Speaker 1: We have choices, and we can have wise choices, and
Speaker 1: we can choose if we can slow things down enough
Speaker 1: to have that space, bechige stomnas and respond to choose wisely,
Speaker 1: to choose in alignment with not only our values, but
Speaker 1: how the universe works.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moved in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: Our guest on this episode is George Mumford, a globally
Speaker 2: recognized speaker, teacher and coach. Since nineteen eighty nine, he's
Speaker 2: been honing his groundbreaking performance and mindfulness techniques with people
Speaker 2: from locker rooms to boardrooms, from Yale to jail. Michael
Speaker 2: Jordan credits George with transforming his on court leadership, while
Speaker 2: Mumford has also worked with Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neil, and
Speaker 2: countless other NBA players, olympians, executives and artists. Today, George
Speaker 2: and Eric discuss his new book, Unlocked, Embrace your Greatness,
Speaker 2: Find the Flow, Discover Success.
Speaker 3: Hi, George, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Hi, it's great to be here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on. I've been
Speaker 3: following your work for a number of years, and today
Speaker 3: we're going to be talking about your latest book, which
Speaker 3: is called Unlocked, Embrace your Greatness, Find the Flow, and
Speaker 3: Discover Success. But before we do that, we'll start, like
Speaker 3: we always do, with a parable. In the parable, there's
Speaker 3: a grandparent who's talking to their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 3: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 3: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 3: other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 3: hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. I think about
Speaker 3: it for a second they look up at their grandparents,
Speaker 3: they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says,
Speaker 3: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 3: by asking you what that parable means to you in
Speaker 3: your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Thank you for asking that. That's a prime directive in
Speaker 1: my work, did I do? I use that story. I've
Speaker 1: summarized it down to fear and love, Yeah, which is
Speaker 1: the same principle and as the one that you feed,
Speaker 1: and so I use that.
Speaker 4: That's the essence of what I teach is.
Speaker 1: That you have to be clear about are you feeding
Speaker 1: the love wolf or the fail wolf? Because if you
Speaker 1: feed the love wolf, then you're going to be open
Speaker 1: and you're going to have access to your masterpiece within
Speaker 1: you're going to be able to unlock. As long as
Speaker 1: you're in the fail wolf, you're going to be in
Speaker 1: the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.
Speaker 4: I guess is another word for it.
Speaker 1: But you're going to be on your heels and you're
Speaker 1: going to be reactive, and you're going to be in
Speaker 1: scarcity mode.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love that. Listener As you're listening, what resonated with
Speaker 3: you in that? I think a lot of us have
Speaker 3: some ideas of things that we can do to feed
Speaker 3: our good wolf, and here's a good tip to make
Speaker 3: it more likely that you do it. It can be
Speaker 3: really helpful to reflect right before you do that thing
Speaker 3: on why you want to do it. Our brains are
Speaker 3: always making a calculation of what neuroscientists would call reward value, basically,
Speaker 3: is this thing worth doing? And so when you're getting
Speaker 3: ready to do this thing that you want to do
Speaker 3: to feed your good wolf, reflecting on why actually helps
Speaker 3: to make the reward value on that higher and makes
Speaker 3: it more likely that you're going to do that. For example,
Speaker 3: if what you're trying to do is exercise, right before
Speaker 3: you're getting ready to exercise, it can be useful to
Speaker 3: remind yourself of why, for example, I want to exercise
Speaker 3: because it makes my mental and emotional health better today.
Speaker 3: If you'd like a step by step guide for how
Speaker 3: you can easily build new habits that feed your good wolf,
Speaker 3: go to goodwolf dot me, slash change and join the
Speaker 3: free masterclass. I love the way you've sort of boiled
Speaker 3: that down to you know, fear and love, So I
Speaker 3: want to talk a little bit because you know you've
Speaker 3: done work ranging from the top of the top pro athletes,
Speaker 3: Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, those type of people. And you
Speaker 3: also have done a lot of work in prisons, where
Speaker 3: we might say people are sort of at the bottom
Speaker 3: of the bottom, right, And you talk about this idea
Speaker 3: that greatness can be discovered in every one of us,
Speaker 3: And I'm curious, how do we think about that if
Speaker 3: we think about it from a few different levels, right,
Speaker 3: One level is the Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan's right, But
Speaker 3: you also coach teams in general, and so you know,
Speaker 3: the next level might be your average pro athlete, right,
Speaker 3: you know, and then let's talk about somebody like me,
Speaker 3: and then let's finally talk about somebody in prison. What
Speaker 3: is the common thread that allows each of us to
Speaker 3: use the word great in our own lives?
Speaker 4: Here?
Speaker 1: Thank you for asking and this interesting I see my
Speaker 1: mind working as you were asking the question. And so
Speaker 1: when you think of Michelangelo or Michael Angelo, depending on
Speaker 1: how you pronounce his name, when he was being interviewed
Speaker 1: back in the day and they asked him, well, how
Speaker 1: do you create these masterpieces out of these blocks of marble?
Speaker 1: And he says, all I do is chip away to
Speaker 1: get to the masterpiece that's already there. And so in
Speaker 1: my mind, whether I'm doing that work that Michael Angelo
Speaker 1: was doing and in or in a sports facility, it's
Speaker 1: the same work, even though the marble might be in
Speaker 1: a different location. Whether you're in prison or your jail, yeah,
Speaker 1: locker room, boardroom, you represent that block of marble. And
Speaker 1: then the question becomes, how do you tip away to
Speaker 1: get to the masterpiece thats already in there. So it's
Speaker 1: the same work even though they're in different places. Now
Speaker 1: how they manifest would be different. But my job is
Speaker 1: just to release the device park but a masterpiece within,
Speaker 1: and how they express themselves, well, that's up to them.
Speaker 4: My job is to help them access it.
Speaker 1: But you might say, and it's interesting because back years
Speaker 1: ago it was this guy's name was Matthew Fox. He
Speaker 1: was a Dominican priest and he wrote a book called
Speaker 1: The Original Blessing.
Speaker 4: Yep, I think we've had mass I would be more
Speaker 4: in alignment with that, in other words, like we have salvation.
Speaker 4: We have this masterpiece within, this greatness within, and it
Speaker 4: could be accessed. But the interesting thing is.
Speaker 1: Whether you're and Yale or jail, locker room or boarding room,
Speaker 1: the interesting thing is it can only be access.
Speaker 4: It's an inside game by you.
Speaker 1: So my job is to help the person embrace their
Speaker 1: greatness so that they can find the flow, so they
Speaker 1: can discover success.
Speaker 4: But that's the challenge.
Speaker 1: But the work is the same whether it's in a
Speaker 1: jail or in a locker room, whether you're Kobe Bryant
Speaker 1: or you're just every day Joe or Sally, it's the
Speaker 1: same work as how do you unlock? And that's the
Speaker 1: process we get involved in, is unlocking. So we're starting
Speaker 1: off from a basic premise that there's nothing wrong. It's
Speaker 1: just a matter of uncovering or releasing a divine spark,
Speaker 1: if you want to call it that.
Speaker 3: Do you know when they interviewed Michelangelo about that? Did
Speaker 3: they do it on a podcast?
Speaker 4: I can't.
Speaker 3: I can't remember.
Speaker 4: Yeah it was.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was in secret or in
Speaker 1: the public square, because back in those days there's something
Speaker 1: you couldn't talk about and survive. So I'm not really right,
Speaker 1: that's right. I'm not really sure what the context was.
Speaker 1: But conversation is interesting. The conversation is the same conversation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So going back to what you said earlier about fear,
Speaker 3: and love.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: When we think of greatness, right, one of the things
Speaker 3: we have a tendency to do is compare ourselves to
Speaker 3: things that we see outside of us that are great, right,
Speaker 3: And so we could say that's a little bit more
Speaker 3: of the fear mode. It's the fear mode. And I
Speaker 3: think you know, when people are looking at greatness, they're
Speaker 3: thinking about performance often, right, But I don't think that's
Speaker 3: quite what we're talking about here, because obviously you could
Speaker 3: unlock the best version of me, right, but I'm never
Speaker 3: going to play basketball like I mean, even an average
Speaker 3: college athlete right at my breast. So and somebody in prison,
Speaker 3: the number of things that they actually are able to
Speaker 3: do is very restricted. So how do you transition someone
Speaker 3: from an external concept of greatness to an internal concept
Speaker 3: of greatness? Because I think that's what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, So we call the locus of control. It
Speaker 1: is internal. It's always been internal. But we have been
Speaker 1: programmed to think that everything's out here, that the environment,
Speaker 1: places and things give us value. And what we discover
Speaker 1: is that we have our own unique value and we
Speaker 1: have to go inside to figure out what that is.
Speaker 1: So one size does not fit all. So maybe One
Speaker 1: person values to play basketball, another person values to write poetry.
Speaker 1: Another person's value is be a leader, be able to
Speaker 1: bring people together, or be able to help people help themselves.
Speaker 1: So we all have this uniqueness, and there's only one
Speaker 1: of us. So I would say, I think of you, Eric.
Speaker 1: There never will be or never was, anybody like you.
Speaker 1: In your essence, what's inside your masterpiece? And so your
Speaker 1: job is to be you. I can't tell you what
Speaker 1: that is. That's an inside job. But if you follow
Speaker 1: your bless you follow your heart. If you pay attention,
Speaker 1: that's still small voice, it's easily drawn out, will help
Speaker 1: you access you know why you were here and how
Speaker 1: you can do things in your particular, unique way. And
Speaker 1: that's what we need. We need everybody to be themselves.
Speaker 1: And I'll go back to what I refer to Soar
Speaker 1: and careca God, this existential philosopher of going back in
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds. One thing he said is the most
Speaker 1: devastating kind of despair is not being yourself. And so
Speaker 1: that's our job to be ourselves. But what gets in
Speaker 1: the way is what he called the allowing possibility of
Speaker 1: being able. So if I take a quarter a coin
Speaker 1: and one side is heads, that's my potential, that's my freedom.
Speaker 1: The other side is tails, that's uncertain, the anxiety. They
Speaker 1: come together, and so I would say our biggest challenge
Speaker 1: is being able to overcome the anxiety that comes with
Speaker 1: the freedom. And I believe they called it an existential
Speaker 1: psychotherapy or philosophy.
Speaker 4: They called it the dizziness of freedom.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like you're walking on shaky ground because
Speaker 1: you're embracing that unknown.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, one of the
Speaker 3: great things about modern society is the degree of freedom
Speaker 3: that we largely have. And it is dizzying for many
Speaker 3: many people because many of the old rules about who
Speaker 3: to be, how to be they're not there anymore in
Speaker 3: the way that they were. And so in addition to
Speaker 3: being like, if you want to be a good person, right,
Speaker 3: it's a lot of work to be a good person,
Speaker 3: just like living up to it.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: But on top of that, right, we kind of got
Speaker 3: to figure out what that means at the same time. Right,
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of work to be done there,
Speaker 3: I think, and being the person we want to be
Speaker 3: because we have to figure out what does that actually
Speaker 3: mean to me, which is you know, this gets to
Speaker 3: the dizziness of freedom piece. And then the second part is, now,
Speaker 3: how do I actually live that? Although I do think that,
Speaker 3: you know, I know you've studied extensively in the Buddhist tradition,
Speaker 3: so there are frameworks and reference points that we can
Speaker 3: use as guide posts, so that freedom isn't quite so dizzy.
Speaker 3: Would you say?
Speaker 1: Yes, Well, when you really think about it, you can
Speaker 1: be spontaneous or of one's free will. But it's really
Speaker 1: challenging to do because we get challenged when we do that.
Speaker 1: And so from a point of view, what we're really
Speaker 1: talking about when we're talking about freedom, and it's interesting
Speaker 1: depending on your circumstance.
Speaker 4: So I'll talk about Victor Frankel.
Speaker 1: You know, he wrote the book Man Search for Meeting,
Speaker 1: and he was in a concentration camp, and he said
Speaker 1: that man's ultimate freedom is no matter what happens to us,
Speaker 1: we get to choose how we react to respond to it.
Speaker 1: In that space, the other freedom and power to choose,
Speaker 1: and so.
Speaker 4: On your way. You know, if you have unavoidable.
Speaker 1: Suffering, whether it's cancer or just something really bad happens
Speaker 1: to you, something that's very devastating, like.
Speaker 4: A loss of yourself or a loved one or the.
Speaker 1: Way of being that you always can choose the attitude
Speaker 1: or how you interpret what it means.
Speaker 4: And that's the ultimate freedom.
Speaker 1: And so being in a concentration camp, you're right, you
Speaker 1: don't have liberty, but you have freedom in your mind
Speaker 1: because you can choose to let things affect you or
Speaker 1: you can choose to interpret them in ways.
Speaker 4: That empower and aspire you. So that's the ultimate freedom.
Speaker 1: Now, a lot of us make choices, but how do
Speaker 1: you choose when you're about to die or you have
Speaker 1: the choice of saving yourself or doing what's right, being
Speaker 1: selfish or being selfless.
Speaker 4: And so that's the ultimate freedom. And so we.
Speaker 1: Always have choice, and even when we don't make a choice,
Speaker 1: you're choosing. And so that's the main thing that I
Speaker 1: love about this is like I am responsible. I have
Speaker 1: self awareness, And because I have self awareness, I can
Speaker 1: self regulate. I can regulate my thoughts, feeling, behaviors. I
Speaker 1: can choose to create space between stemus and response. And
Speaker 1: in that space, I have the freedom and power to choose,
Speaker 1: and I can choose based on my values, based on
Speaker 1: what I believe is important.
Speaker 4: But I get to choose that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love Victor Frankele and that idea of the
Speaker 3: space between stimulus and response was transformational to me the
Speaker 3: first time I heard it. And I think you and
Speaker 3: I talked before getting on the air that we're both
Speaker 3: recovering IV heroin users, right, And you know, a big
Speaker 3: part of recovery for me was recognizing there is that
Speaker 3: space between stimulus and response.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: If there wasn't, I never could have gotten better.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: It was recognizing that, Okay, the stimulus is here telling
Speaker 3: me I should use drugs, but there is a space
Speaker 3: and I can choose it. And you know, my understanding
Speaker 3: of a lot of meditation, mindfulness awareness practices for me
Speaker 3: is that it increases that space. Right, Yes, it makes
Speaker 3: that space bigger, ris.
Speaker 1: It gets us out of reactivity and into being in
Speaker 1: a moment as it is and seeing it in new
Speaker 1: and fresh ways. So if we get out of our
Speaker 1: habitual ways of being and recognize this idea of wisdom
Speaker 1: begins in wonder or can we look at the unfolding,
Speaker 1: unknown moment with fresh eyes, with a beginner's mind, where
Speaker 1: the mind it's open to everything and not limited to
Speaker 1: what we already know or what we expect, but really
Speaker 1: just being willing to be vulnerable enough to let the
Speaker 1: unfolding unknown moment express itself as it is.
Speaker 3: You talk about awareness a lot and acceptance right of
Speaker 3: the moment as it is. And at the same time
Speaker 3: you are also considered a performance coach, right, right, So
Speaker 3: you're not teaching people just be with what is, and
Speaker 3: that's the way it is, right. I think you're pointing
Speaker 3: towards this awareness and this saying yes to the moment
Speaker 3: as it is as a step on the way to
Speaker 3: then being able to make the best response and to
Speaker 3: become better versions of ourselves. So the sort of yes
Speaker 3: to life is not an ending point, it's kind of
Speaker 3: a beginning point. I think, Yes, the way you're talking
Speaker 3: about it, right.
Speaker 4: Yes, thank you for sharing that. And awareness I'm talking
Speaker 4: about is like a mirror mind. It's just reflects what's
Speaker 4: in front of it. It's not an interpretation. It's just
Speaker 4: letting things speak in their own language. And so I
Speaker 4: talk about the four a's.
Speaker 1: So the four a's are awareness, aceptance, compassionate, action, and
Speaker 1: assessment and so be able to say yes to what's there.
Speaker 1: But saying yes is not just having the reflection of
Speaker 1: seeing it, but it's accepting it as it is. It
Speaker 1: is the acceptance of it. Yes, saying yes to it
Speaker 1: is the acceptance of it. But without accepting it, we
Speaker 1: won't see it. And so there's this combination of accepting
Speaker 1: and seeing it and then the compassionate action, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, based on this based between stemising response. Whatever
Speaker 1: my values are, if I value life from about love
Speaker 1: and compassion and seeking to understand, then that action, that
Speaker 1: choice that I make is going to be in alignment
Speaker 1: with those values. And then afterwards the fourth of the assessment,
Speaker 1: that's where we reflect on experience, because true understanding comes
Speaker 1: from reflecting on experience. So we reflect on it, well,
Speaker 1: you know, was that helpful or was it not helpful?
Speaker 1: And if it wasn't helpful, how do I get what
Speaker 1: wasn't helpful to be helpful?
Speaker 4: But it's just as.
Speaker 1: The saying goes unexamined, life is not worth living. You
Speaker 1: got to examine it, and you examine it. Why Because
Speaker 1: we have this ability to self regulate, to change what
Speaker 1: we're doing so that we can get a different result.
Speaker 4: We're not locked in, we're not boxed in.
Speaker 1: We have choices, and we can have wise choices, and
Speaker 1: we can choose if we can slow things down enough
Speaker 1: to have that space, you change stemnus and response to
Speaker 1: choose widely, to choose in alignment with not only our values,
Speaker 1: but how the universe works. So I give you an example.
Speaker 1: You don't have to believe in gravity, but it's lawfulness.
Speaker 1: If you jump up, you will come down. It's nothing
Speaker 1: about believing. It's just the way things are. So once
Speaker 1: you embrace that, then you can use gravity to do
Speaker 1: whatever you need to do because you're working in alignment
Speaker 1: with how it works. And I can say that about
Speaker 1: a lot of other things. This is a friend of
Speaker 1: the universe if you see it that way, and there's
Speaker 1: a lawfulness to it. And there's certain principles that don't change.
Speaker 1: Principles don't change their timeless the universal, and they's self evident.
Speaker 1: I know for myself that whatever I give, I get back.
Speaker 1: So if I get if you grief, I'm going to
Speaker 1: get grief back. If I give you love, I'm going
Speaker 1: to give love back. There's a lawfulness in this universe.
Speaker 1: If I'm coming out of that fear you talked about,
Speaker 1: then I'm going to be coming from scarcity and I'm probably.
Speaker 4: Going to be more hostile or more fearful.
Speaker 1: If I come from love, from an openness, I'm coming
Speaker 1: from abundance. I'm coming from this place that says, Okay,
Speaker 1: something happens, I make a mistake, but I can learn
Speaker 1: from it.
Speaker 4: I can correct it.
Speaker 1: Versus I made a mistake, I am a bad person
Speaker 1: and there's nothing I can do about it.
Speaker 4: No, you just have to be willing to understand.
Speaker 1: How do I the how to question, how do I
Speaker 1: do what I say I want to do? Even though
Speaker 1: I got feedback just said that didn't work. Am I
Speaker 1: willing to learn and practice so that I could do it.
Speaker 3: I'm going to come up with a pretend scenario here.
Speaker 3: I'm a coach of a I don't know a university
Speaker 3: sports team, and I've got a player who has a
Speaker 3: lot of potential, but they're not really living into it.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: We look at them and go, well, why are they
Speaker 3: not better? And obviously, you know, we as the coaches,
Speaker 3: are working on the X and o's of their game,
Speaker 3: their shooting technique, all that kind of stuff, So you
Speaker 3: don't come in to help with that piece of it.
Speaker 3: But when you come in, you know, how do you
Speaker 3: start with someone and how do you work with them
Speaker 3: on getting to and we're going to talk about this later.
Speaker 3: You don't like the term peak performance, you like the
Speaker 3: term pure performance, and we'll get to that. But how
Speaker 3: do you work with somebody on improving their performance? Like?
Speaker 3: What things are you looking for? What kind of questions
Speaker 3: are you asking? What does this look like?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so basically I come in and I ask them
Speaker 1: what do you want? And then based on that then
Speaker 1: they'll say, okay, So if you want something, you have
Speaker 1: to be something. And so meeting them where they are
Speaker 1: and really getting clear because sometimes you go in and
Speaker 1: they may be doing something they don't really want to do,
Speaker 1: or they might be doing it because somebody else wants
Speaker 1: them to do it. So the first thing I do
Speaker 1: is understand what's your intention?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 1: In other words, I want to teach them the self
Speaker 1: awareness and the self regulation. So basically it's like you
Speaker 1: have self awayenness as you were responsible, and if you
Speaker 1: don't like what you're getting.
Speaker 4: Then you can do something about it. You have a masterpiece.
Speaker 1: You have this ability to change how you see yourself,
Speaker 1: what you're doing. And normally, when somebody is talented and
Speaker 1: they're not able to express that talent, it's because there's
Speaker 1: something in the way, some self limiting belief and normally
Speaker 1: it has to do with their self concept, how they
Speaker 1: see themselves, and so just really getting clear about that.
Speaker 1: Or it may be that they say didn't want to
Speaker 1: do it, but they don't really want to do it,
Speaker 1: So it's just really getting on. It's getting clear with
Speaker 1: you know, who are you and why are you here?
Speaker 1: Because that's usually the question I asked. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're here, Why are you here? What's your intention? You know,
Speaker 1: do you have a goal? Do you have an idea?
Speaker 1: I work with this one football player. His goal was
Speaker 1: to make the team, so he tried out for the team,
Speaker 1: made it, but then he didn't have anything else, so
Speaker 1: he had to set another goal.
Speaker 4: You know, Okay, you made the team.
Speaker 1: So you have to keep engaging yourself, keep challenging yourself,
Speaker 1: or keep that intention for being able to do something alive.
Speaker 3: So, assuming we've got someone and we are at the
Speaker 3: point where, you know, we know that they want to
Speaker 3: be doing what they're doing, they've got the right goal
Speaker 3: right right, but they're still just not getting there kind
Speaker 3: of where do you go next? What's the next things
Speaker 3: that you start looking at with them?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you want to look at what's in the way,
Speaker 1: what's getting in the way, And it could be a
Speaker 1: variety of things, but basically, one scenario might be that
Speaker 1: they want to do it, but unconsciously they don't think
Speaker 1: they deserve it, or they don't think they're as good
Speaker 1: as they could be as the self image, how they
Speaker 1: think feel behave about themselves. But whatever it is in
Speaker 1: the way, they could be maybe something happened when they
Speaker 1: were younger.
Speaker 4: And they just don't think that they can succeed.
Speaker 1: Maybe they ever finish anything, or whatever it is, or
Speaker 1: could be somebody who told them that they were never
Speaker 1: going to amount to anything. There's some self limiting belief
Speaker 1: that's in there, that operating, and so then that becomes
Speaker 1: the work. What's in the way becomes away, as Marcus
Speaker 1: really has said centuries ago, what's in the way becomes
Speaker 1: a way. But just knowing that something is off, or
Speaker 1: something's missing, or he's just not clicking. And usually they
Speaker 1: could be you know, if I look at the whole person,
Speaker 1: the body of the mind, heart and the soul or spirit,
Speaker 1: it could be something in there. It could be that
Speaker 1: maybe they're wanting to please somebody, maybe they're playing because
Speaker 1: of their parents, or they want to please the coach
Speaker 1: instead of just being able to just play for themselves
Speaker 1: just to really be enjoying it. So a lot of people,
Speaker 1: I would say the main things that I encounter a
Speaker 1: lot people try too hard. They want it too badly,
Speaker 1: and they're trying too hard and they're efforting and they're
Speaker 1: trying hard and nackets in a way instead of them
Speaker 1: just performing and being okay to make mistakes. So the
Speaker 1: fear of failure could be there, to fear success, It
Speaker 1: could be something, but it's you know, like we talked
Speaker 1: about it, they're feeding the fair wolf and the fair
Speaker 1: wolf is dominating, and as a result of that, they're
Speaker 1: withholding or they're trying too harder, they're not trying hard enough.
Speaker 1: So there might be this balance of you know, trying
Speaker 1: too hard, not trying at all, trying hard and then
Speaker 1: withdrawing energy and then you know, being confused and not
Speaker 1: knowing what they need to do. So the idea is
Speaker 1: to help them get clarity about the fact that they
Speaker 1: need to make choices, and they're making choices and what
Speaker 1: do you want to do? Take responsibility for what you're doing.
Speaker 1: So if I get them to a place of courage,
Speaker 1: as doctor Harkins talks about, where they say I am
Speaker 1: responsible no excuses. There's a book called I'm Becoming a
Speaker 1: Leader written by Larren Venice, and he talks about the
Speaker 1: four lessons of self knowledge, because you got to know yourself,
Speaker 1: to be yourself, to express yourself, to have yourself.
Speaker 4: So it's really about.
Speaker 1: Them knowing who they are and knowing how they really
Speaker 1: feel about things. But in those four steps, he talks
Speaker 1: about the first step, you can learn anything you want
Speaker 1: to learn, so you got to be a learner, be responsible,
Speaker 1: no excuses. The third thing is you're your own best teacher.
Speaker 1: So that's another way of saying you're responsible for what
Speaker 1: you learn. You can't have somebody else come in say
Speaker 1: you should learn this and that at some point you
Speaker 1: got to own it. And then the fourth lesson is
Speaker 1: true understanding comes from reflecting on experience, and so it's
Speaker 1: really meeting them where they are, getting to see how
Speaker 1: they're seeing things, and then helping them make adjustments so
Speaker 1: that what's in the way becomes a way. And you know,
Speaker 1: once you remove those obstructions, then you become unlocked. But
Speaker 1: once again, it's not a one time thing. You get unlocked.
Speaker 1: But then you know you're having a success.
Speaker 4: Like this guy.
Speaker 1: His challenge was, you know, the fourthotball player was Okay,
Speaker 1: if he doesn't have any goals, he's just showing up
Speaker 1: with no passion, with no purpose.
Speaker 4: So there's got to be a purpose.
Speaker 1: It's got to be an intention, and sometimes the best
Speaker 1: intention is just to help other people succeed.
Speaker 4: Is to say, Okay, I'm a part of something greater
Speaker 4: than myself.
Speaker 1: I'm part of a team, and that means that I
Speaker 1: care about my teammates and I'm going to do what
Speaker 1: I need to do to help them and they're going
Speaker 1: to help me. So it's really getting them to be
Speaker 1: a whole person to really understand that, you know, just
Speaker 1: to you know, shut up and dribble or just play
Speaker 1: football and don't think, or I don't care how you feel,
Speaker 1: that's not realistic. You got to deal with the whole person.
Speaker 1: They got to body, my heart and soul. And so
Speaker 1: you talk about the mental, the emotional, and social. That's
Speaker 1: this one interact with self and others and the spirit,
Speaker 1: you know, contribution in being something greater than yourself. So
Speaker 1: you got to deal with the whole person. And then
Speaker 1: you got to really be clear about well why am
Speaker 1: I here? Because being a student athlete, you don't have
Speaker 1: a social life. All your work is on academics and athletics,
Speaker 1: and so you have to want it. It has to
Speaker 1: be an intention. If you're just doing it because it's
Speaker 1: something to do, you may not have the energy you
Speaker 1: need to really succeed or to really take responsibility and
Speaker 1: want to get better.
Speaker 4: Does that makes sense?
Speaker 1: So when I talked about the self awareness at the
Speaker 1: four a's is like, you be aware, Okay, here I.
Speaker 4: Am and I'm not living up to my potential.
Speaker 1: So the awareness of that and then accepting that, because see,
Speaker 1: that's the biggest thing, because it's really challenging to say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if I really want to
Speaker 1: be here, you know, or you know, I don't trust
Speaker 1: in myself because no one wants to say I'm not
Speaker 1: happy and you know.
Speaker 4: I'm inadequate.
Speaker 1: People are going to tell you that, but they're thinking
Speaker 1: that and they're behaving that. And unless they embrace the
Speaker 1: fact that yeah, I'm not happy or I don't have
Speaker 1: confidence in myself, then once you see that and accept it,
Speaker 1: now we can work on it. Now we can say okay,
Speaker 1: what confidence comes from understanding stuff, but putting in the
Speaker 1: work and getting the results. So this whole idea of
Speaker 1: being a learner, I'll talk about it that way. So
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what's poort it is.
Speaker 4: You got to learn.
Speaker 1: You've got to be a learner. You got to learn
Speaker 1: how to do it. What's the essentials? You got to
Speaker 1: learn about yourself. You learned about how do you know
Speaker 1: when you're being yourself when you're not being yourself? How
Speaker 1: do you know when you're doing something because somebody else
Speaker 1: wants you to do it or because you want to
Speaker 1: do it. That's where you got to go to the
Speaker 1: inside job and you got to know yourself and really
Speaker 1: be honest about how you feel and how you're seeing things.
Speaker 1: And that could be challenging because we live in a
Speaker 1: society where we don't necessarily do that, We don't necessarily
Speaker 1: see the whole person. You could be a coach and
Speaker 1: with good intentions, but you have depending on the size
Speaker 1: of your team. If you're talking about a soccer team,
Speaker 1: you might have twenty plus people on your team, and
Speaker 1: how do you attend to all of those and you
Speaker 1: only get twenty hours a week or twenty two hours
Speaker 1: a week to work with them, and so your tendency
Speaker 1: is probably going to be focused on what's wrong, or
Speaker 1: you don't have the time to just go in and
Speaker 1: ask each person, I have to know you, so I
Speaker 1: know how to motivate you or how to get you
Speaker 1: to motivate yourself. And so there's all of these these
Speaker 1: variables that are involved, but it really comes down to
Speaker 1: just knowing that you have a whole person and they
Speaker 1: have a masterpiece within, So how do we get them
Speaker 1: to embrace that, to accept it and put in the work.
Speaker 4: The awareness, the acceptance is the compassionate action, and then
Speaker 4: the assessment.
Speaker 1: You know, how do you keep getting better, you learn
Speaker 1: from your mistakes, you're not your mistakes, that.
Speaker 4: Sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So it's really challenging to do it, and that like
Speaker 1: one size fits all, but basically it comes down to
Speaker 1: seeing what's in the way and then that becomes away.
Speaker 1: So if it's self limiting beliefs, then we got to
Speaker 1: work with that. If it's you know, feeling like you
Speaker 1: don't deserve to be there, then we got to work
Speaker 1: with that. Or maybe you try too hard, you want it,
Speaker 1: but you don't know how to do it, and so
Speaker 1: helping people to understand that. But a lot of it
Speaker 1: is the regulation self regulation what I talked about, and
Speaker 1: the fourth lessons of self knowledge, and that is you're
Speaker 1: your own best yep, you know you can learn anything,
Speaker 1: and that you got to be responsible as you're responsibility
Speaker 1: is not people, places and things.
Speaker 4: You have to do it as an inside job. And
Speaker 4: once you embrace that, then you.
Speaker 1: Start developing what we call strong self efficacy belief because
Speaker 1: you know, no matter what happens, you can choose your
Speaker 1: response if you can create that space and even if
Speaker 1: you're reacting to something, you can learn from that and
Speaker 1: decide not to react that way. But it's not simple
Speaker 1: or simple, but not easy. But it's really clear about
Speaker 1: you know, getting to know who you are.
Speaker 4: So you got to know who you are, so you
Speaker 4: can be who you are. And that's the that's the thing,
Speaker 4: and it's not emulating somebody else.
Speaker 1: You can do that, like when you learn how to
Speaker 1: play guitar or something. Yeah, we do that, but we
Speaker 1: emulate people. We might play somebody's tune, but at some
Speaker 1: point we got to own it and we got to
Speaker 1: find our own way. But we emulate other people, we
Speaker 1: copy other people, but at some point we have to
Speaker 1: make it our own.
Speaker 4: Does it make any sense what I'm saying?
Speaker 3: I wanted to pause for a quick good Wolf reminder.
Speaker 3: This one's about a habit and a mistake I see
Speaker 3: people making. And that's really that we don't think about
Speaker 3: these new habits that we want to add in the
Speaker 3: context of our entire life. Right, Habits don't happen in
Speaker 3: a vacuum. They have to fit in the life that
Speaker 3: we have. So when we just keep adding I should
Speaker 3: do this, I should do that, I should do this,
Speaker 3: we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what
Speaker 3: we're not going to do in order to make that happen.
Speaker 3: So it's really helpful for you to think about where
Speaker 3: is this going to fit and what in my life
Speaker 3: might I need to remove. If you want to step
Speaker 3: by step guide for how you can easily build new
Speaker 3: habits that feed your good Wolf, go to good Wolf
Speaker 3: dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. So
Speaker 3: I want to go back to something you said earlier,
Speaker 3: and you said, oftentimes somebody is trying too hard, and
Speaker 3: you know from reading your book and just reading things
Speaker 3: in the press. Right, when we think about people like
Speaker 3: Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. What we know is that
Speaker 3: they worked incredibly hard, perhaps harder than anybody else. So
Speaker 3: tell me the distinction between that, like, I'm willing to
Speaker 3: put in the work, I'm going to work really hard,
Speaker 3: versus trying too hard.
Speaker 1: So a lot of times we think it's the elbow
Speaker 1: grease or the physical effort, and I talk about this
Speaker 1: is my rindful athlete.
Speaker 4: This is the right effort. It's not like working hard
Speaker 4: and then stopping.
Speaker 1: It's about this idea of slow as smooth, smooth as fast,
Speaker 1: or slow motion gets here there quicker. But you got
Speaker 1: to understand what is it you're doing, what's your intention,
Speaker 1: and what's the world to find outcome? So you have
Speaker 1: to have you have to you have to master the fundamentals.
Speaker 1: You have to understand.
Speaker 4: That working hard but working smart, it has to be
Speaker 4: with a purpose.
Speaker 1: It has to be an intention, It has to be intentional.
Speaker 1: You need to understand because this is what happens. We
Speaker 1: call it deliberate practice. And then one book The Talent Code,
Speaker 1: they call it deep practice. You got to know how
Speaker 1: to do something. You got to master the fundamentals. Both
Speaker 1: of those guys that just talked about the massive the fundamentals,
Speaker 1: but you got to be willing to do the repetition
Speaker 1: that the skill development where you make thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of repetitions and error corrections. And so what can happen
Speaker 1: is what helps those two guys is this idea of
Speaker 1: learning and achievement. So you learn something and you achieve it,
Speaker 1: then it generates this I want to say, enthusiasm or
Speaker 1: energizing enthusiasm.
Speaker 4: And so once you know that you can learn anything,
Speaker 4: you want to learn that you're responsible and you're your
Speaker 4: own best teacher, and you learn from reflecting on experience,
Speaker 4: then you got it going on because you know, oh,
Speaker 4: I could figure this out. It's going to be great.
Speaker 4: Being a learner is the joy of discovery is the
Speaker 4: willingness to put yourself at risk and do it anyway.
Speaker 1: So you're going to fail. So let's talk about Michael Jordan.
Speaker 1: So when I started working with him in nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 1: I started working with the Bows in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: and he took an eighteen month hiatus and when he
Speaker 1: came back.
Speaker 4: If you think about his experience, he got cup from
Speaker 4: his high school basketball team. So when I saw him
Speaker 4: in nineteen ninety five, ninety six on up he had
Speaker 4: like he was still trying to make the team. Nobody
Speaker 4: out worked him, so something happened. He got cut from
Speaker 4: the team. The coach said to him, I'm gonna come
Speaker 4: pick you up five o'clock in the morning. We're gonna
Speaker 4: put the work in. Of course he grew four or
Speaker 4: five inures.
Speaker 1: That helped, but that wasn't as much as the mentality
Speaker 1: of the work and saying I'm never gonna get cut again.
Speaker 4: That's never gonna.
Speaker 1: Happen because I didn't put in the work and I
Speaker 1: didn't figure it out, or I didn't have people to
Speaker 1: help me.
Speaker 4: So you see where I'm going with this, no struggle,
Speaker 4: no swag.
Speaker 1: People who had adversity, they overcame that adversity and then
Speaker 1: they start developing this self belief.
Speaker 4: It's unsakable self belief.
Speaker 1: Because they know that if they figure it out, if
Speaker 1: they put in the work, if they work smarter and harder,
Speaker 1: but really understanding what is the one thing that I
Speaker 1: need to focus on, it's gonna help me instead of
Speaker 1: trying to do everything.
Speaker 4: It's like the Peredo analysis for the eighty twenty rule.
Speaker 1: You just focus on this with deliberate practices, Okay, So
Speaker 1: Kobe one summer, you know he was working on his
Speaker 1: three point shot.
Speaker 4: So how did he work on that?
Speaker 1: He decided he was going to make thirteen hundred May
Speaker 1: threes a day. So it wasn't just working harder, but
Speaker 1: it was specificity with an intention, with a purpose saying
Speaker 1: with MJ. One of the things Bobby Knight said about
Speaker 1: MJ is he's the most fundamentally.
Speaker 4: Sound athlete he ever worked with. I said made him
Speaker 4: so great because he mastered the fundamentals. Same with Kobe
Speaker 4: for work.
Speaker 1: So you have to master the fundamentals, and what we
Speaker 1: see the fancy suffer. We don't see all of the
Speaker 1: work that he puts in all the work that they do.
Speaker 1: And so it's not just working harder, working smarter, but
Speaker 1: working with a purpose, with a deliberation of this is what.
Speaker 4: I'm going to work on, and it's going to hans
Speaker 4: my performance.
Speaker 1: And every year, whether I talk about Larry Bird or
Speaker 1: Magic Johnson or Doctor Jay, every year they were working
Speaker 1: on expanding their game or expanding.
Speaker 4: Their production capacity. But it was a joy.
Speaker 1: I mean, these guys who play these sports, they would
Speaker 1: pay for free, but they don't have to because it's
Speaker 1: a love, so you get to the point where you
Speaker 1: can love and there's no difference. Because one of the
Speaker 1: fascinating things I know is about Michael Jordan.
Speaker 4: I started working with them and watching them.
Speaker 1: Number one is you didn't know the difference between practice
Speaker 1: and games because he was always coming at you with
Speaker 1: that idea of dominating being the best today.
Speaker 4: Today I got better. And that was the thing.
Speaker 1: He was always pushing the envelope, always encouraging, challenging themselves,
Speaker 1: and that's how you get in the flow when you
Speaker 1: have that challenge skill ratio there, but you have a
Speaker 1: clear idea of what you're doing and what you're getting
Speaker 1: and you're able to make adjustments and a fly. So
Speaker 1: it really comes down to being a learner and just
Speaker 1: embracing your greatness, which means there's some things like you
Speaker 1: may not be a basketball player, or you might play basketball.
Speaker 4: You know, maybe you want to shoot three point shots,
Speaker 4: but you're a better rebounder.
Speaker 1: That's your skill. Then you got to embrace that. And
Speaker 1: it's try not to be somebody else. I mean, I'll
Speaker 1: share something because I think is really important what we're
Speaker 1: talking about, and I don't mean to demean anybody or whatever.
Speaker 1: But I was in the barbershop a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: ago and was talking to one of the bowers and
Speaker 1: he was upset that for the super Bowl, you know,
Speaker 1: in the playoffs where he expected Baltimore to win with
Speaker 1: my jackson, and he was upset because he said, you know.
Speaker 4: Lamar forgot who he was.
Speaker 1: He tried to be a pocket passer instead of just
Speaker 1: letting his legs win the game for him. So this
Speaker 1: is what happens. We get hung up because the media says, well,
Speaker 1: you're not a true quarterback because you don't do this.
Speaker 1: You can't listen to them. You got to be yourself.
Speaker 1: You got to be Okay, this is what got me here. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know I can make plays with my legs. I
Speaker 1: had to do that, so you get what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: So you have to learn true understanding comes from reflecting
Speaker 4: our experience. What happened there. Okay, you weren't yourself. And
Speaker 4: I can't tell you how many times that happens because
Speaker 4: we think we have to be somebody or we have
Speaker 4: to win a certain way. I can go back to
Speaker 4: a boxing match between Sugar Ray Lennen and Marvin Hagl,
Speaker 4: who I knew and he didn't want people to think
Speaker 4: that he was brother. That's who he was, you know.
Speaker 4: So if you're not gonna do ye out none personal.
Speaker 4: But this is how I have to play. But if
Speaker 4: I'm worried about that and I'm going to change my
Speaker 4: style because i want to be accepted, it's not gonna work.
Speaker 4: So and we do this every day. I do it,
Speaker 4: you do it. We all do it.
Speaker 1: We think we have to be somebody else rather than
Speaker 1: being ourselves, instead of being to it thine own self.
Speaker 4: Be true. No, the truths, and the truth shall make
Speaker 4: you free. That's what we need to do. We need
Speaker 4: to be able to say yes to it, even though
Speaker 4: it's inconvenient sometimes. But these folks, they spend a lot
Speaker 4: of time and energy mastering their craft, and we all
Speaker 4: can do that. Can we do it at the level
Speaker 4: they do? Probably not.
Speaker 1: But our job is to be our best version of
Speaker 1: ourselves to get better each day. It's not about trying
Speaker 1: to be somebody else. It's about being who we are
Speaker 1: and embracing it and not letting anybody.
Speaker 4: Tell us with somebody else.
Speaker 1: But when we're in the fair, when the fair wolf
Speaker 1: is there, that's what happens. If you're in the Loved Wolf,
Speaker 1: then the chances are you're going to say, no, I'm good.
Speaker 1: Thanks for your opinion, but my opinion is the most
Speaker 1: important opinion.
Speaker 3: Here, let me ask a question about the relationship and
Speaker 3: ship between striving and accepting where we are right. This
Speaker 3: is one of the things I look at in my
Speaker 3: own life that I find to be a really nuanced
Speaker 3: thing to figure out. Right, It's this idea that you know,
Speaker 3: I want to be better. I want the circumstances of
Speaker 3: my life to be better. I want to accomplish more right,
Speaker 3: And that feels sort of natural and inborn right, But
Speaker 3: there's also a really unhealthy version of that versus the
Speaker 3: other side, which is to be content with what I have,
Speaker 3: be content with who I am, be content with the
Speaker 3: way things are. How do you see those things? Because
Speaker 3: one of the things, I knew him and you didn't,
Speaker 3: And I don't expect you to say anything about him.
Speaker 3: I'm just making this observation, you know, watching some of
Speaker 3: the stuff with Michael Jordan, I'm like, a guy looks
Speaker 3: extraordinarily driven and intense, but I can't tell if he's
Speaker 3: a very content person. And so again I'm not expecting
Speaker 3: to say aything about Michael Jordan. I'm just saying, in general,
Speaker 3: how do you think about that balance between contentment and striving?
Speaker 1: Well, let me talk about myself. Yeah, it's July thirty
Speaker 1: for us. I'll be forty as a sobriety.
Speaker 3: Congratulations.
Speaker 4: It's a long time, forty years of sobriety. I've average
Speaker 4: over a book a week minimum. Okay.
Speaker 1: So I'm pursuing excellence and wisdom with grace and ease.
Speaker 1: I didn't have the grace and eeds before. I was
Speaker 1: doing it with this warrior energy. Then I realized, oh man,
Speaker 1: that's right. Efort is slow, is smooth, smooth as fast.
Speaker 1: Just do what you know to do and the next
Speaker 1: that we'll be given to you. Just go with the flow.
Speaker 4: And there's times when you'll be more intense, times when
Speaker 4: you're easy.
Speaker 1: But that's a read, that's an understanding, like sometimes you
Speaker 1: got to get after it.
Speaker 4: But you're right.
Speaker 1: We spend most of our time between boredom and anxiety.
Speaker 1: And anxiety is when we are challenged and our skills
Speaker 1: and knowledge experience no how it doesn't meet it. And
Speaker 1: then it's sometimes when we have a lot of know
Speaker 1: how and experience, but we don't challenge ourselves, so we
Speaker 1: get bored.
Speaker 4: So this is the thing.
Speaker 1: So you're finding that balance between not settling and not
Speaker 1: being excessive. And that's why this whole flow genome that
Speaker 1: Steve Catler and his groups talked about and this book
Speaker 1: that other impossible.
Speaker 4: He talks about.
Speaker 1: Getting up to four percent, but some people who are
Speaker 1: like type A, like myself, we may have to go
Speaker 1: up to thirty percent of anxiety to get there.
Speaker 4: But that's why you got to know yourself.
Speaker 1: But you got to know yourself, know when you need
Speaker 1: to push and.
Speaker 4: When you need to hold back.
Speaker 1: And that's why when you have coaches and folks that
Speaker 1: are around you, they could be helpful. So there was recently,
Speaker 1: I think Phil Jackson was when they made the Kobe
Speaker 1: but I know Phil I was there. There was one
Speaker 1: game I think Kobe had like fifty points or an
Speaker 1: extraordinary amount of points in the third quarter and Phil
Speaker 1: wouln't let him play in the fourth quarter because he
Speaker 1: knew if he would have played in the fourth quarter,
Speaker 1: then that energy he took to do that it might
Speaker 1: take him two weeks to recover fromhim. So sometimes you
Speaker 1: have to have people around you that are able to say,
Speaker 1: dollar it down, or let's slow down, because the intention
Speaker 1: of wanting to achieve a goal may overcome your well being.
Speaker 1: You see what I'm saying. So it's always about heart
Speaker 1: and compare for yourself, empathy, compassion for yourself, and you
Speaker 1: can get out of your comfort zone, but it can't
Speaker 1: be so far out of your comfort zone that the
Speaker 1: anxiety is going to have an impact on either you
Speaker 1: physically or emotionally where you're not able to be rational yep, right,
Speaker 1: and you're pushing yourself and sometimes you got to be unreasonable,
Speaker 1: but you can't sustain that.
Speaker 4: And you got to know what's your motivation. Are you
Speaker 4: doing this for selfish reasons or you're doing it for
Speaker 4: the greatest good? That is huge. That is really huge
Speaker 4: because when it's selfish and you're coming from the fear
Speaker 4: of being driven by like Joseph Campbell talked about being
Speaker 4: in that place of rest when we're performing at our best,
Speaker 4: where we're not compelled by fear or desire, we just
Speaker 4: hold our center. That's pure performance. That's why I call
Speaker 4: it pure performance because it's the activity in and of
Speaker 4: itself is the motivation. It's what sending me. I called
Speaker 4: autotelic personality.
Speaker 1: You do the thing for the activity in and of itself,
Speaker 1: being in the moment, being fully engaged, fully deployed.
Speaker 4: That's it. Now in the results all the others, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's that. But the main.
Speaker 1: Driver is to feel like I got better today and
Speaker 1: I left everything out there, but I didn't do it
Speaker 1: in a way where it's going to cause harm to
Speaker 1: myself physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.
Speaker 4: And sometimes we're going to go over, sometimes we're going
Speaker 4: to go under.
Speaker 1: But that's the titration, that's the calibration, that's the reflection,
Speaker 1: and that's the assessment of Okay, yeah I went a
Speaker 1: little bit fire, I can need to tone it up.
Speaker 4: I could have done more, and you do more because
Speaker 4: it makes sense. But it's the compassionate action, the awareness,
Speaker 4: the acceptance, the compassionate action, that compassion for yourself and others,
Speaker 4: and then the assessment. So without the compassion, once you
Speaker 4: lose your humanity, that's when you see people that are
Speaker 4: driven and would destroy people or lose their humanity, that's
Speaker 4: when it becomes a problem your humanity and still be
Speaker 4: a lead performer and still push yourself and push others
Speaker 4: to have that killer instinct. But having that killer instinct
Speaker 4: with losing your.
Speaker 1: Capacity your humanity or your capacity to be compassionate. That's
Speaker 1: the problem. That's why you know the Golden State war
Speaker 1: is for their core.
Speaker 4: Values used to be.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it still is joy, mindfulness, compassion,
Speaker 1: then competition. So the compassion piece the empathy piece, and
Speaker 1: this is emotional intelligence. You know, like the IQ will
Speaker 1: get you the job, but the EQU is going to
Speaker 1: get you the transformation and the promotion.
Speaker 4: So what is EQ.
Speaker 1: What I talk about is self awareness and self regulation.
Speaker 1: That's the first part of it. That's the internal journey.
Speaker 1: The external or the relational part is social awareness and
Speaker 1: relationship development. I would say, I don't like the word management,
Speaker 1: relationship cultivation.
Speaker 4: We'll call it that. And that is where you have
Speaker 4: empathic listening to the other person. You care about.
Speaker 1: The person you listen, they're a whole person and not
Speaker 1: somebody has a body that's means to end. But they
Speaker 1: have a body of mind or heart and the soul
Speaker 1: or spirit. So it's the whole person. And when you
Speaker 1: treat somebody as a whole person, they'll give their heart
Speaker 1: to you. If you treat them as a thing, if
Speaker 1: you leave out any one of those four components, now
Speaker 1: you're relating to them as a thing or I and
Speaker 1: it what Buba talked about, and they might rebell or
Speaker 1: they might do what you ask them to do, but
Speaker 1: I hope it doesn't work. But they're not going to
Speaker 1: give you their whole heart. That you're not going to
Speaker 1: have a partnership. You're not going to have a collaborator
Speaker 1: who you know, think when when you know synergy's better together,
Speaker 1: teamwork makes a dream work. We want that as individuals.
Speaker 1: We have this desire to connect to something greater than ourselves.
Speaker 1: So when we can use that in ways where we
Speaker 1: have a worthy cause and we have core values that
Speaker 1: are in alignment with you know, not losing our humanity,
Speaker 1: being compassionate and having empathy, seeking wisdom and loving kindness,
Speaker 1: then we're into something. And so that's what's missing and
Speaker 1: missing when you talk about you can be so ruthless
Speaker 1: or you're you know, you can push yourself.
Speaker 4: I've done that.
Speaker 1: I sat to my knees not right because I sat
Speaker 1: through the pain because I had that warror energy before
Speaker 1: I realized, no, compassion is important. You know, I can
Speaker 1: move my leg and it's not about reachieving a goal
Speaker 1: at any cart is about achieving a goal but not
Speaker 1: losing my compassion.
Speaker 4: That's why I call it compassionate action, not just action.
Speaker 4: Compassionate action.
Speaker 1: It's based on non harm on goodwill.
Speaker 3: So you talked a little bit there, and I think
Speaker 3: you've alluded to it in the conversation a little bit,
Speaker 3: And it's in your writing a lot about this sort
Speaker 3: of parasympathetic versus sympathetic response, right, and broadly speaking, right,
Speaker 3: parasympathetic is what we consider sort of the rest and
Speaker 3: digest or the relaxed state, and sympathetic is the more
Speaker 3: keyed up fight flight. And as I was reading that,
Speaker 3: and I was thinking a little bit and reflecting on
Speaker 3: my own life, I started to wonder. It seems to
Speaker 3: me there's a lot of things that are either at
Speaker 3: the high end of one of those or the low
Speaker 3: end of the other, where I don't really feel like
Speaker 3: I'm in like a deep, calm, relaxing state, but I
Speaker 3: certainly don't feel like I'm in any sort of fight flight.
Speaker 3: How do you think about that?
Speaker 4: Like everything, mindfulness, compassion, whatever, on the scale of one
Speaker 4: to ten or whatever, there's variation. You see what I'm saying,
Speaker 4: so you could.
Speaker 1: Be relatively relaxed and alert, or you could be relatively
Speaker 1: keyed up, but you need the keyed up. It's the
Speaker 1: balance between them. And this is why I say to
Speaker 1: people a lot of times people don't want to meditate,
Speaker 1: they don't want to be still and no, but I'm
Speaker 1: right handed, so my left brain dominates and the right brain.
Speaker 1: So the left brain has the one plus one equals
Speaker 1: to the words of the song, the sequence reading the
Speaker 1: first chapter and then start with the first and going literally.
Speaker 1: Then the nonlinear is one plus one might equal six.
Speaker 1: It's the melody, it's the big picture, all of that stuff,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't get a word in edgewise if we
Speaker 1: stay in that active mode and we don't stop and
Speaker 1: focus on one thing or disrelaxed and meditate, prayer, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, and just be locked in so that now
Speaker 1: you're using both sides of your brain, and this probably
Speaker 1: is not dominating. So we have to have these practices
Speaker 1: that allow us to allow our intuition. That's why I say,
Speaker 1: you know you're in that place of rest. Now that
Speaker 1: right brain, although they're connected, they're not totally separate. You know,
Speaker 1: the combinations, but that right brain. That's where the wisdom
Speaker 1: and the creativity comes from. But if you're not at rest,
Speaker 1: if that love wolf is not Donan, then that fair
Speaker 1: wolf you're not going to have access to that wisdom
Speaker 1: and that creativity. It's just not going to happen. So
Speaker 1: when you talk about sympathetic and power sympathetic, that's the
Speaker 1: fair wolf and the love wolf.
Speaker 4: Yea.
Speaker 1: And so we need both because I need that sympathetic
Speaker 1: because when I'm walking across the street and a car
Speaker 1: or some dangerous happening, I.
Speaker 4: Can't reflect on wealth.
Speaker 1: Should I move my body will move me out of
Speaker 1: the way, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: So we need both. But we just don't live in
Speaker 4: a hostile environment.
Speaker 1: Well some of us don't live in a hospitle environment
Speaker 1: where your reptilian brain is seeking danger. And believe it
Speaker 1: or not, the resource says that nine out of ten
Speaker 1: todds are negative because of that. That's why if we
Speaker 1: don't train this ability to rest and digest, because if
Speaker 1: we don't, we're going to have GI problems. We're going
Speaker 1: to have stress related issues because now your immune system's
Speaker 1: not working properly, and stuff you know you don't have
Speaker 1: access to because when the brain is stressed out, you
Speaker 1: don't you don't have access. You're like forty percent dumber.
Speaker 1: It's just nothing personal. So there's a value to being
Speaker 1: able to have a balanced brain. However you want to
Speaker 1: look at it.
Speaker 4: Does that make sense? And knowing when you need to
Speaker 4: rep things up and when you need to calm things down.
Speaker 4: And that's the interesting thing.
Speaker 1: When I first started meditating, and I first started just
Speaker 1: being doing relaxation or just being in my body, just
Speaker 1: sitting and breathing, I hear the gurgling and all these
Speaker 1: other sounds while.
Speaker 4: That's the rest and digest. Yeah, that's the body.
Speaker 1: Actually, no one is saying without your permission, but you're
Speaker 1: not getting in the way. Being relaxed is one of
Speaker 1: the most valuable skills we can have.
Speaker 4: Not so relax with your chill act, but relax but
Speaker 4: yeah alert.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. And so that's why it's a balance,
Speaker 1: Like you said, the valiance. So sometimes you got to
Speaker 1: be really locked in. Other times you can be relatively
Speaker 1: locked in or relatively calm, like just being able to
Speaker 1: watch over something. The analogy they use is like you know,
Speaker 1: you're a farmer and you have calls in the field
Speaker 1: and when there's a crop, you got to really pay attention,
Speaker 1: You got to be mindful, you got to be diligent
Speaker 1: about keeping them away from it. But then once the
Speaker 1: crop is harvested, then you can have this relaxed alertness
Speaker 1: that just kind of watch and make sure they don't
Speaker 1: get into trouble. That's like mindfulness. That's an observation of
Speaker 1: mindfulness where you're just noticing, but you're not doing anything
Speaker 1: other than taking in the information.
Speaker 3: So let's talk briefly as we near the end of
Speaker 3: our time here about comfort zone. You say you can't
Speaker 3: push yourself so far out of your comfort zone that
Speaker 3: your body breaks down or the ultimately give up because
Speaker 3: you can't sustain it. And then you went on to
Speaker 3: talk about people like doctor j Jordan and Kobe. You
Speaker 3: said their comfort zones were like a horizon, always moving
Speaker 3: forward in front of them as they approached.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: And I love that idea because, like you said, it
Speaker 3: means we don't have to go far outside of our
Speaker 3: comfort zone, but we have to continually be redefining our
Speaker 3: comfort zone.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, another way of saying that our production capacity,
Speaker 1: capacity to produce and whatever. So it's in alignment with
Speaker 1: actually neuroplasticity if you really think about it, the four
Speaker 1: octiuent tips of neuroplasticity that is creating new brain connections.
Speaker 1: You know, the first step is going to have access
Speaker 1: to oxygen, so that means you're aerobic right up, because
Speaker 1: in these oxygen's develop new brain connections as well. Second
Speaker 1: thing is it's got to be incremental. And the third
Speaker 1: thing is it's got to be hard to do but douable.
Speaker 1: That's what we're talking about here, how to do but duable.
Speaker 1: It's got to be so you're just below your edge
Speaker 1: and then you're moving beyond that, but you're moving with compassion.
Speaker 4: You know, slow motion gets you there quicker.
Speaker 1: You know, you just ease a little bit out, just
Speaker 1: and it's a flow, it's not this hirky jerky thing. Then,
Speaker 1: like if you do yoga, you get to a place
Speaker 1: where it's tight and then you just breathe through it.
Speaker 1: You just honor it, and then you're able to just
Speaker 1: slightly move to it and then you keep doing that,
Speaker 1: you keep doing that and you keep increasing capacity. And
Speaker 1: the fourth thing you need for neuroplasticity is this idea
Speaker 1: of interest. Because when you become interested in something, it
Speaker 1: stimulates the motivational circuits and the brain. So think about
Speaker 1: how that's connected. You know, you get your oxygen rate out,
Speaker 1: you do it in increments, baby steps, short feedback loops.
Speaker 1: It's hard to do, but doable, and you bring interest
Speaker 1: and curiosity into it, so to stimulate your motivational circuits.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really like that. So listener and thinking about
Speaker 3: that and all the other great wisdom from today's episode.
Speaker 3: If you were going to isolate just one top insight
Speaker 3: that you're taking away, what would it be. Remember, little
Speaker 3: by little, a little becomes a lot. Change happens by
Speaker 3: us repeatedly taking positive action. And I want to give
Speaker 3: you a tip on that, and it's to start small.
Speaker 3: It's really important when we're trying to implement new habits
Speaker 3: to often start smaller than we think we need to
Speaker 3: because what that does is it allows us to get victories.
Speaker 3: And victories are really important because we become more motivated
Speaker 3: when we're feeling good about ourselves, and we become less
Speaker 3: motivated when we're feeling bad about ourselves. So by starting
Speaker 3: small and making sure that you succeed, you build your
Speaker 3: motivation for further change down the road. If you'd like
Speaker 3: a step by step guide for how you can easily
Speaker 3: build new habits that feed your good Wolf. Go to
Speaker 3: Goodwolf dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. Well, George,
Speaker 3: we are at the end of our time together, although
Speaker 3: you and I are going to continue to talk a
Speaker 3: little bit more in a post show conversation and I
Speaker 3: really want to focus in there on the five superpowers.
Speaker 3: So we're going to talk about what the five superpowers are. Yes,
Speaker 3: there listeners. If you'd like access to more of our
Speaker 3: time together with George and I ad free episodes. If
Speaker 3: you'd like to support a show that makes a difference
Speaker 3: in your life and in the difference of many many others,
Speaker 3: you can go to one feed dot net slash join. George,
Speaker 3: thank you so much for coming on. It has been
Speaker 3: a pleasure to talk with you.
Speaker 1: Yes, so if people want to know more about my work,
Speaker 1: obviously you can go to georgemumfit dot com. And you
Speaker 1: know I have a YouTube channel with not of course
Speaker 1: you have the book The Mind for Athlete and Pure Performance.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're just scratching the surface, but I'm so
Speaker 1: excited for this opportunity, and your podcast is so much
Speaker 1: in an alignment of what I've been teaching.
Speaker 3: Thank you, No, you're very welcome. You're very welcome. It's
Speaker 3: a pleasure, and we'll make sure we have links in
Speaker 3: the show notes to your website, your book, and your
Speaker 3: YouTube channel. So thank you so much, George.
Speaker 4: You're welcome.
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