March 12, 2025 • 46 mins
Tara Thurber interviews Tom Sterner, founder of the Practicing Mind Institute, on mental performance. Sterner emphasizes mental sovereignty, the ability to control one's mind, and shares insights from his 45 years of research. He highlights the importance of thought awareness training, which involves focusing on the breath or a simple phrase to detach from thoughts. Sterner advises setting goals with accurate data, using premeditated procedures for high-pressure situations, and interpreting experiences positively. He stresses the need to balance learning with performance and to embrace challenging situations as opportunities for growth.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tara Thurber (00:00):
Hey everyone, welcome back. I'm Tara Thurber,
Founder and Director ofPartnerships at define talent.
And joining me today is a reallyspecial guest, Thomas sterner,
the founder and CEO of thepracticing MIND Institute, as a
successful entrepreneur. He isconsidered an expert in Present
Moment functioning or PMF, withover 45 years of research into
(00:24):
sports psychology, neuroscience,centuries of Eastern thought,
systems, meditation and morerecently, the science of
consciousness and quantumphysics, he has accumulated a
thorough understanding of how wecan use our mind instead of
being used by our mind tofunction at our highest level
(00:45):
and to reach our goals in theshortest amount of time and
without a sense of resistanceand struggle, Tom has worked
with a wide range of high levelindividuals, from CEOs and
corporate team members,professionals in the medical
field, college coaches andathletes as well as high school
students. He is the author ofthe international bestseller,
(01:06):
The practicing mind, developingfocus and discipline in your
life and fully engaged using thepracticing mind in daily life.
And most recently, it's just athought emotional freedom
through deliberate thinking.
That's quite the list. Tom,today, he is here sharing with
us his top five tips onimproving mental mental
(01:28):
performance. Tom, how you doingtoday?
Tom Sterner (01:32):
I'm doing great. So glad to be here. Tara,
excellent.
Tara Thurber (01:36):
So happy to have you here as well. And I guess
what I would love is just do alittle bit of an intro to what
is mental performance? Well, Iguess the simplest definition
would be mental sovereignty. Imean, in other words, that you
are the one who is in control ofyour mind, and not the other way
(01:56):
around. And there was a timewhere I was doing a presentation
for high school kids in anauditorium, and I said, look,
let's just do this. I'm
Unknown (02:06):
going to set a timer for two minutes. I want you to
sit, close your eyes and stopthinking. And of course, I knew
they couldn't do it, but theydidn't know they couldn't do it
like so at the end of the twominutes, you know, the timer
went off, and the chatteringstarted, the murmuring like this
was an epiphany for these kids,because they realized that even
though they were telling theirmind not to think, it was
(02:28):
continuing to think. And so Iasked them the question is, what
if? What did you learn? Andthere was a bunch of
information, you know, a bunchof questions or answers that
came up. But I said, I think thecore of what you learned is that
if you are telling your mindyou, the real you is willing
your mind to stop thinking andit's ignoring you, then who's in
charge? Because it's not you.
And this was an epiphany forthese kids, and it actually
(02:53):
sparked a meditation practicefor a number of them, which I
found out later. You know, theirparents had said that they're
all of their academics hadimproved and just their
personalities had improved. Butthe point is, is that
neuroscience says that we havebetween 55 and 65,000 thoughts a
day. Most of them are thoughtswe had yesterday and the day
before. Most of them arenegative, and they are not us.
(03:16):
They're just programs that wehave installed over our
lifetime, or that other peoplehave helped us install into our
subconscious. And oursubconscious is just responding
to the different the differenttypes of triggers that are
outside of us. So mentalperformance is the ability to
stop that and the ability to befocused, you know, like, you
(03:39):
know, to be focused on, youknow, to tell your mind, this is
what we're working on. We'reworking on this right now, and
this is where you will stay, andthis is what you will think
about like, and that is mentalperformance. And it's a lot
easier to talk about it than itis to develop it.
Tara Thurber (03:56):
I love that, Tom, and actually, I was thinking
about you this morning as I wassitting down and preparing for
my day, and a lot of times I'llsit and write a like a to do
list, but what I transitionedwas do now instead of a to do,
and it shifted me, and I wasable to kind of find myself
(04:17):
being present for the first timein in quite A few weeks, to be
honest, and again, it's the donow. What can we do now and be
present now with and eventually,everything else falls into
place.
Unknown (04:31):
Yes, we're so used to not being in the present moment
that it feels normal. We don'tfeel like our mind is running
our day, because you know yourmind. You don't notice your mind
until you try to stop it. Youknow, your mind thinks all the
time, and it runs all over theplace. One thought begats
another thought, you know, like,I got to stop at the store. I
(04:52):
need milk. Maybe I should getbread. I don't like that bread I
got the last you know, it justkind of one thought just creates
another thought, and it justkeeps running. Um, and it's
almost like you're watching amovie, but you forget the fact
that you're not in the movie,you know, and this is happening.
And of course, every thoughtthat the mind begats, you have
stored a an emotional responseto it. And so you experience
(05:15):
that emotional response, and youknow, it's really when you
understand the system, it canreally work for you, but when
you don't understand it, you'rea total prisoner of the system,
which is where most people live,
Tara Thurber (05:29):
absolutely, absolutely. And I want to kind
of dive in here you and youemphasize the importance of
focusing on the process ratherthan the product. How does this
shift in mindset contribute toimproved focus and discipline in
both our personal andprofessional settings.
Unknown (05:49):
Well, in all settings, you know, we are taught to be
attached to the goal we youknow, we're unhappy. There's a
feeling of incompleteness insideof us, and we want that feeling
to go away. This is the enginethat drives marketing, you know,
if you don't have this car, ifyou're not taking a vacation, if
you're not, you know, drinking aCorona on the beach, or whatever
(06:09):
it is, life is passing you by.
And so we're taught thathappiness is not in the process
of what we're doing right now.
Process exists over theresomewhere, and if we could just
get there, then this feelingwould go away. Um, so we spend
our life chasing this, thisplace that we're not at, you
(06:29):
know? So when you learn, firstof all, you have to learn to be
aware of when you're not in theprocess, because you can't pull
yourself into the process ifyou're not even aware of it.
That's why I said it. You feelso normal to not be in the
process that you don't noticeit, but once you get to that
place where you begin to noticeI'm not in the process, and you
can give yourself permission tolet go of everything that you're
(06:51):
not doing and just do whatyou're doing. It's an amazing
experience, because all of asudden the stress leaves, your
performance level goes way upbecause you're not asking your
mind to process all thesedifferent things. You have
access to all of your cognitiveabilities. Because normally you
have this, if you think of itlike computer RAM, you know,
(07:12):
computer Ram has backgroundtasks that are going on and when
you were thinking, when you'rethinking extraneously about
something that's going to go onyesterday or later in the day,
or something you shouldn't havesaid to somebody this morning,
or all these different things.
Your mind has to process allthose things. And we also know
that the mind doesn't multitask.
(07:33):
It's switch tasks. It just shutsoff, and it's so it's constantly
turning on, shutting off,turning on, changing directions.
And this is why we're sofatigued during the day, and so
fatigued at the end of the day.
So when we learn to be in theprocess of what we're doing and
just doing that, and we giveourselves the permission to do
that, all this other stuff fallsaway. And it's a it's I find
that even the stuff, many timeswhen you're stressful about
(07:57):
stuff, it's because you're notactually doing it. You're
thinking about doing it, but,you know, if you're doing it
like and you're just focusing onthe here and the now and what
you're doing, your mind becomes,you know, time goes away, your
mind becomes very immersed intothe process of what you're
doing, and there is no otherextraneous thinking going on.
And it's a very it's really awonderful experience. And and
(08:18):
what science has shown us is, ifyou look at people that are in
quote, flow and all these, thisis where they're at. There is
nothing else going on but whatthey're doing right now. They're
only thinking about this moment,this second, and so their mind
is free to perform at itshighest level. And that's, you
know, in the introduction, whenyou're reading, that's when you
(08:40):
experience accomplishing yourgoals. And those goals don't
have to be physical goals,meaning you're improving your
golf swing. They can be learningto deal with a stressful person
at work. They can be learning toI want to stop procrastinating,
you know, like, I mean, allthose types of things. What
happened is the perception ofdifficulty starts to drop away,
because you're not thinkingabout any of that. You're not
(09:02):
all you're doing is processingwhat you're doing. And so the
mechanics are, you know, whenyou hear the mechanics, they
say, oh, that sounds you know,the mechanics are deceptively
easy. You know, hear them, but,you know, learning them. It's a
faculty. Tara, it's a facultyand a skill. We all have it, but
we're not taught it, at least inthe West, in any country that's
(09:23):
westernized, we're not taughtit. So it's something that we
can learn. And unfortunately,because we've learned the
opposite. And if you think aboutif you went back to 150 years
ago and you lived on a ranch andyou had to go to town, and it
was 20 miles away, you know, youjust get on your horse and
clippity clop along in thecountryside, and there really is
nothing to distract you. But nowwe've got a smartphone on our
(09:45):
face. So much distraction. Soour mind is being it's being
asked to perform at process somuch stuff all the time, and as
it does that what we. Learned isthat it's atrophying in terms of
its ability to concentrate,because we're not asking it to
do that. We're asking it toprocess all this data. So it's
(10:06):
going okay. And so we'reevolving. You know that our
brain is evolving in thatdirection, but because we're
not, you know, you ask mostpeople to just sit still for 15
minutes, and they reallystruggle with it, because they
feel like I got something to do.
I got so much to do, I'm notdoing anything. And their their
mind is driving them to getgoing, get going, get going.
Like, so it's but at least werealize this now, and you know,
(10:30):
we know the way out of it,
Tara Thurber (10:33):
which, you know you're as you're talking, my
brain is going because I'mthinking so much about
everything that you're saying tome too, and you know, in my
mind, I'm racing, because I wantto explore so much more and be
in that flow, but knowing too,how do we quiet that in order to
(10:54):
be able to show up and bepresent in business and
professional lives. You know, Ifeel that we talk about this,
this, or you talk about thismental quietness, right? How can
we find that acknowledgement?
How can we build that, I guess,build or grow the ability to
observe the thoughts withoutattaching them to us and and be
(11:19):
able to develop this level ofawareness, not only in our day
to day, but in high, highpressure situations. Well,
Unknown (11:30):
that's a great question, and the simple answer
is, through thought awarenesstraining. Now, what is thought
awareness training? Yeah, well,thought awareness training, you
could, you know, you have tounderstand the word is not the
thing. So I could saymeditation, you know. But
meditation has a lot ofconnotations. You know. Some
people think of it as areligious practice, you know.
(11:51):
Other people think of it aslooking for peace. But if you
look at a very simple either abreast breath based meditation
or phrase based. It could bephrased base. And what you do
is, you know, you sit in a chairwith you want your back to be
fairly upright. You know, youdon't want to be in a position
where your body distracts you,so you need to be comfortable.
(12:13):
You also don't want to be in aposition where you're going to
get drowsy and fall asleep,because you will become relaxed.
And then, you know, you take afew deep cleansing breaths,
close your eyes, so you shut outall of the extraneous stimuli.
And I usually tell people, it'sreally nice if you can have some
white noise, whether that's an Igive my clients like ocean waves
that I recorded actually at thebeach, and I start them out with
(12:36):
10 minutes, and then we move to15 and then to 20 minutes. So
you just have this thing thatkind of shuts off the outside
stimulus, and then you justwatch your body breathe. And
that sounds like so simple, butwhat ends up happening is you're
either watching your bodybreathe or you're saying a
simple phrase to you're hearingit in your head. You're not
saying it with your mouth,right? You're saying something
(12:56):
like, I am still. You're hearingit in your head, yeah? If you're
watching your body breathe. Whatends up happening is that
you're, well, two things happen.
One is you generally the egostarts to try to control the
breath, because you've neverpaid attention to before. You
just breathe, you know. But onceyou start paying attention to
it, then you start trying tomodify it. Like, well, maybe I
should be breathing deeper,maybe I should be breathing
(13:17):
slower, like, maybe that willmake this work faster, you know.
Like, go, you know, all the egogets involved, all this sort of
stuff. And so if you can justdrop back to, know, just sit
there and let your body breathe.
You know, that's, you know,that's one thing. But then the
mind wants, this is where thingsstart to happen very quickly,
within 30 seconds. If it takesthat long, the mind goes, I got
this. Why you do that? I'm goingto go work on this, and it takes
(13:40):
off. And when it takes off, yougo with it, because you've
always done that your wholelife, and you go with it, and
you start to do whatever it'sthinking about. You start
processing whatever it'sthinking about. And then the
magic happens. And the magic,which a lot of people think is a
failure, but it isn't, is thatyou wake up and realize, I'm not
paying attention to my breath.
And it's in that moment, in thatsecond when you wake up and you
(14:02):
notice that that you havereconnected with you, the
observer, the observer who waswatching what the mind is doing.
You've left and gone into themind, and now you're in the
mind, and it's doing all of itsstuff, and you're there, and
you're experiencing all theemotional content of whatever
it's thinking about. And then,but when you notice that you're
there and you've realized thatthe mind has grabbed you and
(14:24):
pulled you off, and then youstop, and you pull your
attention back onto your breath,and every time you do that is
like a repetition at the gym.
It's basically you'restrengthening your will and
you're reaffirming who youreally are. Who is the conscious
creator, who is the creativethinker, who is the person that
makes the thoughts that you wantto make? And as you go through
(14:49):
that, and so very it's a veryinteresting experience, because
what happens is it feels likenothing is happening. I mean,
you're doing this on a dailybasis, what's. Starts to happen
is you realize you begin toexperience I am not my thoughts.
You begin to notice thoughts,but the thoughts start to lose
(15:09):
their power over you, becausethey become just like in
meditation. They just becomethis thought, and you begin to
hear yourself saying things likeyou, where, where you used to
have a thought that would makeyou very anxious or or fearful.
You say something like thatthought has nothing to do with
me. It's not me. It's a thoughtthat is happening to me like and
(15:30):
I tell people, you know, you cantell that, because if I asked
you if you could stop thatthought, would you do that? And
they go, yeah, what I said,That's because you weren't the
thought. The thought ishappening to you, and what this
meditation, simple, simpleprocess of thought, awareness
training that you do every day.
What happens is that skillbecome expands, and your
(15:50):
strength within that skill, verymuch, like any exercise, becomes
stronger and stronger andstronger. And that's why, you
know, people ask me. I mean,I've been meditating for 50
years. I mean, people ask me.
One guy said, I want to, I wantto know what it feels like to go
through the day in your head andand I said, Well, I'll tell you
that as soon as you describe thecolor blue. And it only took him
(16:14):
a second to figure I couldn't doit like I said. I can't give you
what I experienced, but I cantell you that I used to be when
I was growing up, I was a worrywart. I had a rabbit brain that
was running all over the place.
I was not focused. I had allkinds of creative ideas. I
didn't stick with them, I didn'tfinish them. And I said, by the
time I was in my early 20s, Iwas the complete opposite. And
I've been through many, manysituations. I have my parents
(16:37):
both transitioned with witharduous deaths, and I was there
with them the whole time. I'vebeen through divorce, I've been
broke, I've been through allthese different things. And I
can tell you that this stuffthat we're talking about, Tara
got, took the took the sine waveand flattened it out. People
have said to me, they said,you're very flat lined. And I,
(16:59):
um, said, Well, I do experiencealmost indescribable joy. I
said, but I don't experience thepanic and all those sort of
things. They just don't have anypower over me anymore. And so
that's really what we're talkingabout. If you just do this
thought awareness training, it'sthe key to the prison. If you
don't do that, you're you're,unfortunately, you're set to be
(17:20):
a prisoner of your mind, youknow, which is where most people
live. So it's a very simpleprocess, but you have to
practice it, you know. And thelike I said, the mechanics are
very simple. But you know, whatpeople don't realize is that,
yeah, the mechanics, themechanics of playing a Beethoven
symphony are simple. If you lookat the sheet music, yeah, you
(17:42):
just play this note and pushthis key, you know. But you can
see the mechanics aren't hard,you know. You understand that
note is this, that note on thepage, this note on the
instrument. But you can't do itlike because there's a gap
there, you know, between yourskill level and what the
mechanics are, and that's whyyou under you. You go into this
and you understand that part ofthe piece that comes from this
(18:03):
is learning what meditation, ifyou want to call it that, what
it does is it develops a senseof equanimity, like you stop
judging everything you're doing.
But judging is a thought. It'sjust a yes. So when you have
that thought, you go, you know,that thought has nothing to do
with my performance. It's justdegrading it so you just let it
go, and it becomes easier andeasier, and then eventually it
(18:27):
becomes of a part of just whoyou are and how you operate.
Tara Thurber (18:33):
Wow, I, you know, listening to you and and being
riding this wave of of learning,to me, is is phenomenal, because
I find you say the judge, andthe thought I so many
individuals are struggling withthe judge, and the thought right
(18:54):
now, you know, look at, I mean,with what I do, with recruiting,
and all of the individuals thatare out of work right now,
right? And it's the thought,it's the imposter syndrome, it's
the judge that comes in that isreally, I feel, when I'm talking
to a lot of individuals, that'sthe biggest thing that we're
trying to break down, is thatjudge and to just be present in
(19:19):
the now and to not worry aboutthe future, not worry about the
to do's, but to be able to comeback and the meditation aspect
is huge for for all of this, tocome into the now and and be
present. Because I find whenpeople are present and in the
(19:39):
now, they can take a breath.
Unknown (19:44):
They can take a breath.
And I think that the follow upon that is a premeditated
procedure of what you're goingto do when that moment comes
where the two things cometogether, meaning, if there's a
particular situation, forexample, that stresses you. Out.
It's a certain person that comesin the room. It's a certain
situation, a job interview, youknow, yeah, I've had people
(20:05):
where I say to the you know,they'll say, like, you know,
this person always just stressesme out. They intimidate me or
something. So I'll say, like,Well, okay, do you do you meet
this person often? Yeah, everyweek I have to deal with this
person. Okay, so I'm going totouch you on the head with a
magic wand, and right beforethat person comes into the room,
(20:27):
and it will make you any personyou want to be. Who is that
person? And the answer is, Idon't know. I said, Well,
there's the problem if you don'tknow who you need to be who you
want to be in that situation.
You can't become that person, Isaid. So let's start there. You
(20:48):
know, let's give you a targetlike I said. You know, if you
just step back from myinterpretation, you have an
extreme tactical advantage inthis situation. Number one, you
know when that thatconfrontation is going to
happen, because it happens on aregular basis. I said number
two, you know how that person isgoing to act, but they only
(21:08):
think they know how you're goingto act, because you're going to
change how you're going to actlike so you're going to change
how you process their behavior.
And they're not ready for that,so they're going to be stepping
and fetching in that situation,but yeah, you're going to be
heart centered and you're goingto be focused. I said, what I
want you to focus on is not whatthey're saying or doing. Is, how
are you feeling? I want you tofocus on, how am I feeling in
(21:31):
this moment? That's all I said.
Like, am I starting to feelnervous? I said, then that's a
thought. It's not you. It's justa habitual reaction to this
situation. Understand that. Andand go back to, I'm still
whatever it is I said, I wantyou to do it now. What I have
found over and over again, when,when people do this, you know,
(21:53):
always the next session, like,oh my gosh, it was so crazy,
yeah, because they didn't haveall this, this power over me,
and I it's, I could have donethat years ago, and like all
that stuff and but I, you know,the answers are not real
complicated. It's just thatpeople get so immersed in their
habit of reaction. And I callit, there's a big difference
between a reaction and aresponse. A reaction is just a
(22:13):
reaction, but a response haswillpower and conscious choice
making in it. And if that's whythey call them, you know, first
responders, not first reactors,because you know they know what
they're going to do when theycome on an accident scene.
They're not, you know, they mayhave to make certain decisions,
but they know what they're goingto how they're going to respond
to certain situations. They'renot having a coffee break and
(22:35):
trying to figure out, what doyou think we should do? They
know they've practiced this, andI can tell you as a pilot, all
of those emergency situationsare taught to you when you're
getting your your license, andthey're written down, and you
know, if you have, if the enginequits, you're going to do this,
this, this, this, this, youknow. And they have a saying, I
think, is great. It's alsotransferable into business and
personal life, which is, aviatecommunicate, or, I'm sorry,
(22:58):
aviate navigate, communicate.
And the reason what thattranslates out into fly the
plane first. What happens is, ifsomething goes wrong, what kills
people is they start trying tofigure out what's going wrong
instead of flying the airplane.
And then the airplane gets in asituation that they can't
recover from. So when you're ina situation where you start to
(23:18):
feel like the engine just quit.
In this situation, fly theairplane first. What's the
airplane? What is the airplane?
You go inside, check in, askyourself, Where am I in this
situation? Is this situation incontrol? Because if you don't
have this terror, then you'reonly ever as happy and free as
whatever's going on out here.
The next thought that comes inis going to take away your
(23:41):
freedom. You're going to takeaway your power, if you're not
aware of that. So these, theseare situations where you have to
have a process, you know, aprocedure that you're going to
go into, and you're going tolook at it as a repetition, oh,
boy. You know, this crapshappening. I get to, I get to
practice this, you know, like,that's what I say. I Yeah, I'm
in gratitude. You know, whenstuff happens when you're not
(24:02):
good at when you noticesomething and you start to
struggle, it's because you'renot good at it. The stuff that
you're good at just flows past.
You don't notice it. You onlynotice the stuff that makes you
have to work, either mentally,emotionally, and it's just you
haven't mastered it yet. Itdoesn't mean that you can't get
good at it. So those situations,to me, I look at them as just
(24:26):
data. It's like, when I start tofeel uncomfortable, it's just
data. It's information that'scoming in. The reason it's
making me feel uncomfortable isbecause I'm interpreting it as
that. And, you know, I know youand I talked the other day, and
interpretation creates yourexperience, you know? And that's
another that's another gift thatyou get from from thought
(24:46):
awareness training, you get tomake the choice of, how am I
going to interpret thissituation? I can interpret it in
a way that makes me experienceit in a horrible way, or I can
interpret it in a way where Ican say, Oh, goody, like, you
know, this is. Hard, and thatmeans it's my chance to practice
everything I've the procedureI've come up with, you know, to
deal with this situation.
Tara Thurber (25:07):
And I like, I like, where you went with you
get you get to, do you get to?
You get that? You get thechoice, right? You get the
choice. Absolutely amazing. Tom,I want to ask a couple more
questions. You've mentioned thatyou can't learn and perform at
the same time. How canindividuals balance the need for
(25:28):
continuous learning with thedemands of high performance in
today's fast paced environments?
Unknown (25:37):
Well, some of this is taken care of just by practicing
thought awareness training,because it gives you the ability
to separate yourself from thesituation. But I also think in
professional sports, that'swhere that term came from.
Sports Psychology, what you haveto recognize is, which phase Do
you want to be in you make, youmake a conscious choice. So to
(26:01):
use golf, for example, if you'regoing to go out on the golf
course, I think most people, ifthey don't even they don't play
golf, they have some idea ofwhat goes on in the golf course
besides the bad language
Tara Thurber (26:13):
or the drinking. I mean, I know there's definitely
drinking on golf courses,
Unknown (26:18):
but the thing that you do is, when you step out on the
course, and this is, you know, Iused to play a tournament golf,
and I the you make a choice, isthis a practice round where I'm
going to learn how to hitcertain certain types of shots,
or am I going to score? Becauseyou can't do both at the same
(26:38):
time. So, and what's interestingis you can't learn to perform
unless you learn to practice youlike, so you have to give
yourself permission. Like, Ican't perform at my highest
level if I can't take a momentto practice what I'm going to do
when I need to perform at myhighest level. Like, so to me,
that's what you're doing. Youknow you go when I used to work
(27:01):
with a PGA pro all the time, hewould take me on the golf court,
and he would throw balls downunderneath of a tree, and I had
to hit, you know, a low cut, youknow. So I had to hit a ball.
The ball couldn't get more than,say, 10 feet off the ground, and
it had to turn, you know, somany yards. And he would say,
let me see you do that. Well,we're not trying to score here.
We're trying to he's trying tosee, can you do it like and I
(27:22):
want you to do this with yourmechanics to make that happen.
And so when I would do that, Iwasn't trying to score, I was
trying to execute the shot. Andso that's the you know, to me,
when you're in business or in apersonal situation, sometimes I
think you really have to giveyourself permission if you
start, if the situation startsgetting the better of you, you
(27:45):
have to give yourself permissionto drop back and say, You know
what this is. This is my chanceto learn. Just in that comment
to yourself, you have gotten outof your thinking. You're out of
the thought. The Thought haslost its power, and now you're
attached to your your observer,your true self, what your true
self, your left brain, whateveryou whatever you want to call
(28:05):
it, it's just not word is notthe thing you're out of the
subconscious because you'vetaken away that you said, like,
No, I'm not going to do yourautomated responses. I am going
to because that. You know, thething with the subconscious that
people have to realize is it's avery elegant recording system,
but it does not criticallythink. It doesn't analyze. It's
not creative. It just gives youwhat it thinks you want. And
(28:27):
what it thinks you want is whatyou've told it to give you,
which may have nothing to dowith what you want. You know,
like, um, but it's just doingthat. It's doing it very
dutifully. And so you have tounderstand there's times where
you have to go now you're not asright. Now, I'm shifting over
the left side of my brain. I'mmaking creative I'm making my
own creative decisions. Here I'mgoing to look this, and then you
try stuff, you know, giveyourself permission to try
(28:49):
different things in thesedifficult situations, and don't
judge because you're in theprocess of gathering data. What
works, what doesn't work, youknow, like, so you can't be
like, Well, that should haveworked. Well, now all it did was
it showed you what's a mistake.
It's just information. That'sall it is, you know, it's
information that, what thattheory didn't, it didn't, it
didn't track, you know, like itwas gone too. It seemed like, on
(29:10):
paper, seemed great, you know,but it didn't. But you got
valuable information from that.
And stop judging, becausethat's, you know, it's okay to
analyze. We have to analyze. Butjudging always comes after
analysis. And if you can juststop that flow and go, I'm just,
I am in the process of learninghow to perform, you know. And
(29:30):
then that's the other thingabout using golf is you have to
learn to let go of the analysisand just perform. That's why
Annika Sorenson said she had athinking box and a performing
box. So when she would standbehind the ball, she was in the
thinking box. In the thinkingbox, she would say, the wind's
blowing this way. I'm this manyyards, you know, the pin is
(29:52):
tucked behind the sand trap. Youknow, whatever was, that's the
thinking box, you know. So shewas making her decisions once
she stepped across thisimaginary. Mine, she had already
made her decisions. Now she's inthe performing box, and then she
would make her swing with justperformance in mind. So we
really need to look at our livesand again, this is if, if it's
(30:12):
like your kids sometimes arejust driving you nuts, you know,
like if you look at thosesituations, if you stop getting
sucked into your habitualreactions and start looking at,
okay, if I could handle thissituation any way I wanted, what
is do I even know what thatlooks like, like, um, and give
yourself a target, and then juststart trying things. It starts
to become almost like a videogame.
Tara Thurber (30:34):
Yes, I was just gonna say, almost like a game
that you get to play, and youthen start to have fun in any of
the situations.
Unknown (30:43):
That's right, you do use that's why I'm saying.
That's everything we're talkingabout here. Tara is about you
start losing the drama. Yes, youknow, because, um, the drama
starts to drop away. Because youare performing at your highest
level. You know, mentally,you're operating with mental
performance, you know, highlevel mental performance, and
you're at, you know, when you'renot in fight or flight. You
(31:05):
know, as soon as you startfeeling stressed, you know, your
body goes into fight or flight,and you immediately lose a lot
of your higher thinkingcapacity. And so, you know you
don't go there because that itdoesn't impact you. You know, in
that regard, that's why somepeople are really good at
handling with difficultsituations, and other people
just surrender all of theirconsciousness to panic, right?
(31:27):
You know, that's a spectrum. Youknow, like most investors, some
it depends on the situation.
But, you know, and it really isinteresting, the experience is
interesting, how separate youbecome from the environment. In
other words, you know, you know,you can be with someone who's
really angry with you, andthey're just, they're just
spouting off, and you're lookingat them, and their anger is not,
it's not doing anything to youemotionally. And you're having
(31:51):
this opportunity to think, howdo I diffuse this? You know, you
know, other types of things andso, but you, the real you is not
impacted by and boy, you talkabout a satisfying feeling. It's
you feel so powerful, you knowwhen you're in those situations,
because you feel like in fact, Itold one woman who was in there
(32:12):
couples counseling, I said, whatI want you to focus on her
partner was very intimidating toher, and would start whenever
they got into these things. Andit really, it really derailed
her. And I said, I want, what Iwant your thought to be is you
don't get to touch my innerpeace. He said, I want you to
just stay with that. You don'tget to touch my inner peace and
(32:33):
don't ignore what he's thecontent of what he's saying. Let
him talk. You know he's going todo that. He's going to go right
where he always goes. It's justhis habit, like, and he's
expecting you to getintimidated. So instead of, you
know, reacting to his content,just focus internally, you know,
and say, I'm not going to letyou. Don't get permission. I'm
the gatekeeper, and you don'tget permission to impact my
(32:54):
inner, inner peace. And she wasone of the people that came
back. This is like, she said,like, for the first time, really
was in control. She said, thiswas so easy, like, so anyway,
it's magic.
Tara Thurber (33:08):
It is it is magic.
It is magic. And one thing thatI've always said is, you get to
choose, I think a lot of times,individuals and people that
I've, I've worked with some ofmy clients, even my kids. You
know it's you choose how youwant to respond and and how you
want to feel in situations. Andit's such a it's such an
(33:32):
empowering way to think ofthings.
Unknown (33:40):
Well it is. And the thing is to give yourself what
thought awareness training doesand everything we're talking
about, yeah, it opens up a gapright between the moment you
have to choose and the momentyou when the you gotta make a
choice. And how much time do youhave to make the choice? Is it a
split second, or is it fiveseconds, you know, like, um,
because that's important, youknow. It gives you a chance to,
(34:02):
how do I want to handle this?
You know? Like to ask yourselfthat and actually go there
instead of reacting, reactingto, what do I want my response
to be here, you know? And that'swhere, you know, we've lost
that, because everything movesso fast, and we have all this
information cram, being crammedinto us all day long. Most of us
are trying to do more in a daythan we should. You know? I
mean, it just, you know, I wasworking with a psychiatrist one
(34:26):
time, and he said he was askingme to help him with all the
paperwork and everything that hedid and the struggle that he had
with that. And I said, Well,look, if you're asking me to
teach you how to do 40 hours ofwork in 10 I can't do it. It's
40 hours of work, I said, but Ican tell I can teach you how to
experience the 40 hours. I said,you know, because right now what
you do, because it came up,because he wanted to spend more
(34:47):
time with his patients, but hecouldn't because he had the
paperwork. He said, sometimes Ido that. He goes, but I know
it's going to just cause thisproblem. I said, Well, there you
go. I said, you've givenyourself permission to spend
more time with your patient, butnow you're. Polluting the
experience of spending the moretime with your patient. Because
why you're spending the extra 10minutes within patient you're
thinking about this is, this isgoing to come back and bite me.
I said, Yeah, you're not evenpresent. I said, and you're not
(35:09):
giving yourself the gift of the10 minutes. You know, so again,
but that again is he's not, he'sin his thoughts. He's not
actually the thinker, thethought.
Tara Thurber (35:21):
Tom, last question for you before we get to your
your top five, what in a worlddriven by instant gratification
and rapid results? How canindividuals cultivate patience
and presence in both theirpersonal and professional growth
(35:41):
while still being able to strivefor high performance. Well,
Unknown (35:46):
I think what's important is to ask yourself,
one of the chapters in one of mybook was called and then what if
you ask yourself, Okay, I'vedone it. I got everything here.
I want that right? And then whatyou're fully realized, like, you
know you're done, you knowyou're 35 years old. I got
everything like it doesn't workthat way. You know, is to really
recognize within yourself thatwe are built our DNA is built to
(36:12):
expand. It's part of our DNA,and the instant gratification
comes from what I said earlier.
We are marketed to and taughtthat you cannot be happy with
who you are right now, in thismoment, there's something, or
many things, missing from yourlife, and that feeling is
interpreted as beinguncomfortable. And I got to stop
(36:32):
this feeling, because it makesme uncomfortable. I want to get
some place, and if I could justget there, like if I just made
another 25 grand a year, if Ijust had that car, whatever it
is, you know, like, then thisfeeling would go away. And what
we're real, we're not realizingis, no, we're supposed to have
the feeling, because the feelingis what we're the Sistine Chapel
has come from. And all ourtechnology and the symphonies,
(36:55):
you know, all this, the greatart is come from the fact that
we, we want more. You know, wewant more. And that more isn't
necessarily, shouldn't be justconfused with material things.
It's of ourselves. And I oftenask people, you know, what is
perfection? You know, Perfectionisn't, um, it's not another
(37:15):
$100,000 a year. It's not abigger house. Perfection, by
definition, has to be theability to expand limitlessly,
because anything else is alimitation. If it's a certain
number, if it's a certain amountof possessions, if it's a
certain skill level, you know,at in a in a sport, then it's
limited. So really, perfectionis the ability to expand
(37:39):
infinitely, and when youunderstand that, you realize
that you're always where youshould be, because you're never
going to get to a place whereyou feel like you've arrived. I
mean, that's how all art works.
And life is art. Our life is aform of art, and we live this
(38:00):
art, and we make our decisionsof when you can drop back once
again. Once you release yourselffrom that, the instant
gratification goes away. Onceyou realize that, how many
things in your life growing updid you have to have? I just had
to have that bike, I just had tohave that smartphone. I just had
to have this date, you know, andyou've had most of all that
stuff is, does anything change?
As soon as you get it, you justmake another I have to have like
(38:22):
so once you release yourself onthat man, life gets so much
more, so much more pleasant, andyour head is such a nicer place
to spend your day, becauseyou're not feeling like
Ungratified. You're feeling likeeverything is perfect as it is,
and this is an I, there is nolimit to how I can change myself
(38:43):
and how much I can transformthere is no and you actually,
you know, there's a differencebetween a belief and a knowing.
You know, a belief is what'shanded to you from the outside.
Someone says, Yeah, you know,like you can do this, you know,
well, it's a belief. It's not aconscious knowing. Once you do
it, now, it's a consciousknowing, and when you can, when
you can get that thing that I aman infinite being, and I can,
(39:07):
I'm never going to run out ofroom to transform myself or
expand, when you can know thatthe instant gratification drops
away on its own, because youstop thinking like that, that is
really, again, it's, it's partof scarcity consciousness. It's
a part of marketing. And that'sthe, that's the the paradox, the
people that are marketing to us,they're in scarcity
(39:29):
consciousness, you know, they'retrying to get more, so they need
to sell us more, so the numbers,they're junk. Like, yeah, just
keep going, and we all play thegame, you know? Like, yes, so
release yourself from it.
Tara Thurber (39:41):
It's wild. It's so wild Tom and and in today's day
and age with social media andeverything at our fingertips, I
think it's even harder nowadaysfor individuals to to work on
their mental performance unless,unless they are. Are
acknowledging right, unless theyare aware that it needs to be
(40:05):
worked on. Because I feel, also,there's a lot of people that
just, they don't, they don't.
Unknown (40:13):
You have to be willing to invest in yourself. And I
think people are because theythey think like what I'm doing
isn't working. Yeah, I'm nothappy. I never really feel
happy, deeply happy. I don'tfeel that way. I, you know, I,
I'm always worried aboutsomething, yeah? And I think
that, you know, we have learnedthere's a way out of the matrix,
(40:34):
yeah? So you, yeah, you have to,you know, you have to do it, you
know. But what's the it's I saidto you the other day, it's like,
you know, many people say, Well,this is, this is kind of
difficult. Difficult. It's aword to describe data, but, you
know, like, it's just a wordwe've come up with. I don't want
that it's difficult, you know,well, it's just data. It's just
(40:54):
information. You know, like, thereason you feel what you
describe as as difficult isbecause you haven't mastered it.
As soon as you master it, it'snot difficult anymore, and you
don't define it that way. So,you know, look at that and you
know, and set yourself free likeand stop, stop judging
everything as because you know,the truth is that when things
(41:16):
are easy, we don't want to dothem. It's like, if you look at
like kids in video games. I'veasked, you know, kids that I've
been working with groups ofkids, like, what do you do in a
video game? When you master thelevel? I go to the next level.
What if it doesn't have one? Iget rid of the game. I go get
another one. Like, right? Yeah,because you like it, you want it
to be just at that point whereyou can, sometimes you can beat
the computer, and sometimes youcan't. Otherwise, it's just not
(41:38):
fun. And that's life. Wow.
Tara Thurber (41:41):
So Tom to wrap us up today. I would love if you
could share with our listenersyour top five tips on improving
mental performance.
Unknown (41:53):
Alright, so number one, I would say, let's you gotta
start with thought awarenesstraining, without that, if you
don't have, if you don't get toa point where you recognize the
difference of what it feels likewhen you're in your thoughts and
when you're having a thought,you're you're not getting out of
prison. You know that's numberone. Number two is mantra,
interpretation createsexperience. How you interpret a
(42:13):
situation is going to createyour experience in that
situation, and what you'll find,if you really think about it, is
experiences you're in. Thingsare not absolute. You know, what
one person thinks is difficult?
Another person doesn't think isdifficult. Well, one person
thinks is funny, another persondoesn't think is funny. We have
the opportunity to interpret,and if you interpret things
differently, you know, I had awoman who had a lot of was
(42:37):
abused, you know, being raisedemotionally, and she felt that
she initially started to repeatthat behavior, but then she she
got out of that behavior, andshe corrected herself, and was
doing very well with herchildren. And she said, I have
this tremendous guilt. And Isaid, Well, I said, there's two
ways to I said, guilt is afeeling. That's all it is. It's
(43:00):
data. I said, like, myinterpretation of the guilt is
the universe saying, Look howfar you've come. I said, yours
is, I'm a terrible person, as ifthe data is just the data, I
said. And, you know, I said, butit really many people that are
abused as children just repeatit. You're not. And so the
reason you feel guilty is yourecognize it was not helpful and
(43:23):
it was not good for you. I said,so that is a positive. So
there's an example ofinterpretation creative. Set
your goals with accurate data.
It's really, really important.
You know, if I said, and I'vegiven this analogy many, many
times, if someone says, I'mgoing to lose 30 pounds, that
should take five days. Fivedays. Well, that's a stupid
idea, but that's only because weknow it is. But we create these
(43:46):
goals, and in general, we don'tknow how long it's going to
take. We always put these ideas,yeah. Take me a couple of weeks,
you know, like, I'm going toYeah, and then we then we begin
to judge our performance levelbased on where we fit in that
time frame. And the time framecould be grossly off. It could
really take maybe three times asmuch, and you're actually ahead
(44:11):
of schedule, but your yourinterpretation of that is going
to be, I'm you're going to loseyour confidence, you know, I'm
not good at this stuff. So setyour goals with accurate data
and understand that sometimesyou can't have all the data you
need. And that I went I, youknow, I went through that, you
know, I learned all this stuff.
I learned by personalexperience, I can assure you.
(44:32):
The other is what we talkedabout earlier, premeditated
procedures. Look at situationsand don't do 100 of them. Pick
one or two and say, You knowwhat, this situation is
difficult for me, and I need aplan. So I'm going to construct
and write it down. You know, thereason I say write it down is
because the number one, you haveto have clarity on it and keep
(44:53):
it simple. I'm going to do A, B,C, that's it. Now, I don't want
a page like, you know, justwrite it down, because. Give
yourself very clearinstructions. When this happens,
I'm going to do this and I'm notgoing to judge, and then I'm not
going to judge myself forjudging, because then I'm going
to judge. So that's the otherthing you like to come in. So
you want, you know, you want apremeditated procedure for one
(45:14):
or two things you just work onone or two at a time. And once
you see that you can do this andget yourself out of it, then you
get more comfortable. Yourconfidence goes up as your
confidence goes up, then yourfrequency goes up, and then you
start to become better at it.
And then the last thing is,welcome the tough stuff. I mean,
that's what I said. You know, ifyou want to get good at the
tough stuff, you got to be inthe tough stuff. You know, you
can practice singing in front ofa mirror in your bedroom, all
(45:35):
you want. But if you want to beable to get out in front of 1000
people and sing, you're going tosooner or later, you got to walk
out on the stage and out on thestage. And so when you feel that
uncomfortable feeling, realizeit's just data, just information
that's coming to you saying, Oh,here's your chance. You know you
can interpret it as, here's it'ssaying, hell, here's your chance
to get good at singing in frontof 1000 people. Or you can
(45:56):
interpret as, I am scared todeath and I can't open my mouth.
Like the choice is yours. Likewhen you're separate for your
through your thought awareness,you have that choice. So those
are my five.
Tara Thurber (46:07):
I love it. And it's just, it's, it's being
comfortable in theuncomfortable, right? And that,
I think, is something thateverybody struggles with. But,
um Tom, you are amazing. Ireally appreciate you joining us
today. This was such a beautifultalk, and I really hope that our
listeners can get a lot out ofthis. I know I did, and I'm
(46:28):
excited to take it, take it towork with myself. So I
appreciate you so much. Thank
Unknown (46:35):
you so I appreciate you too. Thank you so much for what
you're doing. Thank you so much.
Have
Tara Thurber (46:39):
a great day. Okay, we are defined talent coming to
you at top five, make it a greatday. You.
Hey everyone, welcome back. I'm Tara Thurber,
Founder and Director ofPartnerships at define talent.
And joining me today is a reallyspecial guest, Thomas sterner,
the founder and CEO of thepracticing MIND Institute, as a
successful entrepreneur. He isconsidered an expert in Present
Moment functioning or PMF, withover 45 years of research into
(00:24):
sports psychology, neuroscience,centuries of Eastern thought,
systems, meditation and morerecently, the science of
consciousness and quantumphysics, he has accumulated a
thorough understanding of how wecan use our mind instead of
being used by our mind tofunction at our highest level
(00:45):
and to reach our goals in theshortest amount of time and
without a sense of resistanceand struggle, Tom has worked
with a wide range of high levelindividuals, from CEOs and
corporate team members,professionals in the medical
field, college coaches andathletes as well as high school
students. He is the author ofthe international bestseller,
(01:06):
The practicing mind, developingfocus and discipline in your
life and fully engaged using thepracticing mind in daily life.
And most recently, it's just athought emotional freedom
through deliberate thinking.
That's quite the list. Tom,today, he is here sharing with
us his top five tips onimproving mental mental
(01:28):
performance. Tom, how you doingtoday?
Tom Sterner (01:32):
I'm doing great. So glad to be here. Tara,
excellent.
Tara Thurber (01:36):
So happy to have you here as well. And I guess
what I would love is just do alittle bit of an intro to what
is mental performance? Well, Iguess the simplest definition
would be mental sovereignty. Imean, in other words, that you
are the one who is in control ofyour mind, and not the other way
(01:56):
around. And there was a timewhere I was doing a presentation
for high school kids in anauditorium, and I said, look,
let's just do this. I'm
Unknown (02:06):
going to set a timer for two minutes. I want you to
sit, close your eyes and stopthinking. And of course, I knew
they couldn't do it, but theydidn't know they couldn't do it
like so at the end of the twominutes, you know, the timer
went off, and the chatteringstarted, the murmuring like this
was an epiphany for these kids,because they realized that even
though they were telling theirmind not to think, it was
(02:28):
continuing to think. And so Iasked them the question is, what
if? What did you learn? Andthere was a bunch of
information, you know, a bunchof questions or answers that
came up. But I said, I think thecore of what you learned is that
if you are telling your mindyou, the real you is willing
your mind to stop thinking andit's ignoring you, then who's in
charge? Because it's not you.
And this was an epiphany forthese kids, and it actually
(02:53):
sparked a meditation practicefor a number of them, which I
found out later. You know, theirparents had said that they're
all of their academics hadimproved and just their
personalities had improved. Butthe point is, is that
neuroscience says that we havebetween 55 and 65,000 thoughts a
day. Most of them are thoughtswe had yesterday and the day
before. Most of them arenegative, and they are not us.
(03:16):
They're just programs that wehave installed over our
lifetime, or that other peoplehave helped us install into our
subconscious. And oursubconscious is just responding
to the different the differenttypes of triggers that are
outside of us. So mentalperformance is the ability to
stop that and the ability to befocused, you know, like, you
(03:39):
know, to be focused on, youknow, to tell your mind, this is
what we're working on. We'reworking on this right now, and
this is where you will stay, andthis is what you will think
about like, and that is mentalperformance. And it's a lot
easier to talk about it than itis to develop it.
Tara Thurber (03:56):
I love that, Tom, and actually, I was thinking
about you this morning as I wassitting down and preparing for
my day, and a lot of times I'llsit and write a like a to do
list, but what I transitionedwas do now instead of a to do,
and it shifted me, and I wasable to kind of find myself
(04:17):
being present for the first timein in quite A few weeks, to be
honest, and again, it's the donow. What can we do now and be
present now with and eventually,everything else falls into
place.
Unknown (04:31):
Yes, we're so used to not being in the present moment
that it feels normal. We don'tfeel like our mind is running
our day, because you know yourmind. You don't notice your mind
until you try to stop it. Youknow, your mind thinks all the
time, and it runs all over theplace. One thought begats
another thought, you know, like,I got to stop at the store. I
(04:52):
need milk. Maybe I should getbread. I don't like that bread I
got the last you know, it justkind of one thought just creates
another thought, and it justkeeps running. Um, and it's
almost like you're watching amovie, but you forget the fact
that you're not in the movie,you know, and this is happening.
And of course, every thoughtthat the mind begats, you have
stored a an emotional responseto it. And so you experience
(05:15):
that emotional response, and youknow, it's really when you
understand the system, it canreally work for you, but when
you don't understand it, you'rea total prisoner of the system,
which is where most people live,
Tara Thurber (05:29):
absolutely, absolutely. And I want to kind
of dive in here you and youemphasize the importance of
focusing on the process ratherthan the product. How does this
shift in mindset contribute toimproved focus and discipline in
both our personal andprofessional settings.
Unknown (05:49):
Well, in all settings, you know, we are taught to be
attached to the goal we youknow, we're unhappy. There's a
feeling of incompleteness insideof us, and we want that feeling
to go away. This is the enginethat drives marketing, you know,
if you don't have this car, ifyou're not taking a vacation, if
you're not, you know, drinking aCorona on the beach, or whatever
(06:09):
it is, life is passing you by.
And so we're taught thathappiness is not in the process
of what we're doing right now.
Process exists over theresomewhere, and if we could just
get there, then this feelingwould go away. Um, so we spend
our life chasing this, thisplace that we're not at, you
(06:29):
know? So when you learn, firstof all, you have to learn to be
aware of when you're not in theprocess, because you can't pull
yourself into the process ifyou're not even aware of it.
That's why I said it. You feelso normal to not be in the
process that you don't noticeit, but once you get to that
place where you begin to noticeI'm not in the process, and you
can give yourself permission tolet go of everything that you're
(06:51):
not doing and just do whatyou're doing. It's an amazing
experience, because all of asudden the stress leaves, your
performance level goes way upbecause you're not asking your
mind to process all thesedifferent things. You have
access to all of your cognitiveabilities. Because normally you
have this, if you think of itlike computer RAM, you know,
(07:12):
computer Ram has backgroundtasks that are going on and when
you were thinking, when you'rethinking extraneously about
something that's going to go onyesterday or later in the day,
or something you shouldn't havesaid to somebody this morning,
or all these different things.
Your mind has to process allthose things. And we also know
that the mind doesn't multitask.
(07:33):
It's switch tasks. It just shutsoff, and it's so it's constantly
turning on, shutting off,turning on, changing directions.
And this is why we're sofatigued during the day, and so
fatigued at the end of the day.
So when we learn to be in theprocess of what we're doing and
just doing that, and we giveourselves the permission to do
that, all this other stuff fallsaway. And it's a it's I find
that even the stuff, many timeswhen you're stressful about
(07:57):
stuff, it's because you're notactually doing it. You're
thinking about doing it, but,you know, if you're doing it
like and you're just focusing onthe here and the now and what
you're doing, your mind becomes,you know, time goes away, your
mind becomes very immersed intothe process of what you're
doing, and there is no otherextraneous thinking going on.
And it's a very it's really awonderful experience. And and
(08:18):
what science has shown us is, ifyou look at people that are in
quote, flow and all these, thisis where they're at. There is
nothing else going on but whatthey're doing right now. They're
only thinking about this moment,this second, and so their mind
is free to perform at itshighest level. And that's, you
know, in the introduction, whenyou're reading, that's when you
(08:40):
experience accomplishing yourgoals. And those goals don't
have to be physical goals,meaning you're improving your
golf swing. They can be learningto deal with a stressful person
at work. They can be learning toI want to stop procrastinating,
you know, like, I mean, allthose types of things. What
happened is the perception ofdifficulty starts to drop away,
because you're not thinkingabout any of that. You're not
(09:02):
all you're doing is processingwhat you're doing. And so the
mechanics are, you know, whenyou hear the mechanics, they
say, oh, that sounds you know,the mechanics are deceptively
easy. You know, hear them, but,you know, learning them. It's a
faculty. Tara, it's a facultyand a skill. We all have it, but
we're not taught it, at least inthe West, in any country that's
(09:23):
westernized, we're not taughtit. So it's something that we
can learn. And unfortunately,because we've learned the
opposite. And if you think aboutif you went back to 150 years
ago and you lived on a ranch andyou had to go to town, and it
was 20 miles away, you know, youjust get on your horse and
clippity clop along in thecountryside, and there really is
nothing to distract you. But nowwe've got a smartphone on our
(09:45):
face. So much distraction. Soour mind is being it's being
asked to perform at process somuch stuff all the time, and as
it does that what we. Learned isthat it's atrophying in terms of
its ability to concentrate,because we're not asking it to
do that. We're asking it toprocess all this data. So it's
(10:06):
going okay. And so we'reevolving. You know that our
brain is evolving in thatdirection, but because we're
not, you know, you ask mostpeople to just sit still for 15
minutes, and they reallystruggle with it, because they
feel like I got something to do.
I got so much to do, I'm notdoing anything. And their their
mind is driving them to getgoing, get going, get going.
Like, so it's but at least werealize this now, and you know,
(10:30):
we know the way out of it,
Tara Thurber (10:33):
which, you know you're as you're talking, my
brain is going because I'mthinking so much about
everything that you're saying tome too, and you know, in my
mind, I'm racing, because I wantto explore so much more and be
in that flow, but knowing too,how do we quiet that in order to
(10:54):
be able to show up and bepresent in business and
professional lives. You know, Ifeel that we talk about this,
this, or you talk about thismental quietness, right? How can
we find that acknowledgement?
How can we build that, I guess,build or grow the ability to
observe the thoughts withoutattaching them to us and and be
(11:19):
able to develop this level ofawareness, not only in our day
to day, but in high, highpressure situations. Well,
Unknown (11:30):
that's a great question, and the simple answer
is, through thought awarenesstraining. Now, what is thought
awareness training? Yeah, well,thought awareness training, you
could, you know, you have tounderstand the word is not the
thing. So I could saymeditation, you know. But
meditation has a lot ofconnotations. You know. Some
people think of it as areligious practice, you know.
(11:51):
Other people think of it aslooking for peace. But if you
look at a very simple either abreast breath based meditation
or phrase based. It could bephrased base. And what you do
is, you know, you sit in a chairwith you want your back to be
fairly upright. You know, youdon't want to be in a position
where your body distracts you,so you need to be comfortable.
(12:13):
You also don't want to be in aposition where you're going to
get drowsy and fall asleep,because you will become relaxed.
And then, you know, you take afew deep cleansing breaths,
close your eyes, so you shut outall of the extraneous stimuli.
And I usually tell people, it'sreally nice if you can have some
white noise, whether that's an Igive my clients like ocean waves
that I recorded actually at thebeach, and I start them out with
(12:36):
10 minutes, and then we move to15 and then to 20 minutes. So
you just have this thing thatkind of shuts off the outside
stimulus, and then you justwatch your body breathe. And
that sounds like so simple, butwhat ends up happening is you're
either watching your bodybreathe or you're saying a
simple phrase to you're hearingit in your head. You're not
saying it with your mouth,right? You're saying something
(12:56):
like, I am still. You're hearingit in your head, yeah? If you're
watching your body breathe. Whatends up happening is that
you're, well, two things happen.
One is you generally the egostarts to try to control the
breath, because you've neverpaid attention to before. You
just breathe, you know. But onceyou start paying attention to
it, then you start trying tomodify it. Like, well, maybe I
should be breathing deeper,maybe I should be breathing
(13:17):
slower, like, maybe that willmake this work faster, you know.
Like, go, you know, all the egogets involved, all this sort of
stuff. And so if you can justdrop back to, know, just sit
there and let your body breathe.
You know, that's, you know,that's one thing. But then the
mind wants, this is where thingsstart to happen very quickly,
within 30 seconds. If it takesthat long, the mind goes, I got
this. Why you do that? I'm goingto go work on this, and it takes
(13:40):
off. And when it takes off, yougo with it, because you've
always done that your wholelife, and you go with it, and
you start to do whatever it'sthinking about. You start
processing whatever it'sthinking about. And then the
magic happens. And the magic,which a lot of people think is a
failure, but it isn't, is thatyou wake up and realize, I'm not
paying attention to my breath.
And it's in that moment, in thatsecond when you wake up and you
(14:02):
notice that that you havereconnected with you, the
observer, the observer who waswatching what the mind is doing.
You've left and gone into themind, and now you're in the
mind, and it's doing all of itsstuff, and you're there, and
you're experiencing all theemotional content of whatever
it's thinking about. And then,but when you notice that you're
there and you've realized thatthe mind has grabbed you and
(14:24):
pulled you off, and then youstop, and you pull your
attention back onto your breath,and every time you do that is
like a repetition at the gym.
It's basically you'restrengthening your will and
you're reaffirming who youreally are. Who is the conscious
creator, who is the creativethinker, who is the person that
makes the thoughts that you wantto make? And as you go through
(14:49):
that, and so very it's a veryinteresting experience, because
what happens is it feels likenothing is happening. I mean,
you're doing this on a dailybasis, what's. Starts to happen
is you realize you begin toexperience I am not my thoughts.
You begin to notice thoughts,but the thoughts start to lose
(15:09):
their power over you, becausethey become just like in
meditation. They just becomethis thought, and you begin to
hear yourself saying things likeyou, where, where you used to
have a thought that would makeyou very anxious or or fearful.
You say something like thatthought has nothing to do with
me. It's not me. It's a thoughtthat is happening to me like and
(15:30):
I tell people, you know, you cantell that, because if I asked
you if you could stop thatthought, would you do that? And
they go, yeah, what I said,That's because you weren't the
thought. The thought ishappening to you, and what this
meditation, simple, simpleprocess of thought, awareness
training that you do every day.
What happens is that skillbecome expands, and your
(15:50):
strength within that skill, verymuch, like any exercise, becomes
stronger and stronger andstronger. And that's why, you
know, people ask me. I mean,I've been meditating for 50
years. I mean, people ask me.
One guy said, I want to, I wantto know what it feels like to go
through the day in your head andand I said, Well, I'll tell you
that as soon as you describe thecolor blue. And it only took him
(16:14):
a second to figure I couldn't doit like I said. I can't give you
what I experienced, but I cantell you that I used to be when
I was growing up, I was a worrywart. I had a rabbit brain that
was running all over the place.
I was not focused. I had allkinds of creative ideas. I
didn't stick with them, I didn'tfinish them. And I said, by the
time I was in my early 20s, Iwas the complete opposite. And
I've been through many, manysituations. I have my parents
(16:37):
both transitioned with witharduous deaths, and I was there
with them the whole time. I'vebeen through divorce, I've been
broke, I've been through allthese different things. And I
can tell you that this stuffthat we're talking about, Tara
got, took the took the sine waveand flattened it out. People
have said to me, they said,you're very flat lined. And I,
(16:59):
um, said, Well, I do experiencealmost indescribable joy. I
said, but I don't experience thepanic and all those sort of
things. They just don't have anypower over me anymore. And so
that's really what we're talkingabout. If you just do this
thought awareness training, it'sthe key to the prison. If you
don't do that, you're you're,unfortunately, you're set to be
(17:20):
a prisoner of your mind, youknow, which is where most people
live. So it's a very simpleprocess, but you have to
practice it, you know. And thelike I said, the mechanics are
very simple. But you know, whatpeople don't realize is that,
yeah, the mechanics, themechanics of playing a Beethoven
symphony are simple. If you lookat the sheet music, yeah, you
(17:42):
just play this note and pushthis key, you know. But you can
see the mechanics aren't hard,you know. You understand that
note is this, that note on thepage, this note on the
instrument. But you can't do itlike because there's a gap
there, you know, between yourskill level and what the
mechanics are, and that's whyyou under you. You go into this
and you understand that part ofthe piece that comes from this
(18:03):
is learning what meditation, ifyou want to call it that, what
it does is it develops a senseof equanimity, like you stop
judging everything you're doing.
But judging is a thought. It'sjust a yes. So when you have
that thought, you go, you know,that thought has nothing to do
with my performance. It's justdegrading it so you just let it
go, and it becomes easier andeasier, and then eventually it
(18:27):
becomes of a part of just whoyou are and how you operate.
Tara Thurber (18:33):
Wow, I, you know, listening to you and and being
riding this wave of of learning,to me, is is phenomenal, because
I find you say the judge, andthe thought I so many
individuals are struggling withthe judge, and the thought right
(18:54):
now, you know, look at, I mean,with what I do, with recruiting,
and all of the individuals thatare out of work right now,
right? And it's the thought,it's the imposter syndrome, it's
the judge that comes in that isreally, I feel, when I'm talking
to a lot of individuals, that'sthe biggest thing that we're
trying to break down, is thatjudge and to just be present in
(19:19):
the now and to not worry aboutthe future, not worry about the
to do's, but to be able to comeback and the meditation aspect
is huge for for all of this, tocome into the now and and be
present. Because I find whenpeople are present and in the
(19:39):
now, they can take a breath.
Unknown (19:44):
They can take a breath.
And I think that the follow upon that is a premeditated
procedure of what you're goingto do when that moment comes
where the two things cometogether, meaning, if there's a
particular situation, forexample, that stresses you. Out.
It's a certain person that comesin the room. It's a certain
situation, a job interview, youknow, yeah, I've had people
(20:05):
where I say to the you know,they'll say, like, you know,
this person always just stressesme out. They intimidate me or
something. So I'll say, like,Well, okay, do you do you meet
this person often? Yeah, everyweek I have to deal with this
person. Okay, so I'm going totouch you on the head with a
magic wand, and right beforethat person comes into the room,
(20:27):
and it will make you any personyou want to be. Who is that
person? And the answer is, Idon't know. I said, Well,
there's the problem if you don'tknow who you need to be who you
want to be in that situation.
You can't become that person, Isaid. So let's start there. You
(20:48):
know, let's give you a targetlike I said. You know, if you
just step back from myinterpretation, you have an
extreme tactical advantage inthis situation. Number one, you
know when that thatconfrontation is going to
happen, because it happens on aregular basis. I said number
two, you know how that person isgoing to act, but they only
(21:08):
think they know how you're goingto act, because you're going to
change how you're going to actlike so you're going to change
how you process their behavior.
And they're not ready for that,so they're going to be stepping
and fetching in that situation,but yeah, you're going to be
heart centered and you're goingto be focused. I said, what I
want you to focus on is not whatthey're saying or doing. Is, how
are you feeling? I want you tofocus on, how am I feeling in
(21:31):
this moment? That's all I said.
Like, am I starting to feelnervous? I said, then that's a
thought. It's not you. It's justa habitual reaction to this
situation. Understand that. Andand go back to, I'm still
whatever it is I said, I wantyou to do it now. What I have
found over and over again, when,when people do this, you know,
(21:53):
always the next session, like,oh my gosh, it was so crazy,
yeah, because they didn't haveall this, this power over me,
and I it's, I could have donethat years ago, and like all
that stuff and but I, you know,the answers are not real
complicated. It's just thatpeople get so immersed in their
habit of reaction. And I callit, there's a big difference
between a reaction and aresponse. A reaction is just a
(22:13):
reaction, but a response haswillpower and conscious choice
making in it. And if that's whythey call them, you know, first
responders, not first reactors,because you know they know what
they're going to do when theycome on an accident scene.
They're not, you know, they mayhave to make certain decisions,
but they know what they're goingto how they're going to respond
to certain situations. They'renot having a coffee break and
(22:35):
trying to figure out, what doyou think we should do? They
know they've practiced this, andI can tell you as a pilot, all
of those emergency situationsare taught to you when you're
getting your your license, andthey're written down, and you
know, if you have, if the enginequits, you're going to do this,
this, this, this, this, youknow. And they have a saying, I
think, is great. It's alsotransferable into business and
personal life, which is, aviatecommunicate, or, I'm sorry,
(22:58):
aviate navigate, communicate.
And the reason what thattranslates out into fly the
plane first. What happens is, ifsomething goes wrong, what kills
people is they start trying tofigure out what's going wrong
instead of flying the airplane.
And then the airplane gets in asituation that they can't
recover from. So when you're ina situation where you start to
(23:18):
feel like the engine just quit.
In this situation, fly theairplane first. What's the
airplane? What is the airplane?
You go inside, check in, askyourself, Where am I in this
situation? Is this situation incontrol? Because if you don't
have this terror, then you'reonly ever as happy and free as
whatever's going on out here.
The next thought that comes inis going to take away your
(23:41):
freedom. You're going to takeaway your power, if you're not
aware of that. So these, theseare situations where you have to
have a process, you know, aprocedure that you're going to
go into, and you're going tolook at it as a repetition, oh,
boy. You know, this crapshappening. I get to, I get to
practice this, you know, like,that's what I say. I Yeah, I'm
in gratitude. You know, whenstuff happens when you're not
(24:02):
good at when you noticesomething and you start to
struggle, it's because you'renot good at it. The stuff that
you're good at just flows past.
You don't notice it. You onlynotice the stuff that makes you
have to work, either mentally,emotionally, and it's just you
haven't mastered it yet. Itdoesn't mean that you can't get
good at it. So those situations,to me, I look at them as just
(24:26):
data. It's like, when I start tofeel uncomfortable, it's just
data. It's information that'scoming in. The reason it's
making me feel uncomfortable isbecause I'm interpreting it as
that. And, you know, I know youand I talked the other day, and
interpretation creates yourexperience, you know? And that's
another that's another gift thatyou get from from thought
(24:46):
awareness training, you get tomake the choice of, how am I
going to interpret thissituation? I can interpret it in
a way that makes me experienceit in a horrible way, or I can
interpret it in a way where Ican say, Oh, goody, like, you
know, this is. Hard, and thatmeans it's my chance to practice
everything I've the procedureI've come up with, you know, to
deal with this situation.
Tara Thurber (25:07):
And I like, I like, where you went with you
get you get to, do you get to?
You get that? You get thechoice, right? You get the
choice. Absolutely amazing. Tom,I want to ask a couple more
questions. You've mentioned thatyou can't learn and perform at
the same time. How canindividuals balance the need for
(25:28):
continuous learning with thedemands of high performance in
today's fast paced environments?
Unknown (25:37):
Well, some of this is taken care of just by practicing
thought awareness training,because it gives you the ability
to separate yourself from thesituation. But I also think in
professional sports, that'swhere that term came from.
Sports Psychology, what you haveto recognize is, which phase Do
you want to be in you make, youmake a conscious choice. So to
(26:01):
use golf, for example, if you'regoing to go out on the golf
course, I think most people, ifthey don't even they don't play
golf, they have some idea ofwhat goes on in the golf course
besides the bad language
Tara Thurber (26:13):
or the drinking. I mean, I know there's definitely
drinking on golf courses,
Unknown (26:18):
but the thing that you do is, when you step out on the
course, and this is, you know, Iused to play a tournament golf,
and I the you make a choice, isthis a practice round where I'm
going to learn how to hitcertain certain types of shots,
or am I going to score? Becauseyou can't do both at the same
(26:38):
time. So, and what's interestingis you can't learn to perform
unless you learn to practice youlike, so you have to give
yourself permission. Like, Ican't perform at my highest
level if I can't take a momentto practice what I'm going to do
when I need to perform at myhighest level. Like, so to me,
that's what you're doing. Youknow you go when I used to work
(27:01):
with a PGA pro all the time, hewould take me on the golf court,
and he would throw balls downunderneath of a tree, and I had
to hit, you know, a low cut, youknow. So I had to hit a ball.
The ball couldn't get more than,say, 10 feet off the ground, and
it had to turn, you know, somany yards. And he would say,
let me see you do that. Well,we're not trying to score here.
We're trying to he's trying tosee, can you do it like and I
(27:22):
want you to do this with yourmechanics to make that happen.
And so when I would do that, Iwasn't trying to score, I was
trying to execute the shot. Andso that's the you know, to me,
when you're in business or in apersonal situation, sometimes I
think you really have to giveyourself permission if you
start, if the situation startsgetting the better of you, you
(27:45):
have to give yourself permissionto drop back and say, You know
what this is. This is my chanceto learn. Just in that comment
to yourself, you have gotten outof your thinking. You're out of
the thought. The Thought haslost its power, and now you're
attached to your your observer,your true self, what your true
self, your left brain, whateveryou whatever you want to call
(28:05):
it, it's just not word is notthe thing you're out of the
subconscious because you'vetaken away that you said, like,
No, I'm not going to do yourautomated responses. I am going
to because that. You know, thething with the subconscious that
people have to realize is it's avery elegant recording system,
but it does not criticallythink. It doesn't analyze. It's
not creative. It just gives youwhat it thinks you want. And
(28:27):
what it thinks you want is whatyou've told it to give you,
which may have nothing to dowith what you want. You know,
like, um, but it's just doingthat. It's doing it very
dutifully. And so you have tounderstand there's times where
you have to go now you're not asright. Now, I'm shifting over
the left side of my brain. I'mmaking creative I'm making my
own creative decisions. Here I'mgoing to look this, and then you
try stuff, you know, giveyourself permission to try
(28:49):
different things in thesedifficult situations, and don't
judge because you're in theprocess of gathering data. What
works, what doesn't work, youknow, like, so you can't be
like, Well, that should haveworked. Well, now all it did was
it showed you what's a mistake.
It's just information. That'sall it is, you know, it's
information that, what thattheory didn't, it didn't, it
didn't track, you know, like itwas gone too. It seemed like, on
(29:10):
paper, seemed great, you know,but it didn't. But you got
valuable information from that.
And stop judging, becausethat's, you know, it's okay to
analyze. We have to analyze. Butjudging always comes after
analysis. And if you can juststop that flow and go, I'm just,
I am in the process of learninghow to perform, you know. And
(29:30):
then that's the other thingabout using golf is you have to
learn to let go of the analysisand just perform. That's why
Annika Sorenson said she had athinking box and a performing
box. So when she would standbehind the ball, she was in the
thinking box. In the thinkingbox, she would say, the wind's
blowing this way. I'm this manyyards, you know, the pin is
(29:52):
tucked behind the sand trap. Youknow, whatever was, that's the
thinking box, you know. So shewas making her decisions once
she stepped across thisimaginary. Mine, she had already
made her decisions. Now she's inthe performing box, and then she
would make her swing with justperformance in mind. So we
really need to look at our livesand again, this is if, if it's
(30:12):
like your kids sometimes arejust driving you nuts, you know,
like if you look at thosesituations, if you stop getting
sucked into your habitualreactions and start looking at,
okay, if I could handle thissituation any way I wanted, what
is do I even know what thatlooks like, like, um, and give
yourself a target, and then juststart trying things. It starts
to become almost like a videogame.
Tara Thurber (30:34):
Yes, I was just gonna say, almost like a game
that you get to play, and youthen start to have fun in any of
the situations.
Unknown (30:43):
That's right, you do use that's why I'm saying.
That's everything we're talkingabout here. Tara is about you
start losing the drama. Yes, youknow, because, um, the drama
starts to drop away. Because youare performing at your highest
level. You know, mentally,you're operating with mental
performance, you know, highlevel mental performance, and
you're at, you know, when you'renot in fight or flight. You
(31:05):
know, as soon as you startfeeling stressed, you know, your
body goes into fight or flight,and you immediately lose a lot
of your higher thinkingcapacity. And so, you know you
don't go there because that itdoesn't impact you. You know, in
that regard, that's why somepeople are really good at
handling with difficultsituations, and other people
just surrender all of theirconsciousness to panic, right?
(31:27):
You know, that's a spectrum. Youknow, like most investors, some
it depends on the situation.
But, you know, and it really isinteresting, the experience is
interesting, how separate youbecome from the environment. In
other words, you know, you know,you can be with someone who's
really angry with you, andthey're just, they're just
spouting off, and you're lookingat them, and their anger is not,
it's not doing anything to youemotionally. And you're having
(31:51):
this opportunity to think, howdo I diffuse this? You know, you
know, other types of things andso, but you, the real you is not
impacted by and boy, you talkabout a satisfying feeling. It's
you feel so powerful, you knowwhen you're in those situations,
because you feel like in fact, Itold one woman who was in there
(32:12):
couples counseling, I said, whatI want you to focus on her
partner was very intimidating toher, and would start whenever
they got into these things. Andit really, it really derailed
her. And I said, I want, what Iwant your thought to be is you
don't get to touch my innerpeace. He said, I want you to
just stay with that. You don'tget to touch my inner peace and
(32:33):
don't ignore what he's thecontent of what he's saying. Let
him talk. You know he's going todo that. He's going to go right
where he always goes. It's justhis habit, like, and he's
expecting you to getintimidated. So instead of, you
know, reacting to his content,just focus internally, you know,
and say, I'm not going to letyou. Don't get permission. I'm
the gatekeeper, and you don'tget permission to impact my
(32:54):
inner, inner peace. And she wasone of the people that came
back. This is like, she said,like, for the first time, really
was in control. She said, thiswas so easy, like, so anyway,
it's magic.
Tara Thurber (33:08):
It is it is magic.
It is magic. And one thing thatI've always said is, you get to
choose, I think a lot of times,individuals and people that
I've, I've worked with some ofmy clients, even my kids. You
know it's you choose how youwant to respond and and how you
want to feel in situations. Andit's such a it's such an
(33:32):
empowering way to think ofthings.
Unknown (33:40):
Well it is. And the thing is to give yourself what
thought awareness training doesand everything we're talking
about, yeah, it opens up a gapright between the moment you
have to choose and the momentyou when the you gotta make a
choice. And how much time do youhave to make the choice? Is it a
split second, or is it fiveseconds, you know, like, um,
because that's important, youknow. It gives you a chance to,
(34:02):
how do I want to handle this?
You know? Like to ask yourselfthat and actually go there
instead of reacting, reactingto, what do I want my response
to be here, you know? And that'swhere, you know, we've lost
that, because everything movesso fast, and we have all this
information cram, being crammedinto us all day long. Most of us
are trying to do more in a daythan we should. You know? I
mean, it just, you know, I wasworking with a psychiatrist one
(34:26):
time, and he said he was askingme to help him with all the
paperwork and everything that hedid and the struggle that he had
with that. And I said, Well,look, if you're asking me to
teach you how to do 40 hours ofwork in 10 I can't do it. It's
40 hours of work, I said, but Ican tell I can teach you how to
experience the 40 hours. I said,you know, because right now what
you do, because it came up,because he wanted to spend more
(34:47):
time with his patients, but hecouldn't because he had the
paperwork. He said, sometimes Ido that. He goes, but I know
it's going to just cause thisproblem. I said, Well, there you
go. I said, you've givenyourself permission to spend
more time with your patient, butnow you're. Polluting the
experience of spending the moretime with your patient. Because
why you're spending the extra 10minutes within patient you're
thinking about this is, this isgoing to come back and bite me.
I said, Yeah, you're not evenpresent. I said, and you're not
(35:09):
giving yourself the gift of the10 minutes. You know, so again,
but that again is he's not, he'sin his thoughts. He's not
actually the thinker, thethought.
Tara Thurber (35:21):
Tom, last question for you before we get to your
your top five, what in a worlddriven by instant gratification
and rapid results? How canindividuals cultivate patience
and presence in both theirpersonal and professional growth
(35:41):
while still being able to strivefor high performance. Well,
Unknown (35:46):
I think what's important is to ask yourself,
one of the chapters in one of mybook was called and then what if
you ask yourself, Okay, I'vedone it. I got everything here.
I want that right? And then whatyou're fully realized, like, you
know you're done, you knowyou're 35 years old. I got
everything like it doesn't workthat way. You know, is to really
recognize within yourself thatwe are built our DNA is built to
(36:12):
expand. It's part of our DNA,and the instant gratification
comes from what I said earlier.
We are marketed to and taughtthat you cannot be happy with
who you are right now, in thismoment, there's something, or
many things, missing from yourlife, and that feeling is
interpreted as beinguncomfortable. And I got to stop
(36:32):
this feeling, because it makesme uncomfortable. I want to get
some place, and if I could justget there, like if I just made
another 25 grand a year, if Ijust had that car, whatever it
is, you know, like, then thisfeeling would go away. And what
we're real, we're not realizingis, no, we're supposed to have
the feeling, because the feelingis what we're the Sistine Chapel
has come from. And all ourtechnology and the symphonies,
(36:55):
you know, all this, the greatart is come from the fact that
we, we want more. You know, wewant more. And that more isn't
necessarily, shouldn't be justconfused with material things.
It's of ourselves. And I oftenask people, you know, what is
perfection? You know, Perfectionisn't, um, it's not another
(37:15):
$100,000 a year. It's not abigger house. Perfection, by
definition, has to be theability to expand limitlessly,
because anything else is alimitation. If it's a certain
number, if it's a certain amountof possessions, if it's a
certain skill level, you know,at in a in a sport, then it's
limited. So really, perfectionis the ability to expand
(37:39):
infinitely, and when youunderstand that, you realize
that you're always where youshould be, because you're never
going to get to a place whereyou feel like you've arrived. I
mean, that's how all art works.
And life is art. Our life is aform of art, and we live this
(38:00):
art, and we make our decisionsof when you can drop back once
again. Once you release yourselffrom that, the instant
gratification goes away. Onceyou realize that, how many
things in your life growing updid you have to have? I just had
to have that bike, I just had tohave that smartphone. I just had
to have this date, you know, andyou've had most of all that
stuff is, does anything change?
As soon as you get it, you justmake another I have to have like
(38:22):
so once you release yourself onthat man, life gets so much
more, so much more pleasant, andyour head is such a nicer place
to spend your day, becauseyou're not feeling like
Ungratified. You're feeling likeeverything is perfect as it is,
and this is an I, there is nolimit to how I can change myself
(38:43):
and how much I can transformthere is no and you actually,
you know, there's a differencebetween a belief and a knowing.
You know, a belief is what'shanded to you from the outside.
Someone says, Yeah, you know,like you can do this, you know,
well, it's a belief. It's not aconscious knowing. Once you do
it, now, it's a consciousknowing, and when you can, when
you can get that thing that I aman infinite being, and I can,
(39:07):
I'm never going to run out ofroom to transform myself or
expand, when you can know thatthe instant gratification drops
away on its own, because youstop thinking like that, that is
really, again, it's, it's partof scarcity consciousness. It's
a part of marketing. And that'sthe, that's the the paradox, the
people that are marketing to us,they're in scarcity
(39:29):
consciousness, you know, they'retrying to get more, so they need
to sell us more, so the numbers,they're junk. Like, yeah, just
keep going, and we all play thegame, you know? Like, yes, so
release yourself from it.
Tara Thurber (39:41):
It's wild. It's so wild Tom and and in today's day
and age with social media andeverything at our fingertips, I
think it's even harder nowadaysfor individuals to to work on
their mental performance unless,unless they are. Are
acknowledging right, unless theyare aware that it needs to be
(40:05):
worked on. Because I feel, also,there's a lot of people that
just, they don't, they don't.
Unknown (40:13):
You have to be willing to invest in yourself. And I
think people are because theythey think like what I'm doing
isn't working. Yeah, I'm nothappy. I never really feel
happy, deeply happy. I don'tfeel that way. I, you know, I,
I'm always worried aboutsomething, yeah? And I think
that, you know, we have learnedthere's a way out of the matrix,
(40:34):
yeah? So you, yeah, you have to,you know, you have to do it, you
know. But what's the it's I saidto you the other day, it's like,
you know, many people say, Well,this is, this is kind of
difficult. Difficult. It's aword to describe data, but, you
know, like, it's just a wordwe've come up with. I don't want
that it's difficult, you know,well, it's just data. It's just
(40:54):
information. You know, like, thereason you feel what you
describe as as difficult isbecause you haven't mastered it.
As soon as you master it, it'snot difficult anymore, and you
don't define it that way. So,you know, look at that and you
know, and set yourself free likeand stop, stop judging
everything as because you know,the truth is that when things
(41:16):
are easy, we don't want to dothem. It's like, if you look at
like kids in video games. I'veasked, you know, kids that I've
been working with groups ofkids, like, what do you do in a
video game? When you master thelevel? I go to the next level.
What if it doesn't have one? Iget rid of the game. I go get
another one. Like, right? Yeah,because you like it, you want it
to be just at that point whereyou can, sometimes you can beat
the computer, and sometimes youcan't. Otherwise, it's just not
(41:38):
fun. And that's life. Wow.
Tara Thurber (41:41):
So Tom to wrap us up today. I would love if you
could share with our listenersyour top five tips on improving
mental performance.
Unknown (41:53):
Alright, so number one, I would say, let's you gotta
start with thought awarenesstraining, without that, if you
don't have, if you don't get toa point where you recognize the
difference of what it feels likewhen you're in your thoughts and
when you're having a thought,you're you're not getting out of
prison. You know that's numberone. Number two is mantra,
interpretation createsexperience. How you interpret a
(42:13):
situation is going to createyour experience in that
situation, and what you'll find,if you really think about it, is
experiences you're in. Thingsare not absolute. You know, what
one person thinks is difficult?
Another person doesn't think isdifficult. Well, one person
thinks is funny, another persondoesn't think is funny. We have
the opportunity to interpret,and if you interpret things
differently, you know, I had awoman who had a lot of was
(42:37):
abused, you know, being raisedemotionally, and she felt that
she initially started to repeatthat behavior, but then she she
got out of that behavior, andshe corrected herself, and was
doing very well with herchildren. And she said, I have
this tremendous guilt. And Isaid, Well, I said, there's two
ways to I said, guilt is afeeling. That's all it is. It's
(43:00):
data. I said, like, myinterpretation of the guilt is
the universe saying, Look howfar you've come. I said, yours
is, I'm a terrible person, as ifthe data is just the data, I
said. And, you know, I said, butit really many people that are
abused as children just repeatit. You're not. And so the
reason you feel guilty is yourecognize it was not helpful and
(43:23):
it was not good for you. I said,so that is a positive. So
there's an example ofinterpretation creative. Set
your goals with accurate data.
It's really, really important.
You know, if I said, and I'vegiven this analogy many, many
times, if someone says, I'mgoing to lose 30 pounds, that
should take five days. Fivedays. Well, that's a stupid
idea, but that's only because weknow it is. But we create these
(43:46):
goals, and in general, we don'tknow how long it's going to
take. We always put these ideas,yeah. Take me a couple of weeks,
you know, like, I'm going toYeah, and then we then we begin
to judge our performance levelbased on where we fit in that
time frame. And the time framecould be grossly off. It could
really take maybe three times asmuch, and you're actually ahead
(44:11):
of schedule, but your yourinterpretation of that is going
to be, I'm you're going to loseyour confidence, you know, I'm
not good at this stuff. So setyour goals with accurate data
and understand that sometimesyou can't have all the data you
need. And that I went I, youknow, I went through that, you
know, I learned all this stuff.
I learned by personalexperience, I can assure you.
(44:32):
The other is what we talkedabout earlier, premeditated
procedures. Look at situationsand don't do 100 of them. Pick
one or two and say, You knowwhat, this situation is
difficult for me, and I need aplan. So I'm going to construct
and write it down. You know, thereason I say write it down is
because the number one, you haveto have clarity on it and keep
(44:53):
it simple. I'm going to do A, B,C, that's it. Now, I don't want
a page like, you know, justwrite it down, because. Give
yourself very clearinstructions. When this happens,
I'm going to do this and I'm notgoing to judge, and then I'm not
going to judge myself forjudging, because then I'm going
to judge. So that's the otherthing you like to come in. So
you want, you know, you want apremeditated procedure for one
(45:14):
or two things you just work onone or two at a time. And once
you see that you can do this andget yourself out of it, then you
get more comfortable. Yourconfidence goes up as your
confidence goes up, then yourfrequency goes up, and then you
start to become better at it.
And then the last thing is,welcome the tough stuff. I mean,
that's what I said. You know, ifyou want to get good at the
tough stuff, you got to be inthe tough stuff. You know, you
can practice singing in front ofa mirror in your bedroom, all
(45:35):
you want. But if you want to beable to get out in front of 1000
people and sing, you're going tosooner or later, you got to walk
out on the stage and out on thestage. And so when you feel that
uncomfortable feeling, realizeit's just data, just information
that's coming to you saying, Oh,here's your chance. You know you
can interpret it as, here's it'ssaying, hell, here's your chance
to get good at singing in frontof 1000 people. Or you can
(45:56):
interpret as, I am scared todeath and I can't open my mouth.
Like the choice is yours. Likewhen you're separate for your
through your thought awareness,you have that choice. So those
are my five.
Tara Thurber (46:07):
I love it. And it's just, it's, it's being
comfortable in theuncomfortable, right? And that,
I think, is something thateverybody struggles with. But,
um Tom, you are amazing. Ireally appreciate you joining us
today. This was such a beautifultalk, and I really hope that our
listeners can get a lot out ofthis. I know I did, and I'm
(46:28):
excited to take it, take it towork with myself. So I
appreciate you so much. Thank
Unknown (46:35):
you so I appreciate you too. Thank you so much for what
you're doing. Thank you so much.
Have
Tara Thurber (46:39):
a great day. Okay, we are defined talent coming to
you at top five, make it a greatday. You.
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com