Barbell Shrugged - The Psychology of Self-Sabotage w/ Dr. Ben Steel, Doug Larson, Travis Mash & Dr. Mike Lane #847

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

In this episode, Dr. Ben Steel joins Doug Larson and Dr. Mike Lane to break down the psychology of self-sabotage, performance anxiety, and why high performers often get in their own way. Ben shares his background as a former wrestler, certified mental performance consultant, and mental health counselor, explaining how his own experience with pre-performance anxiety led him into sports psychology. The conversation centers on how athletes and driven people often use avoidance, perfectionism, all-or-nothing thinking, and "paralysis by analysis" as protective mechanisms, not because they are lazy or weak, but because they are trying to avoid shame, embarrassment, failure, or exposure.   The team also explores how self-sabotage shows up differently in athletes, lifters, business owners, and high performers. For some people, it looks like blowing a diet, skipping competition, overtraining, or waiting until everything is perfect before taking action. For others, especially successful people, it can look like over-indexing on work or performance while avoiding uncomfortable emotional conversations, relationships, or deeper personal issues. Ben explains how tools like CBT, visualization, breathing, self-talk, arousal regulation, and pre-performance routines can help, but the deeper solution often starts with empathy, trust, outside perspective, and helping people feel understood rather than judged. Big takeaway: self-sabotage is usually not a character flaw. It is a protection strategy. The goal is to identify what pain the person is avoiding, reduce the perceived threat, build confidence through small actions, and help them step into a challenge without needing everything to be perfect first. Doug Larson on InstagramCoach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, Doug Larson here, and this week on Barbell Strug, we're talking with our good friend Dr. Ben Steele about the psychology of self-sabotage. Ben is a certified mental performance consultant and has worked with elite performers at the highest level of sport. And in this episode, we get into why athletes and high performers sometimes, maybe consciously, maybe unconsciously, possibly accidentally, maybe intentionally, get in their own way and can therefore block their own success. We also talk about practical tools like self-talk, visualization, breathing, and pre-performance routines, and how to to build confidence through small actions instead of waiting until everything feels perfect. And so if you, or maybe somebody that you coach, has ever prepared well and still found yourself somehow sabotaging your own success, this episode is for you. Enjoy the show. Welcome to Barbell Strug. I'm Doug Larson here with Dr. Mike Lane. Mr. Travis Mash is stuck in

jury duty today. So he can't make it. Unfortunately, he said he's bored out of his mind and would much rather be here, but can't make it today. We got Ben Steele here with us. Ben, you went working with us here at Rapid here just recently, and I know you've known Dr. Andy Galpin for a while now. You're more on the psychological side of things, even though we're primarily a kind of physiological organization here, you're tying a blue sense on the psychological side of things. And I know Mike, you guys been working together with a mutual client. So, Ben, give us your background. How did you get into athletics?

How did you get into the world of psychology academically and athletically? How did you get here? Yeah. I mean, I grew up as an athlete, played pretty much all the typical. of sports, kind of focused in on wrestling in junior high and high school, really started to work through my own anxieties. Like, I mean, when you're out on the mat all by yourself and it's just you and the other guy, like, there's no one to hide behind. There's a lot of like pre-performance anxiety. I do remember, like, I'll be honest, as a seventh grader, it's like my first match. I was about

to puke my guts and I was so nervous. I got out there, took the kid down, got him to bleed a little bit, pinned him, and felt like the top of the world. But the reality is, like, I wrestled with a lot of that anxiety myself. And then in undergrad and grad school, I was coaching a team. And that's where it really clicked for me of like, not just teaching like technique and X's and O's or whatever it is, but like how much of this,

how much of, how much of the performance is really about the mental side of things? And like being able to manage your emotions, being able to focus on what you want to, not let things distract you, not, you know, especially in a sport like wrestling where it's really emotional, not to let things get to you,

freak out when you lost, punch stuff, whatever it may be, because it hurts you, hurts your team. So there, I went on to get my doctorate in sports performance psychology and emphasis in mental health counseling. So now I'm both the certified mental performance consultant and a mental health counselor in the state of Washington. Are you primarily historically working with athletes?

I started to get my licensure for mental health. You have to do a certain amount of clinical hours. So I really kind of indexed on that just to get that. out of the way so I get licensed. Now I'm starting to kind of rebalance and have a nice, nice kind of mix. While I was doing that, though, I also did some additional studies and like trauma and whatnot to just help round out things. Mike, I know you guys were talking before the show.

One of the reasons that you wanted to bring Ben on was that you guys were having a conversation about people who were self-savitaging, which I actually don't have a lot of like personal experience with dealing with people who I feel like are doing that. Maybe I'm just like naive and I'm just like not seeing it. But how do you deal with someone who seems to be just staying in their own way or can't get out of their own way, however you want to phrase that? Yeah. I mean, I don't know, Mike, as a counselor, I'm going to throw this back on you guys and ask questions. Doug, you don't have a lot of experiences.

But Mike, have you seen this in working with any of your clients? Oh, dear God. So you have all different types. You know, you have the ones that turn everything into an action potential is all or none. Like, I'm not going to execute until. you give me everything and I have the complete plan and everything's in front of me. And I need everything explained. This is the paralysis by analysis.

And then obviously you have the others that, you know, they create their own barriers. And essentially, you know, the black and white thinking being a big piece of it. And then you, in the good old, you know, perfectionism. So they have to have everything perfect before they're going to go. And then others that, you know, others that social. aspect. You know, you've got the folks that they can have their own negative self-talk or, unfortunately, surround themselves with individuals that end up being massive rate limiters of like, well, you know, you can't do this. And it's like, well, yes, I can't jump 40 inches. That's fair. But I can at least increase my vertical jump some. And, you know, how often you find unrealistic goal expectations? And so they, they underestimate how much can be done, but the time horizon, is where you often have the disconnect because they want everything fixed this week. You know, the people that they need to lose 100 pounds, and it took them a decade to gain that

100 pounds, and they somehow expect you to remove that in a day, which technically you can do. With a chainsaw and no repercussions, I can remove 100 pounds from a human being. They're not going to like the way that it's removed, and they'll lose some functionality. But sorry, being cross. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, all those are great. You're using some terms right out of like typical little.

counseling or CBT world of like the all or nothing thinking black and white thinking that's like particularly with things like diets or building new habits that's one that really trips a lot of people up. I've been like going to the gym every day in doing my thing and then like Friday rolls around and I'm kind of sore or some stuff gets in my way and I miss a day and then it's like I just fall off the rails right like I blew one day or I blew one meal or whatever it is and now like all hell's broken loose and I'm just kind of going for it right. Give me the Oreos, give me the whatever. And, you know, I'm off for the races on gaining that way back. So that kind of black and white thinking for sure comes into play.

I would say- CBT calls those like cognitive distortions. Is that correct? Yep, that's right. Yeah, and there's like a whole list of them. You can look them up. But ultimately there are things. And cognitive distortions is kind of the term, the best way to kind of think about this

is like helpful versus unhelpful versus like true or not true. We start getting to these kind of murky wires. Like, that's true, that's not true. Not to say that truth is important, but like thinking about a thought that is or a belief, that's either helpful or not helpful. And if it's the, oh, screw it, I missed one day at the gym or I, you know, cheated on my diet or whatever it is. So who cares? It's all for waste.

Like, no, you just had four great days. One bad day doesn't necessarily erase all of that. But if you just say, well, I kind of broke my streak or whatever it may be, then I'm going to lead to that unhelpful behavior or the consequences of, well, screw it, let me just go to McDonald's or whatever I'm going to do. Not just shut on McDonald's, but. Is CBT like specifically a big part of your background? It is.

I mean, I think about the, I mean, I think it's a great kind of framework for thinking about the person because we have, if you think about a triangle and the three points of the triangle, you have thoughts, emotions or feelings, and then behaviors. And there's a relationship where there's arrows going in all directions. So our thoughts influence our emotions, our emotions influence our behaviors, behaviors and influence thoughts, and vice versa. Right. So there's this kind of interaction there at the internal world where we're thinking about certain

things and then those lead to certain emotions or emotions crop up and they lead to certain thoughts and so forth. The other kind of interesting thing about this, particularly when we're thinking about like self-sabotage or like really what we're kind of describing is like an internal conflict, right? I want one thing, but then I also want another thing. And so we can think about like first order and second order desires. Like a first order desire is like, wow, that cake looks really good. That would be so tasty right now. And the second order of desire is like, I want to want to eat like the salad or the healthy meal or I, you know, I want to not want the cake even, right? So then

there's this kind of conflict between kind of an immediate need and then a larger longitudinal desire or goal. When I hear the term self-sabotage, it's almost like a, it almost seems like blammy, shamy, like you're, you're being a bad boy, you're doing this on purpose, like you're being a troublemaker, so to speak. And like maybe when I said earlier, like I don't see it. Like I, maybe I just don't like assume that they're like intentionally not doing their best.

Like I always assume, again, right or wrong. I'm not sure that like if someone isn't doing it, it's because they're, they're, they're, they're worried that they're going to be judged. If they don't go to the gym, it's not because they're self-sabotizing specifically, like they don't feel comfortable with the gym. They feel like people are gonna judge them and then they're not gonna be accepted.

And so it's like, there's like this other thing going on, but they really are kind of trying their best. And if they had more, in this example, if they had more like social support or a friend go with them, or like if I went with them since like, I feel comfortable in the gym, like, no, it'd be cool. Like, well, I'll tell you what to do.

Then they're like, oh, okay, no problem. Like, then they'll do it. I was like pin it on something a little differently. So how are we defining self-sabotage and when is it self-sabotage and when is it maybe something else? Yeah, that's a great question. A lot of the literature does kind of tend to look at self-sabotage as a protective mechanism. So we're trying to avoid some kind of uncomfortable or a feeling or a pain, right? Whether it's like in the embarrassment or some kind of like shame maybe some kind of like there could be some unresolved trauma.

going on, not to go down to too much of the clinical route, but that is, that can be a thing. But ultimately, like, self, like, with the counseling framework and performance psychology, we think about, like, behaviors and even habits as, like, a certain function. So even thinking about, like, how do we, I know we're kind of jumping head, but, like, how do we course correct something like this? Well, if I see somebody, like, constantly, they're in, like, a weight-based sport, right? and they're constantly like blowing weight or they're like not sticking to their diet or whatever it may be rather than being looking at like oh the orio's of the problem or the hamburgers

or the problem whatever it is that they're using to blow weight recognize that that's actually serving some kind of function right it's helping me like okay if I blow weight then I actually don't have to handle the stress of going out and performing on game day or you know sometimes it's a built an excuse well I was hung over and that's why I didn't do do my best best or right there's some we're kind of avoiding or protecting probably some part of our ego or our identity in there that we don't we feel like might get exposed and so what we're actually doing is oftentimes substituting one form of pain or discomfort that we're more okay with than another kind right so i'm used to the the source or the feeling of failure or the feeling of maybe this or that

as opposed to, boy, I really let it all out. I gave it my best shot and it wasn't enough. And now I have to come to terms with that. Like that feels too uncomfortable or too scary. So I'd rather handle this other uncomfortable motion instead. So I'm substituting one thing for another. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the RTA program,

which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garland and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers, award-winning athletes, billionaires, musicians, executives, and frankly, anyone who just wanted to be at their absolute best. Artae is not a normal coaching program. It's not just macros and a workout plan. It's not physique transformation and pre-imposed pictures. Arte is something completely different. Artee is incredibly comprehensive and designed to uncover your unique molecular signature, find your performance anchors, and solve them permanently.

you'll be working with not one person, but rather a full team of elite professionals, each with their own special expertise, to maximize precision, accuracy, and effectiveness of your analysis and optimization plan. Artei isn't about treating symptoms or quick fixes. It's about unlocking your full potential and looking, feeling, and performing at your absolute best, physically and mentally, when the stakes are the highest. To learn more, visit Arteelab.com. That's A-R-E-E-E-Lab.com.

Now, back to the show. No, I could not agree with Ben Moore, because the reality is it's a confidential mechanism where it's like, oh, well, you know, I just partied too hard. So that's why I didn't win. And so that's just like a simple thing. It's not, I am a person and not good enough. Because if they really put their entire heart and soul into that preparation and they failed, that is they failed.

Whereas it's like, no, like it's an experiment. You ran the experiment, it didn't work. Like, it's okay. But there's a lot more there than there's just straight up like, well, you know, the problem is I got in a fight with my significant other than I before. And, you know, I didn't sleep well. So that's why I didn't win. You know, it's a lot easier to find the blame in something acute than to think, of course, like, along the lines of the chronic. And one of the things that I find in the strength sports is you'll often encounter people that like, I don't want to do my first Olympic lifting meet, my first power lifting meet, my first this until I'm like at a state record level strength or a national record.

record level. And it's like, but you just need to go compete. But the idea is like, I don't want to go out there and be embarrassed because I see these people that are so much better than me or I know this side of the other. And they just end up right limiting themselves so they never do. And obviously, I find that unfortunate because, you know, the stepping in the arena should hopefully be, you know, a challenging thing. But it shouldn't be one of those things that we have to think of it as we only win completely or we don't even step on the field. Because, I mean, especially since you guys come from wrestling backgrounds. And I think, Doug, that's why there might be a little of a survivorship bias, because it turns out the people that do a lot of jujitsu and wrestling are

so used to having their egos humbled on a variety of levels that you probably don't find this as much as, like I said, the folks in powerlifting, and I'm speaking in generalities, but you have a lot of those folks. It's like they maybe haven't played a real sport, you know, had to like step on the court, step on the field for over a decade. So the idea of stepping on the court by yourself, is terrifying to them. And much less being seen as weak in front of their peers is something they can't get over intellectually, which is too bad because that's the measuring stick in these sports is to go compete. You know, Jim lifts mean nothing. It's what can you put together on the platform?

And I'm speaking for a very specific example there. Well, I would say also getting pants on the pegboard in seventh grade also helps you get over your own embarrassment. So not that that happened to me, but I'm just saying hypothetically. Right. A guy I knew. I guess suspended in school for pants in some kid. Totally unrelated. I pants some kid at recess and then like, like, everybody came over and like the recess

duties or whatever came over and were like, hey, we can't do this as too embarrassing, blah, blah, it's like all the kids were gathered around the kid that got pants and then I ran up and pants them again once the crowd was around him and they were like, you're suspended for like two weeks. And now I look at that as like an adult, that was like a fifth grade or whatever. Look at that as an adult. I'm like, dude, that was fucking mean. as far yeah yeah yeah go ahead I had a really interesting experience one time so I used

to be a gym owner I used to run a strength and conditioning facility and one of the other and another gym owner that I knew who and all gym owners have gotten this excuse from from prospective clients many times where someone will want to join the gym so to speak they'll be in there trying to get a membership and they'll they'll say I'm gonna get in shape and then I'll come back when I'm in shape and gym owners think this is hilarious. They're like, no, this is like how you get in shape. You join the gym.

We will help you. Like you don't get in shape and then join the gym. You join the gym to get in shape. Like it's got it backward, right? But of course, that person is not really saying that. They just don't quite feel comfortable yet for whatever reason. Or they don't think the value is there or they don't feel whatever. There's some other reason.

They're there to get in shape. That's why they're there, right? Amongst all the things. And so I was trying to get a gym owner to come to Jiu-Jitsu. And that gym owner, who has had this said to him, many times said to me, I don't know, I'm going to get in better shape and then I'll show up to Jiu-Jitsu because Jiu-Jitsu is a different type of fitness. And I was like, whoa, you just, you just roll reversal right now and use the same verbiage terminology, et cetera, the same excuse

that all the people that you've told don't do that, you've seen this. And so in that moment, I realized, oh, like, this isn't, I had like empathy for my clients now. I was like, oh, this isn't like this is like this unique thing that non-fitness people experience like this is something else going on people just don't feel comfortable there's like this is like a global a global psychological thing that's happening here and and the excuse of I'm not in shape enough doesn't matter at all something else is happening here like I feel like with the self-savitage piece like this this kind of ties in to what we're talking about where I don't know the right way like there's got to be like a term for

what's happening there is there like a is like a like a term for um it's not like being a hypocrite there there's got to be something else there yeah i mean i guess the way i one of the other things so it's a protective mechanism what is it protecting us from some sort of embarrassment there's like an identity piece though and particularly for your gym buddy like he's already fit if the fit guy comes in and gets kind of you know strangled out by some like 130 pound you know girl and it's like dude you got all those gym muscles you can like rack out a bunch of deadlifts and you got choked out by this girl, that's like even more embarrassing, right, than like the out of shape person who's just showing up as a, as a, you know,

off the streets. Like, so there's like a sense of like, this is the kind of person that I should be or that people perceive me to be. And like, if I put myself in this other environment, then I could get like exposed, right? And we can get like imposter syndrome and all that kind of stuff where that kind of leads to to an extent. But like, yeah, if I think about myself or I think other people perceive me in a certain way, and now I'm putting myself in a position where that could get challenged.

Like, ultimately that, that environment is now threatening as opposed to like an opportunity for growth. Right. And so I think that's probably what's, I would imagine that's going on for a lot of folks. Yeah. So someone is worried about embarrassment or whatever it is. Like, what are like the most common things you see that lead to self-savitage and how do you help people work through those? Yeah. I mean, I think Mike mentioned like the.

perfectionism standpoint. And ultimately, I think a lot of perfectionist tendencies come back to like a lack of confidence in ourselves, like whether it's like cognitive, I'm going to check, recheck and check again to make sure I got it all down right or I'm going to think through things and that's the paralysis by analysis because I actually don't, I, it's like I'm looking for more information to make myself feel more confident when it's actually like, dude, just commit and go and then figure it out. I think the lack of self-belief that like, what if this doesn't go exactly the way I hope it will, can I still be okay? Right? Like if I fall flat on my face or I blow out or I embarrass myself, whatever, can I pick myself back up and like put my gym shorts back on

and still go talk to the cute girl? No, I'm going to go run to the, I'm going to run to like the locker room and like cry or whatever. I didn't do that. But the point is like there's a lot of self-doubt around how can I bounce back if this doesn't go well. And so if it's a a new thing or uncertain or just a really big challenging environment where it's like there's be a lot of eyeballs or a lot of consequences or a lot of money on the line, whatever it may be. What can I, like if I don't, if it doesn't go well or I, you know, how am I going to bounce back from that? And if I don't believe that I'm going to figure it out or I'll come back stronger or that

will be a learning lesson or failures feedback or like any of these kind of things that help us actually move forward, if it thinks like this is going to be catastrophizing. if this is going to be like at the end of me, then I'm probably not going to, I'm not going to go for it, right? The other, I mean, like when I,

you mentioned like the common things, I think there's a lot of, a lot of us that there's certain emotions or feelings that we're pretty uncomfortable with. And so we'll, again, going back to that substitution, I'll go with that uncomfortable feeling that I am okay with,

then one that I'm not. And so I will deal with like the, disappointment of something because I showed up hungover or overweight or whatever it is. Or like, I guess another one would be like overtraining, under training. Either I'm like I'm overtraining because I'm lacking the confidence and it actually blows me out before my actual competition. I'm worn down or run out because I've been trying to eke out every advantage I can as opposed like trusting my training, trusting my coaches.

That's like a form of self-sabotage that we're not necessarily aware of. It's like, wow, that guy's just a hard worker and he's just a hard time like following the program. He just wants to keep doing more and more. That can actually be a form of self-sabotage that we don't even realize, right? Yeah, to kind of piggyback a bit on what Ben said. And then also kind of I, it's a good old when you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. It's one of those situations where you can understand like, yeah, we as humans have anxiety because we know we exist in social hierarchies. we know that there is something we said about being at the top and not showing weakness and being embarrassed.

You know, it's like, why does everyone have anxiety about asking out someone they find attractive? It's because, like, well, it turns out you would have lived in a tribe where you had like maybe 510 viable candidates. So if all 510 said, no, that's the end of your bloodline. So solid pressure there to not mess up because everyone else is either your sibling cousin or too old or too young. So, you know, we've got these anxieties because, yeah, you don't want to be the outcast. You don't want to be the exile. And so when you go to a jiu-jitsu gym, how many people are there that are, you know, seeing you found her? Of course, everyone that's in a gym, yeah, there's at least some a-hole in there that's judging someone for being weak.

But most all of us are like, hell yeah. Like, if you're sitting there with a pink dumbbells, but you're actually in the gym doing something, like I will help you if it looks like you're going to hurt yourself. But the worst case I'm going to do is encourage you or leave you alone and not say a word to you. Like, but people have in their mind that they're walking in a west side barbell in its prime and someone's going to throw a barbell at them if they're doing something wrong or taking up a squat rack. And it's just, it's the sad reality of folks understandably having this built in trepidation, but not being aware of like, hey, this is anxieties that, yeah, they're there because, you know, it's like the grass shuffles one relative of your stares at it, it says, eh, whatever, and the other runs away. Well, if the one time that's a tiger

and the one time they didn't run away, they get eaten, end of bloodline. So you have a solid natural selection for anxiety, you know, in the context of things that seem to be uncomfortable. So how do you get in the move past it? Yeah. Yeah, there's a real cognitive bias towards like negative consequences. They did a study with gambling. And basically the result of this was like, you have to win twice as much as you lose to get the same impact emotional. So I got to win like a hundred bucks to feel as good as losing 50 bucks feels bad. Does that make sense? Like, I don't know if I'm explaining that exactly right, but there's just this high bias towards negativity and like feeling that because again, there's value. And it's like, don't go in those bushes because that's where the tiger is or that's where this, that dangerous thing lives.

And so we are already looking for what are, I'm doing threat detection all the time. Who's going to judge me? Who's going to laugh at me? Am I going to be ostracized from the community? Am I going to be, you know, shamed in front of the people that matter to me, whatever it may be. and so that can cause a lot of resistance, right? Or again, we're kind of going back to that protection and I'm going to build in excuses. So that when they're like, hey, man, what happened after that?

Like, you didn't seem like you're your best. You're like, oh, well, and then you list out your excuses and reasons for why it didn't go your way to try to save face, basically, right? That's one of the downsides of social media is that like you get 20 comments on your, on your post and one of them is negative and 19 of them are like positive, like, clappy hands. and smiley faces and then one of us like this guy's a fucking idiot and then you're like ah like the rest of the day you're like your whole your whole day is over yeah it's it's weighted so much heavier even if you don't want it to be like and you know maybe um you know maybe some people are more sensitive than others and some people like it really hits them hard but like but i think for everyone back there there there is a discrepancy as you're saying like the the negative comments and the

negative parts of life are just are just weighted heavier than the positive comments like I had a friend who was a relationship coach. And she used to coach people that if you make like one, like, um, smart aliki negative comments, you got to have like five positive comments to kind of unwind that. And so she actually taught something very similar to what you're saying. And there's a lot to that. Yep.

Yeah. I mean, the social media thing for sure, I mean, already biased us in like certain directions of people are clearly only going to post certain things. And then so then for us, like if we're not hitting PRs in the gym, like, dude, that guy's always posting PRs. or that guy's always doing this or she's always doing that. Like, I'm not. So there's some of that skewing and bias can go on.

But then also just thinking about, yeah, like the comments. And then, you know, Doug, what you said there about like the 5-1 ratio, that comes out of some really good like marriage counseling stuff. But I also think about like the self-talk, right? And like how that plays into the sabotage. Like I know for me, I was somebody was like, I'm going to work harder than everybody else. And that's what I'm going to trust in order to like be confident.

but then I actually undermined a lot of my own confidence by my own self-talk and questioning myself, which then probably led me to getting over-anxious and I was like puking before matches at times and things like that because it meant I thought it meant so much to me or I had these certain kind of skewed views of myself that reinforced were reinforced through how I talked to myself and that undid like all of this hard work and training that I had done. So there's a way that we can self-sabotage basically by just kind of like questioning, ourselves. And there's, there's nothing wrong with, like, I mean, I don't want to get, you know, getting too arrogant or having a big head has its own negative consequences. But there's like this kind of mode that happens, I think, for certain athletes, like, I don't want to get a big head.

I don't want to get arrogant. So I'm going to swing the other way and be like, I'm just dog crap or like, I'm never, I'm not that good or like what, like all these kind of things, which are just as harmful to our performance because they raise emotions. They, they kind of shift our attention from where it should be consequences to become greater than they ought to be. And it really kind of leads us to a poor performance often. Within that, I mean, this is what naturally lends itself for conversations about a growth versus a fixed mindset. You know, if you just already camp it with the fact, and that's the nice thing about, you're grappling sports is if you just default to the fact you're going to lose and you're

going to lose for a while before you win, you know, too many people think they're going into sports trying to be like Michael Jordan's free throw percentage, where it's like you should probably start off with more the expectation if you're going to be like a baseball player's hitting, you know, batting average. Like if you just win one quarter of your initial matches when you're first trying or, you know, the sparring sessions, like you're already setting yourself up for success because if you go 50-50, you've had a hell of a day. And if you only win one out of 10, like, you're not that far off the mark. But, you know, how do you coach your expectations? That's appropriate. And with the understanding of like, and this is, I guess, kind of higher

order thing, but one of the things that I work with a number of the athletes I coach, which is sometimes you're going to win and you didn't deserve it. You got lucky. And you need to make sure that you understand that you got lucky and you need to fix that. And other times, you're going to have completely executed perfectly, but the other team is better. And in those situations, like, you should be learning as much from your victories as your losses. And with the understanding of like, the only thing that we can really control is, you know, how well did we show up that day? You know, what did we bring to the table? And then what can we go in kind of that post-mortem, but you've got to remove your ego from it. You've got to kind of be

as objective as you can, which is hard. And like, okay, like I could have done this better and or I should have done this instead. But that again requires a whole lot of processing. And that's mental effort. And Lord knows that's finite. I mean, continuing down the boxing analogy, like it's all a function of expectations. Like, if you watch like an actual title fight and you see the numbers behind the fight, like the guy won the fight but he got punched in the face 300 times you know what I mean so it's a part about having like proper expectations you're not going to have this flawless victory in and every and every project that you take on like you're going to get punched in the face repeatedly and you

still might also win and that both of those things are are a part of it like you you can't have this this zero this flawless victory where you just get punched in the face zero times nobody does that yeah yeah and actually even in terms of like mental skills and visualization and some of those things There's like valid evidence to show that maybe 15% of the time if you're doing a visualization of a certain activity, like visualizing not necessarily everything going wrong, but like how do you handle a setback? How do you handle, you know, as Mike Tyson said, everyone's got to plan until you get punched in the face. Like what happens when it doesn't go exactly the way you plan? How do you recover? How do you bounce back?

Like resiliency. So yeah. Actually, on that, on that, no, can I butt in real quick with that? So Ben Bergenon is a crossfit coach. who have a lot of respect for. He's coached a bunch of high level, you know, games athletes and whatnot and runs a great gym and just a great, very intelligent person. And one thing that he does with his team is he sits them down before big competitions

and like on the whiteboard, like they list all of the things they can think of that will go wrong. And they decide what they're going to do when this happens. Like all these things are all out of our control. They're somewhere in the control. But like, they'll list like a hundred of them. And they'll have like a big conversation about like when, you know, when it starts raining in the middle of the event.

and the barbells are slippery, what are we going to do? And when you get lightheaded in the middle of the events, like, what are you going to do? And on and on and on. And that way, like, they've thought of all this stuff and they have, they have a plan of action for when things aren't going to go right, because they aren't going to go right. They don't know how they're not going to go perfectly well,

but they know something is going to crop up and they're prepared for it. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great, a great strategy because in terms of like, if we think about like anxiety as a term, it's a very kind of like unfocused fear. if we're kind of specifically naming, okay, barbell is slippery or this is going to happen or whatever, right? Now we're identifying really specific things that could go wrong. And again, there's like

maybe untold amounts of things that could go wrong. We're not going to cover all of them, but if you're covering the ones that are most likely to happen or even just feeling like, okay, I'm going from just dreading this thing to naming specifically what could happen and how I'm going to respond. Now, I've identified the issue and I'm starting to make a plan for what I'm doing about it, whether it's before the competition or leading up to, I think that itself could help

with some of the self-sabotage because then we're actually naming and getting some agency behind like how am I going to handle these things as opposed to just, man, I'm really nervous about what could happen and I'm freaking out and I can't tolerate this so I'm going to go get hammered or, you know,

whatever the thing is, because that's the only way that I can like manage this anxiety. That's a great point. In fact, and I might be moving us from this topic, but I really would like your thoughts on what you'd like to do to try to help your athlete get to the right part in the arousal curve. Because, yeah, you know, it's one of those things of we've all that athlete that we've had to try to figure out how to talk down from the ledge. And, you know, that's a challenge. But then again, you can also have the ones where it's rare, but they're not as psychologically up for it as they should be given the task at hand. what tools do you like to lean on, you know, for the getting them into that, you know, that right mental standpoint.

Because you guys know, a max attempt deadlift, you can be as psychotic as you want and it's going to go well. But as soon as you lose that self-control in combative sports, that's when a good athlete will dismantle someone of the same physical capacity because they'll make better decisions in the moment. Yep. Yeah. I'm thinking about, yeah, the spectrum there of like deadlifting versus like sinking a put on the masters or like some of these more kind of finding, you know, a shooting instance or something like that. Motor skills. Yeah. So that curve, right, we think about like a bell curve and finding that sweet spot.

So, I mean, one, it's going to be somewhat individualized, right? Like what feels right for me is not necessarily what's what is going to feel right for you. Now, that being said, I mean, we can get some, we can get some data on heart rate and HRV and some things like that. And depending on how much time you have, we can kind of build out like, hey, when you're at your best, here's some data that we can collect. Like, here's what your breathing rate is, here's what your heart rate is, these kind of things, so that we can mimic that. But ultimately, like pre-performance routines that build in mental skills like visualization, breathing for arousal regulation, to the, to, to the extent that we're using self-talk and then focusing our goals. I call those like our four core mental skills, building those in so that we have some familiarity

because it's we're going to things that are unfamiliar are inherently anxiety-inducing just because we just don't, we just don't know what to expect. So I have it, if I have a pre-performance routine that I know I go to every time. Now, the tricky thing is I'll just say a caveat is we don't want it to be like a ritual. Like I'm giving this thing the power. over me and if I don't do this then I can't perform right that being said we want to have habits in place that feel familiar that feel comfortable I want to know what it feels like to have whatever uniform I have on or the shoes that have on I want to know what it feels like the grass or the

ground or the ground whatever it is I'm performing on under me what the the stadium or the venue looks like or feels like right and we can we can mimic some of this through visualization the more vivid and more more of our senses we get involved that's going to help us feel it, make it feel familiar, um, so that when we go out, it can just be, you know, um, we talk about like moments and either I, something I really believe in is it's either, they're all either the most important moment or they're all just another moment. But we don't want like, we don't literally want the Super Bowl to feel different than game, than, than week one of the, um, season.

Right. Right. So, um, we want to build in things that make it feel familiar and know that like, I'm going be locked in. So we some of that is self-knowledge and knowing what does it feel like for me when I'm like at my best or at my peak for this event and then know like and we need to do that a way when it's not emotional like in the moment like hey man where do you need to be right now. Like if you don't know that already, you're screwed, right? So we need to have that built-in preloaded ahead of time. And then what are the practices that feel successful for you to get you there? I would also say, I mean, it's a lot harder when

we've kind of tipped the tipping point when we've gone too far emotionally or like upregulated too much, it's it's harder to pull back from that than to regulate up if we're underregulated. Now that being said, it's a lot less. I mean, I come across far fewer athletes who are underregulated or under like aroused and need to get upregulated for a competition than the other way around. Why do you think that is? I mean, I think the pressure that comes from the performance, it feels more real. We start telling ourselves, oh, this is the moment.

I've been working my whole career for this. Or like, we kind of believe in these, maybe we can believe in the kind of arrival fallacy of like, man, I finally made it to, whether it's D1 or varsity or pro or whatever. Like, we hit these kind of steps and we think it's like this massive unlock. And it's a cool thing, but it's one step in progression. know, that is accounted for among many other steps of progression. Just like, you know, I forget who was talking about like, hey, you didn't lose, you didn't gain that 100 pounds overnight. You're not going to lose it overnight, right?

This is like what these are small decisions built up over time that get you to be a certain kind of person. And so just being anchored and like, hey, I'm the kind of guy who I've shown up. This is what I do. This is what I'm going to be about as opposed to like, oh my gosh, I'm in this big stage and I got like show up. And then I'm like doing more than I should. or feeling like I need to do something different than what got me here.

And that really just dysregulates us. You know, at Rapid, we deal with primarily, you know, high net worth, professional athletes, wealthy executives, et cetera. Like these people are high performers, excuse me, they've had a lot of success in their life. You know, and you talk about any rapid specific people, but do you find there's a radical difference between people who are high performers and the amount of self-sabotaging? They do. Do high performers do this?

in a unique way, like even though they're already at a high level versus someone who's like, you know, brand new, inexperienced coming into the gym, there's a regular person, they're kind of scared, et cetera. Yeah. You know, the thing that comes mind instantly, and again, I'm not speaking about anyone specific, but just kind of the trends of going back to that theme of like over, over training or in this case, like over indexing, like, I mean, I know it's like a, performance show and strength and things like that.

But thinking about like holistically, I'm going to just put all of my eggs in like this basket, whether it's like work or performance and I'm in disregard, like anything else that might be relevant in my life, whether it's relationships or family or like anything else that might have like value for me as a human. I'm just going to kind of disregard that and just completely go all in on this. And so yeah, I'm kicking ass in this one area of my life to an extent. But like my marriages are in shambles or like I'm in dendous. debt or like I'm doing all these other things that are really corrosive as like a compensation

because I'm only kind of focused on this one aspect of who I am as a person. Gotcha. Like made up example. Like if you're just like having you're having conflict with your with your spouse and then you're like, oh, like, rather than have like the hard conversation, you're like, you're like, I got to go to the gym. I got to go to work out. I got to, I got shit to do.

Like just fucking leave me alone. Like you're kind of just avoiding it by by being a high performer in this other domain, so to speak. That was air quotes on the end. I don't like you're doing something responsible almost, but really you're avoiding the most important thing. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

And again, we're just, we're choosing the discomfort that we enjoy, which is like getting a killer workout in, as opposed to like the uncomfortable truth of like sitting down with my wife and like having an honest conversation that our marriage is in a great state. And like, you know, where are we at? And like, how do we build this back up? Because quite frankly, that might be something I don't know, you know, like hypothetically, I don't know how to do. So I'm going to avoid that because I know how to rack out a bunch of like workouts in the gym. So I'm just going to like do that to make my feels myself feel good. Yeah, dude, 100%. Yeah.

You know, earlier you were talking about negative self-talk and that made me back to the CBT conversation. I believe CBT also has a term called like automatic self-talk or automatic negative thoughts or something like that. You know this term? Yep. Yep. So can you explain that concept and how you kind of like logic your way out of those automatic thoughts? Yeah, so automatic thoughts are just like the things that just come up instantly. We're not like intentional about thinking like, oh, Doug was a real dick to me right there.

Right. It's just like, it's just kind of this automatic thought, right? Yeah, sorry, Doug. But those are always rooted in like in what we call core beliefs and like ultimately stories that we kind of have believed about ourselves. Now, it's kind of like there's a reciprocating aspect to it because like the thoughts that we have reinforced the beliefs that we have, which are kind of core to us. and then the thoughts we have kind of come out of those beliefs. So if I believe, and like these kind of core beliefs, if they're negative, tend to be like, I'm not worthy or I suck or I'm not lovable or like kind of these like

kind of deep emotional things. But then it comes out and like, you know, that guy cut me off because he doesn't care about me in traffic and so I'm getting pissed at him. I didn't think about the connection there. It just came out. So in terms of like how do we how do we work our way out of it? of this, we need to kind of like do the deep work here of thinking like, okay, what are stories that I've chose to believe about myself? Maybe they're informed by like influential people in my

life, positive or negative. How did I internalize those? Maybe I was like bullied as a kid. And so I think I'm kind of a weakling. And like that's and then I'm operating out of that, right? Particularly like if you want to figure out like where do I go, just in psychology, we think about developmental aspects and our identity is really forming those teen years. 18 and early 20s. So if there are like significant things, you know, a girl broke up with me, I was embarrassed by this, I got, you know, whatever like these kind of core stories we might think about for ourselves, there's probably something in that that we have internalized and chosen to believe

about who we are as a person that then is kind of coming out. And then so when I get treated a certain way in a business deal, well, it's like I'm getting screwed over because I'm like this kind of a person, right? Which actually all stems back to like when I was, you know, 14 and, you know, eighth grade or something like that, right? It's kind of wild. So that makes sense. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's, uh, it is entertaining for anyone that's personal train for long enough to realize that a certain amount of what you're doing is also dealing with

their past history, we will say. Yeah. I will always remember I had a client that I just could not, they would, they were incredibly resistant to deadlifting. And then of all things, we find out it's because their father had a heart attack whenever he picked up something heavy off the ground and then that became their thing of like, well, if I deadlift, now I'm going to die. And it's just kind of like a, like, well, one, I'm really sorry that you had to like see your parent pick something up and then, you know, had the big one. But two, it's like we're in very different situations. You know, they were markedly older than they were then when I was working with them. But yeah, yeah. And I will, you know, it's where certain folks, they make a lot of sense when you

meet their parents where it's like, oh, this was the mechanism for being around that, like, cool. So this is how they establish control or otherwise. It's just, it's wild. Yeah. It's all easier said than done to like to, as they say, like read the label from the inside of the bottle. Like it's hard to see what your weird beliefs are from in your own mind. You don't, because it's all normal to you.

Everything in here is like the way it's supposed to be. Yep. So is that where like having help from a third party expert comes in or or, you know, doing psychedelic drugs or whatever other, um, treatment there could be out there to like like get perspective in a way that you just can't get by just living in your own mind? I mean,

the amount of, if I had a dollar for every time somebody was like, now that I say this out loud, that sounds kind of weird or like doesn't really make a lot of sense. Are you right? Is it, I would be a richer man than I am today. Um, so yeah,

sometimes it just takes. and the value, you know, whether it's a good coach or a mentor or a counselor or a pastor or something like that, to sit down and kind of just be open and like not necessarily rush to judgment. But the transformation I see that takes place that's like the most like lasting or meaningful is the stuff that we come to on our own conclusions, right? If I just tell you, Doug, here's your problem and here's what you needed to fix it. Cool, maybe you take my advice or maybe you like, dude, that guy's full of crap. He doesn't know me from Adam. I'm going to keep doing what I want to do, right?

But if it's like, hey, now that I talk about it, it sounds like that I'm doing this because of X, Y, or Z back there, or whatever the thing is. And I don't like that. And I realize that I want to do something different. When we come to that conclusion on our own, that's where, like, the real learning and transformation takes place. And so oftentimes we need some kind of guidance, right?

I mean, like, I just think, like, growth ultimately, happens when we're in community, whether it's like in a one-on-one thing or a group of people or whatever it is. But that's where like real growth takes place. And so if I'm like isolating myself or I'm not willing to kind of engage in some of these things with other people, I'm probably going to keep using the same patterns and methods to try to get different results. And I'm going to keep getting frustrated. You know, when you see someone's being like you can you can tell something's going on with somebody. Right. And you also can tell that they're like resistance, the resistance

to change. Like how do you how do you break through? You kind of mentioned being like indirectly mentioned but someone needs to feel understood. You can't just like tell someone what to do like and you say you don't know me like so the comment you don't know me means that this guy doesn't understand my situation and who I am right. So if someone doesn't feel understood then they're not going to take your advice or suggestion. They're just going to be like fuck that guy. I'm out. How do how do you break through and develop trust without without having to take many years of like real relationship building? Sure. You know, I mean, I think, yeah, to your point about, like, if people feel understood or they just feel like, and they don't feel like they're going to be judged, they're going to be judged necessarily, like, I think that's like one of the biggest fears that psychologically we all have is just like being judged.

Because, again, that then separates us from the group or like I'm ostracized or I'm different or whatever it is. So if that can, if that's not present, that's a big help. And then I'm thinking about like, I mean, ultimately, just like if if they're saying, I mean, like, you know, people come to me, right? I mean, like, essentially, I have a business. People reach out to me. They say, hey, I want to work with you. So there's already admitting, like, something in my life is not going the way I wanted to,

whether I'm not performing the way I want to or I've got these kind of past hurts or wounds. So, like, I don't even have to point out, like, hey, you're here for a reason, right? And we can kind of dance around it, and that's cool. But, but ultimately, like, you already acknowledge that there's something going on. And then I think about, I mean, ultimately. you can't you can't break down the the front door so because there's too many psychological locks and there's too many ways that they can just kind of excuse or work it out so you work with what they can do right just like i'm in a good personal trainer like you can't you can't deadlift 315 pounds right

now all right well let's start with some rdLs or some kettlebell work or like where can we start to work where are you willing to engage with and admit and we'll unlock that later right now that might feel kind of frustrating because it's like a slow progression but just like i mean with everything physically like you're not going to start running a six minute mile if right now you can't even you can barely walk a mile right you can not start deadlifting a certain weight if like you can barely pick up a sack of rice like we're just we have to admit where we're at and not try to like jump ahead because we're just going to do do our clients to service or damage um you know uh on the uh feeling understood no I thought of this while after I said that a second ago I had had dinner with a guy and I can't

remember his name. I can't remember the book leader wrote, but he wrote a book on listening. I need to go look this up now that I just have this. He wrote a book on listening. And he told me a story during that dinner of a woman who was almost like mute. Like she wouldn't, she wouldn't talk to people. She wouldn't make eye contact with you. But, but she was like known to be suicidal. And he's trying to counsel this woman into not killing herself, right? And after many sessions of trying to get her to talk and her just like sitting in silence for the whole session. At one point, he said to her something along the lines of, hey, I think I understand why you need to kill yourself. And that was the first time that she like, stopped staring at the wall, looked him in the eye and said, if you can understand why I need to kill myself, then maybe I don't have to. And that's like, that's like his like his rock story for the for this for this book about why why listening is so important. Why making someone feel understood is like the key to connection. Like having empathy for someone is the only way to get them to open up. Man, that's really powerful. I mean, I heard a similar story years ago from a psychiatrist,

and yeah, a woman was suicidal, and he started feeling similar kind of, I don't know if it was exactly a panic attack, but just he was able, there was some kind of emotional unlock there where he was empathized and say something similar. And that was kind of the gateway to all of this, right? And I'm thinking about, like, you know,

clients who are struggling with, you know, a certain performance issue or their weight or whatever it is. And maybe it's just like, yeah, man, I bet it's really hard to be carrying around that extra that extra weight or to not be able to kind of do the things that you want to do or these certain dreams feel impossible, right? And just that knowing and that support as opposed to just feeling like judged or less than or unworthy or whatever it is, there's a famous psychologist who said like when we come to like accept ourselves or who we are, that's when true change can begin.

I'm kind of butchering that quote, but it's, yeah, that's the juice of it. Yeah. That's a big part of the challenge, which is, you know, obviously part of what we all do is it's interpersonal. Like, you've got to build a rapport. And we've all been around that person that thinks they can like speed run building rapport that like they can go that deep that fast. And therein lies at least one of the things that I know I've struggled with with folks that I've worked with, which is if you overplay it and you try to have, you know, reach beyond your grasp with someone personality. If anything, they tend to just throw the barriers up even higher.

Because it's like, you don't know me. You don't know who I am. It's like, that is fair. And, you know, I always find it off-putting when someone's like, don't me wrong, as you know, well, Doug knows, unfortunately. I'm a relatively outgoing individual. So, like, I'll talk to anybody. But it's one of those things that, like,

if someone thinks they can figure me out in less than two hours and like, I doubt it, buddy. I doubt it. This onion has layers. And now I am less interest in getting to know you or making it or making it so you know me on that level of intimacy. I mean, I think that speaks to like, nobody wants to feel like a project, right? Like I'm here. I'm going to fix you or build you or like, dude, don't.

I'm a person. Don't treat me that. And I think like hacks to intimacy or these kind of like shortcuts. This is just like, hey, I'm just trying to optimize like a relate. Like it's ironic and weird to try to quote, quote, optimize a relationship in a sense, right? Like, that's not the right, again, if you're a hammer, everything in the world as a nail, like optimization for a lot of things is great. And we want to have, like, healthy, good relationships like that stuff.

But, like, trying to make shortcuts or hacks to optimize a relationship as opposed to just treating the person as a person is it's going to backfire. Yeah. I need to go apologize to my wife. My best. Yeah. And as Mike pointed earlier, you know, even if you're not on paper. a counselor, so to speak, if you're a coach of any kind, then you're, you are playing this game with whoever you were working with. And so this is relevant for everyone. Whether you're,

whether you're coaching fitness or you're coaching your, your son's baseball team or whatever it is, or you're just a parent in general. Like, if you are in like a leadership role and you're dealing with someone who you, uh, who you need to help help grow and develop, then at some level you're playing this psychological game we're talking about here. I feel like if you're doing that, I mean, again, we do it from time to time, but if we're doing it, it's probably more for us than it is for them. Like, if I'm trying to, like, force you into doing something or, like, trying to get the shortcut to this result, it's probably because, like, I feel, I'm questioning my own ability as a coach and, like,

if I don't get this person, like, their goals and that means I'm a crappy coach or, like, whatever it is, as opposed to recognizing that, like, ultimately their growth is their journey. Like, we can guide them and walk along with them, but they've got to do the work. And I can support them and you know right so we're just kind of taking ownership what is in my control what isn't and if i'm if i'm basically if i'm trying to force that on them then i'm trying to take things that are out of my control into my control yeah 100% man all right uh mr ben steel appreciate you coming on the show enjoy the conversation where can people find more they want to work with you or do you have a social media channels and products etc yeah uh well i you know

i'm on the rapid health team so if you're wanting to work with uh the awesome team here I'm part of that. I also have a private practice. It's called Examined Life Counseling.com, where I do counseling in Washington and sports performance, mental coaching nationwide. And Instagram is Examine Life Counseling as well. Beautiful.

Again, appreciate you coming on the show. Dr. Mike Lane. Yeah, just Mike Lane, Ph.D. on Instagram. I'll work on getting some more stuff at some point. Fantastic. And I'm on Instagram. My name is Doug Larson. You can find me at Douglas E. Larson.

Instagram we are barbell strug barbell underscore shrug and if you want to work with the whole team including dr ben steele is dr ben steele dr ben steel right dr ben steel and dr mike lane and dr and dandy galpin lots of doctors on the team at rapid health optimization you go to r ita lab.com that's a r ete t a b dot com friends we'll see you guys next week