it was kind of like an avocation, just a hobby, but it was one that was, like I said, very, very applicable and immediately so and I found a lot of benefit from. So I really enjoyed that master's program. That's why I and this is great material and it's filling me in a way that I need to be filled, but a practical standpoint as well, if I can take this stuff and I can put it out in the world and see immediate benefits from. And that experience for me is what has led to where I am right now with my own organization focusing on people operating in high stakes environments environments where the consequences really matter, be it in corporate education, first responders, athletics or performing arts, when the consequences really matter, when there's a big difference between what happens if you succeed and what happens when you fail. That's where we really have to make sure that we're grounded, not just mentally, but physically, emotionally, socially as well.
Speaker 1:That's fascinating. I mean we'll touch on shortly the way in which you've been able to parlay the world of stunts into the world of high-risk performance management. But it's interesting listening to you. Clearly the education that you gained in the early 2000s actually fed back into the world of stunts as well, so there was a synergy. I mean, could you maybe take us through one example of, say, an extremely high-stakes stunt for a movie that required not just physical prowess but deep mental resilience as well, and that you were able to parlay some of your education into that?
Speaker 2:Well, there was one stunt on Twilight the movie. It was the last Twilight Twilight, breaking Dawn is what it was part two and at the end of that movie there's a big fight scene. It turns out to be imaginary, but there's a big fight scene and we spent a month and a half shooting it and I was doubling Michael Sheen, who played Aro, the main bad vampire guy, and what starts that fight is one of the girls I don't remember her character's name, but she does this spinning kick and kicks him and he does this big backflip. And that was me. So I was on wires and I just did this big backflip across this arena that we were shooting all of this stuff in and I kept under, rotating and I couldn't stick the landing and I kept under-rotating and I couldn't stick the landing. And I knew why I couldn't stick the landing. I knew why I was under-rotating and it wasn't my fault. It was the guy on the other end of the wires' fault, who was a very good friend of mine and still is to this day, but there was nothing I could do. He was 100 feet. That way I couldn't yell across the thing like Steve, what are you doing, dude? Just let me go. But that's what he needed to do is just let me go. And I'm attached to the wires. I'm where I am. I'm hearing from the stunt coordinator you got to stick the thing.
Speaker 2:I'm listening to the director get frustrated and I'm frustrated because I know I can do it, but but, but I'm not in control of the thing that's messing me up. And so it was one of those moments where it's very easy to spin out of control, because and by spin out of control I just mean because of my lack of control and my inability to do what I wanted to do that frustration can build and the anger can build. It can take a lot of different forms, but at the end of the day, it puts us into a mental and physical state that doesn't allow us to perform to our potential. It redirects our attention to places where it doesn't belong and it's just counterproductive. So in those moments, like when I recognized, physiologically and mentally, what was going on, I was able to take a breath, I was able to recenter my focus and I was able to think through okay, so what can I do?
Speaker 2:And I was able to get the guy who was in charge of the wire stuff over close enough where I could talk to him without announcing to the world what was going on. I said will you please tell him to just let me go, like, just tell him to let me go? And the guy came over and we had a conversation. Steve did the guy who was on the end of the rope and I said Steve, I need you to let me go. He said I can't let you go If you fall and it's on me and then you're going to yell at me. I said I get it, but I can't stick the landing if you keep yanking on the rope.
Speaker 2:But I was able to have that conversation with him in a calm way that touched on exactly what we needed to discuss, not in an emotional accusatory. It was just here's the situation, here's the physics of the whole thing, we need to change it, what can we do? And we came to an arrangement. He went off to the side. I did the backflip again, he let me go about eight feet up, I guess, probably and I stuck the landing and I was so happy. I looked over and I'm like, yes, steve, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. But that moment wouldn't have been possible had I let that frustration and irritation and anger really take over. There would have been no productive conversation. I don't know what would have happened, but that was a moment that I know that the skills that I had cultivated, that I'd learned and developed over the years, they really took hold.
Speaker 3:How do you prepare mentally for a scene like that? Or a scene where you go on fire, a scene quite dramatic. What do you do to keep calm?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, yeah. So there's the specifics of what I do each time that there's a stunt and I perform. That varies depending on what it is, but the structure, the framework of the approach doesn't, and it's a four-phased approach that we developed while I was working with the US Army with the US Army, and it goes beyond the before, during and after that. Most people talk about performing in terms of what we did is add a right before. So there's before in the standpoint of okay, so am I getting the right sleep? Am I getting the right, you know, nutrition? Am I stretching? Do I? Have I gone through in my mind what I'm supposed to do? Did we rehearse, etc. And so forth. That's before and that's all important, but you can't just jump straight to that into the performance of the during. There's a transition phase where you have to especially when you're on set and I'll talk about this more in a second but when you have to have a moment of transitioning from just my regular walking around before self to my physical, mental and emotional state. That I need personally to perform well in the moment. And that's the right before. The right before is when we make that transition, when we focus all our attention on the task-relevant things, when we generate a bubble around ourselves that only allows us to interact with what's important, to fully engage in the moment. That's what happens in the right before and that's what prepares us so that, when action gets called, we can perform to our potential for however long that's necessary. And then there's an after how do we recover the energy that we expended? How do we learn from the experience we just had? So those are the four phases and that's the structure that I use all the time.
Speaker 2:And I say it's important on set, because the typical day is I'll show up and I check in with somebody and they show me to my trailer and I'll put on wardrobe if it's in there, go get some breakfast you know if that's available, depending on the call time and then I go to hair and makeup and then they take me to a rehearsal and we go through all the things and choreograph all the stuff and get it straight, and then I sit around for however long and wait for the time to do the thing, and that could be 30 minutes. It could be like on Twilight we would sit there for 14 hours and not do anything. So you can't stay in the performance, state of mind and body for that amount of time. But you also can't just completely check out and just act like you're on your couch at home eating chips and watching a movie. So there has to be a balance, and that's the before for me. So I'll read, I'll talk to people, but I'll also take a few minutes and do some mental imagery or go through the choreography, physically, mentally. However, I do it whatever it is that's going to happen, and then I'll go back to talking to people again or reading or listening to music or whatever. But then what I'll hear is all right, brian, we're ready for you on set. That's my cue to transition to the right before. So now there is no reading, there are no task irrelevant conversations happening. It's all about what's getting ready to happen now, and then we do it, and then we can recover, and that's a cycle that can happen from show to show.
Speaker 2:It can happen from take to take, which is also an important thing. So once a take is done, you might have to do the thing again. So you start back over again. You can get in the right. Before you make sure your mind is right, you make sure your body is right so that you don't fall into the take two problems, because that is one of the issues that stunt people face a lot is we'll get.
Speaker 2:Especially when it's a dangerous stunt, when there's really there is some risk and it does take some. There's some nuance involved. You really put a lot of attention and time into getting it right the first time and then it goes right and everybody cheers and it feels great and there's this big release and then they say, all right, well, now we need to do it again. Sometimes it's hard for people to recover from that and get themselves back into that place where they were when they did it right, and that causes problems. Then injuries happen and that's a regular, unfortunately, thing. So this four-phased approach is a way that I've found that I can lean on personally to help me reset very quickly after takes, after performances, and I found it very valuable.
Speaker 1:Can I ask, before we move on to your other work in the real world, as it were, what would you reckon is the most dangerous stunt that you've ever been involved in in the movies and TV?
Speaker 2:Well, there have been quite a few, but the one that I don't know how to answer which one's the most dangerous, but I'll tell you which one scared me the most, and but the one that that I don't know how to answer which one's the most dangerous, but I'll tell you which one scared me the most, and it's not one that that, as I describe, it's going to sound very scary. It was just. I was on this TV show. It was a. It was a show on ABC, it was a network shows, pretty big shows, very popular, and I was running across this roof and I was doubling an actor and so I'd run across the roof and just jump up on this ledge. It was maybe a, it was maybe two feet high, probably about a foot wide, wasn't a hard jump, it wasn't a high ledge, it was something that doing my sleep pretty much. But what made it scary is that on the other side of that ledge was a 50-foot drop down to pavement and I wasn't attached to anything and there was nothing below me, Like there was no safety precaution whatsoever. So, as I'm running across this roof and I jump up on this ledge, had I caught a toe, had I, you know, screwed up some kind of way, I was probably going to die, and that was just. That's just the reality of it. So that was the one that scared me the most, and I did it a few times and it went fine. Obviously I'm sitting here talking to you, so I didn't die, it went okay. But I'll tell you that was.
Speaker 2:It's a very basic thing and it's one of the things that I use in my examples when I tell stories around pressure, because pressure comes from a focus on consequences, on what follows follows. If I screw up, then, or even if I succeed, then Whatever follows the, then if that's where my attention is, that's where pressure comes from when those stakes are high. And so, even though it was an easy stunt I mean an easy action it's like the same thing where you know if you tell somebody to walk a line on the ground, they have no problem. If you tell them to walk a line 30 feet in the air, big problem. It's the same. What it requires to walk a line 30 feet in the air is the exact same thing it requires to walk a line on the ground.
Speaker 2:It's not different. The skill set isn't. It doesn't change at all, but just the consequences do. And if that's where our attention is, then that's where the pressure lies. So in this particular case, it wasn't. The stonto is very hard, it's a very easy thing to do, but the potential consequences of messing it up created some of that pressure that I experienced. So that's a perfect example of how pressure is not inherent in the moment. It is about our perception, where our attention is Interesting.
Speaker 3:So back to your day-to-day. So I believe you teach in performance and city and screen, is that correct? Yeah, well, luckily.
Speaker 2:I get to do a lot of things. I have some keynotes that I give, I have workshops that I do, I work on retainer for some first responder organizations, corporations, and I have some intensives, some six-week intensives I do with performing artists and athletes, as well as some individual coaching as well. So I kind of got my hands in a lot of things. But the overall umbrella is high-stakes performance environments and I use that term intentionally, not high-pressure environments, not high-stress environments.
Speaker 2:Stress and pressure are the result of our perceptions of the situations we find ourselves in. It is not the circumstances and situations. This goes back to Stoic philosophers 2,000 years ago when Epictetus said it's not events that disturb us, it's our judgment of those events that disturb us. And you know cognitive psychologists Aaron Beck and the other guy I'm blanking on his name. They knew that they read the stoics and this is where cognitive psychology came from. So what I'm saying isn't new. It's not new stuff. I don't claim it to be Brian Heights head magic, but it is something that has been lost.
Speaker 2:I believe in the performance world we do talk like stress and pressure are inevitable aspects of certain types of situations where, if you find yourself in this environment, you will experience stress or pressure, and so your job is to figure out how to perform with stress and pressure. My approach is completely different. I say no. Stress and pressure are not inevitable, and they're certainly not helpful. So the trick isn't to learn to perform with them, it's to perform without them. So how do we eliminate stress and pressure in these moments so that we can be at our best?
Speaker 3:Do you ever? I mean, I'm very interested in mindfulness Do you ever put that into your techniques?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a book, it's called Begin.
Speaker 3:Again.
Speaker 2:Utilize the Wisdom of Eastern and Western Ideologies to Achieve your Full Potential. And that Eastern side. It's really interesting to me how the Bhagavad Gita and some of the sutras and the Upanishads like there's so much wisdom in the Eastern text Taoism, the Tao Te Ching, that overlaps with a lot of the Western philosophy and aligns with very recent research in many different scientific fields. All of that's fascinating to me. So, yes, mindfulness is one of those things where the present moment, this moment, this is our reality. This is the time when you can actually affect change.
Speaker 2:This is one of the things I tell people about pressure, because pressure is the result of our attention being on the potential consequences, meaning on the future, on the imaginary things that might happen. Pressure is the result of misaligned attention. What we need to do is get attention off the future back into the present moment, because the future is going to be created by what happens now. So if the consequences really are important, if they really do matter to you, well that's fine. But what's going to determine, you know, the extent to which you're going to succeed or not is going to be that's going to happen right now, in this moment. So we have to be able to center ourselves and fully immerse ourselves in this present moment.
Speaker 1:And obviously you've taken that insight and you've worked, for example, with the military. I mean, I noticed that you're a member of an organization called GSOF Global Special Operations Forces where it's trying to encourage the military to help resolve issues all around the world, so can you maybe talk us through how you've helped the military I presume the US military.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I worked as a contractor for the US Army and I guess there were two lines of effort with that. One One was traditional sport performance psychology, meaning, for whatever performance we're talking about, how do you get your mind right so that you can perform to the best of your ability in that moment? So if we're talking about shooting, medical tasks, clearing a building, whatever it is, there's a certain performance. How do you help people be consistently good at that? That's one line of effort.
Speaker 2:But the other line of effort that I really gravitated toward was the resilience piece, and that was more about how do we provide people with resources, with techniques, with skills that they can use, not just in performance situations but in life in general, no matter where they happen to be or with whom they're interacting. They have the tools and the resources to lean on in those moments that allow them to number one, not get knocked down quite as far. Number two, recover to where they were more quickly. But, most importantly, number three, learn and grow and improve as a result of having gone through that challenge. So for me, that's what resilience is. It isn't just about preventing being knocked down when bad things happen or recovering to where we were. It's about growth, it's about improvement, it's about developing wisdom through that experience that benefits us down the road.
Speaker 1:And so how's that had direct applications to the US military then?
Speaker 2:Well, it depends on the, I mean, the resilient stuff is that's. That was very generalized because they're just people Like I mean the military. How does it apply to the military? Well, military life can be challenging on a lot of levels and it depends on whether you're 18 and a private versus 40 in a colonel as to what those challenges are. But there are challenges all the way up the chain. So the resilience is more. It's a broader, generalized approach to being able to handle life.
Speaker 2:Now, how did it affect the other people? You know the performance side of things. Consistency and improved efficiency with training was really what we targeted. So you can get people better, faster and you can keep them more consistent. So you stop the up and down, volatile, uncertain performance days. You can help people have things that they can lean on, like the four-phased approach that I was talking about.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter what set I'm on or what stunt I'm doing. The individual things I do within each of those phases might change, but the structure itself grounds me in a way that allows me to set conditions for my performance to be the best that I can, and that's really going back to the Eastern stuff we were talking about. That's how I think about it. I think about it as how can I help people set conditions that maximize the likelihood of success? Because whatever manifests manifests because conditions are right for it to manifest.
Speaker 2:I notice, you know, I mean there's. You guys have the screens up, so I don't know, maybe there's grass growing on the walls behind you, but my guess is probably not. But if you were to go outside, there is grass growing on the ground. Why? Because conditions are right for grass to grow on the ground and not on the wall behind you. And performance is the same way. We need to create the conditions that allow us to be at our best physically, mentally, to create the conditions that allow us to be at our best physically, mentally, emotionally socially create conditions that let us perform to the best of our abilities, no matter where we are.
Speaker 3:What would you say to your 21 year old self? What advice would you give them?
Speaker 1:And I'll say for young people.
Speaker 3:But what sort of advice if you could?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that'll take me back to the always on the path talk, because the best advice that I can give is that there is no path. We create our own path. Every step that we take, the path manifests underneath us. There is no path in front of us. There is a path behind us. We can turn around and look to see where we've been and how all the different things connected to get us where we are, but there is no path in front of us. We generate that with every choice we make, with every breath that comes out of our score.
Speaker 2:Or I don't get into the right university or I don't get the right position in this company, then my whole career path is going to be shot to hell.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to be able to do anything anymore, and that's just wrong. There are many, many ways to get to wherever we're going to be and, regardless of whether experiences are pleasant or unpleasant, they are experiences that we have that make us who we are. So we are always on our path, we are never off of it, and if I'd known that advice, I would have experienced a whole lot. I mean, I'd have even gone to college at all, but I would have experienced a whole lot less anxiety while I was in college, when I had those moments I don't know what's next. I knew I was supposed to go to high school, and then I was supposed to go to high school, and then I was supposed to go to college, and then I was supposed to get a job. But now I'm stuck. I'm off this path because I don't know where I'm supposed to go next. That was the absolute wrong way of thinking about it, and anything that I can do to change anybody's mind around perceiving life that way, I will do in a heartbeat.
Speaker 1:Well, that's certainly great advice. One final question for me you mentioned before about work that you're doing at the moment where you were unsure about whether they knew about stunts, and I just wanted to sort of touch on where you think the current industry is in Hollywood, because obviously we've got the rise of the streamers, big tech, netflix, apple and so on. Traditional Hollywood styles and modes of production are under pressure. So what do you think about the state of Hollywood at the moment and where it's going?
Speaker 2:Well the.
Speaker 2:American Hollywood, I think, is a big mess. I think that there have been a lot of challenges with the unions. I think that the technology that allows people to shoot things pretty much wherever it's not as big a production anymore, you don't need as much stuff, you don't need as strong an infrastructure. You can create some pretty good content with minimal equipment and minimal people in a lot of different places and that's opened the industry up a lot. So it's not centered in LA anymore, it's not centered in New York, it's not centered anywhere, I would say. I mean, really there are things shooting in Atlanta, there are things shooting in Los Angeles, there are things shooting in Arkansas. For crying out loud, Nothing ever shot it.
Speaker 2:I did a movie last year in Arkansas and almost got hired on one last week for Arkansas. So it has the technology I believe has flattened the curve in terms of what's required to put out pretty good content and that's shifted a lot of stuff For better in some cases and worse in other cases. I don't know where it's all going to go, but that's my take on that.
Speaker 3:And how can our viewers or readers, listeners, get in touch with you? Do you have a website or a book?
Speaker 2:Yeah, if anything I've said interests anybody or strikes a chord in any kind of way, please reach out. My email address is brian at brianheitcom. You can email me directly. I will email you back. Mention this podcast that would be really helpful. Give you some discounts on some stuff. But if you just want to talk about things, I mean, you can go to my website, wwwbrianheightglobalcom and you can schedule a discovery call. We'll talk about whatever the issues are. But this is all stuff that stress, pressure, motivation, burnout. These are all issues that I've struggled with over the years and through the experiences that I've struggled with over the years and through the experiences that I've had with stunts, with the military, with academia, I've come to a place where I'm a lot more comfortable with those things, particularly in high stakes environments, than I ever have been. But it is a hard road to walk, especially by yourself. So please don't just call me. You don't have to do anything by yourself. So please don't just call me. You don't have to do anything by yourself. So please reach out.
Speaker 1:Well, absolutely fantastic. It's been a great conversation, and not just about stunts, but actually, I think, about all the challenges that we all face in life. So, thanks ever so much, brian, and all the best for the future. Again, thank you so much for having me. I love talking about this stuff and I appreciate you guys having a podcast that us so much, brian, and all the best for the future.
Speaker 2:Again, thank you so much for having me. I love talking about this stuff and I appreciate you guys having a podcast that that puts it out to the world.
Speaker 3:Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
