The Daily Stoic - Steve Magness on Winning The Inside Game

Episode Date: February 8, 2025

In his work as a performance expert, Steve Magness has discovered that to truly reach the highest level in any field, it’s the mental game that matters most. Steve joins Ryan today to discuss intrinsic motivation, the difference between confidence and ego, and the psychological impact of performance expectations.Steve Magness is a world-renowned expert on performance and author of Win the Inside Game: How to Move from Surviving to Thriving, and Free Yourself Up to Perform. His writing has appeared in Forbes, Sports Illustrated, Men’s Health, and a variety of other outlets. Steve’s expertise on elite sport and performance has been featured in The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and ESPN The Magazine.Check out Steve’s new book Win The Inside Game and grab signed copies of Steve’s books, Do Hard Things, Passion Paradox, Peak Performance, and The Science of Running at The Painted Porch. You can follow Steve on Instagram, X, and YouTube: @SteveMagnessListen to Steve's first interview on The Daily Stoic Podcast: https://dailystoic.com/steve-magness/🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. When I travel with my family, I almost always stay in an Airbnb. I want my kids to have their own room. I want my wife and I to have a little privacy. You know, maybe we'll cook or at the very least we'll use a refrigerator. Sometimes I'm bringing my in-laws around with me or I need an extra room just to write in. Airbnbs give you the flavor of actually being in the place you are. I feel like I've lived in all these places that I've stayed for a week or two or even a night or two. There's flexibility in size and location. When you're searching you can

look at guest favorites or even find like historical or really coolest things. It's my choice when we're traveling as a family. Some of my favorite memories are in Airbnb's we've stayed at. I've recorded episodes of a podcast in Airbnb. I've written books. One of the very first Airbnbs I ever stayed in was in Santa Barbara, California while I was finishing up what was my first book,

Trust Me I'm Lying. If you haven't checked it out, I highly recommend you check out Airbnb for your next trip. You just realized your business needed to hire someone like yesterday. With Indeed, there's no need to stress. You can find amazing candidates fast using sponsored jobs. With sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so you can reach the people you want faster.

And just how fast is Indeed? In the minute I've been talking to you, 23 hires were made on Indeed, according to Indeed data worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $100 sponsored job credit to get your job's more visibility at indeed.com slash wonder ECA. 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. As you know, I live on a dirt road.

It's lovely. It's like going back in time and it's better on my knees for when I'm running or working out, but I have put thousands, maybe even approaching tens of thousands of miles on this road over the years. Walks, walks runs bike rides ATV I guess I don't get credit for those but I have put in my miles on this road I was on it this morning with my son stomping in puddles because it rained last night

I was running on it yesterday and my wife drove up the road while I was running on it and my wife drove up the road while I was running on it and she rolled down the window and both the kids started laughing and pointing at me because I had mud and dirt all up and down my legs and back and they said it looked like I had a terrible accident on the run, you know, so I was bullied about it, but it was a good run.

This is something I do every day, the walk and the run, the bike ride or whatever. Sometimes swimming, I'm gonna go swimming tomorrow, hopefully at the athletic club in LA where I'm in town to record a podcast. But for me, the physical practice is an important part of regulation. By that I mean being not dysregulated.

Seneca talks about how we treat the body rigorously so that it's not disobedient to the mind. He was saying that sports and exercise and physical practices are a way to win what my guest today would call the inside game, seizing command of oneself, the empire between the ears, as I sometimes call it. Steve Magnus is a world renowned expert on performance.

His books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies. He's written for Sports Illustrated and Men's Health. He's been featured in the New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and ESPN. He's also a running coach. He was with Nike for a long time. He's worked with elite athletes in a bunch of different sports.

He's also a whistleblower. We talk about that in the first episode I did with him. The inside game isn't just like, hey, how do I focus more? How do I concentrate more? But it's also in the pursuit of virtue we're talking about. How do you tune out the noise and focus on what's important? How do you do hard things physically,

but also mentally and spiritually? How do you do what's right, even when people criticize you for it? Sleep at night, right? These are all parts of winning that inside game, mastery of the self. And he has a new book called that, Win the Inside Game. And it's about why we underperform,

how we get in our way, how we don't stand up for our values, why we choke under pressure. I guess we'd call that losing the inside game. But winning the inside game is stepping up when the stakes are high. Doing those hard right things. Getting out of our own way. Not overthinking things. Concentrating. Finding inspiration, motivation, connection. Doing the things that good work comes from. Steve was on virtually for his book, Do Hard Things, all linked to that episode in the show notes.

It's well worth a listen. He's also co-written a book called The Passion Paradox and Peak Performance with my friend Brad Stolberg, who is awesome. Also been on the show before. You can follow Steve on social at Steve Magnus. He signed a bunch of copies of the new books while he was here. I think you're really going to like this episode.

And I got to figure out, my dad kind of snuck away from me today. I got to do my walk in the morning, but I did not get to run. So I'm going to try to squeeze one in after I record this thing. And then before I go pick my other son up from school. I want to win the inside game so I can deal with the traffic on the way home, deal with the stress of the day and the craziness of the world. I wish you victory in your inside game today and I hope you check out this new book and grab it at the painting porch.

I'll link to it in today's show notes. So what is this? Five books? How many have you done? It's a good question. I gotta count. Five, yeah. I'm just trying to think.

So I was doing this talk the other day and they were asking me like, what do, is that talk to the sports teams and military and business? They're like, what do they all have in common? And I think I said something close. I didn't say they're all trying to win the inside game. But that was more or less my answer, which is like, I think people would

think they would all be focused on whatever the very specialized thing they do is, whether it's like building buildings or blowing them up or her, you know, like winning. But you know, like, yeah, you think that that they would spend all their time thinking about like the technical task before them, but it's almost always mental performance side of things. Absolutely. I mean, that's what I found in my own career

as an athlete and then helping elite athletes. I thought, oh, it's the technical stuff. Like this, the X's and O's is gonna set us apart. Totally. The training for the athlete. Yes. But then you realize it's like, wait a minute. Yeah.

No, it's this whole other side over here. I've gotta learn this or else I'm gonna be in trouble. Yeah, and it's weird at like what a basic level they're thinking about these things are. Do you know what I mean? They're just like, let's focus on what we can control. It's so simple, the stuff that they end up talking about that you think it must be like this misdirection

to like hide what obviously they're focused on behind closed doors. Because it seems like cliches. Yeah, yeah. You're like, focus on the process, control the controllables. And you're like, really? Yes.

Is this the thing? But like, as you work with these individuals, as you see behind the closed doors, you're just like, no, this is the secret, almost. It's just too simple, almost, where people want the complicated, complex thing. But it's like, no, we've got to nail these basics. And if we nail these basics, everything else kind of takes care of itself. Yeah like if you

hear Matthew Stafford or someone has a quarterbacks coach you're like obviously they are talking about the technical side of like how you release the football blah blah blah and it's no it's mostly that stuff it's kind of weird. I think in my work with elite athletes So what I learned quickly is that my job when I was coaching them was to keep them from doing dumb things So like 90% of the coaching was like make sure they don't get in their own way Yes, or get in their own head. Yes Exactly, and I think what all these kind of cliches are, are like keeping the main thing, the main thing to use another cliche. It's like, what really matters? What do we really need to

focus on? Because it like keeps everything else, you know, that might get in the way, that might cause them to overthink, that might cause them to overthink and then they choke. in their way that might cause them to overthink, that might cause them to overthink and then they choke. Yeah. It's like those things. No, I gave a talk to the coaches of the Los Angeles Rams and that's one of their things is keep the main thing the main thing. You're like, you're being paid tens of millions of dollars to keep the main thing the main

thing. You needed a reminder of that, but apparently you do. And I'm not making fun of it like, oh, they're at this, this like basic level. I'm saying the opposite. I'm saying that at the elite, it's like the horseshoe, at the elite level, they're being reminded of the same thing that a coach might be telling like an eighth grade basketball team.

Absolutely. Yeah. That's what it is. I mean, I spent 10 years of my life working alongside Carl Lewis, who is like, you know, one of the greatest athletes in history. And the thing that I observed is he's literally giving the same advice

that I remember like my high school sprint and track coach giving, because he realizes that it's like, what matters, show up, stay in your lane, which means like, keep the focus on you, not everyone else you're competing against. Yeah. Execute the things that we, you know, practice. You need to do this, this and this and this. And he's telling this to people who are among the fastest humans in the world. And at first you're just like, wait a minute, like shouldn't there be some complicated thing? And it's like, no, like performance,

we make it super complex. But what really matters is a lot of people have the skills to execute it or the talent to do it, but they let the external get in the way. They let the chase for achievements or the shiny object like distract them. They let the comparison to that competitor get in their head. All of these mental things are essentially to get you to focus on what actually matters and what helps you show up on game day or race day or when it's time to perform.

It is interesting when you look at the people who don't make it or have trouble. It's usually pretty like basic Things that get them into trouble. It's like oh they were just out partying too much or they were late or they had a bad attitude You know what I mean? It's it's obviously there's also injuries and whatever But it's usually not that they technically could not do the thing like or they wouldn't have been in the technically could not do the thing. Or they wouldn't have been in the ballpark, literally and figuratively, to begin with. So a couple of years ago,

when I was coaching college track, I collected all this data. And track is great because you can collect data like crazy because everything is measurable. And it's the same thing over and over again. It's not like a football game where there's an infinite number of possibilities. You can compare like against like in those sports.

Exactly, and you have a clear outcome of did I get faster or not, right? So I tracked all this data on everything. Everything the watches would give me, everything their training data would give me. And I said, okay, what was the best predictor of performance? Who showed up to practice consistently? That was it.

Like over all the like mileage and zones and heart rates and HRV and all these things that you're like, oh, this is fancy. It's like, did you show up to practice more than other people? Chances are you were gonna improve. And it sounds like so freaking basic. And when you tell people that they're like, okay, yeah.

But then you look at the research in academics. So my wife's a teacher, so I spent a lot of time talking to her about this stuff. And you look at one of the best predictors of academic success is like, did you show up to class? Like in college? Attendance. Attendance.

And they're not saying you're gonna attend and everything's gonna be great, but it gives you the opportunity to learn and flourish just as it gives you the opportunity to, you know, be able to learn, grow, develop athletically. Yeah, well, it's like, it's necessary, but not sufficient. But like, if you're not showing up, you're not gonna be good at all.

Like, it's interesting, I did this book with, you're not gonna be good at all. Like it's interesting, I did this book with, you know who Paul Rabel is, the lacrosse? He was saying that when he was in high school, I think, some D1 coach came in and said like, who here wants a scholarship to play college lacrosse? All the kids raised their hand. He's like, I'll tell you what you'd have to do.

If you do this, I promise on my life, you will get a college scholarship to play lacrosse. And he said, you have to do a hundred shots a day. You have to just a hundred shots a day every single day. And that seems so basic and it is so basic, but you're just not gonna do it. You know what I mean? Like you go, okay, I'll do it.

And then you do it for a while. And then you stop or you start to make excuses. But if you're the kind of person that actually commits and say, hey, I'm going to do this thing every single day, chances are you are also going to be doing all the other things that you need to do to be successful at that. Yeah, which gets at, again, if you look at predictors of performance, actually, there was a wonderful study that came out recently that looked at Olympic athletes versus those who fell a rung or two short. Yeah. Right?

And what they found, it was long-term studies. So what they found is that when they were younger, if they had that intrinsic motivation, meaning like joy, the process, like showing up because I want to master this, right? Versus I just want the scholarship, I want the accolade. The higher the intrinsic motivation, the higher the likelihood they made it to the highest level.

And all that comes back to is those are the people who are gonna show up. And in fact, you look at, again, research outside of sports. I talked about it in the book a little bit, is psychologist Ellen Winner looked at prodigies and phenoms and like math and science, like kids who are doing crazy stuff at a young age. There's enormous high burnout in phenoms, right?

Because they have a lot of pressure, you think they're gonna be great, et cetera. The ones who made it had what she called a rage to master, which was not a rage to win, not a rage to achieve, a rage to master. And that master to achieve, a rage to master. And that master came with high levels of intrinsic motivation. If instead they were in it for like the money,

the accolades, the achievement, or if they had a parent or a teacher or a coach who was pushing that stuff, they didn't translate to the next level. Do you see a rage? Rage. That's an interesting word though. Well, what it gets at is if you look at performers,

sometimes we call them like obsessive, right? Where there's this like single mindedness and I had a bit of this as a runner, right? I was like, I'm gonna run, forget everything else. Like I just want to, you know, train harder, blah, blah, blah. Like, so what she's getting at is sometimes they have that. But what we know from the research in psychology

on obsession or passion is that there's two variants. There's a passion that is obsessive, that is a little bit destructive, that comes from this external, that almost comes from a place of like fear. And then there's what researchers call harmonious passion which is you still have that like, that drive. You're still like almost single-minded, but it doesn't,

the underlying fuel is a little bit different and we all have both sides. But what's different is that like, if you go too far in the obsessive side, you're probably gonna head towards burnout or like just getting tired of the thing at some point. Well, yeah, I'm just thinking that there's a difference between like, and I think by rage,

like burning would be a synonym there or drive would be a synonym there, but it's something more intense than just an interest. But yeah, the difference between a drive to mastery and a drive to say dominate or to be famous or to win even, it's very different because one is sort of about the thing and then the other is about what you get

at the end of the thing. That's the difference. And again, like there's all this psychology that ties in. So if we have that drive for the thing, it tells us research tells us that it activates both of what we call an approach and an avoidance motivation. Meaning we're driven towards the thing, but we've got a little bit of like fear of like,

what if I fall short? What if I'm not good enough? On the flip side, if we have that mastery approach, we don't get that avoidance. Because often what happens is like, we're driven to see our progress in the thing. So it's not a threat if like we fall a little bit short, we still made progress.

We can still look back and this is successful endeavor. Yeah, Cheryl Strayed talked once about, to this young writer, she was saying that they were making the mistake of confusing writing and publishing. And if your rage is to be a writer, that's a good place to direct that energy. If your rage is to write versus your rage to be a

writer, those are very different distinctions, right? So we're talking about the noun versus the verb. If you like doing the thing, having done the thing is a byproduct of it. If you like having done the thing or being recognized for doing the thing, you're going to, I think, often get obsessed with things that are outside your control. You're going to, I think, often get obsessed with things that are outside your control. You're going to get distracted easily. You're going to look for shortcuts even. But if the goal is like, hey, I enjoy being in the middle of writing a book versus I enjoy the publicity tour for a book, those are very different states of mind and being. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the crux of performing. You have to care and care deeply, but if it intertwines too much,

you start getting distracted by the shiny objects and your ego starts going like, oh, I care about the publicity. I care about the recognition, the fame. And that can get in our way. Yeah, yeah, it's true. If you're trying to be an athlete or a writer or an entrepreneur or whatever for the end state,

that's a tricky proposition because either it's gotta go really well, like you better get really lucky or you're gonna have trouble. Like I think that's it. You would think that millions of dollars, fame, et cetera, would be a sufficient motivation to get through the shit of whatever it takes to become a master at something,

but it's actually not, because it's so demoralizing that you get so lost in the day-to-dayness of it. If you don't actually like doing the thing, if you're not thinking about it when you're in the shower, because that's what you think about in the shower, not because someone said you're not thinking about it when you're in the shower, because that's what you think about in the shower, not because someone said you better be thinking about it in the shower. I don't think you're going to have the, yeah, you're not going to have the motivation to go the distance and to get through the thing. Yeah. Unless of course

you get incredibly lucky or you're just massively genetically gifted. Yeah. It's got to, I mean, the path has to be smooth sailing. Yes. I think it's the key there because, and I think everything that we know is that it rarely is. And we're going to get, reality is gonna smack us in the face and failure is gonna hit us.

And if the only thing we have underlying that is the potential millions we make, well, that logically might seem like, oh, this is a lot of money, this is life changing, this is gonna do it, it doesn't. And we have decades of both research and then if you look at like whether it's historical or if you just look at examples,

like they also tell you that this is enough. Or if you talk to those professional teams that both of us have, they'll tell you that, hey, we might be paying this person, you know, $5 million, but that's not enough to motivate them to like go home and read the playbook every day. I know. Isn't that crazy that at that level, it still comes down to like, are you willing to do the work or not? And a contract that's 50 or a hundred times bigger isn't the swing vote there. You have to just like doing it.

Yeah, it's so wild and it goes so against kind of like our intuition. Where we think, oh, like more money, you know, this will do it. But again, it's not how our brain is kind of wired. I don't know why, but it's just not how it won't give us the sufficient fuel. On January 5th, 2024, an Alaska Airlines door plug tore away mid-flight, leaving a gaping hole in the side of a plane that carried 171 passengers.

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Featuring shocking testimony from first-hand witnesses, hosts, journalist, podcaster and UFO researcher Andy McGillin, that's me, and producer Elle Scott, take us back to the nights in question and examine all of the evidence and conflicting theories about what was encountered in the middle of a snowy Suffolk forest 40 years ago. Are we alone? Encounters is a podcast which is going to find out. Listen to Encounters exclusively in ad free on Wondry+. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or in Apple podcasts. Why? It's funny because I'm in your book, which I thought was funny. We were talking about this

very thing, which is like as a runner, people always ask me, am I running a marathon or am I training for a marathon? Like they think that you have to be doing it for some reason. And my answer is usually like, this is the marathon. Like doing it for no reason is actually the harder challenge. Like doing it cause you like doing it and because you said you were gonna do it. And to me, that's the sort of metaphorical muscle

that I'm building that I need in my other professional domains. Because on a book, you have so many more bad days than good days. You honestly, you're not measuring progress by any one day anyway. You know, I'm never like reading the finished audio book of a project and go, oh yeah, that was Tuesday, March 23rd. I know, you know, I've never like reading the finished audiobook of a project and go,

oh, yeah, that was that was Tuesday, March 23. I know, you know, like that was so many days of work. And it was also years of prologue before that. And so if you can't get lost in the day to dayness of it, because you like being in it, and that's your kind of default state. Like if you're, if you're the kind of person who's like looking forward to the off season, you're gonna have trouble, I think. Absolutely. And you know, it reminds me of some of the research

that I wrote about in the book, where it's like, it backs up your running, which is, you know, they looked at Nobel Prize winning scientists and compared them to those who were like a ronger two below. And they found the Nobel Prize winning scientists and compare them to those who were like a wrong or two below. And they found the Nobel Prize winning scientists almost all had some sort of like hobby or interest that they like pursued at a decently high level. Sometimes it's like acting or singing or, you know, exercise of some sort.

But like they pursued it at a decent level, not to like run the marathon or become the professional singer. But I think for the same reason that you do running and the same reason that actually I do running now, I don't compete in anything. Is it gives you that thing outside of your main pursuit that builds that mental muscle and also gives you like something else

where you can have a sense of like progress or competency so that when you're making no progress in the writing or it's just one of those those weeks where it's just like I'm beating my head against the wall you're still like I'm still doing something. I find that with writing is like I always close the loop you know like there's a day there's days where I'm starting a chapter, I'm starting a thing, and like, I don't know when it's gonna come together. But literally, when I leave my house to go for a run, I magically end up back at my house.

You know, like that always happens in one form or another. Even if I'm limping home or whatever, I end up, I finish it. So there's something too, I think in hobbies or physical practices, there is a nice sort of closed nature to them, like you either win or you lose, you got a better time or not, you finished the set or not, you hit the PR or not, that, you know, most other domains don't offer you.

Yeah. And I think that's why it's one of the best things to build that mental muscle. Yeah. Because it gives you that, again, that competency that, okay, no matter how it went, I finished the loop, I got the miles in, I got my swim in, or what have you, and that boosts you up, and I think you're right. Other things, they're more nebulous.

What's a finite game versus an infinite game? You know, like life is an infinite game and sports are by definition finite games. Even though there's games within games, but it's like, yeah, you said you're gonna run five miles, you either do it or you don't. You played a game of pickup basketball, you're playing a 21 or not,

you're going for the bike, right? Whatever it is, right? Like even a cold plunge, you're like, 21 or not, you're, you went for the bike, right? Whatever it is, right? Like even a cold plunge, you're like, I'm going to get in for two minutes. You either do it or you're not. It's measurable, quantifiable, and it's clarity. There's clarity. And in most other projects, like building a business, building a brand, I don't even know, just like improving yourself. There's just a vagueness inherently, and an infiniteness to it. And that can be really demoralizing. And so having these kind of false artificial constructs where you get clarity and progress and wins is like essential.

Yeah, I mean, that's where confidence come from, right? From like evidence and getting some wins. And the nice thing is like, there's a degree of transferability to this stuff. And there's a degree, even if you look at the research around like status or significance, is what it shows is that to a degree it's substitutable. Meaning, if we're more complex of a person, and our writing isn't quite going as well, but we're still showing up and getting our run or our exercise in, but we're still showing up and getting our run or our exercise in,

or we're still showing up and doing whatever our hobby is, interest is, is that research tells us that like, our brain kind of switches and says like, okay, we'll just say this over here, we'll still show up at it, but we're gonna take a little of that like, feel good, self-confidence,

self-efficacy from this over here to keep you motivated enough to get through the wrong and the thing that's not going well. You said confidence is connected to evidence. Do you think that's the distinction? Is the distinction between confidence and ego that one is based on something real? Like you earn confidence and ego you don't? I think, yeah, because again, if you look at it, we try and fake it, it generally backfires. Yeah. Because our brain is like smarter than we give it credit for. In some areas.

In some instances. But the example I like to use is if you sign up for a marathon and you haven't done the work, you might, on the starting line, you might be able to like, I got this, I got this, I'm good, you're hyping yourself up. But as soon as you get a couple miles into that, reality's gonna smack you in the face. And all that like fake confidence didn't do anything. But instead, if you've like put in the work,

you put in the miles, you've got that evidence and not the ego, what happens is you have appreciation for the thing, and then when you get to those the miles, you've got that evidence and not the ego. What happens is you have appreciation for the thing. And then when you get to those tough miles, you have something to anchor yourself and go back on where it's like- I've done this before. Yeah, I've done this before. I've been in this situation.

Here's how I navigate it. Yeah, I think that's an interesting, so it's like, how do you know you can do something if you've never done it before? To me, that's an, like, how did I know I could do my first book? Or how does someone know they could start a company or run for public office?

It's like, we know, okay, confidence is based on having done things before. And then there are these tricky cases where you're doing something you've never done before. What are you drawing on? Sometimes ego can be sort of a hack there because you're like, well, I'm the best, everyone loves me, of course.

Or you totally underestimate how difficult something is gonna be so it protects you. So I think sometimes people think ego is beneficial because it sometimes gets people in rooms or situations that they have no business being in. But I like to think that when you're taking on something challenging, what you're able to draw on is analogous situations or sort of meta quality.

So yes, you've never technically done this thing before, but you've done other hard things, or you're like, I'm the kind of person who asks questions. I'm the kind of person who doesn't quit. You have sort of adjacent confidence that allows you to be confident, but not certain that you can do it. Ego is like, of course I can.

And confidence says like, I think I could pull that off. It's the fine line. Yes. And the way I like to think of it is like, our brain is predictive. So when we set up those predictions, what is it gonna draw on? It can draw on either you've been there before or maybe you haven't.

But you've built up this repertoire of, you know, I've done hard things before. I've been in maybe not the exact situations, but I've been in similar anxiety inducing situations. So, for instance, when I started speaking for the first time, what do I pull on? I'd never spoken in front of thousands of people, but what do I pull on is like, hey, I've run in front of thousands of people. Sure, yeah.

And even though it's not like me speaking, it's still being in a, you know, you're in the limelight, right, people are looking at you, you're on national TV or whatever have you. It's like still the pressure is similar enough. So your brain goes, okay, like not exactly, but we've made it through this. So I'm gonna pull on this and use that.

And I think that's where that confidence piece comes from is it's like, evidence doesn't always have to be direct, but if you can give yourself enough like- You've got the circumstantial evidence. Exactly, it's like the enough, close enough stuff, then your brain can pull on that and be like, okay, we've been in similar situations, we'll take this on as a challenge instead of

like maybe retreating and taking this as a threat. Yeah, to me, confidence has an awareness of strength and weakness. Absolutely. Where ego is like, I'm great at everything, I'm the best, they love me everywhere. So then yeah, you're about to be on national television and you don't prepare because you're good

at all these other things. Of course you're gonna be good at this. And then you step into this new medium, which has its own rules and its own logic and its own challenges. And then you're like, oh shit, right? And that's when you get humbled really quickly. But confidence says, hey,

this is a tough thing I'm about to do. Here's the strengths that I'm bringing to the table. And then here's all the things I don't know. And so I'm gonna talk to a publicist. I'm gonna call someone who's done this before. I'm gonna watch footage of other people. Like, so if you have only the awareness

of what you're good at, you stay as you are. If you couple that awareness with a sense of your deficiencies or weaknesses, then you get to work on those things. And then you not only sort of step up into the challenge, but you become better for having wrestled with that challenge. Absolutely.

If you're not aware of your weaknesses, then they come as surprises. And then what happens, reality smacks you in the face when it hits you. And then you go from, you know, I got this to your brains and freak out panic mode. I mean, that's exactly I have a good friend who's in special forces, who was a former athlete of mine, a coach. And he told me, well, going through, you know, the training is like, you know, you'd have these people who you could just see, they acted so confident and had this ego of like, I'm the man, I'm gonna figure out anything.

And then you had this other set of group was like, hey, I'm really prepared in this area, but you know, here are my weaknesses, here are the areas I'm gonna struggle. These are the things I'm nervous about. Yes. Yeah. And he said, inevitably, when they drop you off in the woods in the middle of nowhere,

and you kind of do all this crazy shit. He said it's the people who were aware of their weaknesses who came out on the other side. Interesting. Because they knew and they didn't freak out. They didn't go from like, you know, okay, this is hard to panic. I don't know what to do mode because they knew, hey, if this comes up, I'm going to have to like use everything I got to navigate it.

Well, the other person who just had the ego there, when it came up, it was like a surprise. It's almost like their brain goes like, hey, wait a minute, this one's supposed to be hard. You were supposed to take care of everything. Yeah, going from certainty to uncertainty is very rattling. But if you're starting with some uncertainty, you're like, I don't know how it's gonna to go, but I'm, I'm ready for whatever it throws at me versus like, this is going to be easy.

Yeah, that's it. I talk about this in the discipline book, I think Floyd Patterson loses one of his title fights. And he said in retrospect, I knew I was going to lose because I stepped in the ring and I didn't have any nerves. Like he was just like, I'm the heavyweight champion. Who is this person to challenge me? And to me, I've always thought that that's actually what the story of David and Goliath is supposed to illustrate.

It's not little versus big. It's overconfident versus sort of courageous. Like David doesn't know that he can win. He just thinks maybe he can, you know? And that's very different than Goliath who thinks I'm invincible. I think our biology backs it up. Yeah. Because if you look at that in exercise psychology, sports psychology, we call it like arousal. Meaning if we have no arousal, no nerves, that's our brain essentially being like, why do we need to extra juice?

Why do we need to be prepared? You got this, you don't need that stuff. If we have too much, it's like our brain goes into like, hey, flee, play dead, like, you know, faint, whatever it is, you can't handle anything. If we're in that sweet spot where it's like, hey, I'm prepared for this, but it's still gonna be difficult.

I'm still gonna have to bring my A game. You generally get that middle zone of arousal, which, you know, again, biology tells us is a little bit more adrenaline, a little bit more testosterone, a little bit of cortisol, but that prepares us for the action versus if we have none of that, no adrenaline, we're screwed,

or if we have too much cortisol and none of the other stuff, we're screwed as well. Yeah, and it's kind of like, you're not supposed to get to a place where you eliminate the nerves or the feelings or the worry or the stress. You're supposed to get to a place where you can manage it, where you're comfortable with it.

You can turn down the volume on it, but if it's not there, that's not a good sign either. Yeah, absolutely. I had a good friend who told me that they knew it was time to retire from sport when they'd show up for the games and feel nothing. Right. Because they knew they weren't going to perform at their best. And they knew that for whatever reason,

like they tried a bunch of things, but the sport wasn't giving them that edge where it's like, okay, I need to be in that spot and I can't get myself in that spot. Yeah, there's a kid that works for me and his name is Billy Oppenheimer who's doing his first book. And I was like, when are you gonna send me this book?

I wanna look at it. And he was like, well, I asked for an extension. He's like, I'm not quite happy with where it is. And I said, why do you think that you ever will be? You know, like, do you think anyone is ever happy with it? And so there's this tension between like, oh, it's good enough. Right? That's not obviously a good attitude. But there is, if you haven't done the thing before, maybe you think that there you think that the other people don't have nerves, or that the it comes out fully formed, or totally comfortable for everyone else. And it doesn't like you hear stories about

performers that are like throwing up before they go on 40 years into it. I was like, I'm not happy with it. The day it comes out, you know, so the idea that you in the first draft sort of submission phase are going to have any semblance of happiness or confidence in where this is, that's just a product of complete inexperience and ignorance of the process. You just don't know where you are in the process. And I think to some degree, this is where, you know, our modern world sets us up for that. Yeah.

Because we get set with these like false ideas of comparisons because if you've never gone through that process before, what are you doing? You're comparing your first draft first off to everybody else's final. And no offense, but if you looked at my first drafts, like some of them are trash. You're also comparing it to shit you see on social media

that's not real. Right, exactly. And I think this false comparison is such a big deal, whether we're talking about performance or writing or life as well, is like we need to almost peel back the layers and say, and this was where I think it helps so much to have people like yourself mentoring Billy

or like someone else in the field. So you can't, it's hard to trust a process you haven't been through. So you gotta have someone who has been through the process many times that you trust more than yourself. I mean, this is the whole point of coaches in athletics. And I think in the rest of our lives, sometimes we discount that because like we think,

okay, no, I'm just gonna do this and everything will be all right. And what we don't know, we don't know. So when we get in that moment and we say, hey, I'm not happy with this. Well, of course you're not. Like you're never going to be. Yes.

And if you've been through it before, you know that you're gonna go through these ups and downs of writing where some days you're gonna be like, hey, this is pretty good. And other days you're gonna go through these ups and downs of writing where some days you're gonna be like, hey, this is pretty good. And other days you're gonna be like, this makes no freaking sense. It's actually, it's so, just for people listening, not only are you not happy when it comes out,

you're not happy with it after it comes out and it does well. I just had this weird experience of doing the 10 year anniversary of Obstacle and I had to like redo it and even after I redid it and was reading I was like what is this shit? You know, like like this is a book that's come out it's been weeks on the bestsellers it sold millions of copies. I on some level it's objectively good enough for people and And instead of becoming more satisfied with it as time has gone on, I'm actually less satisfied because that is an element of progress,

which is that you should be less pleased with what you were capable of earlier. So you don't even get the retroactive sort of security of like, that was pretty great for 25 or 24. Like, because you can't even conceive of that anymore. You're actually holding where you were then to the standards you have now. So you just, you're never good with it.

Yeah, this is why comparison is so detrimental. Cause I do the same thing. And whenever I have to go back and read like an early book or early draft of something, I'm just like, oh my gosh, like I don't want to talk about this. Like, you know, this, this, this, and this, like that was really poor writing or bad example or something. And you just go over and you're like, I could have done this, this, and this one. But that's just part of the process.

Yes. Seneca's line, and he was probably the most famous playwright of his time and philosopher, he says, when I think of some of the things I've said, I envy the mute. And you're just like, I didn't just do that and think it was good. I published it in print. What the fuck was I thinking? And you're just mortified. Like, it is an excruciating privilege to get to go back and look at something you've done that's done well.

Because even then you're just like, what is this? Because, and by the way, if you're not having that, you're either egotistical, delusional, or complacent. You know what I mean? Because you should be capable of more now than you were then. Yeah, and I think what you're getting at is the central tension of performing,

which is if you don't have that, it's the ego or complacency, and that's a bad thing. You're not going to learn and grow as a performer. If you have so much of that, that it's paralyzing, where you say, okay, I'm never gonna write anything again because this isn't good enough, I can't hold myself to the standard or what have you, that's paralyzing as well.

Yeah, you talked about Harper Lee in the book. Those tragic cases of someone who did something so good the first go-around, or even if it's not so good, that it was so popular the first go-around, that you get in your own head and then you become incapable of doing the thing that you were quite easily able to do not that long ago. Yeah, that's a fascinating example.

And again, the research backs this up. There was a study I talked about on One Hit Wonders and they looked at writing, in this case, cookbooks that did really freaking well. And the better that like first author cookbook did, like the less likely they were ever to publish anything else. And when they looked at it, why it was that, that identity piece.

It's like, how can I measure up to this? Like, how can I hold myself to this standard? Like I can't do it. And what happens in that case is, it's the same on the athletic field is, you move that first book You don't have those expectations Right you often are free to perform

Yeah, and then once you have all those expectations on you for some people It just like makes it it is a pure fear threat if I put this out and it doesn't measure up It's not that like I failed at writing this book or the sequel or whatever. It is literally I am a failure as a person and that paralyzing thought prevents people from getting back in the arena. Yeah, there's a kind of a Goldilocks space where you want to be just, you don't want it to flop and you also don't want it to be like a chart topping world dominating success. You want like, you don't want to strike out in your first at bat, whatever you're doing.

And you also don't want to hit like a walk off grand slam. You want just like a solid single or maybe a double just enough that they don't pull you from the game. But that you're not in your own head about how you follow that up. It's like, I'm doing the thing now, I can do it. That's what you want. Yeah, it's the expectation effect.

And again, if you look at in sports, like the heart of choking in sports is we don't choke in practice, right? Right. Yeah, the yips, they can do it at home very easily. At home, literally, and I've seen this. You take people with the yips, you put them on the mound where no one's watching,

and it's like, you know, 95 mile an hour fastball straight down the middle. You put them in the game, it's like, it looks like, you know, a junior high baseball player throwing. And it's because of that expectation coming from like everybody else, external pressure that hits on us. For whatever reason, public expectation hits us harder than like other kinds of pressure often.

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I've been thinking about this recently. What do you think the difference between self-awareness is and self-consciousness? Because self-consciousness strikes me as the enemy of almost all kinds of elite performance, creativity, et cetera. When you're in your own head of like, how are the, you know, that's the enemy. And yet also like a lack of self-awareness

is the downfall of so many people. I think it's a curiosity versus a threat. Okay. So curiosity is self-awareness where you're exploring. You're like, okay, what internally does this feel like? What's the experience like? When it's that self-conscious, it's that threat, where you're sitting there being like,

does this feel right? Is this how it's supposed to be? And you can see this again, it athletes, if you look at elite athletes, is they're better at reading their internal signals. So, you know, understanding whether feeling of pain in the muscle is pain, that means injury or it just means fatigue or, you know, I'm working harder. They can distinguish that stuff really well.

But it gets to that self-conscious versus self-awareness that can easily translate where you start being like too conscious of it of especially if you started to have poor performance, where you start saying, oh, that signals that I'm about to slow down and I'm not even at halfway. Even if it doesn't, you start getting the wrong message because like it's almost tapped into this threat mode. So it's a very fine line, I think. Well, the irony of self-consciousness

is that it's actually not so much about you as it is about what other people think of you. And so if you're like, well, like imposter syndrome is self-consciousness, right? You're not actually thinking so much about, am I a fraud? You're thinking, do other people think that I am a fraud? Of course, they're not thinking about you at all. This is just all in your head.

But yeah, self-awareness is more an introspective understanding of the self. Why do I do this? What does this mean? What is this like versus self-consciousness, which is like, if I do this, are they gonna laugh at me? Is this pretentious? You know, or whatever.

But it's about how what you're gonna do is going to be received or is being received, or you're thinking about what you're doing as you're doing it, like you're in the audience watching you as a spectator instead of being in your body, which was probably more of what self-awareness is trying to do for you. Absolutely, I think that's a perfect way to explain it.

And again, tie it back to choking. One of the world's greatest sports psychologists told me, he said essentially, I've got the quote in the book, but I'll butcher it slightly, but he's essentially, the essence is you feel the pressure, cortisol, stress go up, you get self-conscious, you start overthinking, and then it's over. And I think it's, what I mean is like that self-consciousness

is like, you go from like, oh, I feel a little bit different. And instead of being curious about what that means, you start thinking like, oh, everybody's gonna know. Everybody's gonna know I don't have it. And I'm gonna be embarrassed because I'm supposed to do this, this and this. And now I'm gonna be back here doing this at X, Y, and Z. And that causes your brain to start going on

like this ruminating, catastrophizing cycle. Yeah, we're like, this is a big game. This is so important. This is my only chance versus the, what I have to do here is X. And if you look at it, that translates to your actions, because what happens as an expert performer, you've taken stuff that used to be conscious, right?

When you learned how to throw a ball, someone probably taught you, you know, you've got to do this. The mechanics. You know, you got to do the mechanics. Once you've gotten to expert, you're not thinking this is what my elbow does and this is where my release,

you've got it ingrained. But what research tells us is that once we get that pressure, that expectations, that self-consciousness, it's almost like we revert to being a beginner and we start going segment by segment. And what happens is that formerly smooth process now doesn't work. And it's the same in other things.

I mean, it's the same in writing. What happens when you try and force yourself to do it? It backfires. Yeah. Or you're trying to sound a certain way or impress a certain group of people or not piss off a certain group of people. What you're not doing is spending that mental energy on the thing, just sort of going where it needs to go. It's the paradox of effort, where we know we have to try, and trying is good, but if we try in the wrong way, meaning we tense up, I like to think of a sprinter, because it's the perfect example,

is if you watch Usain Bolt run, he's obviously trying, right? He's putting an enormous amount of force into the ground with his legs. But if you watch his upper body or his face, like his face is relaxed as possible. It's like bouncing up and down because he's trying where he needs to. But in the places that create tension that don't contribute to the actual activity, he's trying to be as relaxed as possible. Yeah, golf is sort of, I think, the sport that illustrates this the most,

where the harder you try at golf, the shittier you are at golf. That's it. That's why I'm shitty at golf. Yeah, you're like, if you try to hit the ball hard, you suck. If you try to hit the ball a certain way, you suck. If you try to look at where it's going, you suck. There's something about just kind of being present

and in it that you're supposed to do. But then that sounds so dumb. You know, it's just like, just don't try to hit it hard. You know, like that's what Tiger Woods is thinking. And that's also what someone who's never hit a golf ball before is supposed to be thinking. But at some level it comes full circle in that way. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think it's the, it's how it comes back to again, how we get in our way is, is the same things. And also though, it's like, okay, if you've done the work, like you've lifted the weights, you've hit all the ball, then you don't need to try to hit it hard because you are, you hitting it is hard. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it's like, if you're a good writer, trying to write good is putting a hat on a hat, as they say.

But just trying to write, if you have a good vocabulary, you have a good basis, you have a good voice, you have all the ingredients, you just have to do it. You don't need to be also thinking, am I doing it well? Am I doing it the way that certain people want me to do it? That's where you get in trouble. Yeah. You start trying to write like someone else, right?

You say, oh, this is a really good writer over here. I'm going to try and force myself to be like them. And what happens is it doesn't come out well because it's not you and it's not everything that you've trained to do, right? Same in sport. When you start forcing it, what are you doing? As you're trying to do something that is not fundamentally

you in what you've trained to do. And one other thing I wanted to ask you about, cause I thought it was really interesting. You're talking about Norway as being a sports powerhouse, but you said that Norway doesn't basically have any youth sports culture the way we have it here. Like they're not tracking score, it's just chill for kids. So that seems like not how it's supposed to go. So walk me through that.

Absolutely. So if you look at the US culture, what it is, it's all achievement focused. And then like elite focus, meaning how do we find the talent, like specialize them early. Put them in the best leads. Put them in the best everything so that they come out on top. Norway is the opposite, is I think there's no keeping score before a certain age.

Everybody gets a trophy, regardless of winning or losing. There's no national competitions until, I think it's over 13 or 14. Meaning everything's like local rec league for fun, right? No travel teams, none of that stuff. Their motto is fun for all, okay? They are enormously successful at the elite level.

And we're talking winter sports, obviously, but also summer sports as well. They have a number of athletes who are the best in the world. And you would think, you'd think like, well, how does that youth model support elite development? But what it does, and it comes back to the things we talked about earlier, is that model,

it supports intrinsic motivation, meaning you're developing a love for the sport as a whole. It keeps more people in it. So one of the things that you- Right, so you're not quitting at nine. The US model is horrible. I forget the exact stat, but it's something like of everybody who plays youth sport,

70 plus percent of them have quit by the age of like 12. Yeah, because the parents have sucked the fun out of it. They've been made to think that they don't have what it takes, so why keep doing it? And one of the things that we know from Talent ID is that how you did at 10 does not translate or predict how you're gonna do at 20. Sometimes it does when you're a prodigy,

but if you're not a prodigy, it hasn't even, your signs of being good at it have not even begun to emerge. Especially for young boys, because they haven't even hit full puberty, which differs for everything. Right, right, right, sure. So when we look at those models,

what we see is the US model is like a survive model. And we still do well, but that's mainly because we have a lot of people that play sports and a huge population, and we emphasize it. So like the people who survive are still gonna be pretty good. Norway has a tiny population,

so they have to like maximize, you know. During COVID, they talked about invisible graveyards, which is a concept I think about all the time, just like things that didn't make it, people that didn't make it, ideas that didn't make it. And so you had to think about all the, we're not thinking about all the late bloomers, and by late bloomers we mean like

your freshman year of high school, but all those people that burned out before they even got started. Or because all sports and all sport wasn't created equal, they thought they didn't like sports, but really they just didn't have the freedom to find the sport that they did like. Yeah. Right, because they thought they hate sports generally, but actually they just didn't have the freedom to find the sport that they did like. Yeah. Right.

Because they thought they hate sports generally, but actually they hate tennis and they were really meant to do X, Y, or Z. So creating that sort of safer place where you can experiment and develop your sense of yourself as a person who likes and has fun doing athletic activities, there's just, yeah, we're not thinking about all the athletes that we prevented from being athletes. Absolutely. And if you look at the data at who actually makes it across elite sports, whether professional, soccer,

football, Olympics, et cetera, is for the most part it shows that those two finally make it. There are exceptions, but for the most part, during their youth, they specialize later, they explored more, they had more what we call like non-organized play. Yeah. Meaning you go play in the sandlot or you get your friends together and play in the street versus those who, again, came a couple rungs short, but didn't make the professionals,

tended to specialize earlier, have more structured time, et cetera. And I think it comes back to that same thing that we're just talking about is we need to develop the ingredients. And then also if you develop those ingredients, intrinsic motivation, joy, exploration, so you can find your sport that you like,

then it translates over. And I would argue that, and I kind of do in the book, but the same thing applies to other things. If we narrow too quickly, then we don't see the possibilities, right? Now this is why I think David Epstein's book, Ranges, a parenting book in disguise. Absolutely.

It's funny though, did you watch the Netflix documentary about tennis? I forget what it's called, but what I was so struck by, and I think it's a general, how much or many tennis players seem to hate tennis. And that struck me as unique amongst the sports,

but it's also one of the sports that you specialize in earliest and you can be world class at, at a very young age. Like it's, Tom Brady at 40 isn't playing against 16 year olds, but in tennis that happens, right? And so watching that, I was like, oh, how sad is it that these people found the thing they were meant to do? And then it's almost like some kind of curse, right? Where it's like, I'm gonna let you be world-class at this

and make lots of money, but you will hate every fucking second of it. Even at the pin's like, I'm going to let you be world class at this and make lots of money, but you will hate every second of it. Even at the pinnacle, you will not like the idea of you having fun doing this is anathema to how it seems most people are playing tennis. Yeah. I think tennis is one of those exceptions. It's like gymnastics in with women, right? Yes. Like younger have to specialize early because of, you know, physiology know physiology etc. We're starting to see that change a little bit but it's I feel bad in that case for tennis it's like as you said this is the thing that you have this enormous gift at but if it makes you miserable like what's the trade-off like for me if I hated writing there would be no way that I would be a writer because

like gotta have that expansive quality to it. Or maybe you would because it's still what you're getting paid to do But you would be leaving so much on the table because you could have done it better. You would have done it more You'd be looking for excuses like I think Michael Phelps is a great example of this where you have obviously what once in a Generational talent but clearly leave something towards the end on the table. He manages to come back, which I think is very impressive and a testament to sort of the inner work that he did.

But like, yeah, what would Michael Phelps who liked swimming have looked like there in that core? Cause he would have, there's obviously things he was trying to get out of because he hated it. Yeah. And how do we not do that to ourselves or to our kids? Yeah, and I think that's the key is it's like,

when we look at these things, we're not saying, hey, don't try and achieve, like forget about winning. Like obviously outcomes matter, whether it's life and sport, like outcomes matter. You and I have to sell some books or else we're not gonna be able to write anymore. You're not getting book deals, sure. But at the same time, what we're seeing is like,

we don't have to live in this path or go down this world where it's like, outcome is all that matters. And then we hate the thing that we're doing. There is still a possibility. And there's tons of examples of people have reached the highest height and enjoyed the process of like exploring that sport or pursuit or endeavor. And generally what you see is that those people

are the ones who not only reach a pretty high peak, but sustain it. They stay in the league for a long time. Maybe even after the league, they give back. They start coaching. They start helping people because they enjoy. They like the sounds of the sneakers on the court and the smell of the whatever. They actually like the thing as opposed to the thing being

some way to fill an enormous hole in their soul. And I actually think that's another really dangerous lesson we learned from these sort of generational talents who were miserable is that we think it was the, you know, POW tactics that Tiger Woods' father did on him who were miserable is that we think it was the, the, you know, POW tactics that Tiger Woods' father did on him that made him great when it wasn't, you know, like Michael Jordan deciding that he was gonna,

that Michael Jordan telling himself that he got cut from his high school basketball team. And it was cause he was angry and driven and managed to know you grew a bunch between. That's why you made it the next year. Like there was nothing else really happened. It was that. So sometimes these people tell themselves very wicked stories or they rationalize because they were betrayed or abused by a parental figure or a coach. And they go, that's why I was successful. And it was like, it was actually genetics or it was actually a really great coach that nurse.

It was some positive force and they've decided to credit the negative force. It's like Steve Jobs was a genius who was also an asshole. He wasn't, you know what I mean? The asshole part was subsidized by the genius part, not the other way around. And that's such an important point and almost a damaging thing to society, because what happens is we highlight the asshole,

the tortured part, and people think like, oh, I have to do this. And often what we don't do is we don't point to all these other people over here. It's like, hey, no, like this person's like a desist. It's like, dude. No, it's a very, and it's a very risky strategy for your kids, right?

Because it's like, if you're like, okay, I'm gonna turn my kid into a monster for the low probability that they will become a professional athlete. But like the abuse that I'm doing is a hundred percent gonna have consequences, right? So it's like, it might be worth it in one sense, but if it doesn't work out,

they're definitely gonna be an asshole, definitely have skewed priorities, definitely have internalized a bunch of things. That's really risky, right? Like that's a very, you would much rather go, hey, I'm gonna do this stuff. It's gonna make my kid well-adjusted, happy, you know, interested in math, all this stuff,

and maybe they'll be successful, right? Because if they're not successful, they still have all these positive things. So two things I've noticed as, you know, a young parent now, but lots of my friends are parents, is the former professional athlete friends that I have who are parents are the chillest people on the sideline. And I asked one, I asked one who was like an NCAA champion athlete and then ran professionally,

and she goes, I've seen the journey. It's got to be up to them. Like I'll support them. But like, whether they go through the ups and downs, I can't make it like it's up to them. Like I'll support them. But like whether they go through the ups and downs, I can't make it. Like it's up to them. So like I can make their journey miserable or they can go on it and see if they wanna go on it itself. And I'm like, this is it. And then the other thing this reminds me of

is there's actually not on kids, but there's data on this is a couple of years ago, some researchers looked at coaches in the NBA and they categorized them until like, essentially how like abusive they were, right? If they were like the old school Bobby Knight type. And then they tracked when a player played for them for a year, what happened to their performance

for the rest of the career and what they called their aggressiveness, which they looked at like things like technical fouls. And the title of the study was called, scarred for the rest of my career. Because what they found is if you spent time with this like asshole of a coach, you started the rest of your career

performance dipped a little bit. And you started- Because you picked up bad habits. Yeah. Yeah, you kind of thought this is the way, this is how I have to do it. So I'm gonna be more aggressive. So I have more technical fouls.

I have these bad habits because like I was coached out of fear and it impacts us. And if that happens to guys who are already in the freaking NBA, what do you think is happening? So like, you know, little Johnny or Susie running around the soccer, you know, pitch or what have you. Now that's amazing.

You want to go check out some books? Yeah, let's do it. All right. 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 it would really help the show. We appreciate it. I'll see you next episode. If you like The Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

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