September 11, 2025 • 55 mins
This week, Scott Barry Kaufman sits down with Dr. Alex Auerbach, a licensed counseling and sport performance psychologist who works with some of the world’s top performers—from Olympic champions to NBA, NFL, and MLB athletes, as well as elite military units, Fortune 500 companies, and high-growth startups.
Together, they dive into insights from Dr. Auerbach’s book, To Greatness: Your Personal Playbook for the Pursuit of Excellence. The conversation explores the science of resiliency, adaptive capacity, and wellness, along with the role of self-awareness, values, confidence, and belief in reaching one’s highest potential.
Dr. Auerbach believes greatness isn’t reserved for a select few—it’s available to anyone willing to answer the call. This episode is filled with practical wisdom and inspiring takeaways for performers in every arena of life.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We know quality of relationships is a predictor of life
satisfaction to people feeling like they've lived a life well.
And I don't think that's any different for high performers
in any industry. And again, you know, the relationship between
an athlete and a coach, for example, is really critical
for high performance. The relationship between players and a team
sport is really critical for high performance. The importance of
(00:23):
those relationships cannot be overstated because those are the people.
You know, the people around us are what give us
the sort of fuel that we need to keep pushing
when things get hard. They motivate us in ways that
we don't always know we need to be motivated. They
give us alternative perspectives, They help us feel supported. There's
a ton that comes with having high quality connection.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Hello and welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we explore
the depths of human potential. Today we have doctor Alex
Auerbach on the show. Doctor Auerbach is a licensed counseling
and sport performance pslogist who works with the best athletes
in the world. Olympic champions and NBA, NFL and MLB
players count on him to elevate their game. He has
(01:09):
also worked with high performers and other domeans like elite
military units, Fortune five companies, and venture back startups. In
this episode, we discuss this book called to Greatness, your
personal playbook for the pursuit of excellence. Specifically, we discuss
adaptive capacity, resiliency, the foundations of wellness, the role of
(01:29):
self awareness and high performance, the importance of values identification,
and the science behind confidence and self belief. Doctor Auerbach
believes that we all have a chance to be great.
We just have to answer the call. I really love
his work and I know you will too, So without
further ado, I bring you doctor Alex Auerbach. Hey Alex Auerbach,
(01:51):
how are you, Scott?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I'm good. That's nice to see you.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Nice to see you. Thanks for coming on the Psychology Podcast.
Really been looking forward to featuring your work for a
long time. Can you introduce yourself a little bit for
our audience?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Definitely, But first, thanks for having me. This is kind
of like a little bit of a surreal moment for me.
You know, I grew up in graduate school listening to
this podcast and now to be here with you is
pretty cool. So thank you for having me. I am
a PhD counseling and sports psychologist by training, got my
doctorating counseling psychology from North Texas, and most recently was
the sports psychologist for the Toronto Raptors and now for
(02:27):
the Jacksonville Jaguars along with one of my good friends.
So I spent a lot of time helping athletes and
other high performers across areas. I work with folks in
private equity founders and folks in venture capital. I've worked
with some musicians helping achieve peak performance and balance that
with holistic wellness and becoming the best version of themselves.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I love that, because you know, I love that balance,
and and it's good to see there's a trend for
that balance to be appreciated among sports psychologists and among
sports coaches. I've noticed a real increase in the past
couple of years in understanding just how important that balance is.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
I think that's exactly right, and I love seeing this,
and coaches in particular, they're starting to think of themselves
as performers, which I think is a generally good trend.
But as you know, you know, the best athletes are
doing a great job balancing rest and recovery with a
push for excellence and understand that that recovery and rest
and balance is actually a key part of becoming the
best that they can be.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, very very well put. So, yeah, you're
making me feel a little bit old saying you listen
to my podcasting grad school. You say in your book
you spent the last fifteen years studying what enables performers
to deliver consistent results and make meaningful progress toward achieving
their full potential. I think that this idea of consistency
(03:48):
is a central theme in a lot of your writings.
Would you agree, absolutely?
Speaker 1 (03:53):
I think maybe the most important thing, it's definitely up there,
but to show up every day and give as much
as you can. It's not about giving one hundred percent
every day. I think that's a bit unrealistic. But giving
one hundred percent of whatever it is you have to
give every day is sort of the foundation really for
getting good at anything.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yes, And a lot of my research on creativity shows
that creativity is not necessarily characterized by consistency. So how
do you balance expertise acquisition which does require consistency and
leading allowing a little spontaneity there, Alex, so that you
(04:31):
can allow some unexpected connections to happen or is that
just a relevant to sports.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Well, I'd be really curious how you make sense of that,
because you've got an interesting background and working with creative
experts too. I mean, I do think in sports creativity
sometimes comes as a function of being really expert at
what you do. And so because you put in the
practice and you've seen so many different variations of what
the game might look like, it does allow for a
(04:58):
little bit of improvization. As you know, you know there
are other cognitive factors that go into that too, right,
you know, high intelligence, for example, might make you a
little bit more creative and a little less rigid on
the basketball court or on the football field, and so
I think you might see some of those factors play
out too. But I think consistency in training gives you
that good foundation for understanding the most common ways the
(05:20):
game might unfold, and also allows you to see opportunities
for being a little bit more creative and innovative. But
I do think the reality in sports is we're playing
from a playbook right in most sports, and so there
is a bit of structure, and I think the best
coaches are trying to find ways to give athletes freedom
within that structure, but still sort of move the mission
forward in ways that perhaps like a creative artist, a painter,
(05:43):
a writer may not have those same kind of constraints.
But I don't know. You tell me what do you
make of the time.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Well, I'm still formulating my thoughts about this, But let's
think of some examples of some of the most artistic
creative athletes and see that separates them from the rest.
I think that may be a useful exercise. Obviously, Michael
Jordan eners my mind because I grew up with him
and I felt like he was an artist on the
basketball court, and he did creative things that other athletes
(06:14):
can't do. Alex, what do you who are some artists
that come to your mind?
Speaker 1 (06:18):
That's an interesting way of thinking about an athlete. I
think you've you've given two great ones. Barry Sanders comes
to mind for me. On the football field, you know
someone who could sort of make anything happen, even with
less than ideal circumstances. I think if I'm thinking about football,
(06:38):
I'm thinking about guys like Lamar Jackson right now right
kind of a creative, different outside the box player. Patrick
Mahomes too. I think is a pretty creative player. I'm
thinking about guys like Leo Messi as a pretty creative
soccer player. So I think there are a few artists
out there. I think we might have some selection bias.
(07:01):
I'm not sure we're picking anyone who's not also the
best of the best here, which is interesting. But I
think that's noteworthy too.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
But yes, and in all those cases, they still put
in the work. I mean, consistency was not at odds
with their creativity. I mean, my gosh, I think for
these individuals you mentioned, they're probably also in the list
of the hardest workers of all time. So maybe you
kind of have to put in your reps in order
(07:30):
to be able to have enough to be able to
improvise on I think that's kind of a general consensus
in the creativity literature, and what you said applies in
sports as well.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
I think that's exactly right. How does that play out
in the creativity literature? What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Well that in the world of ideas, the more knowledge
and information you have, the more fodder you have to
play around with in a way, you know, and the
more unexpected connections you can make. You can't make unexpected
connections among things that aren't in your head. It's very fair,
but creative people don't just stop with the expertise. That's
(08:08):
the thing. There really is a beyond expertise element there
to creative people. So I'm just trying to think through
how that works in sports. And I don't think that
most athletes have as their goal creativity, they have high performance.
So yeah, so a lot of your work really is
delivering consistent results, which is not necessarily at odds with creativity.
(08:32):
So how do you respond resiliently to adverse conditions and
setback sow Like, what are some techniques or strategies you
have found really important.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Well with athletes in particular, I'm always thinking about a
couple of things when it comes to dealing with mistakes.
The first is how do we respond in the moment
to not let that mistake totally derail performance? And I'm
sure you can think of people you've worked with too,
but it's not uncommon when people make a mistake to
spend the next you know, fifteen twenty plus minutes in
their head beating themselves up for whatever just went on.
(09:05):
But in the context of a basketball game, let's say
it's not super helpful to be in your head beating
yourself up while the game is going on, right. It
takes you out of the moment. It limits your ability
really to perform at your highest level. And so we've
got to find a way to help you deal with
that mistake effectively in the moment. And so there's some
you know, simple techniques we would teach athletes, like a release, reset,
(09:27):
refocused routine where we help them learn the skill of
basically letting go of the mistake as quickly as possible
and refocusing as quickly as possible so they can be
in the game as much as they can. I think
the second element is often learning when the right time
to deal with the mistake is. So one of the
things that happens a lot in sports is that you know,
(09:48):
team will lose, or a turnover happens, and the player
comes off the corridor, off the field, and you see
the coach, you know, yelling at the player right away.
And I think we've got good data that shows that
that kind of repet sponds, delays recovery and actually increases
cortisol and makes players obviously more stressed out. Interestingly enough,
players who perceive their coaches to be more stressed also
(10:09):
perceive their coaches to be less competent. So it's all
around a bad cycle where the players feeling more stressed
and not recovering and also has less trust and faith
in their coaches' ability to help them. And so we've
got to teach athletes the right time to deal with
a mistake, which is usually after they've had some distance
from the game or from the mistake itself. I don't
(10:29):
think most people deal well with reflecting on a mistake
in the moment or right after the fact. We're still
trying to defend our ego a little bit or justify
whatever's happened or kind of explain it away, versus look
at it like a scientist and really try to understand
what happened here and what can we adjust in the
future so it doesn't happen again without it being so
central to the way that we see ourselves or how
(10:50):
good we think we are as a performer, just because
we made a mistake.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Thanks Alex, I really like that. Do you find in
your work with professional athletes that they are well, certainly
there are humans, I don't need to ask defind their
human But do you find they get affected by what
the media says about them. You know, like if the
media is harsh or tear someone down, can that really
(11:16):
affect a player psychologically? Have you seen that up close?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
I have, And you know, I think you're exactly right
that these athletes, even though they entertain and we sort
of see them as superhuman, for a lot of the
things that they can do, their people first. And so
if they're getting torn down consistently in the media or
even on social media when you try to get them.
You know, I spent a lot of time trying to
get players to not go on Twitter, right, or not
(11:40):
go on social media and avoid the comments because there's
usually nothing good waiting for you there. But the reality
is for all people, right, words heard and language really
matters for the way that we think it feel. And
so it's not uncommon for an athlete to be disrupted
by what's being said about them. And of course we
can teach them, you know, good tips and tricks for
managing that effectively or distancing themselves or coping with whatever
(12:03):
is being said, But especially amidst say like a bad
streak in the season, right, it's not uncommon to have
ten articles written about how you're underperforming in the course
of two or three days, and for anybody, I think
that that would get to them a little bit, and
we've got to give them skills to manage that. And
I do think the best athletes find ways to either
use that as fuel, right and become a source of
(12:24):
motivation or something that helps them overcome, or they find
a way to just disconnect and not be so impacted
by the opinions of people who write about them and
sort of find ways to let that go.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Wonderful. Well, what is this expression adaptive capacity that you
talk a lot about. What is that.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Our friends Brad Stolberg and Steve Magnus I think put
it quite well in one of their books. But it's
the basic idea that stress paired with rest can lead
to growth and progress. Right. The idea is that the
more challenges we take on and the higher harder challenges
we take on, and then when we rest and recover,
we build our ability to do harder things again in
(13:09):
the future. It kind of dovetails with things like stress
and oculation theory and some of these other principles where
we know that when people are provided or do experience
a bit of stress or tension and then they again,
they recover, they can take on more. So the easiest
metaphor to use here is the weight room. Right, if
we're using sports, like if you go to the gym
and you get on the bench and you bench press
(13:31):
on Monday, and then you give yourself a break on Tuesday,
by the time you come back Wednesday, you should be
a little bit stronger and ready to take on a
little bit more. In contrast, right, if you go to
the gym on Monday and you bench, and then you
go on Tuesday and you bench, and Wednesday you bench,
and Thursday you bench. By Friday, you might tear a
peck and so adaptive capacity is really about giving yourself
(13:52):
the adequate amount of stress and the adequate amount of
rest to consistently grow over time.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, that's really not compatible with having an obsessive passion
for your your activity. You know. Vall runs distinction between
harmonious passion and obsessive passion. I think a lot of
athletes have that idea that I need to be the
hardest worker in the room or else I'll never be
(14:20):
a Michael Jordan. And in order to be the hardest worker,
I need to be obsessontally passionate about it even when
it's not bringing returns on my investment. Is that a myth?
Speaker 1 (14:31):
I think you're exactly right. I mean I used to
see this with the rookies we brought in in Toronto.
You know, you draft a rookie and then you fly
him to the facility right away, and you know, you'd
hear the story of, oh, he was in a gym
at three am, you know, for the next five days,
and I'm like, I'm not sure that that's a good thing.
I'm not sure I want him in the gym at
three am. I want him sleeping at three am, ideally
(14:52):
so that he can come in the gym and perform
well the next day. But I do think sports has
an unfortunate way of sort of lionizing consistent work. And
then there's all these sort of pithy sayings that cut
against the idea that recovery is useful. Right, So you've
heard things like you're either getting better you're getting worse,
(15:12):
or while you're sleeping, the enemy is working.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
You know, right, Yeah that's a big one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Those kinds of sayings then discourage people from taking the
rest and recovery that they need to be successful. But
if you actually look at the best athletes in the world,
they're all resting and recovering at an incredible rate. Right
There's been articles written about lebron spending more than a
million dollars a year on his recovery routine. There was
(15:38):
just an article written a couple of weeks ago about
Christiano Ronaldo and his longevity and the routine he goes through.
There's a ton written about Kobe and his you know,
famous Phoria workout sessions, but less written or said about
his naps in between, you know. And so the best
athletes really are engaging recovery as a part of practice
(15:58):
and using recovery to facility take their excellence so that
they can be consistent over time. We just don't talk
so much about the recovery part because it's not as
sexy or interesting as you know, an athlete shooting five
thousand shots or whatever it might be.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
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(16:39):
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(17:01):
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(17:22):
for Human Potential dot com slash s a C. That's
Center for Human Potential dot com slash s a C. Okay,
now back to the show. Yeah, but yeah, this mentality
though that while I'm sleeping, my enemy is working out.
I mean, it's very prevalent in the bio hacking or
(17:44):
the pro pro science community. I mean it's this idea
of like I'm waking up at five am and I'm
jumping in the bath. Are you? Are you kind of
like criticizing that culture a little bit.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
A little bit? Yeah, I mean, look, I think I
think the persist and push to optimize everything ultimately probably
leads to underperformance in the long term. You know, I
think it's a recipe for either burning out or building
you know, unhealthy habits, or potentially taking shortcuts right, Like,
I think this is the slippery slope that leads to
(18:18):
people taking like growth hormone is you're feeling like you're
being left behind and you're looking for whatever edge you can.
I mean, we both know that the bro science community
is also not using science so much, and so I
think I think that's part of it too. But again,
I think probably across across industries, right the best performers
(18:39):
really are taking their time to rest and recover. I'm
sure you've seen it too. But I think Adam Grant
wrote a little bit about the idea that leaders who
engage in post work recovery have higher performing teams because
their teams feel comfortable recovering. I think he wrote a
Twitter poster or blog post about that at some point,
like across spaces this just really or same thing with
(19:01):
sleep insurgeons, right or sleep in pilots. We know that
that's really important for them performing well. So I mean, look,
you can wake up and get an ice bath all
you want, but you're still going to have to recover.
You're still going to have to find just the basic
ways of doing it sustainably over time. If you want
to be great at anything.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
When I go in the ice bath, I spend the
rest of the day recovering from going in the ice bath.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
I don't even get in the ice bath because I
won't I won't make it out.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Oh man, Okay, So what are some other foundations of
well being in a sports context. You've already mentioned a
couple obviously, but what are some others.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
I think probably the most important one would be sleep.
You know, there's just tons and tons of great data
about the value of sleep for both well being and
emotional you know, health and psychological health broadly, but also
for sports performance. There was a study done at Stanford
in the early twenty tens ISH that showed that twelve
(20:00):
players who slept a couple hours longer each night had
an increase in their free throw percentage of about twenty percent.
We've got data that shows that sleep is when you know,
your brain cleans itself and you consolidate learning and you
grow muscle. So if you want to be a high performer,
you know, all those things are really critical, and I
think in most cases sleep is probably the number one
(20:22):
thing we can improve for athletes to raise their performance
quite quickly. Second would be something like nutrition. You know,
I'm not a dietitian or nutritionist, so I won't wax
poetic about that for too long. But we know, you know,
there's more and more being written about like the gut
brain axis and the role of nutrition and mental health.
But we also just know high quality nutrition and hydration
(20:43):
is really important for you know, again, muscle building and
taking care of your body and things that are required
if you want to be a high level performer really
anywhere to be great. I think a lot about the
idea of play and having fun as something that's really
important for well you and your work on creativity. You
probably know a bit more about that than I do,
(21:04):
so I'd be curious what you think of that concept.
But I know for me, if I'm even working with
pro athletes, if we're not having any fun, that's going
to be a problem. And I think play is a
huge foundation of getting more creative in the work that
you do and finding innovative solutions and also engaging and
you know, something socially that makes you feel better. And
the fourth one I'll give you without going through all
(21:25):
of them, is movement. And you know, for athletes, of course,
movements kind of baked in right in practice you're running
around or you're going to the weight room, But for
performers outside of sports, again, the link between you know,
physical movement and brain performance and brain health is pretty robust.
And so making sure you're getting exercise or yoga or
whatever it might be, I think can be really important
(21:49):
for building that foundation well being.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah. I know that this is not very like brolly
of me to say, but what's importance of connection?
Speaker 1 (22:00):
I love that you're not going the bro route there,
That's okay. I support that completely. I mean, you know
as well as anybody, right, Relationships are one of the
biggest predictors of resilience that we have strong as predictors
of resilience that we have. Again, athletes kind of have
that built in a little bit, right with teammates and
the people in the locker room, though those relationships are
(22:21):
not always super high quality. That's one of the places
where people like me and other sports psychologists or psychology
practitioners can help intervene and make a big difference. We
know quality of relationships is a predictor of life satisfaction too,
and people feeling like they've lived a life well. And
I don't think that's any different for high performers in
(22:41):
any industry. And again, you know, the relationship between an
athlete and a coach, for example, is really critical for
high performance. The relationship between players and a team sport
is really critical for high performance. But even in individual sports,
I don't know, if you're watching any Wimbledon right now,
you can see, you know, the best athletes out there
are still interacting with their coaches while they're on the court,
(23:03):
and they're thinking about the people in their circle and
they're taking coaching, or it happens in boxing and UFC
two where the coach kind of comes up on the
ring side and sort of coaches them up. Like the
importance of those relationships cannot be overstated because those are
the people, you know, the people around us or what
give us the sort of fuel that we need to
keep pushing when things get hard. They motivate us in
(23:24):
ways that we don't always know we need to be motivated.
They give us alternative perspectives, They help us feel supported.
There's a ton that comes with having high quality connection,
also not built into the brow protocol, but highly important.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Yeah, because well, the idea of relational tends to it
feels at odds with the need for dominance, and I mean,
I feel like you need to integrate both in a
way for high well being. And so I'm wondering how
that works in a support context where dominance is really
(24:02):
such a culvetted state to be in. You know, that's
why you go into sports, because you want to dominate
you know, the competition. But you know, as a youth
sports coach or as a sports coach at any level,
how can you kind of foster a healthy integration there
of even creating relationships with your competition.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
I think you see it at the highest levels of sport,
there's a really healthy respect for people on the other
team because if you're an elite athlete, if you're a
pro athlete, you understand what it takes to be on
the other side of the ball, right, or be on
the other side of the court, right. It takes a
tremendous amount of work and dedication and persistence to reach
(24:45):
that level. And so I think there is, again in
pro sports, like this mutual respect for each other that's
sort of built in on top of the fact that
you know, you never know who might be your teammate
next year, so you don't have, you know, bad relationships
with everyone. But I do think there's this sort of
element where for a few hours every other night, you've
got to find a way to sort of increase the
sense of connectedness and camaraderie you have with the people
(25:08):
in your locker room and then channel that toward dominating
the people across from you, and for you know, three hours,
be a little bit ruthless about that. It doesn't mean
be disrespectful. It just means be focused on establishing your
team as the superior team. And I think you can
do that in a way that still demonstrates again like
(25:29):
a level of healthy respect for your opponent and respect
for the game, and really just prioritizes the connection that
you have with the people around you. And I think,
you know, probably the best example I've seen of this
in recent times is Steph Curry. You know, Steph has
been with the Warriors for a long time now, but
there was an article written not too long ago as
the Kevin Durant trade rumors circled about him maybe going
(25:52):
back to Golden State, and there was an article written
that talked about Steph sort of basically saying when Kevin
Durant came like, okay, man, this is your team now,
which is pretty uncommon. You know, in a lot of
pro sports locker rooms, the player who's most established simply
tries to re establish dominance over any new player that
comes in. And so for someone to sort of step
(26:13):
aside and recognize it'll be best for the group and
best for the team and best for me if you
take over and we follow your lead, I think is
quite uncommon, but speaks to this really high level of
relational intelligence and the way that he's thinking about building
a team that I think is quite special. And so
to your point, I think people mistake that level of
(26:34):
relational savvy and understanding how the pieces fit together for
weakness essentially, right, or being less than in the dominance hierarchy.
But yeah, in some ways, I think being that patuned
is actually a sign of obviously significant strength, but a
little bit of dominance. Right. If you can be the
one that decides whose team this is, I don't think
you can find a higher position than that.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Yeah, that's a really good point. It's a really good point.
What's the role of self awareness in adaptive capacity?
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Again? I think if I'm looking at the highest level athletes,
they've all got this incredible ability to understand what they
need or what's important to them at any given moment. Again,
to use Steph as an example, he talked not too
long ago about the thing that he believed made him
so excellent or makes him so excellent is constantly paying
attention to how he's feeling and what his body needs
(27:27):
or what his brain needs to perform well. And I
think you've seen this with athletes like a Michael Phelps
or Simone Biles. You know these folks who are paying
attention to their well being, Right, Simona is probably a
great example from a few years ago where she recognized, like,
I don't feel well going out here right, and if
I keep doing this, I'm likely to get hurt, and
that injury is likely to be much worse for me
(27:48):
than pulling myself out of this competition and taking care
of myself. But I think you can only do things
like that if you're aware of how you're feeling, if
you're aware of what you need, if you're aware of
how your body feels, how your mind feels, what your
energy level are like. And so to get to that
level of excellence, you really do have to pay attention
to yourself. You can't just go through the motions. You
can't blindly follow whatever your coaches recommend because they don't
(28:12):
know you. They're not living your body, they're not living
your experience. And so you've got to be able to
build that because that's going to let you figure out
what's the next challenge you need to take on, how
much rest you need, and what's that going to look
like for you to get better and better over time.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Yeah, you you talk about some foundations of self awareness,
such as values, identification and feedback serving. What the heck
are those two things?
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Yeah? Well, I mean I think, for me, the way
I think about self awareness starts and you know, I
was trained pretty heavily in ACT, so I'll acknowledge that
ACT informs a lot of the ways that I think. Right,
But figuring out what you value and what's really important
to you, I think serves as an anchor for a
lot of the decisions you make. And so if you're
unclear about what matters most to you or the person
(29:03):
that you want to become, is going to be really
hard to make decisions that serve you well in the
long term. And I think what you're going to find
is you consistently optimize for the short term, which for
most people is fairly counter to long term success if
you really want to be a healthy competitor. But what's
right in front of you is, you know, three pints
of chocolate ice cream every night. Like I'm not discouraging
(29:25):
people from eating chocolate ice cream. There's just a reality
that you can eat three pints of chocolate ice cream
if you also want to get to the highest level
of nutrition and pro sports right to use a simple example,
and so being clear that becoming the best, for example,
is important to you can help you make that decision.
To sort of forgo the short term pleasure for long
term gain. So I think that's an important part of
(29:46):
values identification. And again, I think it just helps you
make decisions in the moment when things feel tense or
you're unsure about what to do. Knowing what's most important
to you can help you get clear and then commit
to whatever that decision is. And then I think feedback
is really important because you know, I wrote in the
book about self awareness being a little bit of essentially
what we know about ourselves and what others know about us, right,
(30:08):
And I think feedback helps us understand the impact that
we have on the people around us and adjust our
behavior so that we can have the impact that we want,
or understand more effective ways of being right. And again,
this is why the best athletes in the world have coaches,
because even if you think that you're doing footwork correctly,
or you think that you're being a good leader, or
(30:28):
you think you're practicing enough right, someone else's perspective about
what's missing or how your footwork is or how effective
your leadership is can really inform what you need to
do more of, less of, or differently to be as
successful as you want.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
To be Yeah, that's really quite profound, nothing and gloss over. Yeah, yeah,
I really like that all all your path on being
going where you want to be. I think loll self
confidence can rear its head, you know, especially if you're
not performing how you want to be performing. How do
(31:03):
you keep your confidence and self belief? I'm asking for
a friend, I'm not I can't resonate with that at
all right now, But what's how do you maintain your
confidence in your self belief when you're not necessarily getting
paid what you want to get paid, or getting the
successful results you want to get or it's cyclical, right,
(31:24):
it comes and goes. No one, no one including us
is high performing twenty four to seven, correct, So how
do you maintain that confidence and self belief when it's
not going well?
Speaker 1 (31:35):
I think of confidence as being a function of really
two things. Of course there's more, but the two that
I think are most important are past success, so being
able to sort of account for things you've done well
and understand the strengths you use to get there and
how you made those outcomes happen, and pushing past the
initial tendency. We all have to sort of be humble
(31:57):
and say, oh, I just got lucky. Like, No, you
didn't just get lucky, right, you worked hard. There are
strengths that you have that allows you to make that
outcome happen, and we should figure out what those strengths
are and figure out how we double down on those
things so that you can be the best version of
yourself more consistently. And then the second piece for me
when I'm thinking about high performance and athletes is really
about high quality preparation, good practice, and feeling as ready
(32:21):
as you can be is going to help you feel
more confident in believing yourself when you get to the
big game or when you get to whatever your performance is.
And of course you know you know as well as anyone, right,
there are other sources of self efficacy, right, like physiological
arousal and self talk and you know, vicarious learning. But
I think the preparation and past success give you a
(32:44):
really good foundation for feeling confident about yourself in whatever
endeavor it is you're going for. And so if you're
feeling not confident, right, I might start by asking you
to reflect on the things you've done well and how
you made those things happen. And if you're prepared for
something I might ask you to think about, you know,
what's missing from your preparation or what else you could
(33:04):
do that would help you feel as ready to go
as possible going into that performance.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Yeah. Yeah, a lot of this is these are said
and done, but it's very good advice. But you have
to not just think it, you have to feel it.
I think a lot of people, you know, can tell
themselves all they want, you know, to pep themselves up
and have the humbleness and and think about but maybe
(33:30):
deep down they feel like they're kind of broken and
well anyway that gets into trauma. And I mean, but, but,
but but athletes are human, right, so this stuff's not irrelevant.
Have you ever dealt with an athlete who who had
kept having like trauma triggers?
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Unfortunately more often than I wish for the case, you know,
I mean, many athletes come from a place of like
either great hardship or a lot of difficulty growing up.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
You know.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
I can think of athletes I've worked with who suffered,
you know, significant childhood trauma, whether it was like physical
abuse by a parent or some other kind of disruption
in their life. You know, I've worked with athletes who
have experienced homelessness, you know, a full range of things
that really have impacted them. And it's hard because in
(34:22):
the course of a season it may not be the
right thing to do to sort of get deep into
the trauma because there may be you know, they may
have to play right every other night, and so if
it's really disruptive or it's really hard for them or taxing,
you know, dealing with that and coping with that during
the season can can potentially hurt performance and then sort
(34:43):
of make things worse. And so you've got to find
ways to do that work kind of essentially in the
off season so that you can be as successful as
you want to be and heal heal a bit.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Healing. Healing is a big one that we don't give
enough time and space. I think there's a kind of yeah,
there's that mentality of like, you know, who's got time
for healing when your competition is is shooting jump shots
in the gym at five am? You know. Yeah. Okay,
(35:18):
So a lot of what we've talked about is mental strength,
self care, self awareness. Let's talk a little bit about
the building box of high performance. You talk about passion,
perseverance and resilience PPR, right. So are you a big
(35:38):
fan of Evander Duckworth's research on grit? Do you do
you bring that into your your work on high performance?
I do?
Speaker 1 (35:47):
I am. I am a fan of Agelia duckworth work,
and one of the things I respect most about her
is the fact that she kind of evolved her thinking
in the way that her work went in response to
how the data unfolded you. She's not I don't experience
her as like super dogmatic about the work that she's done,
which I really respect. But I think, you know, look
(36:08):
and support Again, if you want to be great at
what you do, you do have to essentially like it
a little bit, right. You have to care about it,
You have to be passionate about it has to be
something that you want to show up and work for,
and then you also have to be willing to push
when things are not going well or you know. The
way I like to think of resilience comes from Keenan Sheldon.
He talks about resilience being the idea of seeking growth
(36:31):
even when conditions don't support it. I think that's a
lot of what it means to work hard and be
good at something in sports, right, I think the best athletes.
I talk a lot, and I think James Clear's written
a bit about it too, about falling in love with boredom, right,
And it's not all that pleasant to be bored and
show up to work, but you've got to do it
(36:51):
if that's something that you really want to achieve. And
you know, again, Michael Phelps has talked about this and
his work, Steph Curry's talked about it from his warm up,
Kobe's written talked about about it, and so I do
think you have to have that combination. I've never I've
never turned it into an acronym like BPR before. Maybe
I'll steal that from you now, But you know, I
think the combination of those characteristics allows you to show
(37:12):
up day after day, to keep working hard at the
things that are most important to you, and to push
yourself even when you don't feel like it.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
That's a great point, and I think that we can
break down this idea of boredom as well falling in
love with monotony. That's really what we mean by boredom.
A lot of people find monotony boring, but I think
a lot of athletes don't find it. The word boredom
is a judgment call though, you know. That's why I'm saying, like,
what is it exactly? It's doing the same thing over
and over and over end. But I think that a
(37:45):
lot of high performers kind of retrain their brain in
a way where they don't need constant novelty of practice routine.
They get excited to wake up, they get excited for
the monotony because as they know that it's going to
really solidify some skill that'll give them an edge and competition.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
I think that's exactly right. And the cool thing about
sports is you get to see that monotony basically like
play out and see if it's working or not for
you on game day, right, So you get to see
if all that high quality practice and the monotony is
leading to the results that you want. And I do
think these highest level athletes are motivated by trying to
perfect their craft right and trying to become the best
(38:31):
that they can be. We talked earlier about the idea
of dominance, but I do think for the athletes who
have the longest, most successful careers, a lot of what
they talk about being after is really self actualization.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Right.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
It's becoming the best athlete that they can be becoming
the best version of themselves. It's not about winning as
many championships as they can. That's sort of an outcome
that comes by way of pushing to be the best
that you can be. But it's not the thing that
they're seeking. You know, if you watch that Darting five
on Netflix, for example, there's an episode where Lebron breaks
the all time NBA scoring record and the interviewer asks
(39:08):
him something about like, you know, did you set out
to break this, Like did you have any idea you
would break this record? And he responds with I had
no intention of breaking this record, basically, like I just
wanted to be the best that I could be, and
as a function of being the best that I could be, I.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Broke this record.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
And so I think of that, Yeah, it's really pretty
special to hear these these players think about what it
means to become high level and it's all about becoming
the best that they can be. And I think if
you then treat monotony as a part of that, right,
it's underpins deliberate practice, it underpins the development of expertise.
It can be something that it may not be the
(39:44):
most energizing thing every day. I've been to enough, you know,
pro sports practices to see that there are sometimes when
the energy just isn't quite there and it doesn't feel
great to go out there and work through the monotony.
But the reality is doing that repeatedly is what helps
you become expert at your draft?
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Yeah? What is? What are some of the best mindsets
that a high performing athlete can harness? You talk about
a challenge mindset in your book. What is a challenge mindset?
And are there other mindsets that are important for athletes?
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Well, look, I want I want to hear a little
bit about the mindset you're writing about a little bit too,
because I think that would be an interesting one to
incorporate into the three that that I've thought about or
talked a lot about. But I'll start where you. I'll
start where you left it, and then I want to
hear from you. But you know, we you know doctor
Elia Crum. Her research is on stress is enhancing mindset
(40:39):
and the idea that the way that we perceive stress
as a challenge or a threat does impact the way
that we think, feel and perform. And so for the
highest level athletes, we're trying to train them to see
stress as enhancing, and the most common way that we
see stress as really as a debilitator. Right, we see
stress as bad or harmful, and that leads to of
course worse performance individually, but also worst team performance.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Right.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
We've all kind of seen that play out, right, you know,
it's the the athlete who picks up their ball and
goes home, right when things get hard. If you quit,
it's really hard to obviously reach the level that you
want to be at, and so to be a high performer,
we really need to figure out how we harness that
challenge mindset. So seeing stress as an opportunity for growth,
(41:23):
or a chance to show what we're made of, or
a sign that we're determined, or as excitement can help
us kind of tap into that stress is enhancing mindset.
The second mindset I talk about is this combination of
growth mindset and fixed mindset, And we talked about this
a little bit last week on a webinar we did together.
But you know, people present growth mindset and fixed mindset
(41:45):
as though there's sort of like two opposites, but the
reality is they're sort of their orthogonal. Right, you can
be high in both. You can have a high level
of growth mindset and a high level of fixed mindset,
and I think for elite performers, you do want to
believe in the value of hard work and effort and persistence.
That growth mindset oriented part of you to reach the
outcomes that you want. But you also have to recognize
(42:07):
that there's something special about you that allows you to
stand out, and that's where harnessing that fixed mindset really
comes into play. And then third, we've talked about the
importance of recovery, but I think learning to see recovery
as an investment in future performance, not as time away
from the game, but time that you're actually putting in
to get better, can facilitate high performance over time. But
(42:29):
I want to hear about you know, I know your
writing and have written now about the victim mindset. I
want to hear more about this mindset you're exploring and
see if I can think about how that folds into
the way I think about mindset too.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Yeah, definitely, I think that it's very relevant in a
sports context where you can feel as though forces outside
yourself for conspiring against you, that you don't have any agency,
laugh that you keep trying to reach your goals and practicing,
and you reach a plateau and you can't get past it,
(43:04):
and and it's the world's fault for that, you know,
and that can really hold you back from persevering and
maybe even changing your goals in ways that are healthy
and you know, and moving on productively. Sometimes you do
reach plateaus, you know. I don't think that grit can
(43:25):
get you in everywhere, Alex. You know, I don't think
that grit can make everyone of Michael Jordan, you know,
I agree. So I think it's equally as important to
have a healthy mindset where you take responsibility for what
you're putting into it, the amount of work you're putting in.
You also take responsibility for your challenges and what and
(43:49):
how you show up and what decisions you make when
faced with those challenges, and how you react to things.
All those things are within your control. And when we
have a victim mindset, we really we outsource all those
problems to the world. So yeah, I do think like
harnessing an empowerment. I call it an empowerment mindset. It's
(44:10):
probably very helpful in a lot of sports contexts. What
it really is is it's self empowerment. So so yeah,
I'm just kind of adding in a self empowering kind
of mindset that I think is complementary to the other
ones you mentioned. I don't think it can be reduced
to any of the ones you mentioned, but I think
it belongs in that canyon of healthy mindsets for success.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
I completely agree, and it's really interesting to hear you
unpack it because this idea would resonate so much for
coaches and sports. You know, there's so many times I've
seen and worked with coaches who get frustrated because athletes
essentially make excuses, right, And that's sort of what you're
saying is an empowerment. Empowerment mindsets about finding your level
(44:58):
of responsibility, your level of control, and taking ownership over
that as much as you can, which is of course
what every coach wants to see in their athletes, right,
is them taking complete ownership for it. I'd be curious
if I can flip the interview on you for a
minute here, but I'd be curious, like, what are the
skills you would teach, either a coach or an athlete
that would facilitate that empowerment mindset?
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Well, I would really, I mean, I would love to
sit down with you and design a curriculum that that
brings all that together. Some things off the top of
my mind include bringing in the idea of learned hopefulness,
which is a construct that is only our recent construct,
because the construct of warned helplessness has existed for many,
(45:42):
many years. This idea that we our default state is
to be helpless, and well, we know that we learn
to be helpless through repeated failures. But Martin Sullgman and
colleagues have found more recently that actually our default state
is helplessness, that's not what we learn. We actually have
to actively learn the skills of hope, and that often
(46:06):
involves coming up with plan B, plan C pland what
are you going to do if this first route is blocked?
You know, well I have a plan, you know. And
so hope is not just a feel good feeling, it's
a cognitive mindset as well. So I think that would
be a big part of it. Helping with emotional regulation
(46:27):
skills is a big part of it. Being able to uh,
not identify with the emotion that you're feeling so much
that you're you're saying, well, I am anxious, you know.
So you're on the court, You're like, oh, I'm feeling
some anxiety right now, but I'm so much more than this,
you know, so you just you know, it's I think
that's a whole skill set right there, is is tr
(46:49):
I'm basically just thinking of this on the spot because
you asked me, But I think I'm thinking within within
a sports context. Those and you asked me for did
you ask me for three?
Speaker 1 (46:58):
You can give me as many as you want. Just
asked for a couple, Yeah, a few?
Speaker 2 (47:02):
Oh yeah, I can't remember if you specified give me three.
But but also yeah, I think like cognitive astortions can
can really be big on on the on the court
or whatever whatever the field, the field, the sports field.
I think that you can kind of get things distorted.
We're not seeing the reality clearly, and you maybe catastrophize.
(47:25):
I think I think catastrophizing the big one. If you
miss a shot, you know, oh my gosh, I'm having
an off day. You know, well, you just missed a shot.
We'll see if you're having it off day. But don't
don't shoot yourself in the foot just yet. So those
are just some immediately coming back. But I think there's
a whole bunch of things that we could add and
that I bet you know, when the day comes where
(47:47):
we can can come together and really share our mutual
knowledge base, I think would come up a really valuable
curriculum for for for for coaches of all ages.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
Yeah, I agree. That's really really cool to hear you
unpack in lifetime. Sorry for putting you on the spot there.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
But oh I loved it. No, I love everything.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Yeah, everything you're mentioning I think would be huge for
really athletes at any level.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
Yeah, I know you you really got me thinking, which
I appreciate. You talk about the principles of peak performance
as preparation immersion APT. I think adaptation is one of them,
Energy optimization and resilience. I want to double click on energy.
(48:32):
I think the newer generation they don't even know what
that means to click, but what what is energy optimization?
Is that different than staying motivated.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
For elite athletes and I think performers at any level. Yes,
you know, I think it's about finding at its core,
it's about finding the right level of energy for the
task at hand. Right. The reality is, you know, speaking
to what we talked about around falling in love with monotony,
for for example, like you're not always going to feel
like it, right, You're not always going to feel good.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
Again.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
If you watch you know, some of the best athletes,
if you've watched the show Quarterback on Netflix, for example,
Kirk Cousins talks about how basically from day one of
training camp onward, you never feel one hundred percent, you know,
but the idea you feeling good is basically done the
moment you step out on the field, and so you've
got to find ways to get yourself into the optimal
(49:27):
energy state to perform, whether that's ramping energy up, which
we don't talk a ton about because we're you know,
most of us are used to running a little bit
hot and needing to calm down when it comes to performance.
But there are athletes who you know, are not as
energized and activated as they need to be to perform well,
and so figuring that out, I think, is really important.
And then, of course, if you're one of the more
(49:47):
common people who runs hot, right, figuring out how to
calm down and get yourself into a centered place so
that you can execute your skills as well as possible
is also really important. So it's a little different than
feeling motivated, right, it's not necessarily out feeling like you
want to or don't want to do something. It's about
getting yourself into the right psychological state to be able
to execute that skill with the level you need to.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
Man, I love that I need some energy optimization. I
recently got this drink that has high caffeine content as
well as a lot of new tropics in it, and
they sent it to me to try it out to
see if I want to advertise it. I was like,
this is optimis that it gives me a lot of energy.
I want to do it more naturally.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
Yeah, is it working? Do you feel? Do you feel optimized?
Speaker 2 (50:36):
You know, the word optimization is a funny one for
someone like me who studies self actualization because I've often
argue there's that there's the idea of optimization is really
not what I'm after. You know, self actualization is a journey,
and it's one where it's only only you can you know,
(50:57):
choose that what path you want to go down. There's
no optimal objectively, there's no objectively optimal path. I mean,
so anyway, with all those caveats aside, I do think
that when I am able to to maintain a high
energy and a high. Uh, yeah, like when I want
(51:22):
when I have the stamina. I think stamina is a
big thing here, you know, and when we when when
we have a high stamina, I mean, we can just
handle so much more things, even in our own cognitive
you know, our cognition is so tied to our physicality.
Our outlook just seems so much greater when we have
(51:42):
the stamina for things. When we're just really lethargic and tired,
we really were like I can't be bothered to do anything,
and so I just think it's this is such an
important facet of peak performance.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
Yeah. Absolutely, I think we've If you want to be
great at anything, you've got to get used to finding
ways to do things you don't really feel like doing
and not being so you know, hung up by the
initial kind of emotional response and let the mood kind
of follow the energy and the action.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
A little bit. Absolutely. Okay, we've already talked about resiliency, preparation, immersion.
I think people get that, you know, like becoming an expert. Yeah,
we get that, right, But what is adaptation? Let's end there.
What is adaptation that the last principle of peak performance.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Well, now you're bringing me back to the roots of
earlier But you know the faucdation.
Speaker 2 (52:34):
That's true adaptive capacity, Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 (52:37):
Yeah, And the way I write about it in this
chapter is really about leveraging the principles of psychological flexibility, right,
and acceptance and commitment therapy to help yourself respond in
the moment more effectively. Right. And actually I think a
lot of it fits with what you were talking about
with an empowerment mindset. Right. It's this idea that you can,
(52:58):
you know, identify what you value and choose to commit
to that path even when you don't feel so good
about it. Or you can let go of the cognitive distortions.
Right if you miss a shot and you catastrophize, you
can learn to let that go effectively essentially diffuse from
that thought, right, and stay in the moment and stay
stay present and stay performing. And I think be really attuned.
You know, we've got good data and sport that shows
(53:19):
that being a bit more attuned to your external environment
versus your internal environment allows you to perform a bit better.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
Right.
Speaker 1 (53:26):
You're basically like reading the game and present with the
game versus oh my gosh, I missed that shot. You
know how am I feeling or am I going to
miss the next thirty in a row because I just
missed this one? Right? And so I think the skills
of psychological flexibility really facilitate that quite well. Right. Being
able to recommit consistently to the game plan and to
the things that are most important to you as a player.
(53:48):
Being able to work through and accept difficult e motion
or discomfort and service of the game you're trying to
play or the skill you're trying to execute, and being
able to let go of these unhelpful thoughts I do
think allows you to stay president and perform well. And
so adaptations about being essentially like the skills that you
need to stay fully immersed in the game, to stay
fully present and be your best when it matters most.
Speaker 2 (54:12):
Yeah, it's so good. It's so good. I love the
work you do, Alex. And your book is called it's
called Called to Greatness. So you really do believe everyone
has a high performer possibility within them. You make that clear.
I'll end on this quote. You and everybody you know
(54:32):
have the chance to be great. You just have to
answer the call. Hopefully that inspires our listeners to answer
that call. So go, go, go Go, That'll be the
coach and me that's the coaching me. I'm saying that
to all our listeners right now. Hope this episode inspired you. Alex,
keep up the great work and I really look forward
to continuing our collaborations.
Speaker 1 (54:53):
Likewise, thank you so much for having me, and thanks
for the opportunity
We know quality of relationships is a predictor of life
satisfaction to people feeling like they've lived a life well.
And I don't think that's any different for high performers
in any industry. And again, you know, the relationship between
an athlete and a coach, for example, is really critical
for high performance. The relationship between players and a team
sport is really critical for high performance. The importance of
(00:23):
those relationships cannot be overstated because those are the people.
You know, the people around us are what give us
the sort of fuel that we need to keep pushing
when things get hard. They motivate us in ways that
we don't always know we need to be motivated. They
give us alternative perspectives, They help us feel supported. There's
a ton that comes with having high quality connection.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Hello and welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we explore
the depths of human potential. Today we have doctor Alex
Auerbach on the show. Doctor Auerbach is a licensed counseling
and sport performance pslogist who works with the best athletes
in the world. Olympic champions and NBA, NFL and MLB
players count on him to elevate their game. He has
(01:09):
also worked with high performers and other domeans like elite
military units, Fortune five companies, and venture back startups. In
this episode, we discuss this book called to Greatness, your
personal playbook for the pursuit of excellence. Specifically, we discuss
adaptive capacity, resiliency, the foundations of wellness, the role of
(01:29):
self awareness and high performance, the importance of values identification,
and the science behind confidence and self belief. Doctor Auerbach
believes that we all have a chance to be great.
We just have to answer the call. I really love
his work and I know you will too, So without
further ado, I bring you doctor Alex Auerbach. Hey Alex Auerbach,
(01:51):
how are you, Scott?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I'm good. That's nice to see you.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Nice to see you. Thanks for coming on the Psychology Podcast.
Really been looking forward to featuring your work for a
long time. Can you introduce yourself a little bit for
our audience?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Definitely, But first, thanks for having me. This is kind
of like a little bit of a surreal moment for me.
You know, I grew up in graduate school listening to
this podcast and now to be here with you is
pretty cool. So thank you for having me. I am
a PhD counseling and sports psychologist by training, got my
doctorating counseling psychology from North Texas, and most recently was
the sports psychologist for the Toronto Raptors and now for
(02:27):
the Jacksonville Jaguars along with one of my good friends.
So I spent a lot of time helping athletes and
other high performers across areas. I work with folks in
private equity founders and folks in venture capital. I've worked
with some musicians helping achieve peak performance and balance that
with holistic wellness and becoming the best version of themselves.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I love that, because you know, I love that balance,
and and it's good to see there's a trend for
that balance to be appreciated among sports psychologists and among
sports coaches. I've noticed a real increase in the past
couple of years in understanding just how important that balance is.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
I think that's exactly right, and I love seeing this,
and coaches in particular, they're starting to think of themselves
as performers, which I think is a generally good trend.
But as you know, you know, the best athletes are
doing a great job balancing rest and recovery with a
push for excellence and understand that that recovery and rest
and balance is actually a key part of becoming the
best that they can be.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, very very well put. So, yeah, you're
making me feel a little bit old saying you listen
to my podcasting grad school. You say in your book
you spent the last fifteen years studying what enables performers
to deliver consistent results and make meaningful progress toward achieving
their full potential. I think that this idea of consistency
(03:48):
is a central theme in a lot of your writings.
Would you agree, absolutely?
Speaker 1 (03:53):
I think maybe the most important thing, it's definitely up there,
but to show up every day and give as much
as you can. It's not about giving one hundred percent
every day. I think that's a bit unrealistic. But giving
one hundred percent of whatever it is you have to
give every day is sort of the foundation really for
getting good at anything.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yes, And a lot of my research on creativity shows
that creativity is not necessarily characterized by consistency. So how
do you balance expertise acquisition which does require consistency and
leading allowing a little spontaneity there, Alex, so that you
(04:31):
can allow some unexpected connections to happen or is that
just a relevant to sports.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Well, I'd be really curious how you make sense of that,
because you've got an interesting background and working with creative
experts too. I mean, I do think in sports creativity
sometimes comes as a function of being really expert at
what you do. And so because you put in the
practice and you've seen so many different variations of what
the game might look like, it does allow for a
(04:58):
little bit of improvization. As you know, you know there
are other cognitive factors that go into that too, right,
you know, high intelligence, for example, might make you a
little bit more creative and a little less rigid on
the basketball court or on the football field, and so
I think you might see some of those factors play
out too. But I think consistency in training gives you
that good foundation for understanding the most common ways the
(05:20):
game might unfold, and also allows you to see opportunities
for being a little bit more creative and innovative. But
I do think the reality in sports is we're playing
from a playbook right in most sports, and so there
is a bit of structure, and I think the best
coaches are trying to find ways to give athletes freedom
within that structure, but still sort of move the mission
forward in ways that perhaps like a creative artist, a painter,
(05:43):
a writer may not have those same kind of constraints.
But I don't know. You tell me what do you
make of the time.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Well, I'm still formulating my thoughts about this, But let's
think of some examples of some of the most artistic
creative athletes and see that separates them from the rest.
I think that may be a useful exercise. Obviously, Michael
Jordan eners my mind because I grew up with him
and I felt like he was an artist on the
basketball court, and he did creative things that other athletes
(06:14):
can't do. Alex, what do you who are some artists
that come to your mind?
Speaker 1 (06:18):
That's an interesting way of thinking about an athlete. I
think you've you've given two great ones. Barry Sanders comes
to mind for me. On the football field, you know
someone who could sort of make anything happen, even with
less than ideal circumstances. I think if I'm thinking about football,
(06:38):
I'm thinking about guys like Lamar Jackson right now right
kind of a creative, different outside the box player. Patrick
Mahomes too. I think is a pretty creative player. I'm
thinking about guys like Leo Messi as a pretty creative
soccer player. So I think there are a few artists
out there. I think we might have some selection bias.
(07:01):
I'm not sure we're picking anyone who's not also the
best of the best here, which is interesting. But I
think that's noteworthy too.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
But yes, and in all those cases, they still put
in the work. I mean, consistency was not at odds
with their creativity. I mean, my gosh, I think for
these individuals you mentioned, they're probably also in the list
of the hardest workers of all time. So maybe you
kind of have to put in your reps in order
(07:30):
to be able to have enough to be able to
improvise on I think that's kind of a general consensus
in the creativity literature, and what you said applies in
sports as well.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
I think that's exactly right. How does that play out
in the creativity literature? What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Well that in the world of ideas, the more knowledge
and information you have, the more fodder you have to
play around with in a way, you know, and the
more unexpected connections you can make. You can't make unexpected
connections among things that aren't in your head. It's very fair,
but creative people don't just stop with the expertise. That's
(08:08):
the thing. There really is a beyond expertise element there
to creative people. So I'm just trying to think through
how that works in sports. And I don't think that
most athletes have as their goal creativity, they have high performance.
So yeah, so a lot of your work really is
delivering consistent results, which is not necessarily at odds with creativity.
(08:32):
So how do you respond resiliently to adverse conditions and
setback sow Like, what are some techniques or strategies you
have found really important.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Well with athletes in particular, I'm always thinking about a
couple of things when it comes to dealing with mistakes.
The first is how do we respond in the moment
to not let that mistake totally derail performance? And I'm
sure you can think of people you've worked with too,
but it's not uncommon when people make a mistake to
spend the next you know, fifteen twenty plus minutes in
their head beating themselves up for whatever just went on.
(09:05):
But in the context of a basketball game, let's say
it's not super helpful to be in your head beating
yourself up while the game is going on, right. It
takes you out of the moment. It limits your ability
really to perform at your highest level. And so we've
got to find a way to help you deal with
that mistake effectively in the moment. And so there's some
you know, simple techniques we would teach athletes, like a release, reset,
(09:27):
refocused routine where we help them learn the skill of
basically letting go of the mistake as quickly as possible
and refocusing as quickly as possible so they can be
in the game as much as they can. I think
the second element is often learning when the right time
to deal with the mistake is. So one of the
things that happens a lot in sports is that you know,
(09:48):
team will lose, or a turnover happens, and the player
comes off the corridor, off the field, and you see
the coach, you know, yelling at the player right away.
And I think we've got good data that shows that
that kind of repet sponds, delays recovery and actually increases
cortisol and makes players obviously more stressed out. Interestingly enough,
players who perceive their coaches to be more stressed also
(10:09):
perceive their coaches to be less competent. So it's all
around a bad cycle where the players feeling more stressed
and not recovering and also has less trust and faith
in their coaches' ability to help them. And so we've
got to teach athletes the right time to deal with
a mistake, which is usually after they've had some distance
from the game or from the mistake itself. I don't
(10:29):
think most people deal well with reflecting on a mistake
in the moment or right after the fact. We're still
trying to defend our ego a little bit or justify
whatever's happened or kind of explain it away, versus look
at it like a scientist and really try to understand
what happened here and what can we adjust in the
future so it doesn't happen again without it being so
central to the way that we see ourselves or how
(10:50):
good we think we are as a performer, just because
we made a mistake.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Thanks Alex, I really like that. Do you find in
your work with professional athletes that they are well, certainly
there are humans, I don't need to ask defind their
human But do you find they get affected by what
the media says about them. You know, like if the
media is harsh or tear someone down, can that really
(11:16):
affect a player psychologically? Have you seen that up close?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
I have, And you know, I think you're exactly right
that these athletes, even though they entertain and we sort
of see them as superhuman, for a lot of the
things that they can do, their people first. And so
if they're getting torn down consistently in the media or
even on social media when you try to get them.
You know, I spent a lot of time trying to
get players to not go on Twitter, right, or not
(11:40):
go on social media and avoid the comments because there's
usually nothing good waiting for you there. But the reality
is for all people, right, words heard and language really
matters for the way that we think it feel. And
so it's not uncommon for an athlete to be disrupted
by what's being said about them. And of course we
can teach them, you know, good tips and tricks for
managing that effectively or distancing themselves or coping with whatever
(12:03):
is being said, But especially amidst say like a bad
streak in the season, right, it's not uncommon to have
ten articles written about how you're underperforming in the course
of two or three days, and for anybody, I think
that that would get to them a little bit, and
we've got to give them skills to manage that. And
I do think the best athletes find ways to either
use that as fuel, right and become a source of
(12:24):
motivation or something that helps them overcome, or they find
a way to just disconnect and not be so impacted
by the opinions of people who write about them and
sort of find ways to let that go.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Wonderful. Well, what is this expression adaptive capacity that you
talk a lot about. What is that.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Our friends Brad Stolberg and Steve Magnus I think put
it quite well in one of their books. But it's
the basic idea that stress paired with rest can lead
to growth and progress. Right. The idea is that the
more challenges we take on and the higher harder challenges
we take on, and then when we rest and recover,
we build our ability to do harder things again in
(13:09):
the future. It kind of dovetails with things like stress
and oculation theory and some of these other principles where
we know that when people are provided or do experience
a bit of stress or tension and then they again,
they recover, they can take on more. So the easiest
metaphor to use here is the weight room. Right, if
we're using sports, like if you go to the gym
and you get on the bench and you bench press
(13:31):
on Monday, and then you give yourself a break on Tuesday,
by the time you come back Wednesday, you should be
a little bit stronger and ready to take on a
little bit more. In contrast, right, if you go to
the gym on Monday and you bench, and then you
go on Tuesday and you bench, and Wednesday you bench,
and Thursday you bench. By Friday, you might tear a
peck and so adaptive capacity is really about giving yourself
(13:52):
the adequate amount of stress and the adequate amount of
rest to consistently grow over time.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, that's really not compatible with having an obsessive passion
for your your activity. You know. Vall runs distinction between
harmonious passion and obsessive passion. I think a lot of
athletes have that idea that I need to be the
hardest worker in the room or else I'll never be
(14:20):
a Michael Jordan. And in order to be the hardest worker,
I need to be obsessontally passionate about it even when
it's not bringing returns on my investment. Is that a myth?
Speaker 1 (14:31):
I think you're exactly right. I mean I used to
see this with the rookies we brought in in Toronto.
You know, you draft a rookie and then you fly
him to the facility right away, and you know, you'd
hear the story of, oh, he was in a gym
at three am, you know, for the next five days,
and I'm like, I'm not sure that that's a good thing.
I'm not sure I want him in the gym at
three am. I want him sleeping at three am, ideally
(14:52):
so that he can come in the gym and perform
well the next day. But I do think sports has
an unfortunate way of sort of lionizing consistent work. And
then there's all these sort of pithy sayings that cut
against the idea that recovery is useful. Right, So you've
heard things like you're either getting better you're getting worse,
(15:12):
or while you're sleeping, the enemy is working.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
You know, right, Yeah that's a big one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Those kinds of sayings then discourage people from taking the
rest and recovery that they need to be successful. But
if you actually look at the best athletes in the world,
they're all resting and recovering at an incredible rate. Right
There's been articles written about lebron spending more than a
million dollars a year on his recovery routine. There was
(15:38):
just an article written a couple of weeks ago about
Christiano Ronaldo and his longevity and the routine he goes through.
There's a ton written about Kobe and his you know,
famous Phoria workout sessions, but less written or said about
his naps in between, you know. And so the best
athletes really are engaging recovery as a part of practice
(15:58):
and using recovery to facility take their excellence so that
they can be consistent over time. We just don't talk
so much about the recovery part because it's not as
sexy or interesting as you know, an athlete shooting five
thousand shots or whatever it might be.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Hil, I want to take a moment to make a
few important announcements that I'm really excited about. As you
all know, I'm committed to helping people self actualize. In
the service of that, I just had a new book
comount called Rise Above. Overcome a victim mindset, empower yourself
and realize your full potential. In this book, I offer
a science backed toolkit to help you overcome your living
(16:39):
beliefs and take control of your life. Are you tired
of feeling helpless? This book will offer you hope, not
by identifying with the worst things that have happened to you,
but by empowering you to tap into the best that
is within you. Rise Above is available wherever you get
your books. Are you a personal coach looking to take
your coaching to the next level. I'm also excited to
tell you there are Foundations of Self Actualization Coaching. Three
(17:01):
day immersive experience for coaches is backed by popular demand.
Foundations of Self Actualization Coaching is a course offered to
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(17:22):
for Human Potential dot com slash s a C. That's
Center for Human Potential dot com slash s a C. Okay,
now back to the show. Yeah, but yeah, this mentality
though that while I'm sleeping, my enemy is working out.
I mean, it's very prevalent in the bio hacking or
(17:44):
the pro pro science community. I mean it's this idea
of like I'm waking up at five am and I'm
jumping in the bath. Are you? Are you kind of
like criticizing that culture a little bit.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
A little bit? Yeah, I mean, look, I think I
think the persist and push to optimize everything ultimately probably
leads to underperformance in the long term. You know, I
think it's a recipe for either burning out or building
you know, unhealthy habits, or potentially taking shortcuts right, Like,
I think this is the slippery slope that leads to
(18:18):
people taking like growth hormone is you're feeling like you're
being left behind and you're looking for whatever edge you can.
I mean, we both know that the bro science community
is also not using science so much, and so I
think I think that's part of it too. But again,
I think probably across across industries, right the best performers
(18:39):
really are taking their time to rest and recover. I'm
sure you've seen it too. But I think Adam Grant
wrote a little bit about the idea that leaders who
engage in post work recovery have higher performing teams because
their teams feel comfortable recovering. I think he wrote a
Twitter poster or blog post about that at some point,
like across spaces this just really or same thing with
(19:01):
sleep insurgeons, right or sleep in pilots. We know that
that's really important for them performing well. So I mean, look,
you can wake up and get an ice bath all
you want, but you're still going to have to recover.
You're still going to have to find just the basic
ways of doing it sustainably over time. If you want
to be great at anything.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
When I go in the ice bath, I spend the
rest of the day recovering from going in the ice bath.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
I don't even get in the ice bath because I
won't I won't make it out.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Oh man, Okay, So what are some other foundations of
well being in a sports context. You've already mentioned a
couple obviously, but what are some others.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
I think probably the most important one would be sleep.
You know, there's just tons and tons of great data
about the value of sleep for both well being and
emotional you know, health and psychological health broadly, but also
for sports performance. There was a study done at Stanford
in the early twenty tens ISH that showed that twelve
(20:00):
players who slept a couple hours longer each night had
an increase in their free throw percentage of about twenty percent.
We've got data that shows that sleep is when you know,
your brain cleans itself and you consolidate learning and you
grow muscle. So if you want to be a high performer,
you know, all those things are really critical, and I
think in most cases sleep is probably the number one
(20:22):
thing we can improve for athletes to raise their performance
quite quickly. Second would be something like nutrition. You know,
I'm not a dietitian or nutritionist, so I won't wax
poetic about that for too long. But we know, you know,
there's more and more being written about like the gut
brain axis and the role of nutrition and mental health.
But we also just know high quality nutrition and hydration
(20:43):
is really important for you know, again, muscle building and
taking care of your body and things that are required
if you want to be a high level performer really
anywhere to be great. I think a lot about the
idea of play and having fun as something that's really
important for well you and your work on creativity. You
probably know a bit more about that than I do,
(21:04):
so I'd be curious what you think of that concept.
But I know for me, if I'm even working with
pro athletes, if we're not having any fun, that's going
to be a problem. And I think play is a
huge foundation of getting more creative in the work that
you do and finding innovative solutions and also engaging and
you know, something socially that makes you feel better. And
the fourth one I'll give you without going through all
(21:25):
of them, is movement. And you know, for athletes, of course,
movements kind of baked in right in practice you're running
around or you're going to the weight room, But for
performers outside of sports, again, the link between you know,
physical movement and brain performance and brain health is pretty robust.
And so making sure you're getting exercise or yoga or
whatever it might be, I think can be really important
(21:49):
for building that foundation well being.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah. I know that this is not very like brolly
of me to say, but what's importance of connection?
Speaker 1 (22:00):
I love that you're not going the bro route there,
That's okay. I support that completely. I mean, you know
as well as anybody, right, Relationships are one of the
biggest predictors of resilience that we have strong as predictors
of resilience that we have. Again, athletes kind of have
that built in a little bit, right with teammates and
the people in the locker room, though those relationships are
(22:21):
not always super high quality. That's one of the places
where people like me and other sports psychologists or psychology
practitioners can help intervene and make a big difference. We
know quality of relationships is a predictor of life satisfaction too,
and people feeling like they've lived a life well. And
I don't think that's any different for high performers in
(22:41):
any industry. And again, you know, the relationship between an
athlete and a coach, for example, is really critical for
high performance. The relationship between players and a team sport
is really critical for high performance. But even in individual sports,
I don't know, if you're watching any Wimbledon right now,
you can see, you know, the best athletes out there
are still interacting with their coaches while they're on the court,
(23:03):
and they're thinking about the people in their circle and
they're taking coaching, or it happens in boxing and UFC
two where the coach kind of comes up on the
ring side and sort of coaches them up. Like the
importance of those relationships cannot be overstated because those are
the people, you know, the people around us or what
give us the sort of fuel that we need to
keep pushing when things get hard. They motivate us in
(23:24):
ways that we don't always know we need to be motivated.
They give us alternative perspectives, They help us feel supported.
There's a ton that comes with having high quality connection,
also not built into the brow protocol, but highly important.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Yeah, because well, the idea of relational tends to it
feels at odds with the need for dominance, and I mean,
I feel like you need to integrate both in a
way for high well being. And so I'm wondering how
that works in a support context where dominance is really
(24:02):
such a culvetted state to be in. You know, that's
why you go into sports, because you want to dominate
you know, the competition. But you know, as a youth
sports coach or as a sports coach at any level,
how can you kind of foster a healthy integration there
of even creating relationships with your competition.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
I think you see it at the highest levels of sport,
there's a really healthy respect for people on the other
team because if you're an elite athlete, if you're a
pro athlete, you understand what it takes to be on
the other side of the ball, right, or be on
the other side of the court, right. It takes a
tremendous amount of work and dedication and persistence to reach
(24:45):
that level. And so I think there is, again in
pro sports, like this mutual respect for each other that's
sort of built in on top of the fact that
you know, you never know who might be your teammate
next year, so you don't have, you know, bad relationships
with everyone. But I do think there's this sort of
element where for a few hours every other night, you've
got to find a way to sort of increase the
sense of connectedness and camaraderie you have with the people
(25:08):
in your locker room and then channel that toward dominating
the people across from you, and for you know, three hours,
be a little bit ruthless about that. It doesn't mean
be disrespectful. It just means be focused on establishing your
team as the superior team. And I think you can
do that in a way that still demonstrates again like
(25:29):
a level of healthy respect for your opponent and respect
for the game, and really just prioritizes the connection that
you have with the people around you. And I think,
you know, probably the best example I've seen of this
in recent times is Steph Curry. You know, Steph has
been with the Warriors for a long time now, but
there was an article written not too long ago as
the Kevin Durant trade rumors circled about him maybe going
(25:52):
back to Golden State, and there was an article written
that talked about Steph sort of basically saying when Kevin
Durant came like, okay, man, this is your team now,
which is pretty uncommon. You know, in a lot of
pro sports locker rooms, the player who's most established simply
tries to re establish dominance over any new player that
comes in. And so for someone to sort of step
(26:13):
aside and recognize it'll be best for the group and
best for the team and best for me if you
take over and we follow your lead, I think is
quite uncommon, but speaks to this really high level of
relational intelligence and the way that he's thinking about building
a team that I think is quite special. And so
to your point, I think people mistake that level of
(26:34):
relational savvy and understanding how the pieces fit together for
weakness essentially, right, or being less than in the dominance hierarchy.
But yeah, in some ways, I think being that patuned
is actually a sign of obviously significant strength, but a
little bit of dominance. Right. If you can be the
one that decides whose team this is, I don't think
you can find a higher position than that.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Yeah, that's a really good point. It's a really good point.
What's the role of self awareness in adaptive capacity?
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Again? I think if I'm looking at the highest level athletes,
they've all got this incredible ability to understand what they
need or what's important to them at any given moment. Again,
to use Steph as an example, he talked not too
long ago about the thing that he believed made him
so excellent or makes him so excellent is constantly paying
attention to how he's feeling and what his body needs
(27:27):
or what his brain needs to perform well. And I
think you've seen this with athletes like a Michael Phelps
or Simone Biles. You know these folks who are paying
attention to their well being, Right, Simona is probably a
great example from a few years ago where she recognized, like,
I don't feel well going out here right, and if
I keep doing this, I'm likely to get hurt, and
that injury is likely to be much worse for me
(27:48):
than pulling myself out of this competition and taking care
of myself. But I think you can only do things
like that if you're aware of how you're feeling, if
you're aware of what you need, if you're aware of
how your body feels, how your mind feels, what your
energy level are like. And so to get to that
level of excellence, you really do have to pay attention
to yourself. You can't just go through the motions. You
can't blindly follow whatever your coaches recommend because they don't
(28:12):
know you. They're not living your body, they're not living
your experience. And so you've got to be able to
build that because that's going to let you figure out
what's the next challenge you need to take on, how
much rest you need, and what's that going to look
like for you to get better and better over time.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Yeah, you you talk about some foundations of self awareness,
such as values, identification and feedback serving. What the heck
are those two things?
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Yeah? Well, I mean I think, for me, the way
I think about self awareness starts and you know, I
was trained pretty heavily in ACT, so I'll acknowledge that
ACT informs a lot of the ways that I think. Right,
But figuring out what you value and what's really important
to you, I think serves as an anchor for a
lot of the decisions you make. And so if you're
unclear about what matters most to you or the person
(29:03):
that you want to become, is going to be really
hard to make decisions that serve you well in the
long term. And I think what you're going to find
is you consistently optimize for the short term, which for
most people is fairly counter to long term success if
you really want to be a healthy competitor. But what's
right in front of you is, you know, three pints
of chocolate ice cream every night. Like I'm not discouraging
(29:25):
people from eating chocolate ice cream. There's just a reality
that you can eat three pints of chocolate ice cream
if you also want to get to the highest level
of nutrition and pro sports right to use a simple example,
and so being clear that becoming the best, for example,
is important to you can help you make that decision.
To sort of forgo the short term pleasure for long
term gain. So I think that's an important part of
(29:46):
values identification. And again, I think it just helps you
make decisions in the moment when things feel tense or
you're unsure about what to do. Knowing what's most important
to you can help you get clear and then commit
to whatever that decision is. And then I think feedback
is really important because you know, I wrote in the
book about self awareness being a little bit of essentially
what we know about ourselves and what others know about us, right,
(30:08):
And I think feedback helps us understand the impact that
we have on the people around us and adjust our
behavior so that we can have the impact that we want,
or understand more effective ways of being right. And again,
this is why the best athletes in the world have coaches,
because even if you think that you're doing footwork correctly,
or you think that you're being a good leader, or
(30:28):
you think you're practicing enough right, someone else's perspective about
what's missing or how your footwork is or how effective
your leadership is can really inform what you need to
do more of, less of, or differently to be as
successful as you want.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
To be Yeah, that's really quite profound, nothing and gloss over. Yeah, yeah,
I really like that all all your path on being
going where you want to be. I think loll self
confidence can rear its head, you know, especially if you're
not performing how you want to be performing. How do
(31:03):
you keep your confidence and self belief? I'm asking for
a friend, I'm not I can't resonate with that at
all right now, But what's how do you maintain your
confidence in your self belief when you're not necessarily getting
paid what you want to get paid, or getting the
successful results you want to get or it's cyclical, right,
(31:24):
it comes and goes. No one, no one including us
is high performing twenty four to seven, correct, So how
do you maintain that confidence and self belief when it's
not going well?
Speaker 1 (31:35):
I think of confidence as being a function of really
two things. Of course there's more, but the two that
I think are most important are past success, so being
able to sort of account for things you've done well
and understand the strengths you use to get there and
how you made those outcomes happen, and pushing past the
initial tendency. We all have to sort of be humble
(31:57):
and say, oh, I just got lucky. Like, No, you
didn't just get lucky, right, you worked hard. There are
strengths that you have that allows you to make that
outcome happen, and we should figure out what those strengths
are and figure out how we double down on those
things so that you can be the best version of
yourself more consistently. And then the second piece for me
when I'm thinking about high performance and athletes is really
about high quality preparation, good practice, and feeling as ready
(32:21):
as you can be is going to help you feel
more confident in believing yourself when you get to the
big game or when you get to whatever your performance is.
And of course you know you know as well as anyone, right,
there are other sources of self efficacy, right, like physiological
arousal and self talk and you know, vicarious learning. But
I think the preparation and past success give you a
(32:44):
really good foundation for feeling confident about yourself in whatever
endeavor it is you're going for. And so if you're
feeling not confident, right, I might start by asking you
to reflect on the things you've done well and how
you made those things happen. And if you're prepared for
something I might ask you to think about, you know,
what's missing from your preparation or what else you could
(33:04):
do that would help you feel as ready to go
as possible going into that performance.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Yeah. Yeah, a lot of this is these are said
and done, but it's very good advice. But you have
to not just think it, you have to feel it.
I think a lot of people, you know, can tell
themselves all they want, you know, to pep themselves up
and have the humbleness and and think about but maybe
(33:30):
deep down they feel like they're kind of broken and
well anyway that gets into trauma. And I mean, but, but,
but but athletes are human, right, so this stuff's not irrelevant.
Have you ever dealt with an athlete who who had
kept having like trauma triggers?
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Unfortunately more often than I wish for the case, you know,
I mean, many athletes come from a place of like
either great hardship or a lot of difficulty growing up.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
You know.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
I can think of athletes I've worked with who suffered,
you know, significant childhood trauma, whether it was like physical
abuse by a parent or some other kind of disruption
in their life. You know, I've worked with athletes who
have experienced homelessness, you know, a full range of things
that really have impacted them. And it's hard because in
(34:22):
the course of a season it may not be the
right thing to do to sort of get deep into
the trauma because there may be you know, they may
have to play right every other night, and so if
it's really disruptive or it's really hard for them or taxing,
you know, dealing with that and coping with that during
the season can can potentially hurt performance and then sort
(34:43):
of make things worse. And so you've got to find
ways to do that work kind of essentially in the
off season so that you can be as successful as
you want to be and heal heal a bit.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Healing. Healing is a big one that we don't give
enough time and space. I think there's a kind of yeah,
there's that mentality of like, you know, who's got time
for healing when your competition is is shooting jump shots
in the gym at five am? You know. Yeah. Okay,
(35:18):
So a lot of what we've talked about is mental strength,
self care, self awareness. Let's talk a little bit about
the building box of high performance. You talk about passion,
perseverance and resilience PPR, right. So are you a big
(35:38):
fan of Evander Duckworth's research on grit? Do you do
you bring that into your your work on high performance?
I do?
Speaker 1 (35:47):
I am. I am a fan of Agelia duckworth work,
and one of the things I respect most about her
is the fact that she kind of evolved her thinking
in the way that her work went in response to
how the data unfolded you. She's not I don't experience
her as like super dogmatic about the work that she's done,
which I really respect. But I think, you know, look
(36:08):
and support Again, if you want to be great at
what you do, you do have to essentially like it
a little bit, right. You have to care about it,
You have to be passionate about it has to be
something that you want to show up and work for,
and then you also have to be willing to push
when things are not going well or you know. The
way I like to think of resilience comes from Keenan Sheldon.
He talks about resilience being the idea of seeking growth
(36:31):
even when conditions don't support it. I think that's a
lot of what it means to work hard and be
good at something in sports, right, I think the best athletes.
I talk a lot, and I think James Clear's written
a bit about it too, about falling in love with boredom, right,
And it's not all that pleasant to be bored and
show up to work, but you've got to do it
(36:51):
if that's something that you really want to achieve. And
you know, again, Michael Phelps has talked about this and
his work, Steph Curry's talked about it from his warm up,
Kobe's written talked about about it, and so I do
think you have to have that combination. I've never I've
never turned it into an acronym like BPR before. Maybe
I'll steal that from you now, But you know, I
think the combination of those characteristics allows you to show
(37:12):
up day after day, to keep working hard at the
things that are most important to you, and to push
yourself even when you don't feel like it.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
That's a great point, and I think that we can
break down this idea of boredom as well falling in
love with monotony. That's really what we mean by boredom.
A lot of people find monotony boring, but I think
a lot of athletes don't find it. The word boredom
is a judgment call though, you know. That's why I'm saying, like,
what is it exactly? It's doing the same thing over
and over and over end. But I think that a
(37:45):
lot of high performers kind of retrain their brain in
a way where they don't need constant novelty of practice routine.
They get excited to wake up, they get excited for
the monotony because as they know that it's going to
really solidify some skill that'll give them an edge and competition.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
I think that's exactly right. And the cool thing about
sports is you get to see that monotony basically like
play out and see if it's working or not for
you on game day, right, So you get to see
if all that high quality practice and the monotony is
leading to the results that you want. And I do
think these highest level athletes are motivated by trying to
perfect their craft right and trying to become the best
(38:31):
that they can be. We talked earlier about the idea
of dominance, but I do think for the athletes who
have the longest, most successful careers, a lot of what
they talk about being after is really self actualization.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Right.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
It's becoming the best athlete that they can be becoming
the best version of themselves. It's not about winning as
many championships as they can. That's sort of an outcome
that comes by way of pushing to be the best
that you can be. But it's not the thing that
they're seeking. You know, if you watch that Darting five
on Netflix, for example, there's an episode where Lebron breaks
the all time NBA scoring record and the interviewer asks
(39:08):
him something about like, you know, did you set out
to break this, Like did you have any idea you
would break this record? And he responds with I had
no intention of breaking this record, basically, like I just
wanted to be the best that I could be, and
as a function of being the best that I could be, I.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Broke this record.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
And so I think of that, Yeah, it's really pretty
special to hear these these players think about what it
means to become high level and it's all about becoming
the best that they can be. And I think if
you then treat monotony as a part of that, right,
it's underpins deliberate practice, it underpins the development of expertise.
It can be something that it may not be the
(39:44):
most energizing thing every day. I've been to enough, you know,
pro sports practices to see that there are sometimes when
the energy just isn't quite there and it doesn't feel
great to go out there and work through the monotony.
But the reality is doing that repeatedly is what helps
you become expert at your draft?
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Yeah? What is? What are some of the best mindsets
that a high performing athlete can harness? You talk about
a challenge mindset in your book. What is a challenge mindset?
And are there other mindsets that are important for athletes?
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Well, look, I want I want to hear a little
bit about the mindset you're writing about a little bit too,
because I think that would be an interesting one to
incorporate into the three that that I've thought about or
talked a lot about. But I'll start where you. I'll
start where you left it, and then I want to
hear from you. But you know, we you know doctor
Elia Crum. Her research is on stress is enhancing mindset
(40:39):
and the idea that the way that we perceive stress
as a challenge or a threat does impact the way
that we think, feel and perform. And so for the
highest level athletes, we're trying to train them to see
stress as enhancing, and the most common way that we
see stress as really as a debilitator. Right, we see
stress as bad or harmful, and that leads to of
course worse performance individually, but also worst team performance.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Right.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
We've all kind of seen that play out, right, you know,
it's the the athlete who picks up their ball and
goes home, right when things get hard. If you quit,
it's really hard to obviously reach the level that you
want to be at, and so to be a high performer,
we really need to figure out how we harness that
challenge mindset. So seeing stress as an opportunity for growth,
(41:23):
or a chance to show what we're made of, or
a sign that we're determined, or as excitement can help
us kind of tap into that stress is enhancing mindset.
The second mindset I talk about is this combination of
growth mindset and fixed mindset, And we talked about this
a little bit last week on a webinar we did together.
But you know, people present growth mindset and fixed mindset
(41:45):
as though there's sort of like two opposites, but the
reality is they're sort of their orthogonal. Right, you can
be high in both. You can have a high level
of growth mindset and a high level of fixed mindset,
and I think for elite performers, you do want to
believe in the value of hard work and effort and persistence.
That growth mindset oriented part of you to reach the
outcomes that you want. But you also have to recognize
(42:07):
that there's something special about you that allows you to
stand out, and that's where harnessing that fixed mindset really
comes into play. And then third, we've talked about the
importance of recovery, but I think learning to see recovery
as an investment in future performance, not as time away
from the game, but time that you're actually putting in
to get better, can facilitate high performance over time. But
(42:29):
I want to hear about you know, I know your
writing and have written now about the victim mindset. I
want to hear more about this mindset you're exploring and
see if I can think about how that folds into
the way I think about mindset too.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Yeah, definitely, I think that it's very relevant in a
sports context where you can feel as though forces outside
yourself for conspiring against you, that you don't have any agency,
laugh that you keep trying to reach your goals and practicing,
and you reach a plateau and you can't get past it,
(43:04):
and and it's the world's fault for that, you know,
and that can really hold you back from persevering and
maybe even changing your goals in ways that are healthy
and you know, and moving on productively. Sometimes you do
reach plateaus, you know. I don't think that grit can
(43:25):
get you in everywhere, Alex. You know, I don't think
that grit can make everyone of Michael Jordan, you know,
I agree. So I think it's equally as important to
have a healthy mindset where you take responsibility for what
you're putting into it, the amount of work you're putting in.
You also take responsibility for your challenges and what and
(43:49):
how you show up and what decisions you make when
faced with those challenges, and how you react to things.
All those things are within your control. And when we
have a victim mindset, we really we outsource all those
problems to the world. So yeah, I do think like
harnessing an empowerment. I call it an empowerment mindset. It's
(44:10):
probably very helpful in a lot of sports contexts. What
it really is is it's self empowerment. So so yeah,
I'm just kind of adding in a self empowering kind
of mindset that I think is complementary to the other
ones you mentioned. I don't think it can be reduced
to any of the ones you mentioned, but I think
it belongs in that canyon of healthy mindsets for success.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
I completely agree, and it's really interesting to hear you
unpack it because this idea would resonate so much for
coaches and sports. You know, there's so many times I've
seen and worked with coaches who get frustrated because athletes
essentially make excuses, right, And that's sort of what you're
saying is an empowerment. Empowerment mindsets about finding your level
(44:58):
of responsibility, your level of control, and taking ownership over
that as much as you can, which is of course
what every coach wants to see in their athletes, right,
is them taking complete ownership for it. I'd be curious
if I can flip the interview on you for a
minute here, but I'd be curious, like, what are the
skills you would teach, either a coach or an athlete
that would facilitate that empowerment mindset?
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Well, I would really, I mean, I would love to
sit down with you and design a curriculum that that
brings all that together. Some things off the top of
my mind include bringing in the idea of learned hopefulness,
which is a construct that is only our recent construct,
because the construct of warned helplessness has existed for many,
(45:42):
many years. This idea that we our default state is
to be helpless, and well, we know that we learn
to be helpless through repeated failures. But Martin Sullgman and
colleagues have found more recently that actually our default state
is helplessness, that's not what we learn. We actually have
to actively learn the skills of hope, and that often
(46:06):
involves coming up with plan B, plan C pland what
are you going to do if this first route is blocked?
You know, well I have a plan, you know. And
so hope is not just a feel good feeling, it's
a cognitive mindset as well. So I think that would
be a big part of it. Helping with emotional regulation
(46:27):
skills is a big part of it. Being able to uh,
not identify with the emotion that you're feeling so much
that you're you're saying, well, I am anxious, you know.
So you're on the court, You're like, oh, I'm feeling
some anxiety right now, but I'm so much more than this,
you know, so you just you know, it's I think
that's a whole skill set right there, is is tr
(46:49):
I'm basically just thinking of this on the spot because
you asked me, But I think I'm thinking within within
a sports context. Those and you asked me for did
you ask me for three?
Speaker 1 (46:58):
You can give me as many as you want. Just
asked for a couple, Yeah, a few?
Speaker 2 (47:02):
Oh yeah, I can't remember if you specified give me three.
But but also yeah, I think like cognitive astortions can
can really be big on on the on the court
or whatever whatever the field, the field, the sports field.
I think that you can kind of get things distorted.
We're not seeing the reality clearly, and you maybe catastrophize.
(47:25):
I think I think catastrophizing the big one. If you
miss a shot, you know, oh my gosh, I'm having
an off day. You know, well, you just missed a shot.
We'll see if you're having it off day. But don't
don't shoot yourself in the foot just yet. So those
are just some immediately coming back. But I think there's
a whole bunch of things that we could add and
that I bet you know, when the day comes where
(47:47):
we can can come together and really share our mutual
knowledge base, I think would come up a really valuable
curriculum for for for for coaches of all ages.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
Yeah, I agree. That's really really cool to hear you
unpack in lifetime. Sorry for putting you on the spot there.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
But oh I loved it. No, I love everything.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Yeah, everything you're mentioning I think would be huge for
really athletes at any level.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
Yeah, I know you you really got me thinking, which
I appreciate. You talk about the principles of peak performance
as preparation immersion APT. I think adaptation is one of them,
Energy optimization and resilience. I want to double click on energy.
(48:32):
I think the newer generation they don't even know what
that means to click, but what what is energy optimization?
Is that different than staying motivated.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
For elite athletes and I think performers at any level. Yes,
you know, I think it's about finding at its core,
it's about finding the right level of energy for the
task at hand. Right. The reality is, you know, speaking
to what we talked about around falling in love with monotony,
for for example, like you're not always going to feel
like it, right, You're not always going to feel good.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
Again.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
If you watch you know, some of the best athletes,
if you've watched the show Quarterback on Netflix, for example,
Kirk Cousins talks about how basically from day one of
training camp onward, you never feel one hundred percent, you know,
but the idea you feeling good is basically done the
moment you step out on the field, and so you've
got to find ways to get yourself into the optimal
(49:27):
energy state to perform, whether that's ramping energy up, which
we don't talk a ton about because we're you know,
most of us are used to running a little bit
hot and needing to calm down when it comes to performance.
But there are athletes who you know, are not as
energized and activated as they need to be to perform well,
and so figuring that out, I think, is really important.
And then, of course, if you're one of the more
(49:47):
common people who runs hot, right, figuring out how to
calm down and get yourself into a centered place so
that you can execute your skills as well as possible
is also really important. So it's a little different than
feeling motivated, right, it's not necessarily out feeling like you
want to or don't want to do something. It's about
getting yourself into the right psychological state to be able
to execute that skill with the level you need to.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
Man, I love that I need some energy optimization. I
recently got this drink that has high caffeine content as
well as a lot of new tropics in it, and
they sent it to me to try it out to
see if I want to advertise it. I was like,
this is optimis that it gives me a lot of energy.
I want to do it more naturally.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
Yeah, is it working? Do you feel? Do you feel optimized?
Speaker 2 (50:36):
You know, the word optimization is a funny one for
someone like me who studies self actualization because I've often
argue there's that there's the idea of optimization is really
not what I'm after. You know, self actualization is a journey,
and it's one where it's only only you can you know,
(50:57):
choose that what path you want to go down. There's
no optimal objectively, there's no objectively optimal path. I mean,
so anyway, with all those caveats aside, I do think
that when I am able to to maintain a high
energy and a high. Uh, yeah, like when I want
(51:22):
when I have the stamina. I think stamina is a
big thing here, you know, and when we when when
we have a high stamina, I mean, we can just
handle so much more things, even in our own cognitive
you know, our cognition is so tied to our physicality.
Our outlook just seems so much greater when we have
(51:42):
the stamina for things. When we're just really lethargic and tired,
we really were like I can't be bothered to do anything,
and so I just think it's this is such an
important facet of peak performance.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
Yeah. Absolutely, I think we've If you want to be
great at anything, you've got to get used to finding
ways to do things you don't really feel like doing
and not being so you know, hung up by the
initial kind of emotional response and let the mood kind
of follow the energy and the action.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
A little bit. Absolutely. Okay, we've already talked about resiliency, preparation, immersion.
I think people get that, you know, like becoming an expert. Yeah,
we get that, right, But what is adaptation? Let's end there.
What is adaptation that the last principle of peak performance.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Well, now you're bringing me back to the roots of
earlier But you know the faucdation.
Speaker 2 (52:34):
That's true adaptive capacity, Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 (52:37):
Yeah, And the way I write about it in this
chapter is really about leveraging the principles of psychological flexibility, right,
and acceptance and commitment therapy to help yourself respond in
the moment more effectively. Right. And actually I think a
lot of it fits with what you were talking about
with an empowerment mindset. Right. It's this idea that you can,
(52:58):
you know, identify what you value and choose to commit
to that path even when you don't feel so good
about it. Or you can let go of the cognitive distortions.
Right if you miss a shot and you catastrophize, you
can learn to let that go effectively essentially diffuse from
that thought, right, and stay in the moment and stay
stay present and stay performing. And I think be really attuned.
You know, we've got good data and sport that shows
(53:19):
that being a bit more attuned to your external environment
versus your internal environment allows you to perform a bit better.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
Right.
Speaker 1 (53:26):
You're basically like reading the game and present with the
game versus oh my gosh, I missed that shot. You
know how am I feeling or am I going to
miss the next thirty in a row because I just
missed this one? Right? And so I think the skills
of psychological flexibility really facilitate that quite well. Right. Being
able to recommit consistently to the game plan and to
the things that are most important to you as a player.
(53:48):
Being able to work through and accept difficult e motion
or discomfort and service of the game you're trying to
play or the skill you're trying to execute, and being
able to let go of these unhelpful thoughts I do
think allows you to stay president and perform well. And
so adaptations about being essentially like the skills that you
need to stay fully immersed in the game, to stay
fully present and be your best when it matters most.
Speaker 2 (54:12):
Yeah, it's so good. It's so good. I love the
work you do, Alex. And your book is called it's
called Called to Greatness. So you really do believe everyone
has a high performer possibility within them. You make that clear.
I'll end on this quote. You and everybody you know
(54:32):
have the chance to be great. You just have to
answer the call. Hopefully that inspires our listeners to answer
that call. So go, go, go Go, That'll be the
coach and me that's the coaching me. I'm saying that
to all our listeners right now. Hope this episode inspired you. Alex,
keep up the great work and I really look forward
to continuing our collaborations.
Speaker 1 (54:53):
Likewise, thank you so much for having me, and thanks
for the opportunity
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