The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish - Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

When Paul Assaiante announced his retirement from coaching the men's squash team at Trinity College in Connecticut earlier this year, it marked the end of the most successful run for any coach in the history of college athletics. During his tenure, Assaiante guided Trinity to 17 national titles, including 13 consecutive championships and 252 wins in a row from 1999 to 2011. On this episode of The Knowledge Project, Assaiante draws on his 30 years of coaching to discuss the lessons he learned during his career. These lessons include how to conquer fear and anxiety, why safety is actually found when facing adversity, the importance of practice, and what's keeping you from reaching your goals. Assaiante is also the author of the 2012 book, Run to the Roar: Coaching to Overcome Fear. Listen and learn. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Our Sponsors: MetaLab: Helping the world’s top companies design, build, and ship amazing products and services. https://www.metalab.com Aeropress: Press your perfect cup, every time. https://aeropress.com Sidebar: Accelerate your career. https://www.sidebar.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When players come into my office and they do all the time with thorny issues or whatever they're wrestling with, I always ask the same rhetorical question, which is, what's the worst that can happen? Once you address the concept of what's the worst that can happen, it's not that bad. Is this really going to be a life-altering experience? And if it is, how do I come to grips with that, and if it's not, then why am I making it a bigger deal than it actually is? Welcome to the Knowledge Project, a podcast about mastering the best of what other people have already figured out, so you can apply their insights to your life. I'm your host. I'm your host, Shane Parrish. If you're listening to this, you're missing out. If you'd like access to the

podcast before public release, special episodes that don't appear anywhere else, hand-edited transcripts, or you just want to support the show you love. You can join at fs.com. Check out the show notes for a link. My guest today is none other than the winningest coach in college sports history, Paul Asante. Paul is the men's squash and tennis coach at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, from 1998 to 2012, Trinity went undefeated, winning 252 consecutive matches, including 13 national championships, the longest winning streak in college sports history. I wanted to talk to coach because not only of his record, but his unique approach to unleashing our potential. He helps his athletes conquer their fears, their anxieties, and their worst nightmares.

There are things that hold us back in all of us and moments of tension and crisis when the lion roars and you just want to run away or you're tempted to stand there like a deer in the headlights. Paul advocates that safety counterintuitively is actually found in running towards the roar. While most coaches and managers ask people what their goals are, coach says those goals are easy. You can write them down in a few seconds. They're visible. They feel good. and if you're good enough and you work hard enough, you'll reach them. But Paul doesn't care about your goals.

He wants to know what you're afraid of, what's holding you back, what's keeping you from achieving and fulfilling your potential. And he says, what sunk the Titanic was not the tip of the iceberg that you could see poking out of the water. It was what was underneath and out of sight. And if we want to reach our potential, we have to get to the source of our own issues, into what seems unsolvable, into what we are afraid of. we have to run toward the roar.

And that's what this episode is about, learning to love the journey, running towards your fears, and reaching your full potential. It's time to listen and learn. I want to start with running to the roar, which is one of the concepts that you have that I absolutely love.

What does it mean to run to the roar? Yeah, so that's an interesting question to kick off with. When I was really getting into the self-exploration, you know, I was meeting with my shrink. I'm a neurotic mess. And he said to me one day, you know, you're really an interesting dude because I've never met anybody who is so conflict avoidant. You run from your shadow. And yet, on weekends, you lead players into high. emotional, competitive environment. So I'm going to tell you a little story, and it's a true story. And the story is that in Africa, lions hunt in packs. And when they go out to hunt, they take with them the oldest female of the pride. By this point, she's old and infirmed and toothless, can no longer catch her own prey a little bit like me. But she has the deepest roar. And what the lionesses do, and it's the lionesses who do the hunting, the lionesses position this old lion in the middle of a field facing the bush. The bush could be a mile away. And the prey are between the old lion and the bush. And all the lionesses hide in the bush. And when this old lady roars, the prey run away from the roar to their death. And so the concept is go at the problem, go at what you perceive to be the problem.

And what you'll invariably find is it's a toothless old lady. When players come into my office and they do all the time with thorny issues or whatever they're wrestling with, I always ask the same rhetorical question, which is, what's the worst that can happen? Once you address the concept of what's the worst that can happen, it's not that bad. And that has been the thing that's holding us back. Once you come to grips with that, you're fine. I think the bravest warriors in history were the samurai.

And when you ask the question, what's the worst that could happen? The answer would be to die on the battlefield. Yet they saw that as a glorious cause. And that made them fearless. So when you're struggling with something, step out and ask yourself, what's the worst that can happen? Is this really going to be a life-altering experience? And if it is, how do I come to grips with that?

And if it's not, then why am I making it a bigger deal than it actually is? How often do you think what we're worried about is losing something versus gaining something? It was interesting. I was with a friend this weekend who's a very successful hedge fund. investor. And one of the things he talked about was that he embraced risk. And people in that business that are successful are very much wired that way. And probably it's one of the reasons that their failures are so much deeper. But I think mostly we're protecting what we have, where we are. You know, one of the things I find as a coach is in an

effort to move forward, you sometimes need to take a half a step backwards. And people will absolutely fight that to the death. I don't want that. I want to become, I want to go from good to great, but I'm not willing to go to good minus for a short time to get to great. And so I think we tend to protect where we are ferociously. Tell me more about going backwards to move forwards in the context maybe of your players or working with business people? Well, you know, it's for the players, it's usually a, it's something of mindset, a skill deficiency, not approaching competition as a opportunity. And so to dive in there, it almost becomes like I become a man without an island. This little island I'm on. I know I want to get to that big island, but I'm on this

little island, and I don't really want to go back into the water, but that's the only way you can get to the big island. I also think you have to recognize that what got you here won't get you there. You've probably heard the phrase, don't change a winning game. Well, a winning game is only going to stay a winning game, and this is in the game of life, if other people are not paying attention and making their own adjustments. So I always look at life as a race, and if you and I go out for a mile run, four laps around the track, and the first lap I lead, I'm running at whatever pace, say 75 seconds, and that's the pace that led. And you now decide to pass me. If I continue running at 75 second pace, I'll lose the race. I now must adjust to

your adjustment. But we're oftentimes so frozen and unable to recognize that that shift needs to occur, that it's all over us before we even notice. And this is where my feelings about emotion are your enemy, because emotion takes away your ability to recognize what adjustments and shifts need to be made. I really want to dive into emotion, but it's part of a broader concept that I want to explore first, which is how do you define success and failure? Such an interesting thing. I have never had any money. I'm just a coach. But I've always been on the sidelines of wealth. Most of the people that I gave lessons to had disposable income or that sort of thing. And in that world, it's very common that the measure of success. And I'm

is how much money you have. But I think success is to get to a place where you can look in the mirror. Almost nobody gets here, by the way. You can look in a mirror and say, I have enough. To me, that's really successful. Now, that doesn't mean you take your foot off the gas. You continue to drive down the road. You continue to do the things that allowed you to achieve whatever it is that you have enough of so that you can live the life you want to live or give to the causes you want to give to. But to me, that's success where you can just look in a mirror and say, I have enough. I have a player who I am just so enchanted with. He's young. He graduated only a few years ago. He was from Sweden. He was a beautiful squash player. It's got a wonderful wife from

Sri Lanka, and they have two little children, and they're in the investment industry in Philadelphia. And I saw him recently, and I asked him the question my father always used to ask me, what's next, what's next, what's the next conquest, what he's striving for? And he said, you know, coach, we're earning enough to live the life that we want to live. Man, that you don't find that very often. But to me, that's the definition of success, is being able to reflect on where you are, feel very good about that, and continue to work toward continuing that. And how would you define failure? Failure is chasing. To me, and this is very personal, but for me, failure was chasing. And for me, in my career, a good part of that time was very ego

attached. I'm embarrassed to admit that, but I was doing it unknowingly because I was, I was filling an empty vase that was my self-perception. And so I was striving and striving, and I was going to get there, whatever there was, and hell to be all others. And then I realized that it's nothing to do with me. And then that became a wonderful time. To give you an example, I recently got a phone call from a friend. And he said, you know, one of my neighbors was your assistant tennis coach at West Point in 1975. And my stomach knotted up. And I said to him, please tell him he would like me more today than then, and that I apologize. Reading, playing, learning. Stellist lenses do more than just correct your child's vision. They slow

down the progression of myopia, so your child can continue to discover all the world has to offer through their own eyes. Light the path to a brighter future with stellar lenses for myopia control. Learn more at SLOR.com and ask your family eye care professional for SLOR Stellist lenses at your child's next visit. I was so busy striving, and to me there was no peace in that. So to me, that's failure, not being authentic to what it is that's important to you and then striving toward that. I want to come back to sort of emotions and maybe we can tie it into this. One of my kids came home early in the school year and did really poorly on an exam.

And, you know, there's a little light switch in me that's like, oh, this is great, right? He goes to a school where they're perfectly comfortable failing them. but he told me he said he looked at me in the eyes like I did my best wow and I knew in that moment that that was not the time to talk to him and so I waited and then later that night we pulled out his test we went over it and I said let's talk about what it means to do your best and we talked about all the elements of doing your best that lead up to the test itself right so all the preparation all the things you control

So when he told me he did his best, what he meant was, I did my best from 10 to 11 a.m. Yeah. How do you think about competition, doing your best, what goes into that and winning and losing? And talk to me about this in the context of preparation, emotions. Well, first of all, what a good father you are. That's beautiful. You can never teach or coach on the heels of love. business or otherwise. In your relationships, when there is emotion, that is not the time to

go in and try to figure out anything. You need to come back later when things have calmed down. You can't come back too much later because then the opportunity for learning is lost. So to me, everything is preparation. Practice is everything. You cannot perform on game day. You cannot present in the boardroom any better than you can in practice. And so the key to me, and what I will miss most in retirement, is practice. Practice is an opportunity to fail, and failure is the playground of success. And so when you talk to your son, okay, let's talk about how did you? prepare? How did you study? Did you leave it to the last minute? Did you do it in increments as you

went along? When you woke up, did you feel healthy? Did you eat properly? Did you go into the exam alert and ready to go? And then there was the exam. Did you handle the moment well? Did you choke when you realize that you didn't know some of the information? Did you cheat? All of these things are things to talk about. And then on the other side of it, what was learned. And his failing in that exam gave him an opportunity to learn more than if he had gotten in 95. You don't learn very much in that moment.

I think preparation is everything. There are sports psychologists in the world who are making tons of money trying to teach people how to compete, or perform with a calm mind the way they would in practice. Now, this is just me, and they're all wealthier than me, and they drive nicer cars than I do. I think that's backwards. Because you know what?

Once you put a scoreboard up there, all of a sudden it's human nature, it becomes more important to you. And so I believe, the opposite, I believe let's make practice more difficult. make it more like game day so that game day doesn't feel like such a shock to the system. We don't have a hard time getting young people excited to play Harvard on Saturday, but we have a hard time getting 19-year-olds to find the relevance and practice on a Wednesday afternoon when nobody's watching. That's when you need to earn your living. That's when you need to get their attention and demand full engagement. So I believe in the Japanese philosophy, which is that you cry and practice and you laugh in competition.

And you also have to practice the things that you're bad at, which means you're going to look like an idiot, but you also have your identity wrapped up in being a hedge fund trader or a squash player and you're really good at that by definition of what you're doing at the level you're doing it. And so practicing, I was actually talking to an MBA coach a couple weeks ago, And he said something similar. He's like the hardest thing to do is get, I can make players better, no problem.

But I need them to practice the things that they're bad at. And they don't want to do that because then they look bad in front of their peers and their colleagues. I believe that you practice your weaknesses, but you compete to your strengths. And the more you can shore up your weaknesses when your opponent tries to expose those, then you're going to be more. able to get past it. You always want to go out there in competition playing to your strength. It's interesting when I was coaching, you know, doubles in tennis. You can position people so that their weaknesses are almost never exposed. And that's the sign of a good

coach. So one of my friends is Bill Belichick, and Bill is the coach of the Patriots. And, you know, there he goes, Asante's name dropping. But Bill has this great phrase that to me is an onion. It has so many levels. And as you go down and peels, it gets sweeter and sweeter. And what Bill says is, do your job. Okay, that's, what does that mean? He puts people in position, and this is the sign of a great leader, so that they're able to compete using their strengths. They're able to perform using their strengths. And then he says, says and stay in your lane. And that's brilliant because what he's saying there is, now that I've put you in a position where you should be able to hit that forehand all day long and run

around the backhand, if you go out of that lane, now your weaknesses are going to get exposed and now you become a liability. And so I think that is really important. We do, one of the things you do in squash is what's something called solo practice, which is you come into the courts, alone and you practice for a period of time. And we sort of orchestrate what that would look like, particularly in terms of working on your weaknesses. So Joe has a weaker backhand than forehand. Joe shows up for his 10 a.m. solo practice. And what does he do? He goes out on the court and he hits forehand. Joe, what are you doing? You're not working on the things that need to become less liabilities, but on game day, we're playing to your strengths. We're playing to

your forehand. If I asked you what it means to prepare, I think of this sort of like put yourself in a position for success. What does it mean to put yourself in a position for success before you reach the stage on which you're performing, whether in athletics or in life? Well, first of all, I think we procrastinate, especially this generation. This generation, this generation, will, you know, it's always interesting. I've had, you know, I've coached tennis and squash and gymnastics, but tennis and squash. And these people have been highly successful. And they were successful. They've been successful because every day they put in a little. Whatever that is, whether it's mental, physical, emotional, what are they working on? But every day, they put in a

level. And then they go to class. And they wait until the week of the final. And then, they take study aid medication so they can pull two all-nighters and try to get ready to take the exam. Guys, you didn't get great in tennis by pulling all-nighters the night before a tournament. That's crazy put in a little every day. So what does that take? That takes discipline. Unless you've been given sprinkled with fairy dust, you've got to put in every day. And I view every day, as another brick in the house that you're building. And no one brick is any more important than any other brick. But it's that daily consistent discipline and putting it and enjoying it.

You know, it shouldn't be a burden. It shouldn't be work. The great ones have this great capacity for imagination where they can come in and it's fun. It's exciting. They see the value. They see the purpose. For the others, it's drudgery. And nobody wants to go to get root canal work done every morning.

So if it's drudgery, then you've got to do a real serious mental shift there because that's not going to work. A lot of people want the results, but they don't want to put in the work. But what I mean by that is like we want to learn a different language. So we sign up for duolingo. We do it for a week. Yeah. And then we're like, oh, and then we start doing it inconsistently every few days.

And then we're like, we're not making progress. It's as if we're like Sisyphus rolling this boulder halfway up the hill. And then we're like, I don't feel like keep going. I'm going to come back tomorrow. But when we come back tomorrow, it's at the bottom of the hill and we have to start all over again. That's a good analogy. Thank you for that. Talk to me about the relationship between sort of consistency, how it gets in our way, and maybe

intensity, which is when you were talking about your students, is like they're focused on intensity over consistency when it comes to testing. But when it comes to competition, they're focused on consistency. consistency over intensity. Well, it's interesting. You know, you've asked something that I've never thought about before. Maybe the intensity is a function of doing something that you don't necessarily enjoy. First of all, there needs to be a realistic measure of where you are and where you're trying

to get to. I think too many people have unrealistic goals, and it's instantly a deterrent. You know, I want to get up that mountain, but I can only do a half a step today. Well, that's where you are. Meeting me where I am, I'm at a half a step. I'm not going to take two steps because two steps is too painful. And I don't want to come back tomorrow and go through pain. So I think the consistency comes for measurable, reasonable goals.

And I personally believe in terms of conditioning, I don't want people to put in 100% on any given day. I want them to save a little for tomorrow. I want them to be able to say, that was good. That was good workout. I feel pretty good about myself. I'll come back tomorrow and we'll start again. So consistency, discipline, yet enjoying the process is so important.

It's ironic, you know, when they come back to visit in 10 years with their partner and their children, they don't talk about individual matches or where number they were. They talk about, do you remember that bus ride in the snow on the way to Maine? And do you remember we arrived late from? You know, they talk about pieces of the journey. You know, I have a friend who recently passed away. And as he was getting closer to the finish line, I said to him, what's this all about? And he said, it's purpose.

Have you found your purpose? it's not hard getting up and working toward or in sync with your purpose. But if you're doing something out of yourself or your own desires, that's work. You know, I've had some failed relationships in my life. And I have found that a bad idea, no matter how hard you work, will probably never work. and a really good idea, a partner who's your friend and who likes you, that can almost never fail. And it's true generally of the day-to-day condition. You know, it's obviously we have to do things that we don't like. I have our, the boys on the team make lists, constantly making

lists. They don't, this generation doesn't do that. And I tell them, before you go to bed, I want you to read your list once. And then you wake up, you find yourself more focused on the tasks at hand. And there's one thing on that list typically is that you're not looking forward to, or you're looking forward to the least. Do that first. Get that out of the way. Now the rest of the day is kind of fun stuff.

But what we do is we push it off and we push it off. And it's sort of that hairy monster. It's sort of that lioness. and we just, I don't want to have to deal with that. Oh, it's tomorrow. Now I have another sleepless night worrying about what I could have knocked off this morning. So this is a beautiful life. And the steps and the interaction should be joyous and additive.

And that's a great gift. And you can get people to appreciate that. I think a couple of points, as you were saying, standing on the bottom of the mountain and looking up. And the gap between where we are and where we want to go seems really large. And that makes us, we notice that gap when we're chasing the result and not the process. And I have the saying that I use all the time, which is a lack of patience changes the outcome. So when you, when you chase the result and you don't work on the process, you're inevitably going to fail. Even if you succeed, you fail.

It's a weird sort of dynamic, right? But if you set yourself to what can I do better to put myself to prepare better today, to put myself in a position for success tomorrow, and you repeat that over and over consistently, then your goal doesn't seem so far away anymore. Your goal seems right in front of you. And so you can make progress and get positive reinforcement there. I like that a lot. You know, I'll be invited to speak to a company.

and it's usually at a retreat. And the CEO will get up and say, this is what we did third quarter. This is where we are in the fourth quarter. These are our goals in the first quarter. And then I get up to speak and I say, well, I'm sure that's super important, but I don't necessarily agree with that. I think if you take care of your people, they will take care of the scoreboard. If you focus on the scoreboard, you're going to fail.

I have never seen an athlete performing in any activity where they're running around with a scoreboard clicker in their hands. They're focusing on the nuts and bolts, the tasks at hand. And as a leader, I think the single most important quality you can have is empathy. And to be an empath, you need to be able to put yourself on the other side of the desk and understand where that person is coming from and how you can help and influence them and inspire them

and get them to be the best version of themselves. And in terms of the best version of themselves, perfection is the enemy of the good. And as I age and I get closer to the finish line, that becomes so much more clear to me. You know, I'll be speaking to a group of parents and their focus is getting their child into the best school possible, because I'm usually talking to that age group.

And, you know, my feeling is if Tommy is a lovely young person, he looks people in the eye, he shakes their hand, he's character large, a good human being, kind and gentle, and he prepares well for things, but he's a C student. That's pretty much who Tommy is. What's wrong with that? There's nothing wrong with that. Celebrate your C student, Tommy, for all the other wonderful things that that person is. We don't do that. We're so driven by goals. And sometimes those goals don't work for who we are. And I think that's, well, we're going to hire

tutors and we're going to get, we're going to do the SAT 17 times and we're going to. because my identity as a parent is wrapped up in your success no question about it and it's so unfair to to Tommy I want to come back to managing emotions before we sort of like I want to talk about this generation and our relationship to failure but before we get there I want to explore what does it mean to manage our emotions and how do we as as parents or coaches teach our children and ourselves to manage our emotions better. And you have a great analogy sort of like with an Oreo cookie. I'd love to explore it. Yeah, life lessons through Oreo cookies. We live in a very angry society. We live in a society now where people are, if you're not on my team,

then you're the enemy. There's no middle. The middle is sort of gone away. And so when I'm talking to young people, I talk to them about life lessons through Oreo cookies. And I stand up and they see my big belly and I say, well, obviously I love Oreo cookies. So let's talk about Oreo cookies and as a metaphor for life. And I say, how many of you have ever been in a car when somebody is in road rage? That's not a safe place to be, is it? No, it's scary. Get away from that person. So I want, I'm going to give you two Oreo cookies. Put one down. I want you to take that Oreo cookie and stand it on its edge. All right.

Now, you're looking at that Oreo cookie. This wafer represents thoughts. In the course of the day, we have thousands and thousands of thoughts. Many of them are not very good. And then the other wafer is action. So you have thought and action. Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $4.

New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small hot coffee, and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. So here we've got these thoughts going on, and then we act. What is the cream in the middle? The cream in the middle is time. There is a period of time measurable between thought and action. Okay. Now I want you to take the wafer off of one cookie and the wafers.

off of the other cookie. And I want you to put the two Oreos together with the cream. What have we just done? We've just doubled the amount of time between thought and action. That's a good thing, all right, because now we're less likely to act on a thought that may have been a bad thought or a knee-jerk reaction. The goal is to increase the gap of time. between those two. How many of you watched the Academy Awards when Will Smith went up and smacked Chris Rock in the face? That dude had no cream in his Oreo cookie. And that's what we need to do. We need, especially with young people. And it's very hard right now with Instagram and all of these things in our phones because everything is short snippets now. And everything is going on fast.

and we don't we don't really stay with the thought for very long you know used to be that you could coach a team for 30 minutes and then you needed to take a breather that is way way shorter so again thoughts action increase the gap of time eat more oreo cookies so that that's my analogy how do you let kids or adults even know hey like you're right now you're succumbing to your defaults you're succumbing to your emotions, you're not thinking clearly, you're just reacting. How do you tell them or point it out? Because I think like nobody makes a bad decision intentionally, right? And so in these moments, you're not thinking. And that's, you're reacting without reasoning. And that's what leads to all this trouble. Inevitably, we have to repair a relationship. You know, we do something

that is irreparable. We, but we're not thinking. Nobody taps us on the shoulder. and says, hey, do you want to pour water or gasoline onto this situation? Well, if somebody did that, we'd be like, oh, obviously, like water. But we don't have that. We don't feel that. So how do you point out to people that that's where they are right now in a way that empowers them? Well, first of all, it's got to be presented in a way that doesn't come across as being

judgmental. I have three young daughters, which I've been given a second chance in life and how lucky am I. My older daughter, my 12-year-old, is very reactive to things. And when she reacts to something, usually anger toward her younger sisters, I'll say, you just reacted. I'm not upset. I'm not raising my voice. I'm just sharing with you that that happened. Just be aware of it. That's not the teachable moment, because once you bring that in, now there is going to be emotion on her side. Oh, Daddy's angry. He's rejecting something, whatever. And then you've got a problem. So you don't ignore it at the moment, but you do address it at the moment in a non-confrontive way.

And you come back and talk about it later. The best analogy, and we kind of stumbled into this, one of my children was a bitter. And in daycare, you know, we'd get a call, oh, you know, so-and-so bit somebody. if a child bites someone and use again this can be a metaphor for a million different things because it's a learned behavior if a child bites someone and you come in at that moment and this is what our parents used to do we're going to stick mustard in your mouth or we're going to bite you so you can see how painful that is nothing gets learned and so what we would do with Emma, as we would say, during the day, when there was nothing going on, driving to the mall, you know, Emma, biting is really a bad thing. It hurts people. Oh, yeah, Dad, I don't want to talk

about it. No, I understand. And then we'd bring it up again, and we'd bring it up again a couple of times through the course of the day, repetition, repetition. She stopped biting within a week because it was addressed in non-emotional times, not at the moment. Now, obviously if there's something that is about to happen where danger or someone is going to get hurt, well, then you have to stop it. But there's no learning going on there. You're just simply triaging the moment. The learning happens on the other side of it. You can point it out. You lost your temper again. Please stop. And then later on, do you remember what happened last night when we were Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's incredible how you can break the cycle. And this learned behavioral thing is

interesting because you, if you become a scientist in terms of observing human behavior, you see that exactly. So why do some people raise their voice and yell? Because they've learned over time, that's the way to stop a conversation. Or they've learned over time that they can affect the outcome through that behavior at the time. I caught myself. I had a, one of my learned behaviors, if somebody told me that I had done something, I instantly apologize. Whether I did it or not, I instantly apologize. You know what that learned behavior did? It stopped the anger. It stopped the conversation. You can't, you know, because, oh, you just told me that I did something wrong and I said, I'm sorry, you're going to beat me over the head about it.

we're going to move on to the next. But that's not necessarily a good behavioral trait. So that's how I see emotion. And in-game adjustments are one of the keys to life. We can prepare all we want. We can be so ready. But when we go in, something happens, and now you have to adjust on the fly. That's what successful people are able to do. I'm going in to ask a person for money in my fundraising role. I go in, I have to be able to read the body language almost instantly. This isn't going well. This is going in the wrong direction.

This doesn't seem to resonate with that person. I'm going to adjust. It doesn't matter how many hours I put in in preparation. I've got to be able to adjust. Now, if there is emotion present, I don't recognize that. I'm not able to see the adjustments that need to be made. And so, again, emotion is not your friend. And so, and that's whether it's elation or depression or anger, all of those things

take away our ability to just be cognizant of what's happening and what adjustments do I need to make. I would hazard a guess that in the world that we live in, finance, teaching, whatever, very precious few people. can say, I was at the mountaintop because it went exactly as I planned. It doesn't. It won't. You know, we talk about mental rehearsal as a way to prepare for an activity.

That's important. But you know what else is? Believing going in, it's not going to go the way I thought it was, and I need to recognize what are those things happening and what adjustments do I need to make. It's really whack-a-mole. Life is really just a big game of whack-a-mole. I like that.

So you've been coaching for 45 years now. Are you worried about kids today? What are you seeing? I am very concerned for this generation of young people because we as adults in their lives will do anything, and it's human nature, but we'll do anything to help them not experience discomfort. We'll do anything to make sure they don't have to go through pain. and it's through the pain that learning occurs.

And so in the name of love, we hurt young people's development. And I think one of the most important qualities to success in the human being is resilience. And the only way you can become resilient is to fail. We have to let them fail. And listen, and I have failed in this. I'm not preaching that I've done this all right. I haven't. But I'm trying.

Our little one would be walking down the hallway in her diaper, and she would fall on her bum. If when she landed on her heinie, we went, she would look at us and cry. If she fell on her bum and we said, yay, she gets up, wipes herself off, and walks away. It actually starts that early. And again, as parents or coaches or educators or leaders, what just happened?

Let's talk about that a little later. Okay. Did we prepare well? Were we ready to go? Was our opponent just too good for us? Did we lose the bid because the other company was offering a better opportunity? I think we need to recognize that we must fail to learn and grow and improve. So I'm working at a college.

People come to the door now. They look more put together than they've ever looked before. And yet the first time they face adversity, they fall into a million pieces. And then the parents come flying in. What's wrong? How did the people supervising your journey let you down or fail you? It just breeds this continuation of, it's okay to fail. What happened?

Let's analyze this. Let's try to do better. That's not really happening right now. And so in the name of love, we're letting this generation down. I heard a comedian recently, and he was saying, when I was a little boy, and I hate that when I was a little boy, you know, I'd walk 12 miles in the snow to go to school. Well, you know, I didn't have to do that. you know, I remember someone, he said, when I was a little boy, I'd walk by the house and my mother'd be in the kitchen. And I'd say, Mom, I'm going down to the lake. And she'd say,

okay, son, don't drown. Now, little boy walks by the window and says, mom, I'm going to the lake. She sprints out of the house, lathers him up with sun tan lotion, put swimmy's on him, and probably even goes to the lake with him to make sure he's safe. That's, I mean, it's a comedic line, but it's pretty true. And so not that long ago, I had to speak to a group of parents in Greenwich, Connecticut. And the topic was raising balanced children in a pressurized society. So I got up and I said, how many of you have seen a few good men and everybody raised their hand? And I said, well, I'm afraid you can't take the truth. Because you're the reason it's a pressurized society. And now we've got to come to grips with that. Well, the headmistress was

running around. She was nervous that I was offending all of these wealthy people. And at the end of my speech, I got a standing ovation because people were so happy that I was talking to the person sitting next to them. We live in a world without mirrors. We're not able to look and say, wait a minute, how am I hurting my child's development to become a better member of society? that's the end game, or it should be, not what college you went to or did you go to college. I had an opportunity to do a panel with the world-renowned Dr. Jim Lear, and he is just a rock star. And we were on the panel, and he had a blackboard or a whiteboard. And he said, all right, and only he could get away with this.

he said, I want you to raise your hand and tell me the big three. When your child was born, what were the big three? That my child, you count all the fingers, you count all the toes. That my child was healthy, that my child was happy. Okay, so we get three things on the board. Now he says your child reaches a certain age, and you now register your child to do an extracurricular activity. Whatever, ice skating, football, playing the obo, being in a play.

what were the big three that my child learned confidence through the activity and my child learned how to play nice in the sandbox. So he's got these six things on the board and he looks back at the crowd and he says, okay, now my question to you is, where did you collectively lose your minds? It was like, whoa, that's intense. But he was right. We went off the path because all of a sudden now we were looking to make sure this child achieve certain things, hopefully for themselves, but probably so that we could go to the country

club and brag a little bit about that child's performance or activities, well, we're not letting them fail. We're paving the way for them to succeed now, but I will guarantee you to fail later. And now we have all of these mental health issues as a result. Well, not as a result. It's one of many reasons why we're wrestling with mental health issues. But I heard of statistic recently that 47% of college students are in therapy. Now, on one hand, that's a very healthy thing. That means people are in touch with their feelings and they don't view getting help as a negative thing. But wow, how did we get to there?

Yeah, it's a little crazy. It is. And it's because fear of failure is a gigantic. dick, not measuring up, unrealistic goals. And a lot of that is the social media. The cell phone is the seventh gate to hell. There's no question in my mind because everything is perfect. You know, these young people will take 80 pictures of themselves, post the one that's best.

Someone else is looking at that picture, feeling less about themselves. How do you think about building resilience, mental resilience, right, in the sense of I'm a parent, I have a, you know, I have two young teens, how do I help them to fail? I mean, one of the things that I've done is try to put them in jujitsu because there's rapid feedback, you're constantly failing. But like outside of that, what can we do to help them do that? And then how do we build mental toughness beyond failure, just mental toughness to be able to look through Instagram and not get caught up in those moments of other people? I think you just have to be omnipresent and communicating. Don't get swept away into what's happening around you. Celebrate the failures. What just happened? That's amazing. So you just build your ice cream on the sidewalk. So let's clean it up and let's talk about how did that happen? I mean, that's a tiny little thing. But, you know, I've got a granddaughter who's learning how to drive.

and she doesn't want to listen to her parents giving her instructions. Well, the outcome, that's not going to go well. So let's talk about why you're resisting this. What's happening? Let's just keep talking about what's happening. Being present, why did this happen? That's great. Or, gee, that didn't work out.

Let's talk about how, why, how? Did we bite off more than we could chew, or is this just beyond our scope? But again, it's talking, talking, talking. It's interesting as a coach, you know, 25% of the student body leaves every year. So what I have to constantly repeat, constantly repeat. And it is the repetition of the constructive things that need to happen all the time. my purpose in life is messaging. I have come to the understanding that all I want to do is share messages, things that I've

learned mostly from failures and mistakes, right? So that's where we're in the business of doing now, you and I and others like us. And yet, I am basically an introvert. At the end of the day, I don't want to talk anymore because all we're doing all day long as talking, but you have to. If you're going to be messaging, then you've signed up for that, and you've got to share the messages. And there's a non-critical, constructive way. I think one of the things that we've hit on today that maybe I underappreciated was the timing of the message is also probably more important in some ways than the actual message, right?

Whoa. It's everything. I can't tell you how many fights I've gotten into with players where I went over to coach them after a loss or a bad moment and they resist. I mean, they're dug in because their inner temperature is way up. These are nice kids, but they're going to fight me at that moment. So I learned early on, that's not the time to do any teaching. Now, the other thing I learned the hard way was I learned, oh, now's not the time to talk to Tom. He's very upset. But I still need to go over to him and put my hand on his shoulder and say, that was a tough one. Because if you don't do anything like that, they think you're angry at them, that you're disappointed in them. Hey, that's a tough one. We'll catch up in a little bit. And then the teaching happens on the other side of that. And it's true in all human engagement. We'll be in a difficult conversation and you just have to get to the point where you say, we're just going to have to agree to disagree here. And let's circle back a little later.

And as the temperature's rising and the voices are getting louder, you know, there's that wonderful saying, the louder you speak, the less that I hear. That's really important. And how we internalize the communication given to us by the people supporting our life journey, my parents were fabulous. I was so blessed.

And yet, so much of what they said and did, I internalized incorrectly. My grandfather was a shoemaker, came over from Italy. My father managed a factory, the most wonderful human being I've ever known. He would walk across a wet field and leave no footprints. He was just a gentle soul. That said, I think he greatly enjoyed whatever successes I was having. for me. I think it was really for me. I don't think he went to the country club and bragged. We didn't belong to a country club. But every time something would happen, some level of success, he would say to me, what's next? So what's the next goal? What are you striving for? We're going to go for another national championship? How's it looked for next year? And if finally, at about the age of 60, I said, Dad, what's wrong with just sitting here and letting this feel good. I'm thinking about it for a little while. I don't want to worry about what's next.

What's next will happen. We'll get there. And so I internalized his well intentions incorrectly. And so I think it's hard to understand or find out how a young person internalizes what it is we're sharing with them. And I think you need to be pretty sophisticated in watching their behavior afterwards, because that will really tell you how they internalized it. Are they harder on themselves than you are most of the time? The kids, the kids on the team? Yeah. No.

Did they used to be? Yeah, no, much less now. There's lack of ownership. So if I don't own an outcome, why would I take the time to beat myself up about it? You know, it's funny as a coach, if a team or a person fails, the finger points at them. Or so, in other words, if I fail, my finger points at me. But if I fail twice, the finger points at the coach. If this isn't going well, it's your fault.

And in this generation coming out now, and I talk to companies about this all the time, If I'm not earning $300,000 at the end of the first year, there's something wrong with the company. Well, maybe not. Maybe that's not the real problem here. And so ownership is super important. And if mommy and daddy are going to run around making sure that you're not failing, how do you own that? But you get these kids that come in. You can start coaching in November.

How do you get them to go for? from wherever they're starting from to take ownership over what they're doing when it comes to what you're coaching them. Time, repetition, repetition. But what messages are you saying? What principles are you using? How are you getting across to them, I guess? Well, I try to do it in a way that they don't feel like I'm judging them and just say, look, this is my observation. This is what just happened. What were you thinking? Where was the cream and the Oreo cookie? Why did you react that way? You know what? This age group needs to be right all the time. There's nothing wrong with letting somebody else be right. Even if you don't agree, just let them win that

little conversation and we can move forward instead of feeling like you have to fall on every debate. It's really about the human interactions and how you're sharing with them in an non-judgmental way. The other thing I have found that's been very helpful, not everybody can do this and not everybody should do this. I am very open with, I share my humanity all the time. You know, I'm medicated on for depression. They know that. I let them know that. I don't want them looking at me like some otherworldly creature, this guy's as human as they come, and I appreciate his humanity, and I'm going to appreciate yours, and I'm going to treat you with respect, and we're going to try to improve. But I think sometimes one of the things that you notice when you go to

college, right, is you go away and Mr. and Mrs. Parrish enabled you to go to college, and then you come home, and one day they're just Sue and Tom. They're just people. And that's a great transitional understanding that they're just people doing the best that they can. And I think as a leader, it's important to share with them your humanity. Because then if I'm human and I'm teaching, I'm not on a mountain top. I'm not judging you. I'm right in here with you.

But I'm seeing some behavior that you need to consider is maybe not helpful. I remember the first time I apologize to my kids for, you know, not having enough cream in my Oreo cookie. And it was so hard. It was just hard to walk up to like a six-year-old and be like, I didn't react the way that I want to. I shouldn't have done that. I'm going to try to do better in the future. But it was just really, really hard to acknowledge. Maybe it's just me, but I find it hard to be vulnerable in that way. Yeah, and obviously we're all like that, right? But if you're trying to teach your children to be better, and the old saying, I'm sorry, I can't hear what you're saying, your actions are speaking too loud. That's really true.

So I lost my temper there. I'm sorry. That wasn't an okay way of communicating. And now when they lose their temper, see, it's not okay. it wasn't okay for me and it's not okay for you so let's try to be better when i think about the you know sort of when it comes to these vulnerable moments shifting the mindset to the bigger goal changing your perspective allows you to open up right so my perspective if i if i walk into that moment with you know what is my goal as a parent right to raise strong independent children

well is this going to put me closer to that goal or further away from it and then it takes it out of me right like it just takes it into this is like a good thing for them to learn like i need to model the behavior that i want them to to exhibit acknowledging you made a mistake uh trying to correct it improving going forward so that comes back to the the very beginning purpose why are we doing what we doing where is this getting us to last night we were in the kitchen and my daughter was doing something with a butter knife, which could have been potentially dangerous. And I raised my voice. And she turned to me and she said, why did you raise your voice?

And I said, because that was going to potentially become a problem. I had to stop the train. Now, later on, we can talk about why you were doing what you were doing, and we can, you know, hopefully get better. But I thought it was really adorable that she said, why are you raising your voice? Because we've talked about the fact that that just doesn't get you anywhere. Right. But it gets her attention in that moment because it's like, whoa, this is really different. Yeah. And it, yeah, the safety issue. I like that. One of the things I would imagine is really hard about your job that I don't think I've ever heard you talk about is sort of managing the diversity of cultures and religions amongst players. Yeah, we have, thank you. We have a tremendous amount of diversity here in the program. Last year, we had 11 different countries on the team.

represented. And that is a large number of different religions. And so we have Hindus and we have Muslims and we have Zoroastians. And on the first day of practice, they're all sitting next to each other. And I say to them, these are your brothers. And now you have to develop a level of empathy, understand where that person is coming. And let's do this in the best way possible. Now, when you're born into a family, you don't choose your brother, but he's there. And so now you've got to develop a meaningful relationship with that person. And we talk about that every day. The religion thing turned out to be the biggest difference of all.

And it blew up in my face one day. I just figured like Pollyanna, everything was perfect, everything is great. Look at how wonderful we are. And one day there was a dispute in the cafeteria involved. a couple of Muslims and a couple of Hindus, and it ignited like a forest fire. And I thought, whoa, we need to address this because the way that this blew up, it's so distorted that this is a big deal. And we sat down and we talked about, why did we get to here? How are the religions different? How are they similar? I consider myself a Christian. I'm not particularly holy, but, you know,

I'm taught that Christ gave up food for 40 days and 40 nights, so I will make the ultimate sacrifice, and I'll give up M&M's or Oreo cookies for 40 days and 40 nights. But now we have our boys on the team that are involved in Ramadan. Well, that's pretty similar length of time. Maybe these religions are a little bit more like each other than they are different. Let's talk about that. and that you reach a level of comfort and at least understanding. One of the other big differences on this campus is socioeconomic.

We have some very wealthy kids on this campus, the one-presenters, and most of our boys on the squash team are on financial aid. They don't have very much at all. And that makes them feel less about themselves. And, you know, they may get invited to the same party, but they're not of that class. And so we're constantly talking about the differences and the similarities. And the more they recognize the similarities, the easier the journey is we went through 9-11.

The world went through 9-11, but we're not that far from New York City. And many of the kids on this campus at the time had friends, family, neighbors, knew somebody involved in that crisis. And I will never forget, the president of the college called me, and he said, because remember, it was just being streamed, constantly being streamed, the pictures of the terrorists. And the pictures of the terrorists, there was, you know, headdresses, or certainly of that part of the world. And he said, I want your team to come to my house tonight. And we went there, and he said, guys, my request of you is don't go anywhere where people are drinking. Because something can explode on us. Now, obviously, there was no incident. There was nothing. But I thought that was

particularly powerful that that came out. And it was conversed about in a way that said, we're concerned, and we want to make sure you're safe. I had a young man coming to Trinity many years ago from South Africa. Two days before he arrived, I got a call from one of the people in one of the offices here, and she said, Coach, I have to ask you a question. I said, right. She said, is that person white or black? I said, I don't know.

And I said, but why are you asking that question? And she said, well, there is apartheid there. And I don't know what this person's views are going to be about things. And how is that going to affect that person's experience here on campus? And, you know, it's just this whole continuing theme that we realize we're more like each other than we are different, but we need to address both sides of it so that everybody comes out of here, richer and wiser and more. One of the things that I, Shane, and I know we don't talk about politics on this show, but we're so far apart on all of these issues. and in the world of education, we tend to focus on one side, and we don't seem to offer the other side very much. And I think we have the obligation to do that. My father called it the green tree

theory. If you have a tree that's bent to the left and you want the tree to grow straight, you don't tie the tree straight. You bend it to the right, and then the tree finds the middle. I think we have to share all perspectives and let the kids make up their own minds. One of the things that you do that I'm interested in is you call your team captains every morning. What's behind that? Why do you do that? What impact does it have? Two things. One, the captains are sort of the telephone line between the team and myself. And so I need to know what's going on. I need to know how they're thinking, how they're perceiving things, particularly as I've gotten older.

You know, most people in business work with people of varying ages, and they go through life shifting and changing. In my world, I'm working with the same age constituency all the time. Yet every day, the gap between my age and their age gets wider. And so it's very important that I remain relevant and understand where they're coming from. I don't really care what Taylor Swift is singing about tomorrow in Seattle, but I got to know. I got to keep up with that stuff. And the captains keep me engaged in ways. So, hey, Joe's having a hard time right now.

All right, great. Let's figure that out. I've got to filter what's real and not real and what's important and not's important. But that's a factor. The other reason is, as a leader, I have only one obligation to them. Well, I have two. One, I need to make sure they're always safe as best I can. But the other obligation I have to them is as future leaders in this world,

they deserve to know what goes into every decision. I have no expectation that they're going to like it, agree with it. It's not important to me, but they need to know why. Why did we get to here? And so as captains, particularly on the track of ultimate leadership, I want them always to know this is, you know, I know the team is upset with me, but this is what I was thinking. And I don't know, we may be very different in this way, but I'm sort of like the bug that scurries along the top of the water. I probably have short interactions with dozens and dozens of people in a day. And I make sure those interactions stay brief.

I don't want to go too deep on anyone because that's time and I don't have the time. So I'm making sure people are okay. I'm skimming along. Obviously, if there's a problem, I'll take a deep dive with that person. But mostly I'm just a surface skimmer. And I find I can talk to a lot more people in the course of the day that way. Yeah, you're just taking the temperature, right? Yeah.

If there's a problem, you can dive in. but if you don't take the temperature, you won't know. Exactly. We usually end the podcast with the question that we started. I think it was our second question about what is success. I think we'll end with what do you see as the commonalities or patterns that the people who a decade after they're on your team end up with the happiest, most fulfilling, most successful, and I'm using successful broadly life.

Well, in terms of my coaching, I have found that for the players with whom I shared the most difficult times, our relationships are much deeper and richer. You know, like a marriage. In a marriage, what you're doing is you're building experiences together, births and deaths and fights and illnesses. and it's not all just the happy vacations that you took. And it's true here as well. It's we shared some hard times and that level of respect that came out of it. One of the most interesting things, so now that I'm retiring, I make it a point to reach out to one person a day that I haven't spoken to in a long time

and just say, hey, how you doing? And one of the things that I have been finding recently is for the young people that we struggled with, now that they've had time, they usually apologize. And I'm not looking for an apology, but she's coach, I'm sorry I was such a jerk back then. or, you know, I didn't, you know, I always think of it as the Mark Twain quote, you know, when I was 15, I couldn't believe what a fool my father was. And when I was 25, I couldn't believe how much he learned in 10 years. Yeah. You know, circling back with fellows that, you know, why, why were you drunk at 10 o'clock on a

Wednesday morning? What were you running away from back then? And they, they have a tendency to almost be a little sheepish or embarrassing. about it. And those little light touch calls, it's okay. I'm not judging you here. I didn't judge you then. You know, we're all human, but we're still in the game together, and that's a beautiful thing. And that I see as a real gift. It's touching back and saying, hey, we're cool. But in terms of answering your question directly, what do I see back then? life is hard.

They all go out there and they all get beat up, like we all do. And just being engaged and connected through it, just like we were when we were together here is a gift. And as I am getting ready to go off into the sunset, so to speak, I can honestly tell them, I received more than I gave. and I want to thank you for that time that we shared. And you, as you get older, you'll see the truth in that. That's a beautiful way to end this conversation, Paul.

Thank you so much for taking the time today. Oh, no, the honor was all mine. And thanks, Shane. Thanks for listening and learning with us. For a complete list of episodes, show notes, transcripts, and more, go to fs. Or just Google the knowledge project. The Farnham Street blog is also where you can learn more about my new book, Clear Thinking, turning ordinary moments into extraordinary results.

It's a transformative guide that hands you the tools to master your fate, sharpen your decision-making and set yourself up for unparalleled success. Learn more at fs.blog slash clear. Until next time.