Mark Bell's Power Project - How to Take Control of Your Mind to IMPROVE Your Performance - Nick Davenport || MBPP Ep. 935
Episode Date: May 23, 2023In this Podcast Episode, Nick Davenport aka Mr. Mental Muscle, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about the mental side of improving your performance from self talk to reframing and exp...loring different mental coaching techniques. Join the Mental Coaching Network Mind.Body.1. Connect https://mb1connect.mn.co/plans/299100?bundle_token=3cba17a93687838df68c0bfa22eaae16&utm_source=manual  Mr. Mental Muscle Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@mrmentalmuscle  Mr. Mental Muscle Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mrmentalmuscle/  New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw  Special perks for our listeners below! ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!  ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!  ➢ https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off Mind Bullet!  ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box  ➢ Better Fed Beef: https://betterfedbeef.com/pages/powerproject  ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject Free shipping and free bedside tin!  ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!  ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM  ➢ https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes!  ➢ https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori!  ➢ https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep!  ➢ https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off!  ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150  Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell  Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en  Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz  #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject
Transcript
Discussion (0)
One of the things that I thought was pretty cool was a challenge versus a threat.
A challenge or a threat meaning a challenge is I get to do it.
How do you help athletes reframe that?
Some things are out of our control.
Who wants to think that you don't have control, but let's be realistic.
I can only control so much of that.
Motivation, I always say, is the gas that makes the car go,
but discipline keeps you in the car.
First thing, I don't care if they're pro athletes to a little girl.
The first thing they do when they mess up oh man and that right there tells me huh you get easily flustered when
things don't go your way some doubt creeps into an athlete's thoughts how do you coach them to
kind of try to block that how do you get rid of or stop it that's the first mistake because when
we suppress thoughts we tend to think of them more I saw one of the videos that you did.
I watched a bunch of them over the last couple days.
And one of the things that I thought was pretty cool was a challenge versus a threat.
Oh.
I thought that was pretty cool.
Can you elaborate on that?
So, yeah, I like using that one because we're going to face stressors in life.
That's inevitable, right?
So I break it down as either see it as a challenge or a threat, meaning a challenge is I get to do it. So think like in track, we're just saying I'm a track guy.
So see a hurdle, right? The hurdle is coming like, okay, let me go over it and get ready for the next
one. That's a challenge because you know there's a hindrance or know there's something blocking you,
but then you know you're going to overcome it. Now a threat is the opposite. You see the challenge
or the obstacle, whatever it is, but now you're retreating and you fall back.
So if you see it as a threat, you already put yourself in a position not to win or not to succeed because you're saying, I'm going to succumb to defeat before even trying.
While a challenge is I may fail, I may get defeated, but I at least put myself in position to overcome.
So it's all about being in the right position, not necessarily I got to win because you can't control outcomes, but you can at least put yourself in position.
Those hurdles are pretty high.
What about if someone doesn't have the skill set quite?
Maybe they got to look at it from a slightly different angle.
Most definitely.
And I talk about this when it comes to confidence a lot because you got to be real with yourself.
Like we're just talking about lifting and stuff.
You can't think your way and mindset your way to a 500-pound squat.
You got to know, what is my assessment right now is it 225 250 so if in that regard with mental skills if i know i'm not as mentally strong or i falter when things get hard then let me be honest
with myself because there's nothing worse than low confidence it's only thing is false confidence
because now you're gonna put yourself in position not to do it. So that's how I look at it. Yeah, whack your shin on the hurdle and cause yourself to be like,
I knew I couldn't do that.
And now you feel worse and now you program yourself for defeat
and now you're like, I'm not going to try again.
It was really cool the stuff you were doing out in the gym this morning,
hitting up some bench pressing and then in between you were standing in front of,
I think kind of like an iPad, right?
And then it was giving you like colors and then you were going based off of the colors.
What have you found in training yourself and training other people have been the benefit of this kind of thing?
Well, first and foremost, you got to stay engrossed in the task the whole time.
So not saying you don't do that in fitness, but you can kind of like slightly wonder when doing a rep or something and come back and it
won't be too detrimental depending on the weight of course but with these tasks the moment you're
not thinking about it it's gone and you missed it or you did it wrong so that task had the color
it's called the Stroop effect and his name after a guy named John Ridley Stroop in 1935 he did a
study to see if a color spelt in an incorrect ink, so say red written in blue, blue written in green, so forth,
if they are able to overcome inhibitions.
So typically we just want to go and read the word.
If they can stop themselves, they'll have a faster score, meaning they can read a list of words in X amount of time.
But those who had trouble with impulse control and inhibition being able to not just react on the first go,
they did worse and messed up or did it slower.
So bringing that to a physical standpoint instead of just saying it,
and that's kind of my premise with some of my tasks is now I'm going to make a goal-directed,
I won't say movement, I'll say behavior for a better word,
a goal-directed behavior to be the outcome.
So now it's not just being a thought.
I have to put that process into real time.
Okay, real quick because the Stroop thing is going to be really interesting to go into,
but back to what you guys were talking to on the challenge versus threat thing.
I forgot the name of the Stanford psychologist or whatever.
But it's this lady that I was talking about.
Carol Dweck?
It's not Carol Dweck.
It's another white woman, though.
It's another white woman.
Although Carol Dweck, what was that book?
Grove Mindset.
Yeah, her book, that book? Uh, yeah, that, well, yeah, her book, um, that book was amazing,
but there's this other lady that was talking about how there are individuals who perceive
stress as being something that can help them grow something that could be positive.
Then there are individuals who perceive stress as a threat or something that moves them back. Right?
So how do you help athletes reframe that? Because that's a really big deal. If you're going to be
an athlete, you're going to be training is going to be stressful. There's going to be aspects of life
that stress training. There's a lot of stressors that are coming your way. And if you can change
the way you look at those things, that'll massively help you become a better athlete.
But a lot of athletes and people, a lot of stressors fuck with them, right? So how do you
help athletes reframe? So the first thing I would look at is what are they stressed about?
Like a lot of people don't ask that question because we talked about it a little bit when we're lifting.
It's like, what am I exactly mad over or frustrated over?
Because sometimes it's an underlying issue.
Like if you say you went to work, had a bad day and you come home to your wife and start yelling at her that that transference, you're like, oh, I'm projecting this on you.
But it's really because my boss gave me a hard time.
So sometimes we don't even know what we're stressed about. So the first
idea going back to the athlete is, am I stressed because I have a high demand of workload
physically? Do I have like with my pro athletes, media stuff to deal with? Because that's a whole
other can of worms. And in my student athletes, it's like, okay, I have school. I have to keep
a GPA. I got to be a student. I have to have a social life. So am I stressed for what reason?
After you identify that, then look in, can it be changed? I think that's something people overlook too. Some things are out of our control. I know it sounds bad to say that because who wants to think that you don't have control, but let's be realistic. There's 8 billion people on this earth. There's all types of natural occurrences. There's financial occurrences, emotional responses. I can only control so much of that. Let's be real. I think there's something about us in modern times, right? That we think we have more control than we really do. So identify what you do have control over. And in psychology, they call it control the
controllables, locus of control. So it's nothing I invented, but basically there's something called
the circle of control. It's a technique that many mental coaches use. And just imagine a circle.
There's inside, there's a small circle and that small circle, it's what you directly affect. So I can change what time I get up for work. I can change how hard I work, how I feel about a situation. Now, outside of that circle is what can I influence?
girl to like me on a date, whatever it is, but you can't fully control it because they have a factor. And then outside of the big circle, that's the last part is what I can't control.
I can't control the weather. I can't control the coaches, the referees, the other person's choices
and emotions towards me. So once you identify what those are, then you can take the steps,
then fix it. So those first two factors is what's stressing you and what you can control. And then
that point, that's when I say, okay, let's work on the ways to cope and deal with those stressors.
And maybe you can figure out a way to control them,
maybe just a little bit, such as the referee.
Maybe you can address him with respect when you see him at the warmup.
Maybe you can acknowledge that he's another person.
Hey, how's it going today, sir?
They might be on to you that you're looking for them to call the extra fouls and things like that. But
it's worth a shot, you know, to be kind to people and to see how much influence you can have.
Because someone like Michael Jordan, you know, he would say I can control the, you know, he can
control every variables, what he thought in his head. And if he thought that in his head, then
maybe some of that was true.
Well, that's a, I guess, you know how to say fake it till you make it. I believe in that to an extent. So like you said, he couldn't control everything, but he at least set the parameters
in his mind that he could. And there was a video I watched on YouTube a few months ago. I forget
the name of it, but they use this like mindset of like this toxic winning, which I wasn't mad at.
See, I'm kind of different from a lot of the mental coaching people in a sense of I'm not going to give you overly positive stuff yes some of my stuff will
give that positive message but sometimes it won't sometimes you got to say I'm going to win at all
costs within means like obviously you don't want to cheat live you can get into the you familiar
with the dark triad you ever heard that term I have okay so you can maybe get into that but you
don't want to be that person a dark tri triad, that's a person who will cheat, steal, lie.
Machiavellianism.
Machiavellianism.
Narcissism and?
Psychopathy.
Psychopathy.
My man.
That's good stuff.
We talk about psychopaths and narcissists.
I think that word gets overused.
It's like, oh, they think they're good.
They're a narcissist.
No, I'm a competitor.
Why shouldn't I think I'm good?
And that's why people, like sometimes on IG, I get feedback.
Good, of course, but I get something like, well well you can't just make people think the better you got
to be humble i'm like to an extent like i definitely know i'm not the best at everything
so but let me know what i'm good at i'm not going to negate that like why would i do that and we're
both all three of us are athletes so i think that mindset more people should adopt like you should
have a certain they called i think it was like toxic winning i don't want to quote it but it was like something like that of the point that you will do
anything within means to get it done and i'm that's how i carry my business out now because
there's people in similar fields that i'm cool with them but i'm gonna beat you in a healthy way
of like i'm gonna provide quality so people say i want nick's stuff what about creating a little
bit of like a persona oh you know some of the guys can
do that right some of the guys are like i'm this way outside the ring i'm this way normally i'm
normally calm i'm docile but you know tyson was kind of a little bit of both in and out of the
ring right but he said that he had so many insecurities he would cry before fights he was
always terrified but as soon as he stepped inside the ring as soon as he got inside those ropes he's like i'm the killer then people can
say what they want about mike but i like that mindset because i use an analogy with my athletes
even the pro ones all the way down to little kids i have a nine-year-old gymnast that i was telling
you i was in a hotel working with and i used it with her and i call it superhero athlete and i'll
ask you who's your favorite heroes i I see Goku in the back, but...
I pick Goku.
Goku?
It would be between Goku and Black Panther.
Okay, let's go with Black Panther.
What about you?
Superman, I don't know.
So those are perfect.
The reason I like it better than Goku
because Goku didn't really have too much of an alter ego,
but Black Panther can work and so can Superman.
So I'll go with Superman
because his is a little easier analogized.
So same thing with an athlete, right?
You have this persona in the field, in the ring, the court, whatever it is.
And those traits that come with that, there's a certain athletic identity.
That's what we call it in sports psychology, that you have to be that high competitiveness.
You have to do what it takes.
Isolate sometimes from your social circle because you have to win or be the best.
So you have to wear that mask, that Superman.
But who's Superman when he's not uh saving the world he's clark kent and clark kent's personality
people think he's this docile clumsy kind of nerd even though he's like six three 220 pounds
but you put on some glasses but the glasses throw it all out the window right forget forget them
knowing his real identity they still think this man's a loser because
he's a news reporter with
glasses. But anyway. Still walking around with like a
60-inch chest. You feel me?
Pics hanging out the front. And he's dressed
well. All the characters that play
Superman are jacks or got
jacked for the role. Like Chris Reeve wasn't
super jacked, but he was like, I think, 6'5".
And then Henry Cavill was like 6'1",
220 solid. So that guy, but get to my point they have to wear different masks or different identities and the
same thing in sport i have to be a killer in the ring i have to be the killer on the court wherever
it is but i can't carry that because that's one emotionally draining because how long can you have
that kill kill kill go go go mindset before it eats away from you like
see it in the movies like when there's a literal killer and eventually it starts getting to them
yeah and we can even go on a tangent on that but get to the point is you have to turn that off at
some point and on the other side as the clark kent the their main identity real identity that's the
athlete who knows when the i lost but it doesn't mean I'm less of a person because I've seen people who
tie even when I was an athlete back then to even my current clients and they'll tie it into their
personality and say, well, if I lost here, I'm a loser there outside in the real world. And that's
the problem. So going back to Mike Tyson, I think it's not perfect, but that's a good way to look
at it. Like you have to shift those lanes. You have to. Yeah. And Ali obviously did it, but Ali
even later on said like, he didn't believe half the stuff he said he just was just like he he wanted to put it out
there to build himself up that way i think he put that energy out there and now he was accountable
for knocking the guy out in the third round and then there would be a good opening and he knocked
the guy out in the third round and i guess that's the other side of when we talk about false
confidence i guess for the people watching take this in consideration too they all could back it up that's the thing we got a skill set
conor mcgregor comes to mind as well exactly so you can't just say it too because i've seen young
athletes who try to carry those same conor mcgregor or florida male whatever it is personas
but let's be real most kids until maybe junior year high school for the most part skill wise
aren't the best
maybe raw talent but i know most people i played with i'm from south florida where
when uh we played football every game was like a state championship even the worst teams
were like four or five star recruits were on those teams so you couldn't take any days off so we knew
we had to be realistic you can't be that guy saying yeah i'm gonna score this many touchdowns
or i'm gonna win all the games i'm going d1 you're like basically bro you had to be realistic. You can't be that guy saying, yeah, I'm going to score this many touchdowns or I'm going to win all the games.
I'm going D1.
Basically.
You have to be real.
Sometimes you're D3.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
But guess what?
Going back to my point,
identifying where you're at.
Now I can go forward and say,
I'm going to be the best at this level.
And if it gets an opportunity to work up,
then work up.
You never hear anybody say I'm D3.
Of course.
I'm guilty.
I said, I'm going to UM.'m guilty i said i'm going to um
i was like i'm going to you i went to camps there i told you i ran a 4 4 40 i was the same size
height wise i was like 190 but i was ideal but my skill set didn't fully get there and guess what i
didn't sign with anyone my senior year for football and i ended up luckily getting a partial track
scholarship at a small uh d1 double a school but then cook me university is a historically black black college in Daytona Beach where it helped me get on this path to the psychology where I
changed my major like four times. I was very indecisive, but I took a class of psychology
and I'm like, I think I like this. And that was back in 2008. So there was a guy, Dr. Ian Payton.
I haven't talked to him probably since I graduated, but he doesn't know his class shifted me to psych
training.
Now look what I'm doing.
So thank him out there wherever he's at.
What are the athletes that seem to be stuck in a mindset of like loss?
Because you mentioned, you know, for example, Ali, he said a lot of things, but he was able to back it up.
Even Conor McGregor, before he became the champ, he was talking like he was the champ, right?
McGregor, before he became the champ, he was talking like he was the champ, right? And you got to imagine like, if that's your goal, you need to have that in your mind, but you can't talk like
that if it's your first fight. But some individuals, maybe they're sparring and they're getting beat
right now, or they're just not where they feel that they want to be, but you still need to have
a level of confidence and belief, right? How can you build that from ground zero?
So I guess it goes back to my other point because that first-time fighter, he has literally no experience.
Well, at least in the official fight, he might have sparred or practiced like you said.
But he has to know that when I do this, there has to be a level of expectation.
So going to your point, he has to expect something, right?
Yeah.
So I say that should be a high level of competitiveness of being a winner.
You don't want to walk in there and say, man, I'm going to lose because it's my first time.
Nah.
But you should have an expectation.
So going to the point is have a realistic expectation.
If you know that you – because you know where you stand.
Let's be real.
No matter how good or bad an athlete and how much they lie to themselves, deep down, they know where they stand.
Yeah.
So either the coach or the athlete himself, depending on the age, it's easier to do it.
But if you're younger, it's harder, obviously.
But you have to say, okay, this guy I'm fighting is, let's say, 5-0 and I'm 1-0.
My first fight was against a no-name person.
Can you realistically say that I will go through this effortlessly?
You're not going to say I'm going to lose, but you're going to be like,
okay, I know how he fights.
I've seen his competition, how they fight, and how those fights win.
Because I think there's this notion of, oh, I'm my only competition.
Yes and no.
Obviously, you've got to beat yourself first.
But like I said earlier, I want to be the best in my field
when it comes to mental coaching and stuff.
So I'm always looking at similar people, whether they're in the same lane or not.
Like I look at Jordan Peterson stuff all the time.
I look at Huberman stuff all the time.
Not to say I'm going to beat them, but I'm like, if they're doing this, I need to know
where I rank.
If their video is getting this kind of engagement, what am I not saying to get that engagement?
So going back to your point, if I'm an athlete getting ready for a fight or whatever sport
event, where do I engage?
Where's my uh interaction at am
i doing the things they're doing am i getting the outcomes they're getting now for one fight you can
realistically say probably not but you know you can at least keep up with them and then build from
there what i like from what you what you mentioned right there is because like we were actually just
we just did a podcast on uh guys and body image and how like a lot of people are paying attention
to social media because they're comparing themselves
to people all the time.
It's like fucking with how
they look at themselves mentally.
But when it comes to being a competitor,
you have to compare,
and being an athlete,
you have to compare yourself
to not just your other competition,
but maybe on guys on your team.
If you're trying to be the best on your team,
you have to see,
oh fuck,
he has better dribbling skills than me.
He has better athleticism than me.
How the fuck can I catch up?
You can't be living in your own world where it's me versus me and never comparing yourself to other people.
You have to be okay to do that.
You have to be okay to see where you stand and see how you can improve.
Exactly.
And the thing going off of that is because when they don't see that, they put them in a box like a bubble almost.
You know how people who don't get to see the world or they only live around their only circle of friends and they get into a real situation but what happens
they don't grow yeah they don't grow they fall apart so that's the same thing with that so you
have to be like okay like i said he's a better dribbler how do i get to his level because even
if your teammate is still a person that you need to either compare yourself to be better
then so you can help the team or at least equal to because at the end of the day those skills are needed i think sometimes a player on a similar team with somebody
might be frustrated after practice that somebody else got the praise you know hey and seem is
rebounding really well today he did abc and then someone else thinks that means that the coach took
a shot at them or the coach said something negative about them but they didn't they said something
positive about him and rather than the next player thinking about how they're
going to beat him which isn't that bad of an idea too because it's good to have competitiveness even
within your own team is how can i contribute you know how what okay he has those skills i got other
skills i can pass i can do this i can play defense i'm going to do that as hard as possible for the
next couple days and see if i can get because I would love the coach to say that about me.
But a lot of times I think people are like, well, how come the coach didn't say anything about me? But then they don't do anything about it.
So that comes into here to term like intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, because motivation is a term that gets thrown out a lot and there's some people say oh it's not about most motivations about discipline or it's i say it's all of the
above because motivation i always say is the gas that makes the car go but discipline keeps you in
the car because let's imagine if i got all the gas to go from i'm from florida so here to california
yeah but if i don't stay in the car i get out in texas or wherever stop guess I'm not getting to my final destination. So those people who don't have that wherewithal to stay
with it, they're not going to be able to accomplish it. Now, to the Stroop test that we started
talking about a little bit, you know, some people see that stuff. Actually, you mentioned the story
to us about how the first time, you know, you showed that on to a lot of people on UFC, right?
Some people see it and they think it's a gimmick. Why is that beneficial for athletes?
So the simplest answer, I'll go from the cognitive side and I'll go from the more mindset,
psychological side. So from the cognitive side, it actually works. I know you brought on numerous
brain scientists, so your audience probably have heard this, but it works regions of the brain
that work on inhibition control, goal planning, and error detection, right?
So this is something like a loop almost.
So when you see the Stroop color, so if the color mismatches the word red written in green, green written in blue, et cetera.
So the first thing is the part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, where we make decisions, plan out, rationalize what makes us human, right?
So the first step is planning.
The plan is color, not word. makes us human, right? So the first step is planning. The plan is color,
not word. Simplistic, right? This is why it looks gimmicky because, okay, you're looking at a color,
whatever. But from the neuroscience side of it, you're actually having to plan out what to do.
That's part one. So the second part is error detection. So there's something called the ACC,
which is the anterior cingulate cortex, which is error detection, emotional regulation,
reward response. So you see where I'm going with this.
So now if I detect, okay, it's not red.
It says it, but it's written in blue.
So now I detected that I'm fixing the error, which is it's not this color.
I fixed it.
Or if you don't, you say the wrong thing, and then you recognize, wait,
I said red when it was supposed to be blue.
Either way you look at it, your brain has to recalibrate to some degree.
Yes.
So that's the ACC,
the anterior cingulate cortex.
Now the VTA,
the ventral tegmental area,
this is where we talk about
dopamine response.
So the VTA for short.
So after you did the correct
or incorrect response,
now that dopamine reward system
has to say,
good job,
behavior that I needed
was fulfilled.
Back to square one.
The color you saw,
go back to it again
and repeat. Now if it was wrong, guess what? one. And the color you saw go back to it again and repeat.
Now, if it was wrong, guess what?
It's still the thing with dopamine.
People think it's only for the bad responses.
No, it works for the, the, the, the, the good response, I should say,
but it works for the bad responses to it.
A negative response is to look at like drug addiction.
It's giving a reward or a motivation to do the behavior again.
Cause your body is saying, I need this.
So same thing with the training.
If you do it wrong, you're reinforcing the wrong behavior.
So that's the beauty of those drills.
At face value, it looks like a fun brain game, sure.
But you're teaching from a physical standpoint how your brain needs to,
one, interpret information, two, correct yourself to whatever degree,
and three, reinforce it.
And you saw I did the one outside.
It was like 45 seconds to a minute.
So a minute of that, you're conditioning your brain. Literally, that's why we coined it cognitive conditioning, because like strength
conditioning is the same way. You get under a stimuli, whether it's a 300 pound squat or a 400
pound bench, whatever it is, it forces an adaptation. And the same thing with our brain.
So that's the cognitive side. Now going to the mental or psychological side, if I do mess up in
real time, the first thing, I don't care if they're pro athletes
to a little girl.
I have an eight-year-old daughter
who does some of these drills
and it's almost identical.
The first thing they do when they mess up,
oh man,
and that right there tells me,
huh, you get easily flustered
when things don't go your way.
Not everyone does this,
but that's the beauty of different personalities.
Yeah, like the next thing's coming,
you got to keep going.
Perfect, exactly.
So that's where that part comes in from the mental psychological side because now not only am i reinforcing it cognitively i can change or sustain my my mood because some people
do sustain i have people who literally mess up do it again mess up do it and they keep getting
frustrated to the point where they stop i've had people get paid a lot of money on a certain day
to do certain things walk away from these tests Just think about like the essence of like an athlete breaking down during a game because maybe he made a bad pass or a fucking grappler.
He gets swept.
He just gives up on the match.
Right.
You don't feel good about yourself anymore.
Not as confident.
Yeah.
It's sunk down.
If it sinks down, like I think the other guy can feel that.
Right.
This is amazing.
Yeah.
I think, you know, sports are exactly what you're pointing out.
I mean, this game with the colors, and I know you have, like, lots of variations of that.
That's what sports is.
I think that people don't recognize that.
But every, like, everything is, like, pattern recognition, you know?
So someone in basketball does a head fake.
And, like, why do they do a head fake?
It's like, well, they're faking a shot, and they're trying to get the guy to jump.
And if the guy jumps and they wait until he jumps out of the way,
and then they shoot and they make it.
Maybe they know that the guy is going to go for the –
maybe they did a head fake earlier in the game,
and now they just lay it right up and the guy didn't move at all.
The guy is just like frozen.
In football, there's so many different things.
Just because I played the sport for a long time,
had opportunity to coach it and stuff like that, too.
But on something like a screen pass, if you're an alignment and you're going to block somebody, play after play after play, you keep running the ball and running the ball and running the ball and running the ball.
Every once in a while, you throw it.
But on something like a screen, you actually literally just get out of the guy's way.
And the defensive player has no idea
what to do in high school obviously college pro they get on to you but like you keep hitting into
the guy over and over again every play 20 plays in a row and then all of a sudden you stand up high
and they just mimic what you're doing i don't know why why, but they stand up high too. You move out of the way and they're like,
quarterback!
And they get to finally get towards the quarterback,
which is every young defensive player's goal
is to try to kill the quarterback,
kill the guy with the ball.
And the quarterback's like, bink,
just throws it right over your head to the running back
who's now off and running
because there's four or five defensive players
that are all concentrated on the quarterback.
So sports are like this time and time again.
You see it in baseball with pitching.
Maybe a guy's known to back a guy off the plate.
He backs a guy off the plate once by throwing a fastball kind of inside.
And then maybe the next one, he's like,
maybe he normally has a pattern of throwing a couple balls first before he throws a strike.
He knows that the guy is anticipating that.
And rather than backing the guy off the plate at all, he just lets one rip right down the middle.
And the guy is like completely frozen, swinging it.
Yeah.
Caught looking.
There you go.
Well, have you heard of a term called cognitive flexibility?
It makes sense.
It's pretty straightforward.
So or mental flexibility.
So going to your point, the reason I bring it up is the reason they get frozen
because we have to be able to shift our thinking in real time.
And like you said, the pattern recognition, two curveballs and he usually throws a changeup.
Or a changeup and a fastball, he's probably throwing a curve next.
Or whatever the case may be.
Yeah, why does a changeup work?
It's like a 60-mile-an-hour ball.
It should never work.
But it's just because it's like a slow dud compared to how much heat the guy was throwing the other ones so that's where mental or cognitive flexibility
comes in is to be able to offset what typically will happen like thing like logic if this happens
then that so like if i said if it's raining it's probably wet right but if it's wet it doesn't
necessarily mean it's raining so in the same context you have to be understand that all because he threw two curves or a change up whatever it's like expecting both sides of the
outcome now it seems pretty straightforward but we really don't do it we usually have a straight
linear path to see this because our brain likes to make shortcuts of everything right and it's a
it's a evolutionary adaptation i always say a term called there's no more saber-toothed tigers
because we got newer software to an extent but the
hardware if you took a person and stripped them naked from 2023 no good ideas guys but 2023 put
them in 1702 for the most part i see where you went there okay let's imagine it not it's going to 1980 well maybe just not the united states
got a point okay not us but i see
but you give up okay i got you bro i got you bro
so you're not seeing a difference until we talk right there's even studies and research
you who talk about this how from the last thousand or two thousand years that we we're kind of
getting dumber because we're we're still the same people so getting back to the point of all of this
is like we're not changed that much so these things that we do our brain wants to get to a
point where you automatically get a response because what's easier right okay if i think about
the trajectory of the angle of his pitch and the way he released it and also he usually does two
strike or two curves and two change-ups and then he does this how much time you're going to have
to actually swing not a lot so the brain says let me just go to the simplest example matter of fact
i'll give you a perfect example ready for this i do this in my class when i used to teach i'm at
the local college back home i'm gonna give you four options the question is what is the most dangerous job based on this
likeliness of dying while working so i'm gonna give you four uh selections and you can pick
which one so most dangerous job based on likeliness to die while working a police officer b farmer c policeman d fisherman most dangerous job
i'm just gonna go with the fisherman because he's like oh yeah kind of kind of a little
different but also like watching deadliest catch people get fucked up on there what is
the difference between police officer and policeman oh maybe you said the same thing twice officer i meant fireman sorry fireman
okay that's my fault i thought that was part of the game yeah me too i was like see that was
unintentional that was unintentional but yeah i'm trying to mess you up not playing but fireman
sorry not policeman and both the fireman and police officer. God. I'd say. Damn, I don't know about fireman.
You know what?
I'm going to just go.
Damn.
Fireman.
Okay.
You ready for the answer?
Drum roll.
Fisherman.
Hey.
Wait, you ready for this catcher, though?
Number two would have been what?
What do you think?
Farmer.
Farmer.
Okay.
But why did your brain do that?
Think about this.
I thought of fires, bro.
Exactly.
And that's called availability bias.
Your brain goes to most relevant.
Because what do you see on the news more?
Because he made a good point.
Daily is cash.
That's why he thought that.
Most people think fishermen, they think on a pier with your granddad.
You're just chilling.
You're probably not going to die there.
But in the rough seas where the waves are 40, 50 feet high and the boat could get flipped over capsized that's dangerous so it's the most
likely because drowning or getting injured and then farmer wise number two people think old
mcdonald bailing hay but think about all the machines they use that are high power could
grind you up in a second dangerous exactly now firemen and police aren't too far off, but they're not the top because we think fire,
you will probably get seriously injured or burn badly or even die.
And in police, we think guns.
And guns kill.
But the likeness of a police drawing, my dad was a police for 32 years and he forced him,
knock on wood, didn't have to do anything to that extent.
But some people do. But it's not as relevant because what do we see on the news every day? years and he forced him knock on wood didn't have to do anything like to that extent yeah but some
people do but it's not as relevant because what do we see on the news every day shooting of office
or officer shooting officer officer shooting yeah but guess what that's the minority but it's a big
event to us because you're not checking random newspaper and small nowhere town huh no shootings
today oh no shoot no you see the cnn or fox news and it spreads yeah so our brain tries to make
sense so you thought fireman because it makes sense that's not an illogical choice so bringing
this full circle i know i took it the job occupations but when that athlete or even just
in life when we make bad decisions is because our brain's just trying to make the quickest sense of
it and this messes us up sometimes i'm kind of curious about this. When it comes to like the Stroop test,
and I know that like you have the added stress
of having an athlete doing a drill and moving
so that there's more moving parts,
but is there any benefits like having an app
that you can then do these?
I know you're not stressed
because maybe you're sitting doing it or standing,
but is there a benefit to that?
So I actually do use an app version.
So the one you saw is the one I created
for those drills, but I have an app version that I utilize and it measures their reaction time,
their variance, their consistency, their speed. So I know not just how fast, because most of these
apps, there's a lot of them out there, but the ones I use are more specific to those. Cause we
think about like statistics, we want to know exactly what variable made them better or what
variable made them worse.
I even use HRV, heart rate variability. So I'm looking at a lot of things and this is stuff like,
obviously IG only shows you clips, but this stuff I look back on my end. So when I'm talking to a
client, cause I work with all populations, athletes have a client with dementia, but I use the same
methodology. So if I know how fast they are, that's cool. But if I have two different people
and I see who's better, next thing I'm looking at is how accurate.
Okay, they're both accurate, 100% accuracy, cool.
Now, variance, that's my favorite because variance shows me how consistent.
So you think of like if I do a task together,
and that's actually right there.
So, yeah, so to do tasks together where I see how consistent they are,
if they're more consistent, say 12% of the time they deviate
from their normal score, that's good.
I want to see under 20% for that.
But if they're like 40%, 50%, you don't even have to know stats to get this is what would you want to only be good at half the time?
10% or 90% sounds better than 50%, right?
So that's what variance tells me because I know if they do this said task, when I change the variable, let's say I make it quicker or I add more external things, do they get faster?
Do they get less consistent?
And then I can say, okay, they didn't get less consistent.
That's like adding bands or chains, right?
And I used to be a strength coach way back in the day before.
Well, I was doing it simultaneously.
I was learning my mental coaching and psychology degrees.
But basically, I look at it the same way.
Adding bands and chains or boards or whatever it is changes the angles, changes the resistance at a certain load or a certain height.
It's the same thing with the mental stuff.
You have to change the variables.
What leads to bad decisions like say something like with food?
You know, somebody knows they want to be in better shape.
They try to dedicate themselves to it.
They spend a lot of time exercising.
They do, you know, I don't know.
They do like 80% of it. And then they self-sabotage. What do you think leads to that?
Self-sabotage. That's an interesting one. I think just if we go with self-sabotage in general,
people, I call it beating to the punch. It's easier to say I messed up because of me versus
saying, well, times got hard or someone got in my way. Cause. Because going back to that control, who wants to give away their control?
So it's easy to say, oh, I fell off.
I know I was eating bad and they beat themselves to the punch.
So self-taught.
But when it comes to diets, food is a very interesting thing, right?
Because from a physical standpoint, it actually does something to us from a mental side.
Like there's different hormones, receptors.
It actually works, yeah.
Like leptin, it's like, are we full?
Are we not full?
And if we get into the nutrition side, it's like some foods have us calorically filled but not nutrient wise and
vice versa nutrient filled but not caloric so i know it's cliche but you have to have a balanced
diet because it's going to fulfill both sides because i can eat all the healthy nutrient dense
stuff i want but what happens at the end of the week when i'm in a negative 5 000 deficit and i'm starving i do that one little i'm gonna go to insert famous fast food chain taco whatever i won't plug anybody
accidentally but basically you're gonna binge yeah so now you set yourself up for failure because
i'm just gonna get a burger and then you're like i should probably get a chocolate shake too
and then then you get the fries up a little bit size wise exactly so it's like why deprive
yourself so it's not saying okay eat a little junk every day but it's like okay if you have to
satisfy yourself a little bit with a little more caloric it doesn't have to be junk but
eating a little more because i think when people think diet they think just restriction yes and
that's anything it's not even just uh food but even behaviors you don't have to stop just need
to dial it back depending obviously what it is so that way you have room because we get it's like say the dopamine response again it's
like you set yourself up for here but then you hit here and guess what your brain's like well
this isn't working let's raise or lower that down and it's like okay and then you get lower and guess
what now you're literally programmed to be less than what you should be doing how do you walk an
athlete through you know you kind of start
talking with them back and forth you realize they're not really doing some of the stuff that
you're suggesting maybe they're not really doing some of the stuff that their other coaches are
suggesting um they're frustrated they're like i'm not really going anywhere like they're they're
getting mad like their competition's coming up they're just kind of flustered like how do you
kind of walk them through some of that how do you maybe get them back on track so i'll ask them like what's been going on because it's all i know
it sounds so simplistic but i guess the first step is always what even led us to this point in the
first place because we just go to a solution great i give you something like i said something to do
but you're not even ready to hear that solution yet so if they say something like well i just feel overwhelmed because i have
like especially mma i have three yeah jujitsu sparring maybe wrestling kickball whatever it is
so they might be overwhelmed so if i hear them say well i just feel like i can't keep up with
the workload now i don't control that obviously the the physical or the skill coaches play their
role and some depending on the client i do have some interaction with both some i have zero so i can't change that control the controllables right so i'll let them know like
okay what can be changed can you dial back the load can you change this day and then that could
be the easiest solution is like oh we shifted the days now i can focus now because you're going to
fail if you're already overwhelmed and you're not even going to be able to change it up so how do i
get better if i have to keep doing the thing that's messing me up? And you both can speak to this better than me from the physical side.
They're going to end up overtraining, which is going to affect their central nervous system,
and it's going to affect their mindset.
So it's just a full circle.
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What did you notice from like Dustin, you know, you work with Dustin Poirier on the mental side of things.
So when you started implementing some of this with him, what's the story behind that?
And for someone who's already a professional athlete, professional fighter, how did it benefit him?
So with Dustin, he, like I said, I hate sounding cliche, but he's a very rare, not rare, but his case was so different because I work with athletes across the board, police even, all types of clientele.
So I've seen so many different varieties.
So when I worked with him, the first thing I noticed was he was receptive.
So in personality, there's something called open to experience.
So that's someone who's more likely to be open to different ideas inquisitive about certain things so with him he questioned a lot
not in a negative way but more so i want to understand more so that right there showed me
like i can throw different things at him because some athletes are probably quite the opposite
they're probably like what's this guy gonna tell me that's new to me like i'm already performing
at such a high level exactly especially when i'm not in their field. My background is like as a personal, as an athlete,
was football, track, and baseball.
So fighting, that's a whole different beast.
So from a guy who's never been in a structured fight,
keep that on the low, but basically I can't really speak to that.
It's a different atmosphere.
So obviously they have to trust me, so I get a lot of that.
But I guess I get some acceptance from the ones who aren't like dustin at least because i come recommend it so that at least gives him
the opening but with dustin i think we mentioned this earlier that was my first time meeting him
was uh fox sports was there to film with phil and phil brought me in and literally my first
time meeting him was on that so talk about trust not only was he allowing this guy he's never met
before to work with him,
he had to do or didn't have to, but he chose to do it where the world saw it.
So that said something different right there.
So I knew from that point on I could throw different things.
And as we progressed, I could say, hey, does this work?
How do you feel?
And he is literally the template because he was one of the first major,
major athletes I worked with.
So his standard became my standard for everyone else under.
So you could be an eight-year-old soccer player.
You could be a police.
You could be a soccer mom.
Dustin Poirier.
He was a standard.
They ask me.
They'll say, what is his scores or what is his times
or what does he think on these things?
So it's like, and it's not necessarily to be like
who's better standpoint.
It's more so if I don't think he'll do it,
I'm not doing it
anyone else because with him there's a lot on the line here it's not just the money obviously but
it's like his reputation his physical being so it's like i wouldn't put him in any parameters
or status with my task or anything or even the mindset stuff like that i would think would harm
him and that's something in any practice right even when doctors they say do no harm so i think
the same way because if this is a detriment to him, I'm not doing my job.
Obviously, getting faster, more efficient, thinking better under pressure is the end goal.
But I want to know if he'd been receptive to doing that in the first place.
Tell all your people, you're like, this is Dustin's favorite exercise.
I do that sometimes.
Andrew, what you got brewing over there?
Let me find it.
It's a post.
Here it is. I just want you to speak on it because this one, this one's big. Oh, that you got brewing over there? Let me find it. It's a post. Here it is.
I just want you to speak on it because this one, this one's big.
Oh, that's one of my favorites.
Yeah.
Can you please speak on this?
So for people listening, it says hindsight, foresight, and insight.
And the hindsight's perfect vision.
Foresight's a little blurry.
Insight is very blurry.
And we talk a lot about like self-talk and then like self-belief and then also manifesting.
But I just wanted you to go a little bit deeper on inside what you mean with this.
Yeah, that's one of my most popular.
I actually reposted that from a few years back because I did a video about it.
So hindsight, right?
That's basically knowing what's already transpired.
I could have did that.
I should have did that.
What if?
We can see that perfectly, right?
Because obviously it already happened.
So it's easy to call back to it.
Yeah.
So that's the, you see the eye chart, so it's clear.
Now the second one, foresight, that's what could happen?
What could I do?
What could be?
What should I do?
So we're good at planning things out, whether it's positive or negative.
Some people can say, oh, I'm going to go on a trip,
or I'm going to win a championship, or I'm going to get married,
whatever it is.
Or they'll do the opposite.
Man, I don't know if I'm going to win.
I might fail.
So whatever it is, they can see that slightly clear,
but it's not perfect
because we don't know
what's going to happen.
It's still a question mark.
And then the last one,
kind of ironic,
insight.
The one thing that we have
direct momentary control over
is the blurriest.
And it's usually because
we're so busy on what already happened
and what could happen,
so we just ignore
what's happening in the moment.
And it's like, it's not
saying you shouldn't have hindsight or foresight. You should, because in order to get better right
now, I have to reflect on things I did wrong. But how much are you emphasizing it? That's the
question I'll ask a client or someone. If I'm only lingering on the loss or only lingering on the
mess up, how much can that get me better after, say, 24 hours? I say the first day or two, linger
on it a little bit because you want to reflect. But after that, let it go and rebuild. And then with foresight,
you can't control outcomes. I know that sounds ridiculous because if you say, of course I can,
if I work hard and just do my best, I'm going to win. So, oh, I'll ask, do you win every race
or every meet or every fight or every job opportunity? No. Oh, so you choose to lose.
No. So what did you really control?
Obviously, going back to the circle of control, you have influence.
My hard work can influence the outcome, whether it's the referee, whether it's the boss at a new job I'm trying to get.
You have to have influence, but we can't completely see it.
And then insight, that should be the clearest of hindsight because that's the only thing you can directly in this moment change.
So that's that one.
I like that a lot.
I think it'd be helpful to make it more.
You can make it more clear by asking questions.
We were talking about that in the gym a little bit.
Rather than, you know, rather than thinking about all the shit that you didn't do correctly
with hindsight, you can just turn those into question marks and say, I wonder how I could
handle that better.
I wonder how I could progress a little faster.
Maybe I'll start asking my coach. Maybe I'll ask my mentor. Maybe I'll ask my teacher
how I can do a little bit better. How can I get my grade up? How can I,
all these things. And it just gives you a lot more options when you
are inquisitive, which sounds like Dustin Poirier was doing with you,
to gain that knowledge so that he could have a more clear picture of everything
that was going to happen yeah and i actually had a little thing i do when i do workshops i call it
the diamond mindset because you know he's a diamond and he had a series of things he did on
top of you know being inquisitive open-minded but he also always spoke in a like you said
ask the questions he spoke like that it wasn't necessarily like guaranteed he's he's open
with this he said this in interviews uh numerous times on like he does feel that like that doubt
or whatever it's just like but i know i'm the best man for this job he's not better than me in the
sense of i know what i bring so that's that balance of confidence versus people who have false
confidence like he's not saying out of i'm the best it's saying is like i did what it takes to
be the best and he talks it like whether i'm hanging around him when we used to work more frequently during when like he's training for other things like sparring, whatever.
You'll see him saying things relevant to being better, not necessarily dominating in the sense of I got this automatically.
But it's like building that mindset of these are the words.
These are the thoughts that go into being dominant and being better.
So that has
to be practiced like any skill i hate to keep using the physical reference but it's very similar
i can't get stronger at a squad or a bench whatever unless i do a squad or a bench i can't
just hope it gets better because i want it but with this some some reason it goes out the window
and actually have a analogy i use for this um because i look at it as there's there's passive
aspects going about like
mental performance or mental health, and there's more active, just like with physical. So passive's
like, you know, the apps like Calm, Headspace, Box Breathing, things like that, Meditation,
Mindfulness, all great. Definitely useful. I get my clients to do it. Definitely something I
personally practice, but that's passive. So imagine in fitness or strength conditioning,
practice, but that's passive. So imagine in fitness or strength conditioning, if I only do mobility work, I only do stretches. Okay. I'm flexible. I can get into a position,
but how resilient is my body in the actual load? That's where the actual strength conditioning
stuff comes in. So same thing with mental. Okay. You do the box breathing. You do the mindful work.
You're, you're doing the self-talk tasks. Great. We need that because that builds that foundation.
But how do you hold up when there's an actual mental stressor or cognitive stressor in front of you?
And that's where those drills we talked about earlier and they showed on the screen,
that's where that can be trained. Because I always break it down to people is we can see in real time
because it's a good thing they know how our brain processes and handles stress from a neuroscience
side. We need that. But we can see in real time from some of these tasks,
how do you actually hold up when things go wrong or you mess up?
And how do you recalibrate or not?
You know, some people, when they look at,
because you were mentioning the big five personality
and how sometimes you have an athlete do a big five
and then you can see how it's reflected in the Stroop test.
Like they fail and they start fucking getting anxious and stuff, right?
So have you seen, through working with an athlete for a prolonged period of time,
have you seen their personality change when it comes to competition? Because
anxiety isn't necessarily fully bad. Sometimes anxious people plan a lot of things out. They
plan for every single situation. They're very particular. They can be very detailed,
but sometimes that anxiety can cripple a person when it comes to competing. Right. So there's a good and bad on anxiety. But have you seen somebody be able to, I guess, flip their anxiety when it comes to being in a competition setting, even though they're still maybe an anxious type of person?
anxious type of person.
So, yeah.
So with anxiety, like you said, anxiety just means we're getting ready, right?
From a physical response, fight or flight, our heart rate increases, our breathing.
So it's letting us know there's something imminent about to happen.
So you need it to be ready.
But like you said, the bad side is when you go too far.
So someone who has more of a neurotic or emotionality, what they call it now, personality, they're more prone to it because personality is all about a spectrum of where you fall.
You're not necessarily anxious, not anxious, extroverted, introverted. It's a spectrum of where you fall you're not necessarily anxious
not anxious extroverted introverted it's more so where do you fall so a person who's high on
emotionality or anxiety they're more likely to default to that so going to your point can it
change yes but you have to be very active in it it's not like okay i did it once or twice i was
calm here i'm good no you have to be conscious because it's personality people always ask can
it be changed and i was talking about my mentor earlier and conscious because it's personality. People always ask, can it be changed?
And I was talking about my mentor earlier, and he says this a lot.
He's a personality psychologist.
He said yes and no.
It's more so no because we have this default mode that that's who we are.
We revert to this.
Think about it.
Perfect example, if I threw this ball to you real quick.
Are you right-handed or left-handed?
Right-handed.
So that worked out perfectly.
So he caught it with which hand? Right. It's right. So what just happenedhanded? Right-handed. So that worked out perfectly. So he caught it with which hand?
Right.
His right.
So what just happened there?
His default mode,
he caught it with the hand
that's most dominant.
Now you can argue
he's on the right side.
I usually do that
when I do surprise people.
I come from the front side
so you have to choose.
But the point is,
your default mode
is what personality is.
Can you catch it
with your left hand?
Sure.
Definitely.
But how often do you use it?
And the same thing
with personality.
If I'm
not actively trying to be less emotional, less anxious, then I'm not going to be able to do it
when it counts in a competition. So you have to practice. So going back to all the drills we do,
I will coach them up in between sets and say, hey, I noticed you didn't use your left hand one time,
or I noticed you were holding your breath, or I noticed you were saying, F you, whatever.
And my biggest
thing and i practice what i preach i've been like this since i was an athlete and now that i'm in
this i try to keep it going yeah i should not know if you're doing good and i should not know if
you're doing bad let's use the late great kobe bryan there's a scene he did an inbound pass
it's for one of his most prominent yeah with uh was it matt barnes right yeah yeah yeah and he
was guarding matt barnes and matt
barnes threw it real hard like inches away from his face he didn't move could he have been nervous
that's a ball about to hit him in the head of course but we wouldn't know and we shouldn't
know i've had athletes and kinds of also even police they'll come in i'll know every aspect
of their fear their frustration i should know especially in those jobs i should know that
should it happen it's going to have like anxiety, worry, it just lets you know something important or something necessary is occurring.
But the next step is where you respond.
So it can be changed.
It just has to be very intentional.
We talk a lot on the show about habits and, you know, people like forming habits.
And it takes a lot of time for some people to develop habits and to start to steer their life in a good
direction. What are some techniques or what are some things you usually communicate to somebody
on how they can start to develop some habits to start to head in the right direction?
So the simplest thing, and it's such a low-hanging fruit, but not a lot of people do it,
have a routine. And when I say routine, not necessarily like a ritual, because a lot of
people argue rituals. I always say routines, not rituals, because how I necessarily like a ritual because a lot of people argue rituals always say routines not rituals because how I look at ritual and how I define it is more so
there's an outcome tied to it so it's like if I put on my lucky jersey or if I do this chant
now this will happen that's where I see the difference with a ritual what a routine is more so
these steps prepare me to let me get ready for said occurrence or event or whatever it is
so a
performance routine like in the psychology world is having maybe two or three steps that you take
and you do it repetitively so it's the same as it can be every time yeah before the event or the
activity and i use this when i do big proposals i had a proposal with um a city miami gardens
a few months ago which was a big opportunity for me and i i ran it all through my head and the
routine for me consists of i take a few few deep breaths, like three or four, like box breathing
style. And then I'll close my eyes and run through maybe two to three minutes of the interview or the
proposal, whatever it is, see it first as the way I want it to go, see it as going not the way I
want it to go, and then bring it together with both because what happens in real life?
You never know which way.
Going back to that hindsight, foresight, insight, I never say get rid of the hindsight or get rid of the foresight, but let's see it.
And I think Dr. Huberman did a podcast recently on visualization.
And I'm so glad to see that because we talked about this a little before, the unofficial West Coast, East Coast beef between neuroscience and psychology.
unofficial West Coast, East Coast beef between neuroscience and psychology.
And for him to do that, I like that.
And to fulfill this is bridging that gap
that I'm trying to do myself personally
because it goes hand in hand.
So visualizing and seeing it.
So a routine consists of one, being in the moment.
So that's why I do the breathing.
And two, having a visual aspect of what you want to happen
as well as what might go wrong.
And then three, have a cue.
Could be a word.
And I know with lifters, you do this.
It could be a physical cue, like with lifters you do this like it could
be a physical cue like slap your hip snap your thing whatever but it should be a cue that says
when i say this or do this it's time to go and then just reflect on where's my mindset because
doesn't mean you're going to be perfectly calm now it just means i know where i'm at so when you do
said tasks or sport or interview or hot date whatever it is you know okay that's where i was
when it happened so when you go back and say so how did you feel when you hit that game winner winning home run i don't know
i just did it no we want to say well i was a little nervous at first i was calm and then i just spiked
up and when i saw the picture i knew it was my time or vice versa yeah i think i wasn't ready
but i still executed whatever it was you at least were mindful because we use the word mindful a lot
but it's usually just freely having your mind roam and that that's not mindfulness mindfulness
should be able to identify what's occurring at the time yeah i think it's interesting if you think of
uh like routine i think you're always trying to especially nowadays because so many people talk
about like their morning routine their cold plunge and their sauna and the different things that people might do, the breathing. But routine doesn't necessarily have to be that way. You know, if you look at,
you know, Marshawn Lynch was big on like eating Skittles before a game.
Kobe Bryant notoriously ate pepperoni pizza and orange and grape soda. So it's highly individual
exactly what someone does. But like maybe those guys found those foods, which most coaches and most nutrition people would be like, well, maybe we should change this.
But I've worked with a lot of great athletes, having them come through here at Super Training, and I've tried to change some of their routine. doing. And it was a mistake because they had a particular way, a particular, a particular way
that they would move a particular way. They would psych up for a lift, a bunch of different things.
And sometimes asking someone to calm down, that gets really hyped up. Isn't a great idea. Sometimes
vice versa. It's not a great idea. Each person's just a little different. So the people listening,
you know, I don't want you to go out and eat a bunch of pepperoni pizza, but I do think that
your routine can be unique to you.
You can find something that feels good for you and that works well for you.
I agree with that 100 percent, because in the track world, we used to always talk about this.
When Usain Bolt took to the scene, people criticized his form.
He's long, he's 6'4", 6'5".
That's not typical for a sprinter.
And people say, but what if his mechanics were like this?
I would argue I'm not a track expert per se i ran it to a decent level but it probably would
have maybe made him slower because that's how he's mechanically like over his career ran and
that's how he got to where he is the same thing with your athletes if this was been working long
as i guess the main takeaway should be is are they in the moment if they're in the moment doing all
that stuff let it be now if it's like i don't know coach i just did it and they have no idea and it's just something
to do the past time that's when i would kind of not say change it but like entertain like hmm
what could go differently so is this something that could help an athlete like you always hear
people talk about the flow right or being in that moment is this something that can help an athlete
be able to better access being in the moment and getting the fuck out of their head?
Yeah, well, flow state, that comes back to, like,
say, managing the stress and anxiety.
There's something called the inverted U hypothesis.
Are you familiar with that at all?
Never heard of that.
So you've probably done it without even knowing it,
or it plays a role.
So the theory is basically, think of an upside-down U.
So on one side is low arousal,
and when we say arousal, we mean, like, ready for action,
not that other arousal.
I know you've talked about that on this podcast before. On the other side is low arousal and when we say arousal we mean like ready for action not that other arousal i know we you've talked about that on this podcast before on the other side is high arousal yeah so obviously just like everything a spectrum you don't want to completely be low
but you don't actually want to complete perfect so you don't be completely high either because
you see the best performance is somewhere in that middle range so when we talk about flow state
that's what they're actually referring to because here, if you get even to the neuroscience of it, you're
in a brainwave state, which allows you to be active in that moment and to be clear because
the best performance are the ones where you're just focused on the task at hand, like I said,
being in the moment. Because when it comes to say cognition, the more load you put on your brain,
the less focus you have on what's able to handle. Because if you look at the high stress level, if we're there, that's like, let's go, let's go, come on, let's
get it. You said some people need that. So that's why I'll argue, know your athlete or know your
client, whatever it is. But more than likely, they could be a little lower. So if they're not
the complete right side, it could be maybe a little outside that zone. So it's not necessarily
perfect. I know we're talking about lifting. and i said that when i hit my biggest squat i hit 525 i actually put on um hotel california
hey that's not red hot chili peppers right is that red hot chili peppers i don't know the eagles
the eagles oh think about californication that's my jam too that's my jam californication okay
i've messed with both but the lift before yeah i was listening to Rick Ross hustling when I hit 485 or something like that.
Whatever the jump was.
So that was the lift before.
Okay.
So when I hit the PR, it was a song that isn't an upbeat song, but I knew for me in that moment, people were like, why you want this?
You just went for more of a crunk, upbeat, crunk.
I just dated myself, huh?
Hey, it is what it is.
So I told myself, this is where I want to be.
I wanted to be a little calmer because I've never had that much weight on me.
And I always have this theory, too.
Regardless if it's 100 pounds or a million pounds, it's always going to be the higher one in my head.
And I look at that in life.
Whether it's an easy task, going back to the Kobe thing, I should not know whether you think it's difficult or hard, it's frustrating or not.
You should be agnostic to it.
You shouldn't see it either way.
Does it mean you don't acknowledge it?
No, that's not what I'm saying.
You can see it as, dang, this is a lot.
But it shouldn't because when you make it outward, guess what?
Those motor functions that go with it become real time.
So it's one thing to think it.
Obviously, the neurons are firing.
The patterns are forming.
That's not preferable. But once you make an action with it, now it's becoming thing to think it. Obviously, the neurons are firing. The patterns are forming. That's not preferable.
But once you make an action with it, now it's becoming an actual dynamic.
People say, you talk about manifesting, right?
That's where that term comes in.
They say speak it to existence, right?
They call it the Pygmalion effect.
So you know the story of Pygmalion from the Greek society.
Basically, he saw a statue that he thought was beautiful.
He wanted it to come to life.
So he wished and the gods made it come to life.
So that same concept is like when you speak things to existence, you eventually, you know, the self-fulfilling prophecy, it becomes what you want it to be.
So you got to make sure you don't verbalize or bring, say, energy like that.
You heard of the secret, right?
That's one of the most popular things with it.
So they got some things right.
It gets a lot of criticism, but they got some things right because in the brain, there's something called the reticular activation system.
That's a lot from Tony Robbins.
Oh, yeah.
So the RAS, right?
Yeah.
So I always say the car thing.
Like if you get a new car, you see it everywhere, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So when you see it everywhere, it's not because sales in the new, I don't know what you're driving, Honda Civic or Ferrari.
I don't know.
But basically, they're everywhere because now your brain says it's relevant.
But basically, they're everywhere because now your brain says it's relevant.
So going back to the point of self-talk and all that stuff, now it's like, okay, if this is relevant to me, my RAS, my brain is going to say, only search for those things.
You overlook.
They did an experiment that I showed in my class.
It's hilarious.
And it's a bear or, no, a monkey.
A guy in a monkey suit.
And they're passing a basketball around.
And they say, count the passes.
So you're like, okay, 12. And they're like, no, it was 13. no it's 13 no it's 15 so i said wait but did you see the dancing monkey and they're like wait
what and then we rewind it back and while they're passing the ball literally a guy who's like these
six feet tall walks through starts popping and locking dancing doing a running man and stuff
and no one sees it why because you weren't even focused on that yeah it seems so like like
crazy but the brain the mind psychology that's why i love this stuff it really has no bounds
and that's why i attack mind body one as a way to bring it all together it's the flow state the
same as the zone yeah that's just like getting in the zone back the flow is the scientific term for
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links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. What about if, I don't know, some doubt creeps into an athlete's thoughts?
How do you coach them to kind of try to block that?
So, go another analogy.
Sounds like a selfish question.
It is very much a selfish question.
Hey, I'm fine with that.
Let's do it.
We have an on-site session.
Let's go.
And the cool thing is it hasn't happened.
I'm just, you know, making sure down the road if something comes up, I want to make sure I have some, you know, some weaponry to fight back.
He's about to do his first jujitsu match.
Oh, so this is an unofficial session console.
I'll bill you later.
Bill the podcast and it's all good.
Definitely not.
I'm happy just to be here, guys.
But basically you said, how do you get rid of or stop it?
That's the first mistake
because when we suppress thoughts we tend to think of them more so like with basketball players how
to athlete the classic thing of bricking a free throw when the game is online or even when it's
not you say don't miss don't miss don't miss even though you say don't what's still in that phrase
miss so don't get rid of the thought by trying to suppress it because there's something
called the white bear experiment that was done at Harvard University in the mid 80s. A guy named
Daniel Wegner. He passed, I think, a few years ago, unfortunately, but he studied numerous things.
And one of the studies he did was on thought suppression because he wondered why does things
get stuck in your head? Think about that song you hate, but eventually start jamming because
it can't go away. You try to suppress it. So what they did in the experiment with the white bear,
they said, okay, sit in this chair,
just talk to whatever thoughts come to your mind,
just say them out loud.
So it might be like, yeah,
I'm going to go get some food later with my friends,
maybe watch a movie, blah, blah, blah.
They said, if you think about a white bear,
hit this bell right next to the seat.
Ding.
So they saw it kind of infrequent.
But the second condition was don't think about the white bear.
And what they saw was they hit it just as frequent in some cases more frequent with the don't think task because
when you say don't think about it your mind says don't think about it oops you just thought about
it so going back to self-doubt it's not to say negate the thought and get rid of it or just
ignore it it's more so reframe it so using the white bear instead of white bear purple flamingos now that's crazy for that example but for your
example if the thought let's say is if you don't mind sharing you have a thought that you might
think about a lot that be negating your performance oh just um i'll just i'll say the competitor
passing my guard and not being able to retain my guard again so let's say the thought is why can i
keep keep them in guard? So instead of
questioning it in that phrasing, say it in a more productive, I don't use the word positive because
positive is subjective, but productive, that means it ends with you doing the outcome you prefer.
So change it to a productive self-talk that would be something that ends in what you're trying to do.
So instead of saying, don't let them X, Y them xyz or don't do this say the new thought
of reframing it to what you're trying to do so like going with the don't miss example all net
buckets whatever it is so something simple as that because what happens is not just like speaking to
existence or or manifesting it's more so what happens the neuron pathways get stronger with
the productive outcome and they get weaker with the negative or the unproductive outcome because the memories don't really go away we we we have
memories from what 20 30 40 years ago whatever your age is so basically it's more how uh relevant
or relevant they are in your mind so practicing the thoughts that are more productive will be
once again default that that catching that ball with your default mode you want your default mode
to be more accessible to the helpful thoughts.
That's amazing.
Yeah, I really appreciate that.
It's power of the mind, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
Seems so simple, but when I talk to people, and that's why I love educating because it's really what I do because I'm not a therapist.
I did go that route for my doctoral before I dropped out like Kanye.
But can I say that?
I know he's canceled right now.
Is he canceled still?
I hope not.
Do you still listen to his music? I do. I still can't get
past the first two albums. Those are my favorites.
It's because you're old, dog. I know, and I'm okay
with that. He likes Nas? The dropout?
College dropout.
Nas and Hit-Boy are on a really good run right
now, though. Wait, really? Nas back?
Dude, it's like a
gangsta type run.
Him and Hit-Boy, very guru premiere. It's really good right now. I'll put that on my playlist. dude oh dude it's like a bad out like a gang star type run you know like him and hit boy is like
very guru premiere it's really good right now i'll put that on my my playlist yes please do it's good
anyways what's that uh the beef you're talking about with people in your field because you're
mentioning like no you're a guy we i like you a lot because you're a guy who takes a lot of this
stuff and then you apply it it's not just based off of like what studies say, but you were mentioning some stuff about some beef.
I'm curious.
So I guess I'm being extra with it, but it's not like a beef per se.
But there is a kind of butting of the heads, I would say, in the industries.
And it's not just me saying this.
You ask anyone in either field.
So there's so many subfields of, I call it the brain and behavior science, because that umbrella includes psychology, neuroscience, clinical psychology.
Those people are therapists, cognitive psychologists who more so on process.
So it's so many sub facets. Right. But if we just go simply psychology versus the neuroscience versus the clinical, we'll break it in those three terms.
So, like I said, there's not no going back to old school, East Coast, West Coast type of thing.
But basically, it's like the applied psychologist, someone who's more like me, I'm taking what I learned from the literature and creating my drills or creating my coaching style from what I understand.
I feel we talk about all the time. He's like, then you always read the articles because I want to be like, I understand this enough that I could go sit, not maybe fully sit at a conference from the other side, but I can at least hold my own.
You know, I'm not know it all, but if I least hold my own. I'm not a know-it-all, but
if I can hold my own, I want to be able to do that.
And the other side, I want to be able to say
if you're a client of any demographic,
it shouldn't matter.
Like I said, I work with law enforcement, military,
kids, dementia, and it's not
because I want to be a Jack of all trades.
I actually have an acronym for Jack of all
trades. I call it Joe of all trades.
So Jack is just average common knowledge of all trades.
Joe is what you want to be.
I call it, that's what I call it.
Justifiably optimal experience of all trades.
Okay.
So I know it's a mouthful, but that's how I look at it because I can't be good at everything.
But can I be optimal?
Sure.
Because there's some things I'm better. I'm more better on the applied psychology than I am on the neuro side.
I would never claim that because I got
people I talk to that, hey, what do you think that are big
in the neuro side? And they have their two
cents. But going back to the point is,
it's not necessarily a beef or a divide. It's just more so
people have their set and their ways.
And since I didn't finish my
doctorate, I didn't have to do a dissertation
which, when you specialize directly
in your, it's your research. It's not that you're, you obviously cite other sources, but you're the
world's foremost expert on whatever topic you pick. So I think the fact that I went so far
and didn't finish, and also just having just crazy life experiences that put me in some
compromised position where I had to think and be creative, it allowed me to see it from different
views so where I can walk in both worlds and be open to both sides or all three sides because the clinical side, that's more so
therapy. We talk about mental health is key and I agree. Therapy has its place, but only about 10
to 12% of the population, give or take, will succumb to a disorder. So what are we doing for
the 98%? That's everyone. That's the majority, right? So that's where I come in because if you
have bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, you go to the clinical side. That's where you need to be.
But if you're just having a tough time in sport, tough time with your family life, you just want
to perform better and not stress as much. That's where you get someone like myself who's going to
bridge that gap because it's a day-to-day thing. We're not going to be in this mood or this this point all the time so i think the discrepancy is not necessarily they don't like
each other or beefing is more so that they have to be open that they all tie in that's why i approach
it this way because i borrow from the neural world i dabble in that it's not my forefront but i gotta
know some of that stuff the clinical world that was my original major so i did up to the point
where right before you start seeing practicum clients.
So I did like mock sessions with my classmates.
So I had to get some of that experience.
And it helps me a lot because now I got to look at it as how do I motivationally interview you and understand why are you even coming to me in the first place and where do we go next?
Then the applied side says make this make sense in real life, whether it'sin poyer someone's grandmother my eight-year-old
daughter tiana whoever it is it's they're gonna it's not gonna look different as far as methodology
but it will look different in application so that's why i think there's a divide they just
gotta like shake hands with each other and say you know what let me take some of this oh like a
dinner table right and a picnic they invite us to cook out like let's get it yeah yeah why do you
think so many people are experiencing
depression anxiety loneliness things like that i think the world evolved too fast because i used
to so another part of my journey i used to be a history teacher and i taught middle school history
u.s history american government and i got fired or not fired laid off because of budget cuts and i
just had my daughter tiana who was three months at the time. Horrible.
So like this Mr. Mental Muscle stuff,
I've lived this.
It's not just a,
like I know the name's gimmicky.
It's a tongue twister,
but I've lived this.
So basically,
I think the world evolved too fast because if you look at, say,
the early 1900s,
so from our standpoint,
that's forever ago.
But that's within some people's
like one generation before.
Like if you have grandparents
born in the 1920s that are still with us, that's one generation before yeah if you have grandparents born in 1920s
that are still with us that's one generation before them so we live in a world where in 1903
kitty hawk north carolina their first flight so once that happened what happened a few years later
world war one so they went from the first flight with this little bulky uh plane that got like six
seven feet off the ground went maybe
19 miles per hour and within 10 years a decade they were flying shooting each other so the world
war is not a good thing same thing happened with cars i think exactly early 1900s all paralleled
ford had like he created an automobile and i think 10 years later, there were 16 million cars, something wild like that.
Something like that.
And Ford, he was so cute.
Without roads.
And that's the crazy part.
So see, that's a perfect example how we evolved from a psychological, mental standpoint so fast.
Because before that, there was no electricity or very little electricity.
It wasn't worldwide.
So those three things, planes, cars, and electricity, all kind of evolved over the same period.
Because people didn't even want to use electricity.
That's the funny thing.
People were collectively against it because there was a big incident in New York.
I think it was in the city, though.
And this guy was working on the wires, right, up top.
He slipped and got electrocuted in front of hundreds of people.
So a mass execution.
Demon.
Electricity is demonic.
Basically.
That's exactly what happened.
So Thomas Edisonison name sound familiar
and um the different companies general electric all of them were trying to prove like no this is
safe so know what they did kind of looks dumb looking back hindsight but in the moment they
thought this was good they started executing animals to show how humane electricity was
it's like see that elephant got electrocuted he He's dead. It was quick and easy. Like, what? You just killed an elephant or a horse.
So get to the point.
The electric chair.
But that was the next step.
And they did a human, and it was horrible.
Because they used DC current instead of AC current.
And you know Tesla, he's the one that said, let's use AC.
And everyone who backed him, Westinghouse, they're like, yeah, this is the way to go.
Edison wanted DC because Edison, great entrepreneur, amazing, brilliant man. but he was hardheaded in his ways and he lost that battle.
But get to the point.
We went from walking horse and buggy to planes just getting eight feet off the ground to fighting wars and then 50 years later to the moon.
And then now we can talk to people in instant seconds.
So going to the point of depression or just mental health in general, if we compare each other of how efficient we are in responding, because communication is key, right?
It's cliche.
Communication is key.
But communication has changed.
Because think about this.
In our parents' days, Chris Rock made a joke about it.
He said, my father would go all day to work.
I could have died and he wouldn't know until he got off at eight.
Think about that.
That was only 40 years ago.
Like, that wasn't a long time ago.
So now it's like, if someone, like a girl, you don't text her back in time, oh, he's not that interested.
Blocked.
So isn't that kind of, and I'm big on myself, obviously, and if you even get to like men's in itself, I'm not trying to go red pill or anything like that.
Let's go there real quick. Okay, we's go there okay let's go into that think about how damaging in general not just for men but in general where we tie these expectations going back to that that dopamine
response we're priming ourselves for expectations that aren't realistic like why should i hold
someone to a standard of if they don't communicate me every 20 minutes to an hour now that's extreme
but i've seen and heard cases.
Not personally, luckily, but I've had friends who girls or people would be like, hey, she talked to me because I didn't respond all day because I was working an eight-hour shift, a physical labor job.
My bad.
I used to work at another job I had.
I worked at a women's prison for a few months, and I couldn't bring a phone in, meaning I was unreachable for 10 hours a day.
So it's like this is unrealistic.
So going to the point, we set these standards and it can vary.
It doesn't have to be just communication.
But think about jobs.
People are less employed or if they get employed, it's not enough to live.
I have my parents.
They're a little bit older.
Born in the 50s and early 60s.
And it's like, oh, if they don't say this, but I know a lot of people from that generation might say this is like, oh, just work hard, bootstraps and all that.
That's great. I bootstrapped and I've been I slept in a car while being on ESPN like that.
That's happened to me. So it's like talking about mental health is like these expectations.
I'm trying. Lack of trying, I don't think is the issue.
I think it's just that we have these standards that aren't congruent with what our expectations are. Like we expect here, but we can only give there.
And that gives us incongruence for our brain.
Going back to those three cycles I talked about, the perception, the planning, the error detection, and the reinforcement.
So now perception is, okay, this is how my life should look.
Nice car, bunch of beautiful girls on my page, flying out to Vegas or Dubai or whatever.
And let's be real. 99.9 percent of people will never go out the country matter of fact the poorest person in america is still
collectively better than majority of the the world yeah so if that's the standard we're trying to
put on the forefront when we say the world's so bad and it's like well that's what we're living
in how can you expect to have a good mindset not saying it's a cop-out but it's like, well, that's what we're living in. How can you expect to have a good mindset? Not saying it's a cop-out, but it's like, that's what we're working with. So we need to have
a better, I guess, standard of where we want to be and where we should be. Yeah. What do you think
people need? Like, is there, are there some like needs that people need to head towards in order to
maybe not have depression or anxiety? Keep it simple because the more you want,
the more you're going to need after that.
And the more you're going to need after that.
Like I joked earlier,
I left my shoes on the way here.
I came from Florida,
got here.
I'm like,
dang,
I had to run and get some shoes.
I got some cheap $20 shoes.
They already broke.
I had them for all of,
I wouldn't even say a day because I got here.
Insert Vivo ad here.
And I usually wear those,
right?
Give me a deal,
Vivo.
But yeah, so that that's that's the world
I live in I'm simplistic like I said I don't wear anything really if I have to pay for like I wear
my stuff I wear Dustin's brand where I work with Juliana Pena I work with her brand where Phil's
brand if you got some stuff I wear your brand I'd like to get my clothes that way call me weird or
cheap I don't know what you want to call it but that's how I wear all my clothes are that so it's
like that's just an example but it's like that standard of
you're always going to want more no matter what if you say so that's called the anchoring effect
you're familiar with that term no so give it to us so it's not familiar with anything we're stupid
see i talk to everyone and always preface it with that because yourself
so stupid so the anchoring effect we're all stupid to some how about that absolutely so the anchoring effect
is another cognitive bias so simply put i'm gonna sell you my car say it's a used 2015
honda civic and you want it you need a car whatever i say all right mark i'll give it to
you or sell it to you for 25 000 you're. You're like, sounds good. Let me get a week.
I got to get the money.
I'll be back.
You come back a week later.
I got that $25,000.
You know what?
I'm actually going to sell it for $40,000.
Obviously, you don't want to pay more, but what's the problem?
You got anchored with that first price.
Now, that's more extreme because it's buying a car,
but you can even do it with lesser things.
So our brain gets primed with the first piece of information,
and it holds that.
That's why I call it an anchor. It holds us to that point because you could literally say, well,
actually, this is actually worth more. And it could be, let's say it is worth more.
You just misquoted them. They're not going to want to pay $40,000 or $10 more or whatever it
is because that's the first piece of information. And going back to the standard being set with
people, why are we more depressed than ever you got 12 year olds unfortunately taking
their own lives and it's because you always have to have them more it's just how we're wired so if
you start fancy car and house which most people are not going to achieve i know it sounds morbid
i'm not saying chase your dreams people do it but be real that man i'm going to tirade right now
you're familiar with survivorship bias this is my favorite bias go for it so i like to bring things like a story full circle you're familiar with the
the song i will survive first i was afraid i don't sing so first i was afraid there we go yeah
so that song explains survivorship bias perfectly and it's cliche that it is called that but i'll
get to my point so the guy wrote it dino facaris he was a writer for motown might be for some of y'all time so he wrote for motown records from the late 60s early 70s got
laid off in i think 1976 so what happened he was like i gotta get another job writing songs that's
my passion i love it and he had some hits he definitely pinned some hits for motown for
different artists but he wasn't finding new work so one night he was watching a movie i forget the
name of the movie but he wrote the theme song so the movie came on he heard the theme song he's like know what this
is a sign i'm not giving up and he said i will survive and he started writing there and that
song came out of it damn but guess what it didn't take off that's 1976 that song got dropped in 1978
so what happened for those two years so for two years he couldn't find a label to help put it out and produce it.
So a label came up
and said, we have an artist, Gloria Gaynor, who had
decent success in disco at the time.
And he said, I want to write a song
called Substitute. So it's like, sure.
But on one condition that I get the song,
I will survive as the B-side to
the track. So it's like, sure. So
Gloria Gaynor had just heard her back pretty
badly on tour, and her mom was overcoming a sickness. So when she read the sure. So Gloria Gaynor had just heard her back pretty badly on tour and her mom was
overcoming a sickness.
So when she read the lyrics,
she said it brought
such conviction to her
because she could relate,
not just because the theme
is overcoming a bad breakup
or something,
but she was surviving life.
So they said,
did it in one take.
One take, Jay.
They got it.
And you got that song.
It won the Grammy
for Disco,
Best Disco,
which is the one
and only Disco Grammy
because Disco was obviously on his way out in the late 70s.
Yeah.
So the moral of the story would be what?
Keep working hard.
Don't give up on your passions and you will survive and be great.
Right?
Wrong.
That's the bias.
Because let's think about it.
How many times do people do their best, push their best foot forward, try the hardest, put in full effort and still don't make it?
So that's the bias
so perfect example
you ever seen a house
or a car from like
50, 60, 80 years ago
whatever
a long time ago
and you're like
they just don't make them
like they used to no more
this shoddy craftsmanship
people just
these plastic houses
whatever right
that's a survivorship bias
you know why
how many houses
from 1902
are still standing
you might have one or two that are landmarks, right?
But the bias is your mind's assuming that the thing that lasted longest is the ideal one.
Look at the ruins in Greece, Rome, Egypt.
This generation is so weak.
Exactly.
But let's guess what?
Every generation had that.
Like, you know how people say, that ain't real music.
Follow me with this music follow me with
this follow me with this so this can go back forever so you're like but that's true no no
i'm gonna kill that for you right now so think about it what you consider real music right uh
like 90s hip-hop right yes sir before that the soul generation like our parents the temptations
that was real music but for their parents it was was like, Billie Holiday, now that's real music.
Then go back far enough, it's Johan Bach.
Like, now that's Bach.
That's real music.
That's a real music.
It could go all the way back to Caveman Day.
That's real music.
But that's a bias because you only see what lasts.
He broke something again so the takeaway
was don't always believe they're not saying don't believe the the survivors the winners
yeah because they do have a story and they do help us but i'll argue you learn more from the
ones who didn't win because hey you you lost everything in the stock crash can you inform
me what you did and you know not to do that because everyone who won, go to Jordan. Hey, man,
how'd you become the best basketball player of all time? I know
debatable, but I just
did it, man. I'm 6'6", and I can dump
from the free throw. Just do that.
Okay.
What do I do next?
Ask the guy who got cut from the
NBA, and he was the same
skill set as Jordan, or not skill set, but similar.
What happened?
Well, you know, I wasn't going to practice.
My agent told me to sign earlier.
Because let's talk about the draft just happened in the NFL and there's people who don't take the deals.
And guess what?
NFL says for not for long.
So the bias is don't always go for the winners because Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, they're dropped.
My students used to do this all the time at the community college I worked at.
They're like, well, Gates and Zuckerberg dropped out.
Oh, really?
Where'd they drop out from?
Harvard.
No offense.
We're at Broward College.
I respect the school because I worked there for six years, but it ain't Harvard.
And mind you, they were going to be that regardless because their mindset, because I asked my students,
I'm like, do you even have the mindset to even be them those guys probably not because you're telling me well i didn't finish my work
because i had to work at 12 a.m in the morning i'm like oh so i have no life outside of this huh
and some of them knew what i did outside of it so it's like i spend three to four hours with y'all
but i'm going i'm an entrepreneur i'm working with clients i'm doing business plans sometimes i fly
out boohoo and i was like at that time
I'm about to be 35 now
but I was like
26
so I'm like
some of them were older than me
so it was hilarious
having someone
that was like 32
and I'm 26
giving me excuses
hey man
you gotta understand
it's hard
and I had a daughter
so it was like
huh
really
so yeah
so survivorship biases
don't succumb to the people
or the things that survive
because
it doesn't tell the full story.
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Enjoy the show.
I heard a quote,
something to look forward to,
someone to love and something to do.
It's from Elvis Presley.
Do you agree with that?
Do you think that is a healthy thing
to have some of those things in mind
when you're trying to have a good mindset
and just feel good about yourself?
Oh, that's pretty good.
Something to look forward to,
something to love and something to do.
That kind of encapsulates it pretty much.
I know I said a lot of stuff, but you narrowed it down to three.
Because if it was something to look forward to, that's that expectation.
And then something to love, that's something you have to be rooted in
because, let's be real, life ain't all about making it big.
Obviously, it's cool, I guess, but there's more to it.
Research has shown that
there's something called social fitness which is a good predictor of of life satisfaction not
happiness that's a misconception happiness social fitness he said they call it social fitness it's
basically your social circle social circles how you adapt as far as like your friend group your
work group so it's more so how health so like physical fitness my group's not very good so i need to but well i'm pretty depressed well these are things you can always work on so
now you can get it i have audience
bring it back okay so um so yeah so i agree with that because it simplifies everything i'm saying
into those three terms obviously i would love people to hear what I'm saying, too.
But it's like it's something to do, not it's putting into action.
So I agree with that.
I never heard that before.
What song is that?
Is it just a quote?
Oh, it's just a quote from him.
I saw it like at like a hard rock cafe.
It was like on the wall and it had like a signature of his.
And that was the quote.
What were the specific names of the apps you're mentioning that you use?
Cause I know like when you mentioned apps,
some people are like,
I want to download whatever app he's talking about.
So is it something you can download or is this something you got to like
subscribe to?
So both kinds.
So one is called Soma NPT.
So that's Soma S O M A and N is in Nike.
P is in Paul,
T is in Tom.
So Soma NPT, that's the one that when I was describing how I get all the statistics, the
variance and all that, that app is great.
But the only reason I say yes or no is because it's made more so for practitioners.
Like you can use it.
It's just something that I wouldn't say to buy because the pricing point is much higher
because it's intended for people who are going to have clients and have IDs because all my clients have an ID
that would cost an amount
for each ID. So you can get it for yourself, definitely.
Just be mindful of that. But it's a great
app. The owner of it,
he mentioned me frequently with new articles
because he does a lot of research with it. So it's verified
through sports, military,
all types of populations that use it.
So Soma MPT. And also, I have
my drills and tasks that i have on
my site so i have access to like the drills you saw earlier i've i've probably a few almost 100
of them so it's really for movement vision tracking thought process mindfulness so i have
that accessible on my website so yeah and i'm actually kind of curious about this because you
said you you do work with youth with this stuff, right? Do you notice a difference?
Because I know how we were just kind of joking about, oh, this generation is weak or whatever.
But do you notice a difference with like kids and teens nowadays?
Because, I mean, when we were all teenagers, we didn't have access to phones.
Like there is comparison, but there isn't comparison to the world.
You know, there isn't comparison to a bunch of people in your age group that are just killing it out life while you're still learning things, right? Do you notice a difference with
how they look at things? More positive, negative, et cetera? So I guess I probably picked that up
when I was working in the schools as a middle school and high school teacher. So that was 2013
to 2016. So I think that was like the turning point for the world. That's where it started.
Yeah. So I would say that generation, they definitely have more open-mindedness to things.
And I think that's a good skill or trait to have because you're more likely to try.
But at the same time, I think they, from what I've saw, they're more critical because in the schooling system, and this is my criticism as a former secondary educator, is that they emphasize a lot of things that aren't really imperative to their lifelong success.
So I can say this now.
I don't teach anymore.
Yeah.
But most teachers will agree with this, but they have to put in the curriculum.
There was times where I got challenged when I was like, you know what?
I want to do stuff to help them so they can be more flexible in their thinking and be able to push forward in life.
But it's like they want to say, no, this is the test they got to take.
Stick to these standards.
Keep them in line for that.
And let's get our standards met.
And that was it.
So if you put in that situation, going back to the expectation, reward, all that stuff,
the expectation is if you don't pass this, you stay in this grade or you don't, whatever
the result is, it's pretty high stakes.
Who wants to have that do or die pressure for, I would say 12 years, but let's say eighth
grade at least.
So that's five years of that?
That's a lot to put on a person who typically doesn't even know
who they're going to be yet.
Yeah.
That's not fair at all.
And I didn't like that.
But I think that gives them, like I said, the open-mindedness to try,
but then it gets brought right back down because now they have the standard
of you've got to be perfect.
Like going back to Carol Dweck, that growth versus fixed mindset.
Like if you have a growth mindset, you're able to say, I i'm not tied to an a i'm not tied to a grade but they're
taught the other stuff fixed mindset hey you need to get this grade you need to get this score
and that just breeds the general and it's literally my daughter is uh eight so she's a little under
that and i'm because she's taking these similar not to that level but they're still taking
standardized tests and it's like where's this that level, but they're still taking standardized tests. And it's like, where's this going to put them?
They're going to get the full force of it because they're 100 percent iPhone.
They're 100 percent Zoom during COVID.
Yeah, she was doing Zoom classes.
So it's like, I don't know what the world's going to look like when we're in our like 70s, 80s.
That's going to be an interesting place.
I'm hopeful for it, but I don't know.
Yeah.
When it comes to comparison for yourself, do you try to block it or do you let it kind of creep in and start to maybe, uh, start to
head in a different direction? Like what? Imposter syndrome type stuff? Yeah. Like you mentioned
Andrew Huberman and some other, uh, famous people that are in the minds, mindset minds, you know,
uh, talking about mindfulness and the brain and so on yeah that's a great
question because i deal with it a lot and i'll be pretty open and vulnerable on this because
like i'm very competitive but in a healthy way like i want to be the best i can be but
i do look at those guys and people similar and one thing is i gotta stop doing and i gotten better at
it is not to feel a certain way when i see their stuff get reshared from people who i even know
personally or just follow me and it's, you don't share my stuff.
And it's not even a bad thing because it is what it is.
But I take it as not as, like you said.
That sounds normal and healthy.
Exactly.
But some people take it, like you said before, that why didn't the coach say me?
So I don't do that.
Instead of being, why did the coach say me?
Instead, I see it as, you know what?
I'm not mad.
Let me do what I need to do so that is what I get.
Because I know I'm doing good things.
I have to reinforce because with imposter syndrome, I said this to you earlier,
it's like it just means that you're on the right path.
You're passionate.
You care.
But when you let that imposter become your roommate and move in with you,
and he's sitting on the couch eating chips like, hey, man, you suck.
And it's like, let's be real.
We take the most crap from ourselves.
Think about it.
I tell clients, I'll be like, name your inner voice.
Whatever you say in your head, name it Bob, John, Larry, whatever.
Because you wouldn't let a random Joe who you don't know talk crap.
But for some reason, we are the person that has to be us all the time so going back to
that imposter get that guy off your couch he might knock on the door and say hey man you don't see
what you're doing tonight and sometimes like man i ain't kicked it with my boy in a minute and you
open the door and it's like no no no get out so it happens to me and that's bringing me to the
chapelle skit that we watched on the show before which one chicken and the fish do you
remember on the plane no oh yeah yeah catfish like dancing on it oh that was a great skit
that was a great chips telling you that you suck basically and the thing is we let them keep
using real life imagine real life that's why i like it making it tangible imagine a real person
sitting there
saying you suck
you're not gonna make it
you're not even
supposed to be here
most people
some people might
succumb and be like
okay
they're very agreeable
okay
but I'll say
50 plus percent at least
will say
get the hell out of my house
but we don't do that
with ourselves
because I guess
it's like
I say it's kind of like
an expectation of
perfectionism
mixed with a little bit of high standards and a little bit of doubt.
You put those together. That's a recipe for imposter syndrome, because now it's like I know there is things I'm not the best at.
True. That isn't I say confirming all negative truths or countering all negative truths.
The art of can't. So if you counter a negative truth,'s saying i i acclimate to what i know is true i may not be the most confident or i may not be the best that's what
whatever it is now how do i counter it what can i control to be better or do to be better or if you
confirm it it's like yep i just suck and some people confirm it so it's a matter of how do you
go about it after you get that negative thought and that creeping in that imposter that's what i
would argue is a problem not that it happens because anything worth having
you're going to have doubts that means you actually care yeah anxiety stress like i said
no more saber-toothed tigers it was meant to get us ready for something now it used to be living
and dying but guess what we take away those saber-toothed tigers now it's getting our business
off the ground getting our new spouse happy or whatever, new baby, whatever it is.
You replace those stressors with these new age stressors, which kind of goes back to what you said about the discrepancy of mental health getting worse because these new stressors, you flip it on like a light switch, right?
The light comes on.
Okay, I'm stressed.
I'm stressed.
Stress goes away, but you don't turn the light switch back off.
And guess what?
Talk about like allostasis and all that stuff, homeostasis.
You're literally physically making your body ready for a danger that isn't there.
And it's like, hello, lights are on, anyone here?
And then physically, your body starts breaking down muscle tissue.
You get sicker, easier. You're not going to sleep as efficiently.
So that's why this whole the mind-body connection is more than just like lip service.
It literally plays on the other.
Let me ask you this, man, because I know you're not like you don't work with people on their diet or whatever. But if you're trying to become a better athlete, you know where you
stand. You know, you are not the best right now. Maybe you're new and you're a beginner. You
understand that. Now, within like this whole diet culture community right now, there's this idea of
self-love and obviously loving yourself where you are. And there's also ideas of, yeah, you don't
need to change your body, all this type of stuff. But you do know, like, for example, where you are. And there's also ideas of, yeah, you don't need to change your body,
all this type of stuff.
But you do know, like, for example, if you are a white belt in jujitsu,
you suck and you're trying to become a black belt.
There are changes and progressions and habits you need to build
to become a black belt.
Well, if you're 50 pounds overweight and you're unhealthy,
you need to love yourself for who you are,
but you can't act like there's no change that needs to be made
so you can become healthier. You know what I mean? What are your thoughts on that? What are
your thoughts on the idea of self-love and that type of idea? I have a few. I have a few. And
hey, I'm keeping it slightly PC, but not. So basically my first thought is why would you
even want to make yourself worse? That's the first thing I'm going to think like you're making
yourself worse by not acclimating to a better diet or better lifestyle. Right. So that's the first thing.
The second thing is why not get better? Because isn't life just a, either you're changing upward
or you're changing downward. So you're literally saying, I don't want to get better. And now from
the actual, like the culture of it, I asked the lady, her name is Amy Morin. She came on my channel
a few months ago. She's a bestselling author. She wrote a book called The 13 Things
Mentally Strong People Don't Do. It's a bestseller. She has like four versions, I think, for women,
for parents and so forth. And basically she talked about this. I asked a similar question
and she actually gave a good answer about that's very detrimental because this idea of self-care
or self-love is strictly just feeling good. That's a very hedonistic way to live. And that's my criticism.
We're very hedonistic.
Because think about it.
Once upon a time, there was consequences for being living in the moment.
YOLO, all that stuff.
You only live once.
It's like, yes, so don't die.
You only live once, so don't die.
So think about 18, whatever.
Don't do it.
I'm about to say 18.
Let's assume in a world where...
I got you.
Because obviously, it'll be different depending on what side of the fence you're on.
But let's assume a while ago.
A while ago.
A while ago.
If I made these heat and air six decisions where I ate up all the food and nothing was left for anyone else in my family that we just
spent 13 hours in the field working yeah who's going to suffer all of us we die calories were
life like another author Tai Tashiro I know I'm throwing but these guys they're great at what
they do what's the name of this author uh Tai Tashiro okay so he came on my channel as well
and he talked about in his book the science of happily ever after he broke down to calories
my channel as well and he talked about in his book the science of happily ever after he broke down to calories he did his research so he said about 1700 calories was about the the average expenditure of
someone like in the late 1800s and the work they did would be about 1600 so you're talking about a
100 calorie discrepancy meaning they they're just under what they need to live so that means
wherever they worked they had to make up for and ration and all that stuff.
So he correlated this
with like marriage
and how it used to be
about that type of stuff,
duty.
So going to the point
is like,
now we don't have to do
that anymore.
So it's easy,
like I said,
going back to that
hedonistic lifestyle.
Back then,
if you ate up all the food
or didn't work your share
because that was the exercise
back then.
You worked in the field
for 12 hours
and your family got the crops,
your sisters, they did the milk and all that stuff.
So if you didn't do that, you starved.
But now we don't have to worry about it.
There's a McDonald's everywhere.
There's a Walmart everywhere.
There's a convenience store everywhere.
And I went to the store a few days ago back home.
And it's not a shot to this person, but they were with their kids and they all were overweight.
These kids could have been more than seven, eight years old
and so was the mother.
And convenience stores,
they have food now.
Like,
remember it used to be
just the junk food,
like the burritos and stuff,
but now they're having
like meal type stuff.
So I don't know how
it is up here in Sacramento,
but back home,
they'll have like
chicken meals
and almost like
Popeye's type stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And she had bags full of it
and it's like,
it's getting to the point where
I think subconsciously
we don't even realize we're doing it
because the world is just so convenient
and safe.
And I think Jordan Peterson said this
where strong times make easy,
or strong men make easy times.
Easy times make weak men.
Weak men make hard times or strong times.
And people take it as just a phrase,
but let's look at the,
I was a history teacher.
The history, it supports this.
Hard times,
the Great Depression.
What happened after that?
The baby boom.
After that,
okay,
the 80s,
there was a market drop there
then in 2000.
So it went up again
with the tech boom
and then went back down
with the market crash in 2000.
I hate to say it,
history is a very good indicator
of the future.
If you take that out,
that's why when it comes
like the hindsight bias
and all that,
it does have a role. But we got to the point where people don't care anymore because it
feels good oh do what makes you happy self-love so oh i have a spa day so i'm canceling on everything
wait so you cancel on your job who needs you to work you cancel on your friends who need you to
do whatever you were going to do or whatever it was just so you can go get your your i need my
me time and that's kind of, that's your mental
self-love. If you loved yourself, you would have made sure
that you handled what needed to be done to be
better without having to negate
your responsibilities. And that's what Amy Morin
said. Like, that's her take on it. I agree with that.
Yeah. Me time or self-love is not
necessarily negating your responsibility. It's like
knowing what's going to help you because things can help
you that don't feel good. Yes.
You might not like it. If I said, hey, and i have to do this thing about with my military and
law enforcement when i work with them they're really they're my dad's police so obviously
hats off but even the ones i work with hats off to all of them if i was sugarcoating their say
their response times and all that stuff nah man you look great and it wasn't and i said you know
what you're a little about twoenths slower than everyone else,
so let's see what's going on, and we fix it.
If I don't do that, that could cost them.
Like, there's real ramifications.
I think that's a problem.
There's no real—I could mention you in England and say,
screw you, buddy, I'll hurt you.
I'm never going to see you.
Nope.
I'm safe.
What did Mike Tyson say?
Everyone's got a plan to get punched in the mouth.
Nah, I'm not trying to advocate violence, but not enough people have been punched in the mouth yeah dang am i gonna get
canceled no bro i'm playing i'm playing i don't okay when we were talking a little bit earlier
about comparison i think there's some healthy things that can come from and i think uh most
great people and most great things come from somewhere else. They come from some other idea that they saw.
You mentioned you had a professor that had an impact on you.
You were in a particular class and it changed your life forever.
And then, you know, what do you immediately do?
You know, once you start to learn from that mentor, you start to try to act as much like them as you can.
You know, maybe even mimic them.
Maybe you're even, you know, looking at
books they read, like you're trying to almost like jump into their head in some weird way.
And I think, you know, somebody listening to Joe Rogan or Andrew Huberman and being like, man,
they got so many listeners. And I think that's, I think that can be healthy. And you can say, well,
I feel like I have a lot to share maybe i should do a podcast
these are all things you have to make sure that you are um that that you actually are going to
like and hopefully love and you'll have to kind of work your way backwards from the end is what
i always think is helpful like how long do you really want to do this for because if the answer
is not like at least five or ten years then then you probably, you know, this show has already been going on for, I don't know, like eight years or
something like that, maybe even longer. But I think those are all questions that are healthy
to ask yourself. And I think it is how somebody turns into something. So comparing yourself to
somebody, I think can be healthy. I think you just have to be kind of careful that you don't fall
into the like, why are they getting so much attention and not me it's more like i think you should uh ask a different
question frame it differently and say i i wonder what they're doing i wonder kind of like what
recipe they're following to uh get this kind of attention they're obviously doing a great job in
some way to get that many eyes on them to get that many comments and likes and so forth yeah you may you're making good points like you got you have psych degree by chance psychology
no i just been studying i live with people who study and understand it more than i like
i want to say that but they get it differently that's why i like that because you just described
something called social modeling so this is a theory in psychology by um albert bandura who's
a psychologist who looked at how we emulate others' behaviors. He did a famous experiment with something called the Bobo doll.
So basically it had some kids look at someone, like an adult, interacting with this doll,
whether it was just playing with it or beating it up.
So let's say I went in there and beat the mess out of the doll.
And then—
Just walk up to a bunch of kids who have a doll, stab the fuck out of it.
That's basically what—but this is what they saw though.
The kids took it and ran with it.
So let's say I was just punching it.
There were some kids that were like, bang, bang, bang, bang.
So they escalated the shooting.
This is like in the sixties.
So he came up with this theory of social modeling.
So what you just said describes that.
So we shape ourselves to the ones we want to be like.
So the thing with this is when I look at it um it goes kind of into
uh uh you're familiar there's a guy named uh he just actually passed he was a psychologist named
anders erickson he had a name yeah he he his work was the the foundation yep so there it is let's
look at that real quick so older persons throw yeah they'll do whatever they do like uh inflated punching bag looking thing
yeah it's a clown yeah i had a bunch of those when i was a kid a clown
we're the kids i know i'm waiting for it oh man i think that's a i don't know i can't tell if it's
a guy or girl on my screen they're all punching the crap out of it kicking it that kid needs to
work on his form though the kid's picking it up kicking the shit out of it, kicking it. That kid needs to work on his form, though.
Kid's picking it up, kicking the shit out of it. He's like 60 years old right now.
Yeah, so people are just mimicking each other.
And you think about this happens in music a lot.
It happens in rap.
Sometimes somebody new that's coming up,
they're like, oh, he's trying to be like so-and-so.
And then look at Kobe Bryant.
I mean,
Kobe Bryant modeled everything.
Crazy bastard.
It's like,
this is a good tool.
They get way more aggressive.
Kobe Bryant,
you know,
mimic Jordan through and through on the court,
stuck his tongue out and everything.
And that's why it's good in that,
obviously not in that degree,
but in that degree is good because going back to Anders Ericsson,
he died,
I think in 2020 and his work was on the science of expertise.
So all his work was about looking at chess champions, musicians, like classical trained musicians like Yo-Yo Ma, Mozart, Tiger Woods.
The list goes on.
And his work was the predisposition to a book by Malcolm Gladwell called Outliers.
And they bring up something called the 10,000-hour rule.
So this gets misquoted.
And Malcolm Gladwell cleared it up because people hear it and they say 10,000 hours to be an expert.
But there's more to that.
And Erickson talks about it more, obviously, in his work because that 10,000 hours is an average.
That's saying three hours a day, every day for about 10 years comes about 10,000 hours.
But what he saw was depending on the subject, the people, whatever, it could be as short as 3,000 hours or as much as 20,000 hours.
So it was more so a recommendation.
It wasn't that saying that you just do 10,000 hours because, one, it has to be deliberate.
Because think about this.
I've been driving since I was 16, so 19 years.
I can't go to Miami Gardens near my area that was just the Miami Grand Prix.
I can't go out there and do anything with those guys.
I'm going to die.
You've been driving for so long.
Exactly.
So that's where people misconstrue because deliberate practice means, one, you get constructive
criticism.
And you guys coach, so you do this all the time.
You can't just be like, all right, you look good.
No, it's like, all right, okay, your knee's kind of buckled when you squat or whatever
it is.
So you have to have that part.
My go-to is let's try something different.
But that's a good, I love that cue because it's not putting them down, but it's reframing them to say, okay, something might not be the way it should.
So, okay, let's move over this way and try this.
But that's great.
But that's an expert quote.
And that's why psychology is great because you don't have to be a PhD.
But if you understand the basics, it'll help you be a better coach, a better spouse, a better friend even because it's about understanding your behavior.
It's not about people always say when I was in college, oh, you're a psych major?
Girl would be like, read my mind.
I'm like, that's a psychic.
But basically, it does help me understand, but it's a downside too, because then I'm
like, oh, wait a minute.
I know what that, and I'm not saying it's 100%, but I hate to say it, humans are not
as special as we think.
We're different to certain degrees there's differences obviously but on a collective because think why why did every civilization major civilization
have some form of pyramid why did every civilization civilization have some form of
of irrigation structure that made society go collective conscious our brains are wired a
certain way through hundreds of thousands of years of at least homeos homo sapiens species
but obviously there's more to that.
So it's like we're not as different.
There's small things that make us different.
We say we're special, whatever.
That's maybe your mom or your friend, cool.
But for the most part, psychology is about predicting likely behavior,
predicting likely, keyword likely, because with most research,
you want to see 60%, 70%, give or take.
With psychology, that number is about 50.
Yeah. So it's a little more room because social behavior is a lot harder to measure.
But the goal of a psychologist, whether it's research or practitioner, is to be able to measure these intangible, make the intangible tangible.
And that's where I come in. So it's like we have to be able to do that.
So when it comes to deliberate practice and all that, you have to have these concepts because if you're just doing it to do it,
you're not really getting better.
What's he doing in Florida, man?
Isn't it crazy there?
Like, those are like alligators and shit.
So I got a story about that.
At my first encounter.
Florida man.
I've had a few encounters with alligators.
Now, for those who are not from Florida, we get a bad rap.
You know Charlemagne Tha God?
Yes. So he has a saying. You know Charlamagne Tha God? Yes. So he
has a saying. You know the saying?
I'm waiting for it. So he says
the two craziest people or places
are people from
certain parts of
New York and all of Florida.
So it's everyone in
Florida for some reason. So, and I
might have misquoted it. It might even be lesser for
other people, but he said all of Florida. So I don't care if it's north florida i'm from south florida i'm like
from a place called deerfield beach which is right outside of fort lauderdale miami so i grew up in
a very diverse area but going back to the gators every floridian probably has at least one story
so this is the one i'll give y'all i was in third grade i had a teacher named mrs summers great lady
she definitely set me on a path she was one of those teachers
that understood you
because there's some teachers
that throw you under the rug
because they just dare to get a paycheck
she was not this
so rest in peace
she actually just passed
unfortunately to cancer
a few weeks ago
but I stayed in touch with her
over the years here and there
but not as much
but she was a good woman
so we went on a field trip
it was in the Everglades area
so Florida
if you don't know
the Everglades was all of Florida but obviously we've industrialized it whatever so there's still parts that is still like
that so we're in the um the canal and it was about it was every third grade class so we're talking
about maybe 200 maybe 200 kids so we're all split up in groups my mom was actually a chaperone
so basically we're canoeing through doing our thing
and we hit something and my mom the chaperone she's like is that a log and i'm like i don't
know if that's a log and the thing is we're not too far from the shore because we're on our way
back yeah so we're on our way back to the shore so everyone started panicking talking about fight
or flight so miss summers came to into the water and pulled the canoe back to the because like i said
we weren't that far from the shore yeah but it was like freaking out and she did that she pulled us
and everyone was like going crazy and it's like i was what eight years old so it was crazy right
so that's just one story but gators they they did so that was dinosaurs yeah it was yeah definitely
that it gets crazier depending what area you're in my areas is so
like south florida has a lot of everglades area out west but where people most people live you
don't see like where i call i'm from it's called deerfield beach i was a joke my dad who's born
and raised there and he his people moved there i think in the 50s but he was born and raised there
i'm like when i was a little i'm like dad i've never seen any deers in deerfield beach
it's like they're gone you killed them all
but basically it's like that's where it is now but if you go to certain parts like more central
florida area like outside of like orlando yeah that's swamp city like you know um university
of florida the gators it's called a swamp for a reason that's where you're gonna see i think
there's even monkeys up there this is him that's a crazy story i didn't even notice i found this
out like a few months ago really so this is happened. They said there was a movie in the 40s or 30s,
a Tarzan movie, and they brought all these monkeys
and after they finished, they just left them.
This generation of monkeys
has been breeding for 50, 60 years.
I think it's the same thing.
I think it's the same story with the gators.
They were released from a zoo or something.
The iguanas, though. That's what that was.
The iguanas there. Do you have iguanas here?
No, I don't think so. I don't think any place really has lizards like Florida. So iguanas, that's what that was the iguanas there do you have iguanas here uh no i don't think
so i don't think any place where they have lizards like florida so iguanas if you don't if you've
never seen an iguana like we have the i don't know other places in the world but in the country i
think we have the biggest iguanas jesus christ they're like this big i hate when people are like
it's not gonna do anything to you i'm like i don't care there's a video that's viral of a raccoon
fighting an iguana and i think the iguana won. They have sharp claws.
They climb up trees.
They can swim.
She just scares the shit out of me.
You know what's crazy?
They have an order out right now.
I think the senator said you can legally just kill them all, and there's no nothing.
They're actually a new business right now.
Check out Rocket.
He found it.
Is that it?
Oh, fucking Rocket.
That's not even the one I saw.
That's not even the one I saw.
There's one they were fading for real. I just just seen out of your backyard that's right it's not
uncommon normally times so my facility right like my facility is in like a warehouse type area
kind of like this and every now and then a frog would just hop out of nowhere a big old frog i'm
like wow this is florida animal be ready for an animal to jump at you at
there's a funny meme
where there's a guy
he's living in Florida
be like
it's literally him
checking every crevice
every door
every track
because it was a joke
to the people of the world
but in real
that's the one I saw
yeah
it was amazing
with all this stuff
you're saying about Florida
you think it gets a bad rap
but Florida doesn't
get a bad rap
Florida is described
exactly as it is.
It seems like it's wild. Why is everyone
moving? You're from New York. Why are the New York people
moving to Florida? It's cold in New York.
I think that's what they're doing. That too.
Oh, look at his tail. Oh, yeah.
How's that for neuroscience?
Wait, so the raccoon is winning.
Yeah, I got it wrong in the raccoon
one. I wasn't sure. Look at that.
Raccoons are savage, dude. Look at them going after you. Ohaccoons are savage. I don't know what's going on in Florida,
but raccoons are just chilling in the daytime now.
They're nocturnal.
You see this? This is broad daylight.
Something's going on.
I don't know if it's rabies.
Maybe it's rabies or something.
They should not be up right now.
I will go.
There's something called the Hillsborough Canal. It separates where I live in deerfield beach to boca raton so you're familiar with that
place or at least heard the name boca raton is where most of the people are just talking about
go to like prominent areas so there's a canal that separates and i live right on that canal
so that's why i see these things i see i have three foxes i have names from star fox red fox
and jamie fox this true story i'm not making this up if i have a video on my phone somewhere three foxes I have names from. Star Fox, Red Fox, and Jamie Foxx.
This is true story.
I'm not faking ending this up.
I might have a video on my phone somewhere of it.
But they live in the back.
Like I said, some parts are still swamped,
but where I live, it's a border between Deerfield Beach and Boca.
A fox is so pretty, too.
They're cool, but don't mess with it.
I don't go near them, no.
They make some weird demonic sounds
come out of their mouth.
It's not cute, but they look cute. Florida is... But don't mess with it. Yeah. I don't go near them, no. They make some, like, weird demonic sounds come out of the house. Yeah.
It's like, yeah, it's not cute, but they look cute.
But, yeah, so Florida is—see, it sounds bad, but that's only if you go to those places.
Like, let's be real.
Most people are going to, like, the hot spots.
Miami.
You're going to South Beach.
Yeah.
You're not going to random backyard of Nowheresville, Florida.
You're going to the hot spots where you're only going to see models and Ferraris and stuff.
I see that, too. That's funny about Florida. You'll see that, hot spots where you're only going to see models and Ferraris and stuff. I see that, too.
That's funny about Florida.
You'll see that.
And then two minutes later, see a Lamborghini.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I remember when I moved back home from college.
Because as a kid, I don't really think about this stuff.
When I got back, now life matters.
Like, I'm a grown man.
Money and being able to make money plays a role in getting in life, getting a girl, all that stuff.
So I started noticing, like, there's a lot of ferraris and
lamborghinis in south florida like like i didn't realize this because it didn't matter then now
it's like man i always ask if i can ask because i used to work at a auto this is my fourth job
so i used to work at sears auto yeah and in the same area so every time some guy came first of
all i was like in my head why are you bringing this to sears auto take it to ferrari because
they try to be cheap i'm like you have a three hundred thousand dollar car you want to get a oil change that's
like forty dollars cheaper for a high performance he's like how much for an oil change 69.99 it's
like wait that's a lot i'm like your car costs more than my house come on man but yeah so it
sets a going back to standards like seeing that all life, same thing with athletics. This plays into my coaching style as a mental coach because I grew up seeing some big names that were my rivals or teammates.
Jason Pierre-Paul, familiar with him?
Played with him in college.
He's a D.N.
I think he plays for the Ravens now, but he started with the Giants.
He played with the Bucks when they won when Tom Brady came, and now he's on the Ravens.
He was my teammate.
Me and him and Phil played together.
We had so many notable people we either played with or against.
And that was life in Florida.
So, hey, Florida's a great place if you can look past the crazy stuff like that.
I'm biased, I guess.
But, yeah.
Awesome, man.
Well, thank you for your time today.
Really appreciate it.
Andrew, want to take us on out of here, buddy?
Yes, sure thing.
Let us know what you guys think about today's conversation.
There's a lot of great stuff in today's podcast.
So drop those comments down below.
Make sure you guys hit that like button and subscribe.
Follow the podcast at MBPowerProject all over the place.
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Nick, where can people find you and your services?
So find me on IG, YouTube,
Twitter at MrMentalMuscle.
MrMentalMuscle. So I drop
weekly videos on
mental coaching. I cover
topics and current events. So like if something
happens, like with the Gervonta Davis
fight that just happened, I talk and I'll give my
like insight, almost like a reaction, but from a psych
aspect so you can get education,
content, things like that. Mr.
Mental Muscle on Instagram, YouTube,
Twitter. I forgot to ask you your mindset
and what your thoughts are on
people setting goals and just being
goal-oriented. I want to finish on that.
Yeah. So there's
process goals, there's performance goals,
and there's outcome goals. Outcome is
what you want to achieve. That's the easiest one to set because you know where you want to go.
Process is the hardest one because this is the day-to-day.
Think of it like a bank, right?
You go into a bank.
You say, all right, I'm in the bank.
Money?
No.
You have to work to get the money, then go to the bank to deposit the money,
let it sit there, maybe you invest in stocks.
Now crypto, right?
Yeah, my kids would always just say, like, go to the bank, you know you know it didn't understand but it's the same concept right no it still costs 50 so
get into your process what are you doing to get that money to deposit in the bank could be
figuratively or it could be literally if that's what you're trying to do so that's the process
goal and then performance is the result of the process if i do what i do day to day week to week
even hour to hour because every situation is a different aspect of your goal.
So that leads to performance because the performance is how do I actually execute?
The process gets me ready. The performance is my execution.
And the execution may, keyword may, get the outcome.
So that's how I do it and look at it. And I would say, get your mind right.
Awesome. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength.
I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Catch you guys later. Bye.
Nice one.
Damn.
I'm glad I caught that ball.