High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 121: Developing Mental Toughness in Sport, Business and Life with Dr. Jason Selk, Bestselling Author, Speaker & Coach

Episode Date: July 12, 2017

Jason Selk is considered to be one of the premier performance coaches in the United States. He helps numerous well-known professional and Olympic athletes as well as Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 executives and organizations develop the mental toughness necessary for high-level success. While serving as the Director of Mental Training for the St Louis Cardinals, Dr. Jason Selk helped the team win their first World Series in over 20 years. Dr. Selk’s second book, Executive Toughness, is a best-selling business book and his first book, 10-Minute Toughness, is on pace to be one of the best-selling sport psychology books of all time. Dr. Selk’s latest book Organize Tomorrow Today was ranked by CEO READ as the 13th best-selling business book of 2016. In this interview, Jason and Cindra discuss: How he helps his clients create an “attack mentality” How working in sports and business compare Why focusing on the process is key to success The channel capacity How elite performers differ from the rest His definition of mental toughness How his clients use success logs And his advice for people interested in going into the field of sport psychology You can find the full show notes at cindrakamphoff.com/jason.

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Sindra Kampoff, and I'm grateful that you're here, ready to listen to episode 121 with Dr. Jason Selk. Now, the goal of these interviews is to learn from the world's best leaders, athletes, coaches, and consultants, all about the topic of mindset to help us reach our potential or be high performers in our field or sport.

Now, today I interviewed Dr. Jason Selk, who's considered to be one of the premier performance coaches in the U.S. He's helped numerous well-known professional and Olympic athletes, as well as Fortune 500 executives and organizations, develop the mental toughness necessary for high-level success. While serving as the director of mental training for the St. Louis Cardinals, Jason helped the team win their first ever World Series in 20 years. Now there's three books that we talk about in this interview that Jason has written. The first one is called 10-Minute Toughness, second one is Executive Toughness, And his latest book is called Organize Tomorrow Today.

And there's lots of things that we talk about in this interview. Here's a few things to give you a snapshot. First, we talk about how he helps his clients develop and create an attack mentality. How working in sports and business compare. Why focusing on the process is key to success. We talk about the channel capacity, his definition of mental toughness, and the differences between elite performers and the rest. Now my favorite quote from this interview is this one, the best of the best realize that in face of adversity, that's how they get the edge. Now you

can head over to cindracampoff.com slash Jason for a full description and as well as the show notes. Now before we get started, I'm going to read a comment from iTunes. And this is what Ryan says. I listen to a lot of personal development stuff, but Cinder has a way of really making the information stick with you long term after you're done listening to the show, which is the true test of how valuable the show is. Thank you so much, Ryan, for heading over to iTunes

and leaving a comment and review there. Now, if you like today's podcast, if you could do one of three things, you could head over to iTunes and provide a rating and comment like Ryan did, tweet about the podcast or share it on social media, or tell the friend about a podcast. I'm sure there's someone that you know who would find this episode helpful. Thank you so much for tuning in today, and without further ado, let's bring on Jason. Dr. Selk, thanks so much for joining me here on the High Performance Mindset, and thanks for coming in.

I appreciate you having me, Sandra. Wow, that's great. Well, let's just jump in right away and tell us a little bit about your passion and tell us a little bit more about what you do, Dr. Selk. Well, first thing, will you please call me Jason? I much prefer to go by Jason. I appreciate that. It's much better for me if you just go with Jason. I think it's really obvious that people I work with, they know I absolutely love what I do. I just feel like I found what I was supposed to do in life. I think primarily both my parents are mental health professionals. And so I grew up in this family of caregiving and taking care of other people.

And I think probably some of it passed on in the DNA. And also seeing the impact of my parents helping other people, seeing that was very, very rewarding. So I knew at a, I think at a very early age that I really wanted to help people. I wasn't quite sure how or in what vehicle I looked into maybe being a physician, looked into physical therapy and those didn't quite feel right. And then I think second semester of my freshman year in college, I stumbled into the idea of sports psychology and really helping people with performance. And I was one of those lucky individuals that early in college figured out what I wanted to do. And ever since then, it's felt like just a perfect fit. So I'm just really passionate about working with people, not just

athletes. I mean, I, I, 70% of the work I do these days is outside of the sports arena, but anybody who wants to improve any way I can help. I just, I feel so fortunate to be in that position to do so. Excellent. I know you do a lot of speaking for businesses and I know you do some stuff in mental training with athletes. Just give us a little bit of snapshot of kind of your week and who do you serve right now? 11 days a month, I'm on the road and I do, you know, again, probably 50 plus keynote speeches a year where I'm hired by corporate organizations. I'm, again, kind of lucky in that I get to work with the best of the best, usually Fortune 500 or Fortune 100 companies.

My prices are kind of high. So it's probably, you know, some of the smaller companies don't look at me maybe because of my pricing but I'll get out you know once or twice a week and do a keynote the days I'm in St. Louis where I live I've got a full practice so kind of like today I've been on the phone coaching people all across the country and some even internationally. Some of them are athletes, some of them are business people. But I'll do, you know, 20, 25 coaching calls a day. Each call is somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes.

When I'm in St. Louis and when I'm on the road, you know, that's the easy stuff. I'll take a flight somewhere and they'll pick me up in a nice car, drive me to a nice venue. I'll speak for an hour, an hour and a half, and they'll put me back in a car and maybe stay in a hotel for the night and then get back to St. Louis. Okay. I've got a lot of variety. I got a lot of variety. And the great thing for me is, again, I just really feel like I'm out there touching a lot of people trying to help. Yeah, that's awesome. That's what it's about, right? Well, you know, Jason, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is I really, really enjoy both of your books that I read, Executive Toughness and then 10-Minute Toughness. I'd like to

talk about those a little bit today. And then I know you've also done some work as a director of mental training for the St. Louis Cardinals and you do other work with, you know, pro athletes. As you look back in terms of your journey, and I know there's people who are listening that maybe aren't as experienced as you, what do you think, you know, what's the one thing that's had the most impact on your success in the field? Boy, that's a tough one to pin it down. There were a couple of things that I think I had a realization with the help of some other people that were important. One was that if you're going to go into this field, especially with professional athletes and high performing individuals, you really have to have a product, if you will, that is better

than anything else on the market. And for example, I believe still today, the mental training program I wrote that's now commonly referred to as 10 Minute Toughness, my first book, I still feel like today that's the best mental training program on the market for focus and confidence. Okay. And so I think if I was going to give advice, it would be, if you're gonna work at that high level, you really have to have something, one thing that's tangible, that you're better than anyone else at. And that one thing really needs to translate for the athlete into being able to perform at a higher level. And if it's a person in the business world, same thing. It needs to

translate for them being able to perform, to outperform their competition. That's, I think, a really important piece that someone told me a long time ago. And then I think the other thing, you really can't fake this. You know, I think in pop psychology and the business books and the business world these days, the word passion is oftentimes thrown around. And again, I think you've kind of heard what we talked about earlier that I really feel like this is what I was built to do. And I feel like it's part of who I am. It's what I enjoy doing at a higher level. You know, oftentimes, I would just assume work than take a vacation day. And I just really, really enjoy working with people and helping people.

And you kind of have to have that passion. The way I just talk about this is it's the attack mentality that with the people I work with, because I'm passionate, because I love the work, I just always have this attack mentality of you must get better. Remember, I heard Barry Sanders, the great running back speak one time, and he said he was really disappointed in the coaching he didn't get in the NFL. And he said something that really, really caught my attention. He said, you know, I don't know if it was the coaches thought I was thinking I was so good that I didn't need to or want to get any better or that the coaches were lazy. But for whatever reason, I didn't get a lot of coaching in the NFL.

And I didn't think that was fair. And when I heard him say that, it just really struck a chord with me because it's really easy with the great athletes, the great business people, the top performers on the team. I think it's really easy from a coaching standpoint or a leadership standpoint to look at those folks and just say the words, just keep doing what you're doing. You're doing everything right. And it was Barry Sanders that really brought to my attention how unfair that is. And so that passion that I have is really translated into a relentless attacking mentality that whenever I have an interaction with someone, it's my job. I'm being paid to make sure I push that person on one thing. I need to outline,

find, help them figure out what's that one step of action that person needs to take. Even if it's just going to make them an inch better, that's enough. But I can never, ever be satisfied with just keep doing what you're doing. That's not what coaching is about. Remember, coaching, I think the role of a coach is to push an athlete or a person to a place they couldn't or wouldn't go without you. And I believe it's my responsibility, it's a coach's responsibility, at every proactive point of contact to do that, even if it's one thing just an inch. And I learned that, again, from one of the greatest football players of all time, Barry Sanders.

Absolutely. And one of the things I hear, Jason, is that, you know, not only are you helping others get better, but you're working to get better every day. So tell us a little bit about the connection that you see in sport and developing mental toughness in sport as you do in business, since I know you work in both of those. And one question I'd like to ask you is what similarities do you see and maybe even what differences do you see in terms of mental toughness in business versus in sport? Well, I'd tell you this. I think the similarities

are a lot greater than the differences. Okay. I would say this in terms of mental toughness and really kind of like the true teachings of sports psychology, the sports world is light years ahead of the business world. Now, I think individuals in both sport and in business, those are where the similarities are the same. They're both very, very hungry for the improvement. But to give you an example, the process mentality, which is really learning to focus more on your effort, on your preparation, on the things that you can control. You have Nick Saban out there who talks a lot about this. There's a lot of the top coaches that talk about this. It really originated with the great coach John Wooden. That's where I learned it. And I think that's where all these great coaches of today have learned it.

And although it's been around for years and years and years in the sports world, and the great coaches have been teaching this to the athletes for years and years and years, in the business world, the process mentality still is somewhat new to people. You know, I think you still have that corporate motto of it's all about results. You know, it's all about what results can you produce. And I don't disagree with that. But what we learned in the sports world from the greats like John Wooden is the best way to control those results is to truly focus on the process, the activities that most cause the results you're looking for. And again, in the sports world, I think that's much more accepted than it is in the business world. I tell you, if there's a big difference that I see,

it's that I think corporate America would be so much more well served if they would have a greater understanding. Because remember, the mind can only fully focus on one thing at a time. And if a person's focused on the result itself, they cannot be in the same moment, focused on those activities that cause the results. I think if there was one thing I would really push people in the corporate world to understand, it's that one thing. Because I think if there was one thing I would really push people in the corporate world to understand, it's that one thing. Because I think if you say, what's the greatest contribution I can make even in the sports world, it's that really helping an individual understand that process mentality. I think that that's the greatest way to control for results, whether it be in sport

or in business. Absolutely. And can you just give us a little insight in terms of how you might help somebody develop that mindset in terms of focusing on the process over the outcome or the results? Yeah. So I think the first thing I do, and I don't think it's that difficult for people to grasp. I just think it's somewhat new for most people. But the first thing I would identify, I would define what the difference between the two types of goals are. You have product goals, which are results, and then you have process goals, which are what it takes daily to achieve the results. So I'd start with just a definition. Then I'd give some examples. If you're in the sports world, let's say you're a professional pitcher. You might have a product goal of, I want to have a sub-3 ERA.

That's a very common example for a starting pitcher in Major League Baseball, what a product goal might be. And then you'd say, okay, now examples of process goals. And this is a really key piece of the process goals. And again, it boils down to something called channel capacity, the brain's bandwidth. process goals and this is a really key piece of the process goals and again it boils down to something called channel capacity the brains bandwidth and and what we know is the magic number is really three when it comes to process goals you really don't want to have more than three and anytime you're working on improving something the magic number with channel capacity is one so with

process goals I'm always going to start people with one and at most work up to three. But the key is you never let them go more than three because they need to know if they start trying to do four, five, six, keep those five, six things in working memory at one point in time. It's like a juggler. I can juggle three balls. If you throw me a fourth oneler. I can juggle three balls. If you throw me a fourth one, I'm going to start dropping balls. Often it's mental. So you really want to force people to prioritize what are the two to three at most important activities daily that will cause the results. So for example, with a major league pitcher, it might be,

I'm going to complete my strength and conditioning program every single day. I'm going to get it done 100% of the time. You might say, I'm going to follow my throwing program 100% of the time. And then you might have a mental component. You might say, well, I'm going to do my mental workout five out of six days or five out of seven days, or I'm going to do my success logs five out of seven days or six out of seven days, or I'm going to do my success logs five out of seven days or six out of seven days, whatever it might be. But those might be examples of product and process goals. And then the final step is, okay, now for you, let's identify what's the one most important result you're going after. And then what are those two or three most important process goals? And I

think, you know, and you can relate to this with your experience with professional athletes. You work with enough professional athletes. You work with enough professional people in the business world. You start to see those patterns of what really works. Now, I'm never going to tell someone what their process goals should be, but I think it would be remiss on my part to say, okay, you know, I've worked with hundreds of professional pitchers at this point. These are some of the most common patterns I see. And then again, I think the key is to let them

choose what are the actual specifics for the product and process goal they're hoping to achieve and focus on. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I hear what you're saying in terms of having them think of the product goals, the process goals, but only consider, you know, between one, three, and our mind can't focus on more than three. I think that's a really good point. You know, Jason, tell us a little bit about how you actually define mental toughness. I know you've written, you know, a lot of things on mental toughness. Your book, 10 Minute Toughness, is really focused on that. Tell us how you define that. Yeah, so I've thought about this for years and years and years, and I've probably put thousands of hours into this. And my definition, and it's been this way actually since 2006, my definition of mental toughness is the mind's ability to focus on solutions, especially in the face of adversity.

That's excellent. And what do you see in terms of the best do, you know, so I'm thinking of the best athletes that you work with, maybe the pro athletes or the executives that you speak to, or you work with individually, what do you see them do in those adverse situations that, you know, other people maybe don't do exactly the same? Yeah, so I think the first thing is, you know, I call it get your mind right. That I think the best of the best realize that in the face of adversity, that's where they really can get the edge on the competition because it's completely normal biologically speaking for the brain to focus on the problem or the adversity you know if a pitcher is pitching on a cold windy day it's very likely that the people he's going up against, the hitters, are focused on how cold it is and how windy it is. And if he realizes that that's what their mind is more likely to be focused on,

and that if he then sharpens his focus on those process goals or what we might call in this situation a performance statement, that during competition has two or three most important items to focus on it's going to give him an advantage because on those nice 72 day weather days where everything is going perfectly everybody feels great the weather's terrific the lighting's perfect he knows that that hitter is going to be on the top of his game. There's nothing going to be necessarily distracting the hitter. But on the worst days, under the worst conditions, in the most adversity, that's where the mentally tough people really have an advantage because instead of allowing their minds to focus on the adversity or the problems, they're going to have a tighter focus, relatively speaking, on the solutions

than the people that they're competing against. So it really is about recognizing the importance of thought control and knowing that normal people, even highly successful people in the face of adversity, are going to focus on the problem. And if you can get above that, you're going to give yourself a distinct advantage, a distinct ability to thrive in the face of adversity. You know, you've given us sort of some of the how-tos, the performance statements, you know, focusing on the process goals. What are some another way or a few other ways that you help,

maybe it's pro athletes or executives really to find the edge in those situations that there's quite a bit of adversity. I think one of the things that I've been fairly good at over the course of my career, and I think people appreciate this working with me is I totally respect channel capacity. So I don't just teach it. I really practice it myself. So instead of, you know, I'm not one of these people that is going to throw 15, 20 different things at the people I work with. What I'm really going to present people with are maybe five to eight different techniques and tools, but from the five to eight, I'm going to make them really boil down what are those one, two, or three at most, most important activities or focus points. And then over the, you know, and I usually, when I work with an athlete or a business person,

the term of the coaching is usually a year. I feel like if I can get somebody for a year, I can basically guarantee the outcomes that I'm not the cheapest person in town and I wanna make sure that the people I work with get a high return on the investment. And I know that if I can get somebody for a year to commit working with me, that over the course of a year,

we can control the scoreboard enough where they're going to get that high return on the investment. But over the course of that year, it's really going to be repetition, repetition, repetition of once we identify for that individual, those two to three at most, most important skills or focus points. Yeah, absolutely. And when you, when you look at like, you know, overall in your work, is there any, I guess, similarities between the two people that you work with in terms of their one or two focus points or their one or two activities or skills that they use and they go back? Could you give us an example of maybe what some of those are? Yeah. So I'd say, again, the first thing that I always work with within individuals, making sure that we have those process goals in place.

And then I'd probably tell you the other top two most common things people focus on are, number one, mental workouts, which is outlined in the first five chapters of 10 Minute Toughness. I think the mental workout is one of the things that really propelled me from a nobody, you know, I was just getting out of graduate school, kind of put it together, catching lightning in a bottle, felt like it took me about 45 minutes, and I was lucky enough to create the mental workout. That's been a really big tool I think people use both in the business world and in the sports world to have themselves mentally prepared each and every day. And then also something called success logs, which the concept, the theory behind it is self-evaluation that, you know, if you can get a person to ask themselves the right questions,

typically really good things are going to happen. The unfortunate thing is most of us, when we evaluate ourselves, we're evaluating incorrectly. I'll give you two quick examples. So it's really common, again, for people to evaluate through the perfectionist mentality, meaning that, you know, I go out there and I play a game or I go through a nine-hour day of work, and when I'm driving home or when I'm sitting in the clubhouse after the game, it's really easy for my mind to focus on,

what did I screw up on today? What did I do poorly today? And you might have done 99 things you did really, really well. Maybe there was one thing less than perfect. And again, the mind has a tendency, because of that perfectionist mentality, to go to that one thing. But unfortunately, that which you focus on expands. If I'm driving home from work or if I'm sitting in a clubhouse

letting my mind focus on the thing I screwed up on, I'm making it more likely that I'm going to have more of that tomorrow you know the great Bear Bryant football coach at Alabama this is something people don't don't know a whole lot that when he showed when they did film work he never showed a player a play done poorly he would only show the player doing plays really well and if there was a mistake would only show the player doing plays really well. And if there was a mistake, he would show the player what someone else did in that circumstance that was done really well. But he wouldn't show plays done poorly for that reason. He didn't want the mind to expand the negative. So that's one thing is, again, in self-evaluation, people have a tendency to

evaluate the negative. And you're so much better off if you'll evaluate first what you did well and then what you want to improve instead of what you've done poorly. The other thing people do in terms of evaluating incorrectly is they, again, put most of the evaluation on the result. And you can't control the result, especially when it's already done. What you can control, you can evaluate, you want to evaluate your process. So instead of saying, how much money did I make today? Or did I win or lose today? A better question might be on a scale of one to 10,

how well did I do in the last week completing my process goals? How well did I do today completing my process goals? Things like that. But I think, you know, process goals, mental workouts, and success logs, those are probably the top three performance tools that I use with people I work with, whether it be in sport or in business. Excellent. And the mental workout you can get in the 10-minute toughness book is a success log in there as well? Yes. In fact, in executive toughness, both are covered as well. Executive toughness was written more for people in the business world. 10-minute toughness was written primarily for professional athletes or athletes wanting to become professional athletes. So, you know, they're a little bit different in

terms of some of the questions in the success logs and some of the things you might want to visualize in the mental workout. But the format's fairly similar. If you're an athlete, I'd tell you look at 10-minute toughness. If you're a business person, look at executive toughness. Okay, excellent. And then you have one other book called Organized Tomorrow Today. I know, you know, we could talk about this all day long. I'm sure we could spend 24 hours just talking about these concepts nonstop. But you know, you can obviously get those three books on Amazon. Can you tell us other ways that we can buy these books and connect with you, Jason? Yeah, they're all three bestsellers. So if you went to Amazon, you wouldn't have any trouble. You can also we try to put a lot of free stuff on our website.

So you could obviously get links on the website to any of the books. But we try to put some videos and information on there for people so that if they don't want to go out and hire me or go watch me in a lecture, that they can get some free stuff too without having to do too much work. And that website is jasonselk.com. Okay, excellent. And then I'll make sure that I connect all of your social media links to the show notes page, which will be at cindracampoff.com slash Jason. So Jason, do you have any kind of final advice for those people who are just working to be at their best more often, what I call high performers. Again, I'd say know what your single most important activity is every day and just really

work to attack that one thing every day. You do that, you'll be well on your way to outpacing everybody else. Excellent. Thank you so much for your time and energy and coming on this show, Jason. Well, Sandra, thanks for having me and thanks for all you do. I know that you're making a major impact out there with people, so I appreciate what you're doing to help people as well. Thank you, Jason.

Have an awesome weekend and a great 4th of July. Thanks, Sindra. Great being with you. Bye-bye. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you like today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend, and join the conversation on Twitter at Mentally Underscore Strong. For more inspiration and to receive Sindra's free weekly videos, check out DrSindra.com.