April 3, 2025 • 53 mins
Jim Murphy wrote Inner Excellence a book about performance and living your best life. The book was published 15 years ago; However, it has recently become a NYT best seller and reached a record number of sales on Amazon.This all came after NFL’s Wide Receiver AJ Brown was spotted reading Inner Excellence on the sidelines during a game in January and then again during the Superbowl. Brown went on to score a touchdown and lead the Eagles to win the Superbowl. That led many of us to ask what’s in this book?The author Jim Murphy, a former professional athlete, has inspired professional athletes and individuals around the world to achieve peak performance and live their best life.In this podcast, he talks about the tools to train our minds for optimal performance in all aspects of life.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, welcome to the podcast. Before we kick off
this week, though, could you please take a moment and
subscribe to our YouTube channel and Instagram to get this
episode and all the latest episodes That actually helps us
pay for the podcast so that you don't have to Today,
I am thrilled to bring you the author of a
book that might change your life. It's actually changed his
(00:21):
life in ways he did not expect. Jim Murphy wrote
Inner Excellence, a book about performance and living your best life.
The book was published fifteen years ago. However, it has
recently just now become a New York Times bestseller and
reached a record number of sales on Amazon. This all
came after NFL's wide receiver AJ Brown was spotted reading
(00:44):
Inner Excellence on the sidelines during a game in January,
and that again during the Super Bowl. Brown went on
to score a touchdown and lead the Eagles to win
the Super Bowl. That led many of us, including myself,
to ask what's in this book? Today we find out
the author, Jim Murphy, is a former professional athlete himself.
His wisdom has inspired professional athletes and individuals around the
(01:07):
world to achieve peak performance and live their best life.
He joins me today to talk about the tools to
train our minds for optimal performance in all aspects of
life live.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Wow, what a.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Ride this has been for you? Right amazing? The last
month has been what you fill in the blank.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
A lot. It's been a lot, like a lot more
a lot for a person that doesn't deserve any of it.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Well, why do you say that doesn't deserve it?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
You know, I think the most that a person can
I wrote about this in the Best Possible Life, that
that Michael Phelps. You know, he's achieved one of the
greatest achievements in sporting history, twenty three gold medals. If
you were to divide up the percentage of how much
does he can he take credit for? And how much
does God take credit for? Out of one hundred and
knowing there's no right or wrong answer is just a thought,
(02:20):
you know, problem or a question. I think it's two
percent is what my can can Michael can take credit
for at the most, and.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
What happens to the other ninety.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
So God, God give to him.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Really that that's your belief that it is it's outside himself.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
And that's what Michael Phelps accomplished. Now, what about me?
I've never accomlished anything like that.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Well, he wrote the book.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Well, you know, hopefully it's it's helpful to some people.
But yeah, I think two percent is the most that
I could I could do.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
You mention that in the book?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, well that that's in in the next book that
I wrote, called The Best Possible Life.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Okay, okay, Well let's stick with this one just for
a second while we're here. So ajund is reading the
book on the sidelines of an NFL game, and then
not just one game, but then in the Super Bowl.
Are you watching that game? How did you find out
that he had picked up your book and was getting
all this attention.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yes, good question. So I knew that he was and
that he had read the book at a game. I
didn't always bringing it to every game. I didn't know
he was reading it before every game to get centered
and after every drive to get recentered. I had no idea.
And so I was actually watching the Penn State Notre
Dame Bowl game that had already been played. I was
watching a rerun of that when this went on, and
(03:34):
then I saw my phone and then saw the messages.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
So it messages from friends and family or messages. Okay,
saying what.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, just hey, you need to check out you see
what happened. You need to check out this game. I
was like, whoa, what happened?
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeah, and you said you knew before though that he
was picking it up.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
He saw on that Instagram post. A friend of mine
sent an Instagram post that said, hey, look at this.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
A J.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Brown's reading your book during the game, and like, whoa,
that's pretty amazing. Yeah, but there's there's actually a really
cool story that happened kind of leading up to this
or as a part of this, I guess. So that
was Sunday night, January twelfth, Packers playing the Eagles, and
I was in Dallas to write to lead an inter
(04:16):
excellence retreat, and I was kind of walking around downtown
Dallas on an empty you know, downtown Dallas was empty
on a Sunday, and my mom was dying and she
died four days later.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
She just died in January, Yeah, January sixteenth.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
It's more joy than start though. I was right, she
was suffering. So I'm grateful for what God did. So,
you know, my life is kind of somber, and business
was kind of slow, and I hadn't paid off my
credit cards. In January and which is went pretty rare.
And I look at this building, the skyscraper, and I think, Jim,
(04:52):
would you rather own that skyscraper, paid off, you know,
whatever hundreds of millions dollars it's worth, or would you
rather have understood and written the best possible life? This
book about the spiritual life? And I thought, actually, I
would rather have understood and written the book rather than
take the hundreds of millions of dollars. And now I
think that was actually God asking me that question, but
(05:13):
at the time it was just a thought came into
my mind. And so, you know, my life's kind of slow.
Mom's dying and kind of a somber time and somber day.
I'm kind of all alone, and I think, well, at
least you got that, and then three hours later, Wow,
my life changes.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
We're going to get to how your life changed. But
before I let before we get there, we're going to
get to the first question that I ask everyone, which
it's now about the third question. But what goes through
your mind ten seconds.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
To air It really depends on you know what I'm doing.
So for this, I think the big thing is the
culture and the world today. There's so much fear and
so much anxiety, and so much tension in America and
around the world, and there's so much need, and I
just want people to know that there's there's a better
(06:02):
way to live. You don't have to live caught up
in yourself in your circumstances, because it's the natural default
way to live is to live caught up in you
as the center of your life. But it leads to fear.
And so when you can the more selfless you can be,
the more fearless you can be. And so I thought
of that before while I was driving here.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
To be fearless.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah, well, to be selfless and therefore fearless and the
great need that the world needs these ideas.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
You were a pro athlete, you were in the CUBS organization.
What went through your mind before you got up to bet?
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Well, you know, I wish I had knew inner excellence
back then. The challenge when you're a pro athlete is
your design. You know, obviously you're you're evaluated based on
your results, but to get the best results, you need
to be fully present and ideally, as we wrote about,
you can read inter excellence to be fully engaged heart, mind,
and body, unattached to what you're trying to do. It's
hard to do when everything, you know, everyone around you
(06:58):
is like the only thing that matters is your results.
And so when I was a pro athlete, I you know,
I was kind of beginning these ideas, but it was
I worked hard to focus on my routines and things
that I could control. And so in one of those things. Now,
you know, anytime I do anything, whether it's pickleball or
ping pong or anything, you know, I think it's one
(07:22):
of the most powerful mindsets is you know, why am
I doing this?
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Why?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
You know, why are you doing what you're doing? Why
am I doing this? And what is the end result
or the end goal? Rather? And if it's a game,
then then you're doing it to feel alive, aren't you.
Isn't that why you're you're playing a board game or
playing ping pong or doing your work. Isn't it to
feel fully alive? And if that's the case, then gratitude
(07:47):
should be a central part of that.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
What mistake do most people make? Though? With that? I
feel like a lot of people go into that and say,
to win, right, right?
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Right?
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, So everybody wants to win, and the problem is
that that's winning is a past future thing, and it's
and it's largely out of your control. You can play
your best and and and lose, and and play your
play your worst and and and win. And so winning
is not a good barometer. It's a poor barometer, and
yet it's the main one that most people use, Like
(08:17):
getting better inter excellence is about getting better every day,
and it's it's there's getting better at your skills and
your work or your sport, and that's obviously part of it,
but that's that's the least important part, because you're never
going to get as good as you can be just
focusing on the skills. You need to develop your heart
and your inner self. You're in a world because you
can be the best athlete or the best interview or
(08:39):
the best executive or merchant in the world. But if
your inner world is filled with anxiety and fear, you
go into the world in weakness. And you could you
could have a million followers. But if your inner world
is not is not filled with peace and and joy
and inner strength, then it's it's not a strong place
(09:01):
to be. But if your outer world is in shambles
and your inner world has that stability and that foundation,
then you got into the world and strength no matter
how crazy the outer world.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Is one of the most interesting things that I have
found in the book right here is you just touched on?
That is that inner world. A lot of people talk
about success, A lot of people will talk about you know,
this is how you have a great performance, this is
how you do but not a lot of people talk
about that inner strength. Why do you think that is?
Why are we missing that?
Speaker 2 (09:32):
I think it's hard to understand, Well, how do I
gain inner strength? It's kind of very.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
You can't measure it, maybe, yeah, hard to measure.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, it's hard to measure. And I think you know,
when I was in the desert and it spent five
years full time writing and researching inner excellence, one of
the things that I realized is that your heart is
the key to your life. We're far more than thinking machines.
We need to get to your subconscious mind and your heart,
your spirit, your will. And so then when I first
realized that, maybe a couple of years into research, I
(10:01):
was like, Okay, well, now what how do I train
the heart? Where do I even go? And so now
it's a deep dive into philosophy and spirituality, and then
and then realizing that your heart, which I call your
spirit and your will, that's what's running your life. And
so to be the best that you can be in anything,
it requires being wholehearted. And so you know, when we're born,
(10:25):
we're born with a divided heart. We have this nature
that's very self centered, and so we need training. We
need we need to train our heart to love what's
most empowering and not just love what's what's immediate.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yeah, get into that a little bit more wholehearted. So
what does that mean exactly?
Speaker 2 (10:44):
So every human heart has five deep needs. The first
need is for identity. We have a deep need to
feel like we're somebody and that we can contribute to
some something bigger than ourselves. And then the second need
is for connection community. Our greatest need is to be
fully known and fully loved and unconditional love is our
(11:06):
greatest need. It's our greatest desire and our greatest power,
because love is fearless and fear is our biggest challenge.
And our third need is is purpose, to have a
purpose beyond yourself. I think Mark Cuban said there's no
greatness without purpose, and I think It's such a powerful
idea to understand. If if you want to be great,
(11:28):
if you want to be a great leader, if you
want to be great at anything, there has to be
a purpose beyond yourself, because otherwise you're going to quit
way too soon. We need a reason passion. Passion literally
means to suffer, and you can't be great without being
willing to suffer. And so you're never going to be
willing to suffer unless you have some great cause. And
(11:49):
then integrity. Integrity is a fourth deep need. Integrity means
to be to be, to be complete, to be fully integrated,
and we can't be complete we're focused on ourselves that
we have to live for others. And then the last
great need is for growth or like an acorn, we're
(12:09):
created to grow, like an acorn, created to grow into
an oak tree. We're created for glory and we get.
The reason most people miss out on that is because
the default human nature of self centeredness.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
The ego.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yeah, yeah, what I call the ego, that part of
our mind that's always threatened and never satisfied, always comparing,
constantly comparing.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
It's hard to break out of that, you know where
I had this conversation with my family last night when
I was preparing for this and they were asking me,
you know, the kids were asking me, Yeah, but you know,
I've been in school and been told that my measure
of success is how well I do. So there's this
how do we break out of that? And how do
(12:53):
you tell even young people you don't have to You're
not measured by the grade that you got in the
paper or the job that you just achieved or the
salary that you made. So break that apart.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
That's a really hard thing to We need to get
into that purpose and your own life purpose, and it
revolves around relationships because we're creative for relationships. And so
if you're a purpose, like a life purpose that you
say is want to be the greatest athlete or the
greatest musician or anything that's not powerful, that's just a goal.
A purpose is something that you can do independent of
(13:27):
any circumstance that's really really empowering. And it's empowering if
it involves loving others, because that's the most powerful thing
that you can do. That's where you're going to sacrifice
the most. Let me look at anything in history, the
most passion comes from some sort of incredible love, and
so to break out of that ego and the self
centered this we need a greater purpose. And you can
(13:48):
also start to think about, well, how do I want
to feel in my life, what I'm at my best?
What does that feel like? And for most people it's
going to feel very similar, Like to the pro athletes
that I work with, or Olympians or anyone, it's very similar.
You know, I want to feel peace, I want to
feel freedom. I want to feel joy and confidence and
strength and things like that, and I don't want to
feel fear and anxiety and feel like I'm lost. And
(14:12):
so you know, as humans, we all have the same
basic challenges and the same basic needs and desires, and
so we all want to have amazing experiences in deep
and riching relationships, and we want to feel fully alive
and learn and grow and make a difference in the world.
Every single person wants that, they just don't know how
to get it. And so understanding that your own egos
(14:33):
is probably the biggest challenge that you face to have
the most extraordinary life. This party that's always comparing and
always threatened, and so we need this greater purpose and
you can start to think about, well, how do I
want to live? How do I want to feel? When
I say how do I want to live? Like, how
do I want to handle adversity? Because in life we
have so many things out of your control. Like you
(14:53):
have your day planned and then most of the time
it's nowhere near how that day is going to go.
That's a rare thing when it all goes exactly as planned, right,
So we often judge it. When I say judge, I
mean lay down a negative verdict. And so when we
use that create that negative energy to lay down a
negative verdict on a circumstance that we don't know that
we can look at the worst thing that we think
has ever happened to us, and it could be the
(15:14):
very best thing. And so that's important to remember.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
So saying that when you judge even your day, you're
saying even don't even come into your day with judgment.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So the three biggest challenges that
we've faced in general as part of that ego ego
driven mind is overthinking and negative or judgmental thinking, laying
down a negative verdict when we rarely, if ever have
all the information about a circumstance. Like I said, the
thing you think is the worst thing that could ever
happen to you, it could be the very best thing.
(15:47):
And self consciousness. So that's number three is that's what
are people going to think if I screwed up? And
if you want to be great in anything, you have
to be willing to fail. And if you want to
be really great, you have to be willing to fail
in a great way.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
So should we start with the purpose? Should you throw
out purpose and then get into letting go of those
other things? So for example, if I you know, I
use tennis because now I play a lot of tennis,
and let's say you have a tennis game, right, you
want to win. I've let go of that because I've
found that that does not bring me success when I'm
(16:20):
focused on winning at all. It's just it's just not
even close to In fact, the opposite happens.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Right right, very common.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Yeah, So my purpose is now, I think my purpose
is I want to go out there and I want
to I really want to have fun. I want to
connect with my partner, and I want to leave this
day feeling good. That's my purpose.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Very powerful, and so focusing on that you can even
strengthen that idea that that that mindset by saying, what
about my opponent? Who is my opponent? Are they my enemy?
Are they my obstacle? Or like that, are they my partner?
Are they my partner in the dance? Yeah, if you
see the opponent as your dance partner, like Phil Jackson
(17:07):
shared with us, now we've got a whole different story
in your mind. And so if you want to be great,
and I think one of the most powerful like the
inter excellence mindset, as I compete to raise a level
of excellence in my life, to learn and grow in
order to raise it in others, including my opponent. And
so it's natural to want your opponent to perform poorly
(17:27):
in yourself to perform better and for you to win.
That's a human nature. But that's a terrible mindset.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
And you know what, it doesn't make you feel good
exactly when somebody misses the ball. It doesn't really make
you feel good because you don't get to play. Yeah,
you know, you don't get to play, you don't get
to dance.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
That's so powerful, and so you think, well, what is
it that I really love about tennis? Is it just
so I get the very end I can count with
the score I can call my neighbor or my mom
or my aunt say look I beat this person, and
they're going to give you a big hug. What is
it that you really want? Isn't it that you want
to be caught up in the moment of something that
you love? And if that's if you do like tennis,
what is it that you like most. Isn't it being about,
(18:02):
you know, hitting great shots and these great rallies. Well,
you need the other person and the other team to
do that. And so the most powerful mindset is to
want them to be their best so you can be
your best. And so you want to bring your A
game so they can have their A game, and vice versa.
You want them to have their A game so you
can be better, because you're never going to be as
great as you could be if they're playing poorly, you
(18:24):
can be great if they're playing playing great. And so
you to have the energy that I don't want them
to play well is going to hurt you because it's
creating negative energy within you. But if your energy is
I just want to share what I love. They love tennis,
I love tennis. I want to share that with the
world and people watching. I want to have great rallies
and whoever wins, you know, that's up to God. Now
we've got power.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
That's I mean, Jim, that's amazing. I love that. I
love that for so many reasons. One of the quotes
that you have in the book or pieces that I
took out the there is no failure, there's only feedback feedback. Yeah,
there is no failure. There's only feedback. That's fantastic. There
(19:06):
is no failure, there's only feedback. It's just such a
great way of thinking about rolling through life. Period. We
can take the tennis game or work or whatever. Sometimes
my kids will say to me, you're so like you
have such a strong will or you have you know,
They'll and I'll say, I don't know. I just feel
like I just I get something and then I pivot
to a different direction. Now I never put it. There
(19:28):
is no failure, there is feedback, But you did. And
that's that's just I love it. I just love it.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
So Yeah, as part of that, the question is, you know,
such a powerful idea, So how do we get to
that point where we can see failure as feedback? And
this is not something where I don't take it personal.
And so this is the great separator between the best athletes,
the best performers, the most extraordinary business people, everything is
that they see these moments where they don't get what
(19:58):
they want, they well, they don't judge it because they
don't know, Like should I make this putt? What's the
best thing for me to do right now in my life?
Is it to be successful in this thing that I'm
doing putting, or or you know, any part of your
life being successful in it. Sure, that's what you want
to have, and you want everything to be successful, but
is it the best for you? You don't know it
(20:19):
is the best thing for you to win the Masters?
Like in April, there's someone's gonna win the Masters. Is
that the best thing for that person in their life?
It could be a terrible thing for them. And so
when you don't know what's best for you, that can
help you deal with failure and also realizing that the best,
the most extraordinary lives are like artists, that it's not
(20:41):
about the outcome. That's for the fans. That's for the
people to enjoy or boo or or cheer, and you
know you want to help them feel alive by creating
this art. But the true artist is selfless, and so
it's not like look at me, Like, when you see
great art, are you thinking about the artists? Are you know,
are you thinking about yourself? Neither, right, You're You're caught
(21:04):
up in the moment, like, oh, what a beautiful moment
could be a movie, could be, a book, could be
a painting on a wall. You're caught up in that
moment and you have this feeling that feels so good
that you're connected to beauty. Right, that's what the great
artist does. It connects people to beauty and to wisdom
and things like that. And so it's this selfless. Great
art is the selflessness. So you're not thinking about the
(21:25):
person who created it, and you're not thinking about yourself
the viewer. You're all caught up in this beauty. And
that's that's what we want to That's the best way
to live, the most powerful way to.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Live, the way to get there. Do you get a
resistance for that thought when you talk to let's say,
an athlete or a CEO or somebody that really is
judged on outcome, is really judged on.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Oftentimes it takes a while for some people to understand it.
And what I found in the years that I've been
doing this is that younger people get it quicker. And
so it's people that are closer to my age that
are a little slower because little old school and like Jim,
that all sounds great, but we got to win or
you know, the bottom line is we got to make
more money right now, and and so, but people that
(22:09):
are little younger seem to get it faster.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Why do you think that is?
Speaker 2 (22:13):
I think people that are closer to my age are
a little bit stuck, and you know how things have
always been, and you know, the old school coaching is
just got to win, just try harder, and so I
think young people can see that they have a little
bit more of an edge and understanding that trying harder
often backfires.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Where did you come to this? Was it during your
baseball career or after?
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Well, when I was a teenager, you know, I obsessed
about being an NFL superstar or NBA or Major League Baseball.
And then in high school, my coach told me about
sports psychology, and so I carried this book around with
me everywhere for years and years. I still have it.
It's called Mental Toughness Training for Sports by doctor Jim Lair,
and I'm remember one thing from that that he said
(23:01):
that the correct emotional response to a problem is seventy
five percent of the solution. And that had a huge
impact on me. And so when I was like seventeen,
that's when I started thinking about sports psychology. And then
you know, I did my undergrad in psychology and my
master's in coaching science, and then the five years you know,
going to the desert and spending that full time research
(23:21):
writing and researching, and plus coaching the Olympics and coaching
pro baseball and doing what I'm doing now.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
So it was an evolution. It was not It did
not happen overnight.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Yeah. And when you were playing baseball, where were you
in this journey? Were you fifty percent there? Were you
eighty five percent there?
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Well, if you can believe it, my ego was ten
times bigger than it is now. And so I know
that's probably hard to believe, but it was, you know,
very self centered life that I lived, and looking back
on it, I was so I mean, I can't even
tell you how devastated I was when my career ended.
I mean, I wouldn't say suicidal, but as lost as
(24:02):
you can get without being suicidal, Like I've got no meaning,
nothing like everything was built on my whole career, my
whole life, my whole identity, everything was as a pro athlete.
And then when I lost it, I lost everything. And
so but looking back now, I realized, like I said
in the beginning, I thought the best possible life which
(24:23):
I was gonna live. This is my destiny to live
the best possible life. I thought, it's gonna be I'm
making millions of dollars. I'm gonna be on the cover
of magazines. I'm gonna be winning World Series or scoring
touchdowns like AJ Brown and the super Bowl, and that's
gonna be my life. Every guy's gonna want to be me,
every girl's gonna want to be with me, and that's
gonna be my life. And then I got injured and
(24:43):
I lost it all, and I was so lost. And
now looking back, obviously God had a plan through all
of this, and I see that the life that he
gave me is so much better than I couldn't imagine
what was possible. I annoyed it. I mean, just look
at what happened in the life last six weeks. You know,
who could have ever imagined this?
Speaker 1 (25:02):
And were you as spiritual then did you have God
in your life?
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Then I believed in God, but it was it was
definitely not like it is now. It was it's you know,
it's it's hard to understand, like there's so many voices
out in the world, and and people who identify as
Christians that are that are not loving and you know, human,
We're all human, and so we all have our you know,
in some way, we're all hypocrites because you know, I
(25:27):
mean I don't always do what I what I say
that I'm going to do, or I don't always do
my routines, and sometimes I I do what I don't
want to do and don't do what I should do.
And so in many ways we're all hypocrites. And so
don't judge like Christianity based on people, because everyone is
at a different spot in their life.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
And so what does that mean? What do you mean,
don't base explain?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
I think, you know, I think uh Shane Claiborne hero
mine and he said this this one quote in his
book Rethinking Life, that I think things so powerful. He
might have been quoting Tony Campello, and he said someone
told him and said, the church is full of hypocrites.
And I think he was talking about the Christian Church,
and Chance said, you know, I don't think it is.
I think there's plenty of room for more. And so
(26:15):
I was like, whoa, that is so powerful. Yeah, we're
all hypocrites. You know, it's not full room for more.
You can join us. Yeah, and I think that's so true.
Is that because when you I think a lot of
people look at Christianity and they think, you know, if
that's what Christianity is, that person there who in my mind,
is hypercritical. I don't want anything about it. But what
(26:39):
you have to understand is that person is human and
they're you know, they have their flaws and they haven't
been fully transformed. And you know, none of us have it,
so we all have our own flaws and so don't
look at at people's actions to say, okay, am I
going to join this idea? But you know, look at
(26:59):
love and look at what it feels like in your
heart when you you know, pray and say, hey, you know, God,
reveal yourself to me and see what happens.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
What's your daily routine, like you said, you don't always
stick to it, but what's the goal or the purpose?
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Yeah? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I've been
to twenty three countries in the last two years, fifty
one or something overall, and so I travel a lot.
And so it's one of the biggest challenges that I
face is a lack of routine because because inter excellence
is really about a series of daily routines, of habits
of thought and action all day long, because we want
to have that positive energy that's constantly thinking about connecting
(27:36):
with beauty and that anything is possible. So how do
we constantly get out of that judgment? Because most people
spend their entire days every day judging circumstances sell for others,
it's just constantly circumstance could be better, even it's the
best thing. Ever, why does it takes so long? Or
you know, sell or it could be how I'm dressed
or what people think of me, And this this endless
(27:58):
loop of judgment. And that's my biggest is that that
hurts us. So what I do is I really try
to how do I stay in that connection to beauty,
ak God, the source of all beauty and love? How
do I stay connected to that? And so, you know,
I have a series of routines that I do every
day and weekly routines like Sundays, you know work that's
(28:21):
that's the Sabbath, that's just rest and recharge. And Mondays
is uh fasting, so no eating from ten am to
ten am. Tuesday, cold plunge, you know, every day, you know,
try and do something hard. I think that's we need
to learn how to let go of comfort. And the
best possible life has one foot and joy and one
(28:43):
foot and suffering, and so American culture of Western culture says,
the best possible life has one foot and joy and
one foot and happiness and one foot and trophies and
and you know that's all I want. I just want
to happen, feel good.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
I don't want feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
And the problem with that is that's not how the
universe is created. You can just easily look at like,
if you want to get physically strong, you got to
break the body down. And if you want to gain wisdom,
then you've got to go through things.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
And so okay, so you got to Tuesday. What happens
on Tuesday?
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, And so every day it's it's how can I
get my mind, body and heart in a place that's
filled with endless possibilities that that flow, and so how
do I stop judging and and be in this mode
of creativity. Like this morning, I was sitting in the
(29:37):
courtyard of my hotel having some quiet time, and I
was my mind was thinking about this, and that is like, Jim,
stop the thinking. If you want to have a great day,
we need to just connect with beauty, connect to the
source of all beauty. And so I stopped and it
was like, Okay, let's just be present to this moment
(29:57):
in the trees and the beauty, here in the sunshine,
here in la beautiful weather. And so so it's regularly
inviting yourself to do hard things so you can you
can like like cold plunge in fasting, for example. Both
are hard. And the challenge with it is that you know,
we have this this body that I never want to
(30:19):
get poked in the eye. That's never something that I want.
I always would you ever, would you rather choose send
a hot tub poked in the eye? Hundred percent of
the time it's hot tub. I always want comfort. And
so the problem with that is that's a life of
moving yourself towards sickness and disease and and weakness. Why
(30:42):
because that's not how the universe is created. The universe
is created. You have to have one foot and suffering
to do anything right. And so, like I said, passion
that means literally means to suffer. Passion is to suffer.
And so if you want to have passion, that's the
willingness to suffer through and to and to persevere under
under adversity and failure and all those things. And so
(31:03):
how do we get good at how do we get passionate?
Every day? We have to be willing to suffer. And
so then we have to put these things in our life.
And so like one thing that I do, I need
reminders throughout the day. I hate to say the word need,
but I have reminders throughout the day, like on my phone.
For example, in the house that the little retreat center
I had in Point Roberts just outside of Vancouver, the
(31:24):
windows are all covered with with Bible versus interests principles
ideas everywhere, because like for you, you're probably a lot
more positive person than me. I need this all day long.
I need I need it filled in my mind because
my mind in the past would have a tendency to
go to the negative, to the judgment, or you know,
I can't do that or that's that's too hard or
(31:46):
whatever that's limiting. And so for me, constantly like arranging
my environment is really important. And so that means the
physical space that I'm in, you know, I want it
to be clear of you know, not cluttered, and because
I want my mind to be you're not cluttered. And
then I want the space to be filled with things
that are empowering. And you don't need a lot of
money to do that, Like just have the books in
(32:07):
your shelves right, ones that are empowering and and have
like there's this funny story years ago, I had this
roommates and they I I told them that, like, you know,
the People magazine. That's that's how Princess Diana got killed
the paparazzi, right, And and so they one time they
(32:29):
put up People magazine in there my pillow at night,
and so as a joke. But you know, constantly trying
to keep myself away from this gossip and things that
are going to take me towards the negative and and
constantly listen to podcasts and have people around me that
are that are empowering.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
But that's because that's what you need. You're saying that
not everyone has that same threshold of post it notes
everywhere or things that they need.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
I think a lot of people wouldn't need as much
as I do. For sure. I think there's people that
are that are more motivated and have just a better
system than I do.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
So what I'm trying to understand right now is that
balance between suffering and pleasure. Because when you say sure
everyone would rather get into the hot tub than have
their eyes poked out, are you saying you should do
the cold plunge before you do the hot Like, if
you're seeking pleasure, should you be also seeking suffering?
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Yeah, there definitely needs to be a balance. For example,
when I think of pleasure, I think of vacation. I've
wrote an article called how to Be on Vacation. So
what most people do when they go on vacation, what
are they're doing? They're just seeking pleasure, right, And it's
really kind of an escape most people. I think it's
very common anyway, to go on vacation to kind of
(33:42):
escape their lives. I don't want to think about work,
I don't want to think about anything. I just want
to go to the beats with my book and play
tennis or whatever. I just want to have fun very
common and also a big mistake. The most powerful way
to live the most extraordinary life is to when you
have this opportunity, needs to get away to empower yourself,
(34:03):
not escape from yourself. And so how do we empower ourselves? Well,
that's when we think deeply about our life, you know,
to simplify your life, to figure out what is my
life purpose? What am I creative for? What is the
universe or God asking of me? Why am I here?
And then to focus everything into that. And then because
most people don't have a clear life purpose, so they're
(34:23):
going to get scattered, and anxiety is in line with
too many thoughts from too many concerns, right, and why
do they have that? Because they don't have a clear
life purpose. So then okay, what about that? What about that? Okay,
that sounds like what is that person doing?
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Right?
Speaker 2 (34:34):
So that's what happens. And so anxiety is such as
an all time high now because there's so much coming
at us from social media twenty four to seven, all
these things, and without a clear life purpose, you're going
to like here, I'm in La and I'm like we're
on Melrose Avenue and you know, I'm thinking about all
these like, wow, this is epicenter Hollywood of entertainment in
the world anxiety and yeah, I think, well, if I
(34:56):
lived here, I could easily get caught up in oh wow,
yeah you can what about this? About that? And it's like, man,
I got to be really careful just being here.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
For the weekend of distracting. Then I don't get distracted, right,
So interesting, you just were talking about vacation. You bring
up a good point. Vacation can also be very stressful,
and I think you're touching on the reason of why
you could have a vacation plan in particularly for me,
I like my vacations to be active. I like to
(35:23):
I don't want to sit, and I don't like that.
I usually use it for deep thinking time for other things, hiking,
doing something kind of straining. I love that. But I'm
I want to dive into that for a second, because
I do think you touch on something about how we
use our free time. We're escaping from our life, the
(35:47):
tectic to then go and not think about anything, and
it seems like both of them aren't working great, right.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Right, So what happens in vacation is people there. It's
very common. I just want to be happy. I want
my pleasure, my vacation to be pleasure. I've saved up
all year whatever, and so I want this to be
really good. In their mind, is happy and so happy
is these good feelings based on what's happening. Happiness is
a positive, temporary feeling based on what's happening. And so
(36:16):
the problem with that is what I mean, it's to me,
it's pretty obvious. Well, what if it's pouring down rain,
you know, you go to Hawaii or wherever it's pouring
down the rain every single day. Okay, there goes happiness,
there goes your vacation, right right, Yeah, I mean there's
so many things that can happen if you're if you're
pursuing happiness, it's it's a chase your tail, endless pursuit
(36:38):
of emptiness.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
And it's external. All these things you're talking about are
so external. So let's dive into a vacation. How would
you suggest somebody uses that?
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Yeah? Really, it's really okay. First of all, I need
to slow down. I need to take some time to
really slow down and stop all the running around and
all the organizing, and I need to really slow down
and then think about my life and think, Okay, what
is the purpose of my life? If that's not clear
to you, Like, for example, my purpose is to share
God's love with some encourage with athletes and leaders around
the world, really everyone that I meet. But that's kind
(37:08):
of the more of a specific mission. And so if
you don't have that clear purpose, then when you go
on vacation, it's going to be likely to I just
want to be happy and your whole because it's kind
of a microcosm of your whole life. I just want
to be happy. Like I said, that's going to leave
you empty. And so getting that purpose clear and so well,
how do we do that? Well, there's a couple of things.
(37:28):
One is, if you're going on vacation, we want to
slow down and simplify your life and then simplify it
all the way down to your purpose. And started to thinking, well,
you can think about those things that I mentioned earlier, Well,
how do I want to feel in my life? And
how do I want to live? Who am I meant
to become? Who do I want to become? And if
you think about how I want to feel, what happens
to most people happened to me for a lot of
(37:50):
my life is that we get so caught up in
being right and like if someone cuts off and cuts
me off in traffic and the past, that wasn't right,
and so I would not feel good. I would judge
them or you know anything, if I disagree with someone,
I want to be right. And so that's a big
mistake to try and be right, like to try and
(38:10):
get someone to say, Okay, you're right, because you're spending
so much energy and it's it's not helpful.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
How should you redirect that? Well, there's a suggestion there.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Anytime that you're you're say you're talking to somebody, like
what is your goal for your life? Like are you
are you trying to For example, politics is a very
charged thing right now and there's a lot of bitterness
and if you're trying to talk to someone that believes
different than you and you're trying to convince them, and
so say, you're you're really good at debate and you
(38:43):
feel like you win. So what did you win? Like
did so maybe you provided better logic than the other person?
Like what really happened there? Are you leaving that filled
with peace and joy? Is the other person leaving that
filled with peace and joy? And more wisdom. Is their
life going to change? Is your life gonna change?
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Like?
Speaker 2 (39:00):
What's the benefit of that? And I think it's really
understanding that rather than desiring to be right, it's it's
how can I stay in that connection to what's powerful, empowering, beautiful?
How can I stay connected to that? Because then I'm
going to gain more wisdom and I can be me,
I can be my true self when I'm connected to
that source of all beauty and all wisdom. And so
(39:21):
how do I live my life staying connected to that?
And if I'm trying to be right or convince people
I'm right, that's really a lack of sense of self.
It's like I need more validation, So I'm going to
try and convince you that you should give it to me.
And that's that's you know, I spend most of my
life like that, so I have a lot of experience
with it, and I don't want to live like that anymore.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
So when did that change?
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Well, I mean, still a work in products. I'm still
a hypocretic, you know, So well, maybe I should say
I've still been a hypocretic. I try not to say
that anything that I don't want to continue as a
present tense. But you know I'm still.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
Every day, you're changing it every day.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
On Monday, did I fast tenn to Monday ten am Tuesday?
I don't think so. So there we go. I guess
the interviews over so but you know, that's kind of
how life is. Life is difficult, and it's not about
how many mistakes you make. It's who you're becoming and
(40:18):
can you keep going when when things are tough and understanding, Like,
if I don't have a clear system for the person
I'm becoming, I'm going to default to the world system.
And the world system is a very superficial chase your tail,
pursue happiness and and it's a zero sum game. I'm
just going to try and get what I can and
because someone else is gonna take it. And that's a
(40:38):
that's a definite recipe for fear, anxiety, and frustration.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
So you've been in LA for how long now?
Speaker 2 (40:46):
About three days?
Speaker 1 (40:46):
About three days? And are you finding it challenging to
stay on course?
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Yeah? Yeah, it is, it is, And it may not
be for the reason you think. Because my life since
January twelfth has been this flood of attention and a
lot of people saying, you know, in Excellence is the
best book I've ever read, or things like that, And
for fifteen years, I haven't had this sort of attention.
And the book came out fifteen years ago, the first.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Version anyway, and then it really came out again in
twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
So twenty twenty version is is quite a bit different,
same concepts, but a lot of new stories and stuff.
And so, you know, I get a lot of attention
now or a lot of people that are saying good things,
and I can feel like I'm somebody. And the moment
that I started to think, yeah, I'm like I've I've
given more than my two percent, Like oh I deserve
seventy five percent, or you know, look at me. Why
(41:35):
would I do that or think that or feel that.
It's because I'm not i don't have that fully integrated
sense of self. I'm disconnected. So then I'm like, oh, yeah,
I should I deserve this or deserve that, I should
have this. And I could see being here and be like, yeah,
I would like a little more of that, and oh yeah,
let's get more of that. And so it's danous.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
So you're not staying in la is what I'm what
I'm mean, I love La and.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
I may be back a lot more. I just I
think everyone needs to know what is the biggest challenge
that they face. And the basic idea of interactionence is
that the biggest challenge you face in performance and in
life is self centeredness. And that was my challenge before
January twelfth when this all went down, and now it's
like ten twenty times that, And so now I've got.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
On a personal level. You're saying, on a personal level, Yeah, yeah,
have you ever spoken to A. J. Brown? I have conversation.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
A great guy. He's very humble, gentle, awesome guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Do you know what part of the book he was
reading during the Super Bowl?
Speaker 2 (42:31):
Well, they did zoom in on it, and so I
have a you know part of it. But that it's
that you can see, it's like all highlighted, and you
know that part about having that clear mind and unburdened
hard I think is resonate part of that's what he's
read every day or during the games. I should say.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
I just want to make sure we give people, you know,
some kind of hard and fast tools to take with
them today if they want to change their lives today.
And again, there's so much in this book and so
much that we've talked about in the last few minutes here,
and I mean, you've opened my mind up to thinking
of all kinds of things. So I thank you for that.
It's been amazing experience for me. And I work with
(43:13):
people with performance and mindset and all that. But the
biggest thing to me that I noticed that you say
is it's not just about achieving that goal or that
you know in performance is having a really good performance
and then feeling okay about it. What I like that
you're doing that most people don't do is you're saying
it's not just about your performance at work or whatnot,
(43:36):
it's really also about how you roll through life. And
a lot of people see those as two different things.
Meaning I can go to work, I can do this podcast,
and then I can put everything down and say, Okay,
I'm done. And what I hear you saying is no,
you're never done. You're never actually done with your and
(43:56):
I'm going to say performance and quotes, but with how
you roll, no, your heart and so how do we
begin today to make those changes to roll through life
and work and everything you know as one like, as
one human being? As opposed to my work life self
(44:19):
and my home life self. I don't know if you've
seen the show Severance, but they sever the head and
they go to work as one person and they can't remember,
and then they go home as another another. So how
do we merge those and be one.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
I'll share with you the four daily goals. Before I
get to that, I want to share with you this
conversation I had with one of my clients, and he's
a pro baseball player, and he was talking about golfing
and how I realized that the golf has kind of
helped me because I can get nervous, you know, I
hit this great shot and I don't want to miss
the pot. And so one thing that I shared with
him is that not only is golf helpful for you
(44:51):
to train for your pro baseball career, all of life
is here to train you for baseball. Everything that you do,
everywhere you go is training for you for your baseball
and also everything you do on the baseball field is
training for your life. Now which one is more important? Now?
The world says, well, in baseball, as a position player,
(45:14):
it all comes down to your four at bats, you know,
get two or more hits, it's a great day, one
or less, it's not a good day, et cetera. And
this obsession with results, and you know, that's the world
that we live in, and so how do I live
in this flow connected to beauty and grounded every day?
And that's where we want to get to. That kind
of where the four goals kind of come in. The
four daily goals, which is the first one is to
(45:36):
give the best of what you got each day, because
it's so important to realize most days you're going to
be nowhere near your best. I mean there's a lot
of days when you may say, if your best is
one hundred percent and you've only got fifty percent, and
so if you think that you're going to get one
hundred percent out of a fifty percent day, it's going
to be very frustrating. And so it's important to realize
(45:58):
and develop self awareness, especially on those days and say
I'm going to give one hundred percent of the fifty
and so that's a big one because we're rarely our best.
And then number two is to be present. And when
I say present, what I mean is that that grounded
connectedness to beauty and a lot of it has to
(46:22):
do with slowing down when you're in a hurry. Hurry
is the great enemy of the spiritual life. It's a
great enemy of beauty, it's a great enemy of compassion,
it's a great enemy of love. You know, love is
not hurried and so, and love is the most powerful
force in the universe. So if we want to live
(46:42):
that extraordinary life, we need to unhurry our lives. The
only way we're going to unhurry our life is that
we have to have a clear purpose. Everything has to
go down to one thing that we make all our
decisions through. And if not, then we're going to be
hurried because like, well what about this? We can't I
can't get rid of that, of that that could be helpful.
And so the only way to unhurry your life life
is you have to and get rid of hurry sickness,
is you have to eliminate things from your life. And
(47:05):
so being present is number two. Number three is to
be grateful. Gratitude is closely linked to inner inner piece.
Inner piece is tied to inner strength. In your strength
is linked to mental toughness, and they're all linked to
beauty and so, but it's really hard to be grateful sometimes,
So how do we become more grateful? And so I'm
(47:26):
not saying this as a Christian that you should be
more grateful to be a better person. I mean sometimes
I'm not a very good person. What I'm saying is
as a performance coach, if you want to live a
better life, then how do we be more grateful? We
look for the smallest moments every day that are gifts,
the smallest moments, and so if you say I'm grateful
for my health or grateful for my family, that's wonderful,
(47:47):
but it's not super empowering if you every day you're
looking for the smallest moments, whether it's getting a parking
spot or if you're filled with anxiety, like there's in
twenty ten, I had so much anxiety almost had the
mental breakdown. This is after the book came out. Five
years of relative isolation, and you know, we're created for relationships,
(48:10):
and so I can see why I came to that point.
So that sorry, what.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
Was I saying, Hey, you were getting onto your number
three of being grateful and you're giving the example of
yah yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Yeah, OK, so gratitude every day having like going through
your day, I want threes was going to go through
your whole day and look for at least three I
mean there's probably one hundred at least every day specific moments.
The smaller the moment and the specific moment, the better,
because your subconscious is going to be able to It
likes pictures, and if you can give it a picture
every day of multiple moments, it's going to see them
(48:43):
more and more. Now, remember what I said, so that
the gratitude is linked to inner piece, which is linked
inner strength and mental toughness and joy, beauty. And last
one is to focus on your routines and only what
you can control. And so that's the fourth daily goal
and your routine. Like I shared earlier, an your excellence
is a series of habits of thoughts and action every day.
(49:08):
And so I have on my phone these reminders like
God is with you, Jim, and like I had to
remind I had this affirmation that I'm a New York
Times best selling author, and I had that on my
phone for years and then finally I got rid of it.
I mean it was it's been fifteen years, you know,
so it's like, okay.
Speaker 1 (49:22):
That's amazing. So and in your fifteen it came yeah, yeah, yeah, amazing. Okay,
So the four are The first one is give one
hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
Of what you got each day of what you have,
So if.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
It's at fifty, you give one hundred percent of that's right.
Number two is is present, that's right.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:37):
Number three is gratitude, and number.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
Four is focus on your routines and only what you
can control. Focus on your your routines is so important,
like what do I do when I wake up? Like
first out of your day. We don't want to be
making any decisions the first hour of the day. It
should be ideally scripted. That's the goal every day because
you know what your life purpose is, So we want
to use music to start your day. Music is so powerful.
We want the music lined up with your purpose. So
(50:01):
we want the words coming into your mind every single
day of the person that you want to become, and
then and so and then get them good good feelings
line up with your purpose because beliefs are us running
your life, and so we want to get those feelings
in those words lined up with what's possible for us.
And so music a big part of that first hour.
Along with having some quiet time and connecting with God
(50:23):
and beauty.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
You also talk a little bit about perspective. I just
want you to touch on this because you can have
you can agree to these four goals daily, but if
you're out a line in some way, it's going to
be hard to get started with any of these. So
if my if my number four is my routine, I
know what I want it to be, but I never
get there because I'm kind of I don't know, you know,
(50:47):
I got to get the kids off, I've got to
get There's a lot of stuff I got to do
before I get to my routine. Because it's easy to
say my routine is, yeah, I drop off here and
then I go to work and then go that's a root.
But that's not the kind of routine you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Yeah, so we want to get one percent better every day.
Don't think that you're going to be, you know, have
this life of inter excellence every day and like if
you follow me, you'll be like Jim, that's not very
inter excellence and be like, well, yeah, I need to
get better. I'm working on it. So every day is working.
Can we get better and learn not to be so
hard on yourself? Can I get a little bit better today?
And some days are not going to be good. Some
(51:24):
days are going to be terrible, and so it's really
elimiting that judgment from your life.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
Right, and if you can be one percent better every day, yeah, imagine.
I mean that's really.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Powerful and really understanding that some days are not going
to be good. And I didn't get any better today,
and that's okay.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
I usually say anything I didn't ask you that you
wanted to touch on.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
As you know, as I shared, my life's changed a
little bit now, and so I really want to share
this message of God's love around the world and that
selfless is fearless and it doesn't matter what you believe.
We all worship something, and so I want to help
people understand that one that you're worshiping something and whatever
that God is, whatever is at the top of your list,
(52:04):
that's your God. And I want to help you make
sure that that's very empowering. And so most of my
life it wasn't empowering. I was like worshiping success and
popularity and you know, just want people to love me
and trying it. I was chasing my tail and it
was it was this endless pursuit and that was leaving
me empty. And so I want people to know that
(52:25):
there's a far better way to live and to love.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
Jim, I can't thank you enough. This has been such
a pleasure for me. I have learned so much. I
am ready to kind of reset a few things, you know,
not going to share them with you right now, but
they'll be resetting. And this has just been it's been
a real pleasure to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (52:43):
Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (52:44):
But you know what, more than I expected. So I
really love that. Not that I had a bar that
was in a certain place, but I think I didn't
have an expectation. I was really curious as to who
you were and what you were, what you were all about.
So this has been really enlightening. Thank you, Thank you.
Hey, everyone, welcome to the podcast. Before we kick off
this week, though, could you please take a moment and
subscribe to our YouTube channel and Instagram to get this
episode and all the latest episodes That actually helps us
pay for the podcast so that you don't have to Today,
I am thrilled to bring you the author of a
book that might change your life. It's actually changed his
(00:21):
life in ways he did not expect. Jim Murphy wrote
Inner Excellence, a book about performance and living your best life.
The book was published fifteen years ago. However, it has
recently just now become a New York Times bestseller and
reached a record number of sales on Amazon. This all
came after NFL's wide receiver AJ Brown was spotted reading
(00:44):
Inner Excellence on the sidelines during a game in January,
and that again during the Super Bowl. Brown went on
to score a touchdown and lead the Eagles to win
the Super Bowl. That led many of us, including myself,
to ask what's in this book? Today we find out
the author, Jim Murphy, is a former professional athlete himself.
His wisdom has inspired professional athletes and individuals around the
(01:07):
world to achieve peak performance and live their best life.
He joins me today to talk about the tools to
train our minds for optimal performance in all aspects of
life live.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Wow, what a.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Ride this has been for you? Right amazing? The last
month has been what you fill in the blank.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
A lot. It's been a lot, like a lot more
a lot for a person that doesn't deserve any of it.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Well, why do you say that doesn't deserve it?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
You know, I think the most that a person can
I wrote about this in the Best Possible Life, that
that Michael Phelps. You know, he's achieved one of the
greatest achievements in sporting history, twenty three gold medals. If
you were to divide up the percentage of how much
does he can he take credit for? And how much
does God take credit for? Out of one hundred and
knowing there's no right or wrong answer is just a thought,
(02:20):
you know, problem or a question. I think it's two
percent is what my can can Michael can take credit
for at the most, and.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
What happens to the other ninety.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
So God, God give to him.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Really that that's your belief that it is it's outside himself.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
And that's what Michael Phelps accomplished. Now, what about me?
I've never accomlished anything like that.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Well, he wrote the book.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Well, you know, hopefully it's it's helpful to some people.
But yeah, I think two percent is the most that
I could I could do.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
You mention that in the book?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, well that that's in in the next book that
I wrote, called The Best Possible Life.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Okay, okay, Well let's stick with this one just for
a second while we're here. So ajund is reading the
book on the sidelines of an NFL game, and then
not just one game, but then in the Super Bowl.
Are you watching that game? How did you find out
that he had picked up your book and was getting
all this attention.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yes, good question. So I knew that he was and
that he had read the book at a game. I
didn't always bringing it to every game. I didn't know
he was reading it before every game to get centered
and after every drive to get recentered. I had no idea.
And so I was actually watching the Penn State Notre
Dame Bowl game that had already been played. I was
watching a rerun of that when this went on, and
(03:34):
then I saw my phone and then saw the messages.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
So it messages from friends and family or messages. Okay,
saying what.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, just hey, you need to check out you see
what happened. You need to check out this game. I
was like, whoa, what happened?
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeah, and you said you knew before though that he
was picking it up.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
He saw on that Instagram post. A friend of mine
sent an Instagram post that said, hey, look at this.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
A J.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Brown's reading your book during the game, and like, whoa,
that's pretty amazing. Yeah, but there's there's actually a really
cool story that happened kind of leading up to this
or as a part of this, I guess. So that
was Sunday night, January twelfth, Packers playing the Eagles, and
I was in Dallas to write to lead an inter
(04:16):
excellence retreat, and I was kind of walking around downtown
Dallas on an empty you know, downtown Dallas was empty
on a Sunday, and my mom was dying and she
died four days later.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
She just died in January, Yeah, January sixteenth.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
It's more joy than start though. I was right, she
was suffering. So I'm grateful for what God did. So,
you know, my life is kind of somber, and business
was kind of slow, and I hadn't paid off my
credit cards. In January and which is went pretty rare.
And I look at this building, the skyscraper, and I think, Jim,
(04:52):
would you rather own that skyscraper, paid off, you know,
whatever hundreds of millions dollars it's worth, or would you
rather have understood and written the best possible life? This
book about the spiritual life? And I thought, actually, I
would rather have understood and written the book rather than
take the hundreds of millions of dollars. And now I
think that was actually God asking me that question, but
(05:13):
at the time it was just a thought came into
my mind. And so, you know, my life's kind of slow.
Mom's dying and kind of a somber time and somber day.
I'm kind of all alone, and I think, well, at
least you got that, and then three hours later, Wow,
my life changes.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
We're going to get to how your life changed. But
before I let before we get there, we're going to
get to the first question that I ask everyone, which
it's now about the third question. But what goes through
your mind ten seconds.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
To air It really depends on you know what I'm doing.
So for this, I think the big thing is the
culture and the world today. There's so much fear and
so much anxiety, and so much tension in America and
around the world, and there's so much need, and I
just want people to know that there's there's a better
(06:02):
way to live. You don't have to live caught up
in yourself in your circumstances, because it's the natural default
way to live is to live caught up in you
as the center of your life. But it leads to fear.
And so when you can the more selfless you can be,
the more fearless you can be. And so I thought
of that before while I was driving here.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
To be fearless.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah, well, to be selfless and therefore fearless and the
great need that the world needs these ideas.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
You were a pro athlete, you were in the CUBS organization.
What went through your mind before you got up to bet?
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Well, you know, I wish I had knew inner excellence
back then. The challenge when you're a pro athlete is
your design. You know, obviously you're you're evaluated based on
your results, but to get the best results, you need
to be fully present and ideally, as we wrote about,
you can read inter excellence to be fully engaged heart, mind,
and body, unattached to what you're trying to do. It's
hard to do when everything, you know, everyone around you
(06:58):
is like the only thing that matters is your results.
And so when I was a pro athlete, I you know,
I was kind of beginning these ideas, but it was
I worked hard to focus on my routines and things
that I could control. And so in one of those things. Now,
you know, anytime I do anything, whether it's pickleball or
ping pong or anything, you know, I think it's one
(07:22):
of the most powerful mindsets is you know, why am
I doing this?
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Why?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
You know, why are you doing what you're doing? Why
am I doing this? And what is the end result
or the end goal? Rather? And if it's a game,
then then you're doing it to feel alive, aren't you.
Isn't that why you're you're playing a board game or
playing ping pong or doing your work. Isn't it to
feel fully alive? And if that's the case, then gratitude
(07:47):
should be a central part of that.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
What mistake do most people make? Though? With that? I
feel like a lot of people go into that and say,
to win, right, right?
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Right?
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, So everybody wants to win, and the problem is
that that's winning is a past future thing, and it's
and it's largely out of your control. You can play
your best and and and lose, and and play your
play your worst and and and win. And so winning
is not a good barometer. It's a poor barometer, and
yet it's the main one that most people use, Like
(08:17):
getting better inter excellence is about getting better every day,
and it's it's there's getting better at your skills and
your work or your sport, and that's obviously part of it,
but that's that's the least important part, because you're never
going to get as good as you can be just
focusing on the skills. You need to develop your heart
and your inner self. You're in a world because you
can be the best athlete or the best interview or
(08:39):
the best executive or merchant in the world. But if
your inner world is filled with anxiety and fear, you
go into the world in weakness. And you could you
could have a million followers. But if your inner world
is not is not filled with peace and and joy
and inner strength, then it's it's not a strong place
(09:01):
to be. But if your outer world is in shambles
and your inner world has that stability and that foundation,
then you got into the world and strength no matter
how crazy the outer world.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Is one of the most interesting things that I have
found in the book right here is you just touched on?
That is that inner world. A lot of people talk
about success, A lot of people will talk about you know,
this is how you have a great performance, this is
how you do but not a lot of people talk
about that inner strength. Why do you think that is?
Why are we missing that?
Speaker 2 (09:32):
I think it's hard to understand, Well, how do I
gain inner strength? It's kind of very.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
You can't measure it, maybe, yeah, hard to measure.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, it's hard to measure. And I think you know,
when I was in the desert and it spent five
years full time writing and researching inner excellence, one of
the things that I realized is that your heart is
the key to your life. We're far more than thinking machines.
We need to get to your subconscious mind and your heart,
your spirit, your will. And so then when I first
realized that, maybe a couple of years into research, I
(10:01):
was like, Okay, well, now what how do I train
the heart? Where do I even go? And so now
it's a deep dive into philosophy and spirituality, and then
and then realizing that your heart, which I call your
spirit and your will, that's what's running your life. And
so to be the best that you can be in anything,
it requires being wholehearted. And so you know, when we're born,
(10:25):
we're born with a divided heart. We have this nature
that's very self centered, and so we need training. We
need we need to train our heart to love what's
most empowering and not just love what's what's immediate.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yeah, get into that a little bit more wholehearted. So
what does that mean exactly?
Speaker 2 (10:44):
So every human heart has five deep needs. The first
need is for identity. We have a deep need to
feel like we're somebody and that we can contribute to
some something bigger than ourselves. And then the second need
is for connection community. Our greatest need is to be
fully known and fully loved and unconditional love is our
(11:06):
greatest need. It's our greatest desire and our greatest power,
because love is fearless and fear is our biggest challenge.
And our third need is is purpose, to have a
purpose beyond yourself. I think Mark Cuban said there's no
greatness without purpose, and I think It's such a powerful
idea to understand. If if you want to be great,
(11:28):
if you want to be a great leader, if you
want to be great at anything, there has to be
a purpose beyond yourself, because otherwise you're going to quit
way too soon. We need a reason passion. Passion literally
means to suffer, and you can't be great without being
willing to suffer. And so you're never going to be
willing to suffer unless you have some great cause. And
(11:49):
then integrity. Integrity is a fourth deep need. Integrity means
to be to be, to be complete, to be fully integrated,
and we can't be complete we're focused on ourselves that
we have to live for others. And then the last
great need is for growth or like an acorn, we're
(12:09):
created to grow, like an acorn, created to grow into
an oak tree. We're created for glory and we get.
The reason most people miss out on that is because
the default human nature of self centeredness.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
The ego.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yeah, yeah, what I call the ego, that part of
our mind that's always threatened and never satisfied, always comparing,
constantly comparing.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
It's hard to break out of that, you know where
I had this conversation with my family last night when
I was preparing for this and they were asking me,
you know, the kids were asking me, Yeah, but you know,
I've been in school and been told that my measure
of success is how well I do. So there's this
how do we break out of that? And how do
(12:53):
you tell even young people you don't have to You're
not measured by the grade that you got in the
paper or the job that you just achieved or the
salary that you made. So break that apart.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
That's a really hard thing to We need to get
into that purpose and your own life purpose, and it
revolves around relationships because we're creative for relationships. And so
if you're a purpose, like a life purpose that you
say is want to be the greatest athlete or the
greatest musician or anything that's not powerful, that's just a goal.
A purpose is something that you can do independent of
(13:27):
any circumstance that's really really empowering. And it's empowering if
it involves loving others, because that's the most powerful thing
that you can do. That's where you're going to sacrifice
the most. Let me look at anything in history, the
most passion comes from some sort of incredible love, and
so to break out of that ego and the self
centered this we need a greater purpose. And you can
(13:48):
also start to think about, well, how do I want
to feel in my life, what I'm at my best?
What does that feel like? And for most people it's
going to feel very similar, Like to the pro athletes
that I work with, or Olympians or anyone, it's very similar.
You know, I want to feel peace, I want to
feel freedom. I want to feel joy and confidence and
strength and things like that, and I don't want to
feel fear and anxiety and feel like I'm lost. And
(14:12):
so you know, as humans, we all have the same
basic challenges and the same basic needs and desires, and
so we all want to have amazing experiences in deep
and riching relationships, and we want to feel fully alive
and learn and grow and make a difference in the world.
Every single person wants that, they just don't know how
to get it. And so understanding that your own egos
(14:33):
is probably the biggest challenge that you face to have
the most extraordinary life. This party that's always comparing and
always threatened, and so we need this greater purpose and
you can start to think about, well, how do I
want to live? How do I want to feel? When
I say how do I want to live? Like, how
do I want to handle adversity? Because in life we
have so many things out of your control. Like you
(14:53):
have your day planned and then most of the time
it's nowhere near how that day is going to go.
That's a rare thing when it all goes exactly as planned, right,
So we often judge it. When I say judge, I
mean lay down a negative verdict. And so when we
use that create that negative energy to lay down a
negative verdict on a circumstance that we don't know that
we can look at the worst thing that we think
has ever happened to us, and it could be the
(15:14):
very best thing. And so that's important to remember.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
So saying that when you judge even your day, you're
saying even don't even come into your day with judgment.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So the three biggest challenges that
we've faced in general as part of that ego ego
driven mind is overthinking and negative or judgmental thinking, laying
down a negative verdict when we rarely, if ever have
all the information about a circumstance. Like I said, the
thing you think is the worst thing that could ever
happen to you, it could be the very best thing.
(15:47):
And self consciousness. So that's number three is that's what
are people going to think if I screwed up? And
if you want to be great in anything, you have
to be willing to fail. And if you want to
be really great, you have to be willing to fail
in a great way.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
So should we start with the purpose? Should you throw
out purpose and then get into letting go of those
other things? So for example, if I you know, I
use tennis because now I play a lot of tennis,
and let's say you have a tennis game, right, you
want to win. I've let go of that because I've
found that that does not bring me success when I'm
(16:20):
focused on winning at all. It's just it's just not
even close to In fact, the opposite happens.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Right right, very common.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Yeah, So my purpose is now, I think my purpose
is I want to go out there and I want
to I really want to have fun. I want to
connect with my partner, and I want to leave this
day feeling good. That's my purpose.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Very powerful, and so focusing on that you can even
strengthen that idea that that that mindset by saying, what
about my opponent? Who is my opponent? Are they my enemy?
Are they my obstacle? Or like that, are they my partner?
Are they my partner in the dance? Yeah, if you
see the opponent as your dance partner, like Phil Jackson
(17:07):
shared with us, now we've got a whole different story
in your mind. And so if you want to be great,
and I think one of the most powerful like the
inter excellence mindset, as I compete to raise a level
of excellence in my life, to learn and grow in
order to raise it in others, including my opponent. And
so it's natural to want your opponent to perform poorly
(17:27):
in yourself to perform better and for you to win.
That's a human nature. But that's a terrible mindset.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
And you know what, it doesn't make you feel good
exactly when somebody misses the ball. It doesn't really make
you feel good because you don't get to play. Yeah,
you know, you don't get to play, you don't get
to dance.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
That's so powerful, and so you think, well, what is
it that I really love about tennis? Is it just
so I get the very end I can count with
the score I can call my neighbor or my mom
or my aunt say look I beat this person, and
they're going to give you a big hug. What is
it that you really want? Isn't it that you want
to be caught up in the moment of something that
you love? And if that's if you do like tennis,
what is it that you like most. Isn't it being about,
(18:02):
you know, hitting great shots and these great rallies. Well,
you need the other person and the other team to
do that. And so the most powerful mindset is to
want them to be their best so you can be
your best. And so you want to bring your A
game so they can have their A game, and vice versa.
You want them to have their A game so you
can be better, because you're never going to be as
great as you could be if they're playing poorly, you
(18:24):
can be great if they're playing playing great. And so
you to have the energy that I don't want them
to play well is going to hurt you because it's
creating negative energy within you. But if your energy is
I just want to share what I love. They love tennis,
I love tennis. I want to share that with the
world and people watching. I want to have great rallies
and whoever wins, you know, that's up to God. Now
we've got power.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
That's I mean, Jim, that's amazing. I love that. I
love that for so many reasons. One of the quotes
that you have in the book or pieces that I
took out the there is no failure, there's only feedback feedback. Yeah,
there is no failure. There's only feedback. That's fantastic. There
(19:06):
is no failure, there's only feedback. It's just such a
great way of thinking about rolling through life. Period. We
can take the tennis game or work or whatever. Sometimes
my kids will say to me, you're so like you
have such a strong will or you have you know,
They'll and I'll say, I don't know. I just feel
like I just I get something and then I pivot
to a different direction. Now I never put it. There
(19:28):
is no failure, there is feedback, But you did. And
that's that's just I love it. I just love it.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
So Yeah, as part of that, the question is, you know,
such a powerful idea, So how do we get to
that point where we can see failure as feedback? And
this is not something where I don't take it personal.
And so this is the great separator between the best athletes,
the best performers, the most extraordinary business people, everything is
that they see these moments where they don't get what
(19:58):
they want, they well, they don't judge it because they
don't know, Like should I make this putt? What's the
best thing for me to do right now in my life?
Is it to be successful in this thing that I'm
doing putting, or or you know, any part of your
life being successful in it. Sure, that's what you want
to have, and you want everything to be successful, but
is it the best for you? You don't know it
(20:19):
is the best thing for you to win the Masters?
Like in April, there's someone's gonna win the Masters. Is
that the best thing for that person in their life?
It could be a terrible thing for them. And so
when you don't know what's best for you, that can
help you deal with failure and also realizing that the best,
the most extraordinary lives are like artists, that it's not
(20:41):
about the outcome. That's for the fans. That's for the
people to enjoy or boo or or cheer, and you
know you want to help them feel alive by creating
this art. But the true artist is selfless, and so
it's not like look at me, Like, when you see
great art, are you thinking about the artists? Are you know,
are you thinking about yourself? Neither, right, You're You're caught
(21:04):
up in the moment, like, oh, what a beautiful moment
could be a movie, could be, a book, could be
a painting on a wall. You're caught up in that
moment and you have this feeling that feels so good
that you're connected to beauty. Right, that's what the great
artist does. It connects people to beauty and to wisdom
and things like that. And so it's this selfless. Great
art is the selflessness. So you're not thinking about the
(21:25):
person who created it, and you're not thinking about yourself
the viewer. You're all caught up in this beauty. And
that's that's what we want to That's the best way
to live, the most powerful way to.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Live, the way to get there. Do you get a
resistance for that thought when you talk to let's say,
an athlete or a CEO or somebody that really is
judged on outcome, is really judged on.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Oftentimes it takes a while for some people to understand it.
And what I found in the years that I've been
doing this is that younger people get it quicker. And
so it's people that are closer to my age that
are a little slower because little old school and like Jim,
that all sounds great, but we got to win or
you know, the bottom line is we got to make
more money right now, and and so, but people that
(22:09):
are little younger seem to get it faster.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Why do you think that is?
Speaker 2 (22:13):
I think people that are closer to my age are
a little bit stuck, and you know how things have
always been, and you know, the old school coaching is
just got to win, just try harder, and so I
think young people can see that they have a little
bit more of an edge and understanding that trying harder
often backfires.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Where did you come to this? Was it during your
baseball career or after?
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Well, when I was a teenager, you know, I obsessed
about being an NFL superstar or NBA or Major League Baseball.
And then in high school, my coach told me about
sports psychology, and so I carried this book around with
me everywhere for years and years. I still have it.
It's called Mental Toughness Training for Sports by doctor Jim Lair,
and I'm remember one thing from that that he said
(23:01):
that the correct emotional response to a problem is seventy
five percent of the solution. And that had a huge
impact on me. And so when I was like seventeen,
that's when I started thinking about sports psychology. And then
you know, I did my undergrad in psychology and my
master's in coaching science, and then the five years you know,
going to the desert and spending that full time research
(23:21):
writing and researching, and plus coaching the Olympics and coaching
pro baseball and doing what I'm doing now.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
So it was an evolution. It was not It did
not happen overnight.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Yeah. And when you were playing baseball, where were you
in this journey? Were you fifty percent there? Were you
eighty five percent there?
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Well, if you can believe it, my ego was ten
times bigger than it is now. And so I know
that's probably hard to believe, but it was, you know,
very self centered life that I lived, and looking back
on it, I was so I mean, I can't even
tell you how devastated I was when my career ended.
I mean, I wouldn't say suicidal, but as lost as
(24:02):
you can get without being suicidal, Like I've got no meaning,
nothing like everything was built on my whole career, my
whole life, my whole identity, everything was as a pro athlete.
And then when I lost it, I lost everything. And
so but looking back now, I realized, like I said
in the beginning, I thought the best possible life which
(24:23):
I was gonna live. This is my destiny to live
the best possible life. I thought, it's gonna be I'm
making millions of dollars. I'm gonna be on the cover
of magazines. I'm gonna be winning World Series or scoring
touchdowns like AJ Brown and the super Bowl, and that's
gonna be my life. Every guy's gonna want to be me,
every girl's gonna want to be with me, and that's
gonna be my life. And then I got injured and
(24:43):
I lost it all, and I was so lost. And
now looking back, obviously God had a plan through all
of this, and I see that the life that he
gave me is so much better than I couldn't imagine
what was possible. I annoyed it. I mean, just look
at what happened in the life last six weeks. You know,
who could have ever imagined this?
Speaker 1 (25:02):
And were you as spiritual then did you have God
in your life?
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Then I believed in God, but it was it was
definitely not like it is now. It was it's you know,
it's it's hard to understand, like there's so many voices
out in the world, and and people who identify as
Christians that are that are not loving and you know, human,
We're all human, and so we all have our you know,
in some way, we're all hypocrites because you know, I
(25:27):
mean I don't always do what I what I say
that I'm going to do, or I don't always do
my routines, and sometimes I I do what I don't
want to do and don't do what I should do.
And so in many ways we're all hypocrites. And so
don't judge like Christianity based on people, because everyone is
at a different spot in their life.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
And so what does that mean? What do you mean,
don't base explain?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
I think, you know, I think uh Shane Claiborne hero
mine and he said this this one quote in his
book Rethinking Life, that I think things so powerful. He
might have been quoting Tony Campello, and he said someone
told him and said, the church is full of hypocrites.
And I think he was talking about the Christian Church,
and Chance said, you know, I don't think it is.
I think there's plenty of room for more. And so
(26:15):
I was like, whoa, that is so powerful. Yeah, we're
all hypocrites. You know, it's not full room for more.
You can join us. Yeah, and I think that's so true.
Is that because when you I think a lot of
people look at Christianity and they think, you know, if
that's what Christianity is, that person there who in my mind,
is hypercritical. I don't want anything about it. But what
(26:39):
you have to understand is that person is human and
they're you know, they have their flaws and they haven't
been fully transformed. And you know, none of us have it,
so we all have our own flaws and so don't
look at at people's actions to say, okay, am I
going to join this idea? But you know, look at
(26:59):
love and look at what it feels like in your
heart when you you know, pray and say, hey, you know, God,
reveal yourself to me and see what happens.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
What's your daily routine, like you said, you don't always
stick to it, but what's the goal or the purpose?
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Yeah? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I've been
to twenty three countries in the last two years, fifty
one or something overall, and so I travel a lot.
And so it's one of the biggest challenges that I
face is a lack of routine because because inter excellence
is really about a series of daily routines, of habits
of thought and action all day long, because we want
to have that positive energy that's constantly thinking about connecting
(27:36):
with beauty and that anything is possible. So how do
we constantly get out of that judgment? Because most people
spend their entire days every day judging circumstances sell for others,
it's just constantly circumstance could be better, even it's the
best thing. Ever, why does it takes so long? Or
you know, sell or it could be how I'm dressed
or what people think of me, And this this endless
(27:58):
loop of judgment. And that's my biggest is that that
hurts us. So what I do is I really try
to how do I stay in that connection to beauty,
ak God, the source of all beauty and love? How
do I stay connected to that? And so, you know,
I have a series of routines that I do every
day and weekly routines like Sundays, you know work that's
(28:21):
that's the Sabbath, that's just rest and recharge. And Mondays
is uh fasting, so no eating from ten am to
ten am. Tuesday, cold plunge, you know, every day, you know,
try and do something hard. I think that's we need
to learn how to let go of comfort. And the
best possible life has one foot and joy and one
(28:43):
foot and suffering, and so American culture of Western culture says,
the best possible life has one foot and joy and
one foot and happiness and one foot and trophies and
and you know that's all I want. I just want
to happen, feel good.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
I don't want feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
And the problem with that is that's not how the
universe is created. You can just easily look at like,
if you want to get physically strong, you got to
break the body down. And if you want to gain wisdom,
then you've got to go through things.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
And so okay, so you got to Tuesday. What happens
on Tuesday?
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, And so every day it's it's how can I
get my mind, body and heart in a place that's
filled with endless possibilities that that flow, and so how
do I stop judging and and be in this mode
of creativity. Like this morning, I was sitting in the
(29:37):
courtyard of my hotel having some quiet time, and I
was my mind was thinking about this, and that is like, Jim,
stop the thinking. If you want to have a great day,
we need to just connect with beauty, connect to the
source of all beauty. And so I stopped and it
was like, Okay, let's just be present to this moment
(29:57):
in the trees and the beauty, here in the sunshine,
here in la beautiful weather. And so so it's regularly
inviting yourself to do hard things so you can you
can like like cold plunge in fasting, for example. Both
are hard. And the challenge with it is that you know,
we have this this body that I never want to
(30:19):
get poked in the eye. That's never something that I want.
I always would you ever, would you rather choose send
a hot tub poked in the eye? Hundred percent of
the time it's hot tub. I always want comfort. And
so the problem with that is that's a life of
moving yourself towards sickness and disease and and weakness. Why
(30:42):
because that's not how the universe is created. The universe
is created. You have to have one foot and suffering
to do anything right. And so, like I said, passion
that means literally means to suffer. Passion is to suffer.
And so if you want to have passion, that's the
willingness to suffer through and to and to persevere under
under adversity and failure and all those things. And so
(31:03):
how do we get good at how do we get passionate?
Every day? We have to be willing to suffer. And
so then we have to put these things in our life.
And so like one thing that I do, I need
reminders throughout the day. I hate to say the word need,
but I have reminders throughout the day, like on my phone.
For example, in the house that the little retreat center
I had in Point Roberts just outside of Vancouver, the
(31:24):
windows are all covered with with Bible versus interests principles
ideas everywhere, because like for you, you're probably a lot
more positive person than me. I need this all day long.
I need I need it filled in my mind because
my mind in the past would have a tendency to
go to the negative, to the judgment, or you know,
I can't do that or that's that's too hard or
(31:46):
whatever that's limiting. And so for me, constantly like arranging
my environment is really important. And so that means the
physical space that I'm in, you know, I want it
to be clear of you know, not cluttered, and because
I want my mind to be you're not cluttered. And
then I want the space to be filled with things
that are empowering. And you don't need a lot of
money to do that, Like just have the books in
(32:07):
your shelves right, ones that are empowering and and have
like there's this funny story years ago, I had this
roommates and they I I told them that, like, you know,
the People magazine. That's that's how Princess Diana got killed
the paparazzi, right, And and so they one time they
(32:29):
put up People magazine in there my pillow at night,
and so as a joke. But you know, constantly trying
to keep myself away from this gossip and things that
are going to take me towards the negative and and
constantly listen to podcasts and have people around me that
are that are empowering.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
But that's because that's what you need. You're saying that
not everyone has that same threshold of post it notes
everywhere or things that they need.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
I think a lot of people wouldn't need as much
as I do. For sure. I think there's people that
are that are more motivated and have just a better
system than I do.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
So what I'm trying to understand right now is that
balance between suffering and pleasure. Because when you say sure
everyone would rather get into the hot tub than have
their eyes poked out, are you saying you should do
the cold plunge before you do the hot Like, if
you're seeking pleasure, should you be also seeking suffering?
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Yeah, there definitely needs to be a balance. For example,
when I think of pleasure, I think of vacation. I've
wrote an article called how to Be on Vacation. So
what most people do when they go on vacation, what
are they're doing? They're just seeking pleasure, right, And it's
really kind of an escape most people. I think it's
very common anyway, to go on vacation to kind of
(33:42):
escape their lives. I don't want to think about work,
I don't want to think about anything. I just want
to go to the beats with my book and play
tennis or whatever. I just want to have fun very
common and also a big mistake. The most powerful way
to live the most extraordinary life is to when you
have this opportunity, needs to get away to empower yourself,
(34:03):
not escape from yourself. And so how do we empower ourselves? Well,
that's when we think deeply about our life, you know,
to simplify your life, to figure out what is my
life purpose? What am I creative for? What is the
universe or God asking of me? Why am I here?
And then to focus everything into that. And then because
most people don't have a clear life purpose, so they're
(34:23):
going to get scattered, and anxiety is in line with
too many thoughts from too many concerns, right, and why
do they have that? Because they don't have a clear
life purpose. So then okay, what about that? What about that? Okay,
that sounds like what is that person doing?
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Right?
Speaker 2 (34:34):
So that's what happens. And so anxiety is such as
an all time high now because there's so much coming
at us from social media twenty four to seven, all
these things, and without a clear life purpose, you're going
to like here, I'm in La and I'm like we're
on Melrose Avenue and you know, I'm thinking about all
these like, wow, this is epicenter Hollywood of entertainment in
the world anxiety and yeah, I think, well, if I
(34:56):
lived here, I could easily get caught up in oh wow,
yeah you can what about this? About that? And it's like, man,
I got to be really careful just being here.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
For the weekend of distracting. Then I don't get distracted, right,
So interesting, you just were talking about vacation. You bring
up a good point. Vacation can also be very stressful,
and I think you're touching on the reason of why
you could have a vacation plan in particularly for me,
I like my vacations to be active. I like to
(35:23):
I don't want to sit, and I don't like that.
I usually use it for deep thinking time for other things, hiking,
doing something kind of straining. I love that. But I'm
I want to dive into that for a second, because
I do think you touch on something about how we
use our free time. We're escaping from our life, the
(35:47):
tectic to then go and not think about anything, and
it seems like both of them aren't working great, right.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Right, So what happens in vacation is people there. It's
very common. I just want to be happy. I want
my pleasure, my vacation to be pleasure. I've saved up
all year whatever, and so I want this to be
really good. In their mind, is happy and so happy
is these good feelings based on what's happening. Happiness is
a positive, temporary feeling based on what's happening. And so
(36:16):
the problem with that is what I mean, it's to me,
it's pretty obvious. Well, what if it's pouring down rain,
you know, you go to Hawaii or wherever it's pouring
down the rain every single day. Okay, there goes happiness,
there goes your vacation, right right, Yeah, I mean there's
so many things that can happen if you're if you're
pursuing happiness, it's it's a chase your tail, endless pursuit
(36:38):
of emptiness.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
And it's external. All these things you're talking about are
so external. So let's dive into a vacation. How would
you suggest somebody uses that?
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Yeah? Really, it's really okay. First of all, I need
to slow down. I need to take some time to
really slow down and stop all the running around and
all the organizing, and I need to really slow down
and then think about my life and think, Okay, what
is the purpose of my life? If that's not clear
to you, Like, for example, my purpose is to share
God's love with some encourage with athletes and leaders around
the world, really everyone that I meet. But that's kind
(37:08):
of the more of a specific mission. And so if
you don't have that clear purpose, then when you go
on vacation, it's going to be likely to I just
want to be happy and your whole because it's kind
of a microcosm of your whole life. I just want
to be happy. Like I said, that's going to leave
you empty. And so getting that purpose clear and so well,
how do we do that? Well, there's a couple of things.
(37:28):
One is, if you're going on vacation, we want to
slow down and simplify your life and then simplify it
all the way down to your purpose. And started to thinking, well,
you can think about those things that I mentioned earlier, Well,
how do I want to feel in my life? And
how do I want to live? Who am I meant
to become? Who do I want to become? And if
you think about how I want to feel, what happens
to most people happened to me for a lot of
(37:50):
my life is that we get so caught up in
being right and like if someone cuts off and cuts
me off in traffic and the past, that wasn't right,
and so I would not feel good. I would judge
them or you know anything, if I disagree with someone,
I want to be right. And so that's a big
mistake to try and be right, like to try and
(38:10):
get someone to say, Okay, you're right, because you're spending
so much energy and it's it's not helpful.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
How should you redirect that? Well, there's a suggestion there.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Anytime that you're you're say you're talking to somebody, like
what is your goal for your life? Like are you
are you trying to For example, politics is a very
charged thing right now and there's a lot of bitterness
and if you're trying to talk to someone that believes
different than you and you're trying to convince them, and
so say, you're you're really good at debate and you
(38:43):
feel like you win. So what did you win? Like
did so maybe you provided better logic than the other person?
Like what really happened there? Are you leaving that filled
with peace and joy? Is the other person leaving that
filled with peace and joy? And more wisdom. Is their
life going to change? Is your life gonna change?
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Like?
Speaker 2 (39:00):
What's the benefit of that? And I think it's really
understanding that rather than desiring to be right, it's it's
how can I stay in that connection to what's powerful, empowering, beautiful?
How can I stay connected to that? Because then I'm
going to gain more wisdom and I can be me,
I can be my true self when I'm connected to
that source of all beauty and all wisdom. And so
(39:21):
how do I live my life staying connected to that?
And if I'm trying to be right or convince people
I'm right, that's really a lack of sense of self.
It's like I need more validation, So I'm going to
try and convince you that you should give it to me.
And that's that's you know, I spend most of my
life like that, so I have a lot of experience
with it, and I don't want to live like that anymore.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
So when did that change?
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Well, I mean, still a work in products. I'm still
a hypocretic, you know, So well, maybe I should say
I've still been a hypocretic. I try not to say
that anything that I don't want to continue as a
present tense. But you know I'm still.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
Every day, you're changing it every day.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
On Monday, did I fast tenn to Monday ten am Tuesday?
I don't think so. So there we go. I guess
the interviews over so but you know, that's kind of
how life is. Life is difficult, and it's not about
how many mistakes you make. It's who you're becoming and
(40:18):
can you keep going when when things are tough and understanding, Like,
if I don't have a clear system for the person
I'm becoming, I'm going to default to the world system.
And the world system is a very superficial chase your tail,
pursue happiness and and it's a zero sum game. I'm
just going to try and get what I can and
because someone else is gonna take it. And that's a
(40:38):
that's a definite recipe for fear, anxiety, and frustration.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
So you've been in LA for how long now?
Speaker 2 (40:46):
About three days?
Speaker 1 (40:46):
About three days? And are you finding it challenging to
stay on course?
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Yeah? Yeah, it is, it is, And it may not
be for the reason you think. Because my life since
January twelfth has been this flood of attention and a
lot of people saying, you know, in Excellence is the
best book I've ever read, or things like that, And
for fifteen years, I haven't had this sort of attention.
And the book came out fifteen years ago, the first.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Version anyway, and then it really came out again in
twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
So twenty twenty version is is quite a bit different,
same concepts, but a lot of new stories and stuff.
And so, you know, I get a lot of attention
now or a lot of people that are saying good things,
and I can feel like I'm somebody. And the moment
that I started to think, yeah, I'm like I've I've
given more than my two percent, Like oh I deserve
seventy five percent, or you know, look at me. Why
(41:35):
would I do that or think that or feel that.
It's because I'm not i don't have that fully integrated
sense of self. I'm disconnected. So then I'm like, oh, yeah,
I should I deserve this or deserve that, I should
have this. And I could see being here and be like, yeah,
I would like a little more of that, and oh yeah,
let's get more of that. And so it's danous.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
So you're not staying in la is what I'm what
I'm mean, I love La and.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
I may be back a lot more. I just I
think everyone needs to know what is the biggest challenge
that they face. And the basic idea of interactionence is
that the biggest challenge you face in performance and in
life is self centeredness. And that was my challenge before
January twelfth when this all went down, and now it's
like ten twenty times that, And so now I've got.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
On a personal level. You're saying, on a personal level, Yeah, yeah,
have you ever spoken to A. J. Brown? I have conversation.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
A great guy. He's very humble, gentle, awesome guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Do you know what part of the book he was
reading during the Super Bowl?
Speaker 2 (42:31):
Well, they did zoom in on it, and so I
have a you know part of it. But that it's
that you can see, it's like all highlighted, and you
know that part about having that clear mind and unburdened
hard I think is resonate part of that's what he's
read every day or during the games. I should say.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
I just want to make sure we give people, you know,
some kind of hard and fast tools to take with
them today if they want to change their lives today.
And again, there's so much in this book and so
much that we've talked about in the last few minutes here,
and I mean, you've opened my mind up to thinking
of all kinds of things. So I thank you for that.
It's been amazing experience for me. And I work with
(43:13):
people with performance and mindset and all that. But the
biggest thing to me that I noticed that you say
is it's not just about achieving that goal or that
you know in performance is having a really good performance
and then feeling okay about it. What I like that
you're doing that most people don't do is you're saying
it's not just about your performance at work or whatnot,
(43:36):
it's really also about how you roll through life. And
a lot of people see those as two different things.
Meaning I can go to work, I can do this podcast,
and then I can put everything down and say, Okay,
I'm done. And what I hear you saying is no,
you're never done. You're never actually done with your and
(43:56):
I'm going to say performance and quotes, but with how
you roll, no, your heart and so how do we
begin today to make those changes to roll through life
and work and everything you know as one like, as
one human being? As opposed to my work life self
(44:19):
and my home life self. I don't know if you've
seen the show Severance, but they sever the head and
they go to work as one person and they can't remember,
and then they go home as another another. So how
do we merge those and be one.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
I'll share with you the four daily goals. Before I
get to that, I want to share with you this
conversation I had with one of my clients, and he's
a pro baseball player, and he was talking about golfing
and how I realized that the golf has kind of
helped me because I can get nervous, you know, I
hit this great shot and I don't want to miss
the pot. And so one thing that I shared with
him is that not only is golf helpful for you
(44:51):
to train for your pro baseball career, all of life
is here to train you for baseball. Everything that you do,
everywhere you go is training for you for your baseball
and also everything you do on the baseball field is
training for your life. Now which one is more important? Now?
The world says, well, in baseball, as a position player,
(45:14):
it all comes down to your four at bats, you know,
get two or more hits, it's a great day, one
or less, it's not a good day, et cetera. And
this obsession with results, and you know, that's the world
that we live in, and so how do I live
in this flow connected to beauty and grounded every day?
And that's where we want to get to. That kind
of where the four goals kind of come in. The
four daily goals, which is the first one is to
(45:36):
give the best of what you got each day, because
it's so important to realize most days you're going to
be nowhere near your best. I mean there's a lot
of days when you may say, if your best is
one hundred percent and you've only got fifty percent, and
so if you think that you're going to get one
hundred percent out of a fifty percent day, it's going
to be very frustrating. And so it's important to realize
(45:58):
and develop self awareness, especially on those days and say
I'm going to give one hundred percent of the fifty
and so that's a big one because we're rarely our best.
And then number two is to be present. And when
I say present, what I mean is that that grounded
connectedness to beauty and a lot of it has to
(46:22):
do with slowing down when you're in a hurry. Hurry
is the great enemy of the spiritual life. It's a
great enemy of beauty, it's a great enemy of compassion,
it's a great enemy of love. You know, love is
not hurried and so, and love is the most powerful
force in the universe. So if we want to live
(46:42):
that extraordinary life, we need to unhurry our lives. The
only way we're going to unhurry our life is that
we have to have a clear purpose. Everything has to
go down to one thing that we make all our
decisions through. And if not, then we're going to be
hurried because like, well what about this? We can't I
can't get rid of that, of that that could be helpful.
And so the only way to unhurry your life life
is you have to and get rid of hurry sickness,
is you have to eliminate things from your life. And
(47:05):
so being present is number two. Number three is to
be grateful. Gratitude is closely linked to inner inner piece.
Inner piece is tied to inner strength. In your strength
is linked to mental toughness, and they're all linked to
beauty and so, but it's really hard to be grateful sometimes,
So how do we become more grateful? And so I'm
(47:26):
not saying this as a Christian that you should be
more grateful to be a better person. I mean sometimes
I'm not a very good person. What I'm saying is
as a performance coach, if you want to live a
better life, then how do we be more grateful? We
look for the smallest moments every day that are gifts,
the smallest moments, and so if you say I'm grateful
for my health or grateful for my family, that's wonderful,
(47:47):
but it's not super empowering if you every day you're
looking for the smallest moments, whether it's getting a parking
spot or if you're filled with anxiety, like there's in
twenty ten, I had so much anxiety almost had the
mental breakdown. This is after the book came out. Five
years of relative isolation, and you know, we're created for relationships,
(48:10):
and so I can see why I came to that point.
So that sorry, what.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
Was I saying, Hey, you were getting onto your number
three of being grateful and you're giving the example of
yah yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Yeah, OK, so gratitude every day having like going through
your day, I want threes was going to go through
your whole day and look for at least three I
mean there's probably one hundred at least every day specific moments.
The smaller the moment and the specific moment, the better,
because your subconscious is going to be able to It
likes pictures, and if you can give it a picture
every day of multiple moments, it's going to see them
(48:43):
more and more. Now, remember what I said, so that
the gratitude is linked to inner piece, which is linked
inner strength and mental toughness and joy, beauty. And last
one is to focus on your routines and only what
you can control. And so that's the fourth daily goal
and your routine. Like I shared earlier, an your excellence
is a series of habits of thoughts and action every day.
(49:08):
And so I have on my phone these reminders like
God is with you, Jim, and like I had to
remind I had this affirmation that I'm a New York
Times best selling author, and I had that on my
phone for years and then finally I got rid of it.
I mean it was it's been fifteen years, you know,
so it's like, okay.
Speaker 1 (49:22):
That's amazing. So and in your fifteen it came yeah, yeah, yeah, amazing. Okay,
So the four are The first one is give one
hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
Of what you got each day of what you have,
So if.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
It's at fifty, you give one hundred percent of that's right.
Number two is is present, that's right.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:37):
Number three is gratitude, and number.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
Four is focus on your routines and only what you
can control. Focus on your your routines is so important,
like what do I do when I wake up? Like
first out of your day. We don't want to be
making any decisions the first hour of the day. It
should be ideally scripted. That's the goal every day because
you know what your life purpose is, So we want
to use music to start your day. Music is so powerful.
We want the music lined up with your purpose. So
(50:01):
we want the words coming into your mind every single
day of the person that you want to become, and
then and so and then get them good good feelings
line up with your purpose because beliefs are us running
your life, and so we want to get those feelings
in those words lined up with what's possible for us.
And so music a big part of that first hour.
Along with having some quiet time and connecting with God
(50:23):
and beauty.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
You also talk a little bit about perspective. I just
want you to touch on this because you can have
you can agree to these four goals daily, but if
you're out a line in some way, it's going to
be hard to get started with any of these. So
if my if my number four is my routine, I
know what I want it to be, but I never
get there because I'm kind of I don't know, you know,
(50:47):
I got to get the kids off, I've got to
get There's a lot of stuff I got to do
before I get to my routine. Because it's easy to
say my routine is, yeah, I drop off here and
then I go to work and then go that's a root.
But that's not the kind of routine you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Yeah, so we want to get one percent better every day.
Don't think that you're going to be, you know, have
this life of inter excellence every day and like if
you follow me, you'll be like Jim, that's not very
inter excellence and be like, well, yeah, I need to
get better. I'm working on it. So every day is working.
Can we get better and learn not to be so
hard on yourself? Can I get a little bit better today?
And some days are not going to be good. Some
(51:24):
days are going to be terrible, and so it's really
elimiting that judgment from your life.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
Right, and if you can be one percent better every day, yeah, imagine.
I mean that's really.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Powerful and really understanding that some days are not going
to be good. And I didn't get any better today,
and that's okay.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
I usually say anything I didn't ask you that you
wanted to touch on.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
As you know, as I shared, my life's changed a
little bit now, and so I really want to share
this message of God's love around the world and that
selfless is fearless and it doesn't matter what you believe.
We all worship something, and so I want to help
people understand that one that you're worshiping something and whatever
that God is, whatever is at the top of your list,
(52:04):
that's your God. And I want to help you make
sure that that's very empowering. And so most of my
life it wasn't empowering. I was like worshiping success and
popularity and you know, just want people to love me
and trying it. I was chasing my tail and it
was it was this endless pursuit and that was leaving
me empty. And so I want people to know that
(52:25):
there's a far better way to live and to love.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
Jim, I can't thank you enough. This has been such
a pleasure for me. I have learned so much. I
am ready to kind of reset a few things, you know,
not going to share them with you right now, but
they'll be resetting. And this has just been it's been
a real pleasure to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (52:43):
Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (52:44):
But you know what, more than I expected. So I
really love that. Not that I had a bar that
was in a certain place, but I think I didn't
have an expectation. I was really curious as to who
you were and what you were, what you were all about.
So this has been really enlightening. Thank you, Thank you.
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