High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 329: Raise Your Game with Alan Stein Jr., Author and Performance Coach

Episode Date: April 18, 2020

Alan Stein, Jr. teaches proven strategies to improve organizational performance, create effective leadership, increase team cohesion and collaboration, and develop winning mindsets, rituals, and routines.   A successful business owner and veteran basketball performance coach, he spent 15 years working with the highest-performing athletes on the planet (including NBA superstars Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, and Kobe Bryant).   In his corporate keynote programs and workshops, Alan reveals how to utilize the same approaches in business that elite athletes use to perform at a world-class level. He delivers practical lessons that can be implemented immediately.   His clients include American Express, Pepsi, Sabra, Starbucks, Reeds Jewelers, FDA, Omnicell, and numerous college athletic programs.   The strategies from Alan’s book, Raise Your Game: High Performance Secrets from the Best of the Best, are implemented by corporate teams and sports teams around the country. His inspirational words are featured on 12-foot mural outside the Penn State Football Training Center, so that players run past it on the way to practice every day.   In this podcast, Cindra and Alan talk: His lessons learned from watching Kobe Bryant and Steph Curry practice How self-awareness is “the hub” and a “habit” Ways to have an unwavering self-belief like Sarah Blakley and Jess Itzler How 50% of the time we aren’t thinking about what we are actually doing How arrogance prevents us from seeing our flaws   Reach Alan at @AlanSteinJr and Cindra at @Mentally_Strong on Twitter.

Hey, my name is Cindra Campoff and I'm a small-town Minnesota gal, Minnesota nice as we like to say it, who followed her big dreams. I spent the last four years working as a mental coach for the Minnesota Vikings, working one-on-one with the players. I wrote a best-selling book about the mindset of the world's best and I'm a keynote speaker and national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. And I am obsessed with showing you exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best so you can accomplish all your goals and dreams. So I'm over here following my big dreams and I'm here to inspire you and practically show you how to do the same. And you know, when I'm not working, you'll find me playing Ms. Pac-Man.

Yes, the 1980s game Ms. Pac-Man. So take your notepad out, buckle up, and let's go. This is the high performance mindset. So for me, self-awareness comes down to constantly stepping out to be a spectator to my own emotions and asking myself, okay, what am I feeling right now? But, okay, what am I feeling right now? But more importantly, why am I feeling that? And what's really the root cause of that? Welcome to episode 329 with Alan Stein Jr. This is your host, Dr. Sindhara Kampoff, and I'm grateful that you're here. If you know that mindset is essential to your success, then you are in the right place. And today was

the day that I was set to deliver a TED Talk that now has been put on hold. And I have to tell you, I was disappointed, I was sad, and I knew I needed to direct my energy to something new. So I asked myself, how can I serve? How can I give during this time? So I reached out to 22 top mindset experts and I put them all in one place for you to help you learn new strategies to deal with uncertainty and change. And we're talking best-selling authors, mental performance coaches for pro teams, influencers. The lineup is crazy good. And when I got done with the interviews, my mind was blown. I learned so much and felt more on purpose, clear on my values, and mentally stronger. I'm excited to introduce you to the

High Performance Mindset Summit. And in the summit is really designed for you to do the same, to stay mentally strong during this time, help you build an unstoppable mindset toolkit for you to continue to use when this time period is over. And in the High Performance Mindset Summit, you're going to learn strategies to lead yourself and others with grit, resilience, and energy. You're going to understand fear and how to reduce it. You'll learn how to master the ability to stay in the present moment during this time of change and adversity. And you'll learn new tools and strategies for your mindset toolbox. So it starts today. You can head over to highperformancemindsetsummit.com. And today you'll get access to two of the videos, John Gordon and Brad Stolberg. And those were two

of my previous guests. So if you enjoyed this podcast, you are going to love the summit. And you'll continue to get access to several of the videos throughout the next 11 days. And guess what? This summit is free. So head over to highperformancemindsetsummit.com. And today I interview Alan Stein Jr. He is also one of the summit guests and I wanted to dive into his book and into his expertise a little bit deeper and that's why I asked him to be on this podcast. Now every February my husband and I usually go somewhere warm on the beach and full disclosure I take about 10 books on our beach trip usually and I don't read them all but I always choose one or two to read during the day each day. And so I love that time

where I just lay on the beach and read. And this year I read Allen Stein Jr.'s book, Raise Your Game. And I loved it. My friends loved it. Josh, who doesn't normally read, read Allen Stein Jr.'s book on the beach. So shout out to Josh. And let me give you a little bit of insight into Allen Stein Jr. He teaches you proven strategies to improve organizational performance, create effective leadership, increase team cohesion and collaboration, and develop winning mindsets, rituals, and routines. A successful business owner and veteran basketball performance coach, a successful business owner and veteran basketball performance coach. He spent 15 years working with the highest performing athletes on the planet.

We're talking NBA superstars Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, and Kobe Bryant. In his corporate keynote programs and workshops, Allen reveals how to utilize the same approaches in business that elite athletes use to perform at a world-class level. He delivers practical lessons that can be implemented immediately, and his clients include American Express, Starbucks, Pepsi, and numerous college athletic programs. The strategies from Allen's book Raise Your Game, High Performance Secrets from the Best of the Best, are implemented by corporate teams and sport teams around the country. I didn't know this, but his inspirational words are on the feature of a 12 foot mural outside the Penn State Football Training Center so that players run past it on the way to practice each day. Pretty cool.

So I know you're going to enjoy today's podcast episode. Here's a few things that we talk about. His lessons learned from watching Kobe Bryant and Steph Curry practice. How self-awareness is the hub and a habit, ways to have an unwavering self-belief like Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, and Jesse Eitzler, the president of the Atlanta Hawks, how 50% of the time we aren't actually thinking about what we are doing, and he gives us research to support that idea, and how arrogance prevents us from seeing our flaws. Now, if you enjoyed today's episode,

wherever you're listening, please subscribe and give us a five-star rating. I am working on attracting amazing guests for you and that would help us get higher and higher on the charts. So thank you so much. And you can reach Alan at AlanStein Jr. on Twitter and me at Mentally underscore strong. We'd love to hear from you. Without further ado, let have you on the podcast today. So thank you so much for joining us from Maryland. Oh, absolutely. My pleasure. We're going to have a fun conversation.

I know we are. I love your book, Raise Your Game. My favorite times to read books are on the beach. So my husband and I go on like a vacation every February and all I do is read. And this was the one that I read this year. And then we passed it along with our friends. So several of my friends read it as well. So that's pretty fun. Oh, that's super cool. And I share your enjoyment of reading on the beach. That's a perfect, perfect vacation for me. I'm what surprised a lot of people. I'm very heavily introverted and really drive, I know to recharge my battery. I enjoy solitude and I enjoy that quiet time. So laying on a beach reading and enjoying some sunshine and eating good food is about

the perfect vacation for me. I know I would, I would like to do that at least once a month, but I don't think that's, at least now in my life, that's not going to work. Probably not. Yeah. So for people who are just kind of tuning in, tell us a little bit about your passion and what you do. Sure. So I spent most of my career as a basketball performance coach. And I'm very thankful and proud of that because basketball was my first identifiable passion. I vividly remember falling in love with the game at four or five years old. And here four decades later, basketball is still a major staple in my life. So I'm so thankful that I've been able to earn a living and make a career out of doing something that I've really, really enjoyed and been passionate about. But several years ago, about four years ago to be exact, I was just ready for a change.

And I was ready to take everything that I had been learning from elite level players and coaches on the court and pivot and shift to a new audience. And four years ago, I decided to start a career as a keynote speaker and author and share all of these lessons and strategies I'd learned. So basketball is still very much in my DNA and of everything I do, but I don't do the training anymore. It's now teaching businesses and business leaders how to utilize those same mindsets and principles and routines and disciplines. That's wonderful. So tell us a little bit about your transition from, you know, performance coach in the basketball

area until, you know, to keynote speaking and, and really working with businesses and writing your book. Sure. Well, if I had to, you know, I don't believe in, in labels necessarily, and I don't want to put myself in a box, but if I had to, if I had to identify with one name, it would be coach. Like I'll always consider myself a coach. Even now as a speaker, I mean, speaking is what I do, but it's not who I am. Coaching is really what's

in my blood. And a big portion of coaching, which is very similar to teaching, is just being of service to others. So that's my number one goal is to always try and find ways where I can add value and serve other people. And at present, I think the most value and the best service I can be is being on stage and doing things like this, where I can share these different strategies and principles and ideologies. So the transition was more just of kind of the framework of what I was doing. I don't really consider the DNA of who I am to have changed at all. I just went from working mostly with high school basketball players and high school basketball coaches to now working mostly with folks in the corporate world. And, but I

still consider my main purpose and what I try to be intentional about the exact same. Yeah, that's wonderful. And I appreciate what you said is like that, that it's not who you are. Keynote speaking isn't who you are, right? You're always the same person, no matter what role you're in. So Ellen, one of the questions I always ask people on the podcast is to tell us what a failure means to them and tell us about a time that you failed or it didn't go so great. And I want to ask that question because just to keep it real. Oh, of course. Absolutely. Well, you know, failure is an interesting one because it's one of the few areas of my life that I've completely changed my perspective on. You know, when I was younger, I was kind of brought up that failure was a bad thing, that it was to be resisted, that you should be embarrassed or shameful when you fail, that you should do anything in your power not to fail at something. And that's completely changed. I mean, now I'm a firm believer that as long as you're giving your best effort and you're preparing and you have a good attitude, you should be pushing yourself to failure in almost every

area of your life. That failure is really just a conduit to growing and improving. And that if you're willing to have the humility and vulnerability to examine a failure after you've had it and experienced it, that there's always going to be a lesson or an opportunity. And then you can grow and develop to be even better than you were before. So I went from believing failure was something to be resisted and run from at all costs to now being something that should be embraced. And actually, you should be searching for opportunities where you extend yourself so far that you do experience some failure. The best way I can describe it, especially when I was working with basketball players, was, you know, if you go into the gym and you do a ball handling workout for 30 minutes and you never lose the ball, you probably didn't get any better. All you did was go in and spend 30 minutes doing something you were already capable

of doing. You should be pushing yourself to try harder drills, more advanced drills, pushing the speed of what you're doing to the point that you lose the ball and you make mistakes. And then over time, you'll slowly start to level up. And I have that same approach in everything I do now. And it's funny because, I mean, I experience, you know, failures every single day. I mean, some are incredibly minute. Some might be a little bit bigger. But what I'm very proud of the fact that I've developed a grit and a resiliency where they just kind of bounce off me like Teflon now. Like, I don't worry so much about it. You know, I don't even really think of them as failures. I just think, okay, I tried this. It didn't work real well. How can I try it again? Or maybe that's the sign that I shouldn't have been doing this in the first place. And now let's pivot and do something completely different. So I look at failure now is more of a guide

than anything else. I like that failure as a guide and just didn't continue to push yourself out of your comfort zone, right? You need to grow and improve. And I think particularly as an athlete that people can understand that example of what you said about basketball. And I think it's easy to see that you need to push yourself. Like I'm a runner. And I think about like, if I don't push my speed, right? If I don't every week, just kind of push it a little bit, I'm just going to stay the same. So good analogies in sport. And when you look at, I mean, you know, obviously basketball, you know, the best shooters in the league miss half of all the shots they take, you know, they shoot about 50% and that's world-class. Baseball is even more slanted. You know, if you, if you can hit the ball three out of 10 times, you'll eventually be in the hall of fame.

And what I've really learned, it's the same thing in sales, in the business world. If you look at the percentages of even the most elite sales professional, they're missing out on a lot of deals, more than they're closing, and yet they're still elite at what they do. And I think that's the key is being able to examine that. And many times for me, what's most important is I want to control the controllables. So if I ever fail at something because of lack of effort, or I fail at something because I had a bad mindset or attitude, or I fail at something because I wasn't adequately prepared, then that's on me. And I need to make sure that that does not happen again. And I retrace my steps and I course correct. But sometimes you fail at something

because it's just not the right fit or somebody else was better. I'm in the speaking world now. So I'm doing a lot of outbound, but I also get a lot of inquiries on speaking engagements. And I certainly don't close 100% of all of the inquiries. Sometimes they decide that another speaker is a better fit for them. And I just have to, again, retrace my steps. And if I can say that I put my best foot forward and I did everything that I was capable of to show them what I would bring to the table as a speaker, and they decided to go in another direction, I can live with that. I mean, that's still a failure per se, but it's not going to change my behavior. Now, if I don't feel that I was prepared for the pre-event call, or I don't feel that I gave it my best effort when I submitted a proposal,

then that's on me. And that's something that I would need to course correct and fix in the future. Yeah. I appreciate the idea of just that learning is growth, right? It's an opportunity to grow, or a failure is an opportunity to grow and learn. And I think in my book, I talk about like learn and burn, you know, can you learn? And then just like, let it go. Burn it means like, you know, just move on. Because I think if you keep holding on to that, it can definitely impact your confidence negatively in the long term.

Yeah. I mean, the most resilient people I know can experience failure after failure after failure, and they don't lose any optimism. They don't lose any self-belief. They just know that those, you know, those, those weren't the right fit or it just wasn't their time. And, you know, I come from the school of thought, you know, that the, the, every no that you get is going to take you a little bit closer to a yes. If you keep making these course corrections. And I can't stress that enough.

This is not about just experiencing failure and then just moving on all of the time. What we need to do is examine it first. Then let's burn it and move on because we don't need to look back. Once we've pulled the lesson from it, it's in the rearview mirror and it's over. Now let's just focus forward and look through the windshield. Absolutely. So the learning part is really important. The course corrections, the pivoting. So give us a sense of why you chose to write the book, Raise Your Game. Like what was, what was the kind of thing that made you say, yep, that's what I'm going to do?

There were actually several reasons. The first reason was it had always been a professional bucket list item. Just knowing how much I've loved reading and how many different authors have had a profound impact on my life and my perspective, just the thought that I could put pen to paper and put something out in the world that would be of value to someone else and possibly give them something that could make their life better, I just figured would be one of the coolest things to ever do. So that had always been on my bucket list. Another reason was it forced me as I was beginning to get into the keynote speaking world, it forced me to get crystal clear on my message and to really organize my content. When I first started keynote speaking, I believe I had

the raw materials to do a pretty good job, but my actual keynote was more of a random collage of stories. There wasn't really a flow to it. It wasn't really organized. It was, hey, let me tell you about this, and let me tell you about this. It just wasn't very sequential or organized, and there weren't as many takeaways as they needed to be. So I knew that writing the book would force me to get crystal clear on that and to give me some sequence and some progression to what I was doing. And while my actual keynote does not mirror the book exactly, they're very similar in philosophy and the way that it's approached. So that was another reason. And then the last reason was to actually improve credibility. I'd spent 20 years in basketball

and had earned pretty decent name recognition and credibility in that very small circle. But then I leaped over to the corporate world where I had none. I mean, I've never had a corporate job in my entire life. So no one in the corporate world knew who I was unless they had some type of connection to the game of basketball.

And I figured that writing a book would add credibility. People tend to think that a published author is more credible maybe than someone who's not. And I also knew it would be kind of a glorified business card that someone might take a risk and read the book and get a couple chapters in and go, okay, I want to hear more about what this guy has to say. And the book's been one of the best lead generators for my speaking business. You know, I get several inquiries a week where someone says, I read your book. I really enjoyed it. My sales team needs to hear this, or my executive staff needs to hear this, or my middle managers really could use this message. Can you

come in and deliver this in person? And so for those reasons, writing the book made sense. And I'm very thankful that I did it. I had a wonderful time doing it. It was a lot of work, but well worth it. And even now, at the time of this recording during COVID-19, I'm actually working on a second book now that I've got some extra discretionary time to really sit down and devote to it. So I always look for the silver lining in everything. And while the world is certainly in a global crisis at present, I'm thankful for an opportunity to have a little more time to work on that book. Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. I've been trying to

think like, what's the opportunity here? And you know, how can I use this time to best serve? What's your next book going to be about? So Raise Your Game, as you know, just in case your listeners don't, is about how you can, you know, reach your peak performance. The second book's going to be how can you maintain that for long periods of time without experiencing burnout. So the book's going to focus on three key areas. One is stress, which is kind of what we feel on an acute day-to-day basis, And what are some tips and strategies for managing stress? The middle section is kind of on stagnation. You know, you've been in a certain job or role for 10, 12, 15 years.

How do you alleviate just putting the cruise control on and just riding it out to the sunset? You know, how do you find little pockets of, you know, motivation and creativity and innovation to try and do even better. And then the last part is burnout. How do you alleviate burnout? You know, one of the things that's most impressive to me is anytime I see someone that's had tremendous longevity and success, you know, I mean, quick example, you know, you've got Tom Brady, who's already played for 20 years, achieved everything in the world, and he's willing to go almost start over with a

new team. Or you flip on Netflix, which everybody's doing right now with all this extra time. And you see somebody like Al Pacino or Meryl Streep, who've been in movies for about as long as I've been breathing. And they're still doing it at a high level. And they're still doing it with so much passion. And the list is infinite. I mean, whether it's a Bill Gates and a Warren Buffett or an Oprah Winfrey, I mean, you're talking about people that have been at the top of their game for multiple decades and their passion hasn't waned. And in fact, it's gotten stronger and they've somehow, if they have experienced little portions of burnout, they found a way to mitigate it and pivot around it. And so that's what this book is. It's, they're not necessarily sequential. I'm being very deliberate in writing this, that someone would not need to read Raise

Your Game in order to benefit from this book, but they do go hand in hand. And I would hope that someone would want to read both because I think they will be both equally valuable. I'm going to buy it. So awesome. I got one sale. I got one sale. I love it. Let me know when it's out and I'll pre-order it for you. Awesome. got one sale. I got one sale. I love it. Let me know when it's out and I'll pre-order it for you. Awesome. You are delightful. Thank you so much. All right. So here's a few questions that I have about the book that I thought the people who are listening would really enjoy. And there are some of my favorite parts as I was reading it and you'll enjoy this because I have a little note note card in here that I love it in a reservation from where

we were going with the things I enjoyed so awesome I love it yeah so um one of the things I really want you to describe is uh you know I read this in I guess February and I was reading in how you had watched Kobe Bryant practice and some of some other top performers like Steph Curry so what did you learn from watching Kobe in particular the number one lesson I learned he said verbatim as he looked me in the eye was his secret to success was the fact that he never got bored with the basics and that was a really pivotal lesson for me as a young coach because you know I a couple things one I always assumed that someone of his level with his level of mastery had left the basics way behind and was always going to be working on

new flashy and sexy drills and skills. But nothing could be further from the truth. He was so rooted in the basics and the fundamentals every day that it built a very strong foundation that he could then level up and do more advanced stuff. But he had so much respect for the game and for his craft that he never left the basics. And once I had heard that, and I started looking around at other high performers, not just in basketball, but in any area of life, I found that was the number one common thread,

that anyone that's good at anything has spent a tremendous amount of time mastering the basics. And it's very rare that they ever leave them. And occasionally when they do get distracted by the new shiny object and they do leave them, they end up finding out that was a pitfall and they end up returning back to the basics. But the other lesson that I learned from that is that basic and easy are not synonyms. People often use those two words interchangeably, but they don't mean the same thing. Perfect example. When I give my keynote, it's a 60-minute talk, and everything I'm talking about is basic and fundamental in premise. I have three young children. I have 10-year-old twin sons

and an eight-year-old daughter, and I've brought them to some of my speaking engagements. And at 10 and eight, they understand every single thing that I say. I don't confuse them. I don't see anybody in the audience. Their head doesn't explode. These are basic principles. Yet not a single thing that I say during that keynote is easy to do. There's nothing easy about being self-aware. There's nothing easy about being a world-class active listener.

There's nothing easy when you have a job and a family and so many things going on to make the time to fill your own bucket first. You know, there's nothing easy about accepting a role on a team that's not the role that you want, but it's the role that the team needs you to have to be successful. There's nothing easy about living in the present moment and not getting distracted by the past or anxious by the future. None of that stuff is easy to do, but it's all very basic. And once I could understand the difference between the two, it was just kind of that epiphanal moment where, yeah, what you need to do to be happy, to be fulfilled, to be successful, and to perform at a high level is basic in premise, but it's not easy. And it's important that we go into it knowing that, because I find that if you

think something's going to be easy, then as soon as you start to get some resistance and see how challenging it is, you're more likely to quit or give up. If you go into it going, I know this is going to be really hard, then you're not surprised when it is. Yeah. There's even some research on weight loss that if you go into it knowing that it's going to be more difficult, you're going to lose more weight. So I think that's important. I appreciate what you're saying about getting back to the basics and we might know all this, but it's really hard to do every day. You know, we get in our own way because of, because we're humans. So I appreciate that you're saying that you really, we need to practice this,

even though it might seem basic. Well, and what you just said, I mean, you just described perfectly what a performance gap is. It's the gap between what we know we're supposed to do and what we actually do. And every single person on the planet has performance gaps. But the highest performers in the world have found ways to either mitigate or eliminate them in the most important areas of their life. And it's very common. We can have performance gaps in different areas. You know, I spent my entire career in the basketball performance, wellness, fitness training space. So for me, things under the health and wellness umbrella

tend to be easier for me to acclimate to. Like it's easier for me to work out regularly and to eat well and to get sleep because I've programmed myself to do that. But I realized for most people, that's incredibly challenging for them. But then there's other areas of my life that things have been challenging for me. In the past, I've had huge performance gaps in my financial life, in my relationships, in my ability to be present. So it's one of those things where, and this is why we should never play the comparison game because it's so easy to look at someone else and go, man,

he or she, boy, they've got their act together. I'm struggling to go for a walk for 30 minutes every day. And this person's posting workouts and healthy food, but that's why we can't play the comparison game. So what we need to all do is work towards closing that gap between knowing and doing. And that's why I actually see another silver lining with this current quarantine time is it gives us time to take a breath, to hit reset, and to really reflect and sit down and go, okay, I know this is what I should be doing every day, but I'm not doing any of this stuff. Let me start tiptoeing in the right direction to close that gap

and to make some changes. Yeah. I do think it's giving us time to take a step back and say, you know, are we on the right course? What, what do I need to do differently? How do I need to pivot? I've seen myself do that just like listening to myself, but I seen a lot of my friends and my husband and yeah, for sure. So, um, One thing that I think is so tough about this and you teed it up so insightfully is, uh, where my, where I have very high empathy is for the people that had really started to gain some momentum on certain habits.

And then this massive schedule disruption occurs and it just makes it that much more challenging. Um, because our, our environment and, and, and our schedules and the way we design our lives is so habitual. You know, if you finally got to a point where every day after work, you were heading straight to the gym to get a workout in, and then you stopped at a local smoothie shop to get a healthy smoothie on the way home. And you were, you were really getting that in and being very consistent. Well, now you're not going to work and now the gym's not open and now the smoothie place isn't open.

It's incredibly intimidating because now you've got to create a new normal and start new habits. And that can be really, really tough. And it is proving to be very tough. And then what I'm going to find very interesting is there's going to be a second reacclimation period when things do get back to normal or whatever normal will be. You know, at some point, we're all going to be so used to being home for four to six to eight to 10 weeks or who knows how long. And we're going to create these habits. And then all of a sudden, in the snap of a finger, they're going to say, all right, well, you can go back to work tomorrow.

And now you've got to reacclimate and get back to going to the gym after work and going to the smoothie place. So this is definitely a very challenging time. And I hope folks give themselves some grace and some compassion and some self-love that you're going to have some ups and downs. There are going to be days where it's tougher for you to get certain things done. There are going to be days where you feel like your performance gaps are so wide you could drive a truck through it. Just have some patience with yourself and know that things are massively disrupted at present,

but do the best you can with what you have, where you are, and then that's going to shift again. And, you know, hopefully not too much longer. Right. I had a colleague yesterday, we were talking and he said, like the habits that we create right now are going to be the habits that last. And I thought, well, that that's really powerful because it's like, made me step back and think about, all right, what am I doing? How am I spending my time? All right, I need to maybe exercise a little bit more because that's the habits that's going to last later on in a couple of months

when maybe things get back to normal, whatever that means. Absolutely. Yeah. So, Alan, one question I want to ask you before we dive in a little bit more to some, whatever that means. Absolutely. Yeah. So Alan, one question I want to ask you before we dive in a little bit more to some of the concepts in the book, when you look at the best of the best and you've coached some of them, you've watched them, what do you think that they do differently from a mental perspective? One is, I mean, they have very high confidence in themselves and in their skills because they've

earned that confidence through demonstrated performance during the unseen hours. But despite being off the charts on the confidence scale, they're also off the charts on the humility and openness and coachable scale. And it's that combination of the two that makes them elite. You know, they believe in themselves, you know, a basketball player, they want to take that last shot to win the game. Excuse me, but they're still very open to coaching and to instruction and to learning better ways, uh, to improve their game, even if it's just by a half a percent. So I think that combination of, uh, believing in yourself, but also being open and coachable is, you know,

if you piggyback that onto never getting bored with the basics, now we're starting to kind of create this chain of things that, that I see, you know, the elite of the elite and the best of the best do very regularly. Awesome. So coachable plus confidence. And then what you said is just like, never get bored with the basics. Excellent. So one of the things I really enjoyed about your book is you talked about how self-awareness is like the hub and a habit. And I want to talk a little bit more with you about how you see it as a habit and just different ways that in your perspective, we can develop self-awareness. Most certainly. Well, self-awareness

has to be the foundation to everything because I mean, yeah. And to clarify, I look at self-awareness. Most certainly. Well, self-awareness has to be the foundation to everything because I mean, yeah. And to clarify, I look at self-awareness as this perfect collage of what you enjoy doing, what you don't enjoy doing, what you're really good at, what you struggle with, what you love, but what you're scared of, you know, what are you proud of, but what are you insecure about? You know, it's really knowing yourself inside and out. It's knowing your capabilities and limitations physically, mentally, emotionally. I mean, it's the best you can to create this unbiased audit of who you are. Now, we will always see the world through our own bias lens. So part of what helps with self-awareness, as counterintuitive as this may sound, is getting input from other people.

But the key is not getting it from some random stranger or a Facebook acquaintance. It's getting it from someone that knows you really well because they can help you see some blind spots that you can't see. They might be able to give you more of an unbiased evaluation than you can give yourself. And if you've created an environment that's safe, where folks feel comfortable being able to tell you the truth, that's one of the most powerful ways to develop that self-awareness. Because ultimately, self-awareness is having alignment between the way you see yourself and the way the world sees you. So a perfect example would be, if I ask you if you're a good listener and you say yes, and then I ask the four or five people that know you the best and they say no, she's an awful listener. Well, that would mean that there's something missing. There's a disconnect, that the way you see yourself is not the way the rest of the world sees you.

And I think I could make a compelling argument in that case that you don't have very high self-awareness. Now, as comical as it sounds, if I asked you if you're a good listener and you said, actually, no, that's a weakness of mine. It's something I'm aware of and trying to get better at. And then I asked the people closest to you and they said, yeah, she's not a very good listener. That would actually mean you have very high self-awareness. You're aware of the fact that that's something that needs to be improved upon. And that's a great thing. Because for me, I don't ever worry about where I am. I just worry about the direction at which I'm going. So I'm not worried about if I'm world-class

at something today. All I'm worried about is, will I be a little bit better at it tomorrow and a little bit better at it the next day? So where you are is not near as important as the direction you're going. And I say that because I don't want folks to get stifled by perfection.

I want them to be inspired by progress. So, you know, we're human beings. We're all fallible. Nobody's perfect at anything, but we can work to progress in those different areas. And it has to start with self-awareness because if you're not even aware of what you do well, then you won't be able to maximize the value you can give to others. If you're not even aware of the things you do poorly or that you struggle with, that's going to cripple you when you're trying to add value to others. So I always say in basketball, you know, it's not the player that takes a bad shot that a coach worries about. It's the player that takes a bad shot that doesn't know it was a bad shot.

That's the one that's going to get the coach to pull their hair out because they have no idea. And they're going to keep repeating that mistake over and over until there's some awareness. And we see this in classic narcissists all the time. The way they view themselves, which is, look at me, I'm great, I'm awesome, I'm the best, is not the way everyone else sees them. Everyone's like, well, slow down there, partner, because you've got some holes in your boat too. And that's one of the major issues. Narcissists don't see themselves the way everyone else sees them. Good, good answer. I

think when I think of habit, I think like that it's something that I have to continue just to work on, right? Absolutely. It's even if I'm 50 or 70 or 30, I continue, can always continue to grow in my awareness of myself. Um, yeah, I don't think it's something that we ever, there's no inroads to self-awareness. Uh, first of all, it's going to ebb and flow. Um, there will be some days where you're more aware than other days, but I think we can see general trends. And, and I'm very proud of the fact that I'm more self-aware today than I was a year ago, way more self-aware today than I was 10 years ago. And I feel confident that if you and I get together for coffee or to have another podcast a year from now, I'll be even more self-aware then because it is something I'm cognizant of and constantly trying to work on.

And part of it is just you get in tune with yourself. And what I find to be very helpful is I try to be a spectator to my own emotions. And I try to really grasp what I'm feeling, but then why I'm feeling. I was on a panel on one of these Zoom calls the other day, and a guy said something very profound that I'm going to steal from him because I thought it was brilliant. He said, emotions are here to inform us, not to direct us. So emotions are basically just, they're information, they're data that's coming in, but it's up to us whether or not we use them to change our behavior. So there's nothing wrong with feeling angry. There's nothing

wrong with feeling disappointed. Those are human emotions for a reason. But now if your behavior changes because you're angry or because you're disappointed, that's where we could end up having a problem. So for me, self-awareness comes down to constantly stepping out to be a spectator to my own emotions and asking myself, okay, what am I feeling right now? But more importantly, why am I feeling that? And what's really the root cause of that? You know, as I mentioned earlier, I have three young kids. I'm very amicably divorced. So when I have my kids, it's just me and the three of them. And sometimes things can get a little chaotic. And, you know, my kids might do something that that kind of irritates me or I lose my patience.

And then I have to think, okay, I'm frustrated with them right now. But I need to dig deeper. Why am I frustrated? Am I really frustrated because, you know, just making something up? They spilled some milk in the kitchen or is there something else that I'm really frustrated about? And this is just the easy outlet to let that out. You know, it's this constant examination. And I find that when I do that, it's almost as if I'm watching myself in a movie and I'm the director. So I'm like, okay, here's Alan. He's playing this character in this movie. He's playing a character with three children. One of the kids spill some milk. His character is really angry right now. What should his character do to get the best response? And sometimes,

I mean, most of the time I'd like to believe I choose a good response, but occasionally I don't. And then that time in my mind, you know, the director should be yelling, cut, cut. Okay. Alan, you know, screaming at your kids right now. That's not, that's not what's in the script. You need to go back and here's how you need to handle it a little bit better. And I think constantly tuning in my own self-awareness and then creating an environment where I have people that keep me in check. I have plenty of people in my life that care enough to reach out and say, Hey, Alan, you shouldn't have done that, or you shouldn't have said that, or you should have thought longer before you made that post. So I have people that

I very much appreciate care enough about me to keep me in check and help me see some of those blind spots. And all of that mixed together is, is kind of the cocktail we call self-awareness. Yeah. Excellent. Emotions are here to inform us, not direct us. I think about Susan David's TED Talk on emotional agility, and I think she talks about like making sure you're, or just seeing your emotions as data, not directors. Yes, that's it. And it's the same kind of idea. Now, once again, what you and I just shared is very basic, very difficult, not easy to do. Oh my goodness. You know, when, and, and, and I'm sure so many parents in particular are experiencing this now because everybody's kids are at home and off from school. And especially if either you're working from home, which is abnormal, or maybe

you've been laid off or furloughed, you know, you've got this inordinate amount of stress. You know, you're worried about your financial future. You're worried about being able to keep a roof over your children's head. You're worried about all of this stuff. And now on top of that, you have to proctor their homeschooling. And anyone with young kids will tell you, I mean, I don't know what changed in the math world, but I can't even do math on a fourth grade level anymore because you have to show their work much differently than I had to when I was younger. I mean, I have to get a tutor to help my children do fourth grade math. It's almost comical, but I mean, if you take, you know, all right, I lost my job and I'm worried about this and I haven't been sleeping well

because I'm anxious. And now I've got three kids that I've got to feed and I've got to proctor their homework. And you've got this perfect storm of frustration, of disappointment, of anxiousness, of sadness, all of this. I mean, it'd be very easy just to lose it when a kid, you know, does something that kids do, you know, and this is, so this is a very challenging time for people. So I hope anyone listening knows that while what we're talking about being a spectator to your emotions is a very basic premise, it is definitely not easy. And you're going to find times where you want to tell the director to be quiet because you're about to improv a scene and you're going to let your kids have it.

Hopefully you can, over time, kind of find the restraint and the awareness to be able to step back, take a breath, hit reset, and choose a better response. Well, one thing that might help people right now when you think about being a spectator to your emotions and being present is one of the things that you talked about in your book is you cited a Harvard study that's almost 50% of the time we aren't really thinking about what we're doing. And that to me was like, wow, I'd never read that study. And then I can take a step back and watch people and you're like, yeah, most of the time our mind is just drifting.

We aren't necessarily paying attention to what we're doing. So tell us a little bit more about that study and your perspective of how we can spend more time in the present. Well, I think what that shows is how important it is to constantly have some type of triggering system where we do refocus the lens and get present, you know, but this is also part of awareness because I wasn't aware of that either until I came across that study. So, you know, right now for me, I'm better at being in the present moment, but I'm certainly far from perfect at it. But where I'm happy that I've made progress is now I've found that when I'm not present, it only takes me a few seconds to recognize I'm

not present and I can snap myself back to what I'm supposed to be it only takes me a few seconds to recognize I'm not present and I can snap myself back to what I'm supposed to be doing. So you and I are having a delightful conversation right now. I find myself with my mind starting to wander about the next call I have or what I'm going to eat for lunch. And now in just a couple of seconds, I go, okay, Alan, don't worry about that. You know, refocus on what you're supposed to be doing. Lunch will come in due time and I'm back on track in a few seconds. Whereas in the past, I might have been out of it for a few minutes or I might have been just really mailing it in while I'm talking to you as opposed to being fully present and us actually connecting. So I think the key is having some type of triggering system where you can recognize that you're not present. For me, the phrase that I use all the time with myself, I've heard it from Nick Saban, the football coach at Alabama, and I've heard it from Oprah Winfrey, which is to be where your feet are. And that's constantly what I remind myself. And, you know, one example is, like I said,

you and I are in a conversation, but I find that I'm not actually paying connected attention to you. I'm thinking of something else. So I got to get back to focus. Another one that I'm sure everybody experiences, you know, I'm with my kids, but I'm not really with my kids. I'm staring at my phone the whole time. You know, there's not a parent alive that hasn't stared at their phone. And yeah, yeah, I hear you, Jack. Yeah, I got Yeah. Oh, that's great, man. You're not paying any attention to what your child's doing. And you're paying attention to the phone. And and that's not to say that there's not a time where what's on the phone is incredibly important, but we just have to make sure we're responsible enough to own the fact that we're not present. And I think a big mistake that

a lot of people make is believing that you can actually multitask. It's been scientifically proven that you can't multitask. All you're doing is shifting from one activity to another and back. And yes, some people can do that at a very high level. So some people are capable of whatever it may be, checking email while doing a call. But most people, your performance will decrease when you split it among two different things. So the key is to set up systems and create an environment that will allow you to be more present. Right now, I don't have my desktop open to email or social media. My phone is on silent and turned upside down. I'm not folding laundry or watching something. All I'm doing is paying 100%

attention to you, but that's the environment I've created. You better believe that if my email was open right now and every time it pinged, I'd look at it and I would be distracted. When I'm with my children, I always have my phone with me just in case there's an emergency. But if we're going to go to the park and play, I just leave my phone in the car. And that way I can't look at it. I mean, I physically can't be distracted by my phone if it's not on my person. And that way I have nothing to do but give my children my full presence. Because I've learned enough about myself that if my phone is on me, I'm going to look at it. And I don't say that with pride. I guess that might lack a little bit of discipline in the current moment. But I've learned enough to know that if I want to be present with my children, which I do, then I need to leave my phone in the car. And same thing. If

you and I were going to go grab coffee while we're sitting in Starbucks, I need to leave my phone in the car. And same thing. If you and I were going to go grab coffee while we're sitting in Starbucks, I would not bring my phone in with me because I'd want to make sure that I have no distractions. So I think if we set up different systems and create an environment, it can increase the chance that we'll be more present, more consistently. I was reading this weekend about some of the research on flow, you know, the concept of peak performance and being in the present moment, this state you can get in and what the research shows, if you're multitasking, it's very difficult, maybe impossible to get in the flow. So appreciated that perspective and just mentioning that idea that you can't multitask. Okay, I've got two more

questions for you, Alan. Sure, fire away. I'm loving it. I'm like, I could talk to you can't multitask. Okay. I got two more questions for you, Alan. Sure, fire away. I'm loving it. I'm like, I could talk to you about this all day. Absolutely. No, this is wonderful. Keep firing away. This is great. Okay, perfect. I want to talk a little bit more about having like this unwavering self-belief and confidence, but when it becomes arrogance. And so I really enjoyed in your book when you're talking about Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, love her story. And then Jesse Itzler,

he's the president of the Atlanta Hawks, right? Or the owner. He's part of a group that owns the Atlanta Hawks, yes. Yeah, so you talk about how they both have unwavering self-belief and confidence in themselves. So when you take examples like them or any other examples of a high performer you've seen, how do you think that they develop that? I think it's twofold. One, and I'm noticing this so much now as a parent

myself, I've always believed that it's never too early to plant seeds with young people. And I believe that as a parent, I always believe that as a coach, I believe that as teachers. So part of it, I think, is modeling self-belief and instilling proper self-belief in children at young ages. Now, this is not, this is the exact opposite of the everybody gets a trophy mentality. I think that was originally created because, I guess, logically, they thought it would improve self-belief that if everyone leaves with a trophy, everyone will feel good about themselves. And if you feel good about yourself, you have high self-belief. What they didn't realize was when you give someone something that they didn't earn or deserve, that actually undermines self-belief because they know it. Kids are smart. Kids know that not every kid on the team is equal. Kids know that everyone in a classroom doesn't understand math on the same level. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's okay. So I think it's about making sure that children understand that self-belief is something that's earned. For me, what I try to do the best I can is I praise

the process and I praise my children's effort and attitude. I don't praise outcomes. For me, I want them to take pride in giving their best effort. I want them to take pride in being a great teammate. I want them to take pride in having a great attitude and mindset. And the more that I can pour into that, the more I think that eventually that will raise their self-belief that they have the ability to give an effort and they have the ability to have an attitude that can get them the things that they want to achieve in life. And then for the rest of us as we get older, it really comes down to demonstrated performance. You know, it comes down to practicing things during the unseen hours

and slowly seeing yourself get better at them. And that will increase your self-belief. And that's what folks like Sarah Blakely and Jesse Itzler do and have done their whole lives. I mean, they've earned the right to feel good about themselves. And this puts really a nice bow tie on everything we've been talking about because, you know, it's also about being open and being coachable. So this is why it doesn't bleed over to arrogance because you do believe that you've earned the right to be successful and happy. But you always know that you can still get better and you have to be open to that. And it comes down to performing the basics and getting in the reps during the unseen hours. I mean, that's how you earn it as well. But, and self-belief, it's an

interesting one because confidence in general can also be somewhat compartmentalized. You know, I mean, if you told me right now that you had a group of a thousand executives and you wanted me to jump on stage and speak to them, I would have very high confidence doing that because I've practiced that. I've prepared for that. This is what I want to be doing. Now, if you told me I had to get on stage in front of that exact same group of executives and you wanted me to sing the national anthem, I would lack severe confidence because that's not something I'm prepared to do. It's not something that I've worked on to even deserve to be able to do. So confidence can, you know, it can be somewhat compartmentalized, even though generally speaking, we tend to think

of someone as either confident or not. But that's not always the case. You know, some people are incredibly confident on the court. They're very, they're not confident in social situations. So, you know, it's important that we realize that. And I think part of self awareness is everyone doing the internal work to figure out what areas of life are you confident in and what areas are you not? And that's just important feedback to get. It doesn't mean it's good or bad or right or wrong. It's just good feedback to get. And so when you think about arrogance, right, and I think this is maybe in the self-awareness

section when you're talking about how arrogance prevents us from seeing our flaws. When you see people, I'm thinking about maybe even basketball players, and I've seen this from my work in the NFL, when players are arrogant, they're not coachable, they don't end up lasting very long in the league because maybe there's some friction created between the coach and the athlete, and they don't necessarily have an interest in getting better, or the arrogance is getting in their way of that. So what do you think on your perspective, what do you think leads to arrogance

and tell us in your perspective, like what it means to you? Well, I think it's, it's the lack of self-awareness. That's what leads to it. It doesn't, you're, you're missing that humility component. You know, you have all of the confidence and self-belief, but you don't have the humility and openness. And I guess if I had to define it, you know, someone that's confident basically says, look, I've put in the work to deserve to be successful. I deserve to be a champion. I deserve to be on this team. I deserve to make this sale. I deserve to get promoted. Whereas arrogance is more kind of this comparison of I'm better than you. I deserve this more than you. And I think that's arrogance is when you kind of step outside of yourself and you start looking externally and projecting on others as opposed to the,

you know, they always call it a quiet confidence, but the confidence that you have inside that you deserve to be successful. And, you know, it's a fine line with high performers. I mean, it's a fine line with high performers. I mean, it really is. I mean, you know, I would imagine if we take the late great Kobe Bryant, I mean, there were certainly, he was teetering on that line. There were portions of time where he was probably skewing a little bit on the arrogant side and really did believe, you know, he was going to dominate his competition that night because he was better than them. So this is also about having the type of inner circle that when they see you kind of going over that ledge and crossing over from confident to arrogance, they can pull you back and they can

say, Hey, you know, you need to make sure you have some humility. And that's why, you know, a dose of humility is helpful for everybody. And that's where failure comes in. You know, we're going to bring this back full circle, because most of the time, a failure should give you some type of humility in some way, shape, or form, because you thought it was going to have one outcome. You got a less desirable outcome that should give you some humility that, hey, I wasn't this, or I wasn't that, or this wasn't prepared. So that's where I think failure can come in. And hopefully, if you're open to it, help reduce the chance of being arrogant. Yeah. Excellent, Alan. I really enjoyed having you on the podcast today. I'm going to do my best to summarize what we

talked about. So I really love doing this at the end so that people, if they haven't been taking notes, they can take some notes out now, or at least they can be reminded of like some of the things that you shared with us today. So Raise Your Game, you definitely need to go buy it. It's an excellent book. And we talked at the beginning about failure and failure really is just an opportunity to grow and learn. So I thought that was really helpful and just maybe information so you know if you need to pivot. We talked about self-awareness and really how that's a habit and really the hub, like it starts, performance really starts there. You talked about knowing yourself inside and out is one thing that I wrote down. And we talked about emotions and how those can be more information than direct us.

And we need to separate ourselves or be a spectator. That's what you said from our emotions. And self-belief is, there's never, it's never too early to develop someone's self-belief. So I think about my kids as I hear you say that and just continuing to help them develop their self-belief. So thank you so much for joining us today, Ellen. I'm so grateful that you're on and tell us where people can get the book and where we can follow you. Well, first and foremost, I think you just proved the theory. You actually are an incredible active listener because you nailed that summary perfectly. Your notes are brilliant. So thank you so much. You asked very insightful questions. So this was truly delightful on my end. I actually

have a ton of free resources for folks that would supplement this podcast very nicely. They can just go to allensteinjr.com backslash free. There's a bunch of downloadable PDFs and a bunch of videos, including it's the only place I've ever posted one of my full live keynotes, as well as a virtual keynote that I recorded since I knew people would be spending more time at home. You can also go to raiseyourgamebook.com. If anyone's interested in getting a team set for your organization or team, I can give you a 42% discount and can even sign each copy. You just have to email me at alansteinjr.com. And I'm at Alan Stein Jr. on all of the major social platforms. And I love interacting and engaging with folks. So if you listen to this, if something struck a chord, and you want to continue the discussion, or even if you want to debate it, just hit me up on social because I would love to continue some dialogue. Oh, excellent. Thanks for just offering that to people who are listening. So what final thoughts or advice do you have for those high performers who are listening,

people that are really working to be their best every day? My number one piece of advice is just give yourself some extra grace and compassion during this very turbulent time. Recognize that I'm hoping there's a very good chance that we'll never experience something like this again, a pandemic to the point where we're all on house arrest for four to six to eight weeks. So make the most of this time because as difficult and as challenging as it may be, there are some silver linings in it and there are some massive positives to it if you look for them and you may never get these again. I mean, I don't think I'll ever have

a 10-week staycation again for the rest of my life. So I want to take advantage of it now. And then I also want to make sure I'm preparing for when things go back to normal. So give yourself some love. Give the people closest to you some love. Do everything you can to be of service to others. And let happiness and fulfillment kind of guide you moving forward. And I certainly wish everybody the best. Excellent final advice. Thank you so much for joining us here today, Alan.

My pleasure. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindhra. That's D-R-I-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com. See you next week.