Speaker 1: Because that's it. No struggle, no swag, and that's it.
Speaker 1: Everybody wants swag, but are you willing to struggle for it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's how you get it. You get it out
Speaker 1: of the struggle. People don't understand this. The struggle is
Speaker 1: when our latent ability to express itself. So things are
Speaker 1: going smooth and it's nothing happening, we're in a comfort zone.
Speaker 2: Then we're not really going to learn.
Speaker 1: As much as we will learn if we keep pushing
Speaker 1: that envelope in a compassionate way.
Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome
Speaker 3: George Mumford to the show. George is a globally recognized speaker, teacher,
Speaker 3: and coach. Since nineteen eighty nine, he's been honing his
Speaker 3: gentle but groundbreaking mindfulness techniques with people from locker rooms
Speaker 3: to boardrooms. Michael Jordan credits George with transforming his on
Speaker 3: court leadership, helping the Bulls to six NBA championships. George
Speaker 3: has also worked with Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, and countless
Speaker 3: other NBA players, olympians, executives and artists. He's the author
Speaker 3: of The Mindful Athlete and most recently unlocked. In this episode,
Speaker 3: I talked to George Mumford about peak performance. How does
Speaker 3: one consistently perform at a high level, whether it be work, sports, art,
Speaker 3: or any other craft. George believes that everyone has the
Speaker 3: potential to excel. To unwock greatness, he believes he must
Speaker 3: cultivate mental toughness and love and we're to stay in
Speaker 3: the flow state. In this episode, George talks about his
Speaker 3: experience coaching the Chicago Bulls, how he helped the team
Speaker 3: thrive on and off the court. We also touch on
Speaker 3: the topics of mindfulness, resilience, forgiveness, and joy. It was
Speaker 3: very joyful chatting with George Mumford, and I know you
Speaker 3: will find it joyful as well.
Speaker 4: So without further ado, I bring you George Mumford.
Speaker 3: George Mumford, Welcome to the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: That was my like, that was like my Chicago Bulls intro.
Speaker 3: Right there, do Do Do Do Do Doo?
Speaker 2: A good one, dude.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, welcome to the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, thank you, thank you. A lot of people
Speaker 3: have been telling me very enthusiastically about how awesome you are,
Speaker 3: and after reading your books, I must say, I agree,
Speaker 3: I agree. Congratulations on your new one.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Is it true that you got a master's in counseling psychology.
Speaker 2: Yes, that is correct.
Speaker 4: Tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 3: You know how you got into that and uh, you
Speaker 3: know how you got interest in that because you you
Speaker 3: left the career as a financial analyst, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, I left your career as a financial analyst. So
Speaker 1: when I got in the recovery, when I got cleaned,
Speaker 1: it's like I came out of the detox a different person.
Speaker 2: Everything was different.
Speaker 1: And so I got in well, I was actually reading
Speaker 1: before that, but I got into this. I was intellectually
Speaker 1: stimulated and I had I actually got into this program.
Speaker 1: It was a it was a cutting edge program. It
Speaker 1: was about stress management, and so taught me about changing
Speaker 1: my lifestyle, specifically learning how to use meditation and you know,
Speaker 1: just really taking personal responsibility for myself and being a
Speaker 1: part of my of my of whatever it is, my recovery,
Speaker 1: my whatever. Took me to the physician's office. Then instead
Speaker 1: of just going there and giving the physician, the physician
Speaker 1: or the doctor all the power, it was me being
Speaker 1: a partner and being more involved in it. And taking
Speaker 1: responsibility for, you know, my experience and sharing my experience
Speaker 1: with the clinician so that we could really access, you know,
Speaker 1: really address what was happening. So when I got in
Speaker 1: this program, they had a syllabus books to read like
Speaker 1: pain as Motivator and you know M Scott Packt.
Speaker 2: It was a ton of books.
Speaker 1: So I read all the books on the phyllabus and
Speaker 1: then I went every book that I read. They had
Speaker 1: all the books, and I kept reading books. So I
Speaker 1: averaged over a book a week for the last thirty
Speaker 1: nine coming up thirty eight and eight years and eleven months,
Speaker 1: and I don't know, maybe twenty one days, not done
Speaker 1: counting or anything, but I averaged over a book a week.
Speaker 1: And so I was doing all this stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: I was reading all these books and doing all this.
Speaker 2: Work psychology, philosophy, religion.
Speaker 1: I was doing all of this reading and research and studying.
Speaker 1: And my friend John came over one day and he said, man,
Speaker 1: you're doing all that work, and he threw an application
Speaker 1: at me. It was Cambridge College. He said, you might
Speaker 1: as well tricker, like, you might as well get credit
Speaker 1: for your work. So I fill out the application and
Speaker 1: I signed up for counseling psychology, because I wanted to
Speaker 1: understand how people get motivated to do things they couldn't
Speaker 1: do before. In my case, how why is it that
Speaker 1: I was able to to embrace my anxiety, not my anxiety,
Speaker 1: but my addiction and going to recovery. I was able
Speaker 1: to do what I wasn't able to do before. So
Speaker 1: I was very interested in motivation. And also I was
Speaker 1: working as I was training as a therapist as a clinician,
Speaker 1: I started thinking about, especially working with people and with
Speaker 1: substances they have to get for gap they know how
Speaker 1: to tell you exactly what you want and then not
Speaker 1: do it, And so I wanted to learn more about
Speaker 1: this idea of people who don't have integrity, which means
Speaker 1: people who don't walk their talk. How do I know
Speaker 1: what to believe in? Do I believe what they say
Speaker 1: or do I believe what they do? And so I
Speaker 1: got very fascinated in learning how to communicate or be
Speaker 1: able to read people in the sense of, you know,
Speaker 1: being able to communicate with them. And that's when I
Speaker 1: discovered that ninety three percent of communication is non verbal.
Speaker 1: It's tonality and body language. So thats what got me
Speaker 1: in It was my curiosity, and so that's what got
Speaker 1: me into it. And then of course I went to
Speaker 1: school for and then I was still working. And then
Speaker 1: when I quit my job, I contemplated going and getting
Speaker 1: my PhD. But I realized that to do what I
Speaker 1: wanted to do, there was no degree for it, so
Speaker 1: I just started studying on my own.
Speaker 4: I love that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you kind of carved your own pathway which combined it,
Speaker 3: or shall we say, integrated lots of your prior life
Speaker 3: as well. You were a student athlete right University of Massachusetts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I played.
Speaker 1: I played sports until you know, in high school and
Speaker 1: then in college. My freshman year I didn't play in
Speaker 1: the sports. And my sophomore year that's when I asked
Speaker 1: go out for the basketball team. That's when I got injured.
Speaker 1: In My career was pretty much over after that injury.
Speaker 3: Did you play on the court with Julie Serving?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, real roommates, But I met him my
Speaker 2: freshman year.
Speaker 3: Were you better than him at that point?
Speaker 2: No, not even in the same category.
Speaker 1: You know, you know, uh, there's some people who were
Speaker 1: basketball players, you know, you know, he's a legend. Then
Speaker 1: there's some people who were has beens and then there's
Speaker 1: people that were never was, never.
Speaker 4: Was he never was.
Speaker 2: I had all potential, but I didn't get to express it. Right.
Speaker 1: We used to play a lot of pick up together,
Speaker 1: and of course the plan was we were roommates. Was
Speaker 1: me to play for the team, And so I went
Speaker 1: out for the team and didn't make it. But I
Speaker 1: still was very involved with the team in the sense
Speaker 1: of being his roommate. And when recruits came on campus,
Speaker 1: I would n't attain them and stuff like that. So
Speaker 1: I still stayed involved. I just wasn't on the court
Speaker 1: like right, So that's the thing. So, yeah, we used
Speaker 1: to play pick up together and and you know, the
Speaker 1: only time I didn't play with him was when he
Speaker 1: was playing for the team because I wasn't on the team.
Speaker 1: But you know, we used to bondstorm sometime, go to
Speaker 1: Connecticut other places, myself, him and a couple of folks
Speaker 1: that we hung with, players that we hung with. We
Speaker 1: would play but so yeah, so I would play with
Speaker 1: him and against them when I was so I want
Speaker 1: a freshman.
Speaker 3: That's so cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So then you know, you had some injuries and that's
Speaker 3: what led to this addiction to pain medication and drugs.
Speaker 3: As you were just talking about.
Speaker 1: Well, I was injury prone even before I got to
Speaker 1: U masked, and so I was on dob On and
Speaker 1: other sorts of drugs they didn't have they didn't have
Speaker 1: sports medicine in those days. And so there was something
Speaker 1: about my consciousness being altered where I was able to,
Speaker 1: you know, basically I was able to, you know, get
Speaker 1: out of my inhibitions. You know, there was something about
Speaker 1: expanding consciousness, and you can do that, it's through medication
Speaker 1: and so yeah. So but I was pretty much controlled,
Speaker 1: and even up until the last until I went into
Speaker 1: the detox, I was. I was a functional on substance abuser.
Speaker 1: In other words, I still worked and I did things,
Speaker 1: but it had an impact on a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: and it prevented me from doing a lot of things.
Speaker 1: But I was functional until I wasn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know this job, I mean, what a perfect
Speaker 3: job for you. You know what you did as a
Speaker 3: mindfulness athletic coach.
Speaker 4: What would it be called? Sports psychologist?
Speaker 1: Thank you for asking, because there was really no title,
Speaker 1: no title, There was no title. I mean the closest
Speaker 1: I came to what really expressed what I did was
Speaker 1: I was talking to my friend Bill Kennedy, we did
Speaker 1: executive coaching together and he said, you're ontological coach and
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, that sounds about right, but nobody would
Speaker 1: know what that meant. And plus it's not it doesn't
Speaker 1: have any snaps. You know on ontological coach the study
Speaker 1: of being. Oh, okay, actually you're doing You're teaching people
Speaker 1: to access the potential and talk about the idea of
Speaker 1: being guilty of not expressing yourself fully or not actually
Speaker 1: developing your potential, but somehow finding ways of hiding out
Speaker 1: or escaping from your freedom. You know these books written
Speaker 1: Escape from Freedom by Eric.
Speaker 4: Frohman, their books, yeah books.
Speaker 1: So for me it was yeah, so I kind of
Speaker 1: lost trained what we were talking about.
Speaker 3: I don't even remember.
Speaker 4: Yeah, how did you? How did you? What are you called?
Speaker 4: What are you called?
Speaker 2: What am I called? Yes? What's my handle?
Speaker 1: So I back in twenty nineteen, I was doing something
Speaker 1: with the Milk and Global Conference and they called me
Speaker 1: the performance whisperer, So I think that's probably more appropriate.
Speaker 1: But for my when my book The Mindful of Athletes
Speaker 1: Secrets Pure Performance came out eight years ago, and I
Speaker 1: was doing a lot of like what I'm doing now
Speaker 1: for Unlocked, going around talking to people and talking about
Speaker 1: my book, and what I realized was was that people
Speaker 1: were really.
Speaker 2: Interested in performance.
Speaker 1: And my definition of performance is obviously, you know, like
Speaker 1: the Denver Nuggets and the joker who is not a joke,
Speaker 1: you know, he you know, you perform well.
Speaker 2: You whatever you're doing, you do it at a high level,
Speaker 2: and you do.
Speaker 1: It consistently the high level or you would say elite
Speaker 1: performance or whatever. And so when I started talking to people,
Speaker 1: people wanted a great like Joseph Campbell talked about in
Speaker 1: The Power Myth, people want a sense of feeling fully alive.
Speaker 1: People want to show up, so meaning, you know, Richter
Speaker 1: Franco talked about meaning you can you can find meaning
Speaker 1: in three different ways, at least three ways, and first
Speaker 1: way is to you know, to create something or do
Speaker 1: a good deed. And then the second way was to
Speaker 1: encounter someone or to experience something. Of course he's talked
Speaker 1: about love there. And the third way was taking a
Speaker 1: stance when you are confronted with unavoidable suffering that you
Speaker 1: choose how to relate to it. So in this space
Speaker 1: between stemas and response, you choose to relate to what's
Speaker 1: happening to you as you know there's a lesson there,
Speaker 1: and you bring grace and dignity to it.
Speaker 2: And you you choose how you want to relate to it.
Speaker 1: You that's that's your expression of freedom is when you
Speaker 1: know it's unavoidable suffering and you're willing to say yes
Speaker 1: to it, embrace it, and to learn from it, and
Speaker 1: to make it a turn a road block into stepping stone.
Speaker 2: So I do all of that.
Speaker 1: So some people, in some domains, a personal organizational development
Speaker 1: consultant would work in a business domain or executive coach
Speaker 1: or something like that, and in the sports arena it
Speaker 1: was sports psychology consultant. And you know, in other places
Speaker 1: it's just teacher, just a teacher or a facilitator or
Speaker 1: a guide, however you want to frame it. So I
Speaker 1: would say teachers probably closer to what I do. I
Speaker 1: teach people about being themselves. That's kind of what I do.
Speaker 1: What I do is I help people find themselves no
Speaker 1: matter where they are. And in my book, I talk
Speaker 1: about it being you know, being unlocked, embrace your greatness,
Speaker 1: firing the flow to discover success. And so my commitment
Speaker 1: is to help anybody, at any time, in any place unlocked.
Speaker 3: Yes, it seems like your definition of greatness is one
Speaker 3: where you are being as uniquely you as possible. It
Speaker 3: doesn't sound like it's a very competitive form of greatness.
Speaker 1: Well, when you're competing at the high level, that's because you,
Speaker 1: as Bruce Lee called it, he talked about martial arches,
Speaker 1: honestly expressing yourself. And so to the degree that you
Speaker 1: have an intention and you're able to bring that intention
Speaker 1: into manifestation in a way where you feel good and
Speaker 1: you feel like you've you've met your commitment and maybe
Speaker 1: then some but you feel you know, you really felt
Speaker 1: like you fully express yourself. That is that's a powerful thing.
Speaker 1: And once again we go back to the existentialists, which
Speaker 1: I get a lot of my stuff from. In this
Speaker 1: in this sense is sore and turkey God. And he said,
Speaker 1: I forget how he said it, but something like a
Speaker 1: general form of despair or an you know, a devastating form.
Speaker 2: Of despair is not being yourself.
Speaker 1: And so there's something when I say that, Well, most
Speaker 1: of us don't know who we are, or we have
Speaker 1: an idea, but we're we're not things. We're not set points,
Speaker 1: we're events, We're always evolving, and changing. And so the
Speaker 1: idea is to be yourself, is to fully be able
Speaker 1: to express yourself or might I say having a fully integratedself.
Speaker 1: And this is I'm going back to Eric from now
Speaker 1: when he talks about this idea of spontaneity of one's
Speaker 1: own will, and you can only be spontaneous when you
Speaker 1: have a fully integratedself.
Speaker 3: You have to wait till then.
Speaker 2: Well here to say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you said that, because nothing is permanent. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this moments of time when you happen to be
Speaker 1: in alignment and you get into flow, you know, when
Speaker 1: you're great your.
Speaker 3: Greatness can I could be spontaneous and you.
Speaker 2: Get in the flow.
Speaker 1: So let me remind us that the old digital clock
Speaker 1: non digital clock is right twice a day, So even
Speaker 1: by accident, you're going to have a moment of being unlocked.
Speaker 1: But the challenge is can you recognize it. And to
Speaker 1: the degree that we can recognize it and learn from it,
Speaker 1: we can replicate it or have that experience more often.
Speaker 1: But we have to be willing to use our self awareness,
Speaker 1: our ability to observe uncritically or some people will call
Speaker 1: it mindfulness, but it's really this idea of letting whatever
Speaker 1: speak to us express itself in its own language. And
Speaker 1: there's something about when we're not pushing it away opponent
Speaker 1: towards us, or spacing out or interpreting what it means
Speaker 1: before we get the full measure of the communication. Once
Speaker 1: we can just be still and know. As they say,
Speaker 1: there's something about that when we can just wash weight
Speaker 1: with the alert and be relaxed at the same time
Speaker 1: as a wisdom and creativity that comes out of that silence,
Speaker 1: that ability to just when we see clearly, then the
Speaker 1: action is clear.
Speaker 2: M Does that make sense?
Speaker 4: Well, yes, it does.
Speaker 3: I like the I like the idea that of effortless effort,
Speaker 3: which encapsulates what you're talking about. I'm going to read
Speaker 3: a quote from the great George Mumford. When we are
Speaker 3: unlocked and in touch with the power within us, in
Speaker 3: touch with our true selves, we move an effortless synchronicity
Speaker 3: with the greater whole life moves in us and through us,
Speaker 3: which is what is going on all the time anyway,
Speaker 3: although we're not in touch with it, mindful of it,
Speaker 3: because our thinking process gets in the way. I think
Speaker 3: that quote encapsulates a lot, a lot.
Speaker 4: I just quoted you.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, that's a pretty I like that.
Speaker 4: That's good. That's good. That's some good ship right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's you know, that's how I say it, That's
Speaker 2: how I do it.
Speaker 1: But that's the thing when you're in flow, and I
Speaker 1: live and flow a lot, and it's not bragg or whatever.
Speaker 2: I'm just challenging myself.
Speaker 1: I'm comfortable being uncomfortable, and I'm the best.
Speaker 2: Way to learn something is to teach it.
Speaker 1: So I'm interested in helping people unlocked, and so that
Speaker 1: means I have to model that and I have to
Speaker 1: understand how to do that and to keep moving out
Speaker 1: of my comfort zone and expanding my potentiality or my
Speaker 1: capacity however you want to look at it. There's something
Speaker 1: that happens when we're challenged, and sometimes for us, some
Speaker 1: of us, is when we're in extreme difficulty excuse me,
Speaker 1: a life or death or an earth sense of urgency,
Speaker 1: that latent abilities having to have the opportunity to express themselves.
Speaker 1: And so it's only through adversity, you know, like if
Speaker 1: everything happened and I didn't have any struggles, or I
Speaker 1: didn't have to deal with Southern's abuse of chronic pain,
Speaker 1: or just get to a point where I want to understand.
Speaker 1: I want to pursue excellence and wisdom with grace and ease.
Speaker 1: The grace and ees wasn't always there, but now it's there,
Speaker 1: and that's when you're on lock. Realize that less there's more,
Speaker 1: and you don't have to do anything. And once again
Speaker 1: we talked about at the beginning of this, I was
Speaker 1: looking for my folder, my holder for my phone. I
Speaker 1: put together the phone in a home so I called
Speaker 1: it a folder instead of holder for the phone.
Speaker 2: It just gotta it kind of happened.
Speaker 1: But but when I when I was looking for it
Speaker 1: and I couldn't find it, and I unlocked once I
Speaker 1: let it go. There's something about unlocked and when you
Speaker 1: let go and you don't try to make something happen,
Speaker 1: you're allow it to happen the effortless effort. It is
Speaker 1: just that I just formed the intention okay, I need
Speaker 1: to find my you know, the phone holder, and then
Speaker 1: being okay with not being able to find it and saying, okay,
Speaker 1: let's just move let's move on. And then as soon
Speaker 1: as I turned my head to move on, oh here
Speaker 1: it is right here. And so we do that all
Speaker 1: the time. There's times when what's happening is we're locked
Speaker 1: up because we're wanting to do something so badly or
Speaker 1: using too much effort or too much you know, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like we make it like a sense of urgency
Speaker 1: when it's coud be e it could be easy lead
Speaker 1: them or we can slow most slowly, smooth, smooth as fast.
Speaker 1: So we have to understand that just by taking the
Speaker 1: extra time to really understand and get a clear picture
Speaker 1: of what's going on, then the action is going to
Speaker 1: be clear because we don't see something, then the action happens.
Speaker 1: They co arise, so you see what I'm saying, And
Speaker 1: that's when it's the Effortless effort is when you're able
Speaker 1: to be open and just let things speak to you
Speaker 1: and when you form the intention, you make an intention
Speaker 1: and then you allow it to happen. Yes, you allow it.
Speaker 1: You're not trying to make it happen. But if you
Speaker 1: don't have the ability to be uncomfortable with have that
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance, as we're talking in psychology, to be comfortable
Speaker 1: with the cognitive dissonance, to be comfortable with delaying gratification,
Speaker 1: when we're able to just be there and just allow things.
Speaker 1: Then there's the effortless effort happens. But we train ourselves
Speaker 1: for that. It's not like it's happening and we didn't
Speaker 1: practice it. No, we got to practice. We got to
Speaker 1: keep developing and acquiring more skills, knowledge and experience. And
Speaker 1: then then when we do that, at least my experience
Speaker 1: is when you do that, then you get to a
Speaker 1: place where you start to see things and even though
Speaker 1: you don't know what you're doing, you do it makes
Speaker 1: any sense, like all the new stuff like you go
Speaker 1: in and eat. Each checkout kind of has a different
Speaker 1: way of being. And I find when I don't try
Speaker 1: to figure out well I'll put it. This has been
Speaker 1: my whole life thing. I'm one of those guys that
Speaker 1: directions is a problem sometimes, especially when I try to
Speaker 1: find my find a place. But if I don't try
Speaker 1: to find a place, I find it. Now It's like,
Speaker 1: so how somehow I get out.
Speaker 2: Of my own way.
Speaker 1: I'm unlocked because I'm not doing what I eventually do
Speaker 1: or saying okay, seeing it from a now point of
Speaker 1: view out of fear, like oh, I don't want to
Speaker 1: get lost, whether rather than just saying it's okay, if
Speaker 1: I get lost, I'll find my way. It's not a
Speaker 1: problem when I can stay open and just allow it
Speaker 1: to happen. And then I learned from my mistakes. So
Speaker 1: you learn from the mistakes and then okay, what's the lesson? Okay,
Speaker 1: but a lot of this stuff, as you might imagine,
Speaker 1: you can't really this is what Joseph Kimmel talked about.
Speaker 2: You know, you can't name it. Some of this stuff.
Speaker 1: You can't name it because it's it's nonlinear, it's beyond
Speaker 1: human resource. But Joseph Camel will call it. But there's
Speaker 1: these instincts, there's these this information we have access to
Speaker 1: that you really can't. Like quantum physics, you can't really
Speaker 1: for a minute, it's a wave. In the next minute,
Speaker 1: it's a particle, but the consciousness and the intention has
Speaker 1: everything to do with collapsing it into a particle rather
Speaker 1: than being a wave of possibility. If that makes any sense.
Speaker 3: Yo, you're spouting some quantum physics over here.
Speaker 2: Yes, well I read about that as well. It's like,
Speaker 2: but it makes sense.
Speaker 1: It makes sense to how this idea, this idea that
Speaker 1: everything that ever happened or will happen already exists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that do you have to be that's got to
Speaker 1: be the quantum field otherwise, you know, it says the
Speaker 1: wave of possibilities there, but how do you bring it
Speaker 1: into manifestation?
Speaker 2: How do you how do you collapse the wave?
Speaker 3: The notion of that and potential is very interesting because
Speaker 3: we don't all have the same potentialities, but we don't
Speaker 3: know what they are until we really put in the
Speaker 3: work to see you know as well.
Speaker 2: Yes, well we all have our own conditioning.
Speaker 1: We all have our raison dantra or something that resonates
Speaker 1: with us that we could do that no one else
Speaker 1: can do. So we're unique in that sense. But unfortunately
Speaker 1: everything we do, all of the schooling and instruction I got,
Speaker 1: is one size fits all. It's very rare that you
Speaker 1: have somebody that says, Okay, George, based on your conditioning,
Speaker 1: this is what we're going to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: How did you get involved in like the the nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety eight was it Chicago Bulls team?
Speaker 2: Were you?
Speaker 3: Were you part of that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It working with them in nineteen ninety three ninety three.
Speaker 4: Okay, so how did you get that job?
Speaker 2: Well, that's a that's a great question. How I got it? Really?
Speaker 2: I was so just fast forwarding.
Speaker 1: So at some point I left my role as a
Speaker 1: financial analyst and then I ended up working I got
Speaker 1: a grant with you Mathe Medical Center to teach mindfulness
Speaker 1: based stress reduction to inmates and substance abuse units. And
Speaker 1: also you set up a satellite clinic on the other
Speaker 1: side of railroad tracks.
Speaker 2: And you know, it was in Worcester, not where the
Speaker 2: clinic was.
Speaker 1: But where we're at the other side of railroad tracks
Speaker 1: where they didn't have a lot of resources. So I
Speaker 1: was involved there working at the clinic and it was
Speaker 1: it was called the stress Reduction Clinic in those days,
Speaker 1: but now they called the Center for Mindfulness or what's
Speaker 1: called when it you know, as it evolved and John
Speaker 1: used to John and Hockey actually they used to do
Speaker 1: go to Omeke Institute which is in Ryne Back, New York,
Speaker 1: and do like a mindful the base stress reduction course
Speaker 1: for clinicians. And at the same time, Phil Jackson used
Speaker 1: to run this workshop called the Basketball and the whole
Speaker 1: intention of the workshop was to raise money for one
Speaker 1: of his teammates when he played for the Knicks, Eddie Mass.
Speaker 2: He had had a heart attack.
Speaker 1: And so he was raising money for his family, so
Speaker 1: they were there together, so they got to know each other,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen ninety three had to fill one in
Speaker 1: the bus won the third championship in a row. Phil
Speaker 1: approached John about getting somebody to help him help the
Speaker 1: guys deal with the stress of success. So they so
Speaker 1: when John talked to him about me and my relationship
Speaker 1: with doctor Jay and being around the pro game before
Speaker 1: and coming from the same kind of neighborhoods a lot
Speaker 1: of his players came from, it made sense that I
Speaker 1: would go in the training camp and that was my intention,
Speaker 1: was to go in and help him deal with the
Speaker 1: stress of success. But by the time I got there,
Speaker 1: they were in full blown crisis because Michael Jordan had retired.
Speaker 1: So that was the beginning of our relationship, my relationship
Speaker 1: with filling and bringing contemplative style mindfulness, if you will,
Speaker 1: a spiritual way of being that had to do with
Speaker 1: dealing with the whole person, not just seeing a basketball
Speaker 1: player likes to shut up and dribble, but seeing them
Speaker 1: basketball player as a whole person, and that you want
Speaker 1: that person to thrive not only on the court.
Speaker 2: But I was but off the court.
Speaker 3: Wow, well didn't he retire? It was ninety six. You
Speaker 3: said you've been there since ninety three.
Speaker 1: I was then ninety three and then ninety eight is
Speaker 1: when they broke up everybody.
Speaker 2: It broke up the team, right, right?
Speaker 3: But when did When was his first retirement? Wasn't it
Speaker 3: like ninety six? Oh maybe it was ninety three?
Speaker 4: Huh yeah?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, he won They won championship
Speaker 1: ninety one, ninety two, ninety three, the ninety four, ninety five.
Speaker 1: Then Michael came back in March of ninety five. So
Speaker 1: then ninety six we won seventy two games out of
Speaker 1: eighty two. Then ninety seven and ninety eight we won
Speaker 1: another three championships, and then Phil took a year off,
Speaker 1: and then when he signed up with the Lakers, he
Speaker 1: brought me along, and so then we won championships in
Speaker 1: two thousand, two thousand one, in two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: two thousand, I believe, two thousand.
Speaker 2: I want to say nine and ten.
Speaker 4: So how many fucking championships have you won? I think
Speaker 4: that's the record for the NBA.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, it's not the record. NOI has Bhil
Speaker 2: has eleven as a coach and two is a player.
Speaker 2: I have eight. I have eight.
Speaker 3: I guess Phil does have the record. Yeah, well hold on, man,
Speaker 3: you have the record for being a mindfulness coach. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you have the mindfulness sports coach record.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have. I have uh five with the Lakers
Speaker 2: and the Bulls.
Speaker 3: Do you have rings? Do they give you rings?
Speaker 2: Uh? Yes, they do give you rings sometimes.
Speaker 3: Because Michael Lewis. Did you know Michael Lewis paying a
Speaker 3: chance the orthropedic surgeon for the Bulls at that time,
Speaker 3: he was on my podcast. He showed me his rings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I probably know of him, but I was mostly
Speaker 1: with the coaches and with you know, not the surgeons,
Speaker 1: but the day to day people, you know, like the
Speaker 1: sports medicine guys like Chip Schaeffer and and the trainers
Speaker 1: and the coaches and some of the.
Speaker 2: Grover Tim Grover Grover.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, yeah, he was on my podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, that's awesome.
Speaker 3: Okay, So you were like over there consoling Scottie Pippen
Speaker 3: when Jordan was retired. Did you help Pippen with mindfulness
Speaker 3: during that time?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I was, I was, I was there, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: was there.
Speaker 4: And did you literally do you talk to Pippin?
Speaker 1: Yeah, talk to everybody at the whole team. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: he did wouldn't go out on the court with the y.
Speaker 1: So the last dance, they interviewed me for the last dance,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't on it, but they interviewed me for
Speaker 1: about an hour. But it was really there was a
Speaker 1: lot of transformation going on that didn't get captured in
Speaker 1: that and the way it was expressed.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I was there for the for the.
Speaker 4: Well, tell me to tell us, this is your time
Speaker 4: to tell us about the I'll interview right now. What's
Speaker 4: what was the transformation?
Speaker 1: The transformation was learning how to how to respond to
Speaker 1: adversity in a way that a road block becomes a
Speaker 1: stepping stone, stepping stones and that sort of thing, but
Speaker 1: also how to how to unlock so that you're able
Speaker 1: to express yourself more, not only individually but collectively. But
Speaker 1: it's coming from the premise that we have this massive piece.
Speaker 1: We have this tremendous potential, unlimited potential inside of each
Speaker 1: one of us that can be accessed, that can be developed,
Speaker 1: but only you can develop it. It's an inside job,
Speaker 1: and to the degree that you develop it, that will
Speaker 1: be expressed in your ability to express yourself fully and
Speaker 1: creatively individually.
Speaker 3: I have unlimited potential. I have unlimited potential.
Speaker 2: Really, you do. You have a massive piece. You have
Speaker 2: a divine spar I do in nature, Christ consciousness. We
Speaker 2: all have it.
Speaker 1: That's the gift of our human birth that we have
Speaker 1: this potentiality. But if you don't develop it, you don't
Speaker 1: own it, if you don't embrace it, like I talk
Speaker 1: about my book, then you won't be able to find
Speaker 1: the flow and you won't discover success on a high
Speaker 1: level consistently.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Look, my whole childhood was the bulls, you know during
Speaker 3: that time period. That's so cool that you you had
Speaker 3: a front row seat to all that. I remember a
Speaker 3: particular game that Jordan in the playoffs. He shot three
Speaker 3: straight three pointers, three pointers in a row, and he
Speaker 3: looked over it like Barkley, I think, or Matt Johnson,
Speaker 3: and he just goes like this, like he's in that.
Speaker 4: And I show that as an ample that was against you.
Speaker 2: Were you there?
Speaker 4: You were there of the game?
Speaker 2: No, I wasn't there. That was before.
Speaker 1: That was the free before. But the thing was, the
Speaker 1: interesting thing was once he did this, couldn't make it anymore.
Speaker 4: You're right, You're right. I never thought about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, this is what I study when you're in flow,
Speaker 1: when you're in the zone, you can't. You got to
Speaker 1: block everybody out. You gotta just keep making place. But
Speaker 1: once you start saying, I don't you stop thinking about
Speaker 1: what are you doing? The thinking gets in the way.
Speaker 1: It stops to flow.
Speaker 3: Yes, I need to my lesson I teach you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I've seen I've seen guys. I won't mention names,
Speaker 1: but i've seen. It's one guy I think he was playing.
Speaker 1: Was he playing for the San Antonio Spurs, But he's
Speaker 1: he's a North Carolina grad.
Speaker 2: I just say that, I want to point him out.
Speaker 2: I think that's the same guy.
Speaker 1: And he was making a lot of threes, and they
Speaker 1: kept interviewing him about it, and they talked him right
Speaker 1: out of it.
Speaker 3: M hm.
Speaker 1: You'll see it. It's a very delicate space. When you
Speaker 1: find the flow, you don't have time to focus on
Speaker 1: other stuff. You need to you need to stay locked in.
Speaker 1: I give you an example. So from nineteen ninety six
Speaker 1: to two thousand and two, in that seven year period,
Speaker 1: Phil Jackson's teams won six six NBA championships in seven years,
Speaker 1: and the only year he didn't win was the year
Speaker 1: he took off and I didn't realize it until I
Speaker 1: was years later when I started looking at it and
Speaker 1: I started thinking.
Speaker 2: About, Okay, so I have to come up with this.
Speaker 1: People want your experience, what you've done, and who you
Speaker 1: work with and that sort of thing. And when I
Speaker 1: looked at it, I said, wow, I never thought about
Speaker 1: it that way because it was always once you win
Speaker 1: a championship, you celebrate for a little bit, but then
Speaker 1: you have to let go and move to the next
Speaker 1: next play the next season, and you do it like
Speaker 1: that and you stay in a moment you don't remember
Speaker 1: and you're not keeping score.
Speaker 2: Really does it make sense? And so that's why you
Speaker 2: make three in the row. You don't worry about it.
Speaker 2: You just keep making. You just keep just make the
Speaker 2: next play. No, it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like this idea of being in the zone.
Speaker 3: It just it does seem to all roads lead to,
Speaker 3: like mindfulness or just being as fully present as possible
Speaker 3: in the moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let me share a little secret with you.
Speaker 3: Uh oh no, no, let's do it.
Speaker 1: The only time you have is now I know, okay,
Speaker 1: and we say that, but we don't really act like
Speaker 1: we know what that means to know and not the
Speaker 1: act is not to know. Okay, So in a moment
Speaker 1: and I'll get I'll share another secret with you right now.
Speaker 2: There's nothing wrong, am I am?
Speaker 3: I just find the way I am right now.
Speaker 2: That's wrong right now, right now.
Speaker 1: The only way is not not right is your mind
Speaker 1: gets in it. And so I was thinking about the
Speaker 1: past of the future, or what you don't have or
Speaker 1: what you're not able to do.
Speaker 3: I love that, love that our mutual friend Sharon souls
Speaker 3: are good love that too.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and that's it.
Speaker 1: And so the only time you have is now, and
Speaker 1: center saying I'll share this because it came this is
Speaker 1: it came out of I don't know where it came from,
Speaker 1: but I got interviewed.
Speaker 2: I think it was.
Speaker 1: I think it was the Tim Ferris and Lewis House,
Speaker 1: the two podcasts I did, and they asked me something
Speaker 1: like what the three things I know or the things important?
Speaker 1: And in both cases I said, the only time we
Speaker 1: have is now. The only person you can truly be
Speaker 1: is yourself, and all you need is love.
Speaker 3: M We could talk about this a long time because
Speaker 3: I think there's a lot of nuance here. It sounds
Speaker 3: like you're interpreting that kind of mental toughness, whatever we
Speaker 3: want to call that, that that they had. You're interpreting
Speaker 3: that as a form of love, is what I'm hearing.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, well you have.
Speaker 1: That's why you have to love the game where you
Speaker 1: have to You have to be in love to be able,
Speaker 1: because when you're in love, you label what you love,
Speaker 1: and you love what you labor for.
Speaker 3: It's love of the work, it's love of the the
Speaker 3: the process.
Speaker 2: It's love of life. Really love love. What did Jesus teach?
Speaker 1: He taught two things, at least my interpretation of Jesus,
Speaker 1: if we want to use them, love everything and forgive
Speaker 1: everything and continue forgiveness. So another way of saying, like
Speaker 1: in basketball, you know you just watch it. If the
Speaker 1: ball sticks, then it's a problem. The defense can deal
Speaker 1: on it. But if there's a player, movement, ball movement,
Speaker 1: life is movement is flowing. So you got to keep
Speaker 1: it moving so you can't get stuck on stuff. You
Speaker 1: got to be able to say, okay, this is it,
Speaker 1: let it go and keep it going, move to the
Speaker 1: next thing, learn what you got to learn, and then
Speaker 1: make the next play.
Speaker 2: Otherwise what will happen? You see it all the time.
Speaker 1: Somebody doesn't get up, they get a controversial call against
Speaker 1: them and they're fighting and there they're still down the
Speaker 1: court even though their body is up the court, and
Speaker 1: so they're not playing their man, they're not present. They've
Speaker 1: taken themselves out of the game. So you have to
Speaker 1: be able to have short a memory, just let it
Speaker 1: go mentally, note what you need to make, and then
Speaker 1: you got to make the next play. You got to reset, reboot, reknew,
Speaker 1: begin again. To do that daily life, not just athletes,
Speaker 1: but us as individuals. Moment the moment, that's how we
Speaker 1: unlocked be You got to be able to let go
Speaker 1: to grow. You got to be able to get comfortable
Speaker 1: being uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: You got to be willing.
Speaker 1: And when you say love, we're talking about openness. This
Speaker 1: embracing saying yes to everything.
Speaker 2: No matter what.
Speaker 3: Thank you for clarification on how you come at it
Speaker 3: and your perception of it.
Speaker 1: Like for me, I've been pursuing excellence and wisdom for
Speaker 1: a long time, but I had mama mentality as well,
Speaker 1: and I was doing it without grace and ease.
Speaker 2: And I would tell you.
Speaker 1: I would tell you that because I know Kobe and
Speaker 1: we were really close that mama. Mentality went from like
Speaker 1: with me being you know, like just moving through and
Speaker 1: just pushing yourself and not being compassionate to yourself or
Speaker 1: because you're just seeing you know, you're just being tough
Speaker 1: but you still care about the others, to getting to
Speaker 1: the point where you realize that you can do it
Speaker 1: with grace and needs and you don't have to hate
Speaker 1: and you don't have to push yourself. You can push
Speaker 1: yourself a certain them ount and say, Okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be more compassionate with myself, and then you'll be able
Speaker 1: to go further slowest smooth, smooth is fast. So by
Speaker 1: doing it and with grace and these it becomes effortless. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: you see what I'm saying, But there's this ability and
Speaker 1: then the process of doing it. Yeah, you're gonna cross
Speaker 1: over the line, but once you're mindful of the crossing
Speaker 1: over the line and how you feel, how it affects you,
Speaker 1: then the next time you do it, you pull back
Speaker 1: and then you bring more compassion, more love into it.
Speaker 1: But that is that's the process of transformation. You understand
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, So you do things, and when you
Speaker 1: do things, it's gonna be rough. It's gonna be, you know.
Speaker 1: But then at some point when you after you've done many,
Speaker 1: many repetitions, you start to realize the slowest, smooth and
Speaker 1: smoothest fast and slow motion gets you there quicker, or
Speaker 1: if you allow it to happen, it happens quicker. And
Speaker 1: I had this conversation with Kobe. The mama mentality, Okay,
Speaker 1: he's going out there, he shoots it. A shot is
Speaker 1: like he's trying to score thirty five points on one.
Speaker 1: So all I said to him was the best way
Speaker 1: to score is not to try to score. That's just
Speaker 1: brace and ease. And then you have sixteen points in
Speaker 1: the first quarter. Now, if he's forcing it, he may
Speaker 1: get eight points, but he's probably making a lot of
Speaker 1: turnovers enforcing things. But if he left the game come
Speaker 1: to him it, there's an efficiency, there's a flow that
Speaker 1: he gets into that allows him to do more because
Speaker 1: he's limiting himself by saying, Okay, I want to score
Speaker 1: thirty two points a game, so that means I got
Speaker 1: the eight points he's quarter doesn't work like that.
Speaker 2: And that's to word, it's non linear. Not linear. When
Speaker 2: I mean nonlinear, that means one plus one's he equals six.
Speaker 1: That's the right brain, if you're if you're left, if
Speaker 1: you're right here like me and the left brain, there's
Speaker 1: one plus one equals two.
Speaker 2: And so you just try to do it.
Speaker 1: But there's a rigidity and there's a locked in this
Speaker 1: about that versus being able to read and see the
Speaker 1: whole picture and just trust it in the moment. If
Speaker 1: you're paying attention, you'll see the opportunity and you'll you'll
Speaker 1: be way better off because it'll be effortless and you'll
Speaker 1: be more fit and effective.
Speaker 3: So let me ask you a question. How does that
Speaker 3: apply to other means of life? So like, how can
Speaker 3: you apply the mama mentality to like helping a relationship
Speaker 3: that's on the rocks or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't quit, don't stop and keep and keep looking
Speaker 1: for a solution, keep making mistakes and correcting them and
Speaker 1: getting the feedback and continuing, don't quit on it, just
Speaker 1: saying Okay, it can be done, and so I'm going
Speaker 1: to commit to doing it.
Speaker 2: I'm full in. I'm all in. Yeah.
Speaker 3: My friend christ to Striker, who I want to introduce
Speaker 3: you to someday. She's amazing. She's working on this book
Speaker 3: about that idea of having she says with heart, But
Speaker 3: heart is putting your all into an athletic. She's an athlete.
Speaker 3: I definitely see where you're coming from, and I definitely
Speaker 3: see your perspective.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and once again, I'm not expecting you to believe
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. I'm just sharing my experience, strength and hope.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying anything that's not out of my direct
Speaker 1: experience place versa.
Speaker 3: I don't expect you to agree with me either, No.
Speaker 1: Exactly, but I'm just saying that. That's what I'm saying is, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can disagree and whatever. And all I'm saying is like,
Speaker 1: if you tell me something, I'm not going to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't believe that the problem is gonna say, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know about that, but I'm going to investigate,
Speaker 1: explore curiosity is true, And that's what I'm saying. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want I don't want somebody to say yes,
Speaker 1: because I want you to have a direct experience of it.
Speaker 1: Once you have a direct experience of it, then you'll
Speaker 1: see for yourself. You won't have to take my word.
Speaker 3: But I'm just pointing, can you tell us a little
Speaker 3: bit about how this might relate to the idea of
Speaker 3: being breathed that you talk about in your new book,
Speaker 3: Harrigal's id notion of being breathed.
Speaker 1: What I mean by being breathed is so this idea,
Speaker 1: we have this idea that we have to breathe consciously.
Speaker 1: It's like the ego wants to say it's doing everything,
Speaker 1: but when we go to sleep at night, we seem
Speaker 1: to be okay breathing. So when you're being breathed, you
Speaker 1: notice that even though you're breathing it, if you just
Speaker 1: be still, you'll notice that the breath have its own
Speaker 1: rhythm and you're being breathed. It means that it's like
Speaker 1: it's like the effortless effort. It's like you do something
Speaker 1: and then the muscle memory and then it becomes a
Speaker 1: way of being where it just happens without you having
Speaker 1: to make it happen. So we have the idea that
Speaker 1: we have to make ourselves breathe, and by doing that,
Speaker 1: we actually disrupt the natural process of inhalation and exhalation,
Speaker 1: the breathing process. But if we can step back and
Speaker 1: observe it, we can see that the breath happens, you know,
Speaker 1: just like just like on some level, and John Cavage
Speaker 1: then used to do this. If you hold your mouth
Speaker 1: in your nose and you don't breathe, when you take
Speaker 1: it off, you'll breathe, or if you breathe all the
Speaker 1: way out, then you'll breathe in automatically. And if you
Speaker 1: breathe all the way in, then you're going to exhale automatically.
Speaker 1: But I'm talking about letting the beach breath cycle. You'll
Speaker 1: have a sense of it where it's just happening without
Speaker 1: your having to make it happen. But we have to
Speaker 1: let go, and we have to you willing to let
Speaker 1: it happen. That's the vulnerability that Brene Brown talks about.
Speaker 1: Vulnerability is power.
Speaker 3: Yes, what I love about your approach is you're in
Speaker 3: the sports world, but you're very being oriented. Yes, and
Speaker 3: you say I really like this. You say, be a
Speaker 3: champion before you win a championship, So that is still
Speaker 3: very being oriented.
Speaker 4: You're saying be.
Speaker 1: That's what it's about being because we're being so I say,
Speaker 1: to be a mindful athlete, to be unlocked as an athlete,
Speaker 1: you got to be unlocked as a person because your
Speaker 1: person and your athletics and your athlete are not distinguishable.
Speaker 1: I mean they're They're both affecting each other. So we're being.
Speaker 1: So when I say being, that means just not doing
Speaker 1: so much, but just being so. If I want love,
Speaker 1: I have to be love. If I want people at
Speaker 1: the bepiece, and if I want clarity, have to be Claire.
Speaker 1: So that's what I'm talking about, and so we're being,
Speaker 1: but we get stuck into doing so. I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this playing the guitar. It's one thing if I'm
Speaker 1: playing the guitar because I'm emulating somebody else. It's another
Speaker 1: thing when I'm playing guitar because it's coming from inside
Speaker 1: of me. The music inside of me is expressing itself
Speaker 1: and it's leading me to play a certain way or
Speaker 1: to do certain things. And we can do more of
Speaker 1: that when we can just notice that. There's a way
Speaker 1: that we can have more access to creativity, which is
Speaker 1: just being spontaneous or just letting the muse take you
Speaker 1: wherever it's gonna take.
Speaker 2: You and you just go with it instead of saying stop.
Speaker 1: Maybe the best way to talk about this is let's
Speaker 1: just say we're doing improv improvisation. That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Being spontaneous and being with life. So an improv if you,
Speaker 1: if you, Scott, offer me something, then I have to
Speaker 1: take it, and then from what you give, then I
Speaker 1: create off of that. Then we're flowing totally. But if
Speaker 1: you take something and I say no to it, it
Speaker 1: breaks the whole flow.
Speaker 3: It does, it does.
Speaker 2: So life is like an improvisation yes and can we
Speaker 2: just see it and say yes and yes?
Speaker 3: And do you know, uh, Kelly Leonard? Do you know
Speaker 3: Kelly Leonard at the second City improv? I don't know
Speaker 3: her to him him, but him, I got him and
Speaker 3: his wife and Anne Lebera. I need to introduce to
Speaker 3: these two. They're they're they're leading the whole yes and movement.
Speaker 3: You'd love them.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's why I talk about I do it at
Speaker 1: home with George every week, and I begin the whole
Speaker 1: session with creating the possibility of saying yes to whatever
Speaker 1: comes up, embracing whatever comes up, and at the same
Speaker 1: time generating hope.
Speaker 2: So that's the way to go is to say yes.
Speaker 1: And of course Vitor Frankel, one of his latest books
Speaker 1: that was released was say Yes to Life. Yeah Yeah,
Speaker 1: So once again, it's out of the suffering that we
Speaker 1: find peace, and that we find secut we can seek
Speaker 1: to understand because there's an urgency there. And that's why
Speaker 1: I came up. I was working with this volleyball team
Speaker 1: once year and I was trying to impart to them
Speaker 1: that they have to get comfortable being uncomfortable, and they
Speaker 1: just weren't really feeling it. And finally in my uh, well,
Speaker 1: it was more aspiration, but I would say desperation, aspirations,
Speaker 1: whatever it was. I said, no struggle, no swag. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I said, I got swagged. I struggle. You got to struggle.
Speaker 1: This is the struggle moment here. These are struggle opportunities.
Speaker 1: And they start laughing. They loved it because I said,
Speaker 1: no struggle, no swag, and that's it. Everybody wants swag,
Speaker 1: but are you willing to struggle for it? Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's how you get it. You get it out of
Speaker 1: the struggle. People don't understand. It's the struggles when our
Speaker 1: latent ability to express itself, so things are going smooth
Speaker 1: and there's nothing happening. We're in that comfort zone, then
Speaker 1: we're not really going to learn as much as we
Speaker 1: will learn if we keep pushing that envelope in a
Speaker 1: compassionate way.
Speaker 3: You say, the idea is not to go to heaven,
Speaker 3: it's to grow to heaven.
Speaker 4: Growth. It takes a lot of struggle, often right.
Speaker 2: Yes and no, yes, and yes and no. It depends
Speaker 2: on the situation, and it depends on your mindset and
Speaker 2: everything else. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: If you see struggle as swag, then it won't be
Speaker 1: a problem. You'll be saying, Okay, more of this, this
Speaker 1: is great. I'm learning, I'm growing, I'm evolving. I learned
Speaker 1: from my mistakes, so it's okay for me to make mistakes,
Speaker 1: whereas somebody's trying not to make mistakes. By not making mistakes,
Speaker 1: you're not growing, you're not evolving. You're safe. Like I
Speaker 1: like to say, just chemera causes a sarcophagus or coffin.
Speaker 1: It's nice and you know safe and in there. But
Speaker 1: you're a stiff.
Speaker 2: That's not life. There's no movement.
Speaker 3: What do you think of people these days treating all
Speaker 3: on the TikTok, treating all sorts of minor things as
Speaker 3: they're calling it traumas. I feel like this generation kind
Speaker 3: of views everything as a trauma.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I think words get co opted, they do, and then
Speaker 1: people make a mean what they wanted to mean. And
Speaker 1: that's why you can't go by the meaning of the world.
Speaker 1: You got to go by what the person means by
Speaker 1: that meaning of the word. And so because you know,
Speaker 1: I can tell you what my work was with young
Speaker 1: folks and people in general, and there's times and I
Speaker 1: be working with coaches and whatever, and the student athlete
Speaker 1: or the athletes were working with swears that they're working hard,
Speaker 1: and compared to my experience, compared to my definition of
Speaker 1: work man, there would.
Speaker 2: No hard work.
Speaker 1: Keep them bit them in the butt. Yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: the interpretation of it. But that's where they are. But
Speaker 1: you know, at the same time, there's some things they did,
Speaker 1: like when I when I was taught how to swim,
Speaker 1: I was thrown in twelve feet of water and I
Speaker 1: was on my own.
Speaker 2: Now they would call that child abuse now, but back
Speaker 2: in the day, that's what that's what they did.
Speaker 1: So everybody has their own level of pain or understanding,
Speaker 1: and so for them it might be traumatic because maybe
Speaker 1: they don't have the foundation that you or I had when.
Speaker 2: We were growing up.
Speaker 1: So we have to listen to them and understand what
Speaker 1: they what do they mean by trauma? They say it
Speaker 1: but what do they mean? So you gotta have they
Speaker 1: got to give you an example of what that if
Speaker 1: they could give you on a scamp or not that
Speaker 1: they have to, if they could give you an example
Speaker 1: of what that means and what they felt and what
Speaker 1: they were seeing, you might discover that, you know, you could.
Speaker 2: There's this old adage that you know this.
Speaker 1: You see this singing, you know, in the grass or
Speaker 1: on the street, and you think it's a snake and
Speaker 1: you walk up on it and you realize it's just
Speaker 1: a rope.
Speaker 2: But you interpreted it, you saw it a certain way.
Speaker 1: So I could say, well, I'm going to have trauma
Speaker 1: if I'm seeing a snake when it's this rope. But
Speaker 1: does it mean that trauma is not real? Yeah, it's real,
Speaker 1: but it's based on a faulty a faulty perception.
Speaker 3: M there's a part in your book that I will
Speaker 3: kind of end here today on this that I thought
Speaker 3: was really profound. You were working with this student athlete
Speaker 3: who said he wants to be like Kobe. He just
Speaker 3: kept saying, make me like Kobe, and you said, you
Speaker 3: know you're like, okay, well well how about you try
Speaker 3: being yourself? And man, I thought that that dialogue was
Speaker 3: really powerful. Can you kind of talk about that moment
Speaker 3: a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: I always speak from my own experience when I first
Speaker 1: started playing the guitar and all my friends that my
Speaker 1: brother and friends that play instruments. When you start playing something,
Speaker 1: you emulate the best or you try to play like
Speaker 1: so and So's playing, and then at some point you
Speaker 1: got to make your own music.
Speaker 2: That makes sense what I'm saying. So, but it's challenging.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you look at Tiger, you look
Speaker 1: at the Williams sisters, and there's probably the other folks
Speaker 1: that has some point.
Speaker 2: That's why they have rituals. You know.
Speaker 1: Joseph Cambral talked about when the young man gets to
Speaker 1: be a certain age, he's got to go off in
Speaker 1: the woods and he's got to go through his vision
Speaker 1: question or whatever.
Speaker 2: But we have to go from.
Speaker 1: Dependency, the independency to interdependency. Does that make any sense?
Speaker 1: So there's an evolution that we have to go through
Speaker 1: and we have to figure it out on our own.
Speaker 1: But we start off emulating each other and having role models.
Speaker 1: But I would say, because I feel like I've been
Speaker 1: involved in the lineage, if I call it that when
Speaker 1: I room with Doctor J and I've seen his evolution.
Speaker 2: Then I work with with Michael, then I worked with Kobe,
Speaker 2: and so I know that the Doctor J. You know
Speaker 2: his game.
Speaker 1: They used to call him Mini Hawk because Tonnie Hawkins
Speaker 1: had an impact because he had big hands, he played
Speaker 1: a certain way and and so I think, you know,
Speaker 1: we stand on this on the shoulders of giants elgim Bele.
Speaker 1: I probably assume that Julia learn from him as well. Well,
Speaker 1: all those all of those forwards that that was similar
Speaker 1: to him, you know, a long reachs, big hands and whatnot.
Speaker 2: That.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think that we start off emulating and
Speaker 1: we have to understand how other people did it, but
Speaker 1: then we have to make it our own. And that's
Speaker 1: what I mean, like, yeah, that's great, you could be
Speaker 1: like him, but you have to be like him based
Speaker 1: on who you are, your authentic expression, because authenticity of
Speaker 1: being real is really important.
Speaker 2: And that's because if we know we're not real, it's
Speaker 2: like fake it. Do you make it? You ain't gonna
Speaker 2: make it because you know you're fake. But if you
Speaker 2: act as if, now that's something else, that's the being thing.
Speaker 2: If you want to if you want to be a champion,
Speaker 2: you gotta act like one. You've gotta think film behave
Speaker 2: like a champion, and behave your way into it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of wisdom there. You know, the
Speaker 3: commercial be like Mike, Maybe it should have been a
Speaker 3: different tagline like be like Mike in your own style
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, the thing is God, that's interesting because I think
Speaker 1: what commercials do when they say be like Mike, they're
Speaker 1: saying be successful, be as good as Mike.
Speaker 2: But you have to do it in your own way.
Speaker 1: But people want to emulate or they want to see professional,
Speaker 1: they want to see what it feels like to be
Speaker 1: competing at an elite level now now, and then there's
Speaker 1: the trans there's a trans How do you express that
Speaker 1: spirit of what he's doing, not exactly what he's doing,
Speaker 1: the spirit of what he's doing.
Speaker 2: How do you express that in your own way?
Speaker 1: And so you can look at you know, I can
Speaker 1: look at Michael and say that, Okay, here's somebody who
Speaker 1: got cut from his high school basketball team. Now he
Speaker 1: did grow, but he but by the time I saw
Speaker 1: him with the Bulls, he was playing as if he
Speaker 1: was trying to make the team.
Speaker 4: M HM.
Speaker 1: So you can see you can take failure and they
Speaker 1: can end up being the launching pad for you to
Speaker 1: go to greatness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what that's that's what's possible for us.
Speaker 1: But it's the mindset, and it's saying, Okay, I'm never
Speaker 1: going to get cut again, and at the same time,
Speaker 1: or I make a shot in the NCAA Championship game
Speaker 1: and I go from Mike Jordan to Michael Jordan.
Speaker 2: So it's how you interpret your experience.
Speaker 1: And what I'm saying is we have this, we have
Speaker 1: that be like Mike's potential, but not exactly like him,
Speaker 1: but maybe in our own domain. And it might just
Speaker 1: be that we're the greatest husband or we're the greatest
Speaker 1: person working doing what we're doing, but we're bringing that
Speaker 1: mentality of always trying to get better, always looking to.
Speaker 2: Express ourselves more and to push that envelope.
Speaker 3: I'm going to leave here with by quoting the great
Speaker 3: George Mumford. He says, recover your true self, the masterpiece within,
Speaker 3: and bring it forth out into the world, share it.
Speaker 3: That is how I live and I invite you to
Speaker 3: live that way too. Thank you, George Mumford for being
Speaker 3: my podcast and having this lively discussion with me.
Speaker 2: You're welcome, Scott. I appreciate being here and I love
Speaker 2: your questions.
Speaker 4: Oh, thank you, thank you. I'm a curious George. I'm
Speaker 4: a curious George.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I used to read.
Speaker 1: He just graduated from from Brown with a pac in history,
Speaker 1: so maybe there's something about that.
Speaker 2: Curious George.
Speaker 4: Congratulations to him.
Speaker 3: That's awesome. Thank you, George. I have a good one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 3: If you'd like to react in some way to something
Speaker 3: you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion
Speaker 3: at the Psychology podcast dot com. We're on our YouTube
Speaker 3: page the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 4: We also put up some videos.
Speaker 3: Of some episodes on our YouTube page as well, so
Speaker 3: you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being such
Speaker 3: a great supporter of the show, and tune in next
Speaker 3: time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.