Speaker 1: Pushkin. Let's play a game. Line up Americans in a row,
Speaker 1: all of them by how likely they are to start
Speaker 1: a revolution. At the front of the line, you might
Speaker 1: put let's say, a student activist, or an energetic member
Speaker 1: of some aggrieved interest group, or some evil genius with
Speaker 1: a knack for computer programming. At the back of the line,
Speaker 1: you'd put who who among us is least likely to
Speaker 1: go to the trouble of trying to change the world.
Speaker 1: I don't know a lot of us are complacent, but
Speaker 1: somewhere near the end of the line, I think we
Speaker 1: can all agree we'd find the golf and tennis coaches
Speaker 1: of America's country clubs. When I hired on to be
Speaker 1: a tennis pro as a middle class country club in Seaside, California.
Speaker 1: Tim Galway is the name of the board tennis pro
Speaker 1: in this story. He's in his eighties now, but was
Speaker 1: in his thirties when the story begins. It was four
Speaker 1: o'clock in the afternoon. I've been teaching all day, not coaching,
Speaker 1: and it keeps a little boring telling people where the
Speaker 1: weight on their foot should be and where they should
Speaker 1: hit the ball on the racket on the afternoon In question.
Speaker 1: Tim was teaching a guy with a slice backhand who
Speaker 1: wanted to learn how to hit topspin. The guy was
Speaker 1: taking his racket back too high. Ordinarily, Tim Galway would
Speaker 1: just have told the man, hey, don't take the racket
Speaker 1: back too high, but he lost interest in the sound
Speaker 1: of his own voice and pretty much everything else, so
Speaker 1: he just kept quietly tossing balls at the guy's backhand.
Speaker 1: Three or four minutes a strange thing had he was
Speaker 1: hitting topspin back end and said nothing. But then I
Speaker 1: said something in my head, you lazy bum, you missed
Speaker 1: your chance. If you had only taught him before, then
Speaker 1: you would have gotten the credit for his toss spin
Speaker 1: back in. I said, wow, And this was maybe the
Speaker 1: key point. I'm more interested in teaching than I am
Speaker 1: in this student learning. That was the moment that Tim
Speaker 1: Galway had an idea, because I just said, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: going to see how much improvement I can see in
Speaker 1: front of me with how little teaching for reversing your
Speaker 1: usual approach. How little can you tell them rather than
Speaker 1: how much can you tell them exactly? So you have
Speaker 1: this inside about yourself and your teaching methods, and you
Speaker 1: just you're gonna do it a different way. You're going
Speaker 1: to see how littlely you can say. How long do
Speaker 1: you do that before you start to think I'm onto
Speaker 1: something my next lesson. His next lesson is with a
Speaker 1: complete beginner. She doesn't even know how to hold a
Speaker 1: tennis racket. Goalie thinks maybe he shouldn't try out this
Speaker 1: new idea coaching by not saying anything. Then he thinks, nah,
Speaker 1: screw it, let's try this again. How can I start
Speaker 1: a beginner without telling the fundamentals? And so I said,
Speaker 1: I'll just drop a few and hit them so they'll
Speaker 1: see me. They'll see me. I did that five or
Speaker 1: six times, and she said, I noticed the first thing
Speaker 1: you did was turned your right foot sideways. He said, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't worry about and just take these balls and
Speaker 1: the do it. No, I did say shut your eyes
Speaker 1: and see yourself hitting the ball. I didn't say like
Speaker 1: I did. And this is the absolute She hit like this. This,
Speaker 1: I mean everything I would have told. She didn't know
Speaker 1: any different. Her foot didn't move. So the one thing
Speaker 1: she consciously thought about, she didn't do exactly everything that
Speaker 1: she was just kind of unconscious. She did said, oh
Speaker 1: my god, not the one when did she do everything
Speaker 1: without instruction, but she didn't do the one thing she
Speaker 1: decided herself she should do. In the history of coaching,
Speaker 1: this is a revolutionary moment. Who put chocolate in my
Speaker 1: peanut butter moment. Galli discovers that performance is all about focus.
Speaker 1: Focus on the wrong thing, and you'll do the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: What shocks me what was to see Tennes's improving without
Speaker 1: the student trying to improve. All I would do is
Speaker 1: ask them awareness questions or give them awareness instruction. Awareness
Speaker 1: instructions meaning saying stuff that caused them to focus on
Speaker 1: what was useful, like where the ball was when it
Speaker 1: hit the racket. People love Galway's weird tennis lessons. He
Speaker 1: offered no criticism, no praise, hardly any talk at all,
Speaker 1: just to nudge here and there, to silence the voices
Speaker 1: inside their heads, the voices that caused them to tense up.
Speaker 1: One day, one of the country club students blurted out,
Speaker 1: you should write a book. Kim Galway had zero literary ambition,
Speaker 1: but he did it. He wrote a book about how
Speaker 1: to coach tennis. His text was one part Eastern mysticism
Speaker 1: and one part practical advice on how to crush your
Speaker 1: opponent on a tennis court. He thought about calling it
Speaker 1: Yoga tennis. He wound up calling it The Inner Game
Speaker 1: of Tennis. In the fall of nineteen seventy four, right
Speaker 1: before his book came out, Galway asked his publisher how
Speaker 1: many copies they hope to sell. Twenty thousand, they said two.
Speaker 1: Three quarters later, I had got my third royalty statement
Speaker 1: and I had gone from forty thousand to eighty thousand
Speaker 1: to hundred thousand. And I went back to Random House
Speaker 1: and I said, how come it was so wrong in
Speaker 1: your estimates? And he said, well, we thought it was
Speaker 1: a tennis book. The Inner Game of Tennis is not
Speaker 1: a tennis book. It's something else, which is why it's
Speaker 1: now sold something like two million copies. And Galway is
Speaker 1: inundated with requests from people who want his help, because
Speaker 1: inner voices torture all of us, not just country club
Speaker 1: tennis players. I get asked to give a lecture about
Speaker 1: the Inner Game to the Houston Philharmonic. I played no
Speaker 1: classical instruments. At the end, they applaud politely, except for
Speaker 1: the conductor who comes up and says, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to believe this till I see it. And next thing
Speaker 1: he says is who's going to volunteer for some coaching
Speaker 1: from tim as Faye would have it. One tuba player
Speaker 1: volunteered alone. Galway did the same thing with the tuba
Speaker 1: player that he did on the tennis court. Sir, what
Speaker 1: do you find most difficult in performing at your level
Speaker 1: with the tuba? That's the one question that doesn't ruffle
Speaker 1: the ego. You just say what's the hardest thing? Now,
Speaker 1: things are, but what's the most difficult thing your level?
Speaker 1: And so he says articulation in the upper range. Never
Speaker 1: heard the phrase. And I say it was so hard
Speaker 1: about that? Galway has not the first clue about playing
Speaker 1: a brass instrument. He doesn't even know the words you
Speaker 1: need to talk touba. It's all he can do to listen. Well,
Speaker 1: you go, and uh it sounded good to me. I said,
Speaker 1: so how is that in terms of clean articulation? He says, uh,
Speaker 1: not so good. He said, so there was it was
Speaker 1: dirty to some extent. How did you know, as mass Well,
Speaker 1: I can't hear it because Bella the tube is too far,
Speaker 1: but I can feel it in my tongue. My tongue
Speaker 1: gets dry and it's towards feeling thick. Galway tells the
Speaker 1: tuba player to stop trying to hear his own sounds
Speaker 1: and to focus on his tongue. So I said, don't
Speaker 1: try to keep it change. Just notice the changes and moisture.
Speaker 1: It's only a few measures. Sounds about the same to me.
Speaker 1: The whole orchestra gets up on their feet and gives
Speaker 1: us standing ovation, and you can tell the different. So
Speaker 1: I said, oh my god, this is easy. I know
Speaker 1: nothing about tubeas nothing about classical music. I don't know.
Speaker 1: And I got everything from him as I needed, and
Speaker 1: it seemed like magic. Because now this is new. The
Speaker 1: coach doesn't need to know the first thing about what's
Speaker 1: being coached. All the coach needs is a gift for
Speaker 1: playing around with people's minds. Two things follow from this.
Speaker 1: Anyone can coach anything, and anyone doing anything now needs
Speaker 1: a coach. I'm Michael Lewis, and this is Against the Rules,
Speaker 1: a show about various authority figures in American life. This
Speaker 1: season is about the rise of coaches, and this episode
Speaker 1: is about the inner game. The first big leap that
Speaker 1: game coaching makes is into the business world. Tim Galway
Speaker 1: starts getting requests from corporations to help them figure out
Speaker 1: how to coach their executives. In the early eighties, the
Speaker 1: Bell telephone monopoly was being broken up. The new head
Speaker 1: of AT and T Corners Galway on a tennis court.
Speaker 1: He says, the people of AT and T now need
Speaker 1: to learn how to compete. Just a few years earlier,
Speaker 1: Galway had been nothing more than the local club tennis pro.
Speaker 1: Now the head of one of the world's largest corporations
Speaker 1: is inviting him to try to fix one of the
Speaker 1: world's largest corporate cultures. He started out just saying everything
Speaker 1: to change. So at the end of the two minutes,
Speaker 1: summarize in everything from the top level to the bottom
Speaker 1: level to change. He said, So, Tim, what's the problem?
Speaker 1: Galway told him, point plank you the problems you your
Speaker 1: whole bossing people around management style. A monopoly could get
Speaker 1: away with being autocratic, but now that AT and T
Speaker 1: had to compete in the marketplace, well, everyone needed to
Speaker 1: stop listening to the boss's voice in their heads. The
Speaker 1: leader is the interference. Tiffany Gaskell is director of coaching
Speaker 1: and leadership at a British company called Performance Consultants International.
Speaker 1: Tim Gaway helped to create the company thirty five years ago,
Speaker 1: after all these corporations started asking him for advice. When
Speaker 1: you're on the tennis court, you're in your head. That
Speaker 1: voice is the one that's saying, oh, no, you're not
Speaker 1: good enough to do this. In organizations, because the leader
Speaker 1: is the one that knows the way, then the other
Speaker 1: people don't know the way. Performance consultants is still at
Speaker 1: the center of coaching the executive mind, but the inner
Speaker 1: game has become an industry. Gaskell guesses there are roughly
Speaker 1: a quarter million of these coaches worldwide, helping business people
Speaker 1: deal with the voices in their heads that make them
Speaker 1: worse at their jobs. I was working with the managing
Speaker 1: director of a waste company, waste management company, and every
Speaker 1: month they were missing their recycling targets, and so we
Speaker 1: sat down and he said, okay, so what's going on here?
Speaker 1: We're missing our recycling targets. And he explored his own
Speaker 1: beliefs around recycling and realized that he just didn't believe
Speaker 1: in it because he said, you know, we're just sending
Speaker 1: it on a boat to China. It's not really solving
Speaker 1: the problem. Here. We have a common source of interference,
Speaker 1: not really wanting to do the thing you were meant
Speaker 1: to be doing because you don't believe in it. The
Speaker 1: performance coach helped the waste management boss created a recycling
Speaker 1: program that he could be proud of, and from then
Speaker 1: on they hit their recycling targets. That's interesting. I mean
Speaker 1: one response to this would be just to quit the
Speaker 1: waste management business. But he didn't do that. He found
Speaker 1: a better way to recycle. Yeah, and finding a better
Speaker 1: way to recycle eliminated this interference he had that he
Speaker 1: hadn't fully acknowledged that the whole thing was pointless. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: So It's like, as we become aware of stuff, then
Speaker 1: we can we have a choice and responsibility to do
Speaker 1: something about it or not about now. I can hear
Speaker 1: Bobby Knight throwing a chair across the room. I mean,
Speaker 1: what is this bullshit? It all started on some country
Speaker 1: club tennis court. And these mind coaches or performance coaches,
Speaker 1: or wherever you want to call them, they've only got
Speaker 1: a few simple ideas that they repeat over and over.
Speaker 1: The voice inside your head needs to be managed. Screw that.
Speaker 1: I don't have time for headcases. Criticism and praise are
Speaker 1: equally counterproductive, as they both amplify the inner critic. Suck
Speaker 1: it up, you whimp. Focus your attention on things you
Speaker 1: can control rather than the things you cannot. Work your
Speaker 1: ass off, and you'll control everything. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: Bobby Knight might be shocked by who's finding this stuff useful?
Speaker 1: Before the Break, I talked about how coaches are now
Speaker 1: being brought in to help people who've never had coaches before.
Speaker 1: We are what we repeatedly do excellence that has done
Speaker 1: an act, but a habit. So we don't rise to
Speaker 1: the occasion. We sing to our training. Right. You gotta
Speaker 1: put together effective routines to operate well under pressure. There's
Speaker 1: a mental game of firefighting huge. That's Jason Bresler, former
Speaker 1: baseball player at the US Naval Academy, lieutenant in the
Speaker 1: Marine Corps. Fought in the Battle of Fallujah, fought other
Speaker 1: battles in Afghanistan. In between battles, he joined the New
Speaker 1: York City Fire Department, where he now fights fires, among
Speaker 1: other things. To challenge that our generation has is one
Speaker 1: is the complexity of these events that we go to.
Speaker 1: They're just ever increasing into complexity because there's the active
Speaker 1: shooter threat, there's terrorism, there's transportation accidents, there's biological exposure.
Speaker 1: All these like, it's we do far more than just
Speaker 1: go to fires. No, two emergencies are the same, but
Speaker 1: they all have one thing in common, an inner game.
Speaker 1: All right, more stressful at time? Hopefully what do we
Speaker 1: think stressful? Why? By my heart rate was elevated, I
Speaker 1: was I esk guys like, do you ever have a
Speaker 1: negative conversation with your with yourself? You know, like in
Speaker 1: a moment where you're just like, don't suck, right, or
Speaker 1: now you make a mistake and you're like, I freaking suck.
Speaker 1: And universally, every single guy, particularly the most experienced guys
Speaker 1: that have been to so many fires, and they say
Speaker 1: yeah all the time. Jason fights fires himself, but he
Speaker 1: also helps to run the training programs for firefighters, and
Speaker 1: he noticed that firefighters didn't usually dwell on their inner states.
Speaker 1: They fought fires, and they didn't talk about the conversations
Speaker 1: they had with themselves when they did it. And at
Speaker 1: first they looked at me like I was kind of crazy, right,
Speaker 1: I'd say, well, hold on a second, hold on a second,
Speaker 1: do you recognize that conversation isn't at least bit helpful?
Speaker 1: And everyone would say yeah, I'm like, well, is it
Speaker 1: easy to change that conversation? And they're like hell No.
Speaker 1: All of them were game to be coached about a
Speaker 1: thing they hadn't ever really put into words. So Jason
Speaker 1: brought in a twenty nine year old mind coach named
Speaker 1: Ben Oliva. One of the things we're trying to do
Speaker 1: here is speed up the path to being an expert.
Speaker 1: So this coach wears jeans and a hoodie with a
Speaker 1: kangaroo pouch. He'd never fought a fire. He'd never been
Speaker 1: in a fire. He might have started a fire to
Speaker 1: roast marshmallows or something. He knows fires the way Tim
Speaker 1: Galway knew tubas. But he's talking to a group of
Speaker 1: firefighters who seemed to believe he could make them better
Speaker 1: at their jobs. I think is the difference between routines
Speaker 1: and superstitions. Okay, so I'm going to suggest that there
Speaker 1: is a difference. Ben has a laptop and a power point.
Speaker 1: The firefighters sit in a semicircle around him. Firefighters always
Speaker 1: seem like they're waiting for something to happen. Okay, So
Speaker 1: if you're you're a superstition. If you don't do it,
Speaker 1: you can't perform well. Yea like a lapse of your
Speaker 1: routine is going to throw you off right, kind of
Speaker 1: like they're tied together. What if this happens, some this
Speaker 1: won't happen. You're pointing to an important point here, which
Speaker 1: is that superstitions often give us the impression that we
Speaker 1: cannot be successful if we don't do them, whereas routines
Speaker 1: are more flexible. Ben studied astrophysics and psychology at Williams College,
Speaker 1: where he also played baseball and football. That Williams, he
Speaker 1: noticed that some of his teammates were just way better
Speaker 1: in practice than they were in games. Why was that
Speaker 1: he left Williams and got a masters in sports psychology.
Speaker 1: Now he coaches the minds of players for the Boston
Speaker 1: Red Sox and the New York Giants. Also a bunch
Speaker 1: of lawyers and doctors and some actors and singers you've
Speaker 1: heard of. Bene Leavitt does the same work with firefighters
Speaker 1: that he does with everyone else, starting with trying to
Speaker 1: eliminate interference distractors. One are the things that pop in
Speaker 1: your head. They end up posing on that you don't
Speaker 1: have full control. Decisions that a fire that already have
Speaker 1: been made in executy, past decisions, other people's readiness, other
Speaker 1: people's readiness. Okay, so like other people's performance. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: other people time of year. So external factors in the environment,
Speaker 1: whether excellently. That throws so many apps up. Oh it's gold.
Speaker 1: I can't play well. One of the guys had girls.
Speaker 1: That one gets me a lot. There's one, a really
Speaker 1: big one that I'd like to point out that we
Speaker 1: haven't hit yet. Past mistakes, past mistakes. I can sort
Speaker 1: of understand baseball players getting hung up that way, they're
Speaker 1: all head cases. But firefighters tactical technique. He's not going
Speaker 1: to make us a better firefighter. Jason Bressler Again, he
Speaker 1: says he can see the effect mind coaching has on
Speaker 1: the way that fires get fought. In the course of
Speaker 1: adopting these techniques and applying them, we're likely to become
Speaker 1: a better version of ourself, which then inevitably is going
Speaker 1: to make us a better firefighter. Who doesn't want to
Speaker 1: accomplish that. Plus, it's like you're nobody unless you have
Speaker 1: a mine coach. That's gonna be part of this, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, if everyone else has a mind coach and
Speaker 1: you don't, how can you compete? How do I compete? Hey,
Speaker 1: Michael hold up? Just need to adjust your mic rolling
Speaker 1: in Berkeley. So I've just made you performance coach against
Speaker 1: the rules. You are our podcast performance coach, and I
Speaker 1: bring you in for the first conversation and you come
Speaker 1: sit in our studio. What are the things you ask
Speaker 1: me to try to figure out? Try to diagnose? And Okay, so, um,
Speaker 1: should we should we do this? Should we do? Like? Um, yes,
Speaker 1: let's do this. Tiffany Gaskell of Performance Consultants International. I
Speaker 1: just finished interviewing her and was about to let her go.
Speaker 1: But you can't talk to one of these mine coaches
Speaker 1: for long before you start thinking about new uses to
Speaker 1: which they might be put. Yeah, because none of the
Speaker 1: people who've worked on the podcast have improved in any way.
Speaker 1: So they're just trapped in their own little worlds. And
Speaker 1: I just think, I think what I think of them,
Speaker 1: and but nobody's made any progress at all. So it
Speaker 1: would be nice if we could go somewhere I don't
Speaker 1: know where, so help us. So I'm just putting my
Speaker 1: hand on my head because um, there was um. So
Speaker 1: they come from, right, That's the first thing that's really port.
Speaker 1: The first thing is that it is not a remedial thing.
Speaker 1: So Michael Um, in terms of me coaching you, then
Speaker 1: it's like I'm going on a journey with you and
Speaker 1: walk walking down a path. So what I would ask
Speaker 1: is that essentially we work on you, not all the
Speaker 1: people around you. See what I mean? All right? The leaders,
Speaker 1: the interference I almost forgot. Okay, so let's start this. So, Michael,
Speaker 1: if you had something you wanted to be coached on,
Speaker 1: what would that be? You mean, how would I like
Speaker 1: to improve? Is that the question? Um? Yes, that's a
Speaker 1: good one. Here's here's one. It's it's not huge, but
Speaker 1: it's noticeable. I don't like the way I am can
Speaker 1: be distracted by small irritations. A microcosm of this is
Speaker 1: just driving. My ideal state as a driver is detached
Speaker 1: amusement at the poor habits of other drivers. I have
Speaker 1: trouble staying in that ideal state and not not descending
Speaker 1: into bitterness and fury on the road. So that's just
Speaker 1: an example. But I assume if I'm that way in
Speaker 1: the car, I'm that way with other things, and I
Speaker 1: don't see any benefit to the bitterness and anger I
Speaker 1: feel towards others when they are inept. Okay, that's a
Speaker 1: great thing for us to work on. Okay, you're ready
Speaker 1: to go. Yes, So um, Let's imagine that you are
Speaker 1: sitting in the car. We're doing your dream scenario. Now, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've got my eyes closed, great, me too. You're sitting
Speaker 1: in the car and everything is just as you'd love
Speaker 1: it to be. Tell me about what that feels like.
Speaker 1: It feels like being in a sensory deprivation chamber where
Speaker 1: I'm alone with my thoughts and the car is almost
Speaker 1: just driving itself. So you are enjoying being with yourself,
Speaker 1: moving along, getting to where you're going to m And
Speaker 1: in terms of like our goal for the end of this,
Speaker 1: let's say that something happens outside of your little bubble.
Speaker 1: How is it you stay in your bubble? How would
Speaker 1: I stay in my bubble if I was trying to
Speaker 1: stay in my bubble? Well, if I'm in a good
Speaker 1: state of mind, I laugh. I see someone run a
Speaker 1: four way stop, or someone tailgating me, or an ancient
Speaker 1: person going three miles an hour, and I think different
Speaker 1: strokes for different folks. Isn't it got detachment? The detachment?
Speaker 1: You're detached. I'm detached, That's the way I Otherwise I
Speaker 1: start to get upset. And when you get upset, what's
Speaker 1: there instead m a desire to reek reek vengeance and
Speaker 1: a kind of fury that is just inexplicable given what's happened. Okay,
Speaker 1: I desire to let them know just how awful they
Speaker 1: are as human beings. Okay, so we got judgment right there.
Speaker 1: Right there, you go a lot of judgment. Okay, So
Speaker 1: there's the detached happy place. There's the judgment hell place.
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah? True? Okay, yea. So um, let's
Speaker 1: just get back into your detached happy place. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm there. Great. Just tell me about this bubble. What's
Speaker 1: going on inside the bubble? Yeah? What's the bubble? Like
Speaker 1: the bubbles playful? You could also be seriously playful in
Speaker 1: the bubble. I'm thinking about uh famla, or I'm thinking about,
Speaker 1: more commonly, something i'm working on, like this long scene
Speaker 1: in the middle of this episode. I could be thinking
Speaker 1: about whether to let this tape just play or insert
Speaker 1: some narration to break it up. But I'm not because
Speaker 1: of the noise in my head. Okay. So have you
Speaker 1: got your feet on the ground toes? Yes? Great, So
Speaker 1: just putting your feet on the ground, do you feel
Speaker 1: that connection with the ground and staying in the bubble
Speaker 1: and just really feeling this positivity and the bubble around you.
Speaker 1: What color is a bubble? Blue? Light blue, kind of
Speaker 1: a sky blue, and so you've got that all around you.
Speaker 1: It could be pink too. What's the feeling in this bubble?
Speaker 1: It's warm and cozy. Great, no negativity? Yeah, no negativity.
Speaker 1: And on a scale of one to ten, how strong
Speaker 1: are you feeling this right now at this very moment, yes,
Speaker 1: call it an eight. So what we want to do
Speaker 1: now is find a point on your body which you
Speaker 1: can associate this feeling with. So you've got your feet
Speaker 1: flat on the ground and you can feel this is
Speaker 1: resonating around you, isn't it the bubble? Mhmm? Sometimes blue,
Speaker 1: sometimes pink, but yes, it's resonating. And so where's the
Speaker 1: place on your body that you can, like, for example,
Speaker 1: your chest, to access this feeling. If you keep mentioning
Speaker 1: my chest, it's hard for me to think of anything
Speaker 1: but my sorry about I'm feeling. Yes, I feel like
Speaker 1: I am being led to my chest where it might
Speaker 1: be who knows where it might be, my tip of
Speaker 1: my nose or my little toe could be anywhere for it. Um,
Speaker 1: I would actually say, my toes great, and to tell
Speaker 1: me about that, tell me about your toes, And well,
Speaker 1: normally your toasts take your toes for granted, right unless
Speaker 1: they're injured or they're unsightly and you don't have shoes on.
Speaker 1: But otherwise you don't really think about your toes. They're
Speaker 1: in your shoes. But when you're really aware of your
Speaker 1: body and you wiggle your toes inside your shoe, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a very distinct sensation, and it's a it
Speaker 1: makes you feel very self aware. So I'm wiggling my
Speaker 1: toes inside my shoes and it's giving me pleasure. Can
Speaker 1: that give you access to the bubble? It might? It might.
Speaker 1: It might also cause me to hit the accelerator a
Speaker 1: little fast in the car. But but it's it's um
Speaker 1: But yes, absolutely, I could work on connecting the feeling
Speaker 1: of the wiggly toes to the bubble. So my request
Speaker 1: to you is that next time you aren't driving, that
Speaker 1: this is what you do, all right, when your face
Speaker 1: with a situation that could get you into that judgment place,
Speaker 1: I promise I will do it. It seemed like such
Speaker 1: a simple request, but the inner game is not as
Speaker 1: easy as it looks I came to this episode with
Speaker 1: one question, why why are these inner game coaches now everywhere?
Speaker 1: I mean, they used not to exist, and it's not
Speaker 1: as if they required some new technology to make them possible.
Speaker 1: Leonardo da Vinci could have had this kind of coaching. Now.
Speaker 1: There was a guy with interference issues, hardly finished anything
Speaker 1: he started. Maybe if he'd had a mind coach, Saudi
Speaker 1: Princes would not have to shell out four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars for fake Leonardo's because there'd be so
Speaker 1: many real ones to choose from. Anyway, here's a thought.
Speaker 1: This explosion in mind coaching first required that a scide
Speaker 1: give itself over entirely to markets. It needed life to
Speaker 1: be seen as one giant winner take all competition. It
Speaker 1: needed a new kind of anxiety. So you feel like
Speaker 1: you've put a ton of time into the physical side,
Speaker 1: but the mental side you haven't had that much direction.
Speaker 1: In training, Ben Oliva trainer of pro baseball players and
Speaker 1: Wall Street traders and New York City firefighters. He spends
Speaker 1: a shocking amount of his time coaching young people, teenagers
Speaker 1: who have somehow become swept up in our general performance
Speaker 1: anxiety and so you're interested in figuring out, Yeah, what
Speaker 1: you can do to get better from that? I know
Speaker 1: about you from what your dad told me. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing. I work with lots of high school athletes
Speaker 1: and parents are kind of unreliable source. Yeah, so I'm
Speaker 1: not going to fully rely on what he was telling me. Okay,
Speaker 1: the girl is a seventeen year old high school softball player.
Speaker 1: She's hoping to be recruited to play at elite colleges.
Speaker 1: She thinks her father can't help her. But that's not new.
Speaker 1: Teenagers have always found their parents to be mostly useless.
Speaker 1: What's new is their urgent need to optimize their performance.
Speaker 1: We're going to refocus like we're training a puppy. If
Speaker 1: we're going to train your mind like we train a
Speaker 1: puppy all time us for two minutes, my suggestion is
Speaker 1: you close your eyes. You do not have to on
Speaker 1: your marks. Good, said guy. I'll do it. These sessions
Speaker 1: are usually confidential, but he's made an exception here because
Speaker 1: the girl is my daughter, Dixie. A lot of the
Speaker 1: time when I go to bed, I have a bunch
Speaker 1: of things on my mind. So I was like, well,
Speaker 1: this is kind of a form of meditation. Let's see
Speaker 1: if I can. Because when we did it, like, all
Speaker 1: I really had to focus on was that I wasn't
Speaker 1: thinking about the test I just studied for, or like
Speaker 1: the practice SUCH just had. So I definitely had to
Speaker 1: restart a lot. We live in Berkeley, California, so a
Speaker 1: lot of Dixie's teachers already make her meditate. If they
Speaker 1: gave Olympic medals and meditation, we might just sweep. We'd
Speaker 1: also win recycling. Okay, So when you got distracted and
Speaker 1: then brought your attention back. Yeah. One of the other
Speaker 1: pieces of this is noticing if you judge yourself right,
Speaker 1: distracted right, because one of the bigger themes here is
Speaker 1: trying to manage our self judgment, usually in a way
Speaker 1: that's actually helpful for us rather than unhelpful. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: know she's my child because when she's told to meditate,
Speaker 1: her first reaction is to win at it. She may
Speaker 1: never have heard of Bill Parcels, the legendary football coach,
Speaker 1: but she'd agree with his most famous line, you are
Speaker 1: what your record says you are. Okay, So what's the
Speaker 1: problem with judging our success based on outcomes? Well, we
Speaker 1: get into a mindset where we think we're supposed to
Speaker 1: get on base every time one and that's like, are
Speaker 1: you kind of a perfectionist in that way? Well, that's
Speaker 1: the thing. It's like, I don't like that's definitely how
Speaker 1: I am a lot more in high school. So that's
Speaker 1: the problem of judging ourselves based on outcomes is that
Speaker 1: we lose track of the things that get us the
Speaker 1: best outcomes. So by focusing all our energy on the outcomes,
Speaker 1: we end up getting worse outcomes. Yeah, it's really kind
Speaker 1: of twisted. It's even more twisted than that. My child
Speaker 1: has been engaged in this insane competition for the attention
Speaker 1: of college coaches since she was thirteen years old. The
Speaker 1: pressure on her grows every year. She has the sense
Speaker 1: that any given at bat might cause a coach to
Speaker 1: love her or to hate, and thus determine the course
Speaker 1: of life. Every weekend, Dixie travels with your club softball team.
Speaker 1: It's one of the best teams in the country, and
Speaker 1: it plays against the other best teams. Wherever they play,
Speaker 1: college coaches gather to watch, but only because they are
Speaker 1: one of the best teams. If they started losing all
Speaker 1: the time, they wouldn't be invited to play against the
Speaker 1: best teams, and no one would want to see them
Speaker 1: play except maybe their parents. Lose, and the coach from
Speaker 1: your dream school might never see how good you really are.
Speaker 1: To get a sense of what it feels like to
Speaker 1: be inside my child's dugout, probably also inside her head.
Speaker 1: We stuck a wire on her coach, who was reacting
Speaker 1: to some screw up by one of Dixie's teammates. That
Speaker 1: one wasn't even any of dirt, and you missed it.
Speaker 1: Get around the fucking blood. Don't be positivity. Shut up,
Speaker 1: so I'll give you positivity. I know you want to
Speaker 1: call child Protective Services. And if Dixie's coach said this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff inside of an institution a high school, say,
Speaker 1: or college, some parent would complain and should be FI.
Speaker 1: But you know who'd be the most upset if that
Speaker 1: happened her players. Well, when you know her, you don't
Speaker 1: take any of that really seriously, like if that makes sense,
Speaker 1: like that's just her, Like it's not you don't you
Speaker 1: just can't take it personally, is it was it harder
Speaker 1: to sort of keep your mind in the right place
Speaker 1: when you had a coach that you were intimidated by.
Speaker 1: That's me obviously talking with Dixie in the car after
Speaker 1: a softball practice. I mean I was intimidated by her
Speaker 1: in the beginning, like the very beginning, but it was
Speaker 1: more I just really didn't want to disappoint her. If
Speaker 1: she's not yelling at you, then you're doing something wrong.
Speaker 1: If she's not noticing you, then that's a bad sign.
Speaker 1: Why is that? Because she's not paying attention to you.
Speaker 1: She's like, she doesn't care what you're doing. She If
Speaker 1: she's paying attention to you and yelling at you, it
Speaker 1: means she cares. And that's the most important part. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, we're living this fucking team here. We have
Speaker 1: a paradox. Why don't you try to seeing them all?
Speaker 1: That will be a good strategy is to actually look
Speaker 1: at it. Play at the highest levels of any competitive sport,
Speaker 1: you'll hear a lot of this sort of critical voice.
Speaker 1: You might even sense that you need to hear this
Speaker 1: voice to push you to places that you never push yourself.
Speaker 1: The paradox is that you also need to silence that voice,
Speaker 1: at least inside your own head. This comes up over
Speaker 1: and over again in Dixie sessions with Ben, how much
Speaker 1: she cares about her coaches, but how hard it is
Speaker 1: to stay calm in their presence and how hard it
Speaker 1: is to play well when you're not calm. I'm really
Speaker 1: hard on myself for some reason, like on that team
Speaker 1: with the coaches that I had, Like it's almost like
Speaker 1: I had like so much respect for them that I
Speaker 1: didn't want to let them down because like and my coaches.
Speaker 1: And then another thing I do definitely when I'm nervous
Speaker 1: is like I don't know, like my eyes almost like
Speaker 1: freeze and it's really stressful because I have like naturally
Speaker 1: really good hand eye coordination, and so I'll still hit
Speaker 1: the ball, but I know if my eyes were on it,
Speaker 1: I would have hit it a lot better. Right, So
Speaker 1: think about that. That means your attention is somewhere in
Speaker 1: the future on what if this happens, what if that happens,
Speaker 1: rather than on the present moment actually on trying to
Speaker 1: pick that ball up right out of her view. So
Speaker 1: let's do an exercise just to show you that you
Speaker 1: have control of your attention when you are aware of it. Right,
Speaker 1: So what's your attention talking to you? Right? I would
Speaker 1: hope that it's on me at least for the most part.
Speaker 1: But if we want to write, I can tell you
Speaker 1: to shift your attention to the way that the seat
Speaker 1: feels underneath you, the way that your weight feels on
Speaker 1: that seat. That's really a weird thing to pay attention to, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it would be weird if you were sitting here
Speaker 1: talking to me paying attention to that sensation. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would be like a really weird thing to be doing. Yet.
Speaker 1: But you can do it if you want to, right,
Speaker 1: Or you can just wiggle your toes. The point is
Speaker 1: that Dixie can learn to pay attention to the things
Speaker 1: that are useful, to pay attention to her breath, for example,
Speaker 1: or the ball as it leaves the pitcher's hand. Just
Speaker 1: as the tuba player can stop trying to listen to
Speaker 1: his own music and focus on his tongue, Dixie needs
Speaker 1: to find the thing that helps to focus on. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the right focused cues are. This is personal,
Speaker 1: it's individualized. There's there's not focused cues that are best
Speaker 1: for everybody. But you just told me you hit your
Speaker 1: best when you're aggressive and loose. That sounds like a
Speaker 1: killer focused kid. Ben and Dixie spoke over Skype every
Speaker 1: week for months, just the two of them. We taped
Speaker 1: only a few of these sessions, and even then we
Speaker 1: didn't listen in. But one day, when I was driving
Speaker 1: her home after softball practice, I asked her how it
Speaker 1: was going, and she told me that when she stepped
Speaker 1: into the batter's box, she now had a phrase in
Speaker 1: her head, loose and aggressive. And is it like, how
Speaker 1: do you say it the way you would say it
Speaker 1: to yourself? Like you hear it in your head? Loose
Speaker 1: and aggressive, loose and aggressive. Loose and aggressive. So it's light,
Speaker 1: it's not loud. Yeah, what would have been in your
Speaker 1: head before you did those drills with him? Don't swing
Speaker 1: and miss, you have to move the runner, don't fuck up,
Speaker 1: don't look at your coach. Typically things that started with
Speaker 1: don't get rid of the don't That's what Ben had
Speaker 1: been teaching her. The new strategy gets this trial run
Speaker 1: into tournament being inspected by roughly fifty college softball coaches.
Speaker 1: The opposing team's pitcher has already signed with the University
Speaker 1: of Texas. She lights out, her dropball drops, her rise
Speaker 1: ball rises, and her fastball comes in at sixty five
Speaker 1: miles an hour, which is the equivalent of a ninety
Speaker 1: four mile an hour fastball and baseball Dixie's teammates all
Speaker 1: have trouble dealing with it. Everyone's striking out, her swinging late.
Speaker 1: Everything feels like it's happening too fast. Dixie now comes
Speaker 1: to the plate. There we go next day, Get on time.
Speaker 1: The first pitch is a fastball, high and inside, just
Speaker 1: extremely hard to react to quickly enough to hit hard.
Speaker 1: A month earlier, she'd have been frozen by it. Oh,
Speaker 1: you did it. That's the sound of it. Hit. It's
Speaker 1: a rocket down the left field line. She didn't just
Speaker 1: not freeze, she was ahead of it. She never reacted
Speaker 1: so quickly to a pitch in her entire life. After
Speaker 1: the game, I didn't say anything about it. I'd read
Speaker 1: the inner game of Tennis, and the last thing my
Speaker 1: daughter needed was another voice in her head. She'd been
Speaker 1: coached to stop thinking and trust her reactions, which can
Speaker 1: be hard for a smart person to do. But eventually
Speaker 1: I debriefed her, asked her what she thought had happened.
Speaker 1: I developed a routine that acted kind of like a
Speaker 1: safety net for me, Like knowing that I had a
Speaker 1: plan made me know if I executed it or not,
Speaker 1: and so having that as my goal instead of focusing
Speaker 1: on the outcome it made it a lot easier to
Speaker 1: not be hard on myself because I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I executed my plan, I did everything I was supposed
Speaker 1: to do, and it just didn't work out. And that's
Speaker 1: how this game works. So I just have to let
Speaker 1: it go and do the same thing next time. And right,
Speaker 1: you know, like because it made me realize that I
Speaker 1: cannot control everything. Right, my daughter is saying I cannot
Speaker 1: control everything of her own free will. And I'm sitting
Speaker 1: in the driver's seat about to drive home from softball practice,
Speaker 1: wiggling my toes at every intersection instead of screaming at
Speaker 1: the other drivers. And yet there's still a part of
Speaker 1: me that thinks there is just no way this shit
Speaker 1: can work. Explain to me why people didn't figure this
Speaker 1: out five hundred years ago. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Tiffany Gaskell again, creator of my pink road rage bubble.
Speaker 1: People have cared about performance for a long time. Why
Speaker 1: wasn't Sir Lancelot when he was jousting, Why wasn't he
Speaker 1: wiggling his toes or clenching his abs or I don't understand.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about the evolution of humankind, and I'm thinking
Speaker 1: that we are in a place now where we are
Speaker 1: you know Maslow's hierarchy of human needs. There you go
Speaker 1: so basically like once you've got various stuff to can
Speaker 1: care of, so that's like survival, than we're going relationships,
Speaker 1: than we're going up to relationships with other and then
Speaker 1: we can go into the place where we can self actualize.
Speaker 1: And I think that a lot of the developed world
Speaker 1: is in that place right now. Are you just smuggling
Speaker 1: therapy into people's lives by calling it coaching and making
Speaker 1: them feel better about it? Well, actually, therapy is more
Speaker 1: about things that have happened to you in the past
Speaker 1: that you're trying to deal with, and coaching is really
Speaker 1: about okay, going forward. You know, there's a saying which
Speaker 1: is therapy is a path of tears and coaching is
Speaker 1: the path of laughter. There was one other surprise in
Speaker 1: all this. It occurred to me as I watched Dixie play.
Speaker 1: It had taken me longer to notice, and I was
Speaker 1: more hesitant to credit her inner game coach for it,
Speaker 1: even though the change was entirely in her mind. It
Speaker 1: seemed like she was aggressive there. Then had come to
Speaker 1: Southern California on other business and I dragged him out
Speaker 1: to see Dixie play. He said he didn't usually do
Speaker 1: this because he got so wrapped up in outcomes and
Speaker 1: started doing stuff that was counterproductive to his coaching, like cheering.
Speaker 1: Praise was bad because it was still judge. Anyway, we
Speaker 1: were standing along the left field fence, surrounded on all
Speaker 1: sides by college scouts and anxious parents and screaming coaches.
Speaker 1: Me trying not to care too much about what was
Speaker 1: going on on the field. Ben actually not caring too much.
Speaker 1: Since she started talking to you, she's been the two
Speaker 1: things I've noticed. One is she's been much more aggressive
Speaker 1: in the zone without losing her discipline. So her at
Speaker 1: bats have been very good. The outcome has not always
Speaker 1: been what she'd hope, but it's been fine. I mean,
Speaker 1: she's hit well pretty well. But the other thing is
Speaker 1: I think she's starting to learn not to be hard
Speaker 1: on herself. It's our focus, and where I notice it
Speaker 1: is it when she's hard on herself, it's an express
Speaker 1: have a more general trait, which is she's very judgmental.
Speaker 1: She's hard on a lot of people. She's critical, and
Speaker 1: so she will sit there and be meant. She won't
Speaker 1: say it, but she'll have thoughts about her, critical thoughts
Speaker 1: about her teammates, and of course critical thoughts about her
Speaker 1: parents and m and learning to take that off herself.
Speaker 1: She's been noticeably nicer to me, like like all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, Tabitha turn to me a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: ago and said, who is this child? And so it's
Speaker 1: I don't want to give you that much credit yet,
Speaker 1: and who knows how long last. And I've not said
Speaker 1: a word to her about any of this, but it's
Speaker 1: been it's been really surprising to see just a little
Speaker 1: bit of hesitation before she goes into the critical negative mode.
Speaker 1: Winnings great, so's kindness. That kindness might help you to win. Well,
Speaker 1: you gotta love that. It looks like we're playing fucking
Speaker 1: a B tenant under team and it's two to nothing.
Speaker 1: They are like seven hundred softball coaches in Northern California
Speaker 1: that Dixie could have played for. There's a reason she
Speaker 1: insists on playing for this particular coach. It's not always
Speaker 1: easy or pleasant, but there's a point to it. Tim
Speaker 1: Galway might say the coach was creating interference. Dixie would too,
Speaker 1: but she thinks the interference is important to have you
Speaker 1: know that's bullshit. That's a bullshit approach to life. We
Speaker 1: can benefit from interference. We need coaches who teach us
Speaker 1: how to be comfortable being uncomfortable in a way our
Speaker 1: parents don't and probably shouldn't do. You need to stop
Speaker 1: being a lazy piece of shit and get around the
Speaker 1: ball and get your ass up and block and work
Speaker 1: for your picture or I'm going to kick your ass.
Speaker 1: Got its? The trick is to let their voice into
Speaker 1: your head and then let it out again, use it,
Speaker 1: learn from it, then learn to mute it. Yeah, Miya's
Speaker 1: going to get ahead in account and throw so fast, Stayley,
Speaker 1: so fast, luc agressive, blue senecrest. Oh, I'm Michael Lewis.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Against the Rules. Against the Rules
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. The show's produced
Speaker 1: by Audrey Dilling and Katherine Gerardo, with research assistance from Lydia,
Speaker 1: Jane Cott, and Zooe Wynn. Our editor is Julia Barton.
Speaker 1: Mia Lobell is our executive producer. Our theme was composed
Speaker 1: by Nick Brittell, with additional scoring by Stellwagon Symphonette. We
Speaker 1: got fact checked by Beth Johnson. Our show was recorded
Speaker 1: by Tofa Ruth and Trey Schultz at Northgate Studios in Berkeley.
Speaker 1: We got recording helped this episode in Milwaukee from Jaw
Speaker 1: Media and Neo Soul Productions. Special thanks to Deputy Chief
Speaker 1: Dan Lipski and Eric Nurnberg of the Milwaukee Fire Department
Speaker 1: and Jason Brasler, Christopher g iSER, and Ralph Longo of
Speaker 1: the New York City Fire Department. As always, thanks to
Speaker 1: Pushkin's founders, without whom I would not exist, Jacob Weisberg
Speaker 1: and Malcolm Gladwell. My dad is totally oblivious to it too,
Speaker 1: Like he's just working out in the other room where
Speaker 1: I was originally setting up recording. He's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you have to get out here. I'm working out, And
Speaker 1: I was like, Dad, I'm doing this for you. Also
Speaker 1: like I have this Mica, but yeah, I just switch
Speaker 1: around everything. What are you doing? That's hilarious. No,