High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 758: The Intentional Edge: Building Standards That Sustain Excellence with Jeff Jones

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

In this episode of The High Performance Mindset, Dr. Cindra Kamphoff sits down with Jeff Jones, performance coach, leadership expert, and author of The Intentional Edge, to explore what it takes to build lasting mental toughness, leadership, and high-performance habits.   Drawing on more than two decades of experience in collegiate athletics, Jeff shares lessons learned from working within elite football programs and championship cultures. He explains why success is less about motivation and more about the standards we consistently uphold, especially when pressure, adversity, and uncertainty arise.   Throughout the conversation, Jeff unpacks the powerful idea that when pressure hits, we don't rise to the occasion—we fall to our standards. He discusses why intentional daily actions create sustainable excellence, how elite performers respond to setbacks, and what separates those who grow through adversity from those who become stuck in it.   Jeff also introduces his signature 10-Rep Framework, a practical approach to building mental performance through small, consistent actions that compound over time. His insights challenge the common belief that high performance is reserved for a select few and instead demonstrate how anyone can develop the habits, mindset, and leadership skills needed to thrive. This episode is a powerful reminder that excellence isn't accidental. It's built intentionally, one rep at a time.   You'll Learn: Why standards matter more than motivation What elite performers and leaders consistently do differently How to respond effectively when pressure and adversity arise Why culture is the foundation of sustained high performance The mindset mistakes that often hold high achievers back Practical ways to strengthen mental toughness every day How the 10-Rep Framework can help you create lasting growth Why intentional actions create an enduring competitive advantage   Episode Resources & Links Learn more about Jeff Jones: https://coachjeffjones.com/ Learn more about the Mentally Strong Institute: https://mentallystronginstitute.com/ Request a Free Mental Breakthrough Call with Dr. Cindra or her team: https://freementalbreakthroughcall.com/ Download the National Confidence Research Study: https://confidencestudy.com/

Today on the high performance mindset podcast, I'm excited to welcome Jeff Jones. Jeff is a performance coach, author, and leadership expert who helps athletes, coaches, and organizations build mental toughness, leadership, and elite team cultures. Through his signature 10-rep framework, which we'll talk about today, and his book, The Intentional Edge, which we will also talk about today, Jeff teaches that mental performance isn't built through inspiration alone. It's built through intentional daily reps. So Jeff brings more than two decades of experience in collegiate athletics, including leadership roles at Boise State,

Auburn, Appalachian State, Arkansas State, and currently the University of Northern Iowa, which is my alma mater. Pretty cool. So Jeff, welcome to the high performance mindset podcast. I got your book right here. So thank you so much. I've loved reading it. Yeah. Well, I love it.

Well, thanks for the great intro. I'm fired out. I'm excited to be on your podcast. I've been listening to it for 10 plus years. I'm a huge fan. You're doing great things. So I'm excited to be here. Awesome.

Thank you, Jeff. Well, I want to start with just a question of like, why should people keep listening to us today? Like, what value do you think will provide as we keep talking about the intentional edge and mental toughness? Yeah. What a beautiful way to start that. The reason why I think they should stick with us here is we're going to talk about the most important muscle we have. and that's our mind. Unfortunately, the mind usually doesn't get the same training that maybe our body does

or maybe some of the work skills or how you train your craft. We need to train our mind because it drives all those things. And it's the driver of those. So we're going to talk about the power of tapping into the mind. We're going to give some actionable, practical strategies. I don't think we're going to be just theory. We're going to get some really good tools on how people can elevate their mindset. upgrade their life. Awesome. And Jeff, like that's actually my purpose of my life is to provide people

really tangible tools. And one of the reasons it is because actually at the University of Northern Iowa, where I was a college athlete and ran cross country and track, I didn't have that. And, you know, it was before the time where we had all these books on mental performance or podcasts, you know, and so I didn't know how to get unstuck and wish I, you know, had the tools. that we'll talk about today as a college athlete, I would have definitely reached my potential, but by the end, I was, like, burnt out and ready to throw in a towel. Yeah, I hear you on that. What do you think, like, tell us a bit more about what first led you to become fascinated

with mental performance and leadership. Yeah, so I'm very blessed to do what I do. Like, I had this obsession with athletic performance, even really going back to, like, seventh and eighth grade middle school, I loved lifting weights. I had no clue about it. I didn't know what I was doing. but I loved it. And then I got to college

and I had a strength coach that really impacted me, Jake Anderson. And he taught us, hey, you can be a strength and condition coach. This can be your career. This is what you can do. You can train college athletes. You can develop them.

And since I knew that that could be a career, I became obsessive it. And I read all the time. And in the beginning, Cendra, it was mostly the scheme, the X's and those of performance training. How can you get somebody faster, stronger, more exclusive? And there was this obsession with it.

And I loved it. I was all about it. And then we're 10 years in. I'm loving it. I'm learning. And then something slowly clicked. Even I remember four to five years in, I would read some sports psychology stuff. I remember listening to Brian Kane at a conference.

But just because I listened and I heard and I read these things, doesn't mean you go execute and doesn't mean you live them. So 10 years in, I really just, there is a deep dive of, okay, what is my purpose? What am I doing? Yeah. And if all I'm doing is just trying to get people faster, stronger, more explosive, I think I'm missing out out a really important piece of their development. And also, though, like meaning and purpose for me, there has to be more than just getting somebody faster and more explosive. Yeah. So that is when I started. diving in even more to the mental performance game. And then you start teaching it.

Then you start learning much more when you start teaching it. And you realize really how much better you got to get at teaching the stuff if you want it to have the impact. And what I would say is over the last five years is, you know, I've refined it and I'm still improving it. And I've simplified it in a way to where the last 10 years became more about the mental side. Because you look at an athlete. you look at a person, they usually don't reach their potential because of a mental limitation or a mental issue. It's usually not physical.

And if somebody wants to say it's physical, I would say, well, the mental actually drives the physical because the mental drives their habits. It drives their discipline. It drives what they put in their body. It drives how they train. It drives all those things. So it really starts with the mind. And if you're not intentional about having a system, having a training plan, doing

drills and reinforcing that at a day-to-day week-to-week basis, I really think you're missing out on the most important training aspect. Yeah. And I think what's cool about like what you do is a strength and conditioning coach, right? Like for you to say that the muscle is the most important muscle that you train, your mind is your muscle the most important that you train, like also shows a lot about the impact that you know mental performance has because I also think about, you know, people need. motivation to actually go train and they they need like the purpose and the why behind doing that.

So you've spent, you know, more than 20 years coaching elite college athletics. I would love to hear what you see as what the best performers have taught you about mindset. And then I'll answer that same question as somebody who's worked with elite athletes for 20 years. Yeah, for sure. So what the high achievers, the best of the best that I've worked with, what they've really taught me about mindset is they're the seekers. They take advantage of their resources. They are always looking for areas to improve and grow because I really became fascinated over the last five years of mental performance to help out our low achievers, the bottom third

of the roster, the guys that really struggled with consistency, discipline, showing up at their best. But what I found was through all this mental performance work, it was always the higher achievers that saw the biggest improvements from it. Yeah. And what I believe is, it's because they're the ones always looking for that edge. And what that is, true, more intentional with everything you do. So it's been really cool too is, hey, the last five years, you know, well, the first 10 to 15 years, it was all about, hey, coach, I really appreciate you helping me, get my body right, get me faster, get me stronger. And really what's been neat is the last five years, it's about coach.

Thank you so much for impacting how I think, how I operate, my mindset, training my mind, like affecting my life, like changing my life through these drills, through these principles you teach. So that's been another cool thing as well there. Yeah, I think about also my work in college football. Like I've met many guys, you know, five years later that will say like I'm using these principles you taught in my life and in my job and like thank you so much right and so then you know that you had a bigger impact which I think is really cool when I think about like what the best of the best athletes do I think um they trust themselves you know I think especially in college athletics maybe the first

couple years you're not getting the playing time that you want so they have this like true belief in themselves they trust that their hard work's going to pay off you know I think they're not arrogant because arrogance like is typically false confidence and then that means you're not you can't grow and you can't learn but um they also can let go of things when they that doesn't go great right like I think about in the game particularly in the game of football which you work in it's like they can have which we've talked about in our mentally strong coach training program which you're a part of like they can move on that fast right and not let that last a difficulty like define them the players I've seen not last very long.

It's like one failure. They take it really personally. And then, you know, their performance just declines. So those are things I can see. Yeah. I've seen those as well. Yeah. Yeah.

Was there like a defining moment in your career that really changed how you saw mental toughness and the way you kind of viewed it? I don't know if there's one exact moment, but I know there is a period of time. of frustration of me. Am I making a difference? Am I helping these athletes elevate their mental state, their emotional state? Am I giving them the tools and strategies to improve their consistency and how they show up? And I really evaluated, how can we do this better?

And it's not from giving an inspirational speech. It's not from giving them a catchy quote. It has to be daily reinforcement, but then you got to have some, you got to have a framework. And I think it's very important that you do a little, a lot. Yeah. I used to think you could give a great speech and you could get this, you know, get up there and get them excited and fired up and give them some good stuff. That only lasts a long. Sure.

But the daily consistency of having a framework, of executing that framework, and just being brutally consistent. at showing up every day and then as a coach, you got to go live those things. That's true. If you ain't living them, you ain't coaching it. And the Alex have a great BS detector. So I think that's another important thing is like to teach mental performance, you have to live it. Yeah.

And you have to be passionate about it. So I'm curious when you think about like before you really studied mental performance and now, what is the impact that you've had? on your players. Like, what's the impact of, like, understanding more about mental performance and what impact is that had on your team? Yeah, so what I've seen over the years is I've seen consistency.

Like, we talk about being an everyday guy. And everyday guy is one of the highest honors you can have. And that's somebody that you know what you're getting every day. They're showing up as their best and what you're getting, it's elite. Yeah. And that's really tough to do. You know, you hear everyday guy, people say, oh, yeah, yeah. No, it's actually really tough to do.

And what we want is we want to try to help develop guys to be that or leaders or people in general to show up at their best every single day. And you know, it's just it's the like we talked about the framework, sticking to it. And then what I've seen is I've seen guys become more disciplined. I've seen guys actually care about each other more. Because gratitude and well-being is a rep. It's rep six, and that's really important. I've seen guys become mentally sharper, better focus. I've seen guys be able to train and strain harder,

and then that all translates to the practice field, and that all translates to games. And I'm not going to sit here and say that every player we do this with, they get it. We're 100%. Every single guy we do it with, they get it, they upgrade, and they get better. Yeah. That's not how it works in the team environment. Yeah.

Well, what you want to do is you just want to keep planting those seeds. You want to keep coaching. You don't want to give up on anybody. And then you just keep coaching. You keep planting the seeds. You don't keep score. And then over time, those seeds are, they're going to harvest sooner or later. And maybe they go for a couple. But you know what? You've probably gotten calls. I've gotten calls years later. And it's like, thank you. Right. I didn't get it six years ago. Yeah.

As a junior in college, but man, I've been here for the last five years, four years, and it totally makes sense now. Absolutely. Well, so I want to ask you a couple of questions about your book, The Intentional Edge, right? So we got to hear 10 reps to mental toughness. Tell us what the intentional edge is. Yeah. So I'm a performance coach. And what we coach all the time is reps aren't going to get you better.

Let's not confuse. Let's not think, hey, just because you go in a weight room, just because you're sweating, just because you're training. That doesn't mean you're getting better. How you get better is through intentional reps. So we got to understand that right away. Let's not confuse autopilot and just showing up as us getting better. We get better through intentional reps. So my philosophy as a performance coach is intentional training to build protection and improve performance that transfers to the field.

Okay. So I've always been about this intentional training. that's how you get better. Then when the more I learn about the mind, the more I taught this stuff, it comes down to intentional reps. Because every single day is performers, as leaders,

we're putting in reps. And it's based on how you grow, how much better you get is, are those reps intentional? And the more intentional we can be with our daily reps, the better we're going to get. So to me,

your edge, my edge your edge everybody's edge here is how intentional we can be every day with those reps and the more it's going to be the better we're going to get yeah i love that and you're right like i think about even in the weight room if you're just going through the motions uh and even if you're just going through the motions i think as a coach right or whatever your role might be like you're not going to make the impact as much as you can you know one of my favorite ideas from the the book is like You talk about when pressure hits, you don't rise to the occasion. You fall to your standards.

So like unpack that for us and tell us more about what that means to you. Yeah. So in college football, in coaching, in life, there's going to be a lot of adversity. Pressure, adversity, it's coming. So really, we want to train our minds. We want to train our bodies to when that adversity comes, we can handle it. Okay? Yeah.

Yeah. So it's truly, it's going to go back to the daily intentional reps. And I mean this. I see this time and time again. Is this what we talk about too. Rule number one of high performer, life is hard. It's supposed to be hard. And I think sometimes the people that don't handle adversity well is they think it's

supposed to be easy. And then when the hard things come, the pressure, the adversity comes. they don't have the mindset, the training to respond the right way. Yeah. So what we talk about a lot is adversity's coming. You're either in it, you're getting out of it, or you're coming into it, or you're going right. So what we want to do is who you are is how you respond when things don't go your way. It's easy to be great when it's sunny and 70.

No, no. But really, life isn't always sunny and 70. and lives in the face. And we want to train, we want to do hard things, we want to be more intentional with our AM routine, we want to be more intentional with how we show up. We want to be more intentional with what we're putting in our mind, what we're saying to ourselves.

And the better we can do that, our training, like we're going to be a higher trained human being. And the higher trained human being we are, that response to adversity is going to be stronger than somebody who hasn't put in the reps, who hasn't been intentional and hasn't calloused their mind and their body. That's true. And I think about the game of football, you know. I mean, it's like any, any sport, but man, there's so many things that adversity during a game, maybe you're losing, or a star player gets hurt,

or a ref didn't, you know, call, you know, whatever you agreed with, or you're not getting as much playing time as you'd like. You know, there's just so many examples of adversity, I think, in the game. game. There's so many examples of adversity in our own life. What do you think kind of separates those people who grow from it versus those who get stuck in feeling sorry for themselves? Yeah. And I think it goes back to what I said earlier too is I think the ones that get stuck and feel sorry for themselves have this mindset of it's supposed to be easy. Yeah, got it. Where I really believe, though, the ones that handle adversity, they understand it's not supposed to be easy. I'm here. I want to do something special. Okay. And if I'm going to do that, if I truly want to

become that best version of me to push the limits of what my mind and body can do, I need to understand adversity's requirement for that. You can't get away from it. So I think the mindset is important. And then also, I think doing hard things is really important. And I think the more consistent you are with a routine, the more you do what you say you're going to do, the more you do hard things, when the hard things come, they don't shake you, they don't break you, like maybe some others who haven't put in those reps, who haven't done those hard things. Yeah, absolutely. But you're right. There's even a research study. I think her last name is Otengin, that said when people are losing weight, if they have this mindset, that it's going to be hard.

they're actually more likely to lose weight than those who who just believe it's going to be easy, right? So there's research to show what you're talking about. And I think like we did adversity hits, like how I would answer this question, what separates people from those who grow from it versus who get stuck. I love this quote by Byron Katie. And she said, what if everything happens for you, not to you? And that's super hard in the moment when we're going through something really hard. And I'm just thinking about something that's going on with my son right now who loves playing football and he just got this injury. And I've been like a nervous wreck this week, you know, because I'm like probably more, more than more than he is. But it's like I've been even trying to

see like, okay, this is going to make him stronger or this is going to help prevent him from certain things in the future, right? And I've having to work work on that. But I think about my, even in my experiences at college, which I shared with you at the beginning, like, I actually now see that is happening for me because, like, I am, you know, I'm so passionate about mental performance because I don't want to have people feel stuck the way I felt, you know, and I feel that when I was in college, it was very much like a victim mentality. Like, why is this happening to me? Instead of, like, you know, what am I just to learn from this? Or how can I grow from this? Yeah, I love what you said to the adversity is,

it's so hard when you're in it. It's uncomfortable. It sucks. But if you can take a step back and take a moment and truly ask yourself, what is this teaching me? Right. And then have the faith and confidence and belief in yourself. And then move forward, I truly believe this, that that adversity could take you to a place that if you didn't have the adversity, you couldn't get there.

So I think adversity, like, it is. is great for growth with the right mindset and response. Yeah, awesome. Hi, Dr. Cinder Campoff here. Myself and my team just conducted this national research study on confidence that you have to check out. The report which you can download at Confidencestudy.com shows a research-backed ways you can grow your confidence. What leaders do to both kill and grow confidence and how confidence is not just a personal issue, but an organizational issue. I'm telling you, you've got to check this out. It's a game changer. You can find our full report at confidence study.com.

What is your favorite part of the book or the part of the book that resonates most with people? Well, there's a, I have a lot of favorite parts. But what I will tell you, one of my, you know, I love teaching all these reps and I think they're all impactful. But I really love rep three focus because it's so relevant. right now. And what focus is about is what you focus on grows. And we all have a challenge right now, and that's our smartphone. I know. What's going on is that the lead researcher in focus and intention science talks about he studied this his whole life. And he talks about if he's addicted to the smartphone and he spent his whole professional life studying this stuff, he's like most of us

or all of us are pretty much addicted to our smartphone. So I think when I coach this stuff, I think we just got to have some awareness. We just got to say, hey, your smartphone, we're probably addicted to it. Then once we can have awareness of that, we can start training and to start putting some boundaries up on our phone. Because what's happening now, as I've coached this,

the last three years is three years ago, I would teach it to our freshman class. And the freshman class would come in, and I'd teach it to the staff, and then we'd go small groups, and then we go through these reps. Well, that rep three focus, what we found was, hey, three years ago, a lot of the athletes had six to seven hours of screen time.

Then the next year, it goes up seven to eight some guys at night. And last fall, we got some guys 11 to 12 hours of screen time. Wow. So each year, it's getting worse with the incoming freshman class with their screen. Yeah. So that really like hit me between the eyes like hey we we do not want our phones run in our lives and the more time we spend out of the phone the more they get to know who we are the more they can hook us and then like there's so much study in research right now about what the phone

can do to our brain and how it affects our focus how it affects our mental health so I'm really passionate about teaching this rep and you know it's been really cool to create the awareness with the people I coach us on of what your screen time is, and then being more disciplined and setting these boundaries with your phone. Yeah, that's awesome. I recently read the Gen Zer population spend six and a half hours on their phone on average. And we also found in our confidence study that Gen Zers, which is the people that you coach, right?

Like one and two consistently or frequently feels like they're not enough, right? So there is this correlation. And like I think sometimes my phone runs me, you know, because it's like my text messages, my emails, like, you know, it's all over the place. One of the things I appreciate what you said on page 45 is you said, the more control you have over your focus, the more control you have over your entire life. And in a world where everyone is distracted, the person who can focus becomes unstoppable. So what have you found about, you know, like maybe give us an example or two of somebody who has really disciplined their focus and that what's what has been the impact?

Yeah, I've had I've had countless stories of, okay, first off, if you have six hours of screen time, if you play, if you're in a college football career or you're in college for four years and you got six hours of screen time, that's one full year that you're on your phone. And I think that staff. is an eye opener. And then what we've done is, hey, we're not asking you to be perfect. We're asking, and I'm challenging you for improvement. So, hey, you know what? You got eight hours of screen time? Well, like that's concerning.

We don't want your screen time to even be close to your sleep time. Well, what we do is we just say, okay, let's write down, let's commit to one way you can be more disciplined with how you use your phone. So I've had eyes that have had eight to nine hours of screen time, get the screen time down to two or three. Now, that is a shirley, let it jump. But think about that. If you can even take your screen time from eight hours to four hours. Right. Think out what that can do for your mindset, for your mental health, for your physical health, for how you connect with others.

Like, there are just so many good things that go from limiting screen time and just being more disciplined about that. And I truly believe it, if you can control what you focus on, you're going to have more control over your life. But if you can't control and you're just, you always grab the phone, you cannot be bored, you cannot have time alone, you always have to be digitally stimulated by something, you aren't really control of what's going on in your life. Everybody else is and most everybody else is people on social media and all those other things. So just what I've seen for improvements is, you know, I'm not going to say, oh, we did focus. So this guy caught 20 passes one year. And then he limited his screen time to only two hours a day. And now he caught 80 passes in his all conference.

Right. Like, no, I'm not talking about those improvements. Whatever I'm talking about is like, hey, these guys had eight hours. They got it down to four hours. This guy had it at six. He got it down to four. 80 improvement is a win. Yeah.

Like you know, even a 10% improvement, little by little. And then little by little, that little is going to become a lot. And it's just about it's being okay with small improvements and they're not wholesale changes. But then over time, can you do it just a little bit better? So I think I've seen more clarity. I've seen, I've had so many compliments just from guys about, man, I had no idea. They didn't have the awareness. They didn't have the awareness there.

And just the awareness. alone is a win. Yeah. And I think about most of what is on your phone isn't helping you reach your goals, you know, is generally not, right? And so when you think about reducing that time, it's like there's more time that you can pursue what really matters most to you. So I want to take a step back and just tell us a bit more about your 10 rep framework that you talk about in intentional edge. And what would be a few other reps that anyone could start practicing? thing right now. Okay. So it's 10 reps because I'm a performance coach and we got to put a reps in every single day. I want to be more intentional with those reps. And then these 10 reps, they're all

skills. And these are skills. It's not, oh, you have this or you don't have it. These are skills that you can work on and train and improve. So rep one will just start with mindset. And you know, it all starts with the mind. And I love how you talk about. automatic negative thoughts that's a big part of the book from Dr. Daniel Amen. And another thing that has really affected our players in a positive way is a lot of them didn't know about ants. A lot of people don't. Yeah. Once you know the science and neuroscience of the mind. Yeah. And just having that awareness can really help you out because, hey, we have 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts a day. 80% of those are negative. Roughly 80% are the same

thoughts we thought the day before. And then Dr. Caroline Lee's research about how a lot of negative thoughts get stored in our cells and in our mind, well, those negative thoughts have led to a lot of sickness and disease. So when you hear that, it's like, man, our brain is not wired to make us a high performer. Our brain is wired to keep us safe and comfortable and keep us alive. It's our responsibility to take. make us to be a higher performer, to do those things. So I think just, you know, when you hear all that stuff, you need to learn how to talk to

yourself with power phrases, I am statements, mantras. I think that's really important. I think what you consume on a day-to-day basis with your mind to and what you read. Sandra, I used to think reading, if you don't apply what you read, it's a waste. And now I don't worry about the mind. It's not a waste. because if we know about, because we're getting new thoughts in, we're learning from different people, from experts, we're getting good wisdom.

So there is power in just reading because you're getting new thoughts in there. And I think you're also rewiring your mind. So I think that's really important. And then, you know, rep two is motivation. Yeah. And people want to give motivation a bad rap. And I think people who talk about that, they might not totally understand what motivation means. And how we teach motivation is, number one, it's your job to motivate you. I'm going to bring the juice.

I'm going to bring some inspiration. I'm going to help you level up as much as I can. I'm going to uphold a high standard. But you're the only one with you 24-7. And motivation is a daily decision. So we do the MVP standard with our guys. And the MVP standard is their mission and their why. That's the hand part. Right. And when you, when you, get clear on your why, your purpose, what is your mission? Yep. You connect to that and you look at that. You just don't say it once and this, oh, this is my why.

And then you never connect to it or you never live in alignment with that. Oh, sure. But when you connect with what drives you, when you connect with values. So we talk about our values a lot and we have guys defined what their values are and what it looks like every day. We have them talk about process goals. That's the MVP standard. We haven't talked about definition of.

success. So to me, motivation is a daily decision and it's you connecting with what drives you. It's not rah-rah positivity. It's not a one speech. It's connecting deep within your heart to what drives you and then acting in alignment more and more consistently with those things. Excellent. Number three, we talked about already, which is focus. Yeah. Four, attack the day. five habits, six gratitude and well-being, seven ownership, eight awareness, which it all starts with like paying attention to what you're doing where your focus is. Nine, toughness and discipline and ten are confidence. So those are the 10 rep framework.

Which other one of these do you feel like really hits home with people and really makes a big difference in terms of, you know, implementing it in their daily reps? Yeah. So I think this is a fantastic one too, is attack today. And today is the most important day of your life. Do you believe that? Do you believe it? Because I had a one-on-one with a guy this morning going over at 4, attack today.

Today is the most important day your life. And I talked to him about imagine the version of you who truly believe that. Who woke up every day and he attacked today like today is the most important day of his life. How you showed up, how you ate, how you trained, how you connect with others, how you went to class. like all these things you truly believed and executed like this was the most important day of life imagine that version of you who did that for one year straight not but consistent yeah and then imagine the other version who today is just another day you just wake up on autopilot however you felt is how you go through the day you're going to have some ups you're going to have some downs

and then however you felt that was your day for the most part imagine that version of you so I think And this is something we can do is we can truly wake up every day, reset and talk to ourselves like today's most important day of our life. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, we can go attack that day, attack each moment. Same thing with training. Today's training session was the most important training session of their life because it's the only one they can get better.

They can't get better yesterday. We can't get better tomorrow. The only time we can get better is right here right now. So do you have that urgency about today? Do you have that urgency about that? moment. So we're just trying to create more urgency with today, with how they wake up, with how they start their day, and then with how they attack the moments they go through. Then we went through a drill. And I think this is money too. So this is really good. Is we talk about attack today. We want to

have our best day today. Well, let's look back at your best days. When you were out fire, you had your best days. What were you doing? So I had him write down the things that he was doing. Okay. So then I we boil it down to what are the top three things you do on your best days. Okay. And this is a common one among everyone, eight to nine hours of sleep. I have my fast days when I'm well rested. That is almost every person I've coached as came to that conclusion. And then some of them it's reading their Bible right away or doing something in the morning with intention. Some of them it's going three for three with getting their protein and body weight. Some of them it's calling their mom, calling their dad, connecting with a family member, you know, doing whatever it is.

It's all unique for all of us. But we came up with those top three things. And he would write those things down. And then we talked about, hey, your worst days, some of your worst days you've had. what's the one thing that got in your way or helped create those worst days? What's one of the top things do you think a lot of guys say? Maybe like, I don't know, eating, drinking poorly. I think that, I think listening to the automatic negative thoughts and just like letting

those permeate throughout the day. Yeah, those are a couple things I can think of. Yeah, for sure, like skipping meals, eating a bunch of crabs. and then also too much screen time. Oh, too, okay, there you go. On my phone, racked out eight hours I do is on my phone. Well, that is getting in the way of you creating those best days. And what we want to try to do is you had those best days.

Those best days, we want those to be your baseline. You've done them before. If you get more clarity around, we create your best days, and then you make contracts with yourself, you write it down. Like I love that Josh Liffrat quote, right? Talking about, you are, 48% more likely to go live in alignment and do that thing if you write it down than if you just think it in your head.

Yeah, it's awesome. Allow the drill work, we have them write it out. And you're making a contract with yourself and you're down playing grab ass with your thoughts and you're getting very clear and you're crystallizing your thinking there. Yeah, that's awesome. I think to myself, I love that idea of like today is going to be the most important day in my life, right? I could see like if I'm really thinking that I'm going to be waking up, getting things done,

you know, doing the things I love to do on that day. Like I'm not going to be going through the motions. I'm not going to be sleeping in, right? Because when I think about what I do believe it is the best day in my life, right? I'm excited. I'm jazzed. I'm like pumped or whatever is going to happen. Yeah.

And what's exciting about this stuff too. And you feel this I can tell is the more you train this, We're not perfect at these. I got so much work to do. Like these reps have absolutely changed my life. But I got a lot of work to do. I'm not perfect. I'm not even close to these reps.

And that's what's exciting about this. There's just so much more room for improvement. But when you're doing this work, this mental performance work, it's some of the most important work you can ever do. Absolutely. The confidence you get, the energy, the momentum you get, where truly every day I'm putting my feet on the floor, I'm attacking today, and I believe, like, today is the most important day of my life.

And that's awesome. Yeah, it's a fun place to get to. Well, Jeff, tell us where we can get your book, The Intentional Edge, 10 reps to mental toughness. Tell us where we can get this, where we can find and follow along with your work. And just tell us how we can really learn more of what you're doing. Yeah, well, I'm at coach jeffjones.com. And then my Instagram is coach underscore Jeff Jones.

and, you know, I just, I have a passion for teaching this stuff. I'm very grateful for you. Sandra, you have helped me level up in many ways. And you're just, you know, you're an inspiration to me. And I just, I have this passion for teaching it. And there's a true love for this stuff. Well, awesome. Thank you, Jeff.

And that's why I keep doing the podcast and all the things, and the mentally strong coach certification and the things that we have going on at Mentally Strong. I love today when we talked about, you know, just these reps that your muscle is, your brain is the most important muscle in your body, right? So you've got to train it through these intentional reps that you talked about. I thank you for the idea and just this knowledge about like that in a four-year time period, if you're spending eight to nine hours on your phone, that's like a whole year in college.

Like that's really like brain numbingly shocking. I loved at the end when you talked about the attacking your day and this today is the most, important day in your life and making a contract with yourself like thinking about what your best day looks like what your worst day looks like and then making a contract with yourself that you're going to do those three things every day to create the best you that you can be so uh coach jones let's say you know imagine someone who's listening today is struggling with self-doubt or adversity or feeling stuck what's the one message you'd want them to remember when they turn this episode off yeah just remember it's all a process.

And it's part, you know, some of that stuff, it's what the brain does automatically. And we all need to be more intentional with getting our reps in. And however that looks from your AM routine, from how you go about your day, your PM routine, from how you connect, like everything you do, you know, you're putting in reps. And if you're more mindful of the reps you're putting in,

I really think that can help you, kind of get out of feeling stuck instead of, you know, just just staying there. Yeah, incredible. It requires action. It requires action. I love the simplicity of the 10 reps. So coach jeffjones.com, go check him out there and order his book, The Intentional Edge. So thank you, Jeff, for joining us on the high performance mindset podcast.

I appreciate you and keep crushing it. All right. Thank you, Sandra. 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 enjoy my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can add over to Dr. Cyndra.com. See you next week.