High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 539: Compete Every Day with Jake Thompson, Keynote Speaker

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Jake Thompson is a keynote speaker and Chief Encouragement Officer at Compete Every Day, a brand he started in 2011 by first selling t-shirts out of the trunk of his car.  Jake works with organizations and individuals around the country, teaching how they can develop the focus, habits, and culture in order to grow their businesses and their individual lives.    It’s through his entrepreneurial sales experience, client work, and research that he’s built a proven CE³ Model to help people build their grit, better block out distractions, and create more influence as an impactful leader.  Jake is a third-generation entrepreneur, the youngest strategic advisory board member at the University of Dallas’ College of Business, and a graduate of both Texas Christian University (B.S.) and University of Dallas (M.B.A.). He lives in Dallas/Fort Worth with his wife, Elena and their three dogs, Sugar, Biscuit & Donut.    In this episode, Jake and Cindra talk about:  What it means to Compete Every Day  His “CE3 Model”   How our choices determine our fate   How we can “Outwork our Talent”   His “Midnight Rule”  Why Discomfort Comes Through Growth    HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/539   FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/  TO FIND MORE INFORMATION ABOUT JAKE: Jake Thompson | Motivational Speaker on Grit, Mindset, and Leadership (jakeathompson.com)  FOLLOW CINDRA ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong  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 

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 Miss Pac-Man.

Yes, the 1980s game Miss Pac-Man. So take your notepad out, buckle up, and let's go. This is the High Performance Mindset. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset podcast. This is your host, Cindra Kampoff, and thank you so much for joining me here today for episode 538 with Jake Thompson. Jake and I recently saw each other face-to-face at the National Speakers Association Winter Conference, and I saw him and I thought, I need to have Jake on the podcast. And it was an incredible episode today, so thanks for listening. Let me tell you a little bit about Jake before we head over to the interview. He is a keynote speaker and chief encouragement officer at Compete Every Day, a brand he started in 2011 by first selling t-shirts out of a trunk of his car.

He works with individuals and organizations around the country, teaching them how to develop the focus, habits, and culture in order to grow their business and their individual lives. He's a third-generation entrepreneur, the youngest strategic advisory board member at the University of Dallas' College of Business, and a graduate of both Texas Christian University and the University of Dallas with his MBA. And in this episode, Jake and I talk about what it means to compete every day, how our choices determine our fate, how we can outwork our talent, his midnight rule, and why discomfort comes through growth. You can see the full show notes and the description as

well as the transcription of this episode over at cindracampoff.com slash 539 for episode 539. And without further ado, let's bring on Jake. Jake, I'm so excited that you're joining us here on the High Performance Mindset Podcast. How is your day going? It's fantastic start to the week. Incredibly excited to be here, especially as we finally got to meet in person after years of Zoom and social media. And so I'm stoked to hang out with you today and honored you asked me on. Absolutely.

So Jake and I just saw each other in San Antonio. We were at the National Speakers Association Winter Conference there. And I was like, I know you. And then it was really cool because some of your fellow And I was like, I know you. And then there was really cool because some of your fellow chapter members was like, Jake is crushing it as a member. They had so many great things to say about you. So I'm excited that you're here joining us today. Thank you. Yeah, no, excited for the conversation. You're someone who I continue to learn from and love watching everything you're doing. So this is a treat for me.

Well, awesome. Well, Jake, just to get us started, just so everyone can learn more about who you are and what you've been up to, tell us what you're passionate about right now and what you've been up to. Yeah, passion, I think is a pretty easy one for me is all around competition. And really the lens of how do we truly have the discipline

and mindset to compete with ourselves. And so that has been something for me since the youngest of ages, growing up in East Texas, Friday night lights, everything. I love this idea of competition, but I had a really unhealthy view with it for so much of my life. And so over the last, you know, 10, 11, 12 years running my company, it's been, how do I actually reframe that and help others? And so anything competitive gets me going, whether we're talking about cornhole boards or watching March Madness, which is going on right now. I just love the thrill of competition and what it does for us, but more importantly,

what it can do for a lot of other people. I love it. So your book, Compete Every Day, here we go. I got it with me. Tell us what it means to actually compete every day. Yeah, it's waking up, making the choice to be intentional and look for opportunities of growth. And I think that sounds easier than it actually is because we know, one, growth is uncomfortable. We know, two, it's really easy to get caught in the busy schedules, the soccer practices, the meetings that we just start going through the days instead of intentionally trying to grow through the days. And so it's really waking up and saying, how am I going to push my comfort zone a little bit? How am I going to force myself to find an opportunity to be better so that I give tomorrow something to stack on top of? And so that's really it is

intentionality and a little bit of forward movement every single day. Yeah, I love it. And I think about what you said about competing with yourself. That to me means how can I be better than I was yesterday? And how can I learn and grow or maybe learn more about myself or learn more about my trade or my field? Yeah, it does. Because let's think about this. You talk about this all the time.

We only control us. We can influence, we can respond to other things, but we really only control how we show up. And so when I look at it from a competitive standpoint, teammates, rivals on the sports field, they push us to a new level because of the opportunity at hand, but still it is our choice of, do we rise to the moment? Do we, do we push ourselves harder when we've got that person next to us or not? And so learning to do that with yourself and learning to kind of almost imagine yesterday's version right alongside of you and say, how am I going to be better than you today? Puts us into a consistent state of growth. And I think that's very different than a lot of people have this idea of burning out of like exhausting to always compete. It is if you're always chasing other people because you're never going to catch up. There's always someone ahead of you. There's always someone behind of you. And so it's great to have targets ahead to say, what do they do? Well, how can I improve? How can I get to that level on certain things? But understanding it's

really about how am I competing with myself, which is kind of what we laughed about off air of you got your CSP, which is freaking amazing as a speaker and looking back at all of the reps you put in along the way of like, and I can crush it now. I even thought I was good when I started, like we are like, we go on the first stage. You're like, okay, that was fun. I did it. And now you're looking back at it and you're like, look at all these reps I've put in. That's what it's all about for me. Yeah, absolutely. And so before we were hit record, I just got certified speaking professional.

And most people outside of speaking probably don't know what that is. But it means that you've you've you've done for me. It's been 500 speaking events in the last five years. So basically 100 a year. And part of this is you have to submit videos for other CSPs to watch. And you have to get meeting planners to get feedback about you. And you also have to submit this really comprehensive spreadsheet of all the things you've done. And it actually improved my confidence because I thought, wow, you know, so even you and I sometimes can,

our confidence can be shaken and it's, it's helpful to know that, all right, just look at progress. And that's what I'm hearing is what compete every day is. Yeah. It's all about progress. And to your point right there, I think when we fail to write it down, it's like when we go to work out and we fail to actually track what we're lifting or how fast we ran over time, we start to kind of take it for granted. And we think, well, I'm not making that much progress. I'm not getting better versus when we write it down, we can always look back and say, here's where I was. Here's what I've gotten better at. Here's how I handled that difficult conversation at work that three years ago, I walked out and was like, oh, why

did I say that? This time I'm walking in with confidence. And so to your point, where we can track things, where we can set targets daily is so crucial for us in the long run of mental health, of understanding where our progress is made and being able to really, more than anything, as you talk about as much, enjoy the journey, enjoy the process as much as we do the outcome, which is what unfortunately most everybody tends to focus on instead of who they're becoming in the process. Absolutely. And so Jake, when you as a keynote speaker and you go on and you speak to different associations or conferences or corporate organizations, I know you speak on this idea of the CE triple. Tell me if I got that right. CE3 model. Tell us a little bit about what that is and how you would describe it. did is started looking at what could give us competitive advantages in life and what, how does that break down? And so that competitive edge model is three big picture pieces of like our

inner game, the outer within our company, and then kind of our side peers. And then internally, really a lot of my focus from my keynote speaker is, is the mindset, the focus on the systems. Like we have to adjust our belief system and our mindset. We then have to learn how do we focus on the right things, such as being mindful, focusing on what's in our control, setting the right targets. And then last creating those systems to help build and reinforce that. So what do our habits look like? What does our time management look like? And then really the big piece that I love is the accountability. What are our accountability systems in terms of externally,

internally with ourselves is also with the people we run with so that we're truly setting ourselves up for success. And so that's a lot of the keynotes. We focus on that of like, how do you shift your mindset? How do you shift where we start focusing? And then how are you linking arms with the people on your team, in your organization, instead of doing what's so easy of like, let me just focus on my silo, my work. Let me not talk to anybody else. Let me keep my guard up. And that's really where companies can start to thrive is when everybody lets that guard down just a little bit and starts talking and collaborating and working together. Because, you know, we see it in sports. It doesn't matter how great one person is. It takes a team to win. And so you need everybody on board linked arms.

And so that's where I start to talk about that advantage because we've become more and more as a society about me, me, me, me, me. And when we understand like we do the work individually to bring a better me to the we and the we starts to work. The other really cool things start to happen for us personally, as well as collectively our teams. I love it. And so when you think about accountability and how that works with the best of the best, could you give us a tip or two on how we should work that into our lives and this idea of competing against the last version of

ourselves? Yeah. Yeah. One of the things I love talking about from an accountability standpoint is the app called Habit Share and having a person in your life that you can utilize. And it's a free app. What I actually do with clients, have some people in our community is set two to three daily habits. And it could be a drink, a gallon of water. It could be make three sales calls. It could be spend quality time with my spouse or journal. And then when they check in, they do the activity to have to check in and it sends me a notification. So I can immediately see every single day. Did you hit the marker? Did you not? And if I see you miss it two in a row, I'm like, Hey, what's going on? What's happening here? I see you've missed this a couple of days. Talk to me about it. So what it does is one, it ties in somebody in your life that wants to see you succeed. And then it creates a really easy way. Instead of me having to go every day and text check,

Hey, did you go work out today? Hey, did you go do this today? It's, Hey, I'm going to own it. I'm going to take accountability for my actions. I did it. I didn't. But what I found is knowing somebody else is counting on you to send it increases your level of accountability. It's like if we were going to get up and go work out this morning at 6 a.m. And sure, it's really cold up in Minnesota. It's a little chilly here in Texas today. Yeah.

What? 70 degrees, you know, I mean, we're like in the 50s today, but it's like, oh, you know, my bed's so much warmer. And then you're like, no, I have a, somebody's waiting for me. I have a workout partner that's at the gym counting on me. And so that's the best one I love to do. If you're trying to start a new habit, get somebody who's also trying to do it with you or who already does that. The other piece on the accountability is, as we know, your teammates really determine your

trajectory in life. And so are you hanging out with the people that have the habit or building the habits that you desire? If you're someone that maybe in January, you wanted to do dry January because you're like, I'm having too much wine at holiday parties. I need to cut down. But everybody you hang out with is still going out, still doing happy hour, still drinking on the weekends. You're going to have a really hard time breaking that habit because everybody around you is already doing it. They can't really hard time breaking that habit because everybody around you is already doing it. They can't really hold you accountable as easily because they're engaged in it. Versus if you're like, Hey, I'm hanging out with people who just don't really drink, or maybe they just

have a glass of wine once every so often, it's more likely they're going to be able to hold me accountable. And so having tips like a habit shared to where, you know, somebody's counting on you and being intentional with who you're surrounding yourself with is so crucial for that because it's really hard for us to hold ourselves accountable. It's a lot easier if we know other people are counting on us in that path. Yeah, love it. So that app is called Habit Share. Habit Share. Good, good tool. And I think as we think about just continuing to push ourselves to be the best version of ourselves, right?

There was something in the beginning of your book that you talked about and you said, through discomfort comes growth. And I'll read for those who are listening a few sentences where you wrote, discomfort sets in when we experience something we've never felt before. We move outside of our comfort zone and into the unknown and our body responds as if it's threatened. Success lies in our ability to mentally manage the discomfort and still lean into it. So tell us a little bit about, Jake, how discomfort moving towards growth, how does that relate to competing every day and being the best in your opinion?

Yeah, so it's a daily battle. And it's something when I was young, I wish I better understood. I thought when you got that pit in your stomach that it was a sign to run that avoid that situation. And what happened is I ended up walking away from goals and dreams that I had because I was too afraid in that moment of, of that pit in my stomach versus realizing this is a signal that you have a growth opportunity. And so every single day we're presented with moments of discomfort and our bodies, our brains are going to tell us, avoid it. Don't talk to that stranger. Don't, I know there's like 10 seconds left on the clock at the gym. Why don't you just coast? Cause we're really tired right now versus how do I push for 10 more seconds? How do I have an uncomfortable conversation with a coworker instead of trying to sweep it under the rug? And so we're presented with these moments every day. And what we find is when we avoid it,

when we do always what's comfortable, we never build that new skill. We never start to develop. We never get stronger. We could pick up a guitar today and I don't know about you, but I'd be horrible at it. I would not want to play it in front of people. I'd be terrible at the skill. I would have to spend every day, 30 minutes a day, working at it, watching YouTube videos, hiring a coach, doing things that I'm not very good at that are really uncomfortable, figuring out how my hands work on that guitar. Over time, I've become a lot more comfortable with it. And I may never get to the point where I'm going to play as well as Metallica or Eric Clapton or somebody like that. But if I could play a song or two and my hands get more comfortable in that position, then what

I've done is expand that initial discomfort that my body doesn't move this way to something I'm more comfortable with and can perform. And it works that way in our relationships. Our relationships can't thrive without those tough conversations. And so we have to be willing to lean into discomfort to have them. We don't get stronger in the gym. If we're always going super light and we're never getting our heart rate up, we have to push ourselves out of our comfort zone. And so that's why I think it's a really important part of life. And the visual I always give folks is the idea of, you know, a bamboo tree. And we know the bamboo tree, you plant it and you look above the ground, you see nothing for years.

All the while it's forcing and fighting and growing, clawing through the dirt and soil downward. And eventually it starts to shoot sky high. And everybody thinks for like four or five years, nothing's happened. But in that fifth year, the bamboo tree shoots out of the ground and soars 60 feet or so in the air. All the while, it was growing deeper and deeper into the ground to build stronger roots, to be able to support its upward growth. And our lives are a lot like the same way. The discomfort is like our roots growing into the ground, forcing its way through soil and rock to be able to sustain us and where we're trying to go long-term. And so that's always the visual I go back to, especially talking about, like, did you break some soil today? Did you get through that idea of pushing a little bit of dirt

to try to strengthen your foundation so that who you become, that soaring through the sky is much higher and you have more opportunity to fulfill your potential. I love it. I completely agree. And I like what you said about that you wish you would have known earlier that that feeling in your gut means that you shouldn't just throw in the towel, you should move forward regardless of how you feel. Right. And I think about how courage isn't the absence of fear, right? And I know there's a famous quote, I think, by Teddy Roosevelt. It's the assessment that something is more important than the fear, right?

So courage can start us in a new habit, can keep us going, and no one can be courageous for us, right? It's really up to us. Yeah, nobody can make that decision for us. It's really up to us. Yeah. Nobody can make that decision for us. And the beauty to your point is without fear, there is no courage. And there's always a fear. Sometimes it's our fear of failure. Sometimes it's a fear of other people's opinions. And what I love as we were just talking earlier of like the track record of all the talks and the confidence and that reminder, sometimes we have to remind ourselves when we're going through that discomfort

that this is a courageous choice. And just the simple reminder versus like, I'm scared. I don't know what I'm going to do. What if I fail? What if I'm not even very good at this? What if we just remind ourselves I'm putting in a rep and becoming more courageous in this moment and reframing that discomfort as a chance to build courage. And we know nothing great in life is built without courage because nothing great is done without some sense of fear that has to be overcome. Yeah, absolutely. And the way I think about courage is like a muscle, right? The more I'm courageous, the better I get at it. And the more I can do it in the moment when I notice the fear. Yeah. There's several points I'm going to make in your book. And one of my favorite things that you shared was about this idea of like outworking our talent. And you provided some examples. If you look at the rounds

where the top 15 all-time quarterbacks were drafted, and I like football, Jake. Okay, so I'm going to pull these out. And how many others were drafted ahead of them? So you give an example of Tom Brady. He was the pick 199. Six quarterbacks drafted ahead of him. Joe Montana was picked 82. Three quarterbacks were drafted ahead of him.

And Brett Favre, pick 33. Three quarterbacks drafted ahead of him and Brett Favre pick 33, three quarterbacks drafted ahead of them. Tell us a little bit about how you see people, you know, Tom Brady, Joe Montana, Brett Favre, you know, people like that. How do you see them respond to this type of adversity? And what does it really mean to outwork our talent? Yeah. So I love, so football guy for me too, played quarterback like that. That is a passion point. But what I see when it's outwork your talent is talent we don't control. We do not control our talent ability.

We do control what we do with it. And every year you see this, I see this. There's phenomenal football, basketball, baseball players who you look at them physically and think that's magical talent, but it's wasted because their work ethic and their consistency is in the dumps. They're not consistent. They don't show up. It's the things in our choices that are more important in the long run. Angela Duckworth talks about this. I know the topic grit, so passionate for you, but in the long game, in the, in the big picture, it's about your effort and your consistency is twice as important as your talent. And what that always spoke to me

as a smaller athlete is I was never going to be the most talented quarterback on our roster. But was I going to outwork you and outsmart you to get on the field? Absolutely. Was I going to find a way to be more accurate, to know everything better? Absolutely. And so when I talk about outwork your talent, it's getting away from the idea and really the excuse that I just don't have the talent as so-and-so and waking up every day and saying, whether I have great talent, good talent, average talent, or below average talent, I'm going to give a hundred percent best effort. And I'm going to find a way to outwork it. I'm going to be the, for basketball fans, I'm a JJ Barea guy. I know he played with the T-Wolves for a little bit, but he was 5'10", 5'11", but he was crucial in the Mavs championship run. He went undrafted, 60 guys got drafted this

year, that year that he did. And I think only six played as many games as he did. And maybe five made as much money as he did because he was someone that says, Hey, what do I control? How hard I work, how great I practice, what kind of teammate I am, how consistent I am. Those are the things in my control that allow me to outwork this talent ceiling that everybody else has kind of put on me. And so I use it more as that reminder, especially with athletes. Like it really doesn't matter your talent or potential. It's what you do with it. And that rings true for a high school athlete all the way to a 40-year-old sales professional man or woman

who is like, you could have a teammate who's way better at quote, the gift of gab or building some connection on a sales call. But how much harder are you working your pipeline? How much longer consistent are you picking up your phone and making calls? How are you doing the things that are in your control to outwork any level of talent you have? And that seems to be a big piece of success. And to your point with those quarterbacks, like Malcolm Gladwell talks about it in one of his YouTube videos of that

theory of compensation. Well, if I don't have the talent, I have to work harder. And if I really embrace that idea of instead of, I don't have the talent, I should quit, but I don't have the talent, I have to work harder. And if I really embrace that idea of instead of I don't have the talent, I should quit, but I don't have the talent. I need to outwork everybody. It changes your whole perspective. Yeah. And it's interesting because when I think about Tom Brady and the psychology of someone like Tom Brady, I wonder if he would have been picked as number one, if he would have been as successful. And what I mean by that is I think that likely fueled him, you know, and one of the things I see in just working in the NFL and really great athletes, the ones that can turn adversity on its head and say like, you know, I'll prove you, I'll prove you're wrong, right? They just have this different fire in their belly that I

think it's the motivation and the fire that allows them to be one of the greatest of all times. Like for example, in Tom Brady, right. It's all about his response to the adversity. I love it. And that goes, reminds me of a story about Michael Jordan,

where Jordan, they were playing the Washington bullets on back-to-back nights. And the first night Jordan, you know, okay. Game like maybe 20, 22 points, but some rookie for the bullets had just a lights out game, best game of the guys career rookie season.

And after the game, Jordan tells a reporter that the rookie came up to him and was like, good game, MJ kind of like laughing. And the next night when they played them, the rookie had like no points and Jordan scored almost 50. Well, years later, come to find out the rookie never said a thing to Jordan at all. Never approached him, never talked to him. The kid knew like, don't don't fire up Jordan. But Jordan manufactured this chip on his shoulder after that night to fuel his next performance. And as we saw in the last dance, he did that time and time again of like, put little chips on his shoulder. And I

think to your point, Brady and those folks, they play with that little bit of an edge. And they put that of doubt me, doubt me, doubt me, but they also pair it with uncanny work ethic. And that's what I always find fascinating because like Cliff Kingsbury was on the flying coach podcast with, I want to say it was Sean McVay and somebody else. And they were talking about when Cliff was in new England with Brady and they were all in Mexico at somebody, some Patriots wedding out drinking till two in the morning, the night before the party. And Cliff says he wakes up at like 5 a.m., can't sleep, gets in a golf cart and is driving the island. And he drives by and sees Brady out on

the beach with his trainer training, even though Brady had been out all night with him. He was up before dawn on the beach, working out, working drops in the sand, all of that on a quote unquote vacation. And Cliff was like, that's when you just, you knew he has a different switch in terms of a work ethic. And to your point, it goes into that psychological edge. Yeah. Yeah. I like how you connected that with the, you know, watch me kind of mentality plus the work ethic, because you don't have the work ethic, you know, you don't necessarily have the base of the bamboo to grow. And I think it can be a little dangerous to always be like, watch me, watch me, watch me. But I mean, some of the best have done that, right? Michael Jordan is just one example of creating this edge.

There was one other thing that I really liked about your book, Jake. Again, it's called Compete Every Day. And you talk about this idea of clutch. So this is something we talk a lot about in sports psychology. And you gave some examples of like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. And when you compare their clutch shots as defined by hitting the go-ahead shot in the final five seconds of the fourth quarter of overtime, you'll see their stats below. So Michael Jordan missed 53%. Kobe Bryant missed 77%. LeBron James missed 48%. I wish my son, actually, I'm going to show this to my son tonight because he's a basketball player, right? And he gets so hard on himself when he misses a shot. And it's like,

look at these greats. It didn't say, you know, they've missed 0%. So tell us what about this idea of clutch and why you provided these stats here in your book. Yeah, I think it's most important to understand a lot of people think, well, just certain guys are clutch and certain aren't. And you're either born with it or you're not. And what I wanted them to see is that the best, they failed, they missed multiple shots, but what they had was in those moments with the game on the line, they had the confidence and the competence to say, I can take and make this shot. And Kobe was an example interviewed years later. Like he didn't want to pass it to certain teammates if he saw their practice habits, because he knows their competence level in those moments was low.

Even if they had extreme confidence, I can hit it. He had seen him practice and work ethic. And so why would I trust you when I know you haven't come close to working as hard as I do? The flip side, you can have the people with extreme competence. They can hit killer shot after killer shot, but they start focusing on the moment and how big the moment is versus just the play. And so their confidence level drops in those moments. And so when we talk about clutch, it's more about being in your control of, have you put in the work? And then in the moment, do you have the confidence that I've made this shot a hundred million times,

whether there's 12 minutes left on the fourth quarter or there's 12 seconds and understanding, not letting the size of the moment become too big for you because you're just focused on executing the thing that you've done over and over and over again for you. And I, it's like getting up on a stage and getting from the stage of 40 people, or we can go into an arena of 40,000 people. And you can wither in those moments because you're focused on the size or you can say, I've done this time and time again. Here's my track record. Here's how many talks I've done. I know my talk. I've prepared. I've rehearsed. Let's go. Then you look at that moment with more excitement. And it's probably you talk about the difference between going into

those moments with gratitude for the opportunity instead of fear of messing up the opportunity. Isn't that so true? And I think that confidence in yourself is so important in that clutch moment. And it's easy to stay focused on the outcome. All right. Is the shot going to go in or what's going to, it's easy to focus on the future, right? And the things that are distracting you and how big the moment is, right? All those thoughts can't allow you to be at your best. Or it's if you're focused in the present on the process, the small things you have to do, you're more likely to make that game-winning shot. But the belief in yourself, when I think about what you just said about Colby, like he didn't want to necessarily, you know, pass the shot because he saw their work ethic, but he believed in his own work ethic. Yep. Yeah. Have you have you read Thinking and Bets by Annie Duke?

No. OK, so add it to your list. She's a former World Series of Poker player and she talks about how we become outcome biased. Yes. And in those moments, we make the wrong, we guarantee the wrong decision. So you're a football fan. I'm a football fan. Our teams have won games that they've played horribly and had no sense winning. Our teams have also lost games that they played out of their mind and it just didn't work out that day. And if we only focus on the games we won where we didn't practice that well, we may not practice that hard the next week

because we're like, hey, we're good enough. We can go through this. We can win. We do this in life and we have this bias. And so she talks about it really through the lens of the Patriots Seahawks Super Bowl and the decision at the end of the game to throw the ball and Patriots picked it off

and ended up winning versus run it with Marshawn Lynch. And she talked about all the statistics and all the numbers and everything that goes into it. To your point, we become so outcome obsessed in those moments that if you look at Jordan and LeBron and Kobe, the shots they missed, they immediately the next night are going to take the same shot. They're going to shoot it again. They're going to have extreme confidence that I'm going to make it. Like I have a 50% shooter. I'm going to make it again. I am not getting, I'm not living and dying with that one outcome. I'm going back into saying, okay, what do I need to do tomorrow to better improve my

chances of making that specific shot in that angle, not taking anything else into it. So those guys, I would love to just sit and watch the night after the next morning, their practice, because they probably went back to that spot, shot it, made it 10, 12, 15, 20, a hundred times. And the next night they're like, let's do it again. And maybe they missed it again that night, but they're going to keep refining that craft and getting focused on the, on making the shot and what they control versus kind of letting their confidence only be controlled by the outcome. Absolutely. And I think Jake, the reason that we're so outcome biased is because that's what we feel like we're judged on.

And if you look at ESPN or, I mean, right now March Madness is going on, but it's the highlights of who won, who didn't win, you know. And so that's also what's celebrated. But the outcome focus can create so much anxiety and pressure for us, and especially in those clutch moments that you're just describing. It does. I actually heard Charles Barkley talk earlier this week on March Madness about that. And he said, you know, we, we post all the big three, the dunk, but he said, we're not showing the highlights of the guys diving on the floors, the guys taking charges, the things that are winning teams games. And I remember years ago, it was before, uh, Jerome Tang took over at K state. Maybe it was his first year, but they put

a scoreboard in their locker room of charges, dives on the ball, on the ground, jump balls. Like where were you doing the things that most people overlook as outcome, but are process pieces that stack and where can we celebrate those? And so for our own life, that's why in the book, I created that kind of scorecard. It's a way to score yourself every week on process pieces because we don't control the outcomes. But how are you showing up consistently in the process and understanding if I stack a Lego block every single day of progress, over the course of the next decade, I'm going to create something incredible, even if in this moment it doesn't look like an outcome that's that great. Absolutely. And I'm thinking about those people who might feel like they fail, right? You have something in the book that's called the midnight rule. Tell us about that and how it fits with our conversation so far. Yeah. So I learned the midnight rule from a guy named Nate Smith that

pitched for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in their minor league system for years. And it's the idea in baseball, you fail 70% of the time if you're really good. Like the best batters in the game are gonna fail to hit the ball three out of 10 times to go up to plate. And I wanted to ask somebody that plays the game, how do you constantly step on the field

to give your best effort, to give your best attitude, knowing you're gonna fail? Like it's inevitable in baseball. And he talked about for him a midnight rule. And he said, regardless of how the game goes after the game, I give myself till midnight to celebrate or more. So I'm going to go back and watch tape later, but emotionally my emotions end at 1159, because at that point it's behind me. And the next day I show up to the ballpark, if I'm still thinking about what happened yesterday and the bad pitch and I'm beating myself up, I'm unable to be at my best in the present where my teammates need me, where my friends for my family. And I talked about like, we all need some version of that.

For some people, I laugh, they go sit in their car, they crank up Metallica or, you know, some heavy rock ACDC. They listen to one song, maybe yell at their steering wheel. They get out and they go. Some people, it takes a full day. But what happens is when it's like us trying to run 100, 200, 300 meters looking behind us over our back shoulder, we're never going to run in a straight line. We're never going to be at our best. We're never going to run very fast if we're constantly turned looking behind us or dragging something behind us. And so we have to get in this routine of when something happens, what did we do well in those moments? That game that you went 0 for 4, what did you do well that day? Did you field grounders? Were you a great teammate? What'd

you not do well? I chased a few bad pitches. How are you going to get better tomorrow? And so that's where our focus becomes in life. And we're able to not only let go of some of that emotional pain, but if we're going to go through the pain, let's learn something from it. Let's use it. So starting to go through those processes of even the worst experiences, what did I do? Well, I lost the sale. I bombed the keynotes. We lost the game. What did I do well? And next time, what do I want to do better and how will I do better with it? Yeah, so good. I think the midnight rule is a way to reset because, you know, if you're learning and you're, well, how I would describe it in my book, Beyond Grit is I have a tool called learn, burn, return.

And it's like, when something doesn't go well for us, we ask ourselves, what did we learn? But we ask it objectively. But then we got to burn it, we got to let it go. And ultimately, I think maybe that's what the midnight rule is, is all right, reset. But then the return is how can you build yourself back up, right? Tell yourself the truth, because so many times we're just, we make meaning based on the past, but it's always, it's not always like very accurate. And it's not always the truth. Very, very, it's not accurate. It's not the truth. We're heavily biased and influenced by stories. And I love the idea of burn it. Like I love that idea of just the ashes are left. You remember it. Yeah. Yeah. But you're not hanging on to it. Exactly. Yeah. Burn it means to me, let it go. So towards the end of your book, Jake, you talk about how important it is to help and support others. And I thought that was a really good way to end

the book that you can't do it alone. So as we think about everyone who's listening today and the people that you surround yourself with are really important, tell us why it's really important to help and serve other people. Yeah, so Dr. David McClellan from Harvard estimates that 95% of our successes and failures in life are influenced by the people we habitually associate with. It ties into the old Jim Rohn, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And what I believe and what I've seen is it's really hard to be a high achiever unless you're hanging out with high achievers. And if you're someone who's not chasing greatness and trying to be your best, the people that are chasing greatness and trying to be their best and grow and chase goals aren't going to want to hang out with you. And so there's something about the people you surround yourself

with. But at some point, it's more as important, maybe more of what are we doing to help others grow into their best self? And when I started my career, I used to think leadership was like being that influential, charismatic person. You had a great following. People wanted to follow, support you. And over the years, what I learned is it's about how do you build other leaders? How do you help people shift their mentality, their thinking? Because that's really what legacies are made of. And I tease it in the book a little bit that when we get to the end of our lives, they're not going to talk about how many books we wrote, maybe. They're not going to talk about our social media following or how much money we made.

They're going to talk about a Dr. Kampoff changed my life and she changed how I saw this. And when we get to the end of our career, we don't talk about how much money we made. We talk about that manager that helped open the door, change our perspective, that, that CEO that took a chance on us when nobody else would hire us after we did a hundred interviews. And for us, the most meaningful path is how do we help build others? And that's a kind of backwards thinking in today's world, because it's all about us. How do we build us? But the Zig Ziglar old quote of, if you want to find success, help other people be successful is so true because the most successful people I know are not about how can I get more? It's how can I help

more and building that and pouring into others. And so I wanted to wrap the book up that way, because most all of the book is how do I build me to bring a better version of me to my goals, to my friends, to my work, to my family. But at the end, I wanted them to realize the reason we bring a better me, the reason we go through all the discomfort of growth and being consistent and disciplined is not really about us, but about making sure we bring the best version of ourselves to everyone around us, because otherwise we're cheating them of how much better we could be for them. Yeah. Awesome. And you said 95%. Yeah. Dr. David McClung estimates 95%. Wonderful. Yeah. I mean, that's a lot,

right? And so when you think about how can you give and you can serve other people, I think about the abundance mindset and how can I serve and give others and then the energy comes back to me. Jake, this was outstanding. I'm going to summarize here as a way to, so people can, if they weren't taking notes, they can write a few things down. So you mentioned the app, the Habit Share. So you can check that out as a way to increase accountability in your own life. You were talking about how every day we get to be uncomfortable. So continuing to

develop that courage muscle is really important. And because we can't control our talent, right, we can only control our effort and our consistency towards going after our goals. And I loved at the end when you talked about this clutch moment where your focus should be and the idea of the midnight rule. So Jake, tell us where we can find more information. I got your book here, Compete Every Day. Where can people buy this book and learn more about your speaking and coaching? Yeah, so best place is going to be our website, CompeteEveryDay.com. You'll find us on social media.

I've got my own spinoff. I spend most of my time on LinkedIn or on Instagram as Jake Thompson Speaks. And so we'd love to connect anything that we talked about today. You have a question on, you want to dive further. I'm always game for it, but thank you so incredibly much for having me here and just getting the chance to hang out with you today. Yeah, it's always fun. And I know I'll see you this summer at the National Speakers Association. So I actually, let me, can I say something on that real quick? Cause you, you teed this up beautifully, the abundance mindset that you talked about. And I think you and I, and there's a number of other speakers that I learned dramatically different than when I came into the industry that speakers get other speakers opportunities, which sounds so weird

because it's like, Oh, you two are fighting for gigs. I'm like, we are, but we aren't. Because we want to help people win. And I know I'm not going to speak in an event the next year that I did this year. So who can I refer? How can I help a client? How can I help a great speaker? And having that mentality in the speakers and professionals outside of our space that have that mentality, especially in the mental performance of like, we just want to help

people win. There's enough space for all of us to win individually. If we help enough other people win is a game changer. And so if you've ever been on the fence feeling like there's not enough out there for me, I want to challenge you over the next 30 days to follow Dr. Campoff stuff, practice that abundance mindset and see how your perspective changes, which will ultimately change your world without changing anything else. Because that was a game changer in my life and my career of like, there's enough out there.

It's all about having that rising tide, raising all the good ships of people who actually care about helping other people succeed. It's a game changer. So I wanted to echo what you said there and challenge them to keep diving into your stuff on that because it's such a key piece. It is a key piece. And I appreciate you saying that.

And I think there saying that. And I think there's, I mean, think about all the people in the world, right? All the opportunities out there. And I think when we get really in the scarcity mindset, it doesn't allow us, we're more likely in fear, right? But if we're just thinking about how can I help? How can I serve? It does come back to us. And I love the National Speakers Association, NSA, for that reason, because it is like the spirit of Cabot who started the NSA. And it's very much like just giving and serving and, you know, how can we make the world a better place? I think all of us, regardless of if we're athletes or business people or leaders, when we give, right, that just comes back to us twofold. Yeah. Absolutely. So Jake,

outstanding today. Make sure you follow Jake and check out his book, Compete Every Day. Do you have any final advice or thoughts for us as we close? Yeah. Competition is, when I think about it, I always go back to the Theodore Roosevelt man in the arena, that the credit does not belong to those in the stands, but the ones on the field, bloody, sweaty, tears, fighting valiantly, some winning, some not. And when we get to the end of our lives, I think all of us should strive to be that person on the field, even though it's dangerous, even though it's scary, even though there's a chance we're going to lose, because it's a far better place to rest at the end than sitting in the stands wishing you'd stepped on it. So that is my encouragement to send us off is get in the arena.

Outstanding. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jake. Thank you. 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. Sindra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.