High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 506: 3 Mindsets that Separate the Best from the Rest with Dr. Alex Auerbach, Director of Wellness and Development, Toronto Raptors

Episode Date: August 18, 2022

Dr. Alex Auerbach is the Director of Wellness and Development for the Toronto Raptors. He joined the Toronto Raptors after serving as the Director of Clinical and Sport Psychology for the University of Arizona. Dr. Auerbach has worked with NCAA Division-I schools in the Pac-12, ACC, Big 12, and Conference USA. Dr. Auerbach earned his doctoral degree in counseling psychology with a specialization in sport and performance psychology from the University of North Texas. He received a Master’s in Business Administration from Salve Regina University and a Bachelor in Business Administration from the University of Arizona. Dr. Auerbach is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant, a Licensed Psychologist, and a member of the United States Olympic Committee Sport Psychology Registry.  In this interview, Alex and Cindra discuss:  The 3 mindsets that separate the best from the rest  How stress can be enhancing  The case against self-affirmations  The reason we should fall in love with boredom   Why we need a dash of fixed mindset  HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/506  FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/  FOLLOW CINDRA ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong  TO REACH DR ALEX:  Alex Auerbach | LinkedIn  Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-performance-mindset-learn-from-world-class-leaders/id1034819901   

Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Cinder Kampoff, and I'm excited that you're joining me here today. It's a big day. My second book, Beyond Grit for Business, has just been released, and it's the perfect resource for you. Inside are 10 powerful practices to boost your performance, leadership, and your bottom line. And it's designed for leaders in any industry, entrepreneurs and

salespeople who are serious about improving their performance and pursuing the best version of themselves. You'll find practical tools and strategies to boost your productivity, your leadership skills, and your bottom line. And if you order right now, you'll get $5 off, free shipping, an opportunity to win a free 60-minute coaching session with me, an online course called Multiply Your Confidence, a grit values exercise, a confidence at building morning routine, a game-changing business roadmap, and the High Performance Mindset Summit, which includes 22 expert interviews. So head over to beyondgrit.com today. That's beyondgrit.com today. And that's where you can order Beyond Grit for Business.

So thanks again for joining me for episode 506, where I interviewed Dr. Alex Arbach. And it was awesome. You're going to love it. He is the Director of Wellness and Development for the Toronto Raptors, and he brought it on the podcast today. He joined the Toronto Raptors after serving as the Director of Clinical and Sports Psychology for the University of Arizona, and he's worked with NCAA Division I schools in the PAC-12, ACC, Big 12, and Conference USA. He earned his doctoral degree in counseling psychology with a specialization in sport and performance psychology from the University of North Texas. And in this interview, Alex and I talk about really interesting ideas, including the three

mindsets that separate the best from the rest, how stress can be enhancing, the case against affirmations, and the reason we should all fall in love with boredom, and why we need a dash of fixed mindset. I know you're going to love this episode. To find the full show notes and description of the episode, you can head over to cindracampoff.com slash 506. Thanks again for joining me. And I know you'll love this interview with Alex. Thank you, Alex.

Our back for the coming to the High Performance Mindset podcast. How's your day going? My day is awesome. Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here with you this morning. I'm really excited to be here with you as well. And I'm looking forward to learning more about your career and just learning more about how you work with pro athletes and your trajectory so far. So maybe just to get us started, tell us a little bit about what you're passionate about

and what you're doing right now. Sure. So gosh, I'm passionate about everything health and high performance for individuals, teams and organizations. So for me, I'm really interested in the intersection between well-being and high performance. Obviously, high performance itself is pretty fascinating. And there are so many things that go into helping people manage stress and pressure and perform better and things that can separate sort of the elite of the elite from the almost that elite to the not so elite. But I think there's also, you know, a ton of emerging evidence around the importance of sort of foundational elements of well-being that contribute to that high performance. And I think those are some of the things that at least in the professional sports world and even in the college sports

world for some time have been sort of overlooked in terms of thinking about how we help athletes perform their best. And so I'm really passionate about infusing that into what I do now on a regular basis at an organizational level, as well as at the individual level. And so now I am having the opportunity to do just that with the Toronto Raptors. Yeah, nice. And I'm looking forward to hearing how you do that at a system level and organizational level, because I know working in pro sports that it can be really taxing. And and, you know, this work is even more important because of that. Yeah, it has some unique challenges for sure. But I'm very fortunate to work with an organization that I think is very committed to figuring out how to best infuse these practices into what we do and believes that this can actually help us perform better, which is cool.

Nice. So tell us a bit about how you got to the Raptors. I know you are at the University of Arizona as the director of clinical and sports psychology. And I'm just kind of curious your trajectory. Sure. So actually, before I became a sports psychologist, I really wanted to be a football coach. So I started my career coaching football, I actually selected going to University of Arizona as an undergrad, in large part, because they were the only program that let me in that would also let me work with the football team. And just so happened that that was home. So sort of the best of all worlds. But that was that was what I was dead set on. And then I got into coaching and took a full time job at a good size FCS school, which is sort of one level below Division One.

And enjoyed the relational side of that work, but really struggled with some of the other parts of coaching. And I found myself trying to figure out, like, how do I get more of what energizes me on a regular basis infused into my work? And so did some exploration and ultimately landed on becoming a sports psychologist. So I did my PhD in counseling psychology in North Texas and then did my residency at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. So we've got some North Carolina connection there. And then when I left, I went back to Arizona, which was just a serendipitous opportunity to return home and work at a program that I had had the opportunity to participate in differently earlier. And ultimately ended up taking over the mental health and mental performance services

there for about 500 student athletes. And I'm pretty proud of what came before me and what continues on now, which was really cool as I think a very good program with some well-rounded holistic services, which was awesome. And then sometime into my time there, I got a call from the Raptors and the role I'm in is fairly unique. And so it was one of those things I just didn't feel like I could pass up. Yeah, that's cool. What a great, you know, just like holistic background of all the things that you've been doing so far. And I'm curious about your experience coaching because there's a lot of leaders, some coaches who listen. And what do you wish that you would have known while you were coaching now that you know more about sport and performance psychology? I wish that I would have known how much more of my time should have been spent asking

questions and listening than directing. And I think in football in particular, there's a real emphasis on almost like militaristic order. You know, it's of all sports, I think it's the sport that tries most closely to parallel itself to that really hierarchical, directive way of leadership. And I think for some people in some places that can work, but by and large, it's not the most effective way to do things. And we have a lot of data now that sort of shows that athletes playing have a much better sense of the game than even the most expert of coaches, not because expert coaches don't have anything to offer, but because they're actually experiencing the game and are seeing it from a different angle. And I think that would have really helped me

be a better coach. And I think the same is true in business or any other space, like the people who are on the front lines doing the work do have a different feel for what are the real challenges? What is it that's happening in a really intimate way? And what should be, you know, kept? What should be changed? What should we start doing? Stop doing those sorts of things. But I think in a leadership and coaching role, there's just such a pull to be of value by imparting information. And that's true, certainly across sports, and I think in other spaces as well. But I wish I would have known to not do that as much and to sort of lean more heavily into the expertise of the players I was coaching, even if they were, you know, FCS college players, like they still have an expertise and an

experience that I don't have. So that's one thing. And then I think the second thing that I now looking back, I wish, you know, was a larger part of coaching culture. And certainly my coaching experiences, I perceive myself to be a fairly strengths oriented person. But I think coaching lends itself most often to criticism or to trying to emphasize improvement and building on weaknesses. And I wish that I would have spent more time and attention accurately praising strengths, because I think it's much more effective to reach peak performance by just doubling down on what you do really well and not necessarily ignoring your strengths, but working to mitigate the risk of those strengths while really trying to mitigate the risk of those weaknesses, excuse me, while

really trying to pull on the strengths to their, their max level. And that would involve a lot more frequent positive remarks with really specific detail in, in a way that we don't often praise, right? We're usually pretty good at criticism. We're pretty good at telling people what exactly we'd like to be different and what was screwed up and how they can improve. And then when we praise, we tend to do it in this sort of like, you know, good job surface level kind of way that lacks the depth that someone would need to really capitalize on that. And so had I known that when I was coaching, I would have done that more too. Well, that's a very wise answer and very powerful for everybody who's listening. You know, I think a few things, I do what I do because of my own struggles as a college athlete,

you know, and it's like this coaching likely led you to do this really important work, right? And I think about what you're just saying, Alex, about when you give specific feedback on strengths, people know what they should continue to use, right? Instead of just a good job that isn't always helpful. But also you're really talking about building relationships and asking for input and knowing that your players know maybe just as much as you or at least have something to add that's valuable. A hundred percent. And I think that's sort of the sweet spot is like anything, the truth is kind of in the middle. And so the more that I

as a coach or leader can give over some of my power to this other expert and we can sort of co-create what the best solution is here. We're probably going to be better than just your ideas or just my ideas. And that's sort of, I think the goal of all really good coaching is to get kind of closer to that objective space of truth and then act on whatever that is and sort of keep building on it. And you're spot on. Like, this is why I got into what I do, because I did experience coaching. And I think it really has helped me as a sports psychologist, but I experienced it in a way that didn't necessarily leverage some of the things that I now think are most important. And that's where my systems interest and all these other things

comes into play as I see how it all works together. And I'm really passionate about figuring out like, how do we make it optimize performance for everyone, not just for coaches or players or one individual part of that subsystem. Yeah, so good. And I was just thinking about how I have two teenage boys, and one of them plays youth football or now junior high football. And he has a coach that doesn't know very much about football. But the other day we were talking about him and he said he's the best coach ever because he cares about me and because he builds me up. Right. And so my son knows more about football than he does. But it's just interesting to hear his perspective on the relationship piece and how that's important. So Alex, yeah, isn't that awesome? This shows you, right, especially kids and how they thrive. So I'm curious about as you work with the Raptors

and just pro athletes in general, even, you know, the college athletes you've worked with, when you think about this idea of mindset or the mental game, what topic do you hear yourself kind of talking about a lot? A lot. There are a lot of topics. I mean, I think probably the big ones that have come up most recently that I think are probably related to the pandemic are things like resilience, managing a slump, managing pressure and stress. Those, those I think are sort of the core, you know, themes that have emerged in the last couple of years. And then I think kind of related to that are things like burnout, you know, maintaining motivation, but I see them all sort of, you know,

coming together under this big umbrella. Like how do you manage just a massive amount of ambiguity for two plus years and figure out how to still perform well and it affects athletes the way that the same way it affects all of us right i mean the the athletes i'm working with are playing in a bubble and playing with no fans and then playing with some fans and then playing with no fans and trying to figure out what that how that energy you know how to maintain that energy or maintain that engagement or stay consistent um and i think the same thing was was largely true in college you know there's different challenges that come up for college athletes versus pro athletes and often the

spotlight is a little bit different and the different things that they're managing from you know social media pressure to being more in the public eye to larger consequences i think varies but by and large, the concerns are fairly similar in terms of, you know, how do we maintain our consistent performance, bounce back from failure, those sorts of things. Yeah, absolutely. All really important topics for a pro athlete to thrive, but also just for you and me, being able to deal with adversity and change and bouncing back from failure and dealing with pressure. You know, so let's dive into some of those topics. The first kind of topic related to that, that I wanted to ask you about, I saw your recent tweet that went viral

about three mindsets to separate the best from the rest. Let's dive into that because I think that actually fits really well with what you just said. And then we'll dive into more specifics. So tell us about what those three mindsets are that you see that separate the best from the rest. Sure. So this thread, this framework, I guess, kind of emerged out of trying to figure out like what are the core themes in solving these different problems. I guess, kind of emerged out of trying to figure out like, what are the core themes in solving these, these different problems? I mean, ultimately, like a lot of these things are just human problems, like you said, right, you and I are both dealing with the same thing. And so what is it that would matter to help me manage stress, be more resilient, those sorts of things. And so the three mindsets I've sort of landed on all based on research evidence, too, which is really

important for me in my practice, the first is growth mindset with a dash of fixed mindset. And some of this is my contrarian nature, but some of this is real. So the growth mindset has obviously gotten a ton of attention since Carol Dweck's incredible book came out and really emphasized how focusing on effort and how hard you work can produce really positive outcomes for people in a learning environment, primarily. I think that work, while really valuable, has probably been a bit overextended, right? We've taken the growth mindset to this extreme as like, the absolute most important thing that you can have, and it works for everything everywhere. And that's just not true. Like, it's not always good to be thinking about how you can learn from failure. And we'll talk about that

in a second mindset. So I do value growth mindset. And I think emphasizing effort while you're learning is really important and figuring out how effort relates to success or failure in learning environments is really important. But it's not the only thing. And so I think especially in elite level sports, but I think in elite level anything, really, you do have to have a little bit of a fixed mindset, which is essentially the idea that you believe that your innate talent contributes to your success. And I have never met a professional athlete or a really high performing professional anything that does not believe in some way that they have some unique signature innate abilities that make them really good at

what they do. And I don't want people to shy away from that, I think is really important to believe in yourself, and obviously believe in yourself accurately and appreciate what it is that you can do and sort of balance that confidence and humility a little bit. But I do think there's real merit to valuing the role that your ability plays in the outcomes you produce. If you sort of attribute everything to effort, and you don't think that you are doing anything personally from some innate skill set to contribute, I think it sort of limits your ability to fully appreciate yourself and what differentiates you from the other people you're performing with. And that is important on a team, and it is important in high performance environments. So that's mindset one. The second mindset is this idea that stress is enhancing. And this ties back, we can tie it

back to the growth mindset piece real quick. And then we can talk about some of the other sort of possible options when exploring stress. So stress is enhancing mindset is just this idea that when the pressure is on or when I am in a stressful situation, I believe that the stress is facilitating my performance. This stress is enhancing me. It's making me better. It's energizing me. And it boils down to things that are really common in sports psychology, like a challenge appraisal and accurately appraising your physiology and these sorts of things. But I think it's important to start to reframe stress in a way that is a little bit more facilitative and productive. And the best athletes sort of see this stressful situation, say like a clutch moment at the end of the game, as an opportunity to demonstrate their ability,

as an opportunity to rise to the challenge, as an opportunity to really facilitate peak performance versus crumble under pressure or as a debilitating experience. And so what's really interesting is from this line of research, actually having a growth mindset in these situations limits your performance. Because if you think that this failure, potential failure is just a learning opportunity, you might actually be inclined to just not care as much as you need to really perform, right? So stress becomes, well, it's okay. Like if I fail, I fail, and I'm still going to learn something. And it can be fine and well sometimes, but it's generally not good for performance in high pressure situations, right? We don't want to be thinking about failure as an acceptable outcome when we've got 30 seconds left

to go and we're down three points. You know, those sorts of environments are not conducive to processing failure as a learning opportunity or facilitating performance. And then you can start to think about some offshoots of the way that people handle stress. So you've got this sort of just push through it, folks. And what's interesting about them is their performance doesn't necessarily suffer. But the impact they have on their teammates is pretty harmful, in large part because it doesn't energize the people around you. And it leads to a sense of disconnect about why others may not be doing it the same way you're doing it. And so for a team to work really well together, and I think most

high performers, you know, parents, lawyers, doctors, right, we're all part of a team, whether or not it's an athletic team or not. And so if you're sort of a person who believes that you should just push through it, your individual performance might sort of maintain or be okay, but your understanding of the performance of the people around you is likely to suffer. And that's also not good for delivering in these high pressure moments. And then of course, if you think of, you know, stress as this really debilitating experience, right, you're likely to withdraw and, you know, engage in several other behaviors that might limit your opportunities, self-handicapping, you know, deactivating all these things that are ultimately not going to allow you to deliver when the game is on the line.

And then the final mindset is this idea that recovery or rest is an investment. And I think a lot of this started with sleep as kind of the foundation, but I now see mindfulness and some other kind of like, I know Andrew Huberman called them non-sleep deep rest techniques. I think that's a nice way of thinking about it, right? Like anything that's recovery, right? Whether that's social support, sleep, mindfulness, meditation, yoga, whatever, is not time taken away from performing. It is time spent ensuring that you can perform at your best consistently. And I think it goes very against sort of like the old school sports dogma and the old school dogma generally in some corporate cultures, which is like, you just got to like grind it out. And then as long as you grind it

out, like you'll get to the peak. And like, that's just not accurate. It's a recipe for burnout. It's a recipe for a lot of other things that are not great for your mental health. But the best athletes are really good at prioritizing these things that we sort of shun or think less of when we're in that grind it out mentality. I mean, you've heard athletes like LeBron James talk about how 80 hours of sleep is like a non-negotiable. Steph Curry gets in a float tank. And it's not because they just have all this time to kill and they're just out there experimenting with all these different rest techniques.

It's because they actually know that doing these things will help them perform better in the future, will help them perform more consistently in the future. And there's a reason why, you know, in the NBA, for example, the bubble games were such high quality. It's because everyone was sleeping well. There was no travel. Everyone's going to bed at the same time, right? Like all these things that really do contribute to peak performance really matter.

And so I think the athletes who are able to get to this point where they see rest as an opportunity to invest in their future performance, I do think end up being better than the other athletes who say, well, I can sleep when I'm dead or I'm going to go out tonight instead. And it doesn't matter. You know, I'll be OK tomorrow. It's like the goal is not to be OK. The goal is to be great. And if you want to get to that level, I think you've got to start to reimagine the way that you recover and rest differently. So I know I just shared a lot, so I'm going to pause there. Excellent. I love it. I love it. So the three for people who are listening and maybe they're writing some notes down. First is growth mindset with a dash of fix mindset. Stress is enhancing and recovery is an investment mindset. A few things I'm thinking about related to what you said, Alex, is I really like Kelly McGonigal's book called The Upside of Stress.

And she talks about lots of research about how stress can actually be performance enhancing the way that we view it or our perspectives. I thought that was really helpful to think about. Right. When the when there's a clutch moment, you know, how are you viewing that? And I was thinking a lot about this idea of grit, right? And I wrote a book called Beyond Grit, which covers these 10 practices of high performance. But sometimes people think grit means pushing until you're ready to fall over. But grit instead means to me that you stay passionate and excited and purposeful with your work. And if we're not recovering, if we just keep pushing until, you know, we're ready to die, doesn't sustain high performance. One question I want to ask you about is, you know, when you said growth mindset with a dash of fixed mindset and that the fixed mindset component is about seeing that you have this innate talent.

I'm curious what you see at the pro level. Why is this innate talent really important? For example, if I viewed it as a gift I have versus it's something I've developed over time? You know, why do you see that innate part is really important? I'll give you a couple answers. I think one is it's grounded in reality, right? Like there just is a certain profile that you have to have to be a professional athlete in any sport. There's a reason that we haven't seen like a five, six guards since Mugsy Bogues. It's not because a five,

six guard couldn't exist. It's because most NBA players fall in a really specific physical range of parameters that does, that just is innate, right? And we can get into like the evolutionary genetic stuff, but I don't think we need to, right?

The idea is just there's some baseline level of ability that you have to have to rise to this level of competition. And yes, some of it is developed, but some of it is genetically endowed and some of it is, you know, right time and right place and all those things. So I think that's one part of it is just sort of acknowledging that, like, I belong here, right? I have these characteristics that fit with what this space is. And then I think the second thing is if you lack this sense that you have something unique to offer, I think it's really hard to find your special place amongst a team. I think it's really hard to figure out like, what is my unique contribution to this culture or to this group? And by valuing your innate ability, by valuing what is sort of intrinsic to you as a person, whether you think of it as developed or inborn or some combination of both, I think you end up in a place that's a little bit

more secure in the sense that you do have something special to offer and that it can be sort of unleashed and maximized. So that's sort of how I see it. And I think then the third piece of this for me, which is just important is I want people to sort of more accurately calibrate around the balance between growth and fixed mindset. I mean, the really original data around this suggests that these two constructs are basically like orthogonal, right? Like you can have both. You can be high on both and that's OK. You can really believe that your innate talent matters and also believe that you've developed it and that effort is really important. They're not mutually exclusive. But we've come, you know, this we've come a really long way since carol dweck's book and sort of like villainizing fixed mindset and so i want especially the athletes that i'm working with to appreciate

like you do have some unique abilities you do have some unique strengths and innate talent that you were able to maximize, optimize, and leverage for this performance. And you shouldn't be shy about that. Like it's okay to have some things that you think are really special about you. As long as you're not parading it around in an arrogant way that puts people off, well, I'll be okay. Yeah. Well, I think it helps people own their strengths is what you're saying and really build their confidence so they feel like they can thrive in that environment. I'm curious, Alex, as you work with athletes transitioning into the NBA, what do you see athletes struggle with as they transition in? And then, you know, what do you see that the best do in terms of transitioning into, you know, something that they've been dreaming about for a long time? Yeah, it's, I think it's true in the NBA. And I

imagine it's true in a lot of other professional sports and other spaces. But the big things that jump out are one like the schedule, right? So in college basketball, you play 30 games in an NBA season, you're playing a minimum of 82 games, right? So it's just, you have to develop this like stamina, this endurance and this capacity to stay consistent, stay engaged to show up day after day at a really high level. And I think the consequences of not showing up are much more significant at this level than not. So, you know, in college, like if you have an off day of practice, your coach might get on you and it might be uncomfortable for a couple of days, but like by and large, if you're a scholarship player, you're like pretty low risk of getting cut from the team because of one bad day. But in the NBA, you might get sent to the

G League team if you have a bad day, right? There's all these other things that are going into this need to be consistent. And so I do think in the transition, it's hard for college athletes to appreciate just how much more 52 games really is and what that means in terms of how you have to take care of yourself, how you have to show up consistently, how you have to kind of like fall in love with boredom, right?

You know, you're going to be doing a lot of the same things every day. And that's what the really great ones I think do is they just embrace that and sort of use that as an opportunity to continue to develop versus getting bored or kind of going through the motion. So I think maintaining that intensity and that engagement is one thing. I think the second thing is, you know, for a lot of athletes at this level, especially that year between, you know, your last year in college and your first year pro, in college, chances are for, say, 70% of the games that you played, you were like one of the two or three best players on the floor, you know, and there could be times where you could not necessarily

ease up, but you maybe didn't have to go as hard and you could still show that you are one of the best players on the floor. And then you get to the NBA and no one respects you yet. You know, you might be drawing the fourth or fifth worst matchup from the other guys, you know, and you're not the best player on the floor anymore. I mean, you're surrounded by other really talented athletes who were also the same best player on the floor in college. And so I think figuring out kind of going back to what we were just talking about, like, what is it that I offer? What are my unique strengths? How did I get here? I do think is a big transition and sort of figuring out like, how do I fit and how do I leverage my strengths to belong in this group now

and sort of move past this, like, well, I can just kind of cruise because I'm really gifted into like, now I'm going to have to really push to make it here. And then I think the third is probably like lifestyle adjustments, right? Like oddly enough, like I think the experience for most NBA players is there's a lot more free time than there is in college. You know, in college, you might wake up at six or 630. And then you work out and then you go to class and then you go to practice and then you have shooting and then you have to study hall

and somehow in between there, you're managing to eat your meals. And then in, you know, the NBA, you might show up at 930 or 10 and go through treatment and then go through practice and then do a little bit of work afterward. And then you're kind of done because we're trying to help you recover also and so now it's figuring out like well how do i leverage this time to really facilitate my performance and make better individual performance decisions or health decisions so that i am ready to go you know in college a lot of those choices are made for you. And so I think there's a big learning curve around becoming a professional and really thinking about and internalizing that identity like that. This is not just, I mean, I want it to still be fun and be a game, but it's not just a game, right? It's also a career. It's also my job.

It's also what I'm being compensated well to perform at. And that takes a different level of commitment, investment, engagement, and individual work toward figuring out how I do this as best I can. Yeah, absolutely. And I was thinking about the two, the last two, three mindsets that we talked about. Stress is enhancing mindset. So important in that transition that you see stress as helpful, but also that recovery is an investment. And when you're talking about kind of showing up consistently, is there anything specifically that you see athletes doing to be able to do that? Like the really good ones? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think it starts with how you think about what's being asked of you. And so I think the best athletes where, you know, Kobe Bryant's shooting routine starts like a foot away from the basket. Kobe is like one of the best shooters that we can remember. But it starts with these really

simple actions and then builds on them slowly but surely. And if you watch guys today, like Steph Curry, I mean, Steph's now doing some fun stuff where he shoots from, you know, the third level of the bowl in the arena. But besides that, right, his warm up looks very similar, right? He starts close and he sort of moves on. But I think there's a way that they're thinking about these routine tasks that allows them to engage and really appreciate just how important these things are for their overall development and their overall performance. So in a sense, there's this attitude around not taking the little things for granted, not taking practice or these small moments for granted. And then I think, you know, the second piece is the idea of self-regulated learning,

which there's a lot of data on, particularly in European soccer, around, you know, separating like athletes that make national team appearances from just those who perform at the club level, which obviously, you know, if you've made it to that level in pro soccer, you're very, very good. But there is still a difference between that and national team appearances. And really, it's this idea that they, you know, set goals, they actively monitor their progress toward those goals, they evaluate themselves, and then they adjust and they keep going through the cycle and developing their skills. And I think rather than, again, going through the motions or sort of just relying on whatever your coach is telling you, obviously you need to listen to your coach, but you also need to

have things you specifically are trying to improve. And I think if you've got that really clear in mind, it becomes easier to sort of maintain that consistency and lock in and to, you know, do things that make you feel engaged. Like we all feel better if we're seeing ourselves make progress. And this is one really clear way to do that. So those would be probably a couple of things that I think the best athletes are doing. And, you know, if I think about that in the context of like some of the people who might be listening, I think the same things would apply. Right. It's like still taking advantage of those water cooler bumping moments or preparing for your meetings, even if you don't feel energized by it necessarily, right? Or making sure that you have some kind of routine where you show up and do

your best at these things that you have to do every single day. And then two, setting goals for yourself, right? Like setting goals and figuring out how it is that you can continually work toward them, who you need to rely on to give you feedback and how you can evaluate those things yourself. Right. Those are core pieces of mastery in any profession. Yeah, I love what you said about fall in love with boredom. And I think the example of Steph Curry or Kobe Bryant, you know, shooting really close, right, the easy tasks and be able to master those. And I think about how many times we don't want to do the tasks that are very exciting. You know, even in my business and in my life, right, it's like sometimes you have to force yourself to do that. So, or at least embrace it.

That was a better, that was a really good word that you said is like embracing the boredom or embracing like the practice. So there's a couple of other topics I want us to cover, Alex. And one is about performing under pressure. And I think about especially as athletes are coming into the league and I've done a lot of work in the NFL. It's a little, little different in the NFL because there's a lot more athletes than the NBA. Right. But there's a lot of pressure as you're trying to make the team and, and to show up consistently, like you said, I'm curious even, you know, what, what you've seen in terms of what the best do so that they can kind of

thrive under the pressure. Yeah, that's a really interesting area. And I think it's important for all of us. And I think your comment about the NFL is interesting because there are so many different milestones in the NFL too. Like when you're trying to make a team and the times you can get cut, you know, it's very interesting,

you know, going from now like 90 man roster to 53 man roster, you sort of spend like what I'm imagining is six to eight weeks in this basically like a pressure cooker, right? Wondering if you're going to make it or not. Yes. Yeah. Proving yourself every day, every minute. I think that dynamic is really hard.

I think some of the same things would, would apply. So I think like staying invested in your recovery, staying invested in the things that will help you show up consistently every day is really important. In some sense, we talk about this as like, you know, focusing on the fundamentals, I think of it a little bit differently, like, there are going to be times in these pressure moments, you do have to showcase something special that might not necessarily be fundamental. But I think, you know, fundamentals, big picture in terms of like lifestyle decisions, I think it's really important in these moments, right? So especially if you're needing to perform under pressure for eight weeks, like if you are, you know, pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing, eventually

you'll, you'll struggle with that. I kind of think of it like weightlifting, right? Like if you bench press every day for eight weeks, it's only a matter of time before you tear a pack. And it's not because you're weak, or anything else, it's because you didn't recover. And so I think you've got to stay with that. I think the second piece is, you know, focusing really heavily on what you can control. There's so many factors in sport and in other pressure situations that you can't really control. You know, you can't control like if we're using the football example or basketball example, like you can't control what side of the bed coach woke up on or, you know, what pressure someone else might be facing when they come out to practice or what your teammate did

last night that might affect you today, especially in like these two highly interdependent sports. But what you can focus on is doing your best and what it means for you to show up and get up 100% of whatever it is you have to give that day, I think is really important. I think, you know, going back to that stress is enhancing mindset by focusing on this as an opportunity to perform. I think focusing on this as a challenge and something you're capable of rising to versus something that might cause you to crumble or falter, I think is really important. And then if you wanted to get like really narrowly into sort of pressure moments, I think there are also

a couple other things you can do there. So one would be, you know, identifying kind of a clear fixed goal, like in a clutch moment. There are these experiences like, yeah, we go to the end of a basketball game or the end of a football game where you're kind of like on a two minute drive, right? Like, knowing what it is you need to accomplish is really, really important. And so in those pressure moments, having this kind of vague or open-ended sense of like, just do your best, I don't think is actually going to help you get where you want to go, right? It doesn't mean you shouldn't give your best effort. It just means you also need to know what the task at hand is and have a really clear sense of how you're going to

get there or what steps would go into performing under pressure in this context. So I think that's one. And then I think the second element would be making a really conscious decision to increase your effort. You know, so again, in these kind of pressure clutch moments, we do have a choice about whether or not we're going to like withdraw or shut down or ramp up and give our best and push just a little bit harder. And so in like a very short timeframe kind of pressure situation, making that conscious decision to give greater effort in addition to the challenge appraisal can actually help us perform better too. Awesome. Here's a couple of things I wrote down to summarize. Controlling what you can control helps you deal with pressure.

Seeing is an opportunity to perform, especially if you're feeling stress or pressure. And then I wrote down this idea of the process, right? Because I was thinking about Henry Weisinger wrote a great book called Perform Under Pressure. And he talks about how we feel pressure when the outcome is uncertain, the outcome is important to us, and we feel judged by the outcome. And so many times I think in pressure moments, we can be focused on the outcome. You know, what's going to happen if this doesn't go well or if I miss the shot or, you know, or if I mess up here, I'm going to get cut, you know? And I like what you said about in the moment, having a clear fixed goal and then increasing your effort. Say a little bit more, Alex, about like why you think increasing your effort is really important and maybe how that doesn't naturally happen for us. Yeah. So there was a great book written by Alex,

Alex Hutchinson called Endure. I don't know if you've seen that one yet. I haven't read it. Yeah. Really, really good. So the whole premise of the book is ultimately, you know, a little bit about how we have more say in the effort we're putting forth in physical tasks than we might ordinarily feel. And so I think there are a couple of things that might be going on here. So one is like most of these pressure packed moments that we're describing where you consciously choose to increase your effort come at the end of something. You know, it's very rare that that pressure packed moment is happening when you're like

fresh and there's nothing going on and you've got all your energy. Right. So you're probably in a fatigued state. You're in a place where it might not be natural to think about giving more effort. It might actually be really hard to imagine what it would be like to try even harder than you're trying right now. You know, you think of like the end of a marathon

or these other really intense endurance events where like people don't know if they have any more to give. But the reality is we often have a lot more to give than we think we do. You know, our brains are designed to sort of like keep us in check and gate us a little bit in terms of how much we put forth, not because they're bad, because that's like evolutionarily advantageous, right? Like the goal as a person is to perform at an adequate level with minimal energy that's like what we're all wired to do but in these moments that is not conducive to peak performance either right minimal energy is not going to help you

perform in a clutch moment under pressure so i think you've got to kind of consciously override that natural instinct to not just maybe the best way to think of it is like just get by right like to just maintain you've got to make that decision to sort of kick it into gear and so i think that's one part of it but then i think there's also the second part which relates to the appraisal element which is you know in these moments if you do think of this pressure packed moment that's the threat because you feel like you're going to be judged on the outcome or the outcomes uncertain like some of these elements you're describing there is a little bit of a self-protective mechanism that says like okay

well if i wind down my effort now there's something i can fall back on it's not like self-handicapping right like oh well you know i didn't give my best or I didn't just shut it down or whatever. Like, I had nothing left to give. And it's like, well, mostly that's not true, right? Like this was also a choice that you made to just not push forth for fear of how you might be evaluated or whatever else it might be. And so I think you've got to override that a little bit. And that comes with appraising it as a challenge and then making that decision to like, okay, I'm going to rise to that occasion. Awesome. I love it, Alex. This is so fun talking to you about these topics. The last question I know is like, could we spend a couple more hours? But I'd like to ask you one final question as we wrap up. And I saw your recent tweet that you're kind of talking about the case against affirmations.

Tell us your thoughts on that and what you've seen in the research. Yeah, so I'll answer the second question first, because I think it'll help with the first question. But, you know, the research is really interesting. So that tweet came from a good friend of mine. His name is Gjergjorde. He does a lot of research in sport out in Norway. is really interesting. So that tweet came from a good friend of mine. His name is Gjergjorde. He does a lot of research in sport out in Norway. And he had published this paper about soccer players. And essentially, the idea was, actually, the best players sort of devalue their ability or

their skill relative to their teammates. They think that they're not as good as they might be. And what they found is that actually that appraisal just ended up being slightly more accurate is what it boils down to. So it's not necessarily thinking that you're bad. It's just thinking more accurately about what you might be good at and what you might not be good at and what you might not be good at. And so the athletes who don't have that tend to misrepresent their ability or misjudge what they're actually capable of. And that can be really good for your self-esteem,

but it's not particularly good for performance. And in the long run, your self-esteem is likely to crumble because it's built on something that's not real. And so I think that's the real case against self-affirmations is, it's not to say that you shouldn't speak positively to yourself or be compassionate to yourself. It's to say that really, if you want to perform well, the goal is not to necessarily be nice to yourself. The goal is to be accurate. And accuracy and honesty is going to go much farther to facilitating your ultimate performance than it will to sort of like rah-rah to cheer yourself on.

And again, like I want to, it's very nuanced because I want in, you know, certain moments, like I think positive self-talk can be really helpful but it could also bleed into inaccurately judging a situation right and so you've got to really balance these these things and so you know to me where the self-affirmation stuff sort of goes wrong is it doesn't ever help us to say things to ourselves that we don't believe are true. And you can't really trick yourself into believing something by repeating it day after day if you have no evidence to back it up. Like you can't build your self-esteem or your confidence on a house of cards. You've got to build it with real stuff. And so I think that's where this data comes in and is really interesting, because it's not suggesting that you don't speak positively to yourself. It's not suggesting that

you don't be kind to yourself. It's not suggesting you don't believe in yourself. It's suggesting that you learn to be more self-aware and accurately appraise what you're good at, what you're not so good at. And if you can do that well, over the long run, it will be better for you. Excellent. What a great way to end. Alex, way to bring it today. I really appreciate. I know people, as they were listening, really learned a lot. You got us really thinking about some really important ideas. So if I could summarize today, we talked about three mindsets, growth mindset with a dash of fix mindset, a stress enhancing mindset and recovery is an investment mindset. And we talked about specifically this idea of how rest is really important and how realizing

your innate talents and really owning those strengths can be really helpful. We talked about how to deal with pressure and specifically how we need to fall in love with boredom. I really like what you said there. And then the ways we talked about dealing with pressure are controlling the controllables, staying focused on the process, finding the opportunity in the moment. And then you talked about in the moment when we're feeling pressure, having a clear goal and increasing effort. And at the end, this idea of being accurate and believing what we say to ourselves, like making sure that it's actually

accurate, right? Thank you so much for being here on the High Performance Mindset. How can people reach out to you and learn more about your work? Yeah, well, first, thank you so much for having me. You can find me on Twitter at AlexNauerbeckPhD. You can find me on LinkedIn with the same information. And then if you're interested in the work I'm doing, I'm working on a cohort-based course through Maven that will talk about some of these things. And so I would love to have people join when that's ready. Excellent. And so should they just reach out to you and let them just say, hey, I'm interested, Alex, tell me when it's ready. A hundred percent. Yep. Just find me on LinkedIn and drop me a note. And as soon as we're live and

it's go time, I'll get you going. Excellent. Thank you so much for joining us today, Alex. Thanks for having me. 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-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com. See you next week.