The Daily Stoic - Mastering High Performance | Paul Rabil PT1

Episode Date: May 4, 2024

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Hi, I'm Anna. And I'm Emily. And we're the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And we are really excited about our latest season because we are talking about someone very, very special. You're so sweet. A fashion icon. Well, actually, just put this on. A beautiful woman. Your words, not mine. Someone who came out of Croydon and took the world by storm. Kate Anna, don't tell them where I live. A muse, a mother, and a supermodel who defined the 90s. I don't remember doing the last one. Wow, Emily, not you.

Obviously, I mean Kate Moss. Oh, I always get us confused. Because you're both so small. How dare you. We are going to dive back into Kate's 90s heyday and her insatiable desire to say yes to absolutely everything life has to offer. The parties, the Hollywood heartthrobs, the rockstar bad boys, have I said parties?

You did mention the parties, but saying yes to excess comes at a price as Kate spirals out of control and risks losing everything she's worked for. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad free on Wandery Plus on Apple podcasts or the Wandery app. Hello, I'm Hannah. And I'm Saruti. And we are the hosts of Red Handed,

a weekly true crime podcast. Every week on Red Handed, we get stuck into the most talked about cases. From Idaho student killings, the Delphi murders, and our recent rundown of the Murdoch saga. Last year, we also started a second weekly show, Shorthand, which is just an excuse for us to talk about anything we find interesting because it's our show and we can do what we like. We've covered the death of Princess Diana,

an unholy Quran written in Saddam Hussein's blood, the gruesome history of European witch hunting, and the very uncomfortable phenomenon of genetic sexual attraction. Whatever the case, we want to know what pushes people to the extremes of human behavior. Like, can someone give consent to be cannibalized? What drives a child to kill? And what's the psychology of a terrorist? Listen to Red Handed wherever you get your podcasts and access our bonus short-hand episodes

exclusively on Amazon Music or by subscribing to Wondry Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app. Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space,

when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. One of the weirdest, most surreal experiences of my life was, I think this would have been 2019, I got asked to do a talk to the NFL. Not just the NFL, but at the NFL owners meetings. Twice a year, all the owners of the NFL teams

and all the coaches and all the head coaches and all the GMs and their families get together. It alternates between Florida and Arizona. And this was the off season one and I get invited to go to Arizona to give a talk about stoicism. So straight off the bat, it's an audience of like, you know, 30 plus billionaires.

People I've grown up watching on TV, the coaches, the GMs who make this all happen. And it's the NFL. So like they've partnered with Ted. So they have like the Ted stage in this hotel, the Biltmore in Arizona. And they were like, you've got 15 minutes to talk about stoicism to these people

and how it can apply to their actual lives. So I do talk about the funny thing is they were like, they made us run through it a couple of times. They made me take out a reference I made to the saints having their season unfairly ended by a bad pass interference call. Anyways, they run us through the talks a bunch of times, and then we are supposed to sit in the audience

and do the talk. And I go, guys, there's zero chance, I think I was going last or second to last. There's zero way I'm sitting here on my hands for over an hour while the other people go and perform. And I'm just sitting there. I was like, I'm gonna need to go to the bathroom like 10 times.

I'm gonna need to pace nervously for the entirety of that time. And I'm gonna need to be listening to music on repeat to get in the right head space to be able to do this. So I'm pacing out in the hallway and I see Bill Belichick walk by and he did not seem super happy to be there. And after I gave the talk, I think it went pretty good.

If you've ever seen the intro we do on the YouTube videos, I think there's like a flash of me walking on stage to do it. And I do the talk, I think it goes well. And then afterwards there's like sort of a conversation, like there's sort of like a cocktail party mixing event afterwards. And I walk out and everyone's talking, they're all having friends with each other, they've all known each other,

even though they compete with each other, they're all friends. And I just see Belichick, he's sort of standing alone. It's like, maybe I made this up, but the vibe I took was his girlfriend or then girlfriend said, you have to stay for at least 15 minutes. And he's just sitting there, you know, just putting in

his time. So I go up to him and I go, Hey, obviously, I'm a huge fan. I think you're familiar with some of my books, you know, Mike Lombardi, passed them to you many years ago, you guys brought me out to a game. Thank you for all the support. And he's like, Yeah, yeah, sure. And he showed me some notes that he taken from the talk. That was so cool. And then I go, Hey, by the way, I'm friends with Paul R cool. And then I go, hey, by the way, I'm friends with Paul Rabel.

And it's the entire demeanor changed. He just lit up and we talked for the next several minutes. And it was a total game changer. And it's a game changer because as it happens, Bill Belichick, the greatest football coach of all time, maybe one of the greatest coaches period of all time, is a huge fan of lacrosse. And he's a huge fan of today's guests.

He actually wrote the forward to Paul's new book, The Way of the Champion Pain, Persistence and the Path Forward, which I was lucky enough to help bring into existence. Paul is the LeBron James, the Steph Curry, the Michael Jordan, the Steph Curry, the Michael Jordan, the Tom Brady, the Caitlin Clark of men's lacrosse. Dominant, beyond dominant in college,

beyond dominant on the national team, and then beyond dominant in major league lacrosse. And then if that wasn't enough, tired of barely making a living as a lacrosse player, he founds his own league, the premier lacrosse league, which would go on to acquire the league that he used to play with and has brought lacrosse to this huge new audience.

And I mentioned all those people, like Sue Bird or Tom Brady or Steph Curry or whomever, they're fans of Paul as Belichick is fans of Paul, because game recognizes game. And there's an elite club of people who are the greatest ever at what they do. And even if one of those people is making a hundred million dollars a year

and the other one is making $10,000 a year, one is throwing darts in a tiny professional dart league and the other is playing in front of stadiums, there's still something across boundaries and games and rules and eras where, again, that game recognizes the game. Champions know what a champion is, and they know what it takes to be a champion.

However much you're paid, they know that that's all secondary to the thirst and the hunger and the drive for that greatness. So anyways, that's who Paul is. And I told him he should write a book about it. I said, look, like Tom Brady's not gonna write a book that's sort of the war of art, but for how to be a great champion at what you do.

You are in a position to do it and you would get more out of doing it. So he did. Actually, I passed them to my publisher portfolio at Penguin Random House and they did. It's an awesome book. And Paul came out, he was in town for a friend's wedding a couple of weeks ago

and he stopped by the studio and we talked for two hours. So I think you're really gonna like this interview. It's me and Paul Rabel talking stoicism, greatness, lacrosse and many other things. And you gotta check out the book. It's out in a couple of weeks, I think, but grab it now. Follow him on social media at Paul Rabel. He was sort of early to social media

and built big followings that allowed him, I think, to transform the sport and to get out of the smallness that was the cross at the time. I think he's just a fascinating case. And to bring this all full circle, Bill Belichick wasn't just nice to me at a party about this guy. He wrote the forward to this book

because he tried to recruit Paul to play for him at the Patriots. And a player would go on and do this after, but Paul had this choice. Am I gonna be the greatest of all time at what I do? Maybe not make much money doing it. Maybe not be well known by doing it. Or am I gonna try to go make a bunch of money

at something I don't care that much about that I'm not that good at and just be one of many who's done that thing. And he chose the harder choice at that crossroads. And I think it makes for a great book. Check out the way of champion pain persistence and the path forward follow at Paul Rabil, everywhere you can.

And if you haven't checked out a PLL game, you absolutely should. It's just a new way of thinking about lacrosse and thinking about major league sports. And I think it's gonna be huge. And I've been eagerly watching it as it's grown. And I think hopefully if this is your introduction to it, you will be doing the same.

And I actually forgot that we ended up having such a long conversation. I'm gonna split this interview up into part one and part two. So you're about to listen to part one of my interview with Paul Rabel. I'm good. How you doing? I'm good.

Do you know Samir Chaudhry is my best friend? From Collin and Samir. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know them. I did the show. Yeah, and then we've talked- You bought their company, right, or something? Yeah, we bought the La Crosse Network,

but you and I, we deal with a lot of people at different walks of life. He's my actual best friend. Like I was in his wedding. I didn't know that. Yeah, so we were just talking, I was like, I'm gonna see Ryan. He was like, Ryan just messaged me,

said you were coming in. And we were like, I don't think he knows how close we actually are. No, no, no, it came up somehow because I did their show like a couple years ago. Yeah, I listened to it. I was thinking in a way, I have you to thank for all of this whole setup

because when did I do your show? This would have been like 2019 or 18. Yeah, it should be 18. Or maybe it's 17, man. But I remember you were recording at a comedy club in New York, like which it was a comedy club downstairs and then there was a podcast studio upstairs.

And then later my friend James bought that comedy club. Really? But I was like, oh, this is so cool. There's a comedy club downstairs and then upstairs, there was like offices and a studio and David Films up there. And I did something else there. I did another podcast there a different time,

but I was like, oh, this is a really good idea. So you can have like retail or public facing stuff downstairs, but that's subsidized or supporting the stuff upstairs Which is basically what this bookstore is because my office is upstairs and then this is the studio. This was a barbershop Perfect you nailed it. Yeah, this is cool, right? How did you did you have a Designer come in with you or is this your idea? And then how do you contract someone to bring this to life?

This was done by a 20 year old kid named Braden who lives near me. Like he basically laid bricks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The bricks are books. But you didn't go to the bookstore yet, did you? No. All right, we'll go to the bookstore in a minute.

The bookstore is, well, no, I'll take you to the bookstore. But the bookstore is not, it's open till 10. Like I couldn't change that. But no, no, no. The bookstore has like a 20 foot tower of books that when we did this, it was like a natural thing. But yeah, I saw this in a museum.

I saw like this cool tower of books. And this kid who came over to my house when he was 16 to do, he asked if he could like do odd jobs to make money, you know, when like you were a kid. And he's become this like super talented contractor designer person who can be, he did. Wow, that's really cool. He did this whole space when you go back there.

He nailed it, man. He did all that, all those walls were plaster. The ceiling was, it was a drop ceiling in an office. Did he install the light in his well or did you have to? He did all of it, no, he did all of it. Pretty cool, right? Yeah, it's really cool. the ceiling was like a drop ceiling in an office. You did all of it, no, you did all of it. Pretty cool, right? Yeah, it's really cool. And multiple skills because understanding lighting

is usually its own discipline. Yeah, I think I'm the one who did the lighting and we had a consultant come in and tell us where stuff should go. But yeah, he did this whole thing. And do you write back there? No, no, sorry, so next door, so these are three buildings built in the 1800s.

And then this one is smaller than the other two. The other two are a little bit taller and a little bit longer. And so in the other two, it's the bookstores in the front. And then in the back, there's offices that go up. So I write over there. Cool. Bon Gris tour.

Yeah. I was also thinking two, right? Yeah. I was also thinking when we met the first time, that's where you introduced me to one of my absolute favorite books, which is the Captain's Class, which I had not heard of. That book's so good. Love Sam Walker. Yeah.

He's the best. Yeah, that book's amazing. That's one of my favorites. It's an intellectual exercise that as I, everything I've learned from you and going through this book as well, where the way it finishes wasn't how it was intended when it started.

Was that book supposed to be about something else? Yeah. What was it supposed to be about? He wrote the book to list the best dynasties of all time in sports. Right. And he built a curriculum to quantify and qualify that, knowing that someone was gonna be subjective.

And then when he got to that list, he realized they all shared the same thing in common, which was a singular captain who had the characteristics of a water bottle carrier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so he changed it and he wrote about the captain's class. That's interesting. So yeah, he was gonna just be like,

okay, what makes great teams great? And it was supposed to be all these different factors, but really this main thing is that they all have captives. It was gonna be a book about Barcelona, the Patriots, the Boston Celtics, women's national team in soccer. Why weren't the Spurs in that book? They are referenced, but they are not, they're not for the same reason that Michael Jordan, Chicago Bulls are not listed,

but they're referenced. And I can't remember why he sort of ruled out the Spurs, but he had a lot of positive things to say about Tim Duncan. Well, what's interesting about the Spurs is that they've been really good for, it's almost, it's like a dynasty in the true sense in that there's sort of multiple iterations of the dynasties and they don't involve

all the same players. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Whereas usually it's like a team has like a six or seven year run, we call it a dynasty, where the Spurs have like a 20 year run and none of the pieces are the same. With such a complicated subject, which is why I love the book.

Yeah. You love it, because you go in so many different ways. We have a team right now that- And then PLL? Yeah, that's head coach just resigned. Yeah. And this is a team that's been in three consecutive championships.

They're really good, and he's a fabulous coach. Just the Philadelphia Water Dogs. And I was meeting with them over Zoom two nights ago. And we're involving them heavily in the interview process. We're in a short list now. Well, the team gets to participate in choosing their coach. Yeah, I think that's right.

Yeah, sure, why not? Yeah, of course. I mean, it's probably less formal in the NFL or the NBA, but you'd be halfway smart if you're an owner and you're like, okay, I need my captains to get along with this next person we hire. So we formalized their role in it, but it led to a debate around what people talk about

with, say, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, like who's more important? And the truth is, they're both important and they both do different things and one wouldn't be good without the other and all that type of stuff. And when you're writing a book on it, it is an unbelievably challenging intellectual exercise

to try to get something that is worthwhile for a reader to take away. Yeah, yeah. I was thinking about it because your book starts with, actually, so the series I'm doing, and then your book both start with a similar sort of story, the idea of the choice of Hercules. Like you come to this crossroads and you have to choose

like the easy way, the hard way, the way people understand or the way people don't understand. And for you that came from meeting Belichick. So tell me that story. Well, Coach Belichick, who's a dear friend, he came to our practice my junior year in college. And he had just met my head coach at the time, Dave Petromala.

And one thing that I'll say about Bill Belichick is that his curiosity reigns. I think that is his strongest attribute. And an amazing tactician and motivator, but he's curious. And to be curious means you have to be humble. Yeah. Otherwise I think it's faux curiosity. So why was Bill Belichick at a Johns Hopkins lacrosse practice?

Because Johns Hopkins has the most national championships of any university in the country and had had the number one team for four consecutive years. So he said, there's gotta be something I can learn from this guy. So his relationship was with my head coach and I was the captain on the team. And when I found out he was coming,

I asked my coach if I could get 10 minutes in the office with him after practice and he went, well, let me ask. And he came back to me, he was like, so coach is gonna give you 10 minutes, but I'd like to know what you're gonna talk with him about. And I went in, there were probably 25 questions and the 10 minute meeting turned into a half hour,

maybe hour long meeting. I was just asking about you know Tom Brady and You know their path to not only the dynasty that they were building but The the challenges that they've had to overcome year over year Where they saw they were still a little early in that. What year was this event? Yeah, this was 2007. Okay. Yeah, so it was actually the year before

they had that undefeated run and loss in the Super Bowl to the Giants. Everyone, I mentioned this in my book, but when you think of Bill Belichick, you think of his eight Super Bowls, but he has the most losses as well. Yeah. Or going to be in his next job

because it's inevitable, but right now, the second most losses of any NFL coach, period, in history. But probably the most losses in the Super Bowl too, right? Like if you think about it, because he's been there the most times. Which tells you what? That the greatest lose, you know, Michael Jordan missed 9,000 shots,

Peyton Manning still has the record for most interceptions in a season. Cy Young has blown more saves than any pitcher in history. Martin Brodeur has given up more goals than any NHL goalie in history. Yeah, when you talk to baseball too, because there's so many games, you realize, oh, you've lost thousands of games.

You've lost an unfathomable amount of games, which is nuts. Football, there's not that many games in a season. So Bill Bellatrix plays a long time. He has a lot of losses, but like cumulatively, it's not that many. You look at some sports, you're like, oh, you had like basketball, you have to get used to losing like a lot

to be great. Totally. And you have to be willing to constantly put yourself in that position where there's high risk of losing and you're gonna lose and how are you gonna respond? So anyway, back to this meeting, we kind of, I feel like we hit it off and we stayed in touch. We exchanged information.

Then he came to a game and kept coming to practices my senior year. And when I graduated, I grew up in, just outside of Washington, DC. So at the time I was a Redskins fan, not a Commanders. And he sent me a box of Patriots gear. And the note was, I kept the note. What did it say?

I should have it right in front of me right now. But he said, it was a little bit in jest. He was like, congratulations on an amazing career. I wanted to outfit you in the right team now. He was like, and then he wrote a note like, cause there's a big puffy jacket. He was like, I know it's not that cold in Maryland, but when you come up to Boston later this year

to watch a game, you'll wear this coat. So that happened. I went up to Boston. I had finished my first season playing professional lacrosse and we sat down and talked about sports and life and what was important to me. And I think what coach Belichick does so well, because he's had world-class players on his team

that didn't play college football, is that he's an incredible recruiter of talent that leans towards soft skills in the professional ranks. Meaning, you know, there's thousands of athletes who run a faster 40 than me and bench press more than I do. But he has an ability to see, okay, this person has something upstairs that I think is the differentiator in the pro game. Like I can teach them the specifics of the position,

but I can't teach, but they've got the other things that not enough players have. Yep, not only I can't teach them, but I don't wanna teach someone to show up at six o'clock in the morning every day. I don't wanna teach that same person to be the last to leave. I don't wanna teach that person

to have this endless thirst to study film, and when he senses that, I think he goes long on it. So a little bit out of his skis, because I had never played football, not even youth football, is we began to poach the topic on coming out for the Patriots. And he wanted me to be a strong safety.

And I wanted to be a wide receiver. But who am I to argue with? Yeah, yeah, sure. Joe Belichick. So we broke that dinner and was like, well, think about it. I went back to my strength conditioning coach, Jay Dyer. Remember buying football pads and saying, I think we should give this a shot.

Then we had several conversations later. And the one for me was more of a heart to heart with coach where I had then my second year, won MVP. So you've now gone pro in lacrosse. Yeah. And I had been selected to the team USA, eventual gold medal team that would play in the world championships in England.

And he just said, look, man, like, I think you can make it on this team. It's going to be a long journey. Little did I know that Chris Hogan, who four time All-American lacrosse player at Penn State, two years younger than me, ended up taking Coach Belichick's request and winning through Super Bowls.

Anyway, I love Chris. He said, you know, it's so rare in life that any of us get an opportunity to be the greatest at what we do. And he was like, look, you know, the greatest lacrosse player we could debate is Jim Brown or Gary Gate. But in this moment now, you have a chance to do that.

And by accolades, you have been called that. And if we strip out all this material stuff in life, wage differences, because they were massive. What's a professional lacrosse player making in 2009 or whenever this is? The league maximum was $14,000 for the season. And just the NFL minimum is what, like 400? Practice roster players get 400,000.

And Chris Hogan makes what in his NFL career? Chris Hogan's biggest contract, I believe, was $11 million a year. And that was after the Super Bowls and was really, I mean, he's incredibly talented player. And then, you know, as life often reminds us, full circle happens and he played a season in the PLL with me.

Sure. He's my teammate. But this is, I guess, this is an eight, nine figure decision that you're making. Yes, but he has an incredible ability to strip all that down. To what really matters. And walked away thinking, this is not only a lot less money

and a lot less attention. And I say attention, I'm speaking more as the businessman now of viewership and media marketing. It's the biggest show on earth, like millions of people every weekend. Versus the smallest show on earth. Not even a show. Yeah, you've always been far more eloquent than me

and being able to steal down something better. Like it's not even being televised. Yeah, yeah, not even televised. Yeah. But he really convinced me, and I don't think I actually, I shouldn't say that, he never convinces anyone of anything, but he really made it very clear.

He never convinces anyone of anything, but he really made it very clear. If our souls were aligned from an integrity and purpose and calling perspective, that that was my calling. And I had no clue what my career would evolve into. Sure. I never had a plan to launch a professional lacrosse league with my brother. I never knew that I would have a 14 year

professional lacrosse career. And I never knew things like I would go through a divorce and lose championships and have seven surgeries and all of that stuff is largely through the lessons of many other athletes, entertainers and entrepreneurs I write about in the book, is part of the journey. Yeah. And the best thing you can do is take the first step.

Right. And make a hard commitment. But there must've been moments where you, cause I saw it in the documentary, you're like, you're walking to a convenience store to buy your own ice, to ice your knees. Where you're like, what the fuck was this decision? Yeah, yeah, for sure.

And there's, I've always had- You're on a Southwest flight between games. Like, there must've been moments where you're like, it would have been way easier to do the other thing. Yeah, you know, there must've been moments where you're like, it would have been way easier to do the other thing. Yeah, you know, it's an interesting thing because our ego tells us it would be way easier to do the other thing, but a lot of the greatest athletes in the world

grew up in poverty. Yeah. For me, the element of elements of the way that pro lacrosse players were treated, having to walk to CVS to get my own bag of ice so I could ice my foot that eventually broke, that stuff was motivating. And as we learned, one side of happiness is sadness,

life and death, winning and losing. And I was certainly on one side of the spectrum of you are a professional athlete with the worst circumstances and the highest ambitions. What are you gonna do? And so it was motivating for me. And I think even about someone like Michael Jordan, who played in the NBA in the 80s,

when it wasn't the NBA of today. Yeah, sure. But what was always inspiring to me was watching video of him in an empty gym, dribbling the basketball against the hardwood. And that sense of like, you know, as athletes, we all wanna be in the world championship game, playing in front of 55,000 people in a sold out venue

with the ball on our stick and the game on the line. But to get there, you have to spend tens of thousands of hours in an empty stadium with the ball in your stick, in an empty stadium with the ball in your stick, in imagination, in repetition, in practice. So that to me was, you know, going through those experiences, I remember feeling like Mickey Rourke in the wrestling. Yeah. You know, if I would have applied myself, I could have gone to the NBA. You think so?

Yeah, I think so. But it's just like, it's been done. You know, I didn't want to, I was like, I don't want to be a follower. Hi, I'm Jason Concepcion. And I'm Shea Serrano. And we are back. We have a new podcast from Wondering. It's called Six Trophies.

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It's like everyone wants like they're calling, right? You like I got to find the thing I was meant to do And, you know, a lot of people aren't lucky enough to find that or to hear that call or to have the courage to pursue it. But maybe what we don't talk enough about is like, you also don't get to choose what it is, right? So, yeah, sometimes you're Mickey Rourke and the wrestler. Sometimes, you know, you happen to choose the thing

that's the most popular thing in the world. But like, yeah, you don't get to choose your niche and you don't get to choose how lucrative or well followed that niche is. So like you get this calling to be great at something. I'm sorry, you were called to be great at darts or you were like, I say this, it's like, what I ended up falling in love with

and wanting to write about was an obscure school of ancient philosophy. And there's a ceiling on that, right? Like it's been great and it's bigger than I thought it was gonna be. But there's naturally a ceiling on the amount of people that are gonna be interested in that. And so, you know, you love music

and you end up being called to classical music. There's gonna be a ceiling on that versus if you write, pop songs or rock songs, you're probably never gonna perform what you do in a sold out stadium, right? And you have to be able to just appreciate and feel grateful that you found the thing

you're meant to do and you get to do it at the highest level. You don't get to go, but it would be so much better if at the highest level, you don't get to go, but it would be so much better if 2000 more, 2000% more people appreciated what I did. Yeah, I write about Scott Galloway in the book. And I think one of the lessons that he shares to his class at NYU Stern is this false notion that our passion

is somewhere out there, like an Easter egg hunt, we have to go find it. So let's try a bunch of things. And he was like, your passion is actually already inside of you. It is tied to what you are most talented at. That's what your journey is to discover. And when you find whatever that is,

whether it's writing or playing sports or playing music or being an accountant, when you find what you're best at, your job is to accelerate in that area such that you can become one of the greatest in the industry and all of the accoutrements that are associated with that help that become in hindsight now your favorite thing in the world.

And this book is a collection of lessons from my experiences and the greatest athletes, entertainers, entrepreneurs, writers. And the reason why it's a collection of lessons is that there is no blueprint. We're all different. We all have different upbringings. We've all won and lost at different occasions.

We've all been introduced to things differently. And so my hope in writing this was really this book servicing as a guide to where someone can see themselves through the experience of others that preceded them. And an example is YA collection. Michael Phelps was dragged into a pool by his mother. His two sisters swam. He didn't wanna be a swimmer.

Kobe Bryant's first basketball season, he scored zero points across the entire season. Flip to the other end of the spectrum, the best footballer ever is Pele, the best football player ever is Tom Brady. Before games, Pele used the art of visualization. He was calm, thinking about the goals he would score. Tom Brady motivated himself through anger.

Yeah. Totally different. Yeah, sure. And two of the greatest footballers. Right. One needed to heighten his senses to perform and the other needed to calm down. Sure.

So, you know, for any of us to think, hey, this is the way. Yeah. It's misleading to the infinite amount of experiences that any young athlete or person wants to sort of cultivate today. Yeah, although there is something interesting about your story, because it's sort of proof of this idea

that like game recognizes game. You'd think that, you know, football being played in some huge stadium, millions of dollars, that the experience of being great at that would be very different than, I don't know, football being played in some huge stadium, millions of dollars, that your experience of being great at that would be very different than, I don't know, Tom Brady's experience, or LeBron James, or Steph Curry's experience. But those guys know you, and you guys have a certain,

like you're sort of operating on a wavelength that I think very few of them could understand, or that very few people not on that wavelength could understand. So there is this thing where like, yeah, you wouldn't think people in these very different sports would sort of get it, but you guys all do get it.

And I imagine it's kind of a small club. Yeah, it's at the professional level. Yeah. And why is part of this book, it's broken into three sort of paths, call it, call them books is amateur, professional and beyond the game because it changes through each stage in life.

So that shared frequency that you reference that I have with a lot of the top athletes and even people like you, it doesn't really, there's so much crossover between sports and life and other disciplines. That's really only entered stage on sort of on book two as becoming a professional. Because when we're amateurs, we're all like just discovering,

working really hard, falling in love, banging against the wall. Professional is you and I, I know Steven Pressfield is one of your favorite writers. And through this process, I studied the war of art and turning pro. And he does a really good job on the ladder of just explaining how different life is

when you become a pro. And I think when I hear you say that, it's like, that's the frequency that I feel connected. And the turning pro doesn't mean the size of the check because it's like, Caitlin Clark is pro. You know what I mean? And her check size is going down. Yeah, but I'm saying like, she's been pro for a while.

Like, NIL aside, there's a decision you make or a shift that happens in a person when sort of talent meets moment and dedication that whether you're officially amateur status and turning pro, that's not what we're talking about. It's a mindset shift. It's a transition you make in the pursuit of what you're doing.

And since the vast majority of people never make that transition, the people who are on the other majority of people never make that transition, the people who are on the other side of it, yeah, whether they're professional bowlers or rodeo riders or writers, they all sort of can recognize something in each other that they understand is different

than the people who have not crossed over. Totally. And just quick note on Caitlin Clark, temporary shift, there's a lot of headlines right now because she's declared for the WNBA. And the way NIL works is for college athletes, they can get endorsements. And she's estimated to be getting

like $900,000 in endorsements. But the way that it is structured is that when you go pro, your contracts end. So there will be a temporary change between her wage, but she'll just renew. But anyway, that's a lot of debate back and forth. And you're like, come on, guys. But similar to your world,

the market for watching college women's basketball is actually bigger than women's professional basketball. And so there is an argument people are making and she probably had to consider it. You think about turning pro. If turning pro is how much money you make, then she would be better to continue playing and utterly dominating as a fifth year at Iowa,

then she would be a different pro. But turning pro is, I wanna play against the best people in the world at the highest level in the world. And so turning pro is, in her case, literally turning pro, even though she's probably going to make less money or take a financial hit in doing so. Totally. There is sacrifice, there's a lot of discipline,

there is holding yourself to the highest of high standards, all of which, among others, all of which we're not prepared for. Yeah. There's mostly, if we zoom out and think about society, there's mostly dialogue and resources and coaching that are dedicated to getting drafted to the pros. Yeah. And very little dedicated to,

okay, once we're here, what do we do now? And it's a reason why the average life expectancy for any pro athlete is two and a half years. Oh, in the league, they don't die, but yeah, you have a good respect. Yeah, yeah, in the league. Should have clarified that. I was like, oh, wow, okay.

Yeah, so their career life expectancy. Well, because that's the thing about turning pro. So you turn pro, right? And you're on your own. Yeah, yeah, you're now responsible for yourself. And a lot of people are not prepared financially from maturation perspective. They're just not ready to do it.

And so they burn out or blow up or make mistakes. Plus it's just wicked hard. And so turning pro is cutting, it's burning the boats behind you, it's cutting all the safety nets and now you're just doing it. And most people can't do it very long. And coming full circle back to Bill Belichick,

that's what he susses out. Yeah. He has an ability and a knack for sensing that emotionality around a Caitlin Clark, around a Tom Brady, and that's, I think the greatest coaches do. Spent a lot of time studying coaches because of that sort of interchangeable attribute

that is debated quite a bit. Who's more valuable, coach or player? They both are. And if they can work in concert, really, what can you make out of it? It's pretty special. Yeah, I mean, the idea of like actually using your amateur status though

is something I think worth pointing out. Cause I remember when I was in college, I wanted to meet people. So I'd send all these emails and like everyone was, I'd be like, I'm a student at this school. And they'd always like, they'd help you, right? And then the second I left school, this is the thing I didn't think about.

I dropped out to work for Robert Greene, which is this amazing opportunity. But what I didn't sort of calculate was how suddenly people were less interested in helping me because I went from being a student, which is like this own protected class that isn't, you know, that everyone wants to support and help for the most part,

to suddenly just one of everyone, or effectively the competition. Like when I get a random unsolicited email and someone says, I'm a high school student, I'm more likely to respond and help, student, I'm more likely to respond and help or a college student more likely to respond and help than just somebody who's like, I'm 26 years old. And I'm like, good for you, man.

You're on your own, right? And so there is this, that amateur status. You wanna milk it for everything that's worthwhile, you can, because then once you turn pro, yeah, you walk into the league, guys aren't even, they're not only not trying to help you, they wanna kill you. Because there's only so many spots,

and you are by definition trying to take somebody's spot now. Totally. I mean, money's a hell of a drug. And so the difference between pro and college, at least formally, is that you're right. Not only is money on the line, it's now your career. And then they also incentivize contracts, which in team sports, it's all about the team, right?

But the GMs and the ownership groups and the coaches incentivize a wide receiver to have more catches than his teammate. And he gets paid another million bucks. So why are we gonna get aggravated at the athlete versus the system? So yeah, it's really complicated for pro, but going back to amateur.

Well, that's a good point though, because people go like, oh, why isn't this quarterback mentoring this younger quarterback? And it's like, if he was a college student, he'd mentor him, but now they're both fighting for the same spot, and so they're not friends. And I think the goal is to have, in life, I've found,

is to have, is to be able to nurture that competitiveness and that edge that you have and pair it with perspective. Yeah. Speaking of professional, when I was 28, and that edge that you have and pair it with perspective. Speaking of professional, when I was 28, I lost a world championship that the team I was a part of was dubbed the greatest ever in on our home soil, Team USA versus Canada. A week later, I was back playing in Major League Lacrosse in a playoff contention game and broke my foot.

So two of the worst things that could have happened to me in my life did in a matter of 10 days. And at the time, what got me to that place of high performance was a singular focus around not only being the greatest lacrosse player in the world, but the greatest ever. And it was so singular and everything pointed in that direction that it was my identity.

And it was through that depression that I went through and the recovery of my foot that I got into sports psychology and then I got into therapy. And my fear was that, oh, I'm learning like what I call now a soft masculine approach to life. Is that gonna impact my ability to compete at the highest level?

And the answer is no, it shouldn't. Sure. And so going back to your point around two quarterbacks competing, their jobs are on the line. Of course they're going to do whatever they can to hold onto their job and their goals as a starting quarterback in the NFL. But what they can't, what that shouldn't turn into

is hatred for the other person or ridicule for the other person because they're doing the same fucking thing you are. Yeah. And I find that, again, that to me has been the unlock of various ebbs and flows and emotionality in my life. Do you wanna hear about the $100 wedding dress that just saved Abercrombie? Or the tech acquisition that was just like Game of Thrones?

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listen on Wondery, the destination for business podcasts with shows like The Best One Yet, How I Built This, and many more, Wondery means business. Yeah, Lance Armstrong told me like, he'd always been competitive, but then when he got cancer, it was like sort of the competition of his life, right? He's like, if I win, I live, and if I lose, I die, right?

So he's like, I have to beat this thing. And he was basically saying that he was sort of never the same after that. It became like just sort of winning was literally just sort of a switch flipped in his head that winning was life and death. And when you look at all the things that came after that was part of it. So it wasn't just like, hey, I like winning.

I wanna win. The money is in winning, not in losing. It was like, winning is everything. And therefore one must do everything and anything to be able to do it. And so that can be really hard if you're already naturally driven, you're already competitive

and then there's intense rewards on the line when your identity, which is another form of life and death, like this is who I am. And if I can't do it or I don't win, then I'm nothing. The ability to modulate that or to turn it off or have it in perspective is like a really hard thing. Well, you study death and something you and I have talked about quite a bit,

and I've started studying it more and more, something that was very resistant to naturally. But it comes back to this discussion of when we die, we experience an ego death. And we have this release of a five MEO molecule that we get when we die and when we're born. And when that happens, none of this stuff matters anymore. And it's actually relieving.

Yeah. And it goes to, you know, what I try to talk about in this book, which is making decisions around what is authentically important to you versus having your name on a building that lasts the next 100 years and all this other shit that like when we die, which we all will, doesn't matter. Well, not just when we die, but when we get vulnerable,

like you know who Scott Pollard is? Yeah. He played at Kansas. He was on the Kings when I was a kid. I think he won a championship with Cleveland. But he's a great basketball player, seemed like a real fun guy. And then the other side of being really tall and really big

is that your heart can't take it. And his heart basically gave up. Like every dude in his family, the same thing happens, they're all huge. And suddenly he needs a heart transplant or he's gonna die. You can imagine in a second, all that, as soon as you get the news, like,

hey, your heart has two years left. And if another very large person doesn't die in an accident and happen to be an organ donor, it's it for you. The championship goes away, the final four games go away, the playoff games go away, the $100 million contracts go away. All of a sudden it gets really narrow really quickly and there's no front desk you go to and you say,

I'll give you all these things There's no front desk you go to and you say, I'll give you all these things in exchange for a couple more years of life. Do you know what I mean? It gets equal really quick, really fast too. Yeah, and this is sort of- And he just got his heart. He just got one. So it worked out, but-

It worked out. And similar to Lance, the experience of going through it is game changing. And you know, this is part of, and I first wanna say, I would never have written this book had you not sent me an email, not knowing that I was entering my final season

as an athlete, it was in March of 2021, and say, hey man, why haven't you written a book yet? Can I say that? That's funny. Yeah, call me. And it was mainly because we met when I had you on my podcast seven years ago. And my goal out of curiosity was to interview people

who I thought were brilliant and learn from them. And over five years had a lot of guests. And so when we got on that call, you were like, I think you can translate a lot of these conversations I've listened to the book. Went back and forth a little bit more and that's how we began. The challenge that I've learned as a writer is,

ah, there's so, I mean, just looking around this room, there's so much brilliance here. And, oh, I remember my call with you, I said, you know what, I've never considered writing a book, is like, no one wants to fucking hear from me. And you were like, that's why you should write a book. And you're like, if you didn't have imposter syndrome, then we would actually find that no one wants

to read your book. Like those, I think he said something like, those who think they have a huge audience don't, and those who don't think about their audience and don't think that they're capable of delivering something can. But you know what's funny? So all these books, a lot of them have sold many,

many thousands of copies. Some of these authors are quite famous. A lot of them are no longer with us, but all these books, which these people sweated over and poured themselves into were purchased like in bulk in a bin, right? So you work so hard on this thing and financially it matters if you sell them one by one.

These were supplied by a company called Books by the Foot that sells books literally in volume, like the amount of square footage you are trying to cover. And primarily they sell them for like, I don't know, some billionaire wants to have a fancy looking library but doesn't actually read books and that, or it's like a movie set, they need a scene. It looks like someone has a lot of books in their house.

So that's what they, so these are garbage. These books are garbage. Do you know what I mean? Like these are all books that people donated or we're gonna throw away. And they're as individual titles, they were meaningless. They were sold by weight and size and square footage. And so that's the other thing.

It's like you think, hey, I'm gonna win this championship. I'm gonna get this belt, I'm gonna get this trophy. And then at some point, eventually down the line, like if it's really valuable, your family's like selling it at auctions. If it's not valuable, maybe they're using, you know, your great grandchildren are using that cup as like a thing to throw their keys in when they come in. Or it's just trash, you know? Like that's a

Grammy that I won. And I put my own little plaque on it and it says this is just gonna go in the garbage when you die. Because like, you know, these things matter so much and then they don't matter at all. Yeah, yeah. You have my mind running in a million directions right now. I think about these books and sort of the point that I was drawing to, they're laid like bricks.

And books that we're fortunate to consume, they layer us with intellectual bricks. And the challenge that I kept coming up against that I quite enjoyed and still have a lot of imposter syndrome around is learning from masterminds, and imposter syndrome around is learning from masterminds, their stories, and then in some cases interpreting and other cases, trying to lay the next brick to it.

For example, Tony Robbins, one of the quotes that he shared that I really enjoyed on my podcast is, you've gotta trade in your expectations for appreciation. Sure. And I loved that. And as I was going through the professional chapter, I felt that that was, that needed to evolve versus beyond the game, which I think it's well intact. And that's why the stages of life,

we take things differently. So the way it could evolve in professional chapter is you can have high expectations and appreciate, not trade. Because the minute you trade, I learned in sports psychology is the minute you become a shitty player. You have to have an extraordinarily high expectation for yourself. You can't just be having fun out there.

And that's gonna cause duress. And that's what he's, he works with such a wide range of people and just that task alone is impossibly challenging. But a lot of his work is around lowering the duress. And in sport- He's your sports psychologist. Yeah. Yeah.

In sport, you have to keep friction. Yeah. You know, you have to have nerves. Nerves are actually a biochemical response in our body that's warming up our blood and getting our muscle fibers to begin to twitch so we can perform at our best. Yeah.

Nervousness or sits in your stomach, it feels like butterflies. Yeah. And that can be interpreted different ways. But when your body is like kind of shaking, as a performance athlete is priming you, it's your engine priming. And if you're not feeling that, it doesn't matter to you.

And the reason why things don't matter is you're just not holding yourself in a certain regard. So anyway, that was an ongoing challenge writing this. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and would really help the show. We appreciate it. I'll see you next episode.