May 14, 2024 • 54 mins
In this episode with George Mumford, we discuss how to unlock your inner greatness. Through his work with people from prestigious athletes to prisoners, George explores the surprising truths about mastering personal growth and self-awareness. You'll also discover ways to overcome self-limiting beliefs and learn to find balance and contentment in your life.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Master the art of self-awareness to unlock profound personal growth
- Overcome self-limiting beliefs and unleash your full potential
- Discover powerful strategies for reaching peak performance in all areas of life
- Learn to balance the pursuit of success with finding contentment in the present moment
- Harness the power of neuroplasticity and incremental improvement methods for lasting personal development
To learn more, click here!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We have choices, and we can have wise choices, and
we can choose if we can slow things down enough
to have that space, bechige stomnas and respond to choose wisely,
to choose in alignment with not only our values, but
how the universe works.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
(00:41):
or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
what we do. We think things that hold us back
and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
how other people keep themselves moved in the right direction,
(01:01):
how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Our guest on this episode is George Mumford, a globally
(01:22):
recognized speaker, teacher and coach. Since nineteen eighty nine, he's
been honing his groundbreaking performance and mindfulness techniques with people
from locker rooms to boardrooms, from Yale to jail. Michael
Jordan credits George with transforming his on court leadership, while
Mumford has also worked with Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neil, and
(01:42):
countless other NBA players, olympians, executives and artists. Today, George
and Eric discuss his new book, Unlocked, Embrace your Greatness,
Find the Flow, Discover Success.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Hi, George, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Hi, it's great to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on. I've been
following your work for a number of years, and today
we're going to be talking about your latest book, which
is called Unlocked, Embrace your Greatness, Find the Flow, and
Discover Success. But before we do that, we'll start, like
we always do, with a parable. In the parable, there's
a grandparent who's talking to their grandchild and they say,
in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
(02:19):
are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. I think about
it for a second they look up at their grandparents,
they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says,
the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
(02:40):
by asking you what that parable means to you in
your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Thank you for asking that. That's a prime directive in
my work, did I do? I use that story. I've
summarized it down to fear and love, Yeah, which is
the same principle and as the one that you feed,
and so I use that.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
That's the essence of what I teach is.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
That you have to be clear about are you feeding
the love wolf or the fail wolf? Because if you
feed the love wolf, then you're going to be open
and you're going to have access to your masterpiece within
you're going to be able to unlock. As long as
you're in the fail wolf, you're going to be in
the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
I guess is another word for it.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
But you're going to be on your heels and you're
going to be reactive, and you're going to be in
scarcity mode.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I love that. Listener As you're listening, what resonated with
you in that? I think a lot of us have
some ideas of things that we can do to feed
our good wolf, and here's a good tip to make
it more likely that you do it. It can be
really helpful to reflect right before you do that thing
on why you want to do it. Our brains are
always making a calculation of what neuroscientists would call reward value, basically,
(03:56):
is this thing worth doing? And so when you're getting
ready to do this thing that you want to do
to feed your good wolf, reflecting on why actually helps
to make the reward value on that higher and makes
it more likely that you're going to do that. For example,
if what you're trying to do is exercise, right before
you're getting ready to exercise, it can be useful to
remind yourself of why, for example, I want to exercise
(04:21):
because it makes my mental and emotional health better today.
If you'd like a step by step guide for how
you can easily build new habits that feed your good wolf,
go to goodwolf dot me, slash change and join the
free masterclass. I love the way you've sort of boiled
that down to you know, fear and love, So I
want to talk a little bit because you know you've
(04:42):
done work ranging from the top of the top pro athletes,
Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, those type of people. And you
also have done a lot of work in prisons, where
we might say people are sort of at the bottom
of the bottom, right, And you talk about this idea
that greatness can be discovered in every one of us,
(05:02):
And I'm curious, how do we think about that if
we think about it from a few different levels, right,
One level is the Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan's right, But
you also coach teams in general, and so you know,
the next level might be your average pro athlete, right,
you know, and then let's talk about somebody like me,
and then let's finally talk about somebody in prison. What
(05:25):
is the common thread that allows each of us to
use the word great in our own lives?
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Here?
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Thank you for asking and this interesting I see my
mind working as you were asking the question. And so
when you think of Michelangelo or Michael Angelo, depending on
how you pronounce his name, when he was being interviewed
back in the day and they asked him, well, how
do you create these masterpieces out of these blocks of marble?
And he says, all I do is chip away to
get to the masterpiece that's already there. And so in
(05:54):
my mind, whether I'm doing that work that Michael Angelo
was doing and in or in a sports facility, it's
the same work, even though the marble might be in
a different location. Whether you're in prison or your jail, yeah,
locker room, boardroom, you represent that block of marble. And
then the question becomes, how do you tip away to
(06:16):
get to the masterpiece thats already in there. So it's
the same work even though they're in different places. Now
how they manifest would be different. But my job is
just to release the device park but a masterpiece within,
and how they express themselves, well, that's up to them.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
My job is to help them access it.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
But you might say, and it's interesting because back years
ago it was this guy's name was Matthew Fox. He
was a Dominican priest and he wrote a book called
The Original Blessing.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Yep, I think we've had mass I would be more
in alignment with that, in other words, like we have salvation.
We have this masterpiece within, this greatness within, and it
could be accessed. But the interesting thing is.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Whether you're and Yale or jail, locker room or boarding room,
the interesting thing is it can only be access.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
It's an inside game by you.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
So my job is to help the person embrace their
greatness so that they can find the flow, so they
can discover success.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
But that's the challenge.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
But the work is the same whether it's in a
jail or in a locker room, whether you're Kobe Bryant
or you're just every day Joe or Sally, it's the
same work as how do you unlock? And that's the
process we get involved in, is unlocking. So we're starting
off from a basic premise that there's nothing wrong. It's
just a matter of uncovering or releasing a divine spark,
(07:37):
if you want to call it that.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Do you know when they interviewed Michelangelo about that? Did
they do it on a podcast?
Speaker 4 (07:43):
I can't.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
I can't remember.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Yeah it was.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
I don't know if it was in secret or in
the public square, because back in those days there's something
you couldn't talk about and survive. So I'm not really right,
that's right. I'm not really sure what the context was.
But conversation is interesting. The conversation is the same conversation.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Yeah, So going back to what you said earlier about fear,
and love.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
When we think of greatness, right, one of the things
we have a tendency to do is compare ourselves to
things that we see outside of us that are great, right,
And so we could say that's a little bit more
of the fear mode. It's the fear mode. And I
think you know, when people are looking at greatness, they're
thinking about performance often, right, But I don't think that's
(08:30):
quite what we're talking about here, because obviously you could
unlock the best version of me, right, but I'm never
going to play basketball like I mean, even an average
college athlete right at my breast. So and somebody in prison,
the number of things that they actually are able to
(08:50):
do is very restricted. So how do you transition someone
from an external concept of greatness to an internal concept
of greatness? Because I think that's what you're saying.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Right, Yes, So we call the locus of control. It
is internal. It's always been internal. But we have been
programmed to think that everything's out here, that the environment,
places and things give us value. And what we discover
is that we have our own unique value and we
have to go inside to figure out what that is.
So one size does not fit all. So maybe One
(09:25):
person values to play basketball, another person values to write poetry.
Another person's value is be a leader, be able to
bring people together, or be able to help people help themselves.
So we all have this uniqueness, and there's only one
of us. So I would say, I think of you, Eric.
There never will be or never was, anybody like you.
(09:47):
In your essence, what's inside your masterpiece? And so your
job is to be you. I can't tell you what
that is. That's an inside job. But if you follow
your bless you follow your heart. If you pay attention,
that's still small voice, it's easily drawn out, will help
you access you know why you were here and how
you can do things in your particular, unique way. And
(10:08):
that's what we need. We need everybody to be themselves.
And I'll go back to what I refer to Soar
and careca God, this existential philosopher of going back in
the eighteen hundreds. One thing he said is the most
devastating kind of despair is not being yourself. And so
that's our job to be ourselves. But what gets in
the way is what he called the allowing possibility of
(10:28):
being able. So if I take a quarter a coin
and one side is heads, that's my potential, that's my freedom.
The other side is tails, that's uncertain, the anxiety. They
come together, and so I would say our biggest challenge
is being able to overcome the anxiety that comes with
the freedom. And I believe they called it an existential
(10:51):
psychotherapy or philosophy.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
They called it the dizziness of freedom.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
You know, it's like you're walking on shaky ground because
you're embracing that unknown.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, one of the
great things about modern society is the degree of freedom
that we largely have. And it is dizzying for many
many people because many of the old rules about who
to be, how to be they're not there anymore in
the way that they were. And so in addition to
(11:22):
being like, if you want to be a good person, right,
it's a lot of work to be a good person,
just like living up to it.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
But on top of that, right, we kind of got
to figure out what that means at the same time. Right,
So there's a lot of work to be done there,
I think, and being the person we want to be
because we have to figure out what does that actually
mean to me, which is you know, this gets to
the dizziness of freedom piece. And then the second part is, now,
how do I actually live that? Although I do think that,
you know, I know you've studied extensively in the Buddhist tradition,
(11:52):
so there are frameworks and reference points that we can
use as guide posts, so that freedom isn't quite so dizzy.
Would you say?
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Yes, Well, when you really think about it, you can
be spontaneous or of one's free will. But it's really
challenging to do because we get challenged when we do that.
And so from a point of view, what we're really
talking about when we're talking about freedom, and it's interesting
depending on your circumstance.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
So I'll talk about Victor Frankel.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
You know, he wrote the book Man Search for Meeting,
and he was in a concentration camp, and he said
that man's ultimate freedom is no matter what happens to us,
we get to choose how we react to respond to it.
In that space, the other freedom and power to choose,
and so.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
On your way. You know, if you have unavoidable.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Suffering, whether it's cancer or just something really bad happens
to you, something that's very devastating, like.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
A loss of yourself or a loved one or the.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Way of being that you always can choose the attitude
or how you interpret what it means.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
And that's the ultimate freedom.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
And so being in a concentration camp, you're right, you
don't have liberty, but you have freedom in your mind
because you can choose to let things affect you or
you can choose to interpret them in ways.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
That empower and aspire you. So that's the ultimate freedom.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Now, a lot of us make choices, but how do
you choose when you're about to die or you have
the choice of saving yourself or doing what's right, being
selfish or being selfless.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
And so that's the ultimate freedom. And so we.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Always have choice, and even when we don't make a choice,
you're choosing. And so that's the main thing that I
love about this is like I am responsible. I have
self awareness, And because I have self awareness, I can
self regulate. I can regulate my thoughts, feeling, behaviors. I
can choose to create space between stemus and response. And
in that space, I have the freedom and power to choose,
(13:48):
and I can choose based on my values, based on
what I believe is important.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
But I get to choose that.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Yeah, I love Victor Frankele and that idea of the
space between stimulus and response was transformational to me the
first time I heard it. And I think you and
I talked before getting on the air that we're both
recovering IV heroin users, right, And you know, a big
part of recovery for me was recognizing there is that
space between stimulus and response.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
If there wasn't, I never could have gotten better.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
It was recognizing that, Okay, the stimulus is here telling
me I should use drugs, but there is a space
and I can choose it. And you know, my understanding
of a lot of meditation, mindfulness awareness practices for me
is that it increases that space. Right, Yes, it makes
that space bigger, ris.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
It gets us out of reactivity and into being in
a moment as it is and seeing it in new
and fresh ways. So if we get out of our
habitual ways of being and recognize this idea of wisdom
begins in wonder or can we look at the unfolding,
unknown moment with fresh eyes, with a beginner's mind, where
the mind it's open to everything and not limited to
(14:57):
what we already know or what we expect, but really
just being willing to be vulnerable enough to let the
unfolding unknown moment express itself as it is.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
You talk about awareness a lot and acceptance right of
the moment as it is. And at the same time
you are also considered a performance coach, right, right, So
you're not teaching people just be with what is, and
that's the way it is, right. I think you're pointing
towards this awareness and this saying yes to the moment
(15:29):
as it is as a step on the way to
then being able to make the best response and to
become better versions of ourselves. So the sort of yes
to life is not an ending point, it's kind of
a beginning point. I think, Yes, the way you're talking
about it, right.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Yes, thank you for sharing that. And awareness I'm talking
about is like a mirror mind. It's just reflects what's
in front of it. It's not an interpretation. It's just
letting things speak in their own language. And so I
talk about the four a's.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
So the four a's are awareness, aceptance, compassionate, action, and
assessment and so be able to say yes to what's there.
But saying yes is not just having the reflection of
seeing it, but it's accepting it as it is. It
is the acceptance of it. Yes, saying yes to it
(16:17):
is the acceptance of it. But without accepting it, we
won't see it. And so there's this combination of accepting
and seeing it and then the compassionate action, which is,
you know, based on this based between stemising response. Whatever
my values are, if I value life from about love
and compassion and seeking to understand, then that action, that
(16:37):
choice that I make is going to be in alignment
with those values. And then afterwards the fourth of the assessment,
that's where we reflect on experience, because true understanding comes
from reflecting on experience. So we reflect on it, well,
you know, was that helpful or was it not helpful?
And if it wasn't helpful, how do I get what
wasn't helpful to be helpful?
Speaker 4 (16:57):
But it's just as.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
The saying goes unexamined, life is not worth living. You
got to examine it, and you examine it. Why Because
we have this ability to self regulate, to change what
we're doing so that we can get a different result.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
We're not locked in, we're not boxed in.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
We have choices, and we can have wise choices, and
we can choose if we can slow things down enough
to have that space, you change stemnus and response to
choose widely, to choose in alignment with not only our values,
but how the universe works. So I give you an example.
You don't have to believe in gravity, but it's lawfulness.
If you jump up, you will come down. It's nothing
(17:33):
about believing. It's just the way things are. So once
you embrace that, then you can use gravity to do
whatever you need to do because you're working in alignment
with how it works. And I can say that about
a lot of other things. This is a friend of
the universe if you see it that way, and there's
a lawfulness to it. And there's certain principles that don't change.
Principles don't change their timeless the universal, and they's self evident.
(17:55):
I know for myself that whatever I give, I get back.
So if I get if you grief, I'm going to
get grief back. If I give you love, I'm going
to give love back. There's a lawfulness in this universe.
If I'm coming out of that fear you talked about,
then I'm going to be coming from scarcity and I'm probably.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Going to be more hostile or more fearful.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
If I come from love, from an openness, I'm coming
from abundance. I'm coming from this place that says, Okay,
something happens, I make a mistake, but I can learn
from it.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
I can correct it.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Versus I made a mistake, I am a bad person
and there's nothing I can do about it.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
No, you just have to be willing to understand.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
How do I the how to question, how do I
do what I say I want to do? Even though
I got feedback just said that didn't work. Am I
willing to learn and practice so that I could do it.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
I'm going to come up with a pretend scenario here.
I'm a coach of a I don't know a university
sports team, and I've got a player who has a
lot of potential, but they're not really living into it.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
We look at them and go, well, why are they
not better? And obviously, you know, we as the coaches,
are working on the X and o's of their game,
their shooting technique, all that kind of stuff, So you
don't come in to help with that piece of it.
But when you come in, you know, how do you
start with someone and how do you work with them
on getting to and we're going to talk about this later.
You don't like the term peak performance, you like the
(19:18):
term pure performance, and we'll get to that. But how
do you work with somebody on improving their performance? Like?
What things are you looking for? What kind of questions
are you asking? What does this look like?
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Yeah, so basically I come in and I ask them
what do you want? And then based on that then
they'll say, okay, So if you want something, you have
to be something. And so meeting them where they are
and really getting clear because sometimes you go in and
they may be doing something they don't really want to do,
or they might be doing it because somebody else wants
them to do it. So the first thing I do
(19:50):
is understand what's your intention?
Speaker 4 (19:53):
You know?
Speaker 1 (19:53):
In other words, I want to teach them the self
awareness and the self regulation. So basically it's like you
have self awayenness as you were responsible, and if you
don't like what you're getting.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Then you can do something about it. You have a masterpiece.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
You have this ability to change how you see yourself,
what you're doing. And normally, when somebody is talented and
they're not able to express that talent, it's because there's
something in the way, some self limiting belief and normally
it has to do with their self concept, how they
see themselves, and so just really getting clear about that.
(20:26):
Or it may be that they say didn't want to
do it, but they don't really want to do it,
So it's just really getting on. It's getting clear with
you know, who are you and why are you here?
Because that's usually the question I asked. It's like, Okay,
you're here, Why are you here? What's your intention? You know,
do you have a goal? Do you have an idea?
I work with this one football player. His goal was
to make the team, so he tried out for the team,
(20:48):
made it, but then he didn't have anything else, so
he had to set another goal.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
You know, Okay, you made the team.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
So you have to keep engaging yourself, keep challenging yourself,
or keep that intention for being able to do something alive.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
So, assuming we've got someone and we are at the
point where, you know, we know that they want to
be doing what they're doing, they've got the right goal
right right, but they're still just not getting there kind
of where do you go next? What's the next things
that you start looking at with them?
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yeah, so you want to look at what's in the way,
what's getting in the way, And it could be a
variety of things, but basically, one scenario might be that
they want to do it, but unconsciously they don't think
they deserve it, or they don't think they're as good
as they could be as the self image, how they
think feel behave about themselves. But whatever it is in
(22:06):
the way, they could be maybe something happened when they
were younger.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
And they just don't think that they can succeed.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Maybe they ever finish anything, or whatever it is, or
could be somebody who told them that they were never
going to amount to anything. There's some self limiting belief
that's in there, that operating, and so then that becomes
the work. What's in the way becomes away, as Marcus
really has said centuries ago, what's in the way becomes
a way. But just knowing that something is off, or
(22:35):
something's missing, or he's just not clicking. And usually they
could be you know, if I look at the whole person,
the body of the mind, heart and the soul or spirit,
it could be something in there. It could be that
maybe they're wanting to please somebody, maybe they're playing because
of their parents, or they want to please the coach
instead of just being able to just play for themselves
(22:56):
just to really be enjoying it. So a lot of people,
I would say the main things that I encounter a
lot people try too hard. They want it too badly,
and they're trying too hard and they're efforting and they're
trying hard and nackets in a way instead of them
just performing and being okay to make mistakes. So the
fear of failure could be there, to fear success, It
(23:17):
could be something, but it's you know, like we talked
about it, they're feeding the fair wolf and the fair
wolf is dominating, and as a result of that, they're
withholding or they're trying too harder, they're not trying hard enough.
So there might be this balance of you know, trying
too hard, not trying at all, trying hard and then
withdrawing energy and then you know, being confused and not
(23:37):
knowing what they need to do. So the idea is
to help them get clarity about the fact that they
need to make choices, and they're making choices and what
do you want to do? Take responsibility for what you're doing.
So if I get them to a place of courage,
as doctor Harkins talks about, where they say I am
responsible no excuses. There's a book called I'm Becoming a
(23:58):
Leader written by Larren Venice, and he talks about the
four lessons of self knowledge, because you got to know yourself,
to be yourself, to express yourself, to have yourself.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
So it's really about.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Them knowing who they are and knowing how they really
feel about things. But in those four steps, he talks
about the first step, you can learn anything you want
to learn, so you got to be a learner, be responsible,
no excuses. The third thing is you're your own best teacher.
So that's another way of saying you're responsible for what
you learn. You can't have somebody else come in say
(24:31):
you should learn this and that at some point you
got to own it. And then the fourth lesson is
true understanding comes from reflecting on experience, and so it's
really meeting them where they are, getting to see how
they're seeing things, and then helping them make adjustments so
that what's in the way becomes a way. And you know,
once you remove those obstructions, then you become unlocked. But
(24:52):
once again, it's not a one time thing. You get unlocked.
But then you know you're having a success.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
Like this guy.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
His challenge was, you know, the fourthotball player was Okay,
if he doesn't have any goals, he's just showing up
with no passion, with no purpose.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
So there's got to be a purpose.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
It's got to be an intention, and sometimes the best
intention is just to help other people succeed.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
Is to say, Okay, I'm a part of something greater
than myself.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
I'm part of a team, and that means that I
care about my teammates and I'm going to do what
I need to do to help them and they're going
to help me. So it's really getting them to be
a whole person to really understand that, you know, just
to you know, shut up and dribble or just play
football and don't think, or I don't care how you feel,
that's not realistic. You got to deal with the whole person.
(25:35):
They got to body, my heart and soul. And so
you talk about the mental, the emotional, and social. That's
this one interact with self and others and the spirit,
you know, contribution in being something greater than yourself. So
you got to deal with the whole person. And then
you got to really be clear about well why am
I here? Because being a student athlete, you don't have
a social life. All your work is on academics and athletics,
(25:59):
and so you have to want it. It has to
be an intention. If you're just doing it because it's
something to do, you may not have the energy you
need to really succeed or to really take responsibility and
want to get better.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
Does that makes sense?
Speaker 1 (26:12):
So when I talked about the self awareness at the
four a's is like, you be aware, Okay, here I.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
Am and I'm not living up to my potential.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
So the awareness of that and then accepting that, because see,
that's the biggest thing, because it's really challenging to say, well,
you know, I don't know if I really want to
be here, you know, or you know, I don't trust
in myself because no one wants to say I'm not
happy and you know.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
I'm inadequate.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
People are going to tell you that, but they're thinking
that and they're behaving that. And unless they embrace the
fact that yeah, I'm not happy or I don't have
confidence in myself, then once you see that and accept it,
now we can work on it. Now we can say okay,
what confidence comes from understanding stuff, but putting in the
work and getting the results. So this whole idea of
(27:01):
being a learner, I'll talk about it that way. So
it doesn't matter what's poort it is.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
You got to learn.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
You've got to be a learner. You got to learn
how to do it. What's the essentials? You got to
learn about yourself. You learned about how do you know
when you're being yourself when you're not being yourself? How
do you know when you're doing something because somebody else
wants you to do it or because you want to
do it. That's where you got to go to the
inside job and you got to know yourself and really
be honest about how you feel and how you're seeing things.
(27:26):
And that could be challenging because we live in a
society where we don't necessarily do that, We don't necessarily
see the whole person. You could be a coach and
with good intentions, but you have depending on the size
of your team. If you're talking about a soccer team,
you might have twenty plus people on your team, and
how do you attend to all of those and you
only get twenty hours a week or twenty two hours
(27:47):
a week to work with them, and so your tendency
is probably going to be focused on what's wrong, or
you don't have the time to just go in and
ask each person, I have to know you, so I
know how to motivate you or how to get you
to motivate yourself. And so there's all of these these
variables that are involved, but it really comes down to
(28:08):
just knowing that you have a whole person and they
have a masterpiece within, So how do we get them
to embrace that, to accept it and put in the work.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
The awareness, the acceptance is the compassionate action, and then
the assessment.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
You know, how do you keep getting better, you learn
from your mistakes, you're not your mistakes, that.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
Sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
So it's really challenging to do it, and that like
one size fits all, but basically it comes down to
seeing what's in the way and then that becomes away.
So if it's self limiting beliefs, then we got to
work with that. If it's you know, feeling like you
don't deserve to be there, then we got to work
with that. Or maybe you try too hard, you want it,
but you don't know how to do it, and so
(28:50):
helping people to understand that. But a lot of it
is the regulation self regulation what I talked about, and
the fourth lessons of self knowledge, and that is you're
your own best yep, you know you can learn anything,
and that you got to be responsible as you're responsibility
is not people, places and things.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
You have to do it as an inside job. And
once you embrace that, then you.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Start developing what we call strong self efficacy belief because
you know, no matter what happens, you can choose your
response if you can create that space and even if
you're reacting to something, you can learn from that and
decide not to react that way. But it's not simple
or simple, but not easy. But it's really clear about
you know, getting to know who you are.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
So you got to know who you are, so you
can be who you are. And that's the that's the thing,
and it's not emulating somebody else.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
You can do that, like when you learn how to
play guitar or something. Yeah, we do that, but we
emulate people. We might play somebody's tune, but at some
point we got to own it and we got to
find our own way. But we emulate other people, we
copy other people, but at some point we have to
make it our own.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
Does it make any sense what I'm saying?
Speaker 3 (29:55):
I wanted to pause for a quick good Wolf reminder.
This one's about a habit and a mistake I see
people making. And that's really that we don't think about
these new habits that we want to add in the
context of our entire life. Right, Habits don't happen in
a vacuum. They have to fit in the life that
we have. So when we just keep adding I should
(30:16):
do this, I should do that, I should do this,
we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what
we're not going to do in order to make that happen.
So it's really helpful for you to think about where
is this going to fit and what in my life
might I need to remove. If you want to step
by step guide for how you can easily build new
habits that feed your good Wolf, go to good Wolf
(30:37):
dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. So
I want to go back to something you said earlier,
and you said, oftentimes somebody is trying too hard, and
you know from reading your book and just reading things
in the press. Right, when we think about people like
Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. What we know is that
they worked incredibly hard, perhaps harder than anybody else. So
(31:00):
tell me the distinction between that, like, I'm willing to
put in the work, I'm going to work really hard,
versus trying too hard.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
So a lot of times we think it's the elbow
grease or the physical effort, and I talk about this
is my rindful athlete.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
This is the right effort. It's not like working hard
and then stopping.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
It's about this idea of slow as smooth, smooth as fast,
or slow motion gets here there quicker. But you got
to understand what is it you're doing, what's your intention,
and what's the world to find outcome? So you have
to have you have to you have to master the fundamentals.
You have to understand.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
That working hard but working smart, it has to be
with a purpose.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
It has to be an intention, It has to be intentional.
You need to understand because this is what happens. We
call it deliberate practice. And then one book The Talent Code,
they call it deep practice. You got to know how
to do something. You got to master the fundamentals. Both
of those guys that just talked about the massive the fundamentals,
but you got to be willing to do the repetition
that the skill development where you make thousands and thousands
(32:06):
of repetitions and error corrections. And so what can happen
is what helps those two guys is this idea of
learning and achievement. So you learn something and you achieve it,
then it generates this I want to say, enthusiasm or
energizing enthusiasm.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
And so once you know that you can learn anything,
you want to learn that you're responsible and you're your
own best teacher, and you learn from reflecting on experience,
then you got it going on because you know, oh,
I could figure this out. It's going to be great.
Being a learner is the joy of discovery is the
willingness to put yourself at risk and do it anyway.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
So you're going to fail. So let's talk about Michael Jordan.
So when I started working with him in nineteen ninety five.
I started working with the Bows in nineteen ninety three,
and he took an eighteen month hiatus and when he
came back.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
If you think about his experience, he got cup from
his high school basketball team. So when I saw him
in nineteen ninety five, ninety six on up he had
like he was still trying to make the team. Nobody
out worked him, so something happened. He got cut from
the team. The coach said to him, I'm gonna come
pick you up five o'clock in the morning. We're gonna
put the work in. Of course he grew four or
(33:19):
five inures.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
That helped, but that wasn't as much as the mentality
of the work and saying I'm never gonna get cut again.
Speaker 4 (33:27):
That's never gonna.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Happen because I didn't put in the work and I
didn't figure it out, or I didn't have people to
help me.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
So you see where I'm going with this, no struggle,
no swag.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
People who had adversity, they overcame that adversity and then
they start developing this self belief.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
It's unsakable self belief.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Because they know that if they figure it out, if
they put in the work, if they work smarter and harder,
but really understanding what is the one thing that I
need to focus on, it's gonna help me instead of
trying to do everything.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
It's like the Peredo analysis for the eighty twenty rule.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
You just focus on this with deliberate practices, Okay, So
Kobe one summer, you know he was working on his
three point shot.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
So how did he work on that?
Speaker 1 (34:09):
He decided he was going to make thirteen hundred May
threes a day. So it wasn't just working harder, but
it was specificity with an intention, with a purpose saying
with MJ. One of the things Bobby Knight said about
MJ is he's the most fundamentally.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
Sound athlete he ever worked with. I said made him
so great because he mastered the fundamentals. Same with Kobe
for work.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
So you have to master the fundamentals, and what we
see the fancy suffer. We don't see all of the
work that he puts in all the work that they do.
And so it's not just working harder, working smarter, but
working with a purpose, with a deliberation of this is what.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
I'm going to work on, and it's going to hans
my performance.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
And every year, whether I talk about Larry Bird or
Magic Johnson or Doctor Jay, every year they were working
on expanding their game or expanding.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
Their production capacity. But it was a joy.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
I mean, these guys who play these sports, they would
pay for free, but they don't have to because it's
a love, so you get to the point where you
can love and there's no difference. Because one of the
fascinating things I know is about Michael Jordan.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
I started working with them and watching them.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Number one is you didn't know the difference between practice
and games because he was always coming at you with
that idea of dominating being the best today.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
Today I got better. And that was the thing.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
He was always pushing the envelope, always encouraging, challenging themselves,
and that's how you get in the flow when you
have that challenge skill ratio there, but you have a
clear idea of what you're doing and what you're getting
and you're able to make adjustments and a fly. So
it really comes down to being a learner and just
embracing your greatness, which means there's some things like you
(35:47):
may not be a basketball player, or you might play basketball.
Speaker 4 (35:50):
You know, maybe you want to shoot three point shots,
but you're a better rebounder.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
That's your skill. Then you got to embrace that. And
it's try not to be somebody else. I mean, I'll
share something because I think is really important what we're
talking about, and I don't mean to demean anybody or whatever.
But I was in the barbershop a couple of weeks
ago and was talking to one of the bowers and
he was upset that for the super Bowl, you know,
in the playoffs where he expected Baltimore to win with
(36:15):
my jackson, and he was upset because he said, you know.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
Lamar forgot who he was.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
He tried to be a pocket passer instead of just
letting his legs win the game for him. So this
is what happens. We get hung up because the media says, well,
you're not a true quarterback because you don't do this.
You can't listen to them. You got to be yourself.
You got to be Okay, this is what got me here. Okay,
you know I can make plays with my legs. I
had to do that, so you get what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
So you have to learn true understanding comes from reflecting
our experience. What happened there. Okay, you weren't yourself. And
I can't tell you how many times that happens because
we think we have to be somebody or we have
to win a certain way. I can go back to
a boxing match between Sugar Ray Lennen and Marvin Hagl,
who I knew and he didn't want people to think
that he was brother. That's who he was, you know.
(37:01):
So if you're not gonna do ye out none personal.
But this is how I have to play. But if
I'm worried about that and I'm going to change my
style because i want to be accepted, it's not gonna work.
So and we do this every day. I do it,
you do it. We all do it.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
We think we have to be somebody else rather than
being ourselves, instead of being to it thine own self.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
Be true. No, the truths, and the truth shall make
you free. That's what we need to do. We need
to be able to say yes to it, even though
it's inconvenient sometimes. But these folks, they spend a lot
of time and energy mastering their craft, and we all
can do that. Can we do it at the level
they do? Probably not.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
But our job is to be our best version of
ourselves to get better each day. It's not about trying
to be somebody else. It's about being who we are
and embracing it and not letting anybody.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
Tell us with somebody else.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
But when we're in the fair, when the fair wolf
is there, that's what happens. If you're in the Loved Wolf,
then the chances are you're going to say, no, I'm good.
Thanks for your opinion, but my opinion is the most
important opinion.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
Here, let me ask a question about the relationship and
ship between striving and accepting where we are right. This
is one of the things I look at in my
own life that I find to be a really nuanced
thing to figure out. Right, It's this idea that you know,
I want to be better. I want the circumstances of
my life to be better. I want to accomplish more right,
(38:18):
And that feels sort of natural and inborn right, But
there's also a really unhealthy version of that versus the
other side, which is to be content with what I have,
be content with who I am, be content with the
way things are. How do you see those things? Because
one of the things, I knew him and you didn't,
And I don't expect you to say anything about him.
(38:38):
I'm just making this observation, you know, watching some of
the stuff with Michael Jordan, I'm like, a guy looks
extraordinarily driven and intense, but I can't tell if he's
a very content person. And so again I'm not expecting
to say aything about Michael Jordan. I'm just saying, in general,
how do you think about that balance between contentment and striving?
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Well, let me talk about myself. Yeah, it's July thirty
for us. I'll be forty as a sobriety.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Congratulations.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
It's a long time, forty years of sobriety. I've average
over a book a week minimum. Okay.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
So I'm pursuing excellence and wisdom with grace and ease.
I didn't have the grace and eeds before. I was
doing it with this warrior energy. Then I realized, oh man,
that's right. Efort is slow, is smooth, smooth as fast.
Just do what you know to do and the next
that we'll be given to you. Just go with the flow.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
And there's times when you'll be more intense, times when
you're easy.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
But that's a read, that's an understanding, like sometimes you
got to get after it.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
But you're right.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
We spend most of our time between boredom and anxiety.
And anxiety is when we are challenged and our skills
and knowledge experience no how it doesn't meet it. And
then it's sometimes when we have a lot of know
how and experience, but we don't challenge ourselves, so we
get bored.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
So this is the thing.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
So you're finding that balance between not settling and not
being excessive. And that's why this whole flow genome that
Steve Catler and his groups talked about and this book
that other impossible.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
He talks about.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Getting up to four percent, but some people who are
like type A, like myself, we may have to go
up to thirty percent of anxiety to get there.
Speaker 4 (40:11):
But that's why you got to know yourself.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
But you got to know yourself, know when you need
to push and.
Speaker 4 (40:17):
When you need to hold back.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
And that's why when you have coaches and folks that
are around you, they could be helpful. So there was recently,
I think Phil Jackson was when they made the Kobe
but I know Phil I was there. There was one
game I think Kobe had like fifty points or an
extraordinary amount of points in the third quarter and Phil
wouln't let him play in the fourth quarter because he
(40:39):
knew if he would have played in the fourth quarter,
then that energy he took to do that it might
take him two weeks to recover fromhim. So sometimes you
have to have people around you that are able to say,
dollar it down, or let's slow down, because the intention
of wanting to achieve a goal may overcome your well being.
You see what I'm saying. So it's always about heart
(40:59):
and compare for yourself, empathy, compassion for yourself, and you
can get out of your comfort zone, but it can't
be so far out of your comfort zone that the
anxiety is going to have an impact on either you
physically or emotionally where you're not able to be rational yep, right,
and you're pushing yourself and sometimes you got to be unreasonable,
but you can't sustain that.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
And you got to know what's your motivation. Are you
doing this for selfish reasons or you're doing it for
the greatest good? That is huge. That is really huge
because when it's selfish and you're coming from the fear
of being driven by like Joseph Campbell talked about being
in that place of rest when we're performing at our best,
where we're not compelled by fear or desire, we just
(41:40):
hold our center. That's pure performance. That's why I call
it pure performance because it's the activity in and of
itself is the motivation. It's what sending me. I called
autotelic personality.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
You do the thing for the activity in and of itself,
being in the moment, being fully engaged, fully deployed.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
That's it. Now in the results all the others, yeah,
that's that. But the main.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Driver is to feel like I got better today and
I left everything out there, but I didn't do it
in a way where it's going to cause harm to
myself physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
And sometimes we're going to go over, sometimes we're going
to go under.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
But that's the titration, that's the calibration, that's the reflection,
and that's the assessment of Okay, yeah I went a
little bit fire, I can need to tone it up.
Speaker 4 (42:23):
I could have done more, and you do more because
it makes sense. But it's the compassionate action, the awareness,
the acceptance, the compassionate action, that compassion for yourself and others,
and then the assessment. So without the compassion, once you
lose your humanity, that's when you see people that are
driven and would destroy people or lose their humanity, that's
(42:45):
when it becomes a problem your humanity and still be
a lead performer and still push yourself and push others
to have that killer instinct. But having that killer instinct
with losing your.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Capacity your humanity or your capacity to be compassionate. That's
the problem. That's why you know the Golden State war
is for their core.
Speaker 4 (43:03):
Values used to be.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
I don't know if it still is joy, mindfulness, compassion,
then competition. So the compassion piece the empathy piece, and
this is emotional intelligence. You know, like the IQ will
get you the job, but the EQU is going to
get you the transformation and the promotion.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
So what is EQ.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
What I talk about is self awareness and self regulation.
That's the first part of it. That's the internal journey.
The external or the relational part is social awareness and
relationship development. I would say, I don't like the word management,
relationship cultivation.
Speaker 4 (43:36):
We'll call it that. And that is where you have
empathic listening to the other person. You care about.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
The person you listen, they're a whole person and not
somebody has a body that's means to end. But they
have a body of mind or heart and the soul
or spirit. So it's the whole person. And when you
treat somebody as a whole person, they'll give their heart
to you. If you treat them as a thing, if
you leave out any one of those four components, now
you're relating to them as a thing or I and
(44:03):
it what Buba talked about, and they might rebell or
they might do what you ask them to do, but
I hope it doesn't work. But they're not going to
give you their whole heart. That you're not going to
have a partnership. You're not going to have a collaborator
who you know, think when when you know synergy's better together,
teamwork makes a dream work. We want that as individuals.
We have this desire to connect to something greater than ourselves.
(44:27):
So when we can use that in ways where we
have a worthy cause and we have core values that
are in alignment with you know, not losing our humanity,
being compassionate and having empathy, seeking wisdom and loving kindness,
then we're into something. And so that's what's missing and
missing when you talk about you can be so ruthless
or you're you know, you can push yourself.
Speaker 4 (44:47):
I've done that.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
I sat to my knees not right because I sat
through the pain because I had that warror energy before
I realized, no, compassion is important. You know, I can
move my leg and it's not about reachieving a goal
at any cart is about achieving a goal but not
losing my compassion.
Speaker 4 (45:03):
That's why I call it compassionate action, not just action.
Compassionate action.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
It's based on non harm on goodwill.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
So you talked a little bit there, and I think
you've alluded to it in the conversation a little bit,
And it's in your writing a lot about this sort
of parasympathetic versus sympathetic response, right, and broadly speaking, right,
parasympathetic is what we consider sort of the rest and
digest or the relaxed state, and sympathetic is the more
keyed up fight flight. And as I was reading that,
(45:47):
and I was thinking a little bit and reflecting on
my own life, I started to wonder. It seems to
me there's a lot of things that are either at
the high end of one of those or the low
end of the other, where I don't really feel like
I'm in like a deep, calm, relaxing state, but I
certainly don't feel like I'm in any sort of fight flight.
How do you think about that?
Speaker 4 (46:08):
Like everything, mindfulness, compassion, whatever, on the scale of one
to ten or whatever, there's variation. You see what I'm saying,
so you could.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Be relatively relaxed and alert, or you could be relatively
keyed up, but you need the keyed up. It's the
balance between them. And this is why I say to
people a lot of times people don't want to meditate,
they don't want to be still and no, but I'm
right handed, so my left brain dominates and the right brain.
So the left brain has the one plus one equals
(46:38):
to the words of the song, the sequence reading the
first chapter and then start with the first and going literally.
Then the nonlinear is one plus one might equal six.
It's the melody, it's the big picture, all of that stuff,
and it doesn't get a word in edgewise if we
stay in that active mode and we don't stop and
(46:59):
focus on one thing or disrelaxed and meditate, prayer, whatever
it is, and just be locked in so that now
you're using both sides of your brain, and this probably
is not dominating. So we have to have these practices
that allow us to allow our intuition. That's why I say,
you know you're in that place of rest. Now that
right brain, although they're connected, they're not totally separate. You know,
(47:21):
the combinations, but that right brain. That's where the wisdom
and the creativity comes from. But if you're not at rest,
if that love wolf is not Donan, then that fair
wolf you're not going to have access to that wisdom
and that creativity. It's just not going to happen. So
when you talk about sympathetic and power sympathetic, that's the
fair wolf and the love wolf.
Speaker 4 (47:41):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
And so we need both because I need that sympathetic
because when I'm walking across the street and a car
or some dangerous happening, I.
Speaker 4 (47:50):
Can't reflect on wealth.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
Should I move my body will move me out of
the way, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (47:56):
So we need both. But we just don't live in
a hostile environment.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Well some of us don't live in a hospitle environment
where your reptilian brain is seeking danger. And believe it
or not, the resource says that nine out of ten
todds are negative because of that. That's why if we
don't train this ability to rest and digest, because if
we don't, we're going to have GI problems. We're going
to have stress related issues because now your immune system's
(48:22):
not working properly, and stuff you know you don't have
access to because when the brain is stressed out, you
don't you don't have access. You're like forty percent dumber.
It's just nothing personal. So there's a value to being
able to have a balanced brain. However you want to
look at it.
Speaker 4 (48:38):
Does that make sense? And knowing when you need to
rep things up and when you need to calm things down.
And that's the interesting thing.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
When I first started meditating, and I first started just
being doing relaxation or just being in my body, just
sitting and breathing, I hear the gurgling and all these
other sounds while.
Speaker 4 (48:56):
That's the rest and digest. Yeah, that's the body.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
Actually, no one is saying without your permission, but you're
not getting in the way. Being relaxed is one of
the most valuable skills we can have.
Speaker 4 (49:07):
Not so relax with your chill act, but relax but
yeah alert.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
That makes sense. And so that's why it's a balance,
Like you said, the valiance. So sometimes you got to
be really locked in. Other times you can be relatively
locked in or relatively calm, like just being able to
watch over something. The analogy they use is like you know,
you're a farmer and you have calls in the field
and when there's a crop, you got to really pay attention,
(49:31):
You got to be mindful, you got to be diligent
about keeping them away from it. But then once the
crop is harvested, then you can have this relaxed alertness
that just kind of watch and make sure they don't
get into trouble. That's like mindfulness. That's an observation of
mindfulness where you're just noticing, but you're not doing anything
other than taking in the information.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
So let's talk briefly as we near the end of
our time here about comfort zone. You say you can't
push yourself so far out of your comfort zone that
your body breaks down or the ultimately give up because
you can't sustain it. And then you went on to
talk about people like doctor j Jordan and Kobe. You
said their comfort zones were like a horizon, always moving
(50:11):
forward in front of them as they approached.
Speaker 4 (50:14):
Right.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
And I love that idea because, like you said, it
means we don't have to go far outside of our
comfort zone, but we have to continually be redefining our
comfort zone.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
Yes, yes, another way of saying that our production capacity,
capacity to produce and whatever. So it's in alignment with
actually neuroplasticity if you really think about it, the four
octiuent tips of neuroplasticity that is creating new brain connections.
You know, the first step is going to have access
to oxygen, so that means you're aerobic right up, because
in these oxygen's develop new brain connections as well. Second
(50:47):
thing is it's got to be incremental. And the third
thing is it's got to be hard to do but douable.
That's what we're talking about here, how to do but duable.
It's got to be so you're just below your edge
and then you're moving beyond that, but you're moving with compassion.
Speaker 4 (51:03):
You know, slow motion gets you there quicker.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
You know, you just ease a little bit out, just
and it's a flow, it's not this hirky jerky thing. Then,
like if you do yoga, you get to a place
where it's tight and then you just breathe through it.
You just honor it, and then you're able to just
slightly move to it and then you keep doing that,
you keep doing that and you keep increasing capacity. And
the fourth thing you need for neuroplasticity is this idea
(51:26):
of interest. Because when you become interested in something, it
stimulates the motivational circuits and the brain. So think about
how that's connected. You know, you get your oxygen rate out,
you do it in increments, baby steps, short feedback loops.
It's hard to do, but doable, and you bring interest
and curiosity into it, so to stimulate your motivational circuits.
Speaker 3 (51:49):
Yeah, I really like that. So listener and thinking about
that and all the other great wisdom from today's episode.
If you were going to isolate just one top insight
that you're taking away, what would it be. Remember, little
by little, a little becomes a lot. Change happens by
us repeatedly taking positive action. And I want to give
you a tip on that, and it's to start small.
(52:11):
It's really important when we're trying to implement new habits
to often start smaller than we think we need to
because what that does is it allows us to get victories.
And victories are really important because we become more motivated
when we're feeling good about ourselves, and we become less
motivated when we're feeling bad about ourselves. So by starting
small and making sure that you succeed, you build your
(52:33):
motivation for further change down the road. If you'd like
a step by step guide for how you can easily
build new habits that feed your good Wolf. Go to
Goodwolf dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. Well, George,
we are at the end of our time together, although
you and I are going to continue to talk a
little bit more in a post show conversation and I
(52:54):
really want to focus in there on the five superpowers.
So we're going to talk about what the five superpowers are. Yes,
there listeners. If you'd like access to more of our
time together with George and I ad free episodes. If
you'd like to support a show that makes a difference
in your life and in the difference of many many others,
(53:15):
you can go to one feed dot net slash join. George,
thank you so much for coming on. It has been
a pleasure to talk with you.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
Yes, so if people want to know more about my work,
obviously you can go to georgemumfit dot com. And you
know I have a YouTube channel with not of course
you have the book The Mind for Athlete and Pure Performance.
I mean, we're just scratching the surface, but I'm so
excited for this opportunity, and your podcast is so much
in an alignment of what I've been teaching.
Speaker 3 (53:42):
Thank you, No, you're very welcome. You're very welcome. It's
a pleasure, and we'll make sure we have links in
the show notes to your website, your book, and your
YouTube channel. So thank you so much, George.
Speaker 4 (53:51):
You're welcome.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
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(54:29):
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the show.
We have choices, and we can have wise choices, and
we can choose if we can slow things down enough
to have that space, bechige stomnas and respond to choose wisely,
to choose in alignment with not only our values, but
how the universe works.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
(00:41):
or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
what we do. We think things that hold us back
and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
how other people keep themselves moved in the right direction,
(01:01):
how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Our guest on this episode is George Mumford, a globally
(01:22):
recognized speaker, teacher and coach. Since nineteen eighty nine, he's
been honing his groundbreaking performance and mindfulness techniques with people
from locker rooms to boardrooms, from Yale to jail. Michael
Jordan credits George with transforming his on court leadership, while
Mumford has also worked with Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neil, and
(01:42):
countless other NBA players, olympians, executives and artists. Today, George
and Eric discuss his new book, Unlocked, Embrace your Greatness,
Find the Flow, Discover Success.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Hi, George, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Hi, it's great to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on. I've been
following your work for a number of years, and today
we're going to be talking about your latest book, which
is called Unlocked, Embrace your Greatness, Find the Flow, and
Discover Success. But before we do that, we'll start, like
we always do, with a parable. In the parable, there's
a grandparent who's talking to their grandchild and they say,
in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
(02:19):
are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. I think about
it for a second they look up at their grandparents,
they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says,
the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
(02:40):
by asking you what that parable means to you in
your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Thank you for asking that. That's a prime directive in
my work, did I do? I use that story. I've
summarized it down to fear and love, Yeah, which is
the same principle and as the one that you feed,
and so I use that.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
That's the essence of what I teach is.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
That you have to be clear about are you feeding
the love wolf or the fail wolf? Because if you
feed the love wolf, then you're going to be open
and you're going to have access to your masterpiece within
you're going to be able to unlock. As long as
you're in the fail wolf, you're going to be in
the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
I guess is another word for it.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
But you're going to be on your heels and you're
going to be reactive, and you're going to be in
scarcity mode.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I love that. Listener As you're listening, what resonated with
you in that? I think a lot of us have
some ideas of things that we can do to feed
our good wolf, and here's a good tip to make
it more likely that you do it. It can be
really helpful to reflect right before you do that thing
on why you want to do it. Our brains are
always making a calculation of what neuroscientists would call reward value, basically,
(03:56):
is this thing worth doing? And so when you're getting
ready to do this thing that you want to do
to feed your good wolf, reflecting on why actually helps
to make the reward value on that higher and makes
it more likely that you're going to do that. For example,
if what you're trying to do is exercise, right before
you're getting ready to exercise, it can be useful to
remind yourself of why, for example, I want to exercise
(04:21):
because it makes my mental and emotional health better today.
If you'd like a step by step guide for how
you can easily build new habits that feed your good wolf,
go to goodwolf dot me, slash change and join the
free masterclass. I love the way you've sort of boiled
that down to you know, fear and love, So I
want to talk a little bit because you know you've
(04:42):
done work ranging from the top of the top pro athletes,
Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, those type of people. And you
also have done a lot of work in prisons, where
we might say people are sort of at the bottom
of the bottom, right, And you talk about this idea
that greatness can be discovered in every one of us,
(05:02):
And I'm curious, how do we think about that if
we think about it from a few different levels, right,
One level is the Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan's right, But
you also coach teams in general, and so you know,
the next level might be your average pro athlete, right,
you know, and then let's talk about somebody like me,
and then let's finally talk about somebody in prison. What
(05:25):
is the common thread that allows each of us to
use the word great in our own lives?
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Here?
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Thank you for asking and this interesting I see my
mind working as you were asking the question. And so
when you think of Michelangelo or Michael Angelo, depending on
how you pronounce his name, when he was being interviewed
back in the day and they asked him, well, how
do you create these masterpieces out of these blocks of marble?
And he says, all I do is chip away to
get to the masterpiece that's already there. And so in
(05:54):
my mind, whether I'm doing that work that Michael Angelo
was doing and in or in a sports facility, it's
the same work, even though the marble might be in
a different location. Whether you're in prison or your jail, yeah,
locker room, boardroom, you represent that block of marble. And
then the question becomes, how do you tip away to
(06:16):
get to the masterpiece thats already in there. So it's
the same work even though they're in different places. Now
how they manifest would be different. But my job is
just to release the device park but a masterpiece within,
and how they express themselves, well, that's up to them.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
My job is to help them access it.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
But you might say, and it's interesting because back years
ago it was this guy's name was Matthew Fox. He
was a Dominican priest and he wrote a book called
The Original Blessing.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Yep, I think we've had mass I would be more
in alignment with that, in other words, like we have salvation.
We have this masterpiece within, this greatness within, and it
could be accessed. But the interesting thing is.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Whether you're and Yale or jail, locker room or boarding room,
the interesting thing is it can only be access.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
It's an inside game by you.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
So my job is to help the person embrace their
greatness so that they can find the flow, so they
can discover success.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
But that's the challenge.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
But the work is the same whether it's in a
jail or in a locker room, whether you're Kobe Bryant
or you're just every day Joe or Sally, it's the
same work as how do you unlock? And that's the
process we get involved in, is unlocking. So we're starting
off from a basic premise that there's nothing wrong. It's
just a matter of uncovering or releasing a divine spark,
(07:37):
if you want to call it that.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Do you know when they interviewed Michelangelo about that? Did
they do it on a podcast?
Speaker 4 (07:43):
I can't.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
I can't remember.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Yeah it was.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
I don't know if it was in secret or in
the public square, because back in those days there's something
you couldn't talk about and survive. So I'm not really right,
that's right. I'm not really sure what the context was.
But conversation is interesting. The conversation is the same conversation.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Yeah, So going back to what you said earlier about fear,
and love.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
When we think of greatness, right, one of the things
we have a tendency to do is compare ourselves to
things that we see outside of us that are great, right,
And so we could say that's a little bit more
of the fear mode. It's the fear mode. And I
think you know, when people are looking at greatness, they're
thinking about performance often, right, But I don't think that's
(08:30):
quite what we're talking about here, because obviously you could
unlock the best version of me, right, but I'm never
going to play basketball like I mean, even an average
college athlete right at my breast. So and somebody in prison,
the number of things that they actually are able to
(08:50):
do is very restricted. So how do you transition someone
from an external concept of greatness to an internal concept
of greatness? Because I think that's what you're saying.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Right, Yes, So we call the locus of control. It
is internal. It's always been internal. But we have been
programmed to think that everything's out here, that the environment,
places and things give us value. And what we discover
is that we have our own unique value and we
have to go inside to figure out what that is.
So one size does not fit all. So maybe One
(09:25):
person values to play basketball, another person values to write poetry.
Another person's value is be a leader, be able to
bring people together, or be able to help people help themselves.
So we all have this uniqueness, and there's only one
of us. So I would say, I think of you, Eric.
There never will be or never was, anybody like you.
(09:47):
In your essence, what's inside your masterpiece? And so your
job is to be you. I can't tell you what
that is. That's an inside job. But if you follow
your bless you follow your heart. If you pay attention,
that's still small voice, it's easily drawn out, will help
you access you know why you were here and how
you can do things in your particular, unique way. And
(10:08):
that's what we need. We need everybody to be themselves.
And I'll go back to what I refer to Soar
and careca God, this existential philosopher of going back in
the eighteen hundreds. One thing he said is the most
devastating kind of despair is not being yourself. And so
that's our job to be ourselves. But what gets in
the way is what he called the allowing possibility of
(10:28):
being able. So if I take a quarter a coin
and one side is heads, that's my potential, that's my freedom.
The other side is tails, that's uncertain, the anxiety. They
come together, and so I would say our biggest challenge
is being able to overcome the anxiety that comes with
the freedom. And I believe they called it an existential
(10:51):
psychotherapy or philosophy.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
They called it the dizziness of freedom.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
You know, it's like you're walking on shaky ground because
you're embracing that unknown.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, one of the
great things about modern society is the degree of freedom
that we largely have. And it is dizzying for many
many people because many of the old rules about who
to be, how to be they're not there anymore in
the way that they were. And so in addition to
(11:22):
being like, if you want to be a good person, right,
it's a lot of work to be a good person,
just like living up to it.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
But on top of that, right, we kind of got
to figure out what that means at the same time. Right,
So there's a lot of work to be done there,
I think, and being the person we want to be
because we have to figure out what does that actually
mean to me, which is you know, this gets to
the dizziness of freedom piece. And then the second part is, now,
how do I actually live that? Although I do think that,
you know, I know you've studied extensively in the Buddhist tradition,
(11:52):
so there are frameworks and reference points that we can
use as guide posts, so that freedom isn't quite so dizzy.
Would you say?
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Yes, Well, when you really think about it, you can
be spontaneous or of one's free will. But it's really
challenging to do because we get challenged when we do that.
And so from a point of view, what we're really
talking about when we're talking about freedom, and it's interesting
depending on your circumstance.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
So I'll talk about Victor Frankel.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
You know, he wrote the book Man Search for Meeting,
and he was in a concentration camp, and he said
that man's ultimate freedom is no matter what happens to us,
we get to choose how we react to respond to it.
In that space, the other freedom and power to choose,
and so.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
On your way. You know, if you have unavoidable.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Suffering, whether it's cancer or just something really bad happens
to you, something that's very devastating, like.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
A loss of yourself or a loved one or the.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Way of being that you always can choose the attitude
or how you interpret what it means.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
And that's the ultimate freedom.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
And so being in a concentration camp, you're right, you
don't have liberty, but you have freedom in your mind
because you can choose to let things affect you or
you can choose to interpret them in ways.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
That empower and aspire you. So that's the ultimate freedom.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Now, a lot of us make choices, but how do
you choose when you're about to die or you have
the choice of saving yourself or doing what's right, being
selfish or being selfless.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
And so that's the ultimate freedom. And so we.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Always have choice, and even when we don't make a choice,
you're choosing. And so that's the main thing that I
love about this is like I am responsible. I have
self awareness, And because I have self awareness, I can
self regulate. I can regulate my thoughts, feeling, behaviors. I
can choose to create space between stemus and response. And
in that space, I have the freedom and power to choose,
(13:48):
and I can choose based on my values, based on
what I believe is important.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
But I get to choose that.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Yeah, I love Victor Frankele and that idea of the
space between stimulus and response was transformational to me the
first time I heard it. And I think you and
I talked before getting on the air that we're both
recovering IV heroin users, right, And you know, a big
part of recovery for me was recognizing there is that
space between stimulus and response.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
If there wasn't, I never could have gotten better.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
It was recognizing that, Okay, the stimulus is here telling
me I should use drugs, but there is a space
and I can choose it. And you know, my understanding
of a lot of meditation, mindfulness awareness practices for me
is that it increases that space. Right, Yes, it makes
that space bigger, ris.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
It gets us out of reactivity and into being in
a moment as it is and seeing it in new
and fresh ways. So if we get out of our
habitual ways of being and recognize this idea of wisdom
begins in wonder or can we look at the unfolding,
unknown moment with fresh eyes, with a beginner's mind, where
the mind it's open to everything and not limited to
(14:57):
what we already know or what we expect, but really
just being willing to be vulnerable enough to let the
unfolding unknown moment express itself as it is.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
You talk about awareness a lot and acceptance right of
the moment as it is. And at the same time
you are also considered a performance coach, right, right, So
you're not teaching people just be with what is, and
that's the way it is, right. I think you're pointing
towards this awareness and this saying yes to the moment
(15:29):
as it is as a step on the way to
then being able to make the best response and to
become better versions of ourselves. So the sort of yes
to life is not an ending point, it's kind of
a beginning point. I think, Yes, the way you're talking
about it, right.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Yes, thank you for sharing that. And awareness I'm talking
about is like a mirror mind. It's just reflects what's
in front of it. It's not an interpretation. It's just
letting things speak in their own language. And so I
talk about the four a's.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
So the four a's are awareness, aceptance, compassionate, action, and
assessment and so be able to say yes to what's there.
But saying yes is not just having the reflection of
seeing it, but it's accepting it as it is. It
is the acceptance of it. Yes, saying yes to it
(16:17):
is the acceptance of it. But without accepting it, we
won't see it. And so there's this combination of accepting
and seeing it and then the compassionate action, which is,
you know, based on this based between stemising response. Whatever
my values are, if I value life from about love
and compassion and seeking to understand, then that action, that
(16:37):
choice that I make is going to be in alignment
with those values. And then afterwards the fourth of the assessment,
that's where we reflect on experience, because true understanding comes
from reflecting on experience. So we reflect on it, well,
you know, was that helpful or was it not helpful?
And if it wasn't helpful, how do I get what
wasn't helpful to be helpful?
Speaker 4 (16:57):
But it's just as.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
The saying goes unexamined, life is not worth living. You
got to examine it, and you examine it. Why Because
we have this ability to self regulate, to change what
we're doing so that we can get a different result.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
We're not locked in, we're not boxed in.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
We have choices, and we can have wise choices, and
we can choose if we can slow things down enough
to have that space, you change stemnus and response to
choose widely, to choose in alignment with not only our values,
but how the universe works. So I give you an example.
You don't have to believe in gravity, but it's lawfulness.
If you jump up, you will come down. It's nothing
(17:33):
about believing. It's just the way things are. So once
you embrace that, then you can use gravity to do
whatever you need to do because you're working in alignment
with how it works. And I can say that about
a lot of other things. This is a friend of
the universe if you see it that way, and there's
a lawfulness to it. And there's certain principles that don't change.
Principles don't change their timeless the universal, and they's self evident.
(17:55):
I know for myself that whatever I give, I get back.
So if I get if you grief, I'm going to
get grief back. If I give you love, I'm going
to give love back. There's a lawfulness in this universe.
If I'm coming out of that fear you talked about,
then I'm going to be coming from scarcity and I'm probably.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Going to be more hostile or more fearful.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
If I come from love, from an openness, I'm coming
from abundance. I'm coming from this place that says, Okay,
something happens, I make a mistake, but I can learn
from it.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
I can correct it.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Versus I made a mistake, I am a bad person
and there's nothing I can do about it.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
No, you just have to be willing to understand.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
How do I the how to question, how do I
do what I say I want to do? Even though
I got feedback just said that didn't work. Am I
willing to learn and practice so that I could do it.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
I'm going to come up with a pretend scenario here.
I'm a coach of a I don't know a university
sports team, and I've got a player who has a
lot of potential, but they're not really living into it.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
We look at them and go, well, why are they
not better? And obviously, you know, we as the coaches,
are working on the X and o's of their game,
their shooting technique, all that kind of stuff, So you
don't come in to help with that piece of it.
But when you come in, you know, how do you
start with someone and how do you work with them
on getting to and we're going to talk about this later.
You don't like the term peak performance, you like the
(19:18):
term pure performance, and we'll get to that. But how
do you work with somebody on improving their performance? Like?
What things are you looking for? What kind of questions
are you asking? What does this look like?
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Yeah, so basically I come in and I ask them
what do you want? And then based on that then
they'll say, okay, So if you want something, you have
to be something. And so meeting them where they are
and really getting clear because sometimes you go in and
they may be doing something they don't really want to do,
or they might be doing it because somebody else wants
them to do it. So the first thing I do
(19:50):
is understand what's your intention?
Speaker 4 (19:53):
You know?
Speaker 1 (19:53):
In other words, I want to teach them the self
awareness and the self regulation. So basically it's like you
have self awayenness as you were responsible, and if you
don't like what you're getting.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Then you can do something about it. You have a masterpiece.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
You have this ability to change how you see yourself,
what you're doing. And normally, when somebody is talented and
they're not able to express that talent, it's because there's
something in the way, some self limiting belief and normally
it has to do with their self concept, how they
see themselves, and so just really getting clear about that.
(20:26):
Or it may be that they say didn't want to
do it, but they don't really want to do it,
So it's just really getting on. It's getting clear with
you know, who are you and why are you here?
Because that's usually the question I asked. It's like, Okay,
you're here, Why are you here? What's your intention? You know,
do you have a goal? Do you have an idea?
I work with this one football player. His goal was
to make the team, so he tried out for the team,
(20:48):
made it, but then he didn't have anything else, so
he had to set another goal.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
You know, Okay, you made the team.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
So you have to keep engaging yourself, keep challenging yourself,
or keep that intention for being able to do something alive.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
So, assuming we've got someone and we are at the
point where, you know, we know that they want to
be doing what they're doing, they've got the right goal
right right, but they're still just not getting there kind
of where do you go next? What's the next things
that you start looking at with them?
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yeah, so you want to look at what's in the way,
what's getting in the way, And it could be a
variety of things, but basically, one scenario might be that
they want to do it, but unconsciously they don't think
they deserve it, or they don't think they're as good
as they could be as the self image, how they
think feel behave about themselves. But whatever it is in
(22:06):
the way, they could be maybe something happened when they
were younger.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
And they just don't think that they can succeed.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Maybe they ever finish anything, or whatever it is, or
could be somebody who told them that they were never
going to amount to anything. There's some self limiting belief
that's in there, that operating, and so then that becomes
the work. What's in the way becomes away, as Marcus
really has said centuries ago, what's in the way becomes
a way. But just knowing that something is off, or
(22:35):
something's missing, or he's just not clicking. And usually they
could be you know, if I look at the whole person,
the body of the mind, heart and the soul or spirit,
it could be something in there. It could be that
maybe they're wanting to please somebody, maybe they're playing because
of their parents, or they want to please the coach
instead of just being able to just play for themselves
(22:56):
just to really be enjoying it. So a lot of people,
I would say the main things that I encounter a
lot people try too hard. They want it too badly,
and they're trying too hard and they're efforting and they're
trying hard and nackets in a way instead of them
just performing and being okay to make mistakes. So the
fear of failure could be there, to fear success, It
(23:17):
could be something, but it's you know, like we talked
about it, they're feeding the fair wolf and the fair
wolf is dominating, and as a result of that, they're
withholding or they're trying too harder, they're not trying hard enough.
So there might be this balance of you know, trying
too hard, not trying at all, trying hard and then
withdrawing energy and then you know, being confused and not
(23:37):
knowing what they need to do. So the idea is
to help them get clarity about the fact that they
need to make choices, and they're making choices and what
do you want to do? Take responsibility for what you're doing.
So if I get them to a place of courage,
as doctor Harkins talks about, where they say I am
responsible no excuses. There's a book called I'm Becoming a
(23:58):
Leader written by Larren Venice, and he talks about the
four lessons of self knowledge, because you got to know yourself,
to be yourself, to express yourself, to have yourself.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
So it's really about.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Them knowing who they are and knowing how they really
feel about things. But in those four steps, he talks
about the first step, you can learn anything you want
to learn, so you got to be a learner, be responsible,
no excuses. The third thing is you're your own best teacher.
So that's another way of saying you're responsible for what
you learn. You can't have somebody else come in say
(24:31):
you should learn this and that at some point you
got to own it. And then the fourth lesson is
true understanding comes from reflecting on experience, and so it's
really meeting them where they are, getting to see how
they're seeing things, and then helping them make adjustments so
that what's in the way becomes a way. And you know,
once you remove those obstructions, then you become unlocked. But
(24:52):
once again, it's not a one time thing. You get unlocked.
But then you know you're having a success.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
Like this guy.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
His challenge was, you know, the fourthotball player was Okay,
if he doesn't have any goals, he's just showing up
with no passion, with no purpose.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
So there's got to be a purpose.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
It's got to be an intention, and sometimes the best
intention is just to help other people succeed.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
Is to say, Okay, I'm a part of something greater
than myself.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
I'm part of a team, and that means that I
care about my teammates and I'm going to do what
I need to do to help them and they're going
to help me. So it's really getting them to be
a whole person to really understand that, you know, just
to you know, shut up and dribble or just play
football and don't think, or I don't care how you feel,
that's not realistic. You got to deal with the whole person.
(25:35):
They got to body, my heart and soul. And so
you talk about the mental, the emotional, and social. That's
this one interact with self and others and the spirit,
you know, contribution in being something greater than yourself. So
you got to deal with the whole person. And then
you got to really be clear about well why am
I here? Because being a student athlete, you don't have
a social life. All your work is on academics and athletics,
(25:59):
and so you have to want it. It has to
be an intention. If you're just doing it because it's
something to do, you may not have the energy you
need to really succeed or to really take responsibility and
want to get better.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
Does that makes sense?
Speaker 1 (26:12):
So when I talked about the self awareness at the
four a's is like, you be aware, Okay, here I.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
Am and I'm not living up to my potential.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
So the awareness of that and then accepting that, because see,
that's the biggest thing, because it's really challenging to say, well,
you know, I don't know if I really want to
be here, you know, or you know, I don't trust
in myself because no one wants to say I'm not
happy and you know.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
I'm inadequate.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
People are going to tell you that, but they're thinking
that and they're behaving that. And unless they embrace the
fact that yeah, I'm not happy or I don't have
confidence in myself, then once you see that and accept it,
now we can work on it. Now we can say okay,
what confidence comes from understanding stuff, but putting in the
work and getting the results. So this whole idea of
(27:01):
being a learner, I'll talk about it that way. So
it doesn't matter what's poort it is.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
You got to learn.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
You've got to be a learner. You got to learn
how to do it. What's the essentials? You got to
learn about yourself. You learned about how do you know
when you're being yourself when you're not being yourself? How
do you know when you're doing something because somebody else
wants you to do it or because you want to
do it. That's where you got to go to the
inside job and you got to know yourself and really
be honest about how you feel and how you're seeing things.
(27:26):
And that could be challenging because we live in a
society where we don't necessarily do that, We don't necessarily
see the whole person. You could be a coach and
with good intentions, but you have depending on the size
of your team. If you're talking about a soccer team,
you might have twenty plus people on your team, and
how do you attend to all of those and you
only get twenty hours a week or twenty two hours
(27:47):
a week to work with them, and so your tendency
is probably going to be focused on what's wrong, or
you don't have the time to just go in and
ask each person, I have to know you, so I
know how to motivate you or how to get you
to motivate yourself. And so there's all of these these
variables that are involved, but it really comes down to
(28:08):
just knowing that you have a whole person and they
have a masterpiece within, So how do we get them
to embrace that, to accept it and put in the work.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
The awareness, the acceptance is the compassionate action, and then
the assessment.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
You know, how do you keep getting better, you learn
from your mistakes, you're not your mistakes, that.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
Sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
So it's really challenging to do it, and that like
one size fits all, but basically it comes down to
seeing what's in the way and then that becomes away.
So if it's self limiting beliefs, then we got to
work with that. If it's you know, feeling like you
don't deserve to be there, then we got to work
with that. Or maybe you try too hard, you want it,
but you don't know how to do it, and so
(28:50):
helping people to understand that. But a lot of it
is the regulation self regulation what I talked about, and
the fourth lessons of self knowledge, and that is you're
your own best yep, you know you can learn anything,
and that you got to be responsible as you're responsibility
is not people, places and things.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
You have to do it as an inside job. And
once you embrace that, then you.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Start developing what we call strong self efficacy belief because
you know, no matter what happens, you can choose your
response if you can create that space and even if
you're reacting to something, you can learn from that and
decide not to react that way. But it's not simple
or simple, but not easy. But it's really clear about
you know, getting to know who you are.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
So you got to know who you are, so you
can be who you are. And that's the that's the thing,
and it's not emulating somebody else.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
You can do that, like when you learn how to
play guitar or something. Yeah, we do that, but we
emulate people. We might play somebody's tune, but at some
point we got to own it and we got to
find our own way. But we emulate other people, we
copy other people, but at some point we have to
make it our own.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
Does it make any sense what I'm saying?
Speaker 3 (29:55):
I wanted to pause for a quick good Wolf reminder.
This one's about a habit and a mistake I see
people making. And that's really that we don't think about
these new habits that we want to add in the
context of our entire life. Right, Habits don't happen in
a vacuum. They have to fit in the life that
we have. So when we just keep adding I should
(30:16):
do this, I should do that, I should do this,
we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what
we're not going to do in order to make that happen.
So it's really helpful for you to think about where
is this going to fit and what in my life
might I need to remove. If you want to step
by step guide for how you can easily build new
habits that feed your good Wolf, go to good Wolf
(30:37):
dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. So
I want to go back to something you said earlier,
and you said, oftentimes somebody is trying too hard, and
you know from reading your book and just reading things
in the press. Right, when we think about people like
Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. What we know is that
they worked incredibly hard, perhaps harder than anybody else. So
(31:00):
tell me the distinction between that, like, I'm willing to
put in the work, I'm going to work really hard,
versus trying too hard.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
So a lot of times we think it's the elbow
grease or the physical effort, and I talk about this
is my rindful athlete.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
This is the right effort. It's not like working hard
and then stopping.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
It's about this idea of slow as smooth, smooth as fast,
or slow motion gets here there quicker. But you got
to understand what is it you're doing, what's your intention,
and what's the world to find outcome? So you have
to have you have to you have to master the fundamentals.
You have to understand.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
That working hard but working smart, it has to be
with a purpose.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
It has to be an intention, It has to be intentional.
You need to understand because this is what happens. We
call it deliberate practice. And then one book The Talent Code,
they call it deep practice. You got to know how
to do something. You got to master the fundamentals. Both
of those guys that just talked about the massive the fundamentals,
but you got to be willing to do the repetition
that the skill development where you make thousands and thousands
(32:06):
of repetitions and error corrections. And so what can happen
is what helps those two guys is this idea of
learning and achievement. So you learn something and you achieve it,
then it generates this I want to say, enthusiasm or
energizing enthusiasm.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
And so once you know that you can learn anything,
you want to learn that you're responsible and you're your
own best teacher, and you learn from reflecting on experience,
then you got it going on because you know, oh,
I could figure this out. It's going to be great.
Being a learner is the joy of discovery is the
willingness to put yourself at risk and do it anyway.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
So you're going to fail. So let's talk about Michael Jordan.
So when I started working with him in nineteen ninety five.
I started working with the Bows in nineteen ninety three,
and he took an eighteen month hiatus and when he
came back.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
If you think about his experience, he got cup from
his high school basketball team. So when I saw him
in nineteen ninety five, ninety six on up he had
like he was still trying to make the team. Nobody
out worked him, so something happened. He got cut from
the team. The coach said to him, I'm gonna come
pick you up five o'clock in the morning. We're gonna
put the work in. Of course he grew four or
(33:19):
five inures.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
That helped, but that wasn't as much as the mentality
of the work and saying I'm never gonna get cut again.
Speaker 4 (33:27):
That's never gonna.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Happen because I didn't put in the work and I
didn't figure it out, or I didn't have people to
help me.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
So you see where I'm going with this, no struggle,
no swag.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
People who had adversity, they overcame that adversity and then
they start developing this self belief.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
It's unsakable self belief.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Because they know that if they figure it out, if
they put in the work, if they work smarter and harder,
but really understanding what is the one thing that I
need to focus on, it's gonna help me instead of
trying to do everything.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
It's like the Peredo analysis for the eighty twenty rule.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
You just focus on this with deliberate practices, Okay, So
Kobe one summer, you know he was working on his
three point shot.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
So how did he work on that?
Speaker 1 (34:09):
He decided he was going to make thirteen hundred May
threes a day. So it wasn't just working harder, but
it was specificity with an intention, with a purpose saying
with MJ. One of the things Bobby Knight said about
MJ is he's the most fundamentally.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
Sound athlete he ever worked with. I said made him
so great because he mastered the fundamentals. Same with Kobe
for work.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
So you have to master the fundamentals, and what we
see the fancy suffer. We don't see all of the
work that he puts in all the work that they do.
And so it's not just working harder, working smarter, but
working with a purpose, with a deliberation of this is what.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
I'm going to work on, and it's going to hans
my performance.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
And every year, whether I talk about Larry Bird or
Magic Johnson or Doctor Jay, every year they were working
on expanding their game or expanding.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
Their production capacity. But it was a joy.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
I mean, these guys who play these sports, they would
pay for free, but they don't have to because it's
a love, so you get to the point where you
can love and there's no difference. Because one of the
fascinating things I know is about Michael Jordan.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
I started working with them and watching them.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Number one is you didn't know the difference between practice
and games because he was always coming at you with
that idea of dominating being the best today.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
Today I got better. And that was the thing.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
He was always pushing the envelope, always encouraging, challenging themselves,
and that's how you get in the flow when you
have that challenge skill ratio there, but you have a
clear idea of what you're doing and what you're getting
and you're able to make adjustments and a fly. So
it really comes down to being a learner and just
embracing your greatness, which means there's some things like you
(35:47):
may not be a basketball player, or you might play basketball.
Speaker 4 (35:50):
You know, maybe you want to shoot three point shots,
but you're a better rebounder.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
That's your skill. Then you got to embrace that. And
it's try not to be somebody else. I mean, I'll
share something because I think is really important what we're
talking about, and I don't mean to demean anybody or whatever.
But I was in the barbershop a couple of weeks
ago and was talking to one of the bowers and
he was upset that for the super Bowl, you know,
in the playoffs where he expected Baltimore to win with
(36:15):
my jackson, and he was upset because he said, you know.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
Lamar forgot who he was.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
He tried to be a pocket passer instead of just
letting his legs win the game for him. So this
is what happens. We get hung up because the media says, well,
you're not a true quarterback because you don't do this.
You can't listen to them. You got to be yourself.
You got to be Okay, this is what got me here. Okay,
you know I can make plays with my legs. I
had to do that, so you get what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
So you have to learn true understanding comes from reflecting
our experience. What happened there. Okay, you weren't yourself. And
I can't tell you how many times that happens because
we think we have to be somebody or we have
to win a certain way. I can go back to
a boxing match between Sugar Ray Lennen and Marvin Hagl,
who I knew and he didn't want people to think
that he was brother. That's who he was, you know.
(37:01):
So if you're not gonna do ye out none personal.
But this is how I have to play. But if
I'm worried about that and I'm going to change my
style because i want to be accepted, it's not gonna work.
So and we do this every day. I do it,
you do it. We all do it.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
We think we have to be somebody else rather than
being ourselves, instead of being to it thine own self.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
Be true. No, the truths, and the truth shall make
you free. That's what we need to do. We need
to be able to say yes to it, even though
it's inconvenient sometimes. But these folks, they spend a lot
of time and energy mastering their craft, and we all
can do that. Can we do it at the level
they do? Probably not.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
But our job is to be our best version of
ourselves to get better each day. It's not about trying
to be somebody else. It's about being who we are
and embracing it and not letting anybody.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
Tell us with somebody else.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
But when we're in the fair, when the fair wolf
is there, that's what happens. If you're in the Loved Wolf,
then the chances are you're going to say, no, I'm good.
Thanks for your opinion, but my opinion is the most
important opinion.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
Here, let me ask a question about the relationship and
ship between striving and accepting where we are right. This
is one of the things I look at in my
own life that I find to be a really nuanced
thing to figure out. Right, It's this idea that you know,
I want to be better. I want the circumstances of
my life to be better. I want to accomplish more right,
(38:18):
And that feels sort of natural and inborn right, But
there's also a really unhealthy version of that versus the
other side, which is to be content with what I have,
be content with who I am, be content with the
way things are. How do you see those things? Because
one of the things, I knew him and you didn't,
And I don't expect you to say anything about him.
(38:38):
I'm just making this observation, you know, watching some of
the stuff with Michael Jordan, I'm like, a guy looks
extraordinarily driven and intense, but I can't tell if he's
a very content person. And so again I'm not expecting
to say aything about Michael Jordan. I'm just saying, in general,
how do you think about that balance between contentment and striving?
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Well, let me talk about myself. Yeah, it's July thirty
for us. I'll be forty as a sobriety.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Congratulations.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
It's a long time, forty years of sobriety. I've average
over a book a week minimum. Okay.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
So I'm pursuing excellence and wisdom with grace and ease.
I didn't have the grace and eeds before. I was
doing it with this warrior energy. Then I realized, oh man,
that's right. Efort is slow, is smooth, smooth as fast.
Just do what you know to do and the next
that we'll be given to you. Just go with the flow.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
And there's times when you'll be more intense, times when
you're easy.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
But that's a read, that's an understanding, like sometimes you
got to get after it.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
But you're right.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
We spend most of our time between boredom and anxiety.
And anxiety is when we are challenged and our skills
and knowledge experience no how it doesn't meet it. And
then it's sometimes when we have a lot of know
how and experience, but we don't challenge ourselves, so we
get bored.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
So this is the thing.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
So you're finding that balance between not settling and not
being excessive. And that's why this whole flow genome that
Steve Catler and his groups talked about and this book
that other impossible.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
He talks about.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Getting up to four percent, but some people who are
like type A, like myself, we may have to go
up to thirty percent of anxiety to get there.
Speaker 4 (40:11):
But that's why you got to know yourself.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
But you got to know yourself, know when you need
to push and.
Speaker 4 (40:17):
When you need to hold back.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
And that's why when you have coaches and folks that
are around you, they could be helpful. So there was recently,
I think Phil Jackson was when they made the Kobe
but I know Phil I was there. There was one
game I think Kobe had like fifty points or an
extraordinary amount of points in the third quarter and Phil
wouln't let him play in the fourth quarter because he
(40:39):
knew if he would have played in the fourth quarter,
then that energy he took to do that it might
take him two weeks to recover fromhim. So sometimes you
have to have people around you that are able to say,
dollar it down, or let's slow down, because the intention
of wanting to achieve a goal may overcome your well being.
You see what I'm saying. So it's always about heart
(40:59):
and compare for yourself, empathy, compassion for yourself, and you
can get out of your comfort zone, but it can't
be so far out of your comfort zone that the
anxiety is going to have an impact on either you
physically or emotionally where you're not able to be rational yep, right,
and you're pushing yourself and sometimes you got to be unreasonable,
but you can't sustain that.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
And you got to know what's your motivation. Are you
doing this for selfish reasons or you're doing it for
the greatest good? That is huge. That is really huge
because when it's selfish and you're coming from the fear
of being driven by like Joseph Campbell talked about being
in that place of rest when we're performing at our best,
where we're not compelled by fear or desire, we just
(41:40):
hold our center. That's pure performance. That's why I call
it pure performance because it's the activity in and of
itself is the motivation. It's what sending me. I called
autotelic personality.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
You do the thing for the activity in and of itself,
being in the moment, being fully engaged, fully deployed.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
That's it. Now in the results all the others, yeah,
that's that. But the main.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Driver is to feel like I got better today and
I left everything out there, but I didn't do it
in a way where it's going to cause harm to
myself physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
And sometimes we're going to go over, sometimes we're going
to go under.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
But that's the titration, that's the calibration, that's the reflection,
and that's the assessment of Okay, yeah I went a
little bit fire, I can need to tone it up.
Speaker 4 (42:23):
I could have done more, and you do more because
it makes sense. But it's the compassionate action, the awareness,
the acceptance, the compassionate action, that compassion for yourself and others,
and then the assessment. So without the compassion, once you
lose your humanity, that's when you see people that are
driven and would destroy people or lose their humanity, that's
(42:45):
when it becomes a problem your humanity and still be
a lead performer and still push yourself and push others
to have that killer instinct. But having that killer instinct
with losing your.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Capacity your humanity or your capacity to be compassionate. That's
the problem. That's why you know the Golden State war
is for their core.
Speaker 4 (43:03):
Values used to be.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
I don't know if it still is joy, mindfulness, compassion,
then competition. So the compassion piece the empathy piece, and
this is emotional intelligence. You know, like the IQ will
get you the job, but the EQU is going to
get you the transformation and the promotion.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
So what is EQ.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
What I talk about is self awareness and self regulation.
That's the first part of it. That's the internal journey.
The external or the relational part is social awareness and
relationship development. I would say, I don't like the word management,
relationship cultivation.
Speaker 4 (43:36):
We'll call it that. And that is where you have
empathic listening to the other person. You care about.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
The person you listen, they're a whole person and not
somebody has a body that's means to end. But they
have a body of mind or heart and the soul
or spirit. So it's the whole person. And when you
treat somebody as a whole person, they'll give their heart
to you. If you treat them as a thing, if
you leave out any one of those four components, now
you're relating to them as a thing or I and
(44:03):
it what Buba talked about, and they might rebell or
they might do what you ask them to do, but
I hope it doesn't work. But they're not going to
give you their whole heart. That you're not going to
have a partnership. You're not going to have a collaborator
who you know, think when when you know synergy's better together,
teamwork makes a dream work. We want that as individuals.
We have this desire to connect to something greater than ourselves.
(44:27):
So when we can use that in ways where we
have a worthy cause and we have core values that
are in alignment with you know, not losing our humanity,
being compassionate and having empathy, seeking wisdom and loving kindness,
then we're into something. And so that's what's missing and
missing when you talk about you can be so ruthless
or you're you know, you can push yourself.
Speaker 4 (44:47):
I've done that.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
I sat to my knees not right because I sat
through the pain because I had that warror energy before
I realized, no, compassion is important. You know, I can
move my leg and it's not about reachieving a goal
at any cart is about achieving a goal but not
losing my compassion.
Speaker 4 (45:03):
That's why I call it compassionate action, not just action.
Compassionate action.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
It's based on non harm on goodwill.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
So you talked a little bit there, and I think
you've alluded to it in the conversation a little bit,
And it's in your writing a lot about this sort
of parasympathetic versus sympathetic response, right, and broadly speaking, right,
parasympathetic is what we consider sort of the rest and
digest or the relaxed state, and sympathetic is the more
keyed up fight flight. And as I was reading that,
(45:47):
and I was thinking a little bit and reflecting on
my own life, I started to wonder. It seems to
me there's a lot of things that are either at
the high end of one of those or the low
end of the other, where I don't really feel like
I'm in like a deep, calm, relaxing state, but I
certainly don't feel like I'm in any sort of fight flight.
How do you think about that?
Speaker 4 (46:08):
Like everything, mindfulness, compassion, whatever, on the scale of one
to ten or whatever, there's variation. You see what I'm saying,
so you could.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Be relatively relaxed and alert, or you could be relatively
keyed up, but you need the keyed up. It's the
balance between them. And this is why I say to
people a lot of times people don't want to meditate,
they don't want to be still and no, but I'm
right handed, so my left brain dominates and the right brain.
So the left brain has the one plus one equals
(46:38):
to the words of the song, the sequence reading the
first chapter and then start with the first and going literally.
Then the nonlinear is one plus one might equal six.
It's the melody, it's the big picture, all of that stuff,
and it doesn't get a word in edgewise if we
stay in that active mode and we don't stop and
(46:59):
focus on one thing or disrelaxed and meditate, prayer, whatever
it is, and just be locked in so that now
you're using both sides of your brain, and this probably
is not dominating. So we have to have these practices
that allow us to allow our intuition. That's why I say,
you know you're in that place of rest. Now that
right brain, although they're connected, they're not totally separate. You know,
(47:21):
the combinations, but that right brain. That's where the wisdom
and the creativity comes from. But if you're not at rest,
if that love wolf is not Donan, then that fair
wolf you're not going to have access to that wisdom
and that creativity. It's just not going to happen. So
when you talk about sympathetic and power sympathetic, that's the
fair wolf and the love wolf.
Speaker 4 (47:41):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
And so we need both because I need that sympathetic
because when I'm walking across the street and a car
or some dangerous happening, I.
Speaker 4 (47:50):
Can't reflect on wealth.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
Should I move my body will move me out of
the way, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (47:56):
So we need both. But we just don't live in
a hostile environment.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Well some of us don't live in a hospitle environment
where your reptilian brain is seeking danger. And believe it
or not, the resource says that nine out of ten
todds are negative because of that. That's why if we
don't train this ability to rest and digest, because if
we don't, we're going to have GI problems. We're going
to have stress related issues because now your immune system's
(48:22):
not working properly, and stuff you know you don't have
access to because when the brain is stressed out, you
don't you don't have access. You're like forty percent dumber.
It's just nothing personal. So there's a value to being
able to have a balanced brain. However you want to
look at it.
Speaker 4 (48:38):
Does that make sense? And knowing when you need to
rep things up and when you need to calm things down.
And that's the interesting thing.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
When I first started meditating, and I first started just
being doing relaxation or just being in my body, just
sitting and breathing, I hear the gurgling and all these
other sounds while.
Speaker 4 (48:56):
That's the rest and digest. Yeah, that's the body.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
Actually, no one is saying without your permission, but you're
not getting in the way. Being relaxed is one of
the most valuable skills we can have.
Speaker 4 (49:07):
Not so relax with your chill act, but relax but
yeah alert.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
That makes sense. And so that's why it's a balance,
Like you said, the valiance. So sometimes you got to
be really locked in. Other times you can be relatively
locked in or relatively calm, like just being able to
watch over something. The analogy they use is like you know,
you're a farmer and you have calls in the field
and when there's a crop, you got to really pay attention,
(49:31):
You got to be mindful, you got to be diligent
about keeping them away from it. But then once the
crop is harvested, then you can have this relaxed alertness
that just kind of watch and make sure they don't
get into trouble. That's like mindfulness. That's an observation of
mindfulness where you're just noticing, but you're not doing anything
other than taking in the information.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
So let's talk briefly as we near the end of
our time here about comfort zone. You say you can't
push yourself so far out of your comfort zone that
your body breaks down or the ultimately give up because
you can't sustain it. And then you went on to
talk about people like doctor j Jordan and Kobe. You
said their comfort zones were like a horizon, always moving
(50:11):
forward in front of them as they approached.
Speaker 4 (50:14):
Right.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
And I love that idea because, like you said, it
means we don't have to go far outside of our
comfort zone, but we have to continually be redefining our
comfort zone.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
Yes, yes, another way of saying that our production capacity,
capacity to produce and whatever. So it's in alignment with
actually neuroplasticity if you really think about it, the four
octiuent tips of neuroplasticity that is creating new brain connections.
You know, the first step is going to have access
to oxygen, so that means you're aerobic right up, because
in these oxygen's develop new brain connections as well. Second
(50:47):
thing is it's got to be incremental. And the third
thing is it's got to be hard to do but douable.
That's what we're talking about here, how to do but duable.
It's got to be so you're just below your edge
and then you're moving beyond that, but you're moving with compassion.
Speaker 4 (51:03):
You know, slow motion gets you there quicker.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
You know, you just ease a little bit out, just
and it's a flow, it's not this hirky jerky thing. Then,
like if you do yoga, you get to a place
where it's tight and then you just breathe through it.
You just honor it, and then you're able to just
slightly move to it and then you keep doing that,
you keep doing that and you keep increasing capacity. And
the fourth thing you need for neuroplasticity is this idea
(51:26):
of interest. Because when you become interested in something, it
stimulates the motivational circuits and the brain. So think about
how that's connected. You know, you get your oxygen rate out,
you do it in increments, baby steps, short feedback loops.
It's hard to do, but doable, and you bring interest
and curiosity into it, so to stimulate your motivational circuits.
Speaker 3 (51:49):
Yeah, I really like that. So listener and thinking about
that and all the other great wisdom from today's episode.
If you were going to isolate just one top insight
that you're taking away, what would it be. Remember, little
by little, a little becomes a lot. Change happens by
us repeatedly taking positive action. And I want to give
you a tip on that, and it's to start small.
(52:11):
It's really important when we're trying to implement new habits
to often start smaller than we think we need to
because what that does is it allows us to get victories.
And victories are really important because we become more motivated
when we're feeling good about ourselves, and we become less
motivated when we're feeling bad about ourselves. So by starting
small and making sure that you succeed, you build your
(52:33):
motivation for further change down the road. If you'd like
a step by step guide for how you can easily
build new habits that feed your good Wolf. Go to
Goodwolf dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. Well, George,
we are at the end of our time together, although
you and I are going to continue to talk a
little bit more in a post show conversation and I
(52:54):
really want to focus in there on the five superpowers.
So we're going to talk about what the five superpowers are. Yes,
there listeners. If you'd like access to more of our
time together with George and I ad free episodes. If
you'd like to support a show that makes a difference
in your life and in the difference of many many others,
(53:15):
you can go to one feed dot net slash join. George,
thank you so much for coming on. It has been
a pleasure to talk with you.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
Yes, so if people want to know more about my work,
obviously you can go to georgemumfit dot com. And you
know I have a YouTube channel with not of course
you have the book The Mind for Athlete and Pure Performance.
I mean, we're just scratching the surface, but I'm so
excited for this opportunity, and your podcast is so much
in an alignment of what I've been teaching.
Speaker 3 (53:42):
Thank you, No, you're very welcome. You're very welcome. It's
a pleasure, and we'll make sure we have links in
the show notes to your website, your book, and your
YouTube channel. So thank you so much, George.
Speaker 4 (53:51):
You're welcome.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
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Feed podcast. When you join our membership community. With this
monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits.
It's our way of saying thank you for your support now.
We are so grateful for the members of our community.
We wouldn't be able to do what we do without
(54:29):
their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted.
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