The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 620: Steve Magness - Defining Success on Your Terms, Setting Process Goals, Speaking Up in the Face of Fear, Winning The Inside Game, & Living a Meaningful Life

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes. The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire 1 person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. Episode #620 with Steve Magness, author of Win The Inside Game Notes: Clearly define your purpose and what you want to do. For Steve, it's: "Explore interesting ideas that will help people." "Those things will help me too. I'm curious about them." Defining that one sentence frees you up to say no to those things outside of your purpose and to focus on actions within that align with your purpose. Steve's Framework for Sustainable Excellence: Be - Clarity on who you are Do - Clairty in your pursuits Belong - Clarity on where and how you fit in Steve stood up as a whistleblower after earning his dream job at Nike, showing courage and sticking to his values and ethics. Why don't we speak up? We have a built in preservation system. We justify, rationalize, and avoid it because it minimizes the negative feeling in the short term. Don't play prevent defense. Give yourself the permission and freedom to fail. Diversify sense of self. Don't intertwine a sense of self with success or fear of failure. Diversify your sense of self—don't intertwine your identity solely with success or the fear of failure. It's not an all-or-nothing game. Outcomes matter, but they aren't everything. Focus on process goals and let outcomes be a byproduct of good effort. Set your environment up to define what success means for you. Big achievements, like becoming a best-selling author, rarely feel as fulfilling as imagined. Success can be multi-dimensional and definitionally nuanced. The Power of Belonging When facing a challenge (like climbing a hill), it feels easier when you're with others versus alone. We need each other. We share the load. Surround yourself with compounders. "We are built to belong." It is a mistake to make success or failure a virtue. It's not "I'm a failure." It's, "I failed at that thing." It's temporary. It's not who you are. In moments of stress (e.g., choking in sports like Simone Biles), your brain defaults to survival mode and shuts down higher-level functions. Strategies to overcome it: Narrow your focus: Break tasks into smaller, actionable steps. Create a personal definition of success to shift focus from fear. Try doing something unexpected or crazy to reset your perspective. To have a meaningful life we need to feel Coherent - Life adds up. You have a cohesive story.  Significant - You matter and can make a difference. Directed - There's a purpose to your life and pursuits. Belonging - Part of something bigger than you. "This book is for those who stood up, found courage, and stuck to their values and ethics."

We have to give ourselves the permission and the freedom to fail, the permission and the freedom to explore those limits and be okay. First off, I think it's really important is we need to diversify what I call our sense of self. It's not I failed at running or I failed at this test. It's I am a failure because we've intertwined our sense of self with our success or our failure in that activity. and when we're so intertwined that we're defined by it, that pushes us more to that fear and that avoidance. This episode is brought to you by the great people at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company that builds world-class teams for clients around the globe.

If you need to build a new team with a strong culture and improved productivity, Insight Global's team of talent advisors can help. help find the people, bring them together, and deliver the work needed. Building a team can be tough, but building teams with strong culture can be magic. Visit Insightglobal.com slash learning leader. That's Insightglobal.com slash learning leader today to learn more. Welcome to The Learning Leader Show. I am your host, Ryan Hawk.

Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 666. 866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help you start your week off. Right. You'll also receive details about how our book, The Score That Matters, will help you become a more effective leader. Text Hawk to 66866.

Now on to tonight's featured leader. Steve Magnus is world-renowned for his work on high performance. He's the best-selling author of many books, including The Passion Paradox, Do Hard Things, and most recently win the inside game. During our conversation, we discuss the four things we need to live a meaningful life. And then how to clearly define what success means to you, not what success. society tells you success is. And then near the end, we discussed how to work through imposter syndrome and a specific story on what Steve did to get through this earlier in his career.

Ladies and gentlemen, this one is so good. Please enjoy my conversation with Steve Magnus. So to start, I was reading your acknowledgement section of your most recent book. And you wrote, this book is for those who stood up, found courage, and stuck to their values and ethics. And you open the book with a very personal story about how you struggled, but then found the courage to stand up. Can you share more about that personal story and how you found the courage to stand up. Yeah, absolutely. So my first job, actually, my first job out of grad school, I worked for Nike. And I was working with their world class distance runners, those assistant coach, exercise physiologist for them. And, you know, at first I thought, this is my dream job. I'm what, I don't know, 24. And I said,

I hit it big. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. But then I started to see things that didn't quite make sense. And what I mean by quite make sense is they, they kind of pushed the bounds of the rules of sports, of the ethics of sport. And at first, when I saw those, I, I kind of rationalized and justified and said, oh, you know, this isn't a big deal or there's got to be an explanation for it. And that's what I did. I didn't stand up. I, you know, took, supplements that were sketchy sounding or, you know, I had, you know, the team doctors do experiments where I was the guinea big to test things out where I didn't quite feel uncomfortable or feel comfortable, but I went along with it and rationalized the whole whole weight through.

And it was only after I made the decision about a year and a half to leave and then go do something else where I said, you know what? At first I was like, I just need to move on. This experience sucked. It wasn't what I thought. High level sport sucks. I don't want to be a part of this. And I tried to just kind of push it away. But it just ate at me and ate at me. And as I took on a new job and months went by, eventually I said, you know what, I got to do something. And I wrote a very short email to U.S. anti-doping, who was in charge of, you know, sport rules in track and field. And I said, hey, this is, I don't know, but this is what I experienced. This is everything I went through and things that didn't seem right for me look into it.

And that started a, gosh, nearly 10-year journey where I was a whistleblower and it went all the way to, you know, arbitration. and USADA ruled against them. And it involved the FBI showing up at my door. And all this created me handing over my computer and phone. And so they had everything on me. And it was wild. So the reason that's in the acknowledgments is simple is because I realized that I had this idea of doing the right thing of what it took to stand up. And then I faced the reality, which.

was a hundred times, maybe more engrossing than I thought. So I have a lot of respect for people who face similar situations and are put in that spot where they have to choose, you know, which way do I go on doing the right thing or, you know, keeping my job and in navigating that space. If you could go back in time, how would you have done it differently? I think I would have listened to my gut. Because deep down, I knew, right? I remember this one time.

I was at Nike. I was in one of the buildings. And I came across this chart that was put together by the essential lead exercise physiologist of the Nike lab. And it had some information on there. I think it said, if I remember correctly, like for an athlete presently on testosterone medication. And for anybody knows, if you're in an Olympic competitive sport, you can't take testosterone.

You know, this isn't general life. This is competitive sports. So there's rules. And I remember seeing that and be like, okay, this is the first like really red flag that I saw. And instead, you know, or what I did is I first called my parents and said, what I do? And they said, take it to your boss. asked for explanation.

And they gave me some explanation, but it was kind of like brushed off. And then I never heard or saw those documents again. And I kind of just, you know, rationalized in my mind and said, oh, well, you know, what have you? It could have been this, could have been that. But deep down, I knew something was off. Like this is Nike head exercise physiologists. They're not, you know, lax with their words, right?

This is a trained scientist. They're going to write things to document things accurately. In my gut, I knew. But I ignored that sensation. And I ignored that sensation because I was, I think, because I was thinking of, no, no, you have a good job. You're going to go to the Olympics with athletes and watch and coach them there. This is what you wanted.

Like, ignore all of that. Just get through this so that you can have the. experience and have it on your resume and blah blah blah et cetera where deep down i should have i should have listened to that gnawing feeling and said like no like there's a reason this is gnawing at you you need to listen to it we've all probably been through not necessarily that situation but times where it was just easier to let it go it was just easier to go about our day whether you see your boss cheating or something along those lines. And so we rationalize like you did and justify it and we just let it go.

You talk about winning the inner game. One, why do we do this? I have my hunches, you know, it's easier, but why do we do this and there's science behind this and how could we be better or have more courage the next time we're faced with a moment where our gut intuition is telling us this is. not right. This is not right. I should do something about it. How would you help us proceed? Yeah. So we have an inbuilt essentially self-preservation system, a kind of psychological immune system that wants to convince us that we are good, decent people who are going to, you know,

acting accordingly to those values. And what happens is when we face a discord where we see something that like threatens our worldview or threatens our sense itself, we have an option here. We either do something about it or we avoid shy away and what I call like kind of minimize and compartmentalize it to justify it. And what happens is more often than not, we choose the avoid thing because it minimizes the negative feeling in the short run. Because often when we're in that space, it feels uncomfortable. Our brain goes, you know what? Forget it.

Protect us now. Don't protect us six months down the line, two years down the line. Protect us now. And this anxiety, this angst around it feels really bad. And the bigger the thing is, the more powerful that urge is to just fix that anxiety now. So what happens is we use these systems. the rationalization, the justification, the changing of the story to kind of deal with the anxiety and then protect ourselves so that we don't have to deal with that anxiety right now.

And that's what it is. And we do this on the big stage. We do this on the small stage. You know, you can see this in sport all the time, right? What do we do after a tough loss? We blame the ref. You know, we blame other people. Why? Because we don't, it's uncomfortable to deal with the situation or the reality that maybe we tried hard and we came up a little bit short and we might need to figure out a new path.

We did this in school, right? Or at least I did. You have this big test coming up and you procrastinate and don't study. One of the reasons we do that is so that afterwards when we maybe get that B or C instead of the A, we can say, you know what? If I would have studied, I would have got that A, but it doesn't really matter that much. It's all kind of this protection. And I think to deal with it, to put us on the right path, it's that external versus internal game. It's often we do it to deal with the external, our projected sense of self, to get the outcome, to get that so-called defined success. But if we redefine that and look at success internally, if we look at who we want to be, the values we hold up, if we can come back to that just to touch more than the external, then that's going to kind of allow us to listen to our gut, listen to that sensation because now it's no longer about, hey, I'm going to ignore this sensation because I want to go to the Olympic Games. or I'm going to ignore this anxiety or deal with this anxiety to, you know, temporary get the goal that I want. Now it's what are the values?

What is the internal success I'm defining as who do I want to be as a person? And that is more important. You write about the fact that we end up playing pre-event defense. And one of the examples you used is think of the middle school kid who doesn't really try because they want to look cool. And I think this goes even beyond middle school. This goes as you age and get even older, is if you try really hard and fail,

then you're embarrassed. But if you don't try, then it's like, ah, whatever, we're just play prevent defense. And so how can we be better at not fearing the embarrassment of trying really hard at something and then falling on our face? and with the idea of, well, I just need to look cool. I just don't want it to appear to others that I was giving everything for,

like some people say they want to admit like, oh, I didn't really practice for that, or I didn't do that. So like maybe it's bragging to be a natural or if you fail, then that's the reason why. What should we do instead if we care about sustainable excellence, which I know you do, and I do too. That's where we are very aligned. If we care about sustainable excellence,

how should we get away from playing prevent defense and go more on offense? Yeah. So a lot of this is, again, it comes down to that protection. We play prevent defense to protect ourselves because if we try hard and we fall short, it kind of exposes us. It shows us that maybe we're not prepared enough. Maybe we're not talented enough. Maybe we're not good enough.

And then we have to come face to face to face with that realization. So it's easier to just default towards protection. What do we do about it? We have to give ourselves the permission and the freedom to fail, the permission and the freedom to explore those limits and be okay. And that can occur through a number of different mechanisms. First off, I think it's really important is we need to diversify what I call our sense of self. meaning often we protect because it becomes, you know, it's not I failed at running or I failed at this test, it's I am a failure because we've intertwined our sense of self with our success

or our failure in that activity. And when we're so intertwined that we're defined by it, that pushes us more to that fear in that avoidance. The way out of that is to diversify yourself, to say this is important. It's not to downplay it. It's just say, I really care about my running. I really care about writing. I really care about, you know, being a scientist. Like, it's part of who I am. But it's not that entire me. Meaning, if I fail at running, I'm still a husband, a father. I still have have these other aspects of my intellectual pursuits or like work life that I'm succeeding at. And there's research behind us.

The famed neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky in the book, I quote it, but he essentially found research that showed that if we fail at our nine to five job or if we're not doing well, that hits on our status and makes our stress hormones go up. but if at the same time we help our company win the company softball tournament, we don't have that as big of an increase of those stress hormones. It sounds silly, but helping our company in this other way gives us a little boost of status where it's like, hey, I might have struggled over here, but like I still have this significance over here.

So I think diversifying your sense of self is one of the. the keys to allow you to freedom to fail. And then the other part of it is, I think, reframing things is a lot of times, and you've written about this as well, right, and it's like outcomes are important, but when we make them the only thing, it becomes this constraint or this crutch. In my own career, I was a very good runner. I ran a four or one mile. At first, trying to run a four-minute mile was motivating. But at some point, it became a constrain because I saw I'm trying to run a four minute mile. And every race was defined by that.

So if I fell off pace just a touch, even though I was still there, it was still in the ballpark, I still had a chance, that signal went, ah, my brain goes, ah, you're not going to make it. Like you might as well give up. And even though I cared, that outcome focus got in my way. So when we're looking at going from prevent defense to more approach or offense, sometimes we have to ask, is our focus on the outcome getting in the way? And if it is, then we need to just kind of let it go and focus on, okay, what's the process that I need to take care of in this

situation? I'm 100% with you. You know that, Steve. But I know that is far easier said than done. How do we get better at marrying the process and divorcing the result? I've been told that by mentors. I know that to be true and I still battle it all the time. I wrote a book about it and I still battle it all the time, man. What do we do to get better at being just committed to the process and the outcome will be what the outcome is?

Yeah. So as you know, I think the key here is to understand that it's not an all or nothing game. It's not a zero-sum game. And I think often people hear process and they say, You know, hear coaches say, focus on the process and they think that means ignore outcomes at all costs. That's not the case. You're human.

You care. You're striving. Outcomes matter. So start with that is they're going to be there. You want to win the game. Our goal is simply to go from outcomes are all consuming to nudge and remind ourselves over and over and over again that we need to pull towards the process. because we're just trying to keep those outcomes from overtaking and constraining us. So this is why, again, when you look at coaches, they say always, focus on the process,

they're not outlining that process. It's not that we expect everyone to be 100% process-oriented, but we need those reminders. So in your life, you know, you might not have an athletic coach, but what you can do is set your environment up to remind you what is important to define what that process is to define what success means and have those things that, again, they're not going to pull you all the way, but they nudge us back to maybe a middle ground where outcomes aren't all consuming. So I do this in my writing life, right? Because as you know, you write the book and then you want to sell as many copies as possible and you want to get on all these lists that tell you

you're great and blah, blah, blah, and they are nice. And they do bad or two degree, right? It helps your credibility if you say, I'm a best-selling author and all that stuff. But what I try and do is, I know my mind's going to go there. So I write down, what is my purpose in writing this book? How would I define success in getting this book out there? What are the steps, the process I'm going to take on the week to week, on the day to day to day to give myself the best shot? And for me, it's pretty simple. I write the books to help people. So the number one thing is I want them to be read.

And then I want them to be shared because people say, oh, they read it. They say, that's pretty valuable. I'm going to share this with someone who needs it. How do I get the most books read? I go through my process, which is, you know, nowadays, it's talking to folks like you, Ryan, who are smart, intelligent, and have a podcast where we can go deep on this stuff. It's maybe writing articles so that I can get other people in. It's doing things like, hey, I need some good social media content to share,

to entice people to read. It's going through those process things where it's like I might get, you know, five people to read from it or a thousand. But like these steps are going to help more people get to the goal of reading the book and then hopefully sharing it if it's good. Let's zoom out for a second with that exact thing. Steve. So not many people write books. How about just for your life? Do you have a defined purpose? How do you define success? Let's get personal for a second. And so for you in your life, I know you're a new dad, you're a husband. And so I would imagine that I know that changes things from that shift from not being a dad to being one, but I don't want to answer for you. So if you think about your overall purpose in life, how you define success. And then maybe what's, some of the process that you have put in place to ensure that you're living within your purpose

and your living life in accordance to your definition of success, not societies. Yeah. So I think here, and this is where it's really important, and I talk about this in the book a little bit, is success can be multi-definitional and multidimensional. I think too often we narrow it. And when we narrow, we constrain. So when I look at my own life, I have multiple kind of definitions of success. And there's different seasons of life where I'm more focused on one or the other.

So for example, in my own life, you mentioned, you know, new dad, married is to be there for my family. I have this idea of the father I want to be, the husband I want to be and what that entails. And a lot of that is like, you know, quality time. It's, you know, it's doing interesting things with my family. It's being a good role model for my kids and allowing them to kind of explore their interests and giving them the life where they get to explore their interests as well and supporting them in them. So I want to make sure that I have that space.

And what that means, and that sometimes contrast with my workspace, is that I need, to set aside the time, you know, each week, each day, to be able to do that, right? I can't, as I maybe did 10 years ago, be like, you know what, if I feel good and I want to work from, you know, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. I can do it. I can't. It butts up against my goal. And then we look at my kind of what I call work or intellectual pursuits. My goal and how I define success is this, is my goal is to explore interesting ideas that I think will help people. Those often start with interesting ideas that have or will help me. Because I think every book we write, every big project we do has to have a personal kind of

tent to it because that's going to sustain me because that's the curiosity allows me to figure it out. So that's my goal in my work life. That's the factor I use to decide what project to explore next. Because I say, hey, is this going to help people? Is this interesting? Often I go down this rabbit hole. And I talk about this in the book where I go on a deep exploration,

where I'm reading research, talking to people, doing things, trying things out, coaching people on things, deep exploration before I get to, okay, I'm going to turn this into something. Because we need that exploration to fuel things. And that's really important. So I set my, we go from, okay, that's my work stuff. How do I set my life around that? Well, different seasons of the time.

But I have processes where in my day-to-day life where I'm saying, okay, here's some time set aside for deep work where I'm going to take that exploration and turn it into, you know, something meaningful. but I also have periods where I say, hey, this is, I call it down the rabbit hole days, but essentially it's my play. It's my exploration. I say, hey, I still want to be surprised.

I want to go down the rabbit hole on these different ideas and see where it takes me, and I may never use it for anything. So I just go explore an idea and having these different periods where I'm like, this is the process. And eventually that process often leads to a book, or something else because I spent enough time doing it.

But I don't set up saying, hey, you know, this topic is popular nowadays. I'm going to write a book on this topic because it's popular and will probably sell. No, I go through the exploration first with my process until it gets to a point where it's like, oh yeah, I need to write this book. Yeah. You know what's funny? Let's say you hit a list when you write a book. I remember I was with my family skiing in Colorado on spring break last year.

And our book hit USA Today national bestseller list. And I remember just being surprised. I was more excited about just going on the next run with my family. I mean, I was temporarily like, oh, this is cool. But I thought it would be way cooler. I thought it would be like this amazing celebratory thing. I showed it to my wife. She's like, oh, that's awesome.

And congrats. And we talked about it for like 15 seconds. And then we went back to skiing and never talked about it again. And I don't know, man. It's just funny how sometimes the external things you think are going to be this amazing feeling until you realize they're not. It didn't really matter at all. I guess it's good for credibility. And maybe it helps sell more.

And maybe it will help with speaking gig. I don't know. Maybe not. But they don't necessarily give you the feeling. least in my experience, that maybe you thought they would prior to achieving them. I'd agree completely. And this is something you hear often in high performers and athletes and whoever have you is they think winning the big game, making the Olympics, whatever is going to be this huge

life-changing thing. And it has an impact. But it never feels like you think it is. right you build it up in your mind and think this is it and then there's that's why there's in the olympics and the research they call it like the post-olympic depression yeah because you realize you spent four years going to this thing and you expected this feeling a sensation and don't get me wrong it's great but you're kind of left wondering like okay that that wasn't quite what i thought what do i what do i do now and i think this is where it's that extra

versus internal, where it's also like, you know, your example is great because if you have the internal there where you realize, you know what, I'm just, I'm skiing with my family. Yeah. That kind of grounds you back to it, right? It's like, I'm exploring interesting ideas. Like, I'm going to go read, read a good book. I'm going to go play with my kid because like this is that time. And it keeps you from kind of losing your mind on this chase because I'll tell you what, if you keep expecting that external to fill that void, eventually it's going to make you lose your mind on the chase. Yeah. You write about, and I believe you cited a scientist, you could name them, but you said to have a meaningful life, we need to feel four things. Coherent, significant,

directed and belonging. And so coherent is like life adds up. You have this cohesive story. Significant is you matter and can make a difference. Directed, there's a purpose to your life and pursuits and belonging is we're part of something bigger than you. Can you go deeper onto these four things that we need to have to have a meaningful life and perhaps some of the science behind it? Yeah, absolutely. So this was a paradigm put together by Tatiana Schnell, I believe.

And what she found and what subsequent research finds is that, you know, these things are kind of our basic psychological needs. And when we don't have them, our brain kind of goes into like alarm or freak out or threat mode because we don't have these pillars. So we go on this, this almost journey. I call it like you get hungry, right? And if you're super hungry, what do you do? You often look for the like cheap candy to fill that void, but it's never fulfilling, right? It's the same thing with their psychological needs. And whether we like, you know, Schnells or others, there's litany of research that tells us.

But these four things, I love this paradigm. So that's why I included is, is coherence is this is we all tell ourselves a story, right? We have this inner narrative to make. sense of ourselves. And it integrates what happened in the past, where we are right now, and maybe even where we're going. And it integrates the good things, the bad things, the things we did wrong, things we did right. And if we're coherent, it makes sense. Our story kind of flows. If we're discombobulated and not coherent, then our sense of self feels disjointed. And when we feel disjointed, our resilience drops, our productivity drops, and our sense that the world is

threatening goes up. So we need to make sense of ourselves. Significance, as you said, is, you know, I like to tie it into the research on status, which a lot of times people think of status as like, oh, I'm king of the mountain. But what research tells us is that we can obtain status through multiple dimensions. One is the old school, you know, King of the Mountain dominance, right? I'm better than you at things. It's the, you know, hierarchy in our chimpanzee or ape cousins, right? Who's on top? But we also get status through prestige and virtue. And those are basically, you know, are you showing you're a good person, a decent person, someone that they can rely on? are you doing things that are meaningful and helpful in the world?

And wherever we get that status, it gives us this degree of significance, meaning, you know, I matter. And I think this is important because nowadays our world increasingly makes us feel like we don't matter. And part of that is that we live in a global world where it's really hard to feel significant. Because, you know, you or I can go online and we can find dozens of, people probably who do the same thing. And in our mind, we could say, oh, they do it better than us. Like, we're not that good at the thing that we're trying to do where a hundred years ago, you know, if you were the best writer in your, you know, city or neighborhood or what have you, you felt pretty good because you couldn't compare yourself to everybody in the freaking world.

So I think like the significance is harder to get, but it's important. And then that direction is it's having a purpose, it's seeing a future, it's having hope. And we need, we need paths. And if we have multiple paths or different paths for direction, then we tend to live a happier, healthier life. And I think too often, again, modern world has kind of narrowed her paths and said like, this is the only definition of success. This is the only way forward. When we know there's multiple. And then the last, but I think probably the most important, especially in our modern world is that belonging, that sense that it's, you know, there's something bigger in the world that you're connected to more than, you know, just yourself,

that we have community and connection. And again, I'd argue that the modern world often makes us feel, even though we're hyper-connected, we can connect or follow whoever, we kind of miss out. We don't have that deep sense of genuine belonging. And what research tells us, and it makes sense, is that, you know, think back to when we were on the savannah or in a tribe, if we had others around us, then we had the security to go explore, to hunt, to gather, to do things because we know we had the community behind us. If we were caught on the savanna alone, it often meant danger and possibly death. we are built to belong. And being part of a community sends the safety signal that allows us to get more out of

ourselves. And I think we've kind of, you know, eliminated or downplayed that. And it's hurt us, you know, societally. It's definitely a commonality of sustainable excellence is those people are really good about surrounding themselves with Anthony Pompey. Plano might call them compounders or people that will be there for you, support you, lift you up, push you, nudge you, right? Make you want to strive for something bigger. Those are the friends of my life that, man, I love them. You know, they're there when it's tough. They got your back,

but they're also there next to you celebrating when it goes well. And they're there to say, hey, dude, I think you got a little bit more. They got a little bit more. I think you should be aim a little higher. I think you go bigger. And, Those people are a goal. I tried to be the same for them, but this idea that we can do it alone or that like it's, it's weakness to need others is lame. It makes no sense. It's not a commonality among excellent leaders. In fact, it's the opposite. The excellent leaders are really good about surrounding themselves with other excellent people. Yeah, there's some fascinating research. I love this topic. And you're spot on there's some fascinating research that has found in psychology that we should. share the load. So part of our emotional regulation system is dependent on those others, meaning when we lose, we bounce back better when we have friends and colleagues around us. Literally our biology will change. Our testosterone and cortisol will differ if we suffer

defeat alone and keep isolated versus if we are around others. Whether we bounce back after that loss. You mentioned sometimes you need that person to tell you you're capable of more. Research tells us that if a friend tells us, hey, you sucked at that game, you should have done X, Y, and Z better. If a stranger does it, our cortisol goes through the roof. If a friend does it, guess what? We don't have an increase in cortisol. We have an increase in testosterone because our body is priming us saying, this is someone who cares about us, telling us we can do better. I'm going to be engaged. That's why testosterone fuels some of that motivation internally.

You can get back on the horse and do it again. And the other thing I'd say about belonging, and I outlined this in the book because there's crazy stuff, is that when we have others around us that support us, it literally changes our perception of how difficult things are. Researchers took a bunch of athletes, stuck them at the bottom of a really steep hill. and when you're alone, you judge the hill to be super steep and you say, no, man, I don't want to run up that thing. That would hurt. When you're with others, you literally judge the hill to be 10 degrees or about that shallower. And people say, let's go up it. I know it'll be hard, but let's take on the challenge. They've run similar studies with lifting heavy boxes and weights and, you know, running a far distance. We always, when we're with others who, support us, we always judge the task to be a little bit easier. It changes our perception. And that shifted perception changes our performance for the better. Wow. I love having the research back

that up. Just another reminder of how important it is for us to surround ourselves with people that high character, a high get after it attitude, or at least people that we think will help nudge us forward. And then we do the same for them. You've written. that this may sound obvious, but I want to go deeper on it. It's is that it's a mistake to make success and failure of virtue. Why is it a mistake to make success and failure a virtue? Yeah. So what it does is it puts us in that protective mode.

So when we make success or failure of virtue, it becomes self-defining. There is a fascinating historical research that found that essentially up until the 17, 1800s, saying, I am a failure was relatively rare. We generally said, I failed at this thing, right? If you go all the way back to ancient Romans, ancient Greeks, what did they do? They didn't say, like, I failed at, you know, growing these crops. They said, oh, you know, the god of crops or whatever, you know, caused this to go awry. And the reason we did that for a long time is, yes, it is a little justifying, but it protects us so that we could go then try and grow crops again.

Research, this researcher found that that all changed in 1800s with the bank credit system is banks essentially had to define who to lend money to. So they started saying, this person is a good for nothing, meaning they were not going to be. able to pay back that loan. And since then, we started to define our pursuits of success, failure, and different avenues and jobs as self-defining. And when we did that, what happens is now our job becomes, if we succeed, it's not just, you know, we did good or bad at this thing. It becomes a representation of us. And what all sorts of psychology literature tells us is that when it is us on the line, not surprisingly, it often puts us in this fear or threat mode, this survival mode where it's like, oh my God, if I lose this game, I'm a failure.

People are going to think less of me. I'm not good at what I, you know, I'm not a good person or a productive person or what have you. And your body complies. It says, you know what? If my sense of self is on the line, I'm going to make you feel stress. anxiety, more cortisol, less testosterone, less adrenaline. We're going to feel that stress. Now, there are exceptions, but those exceptions are way rarer than anybody thinks. You know, most of us are not Michael Jordan, even the best of the best athletes. And the representation

I'd give to demonstrate this is this is at the heart of choking in sport. So when you see people get the yips or just melt down on the highest stage, you got to remember, these are athletes who are professional who have trained at the highest level, who have a degree of resilience and toughness that is often, you know, insane. They've made it, but they still choke. And the reason is their brain defaults because defaults to the survival of threat mode because it says, for whatever reason that it determines, oh my gosh, I am on the, the line here. And it's almost like the animal playing dead, right? It says, I can't take on the lion.

So I'm just going to faint. That's what our brain does when our sense of self is on the line. It treats us as if our life is on the line. So what's the best thing to do? It's not to run towards the thing. It's to faint, play dead or, you know, scurry up the tree to try and survive. Is that what happened to Simone Biles years ago? Absolutely. So what you find, and again, the research is young on this, but it's fascinating, is that for whatever reason, something clicks. And the athlete internalizes that this pressure means that, like, I am on the line. If I don't make this, like, my sense of self is destroyed.

And the body literally disconnects. We call it in psychology, we call it a perception action uncoupling. So generally, think of it like this. Simone Biles, she goes and does her twirls and twists and all that stuff. And she's an expert. Her body knows what to do. She feels when she's doing all those twists, believe it or not, she knows where she is in the air, right? Because she's a pro at it.

When this choking occurs, the threat takes over, your body disconnects perception and action. So when she experienced those twisties, the reason it was so dangerous, she went up and did those twirls and twists. And she didn't know where the ground was or where her body is because her body kind of checked out and played dead. It's the same reason that if you see, you know, baseball players like Rick Akeel, who lost the ability to throw, you know, to hold plate or Chuck Knoblock who could no longer throw from second base to first base, even though he's been doing that for decades at a high level.

It's almost like we transport back to when we first learned how to throw a ball where we didn't have that alignment with perception and action. And the reason that occurs is because that threat feels so real that your brain essentially goes, forget it, man, check out. Protect means faint, disconnect perception and actions. How do we overcome that if that happens to us on in different levels? Like maybe you could use real life examples instead of a pro baseball player or the greatest gymnast maybe ever or one of them at least. What about for the everyday person who faces their version of the yips, whatever that might be?

And what do we do to overcome that? Yeah. So first off, I think it comes down to what we're talking about is the external versus internal and how we define success is generally when that happens, we swayed all the way to the external and our definition of success has essentially become impossible. So of course, our brain's going to shut down. So what it means, and Simone Biles actually talked about this during this Olympics, not to use their example, but she talked about how she had to get back to how she defined

success when she started, which was more of play, exploration, I want to compete, but I'm, you I'm just trying to see what I can do versus make others happy, satisfy others, right? Same applies to us in our life. We've got to do the work to redefine what it matters, reorientate instead of letting this outcome take over everything. The second part of it is I kind of simplify it and I call it like do something that shifts your or changes your perspective or simpler like do something crazy. which means this is often, you know, that we get stuck in this rut. So our brain is predictive. So when we get stuck in the rut and let's say we're going to work and we're trying to

nail this presentation, but we just, every time we get up to give it, like anxiety takes over and we just forget everything, right? What happens is our brain learns, okay, when we go up and give a presentation, it's time to be in threat mode, forget everything. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So what we have to do is get out of that rut and nudge us out of that rut, which often means doing something to like intentionally shift our perspective. So example, if I'm giving a speech and I always struggle at it,

instead of like memorizing the speech and saying, this is what I'm going to do, this is what I'm doing. you start off your speech by saying, hey, I really struggle at this. I've choked the last time I've given this, you know, this, this top. It's just how it's going. I'm going to try my best. If you see me sweating up here and choking, that's what's going on. You'd say that to an audience?

Absolutely. Have you done that before? I haven't done that, but I'll tell you this. I've done something similar. the first time I went and talked to NBA team. This was early on in my career. I was a runner and a running coach at that time and hadn't done anything outside of this. And for some reason, NBA team comes and says, hey, Steve, I want you to talk to all of our coaches and stuff.

And I said, are you sure? And they're like, yeah, let's do it. So I walk into, you know, whatever, I walk into this room and it's all these coaches I watch on TV and I'm young kid. and, you know, can't play basketball or shit. And I stood up and I told them, I said, I know nothing about basketball. I'm not going to tell you anything worthwhile about basketball. If I tried, you'd see that I was faking it.

I probably don't even know about elite performance as much as you. You guys all know more than me. I'm just up here because, you know, at that time, the GM invited me and I'm not going to turn down this spot. And then I went into, but here's like what I do know. And what I'm doing there for me is, is in that case is I felt the pressure. I felt the anxiety. I didn't quite feel like I belonged up there. I was an imposter syndrome.

So I reframed it and changed the stage or set the stage in a different manner where my brain goes like, all right like you know I guess we'll lower the bar here a little bit and take a different tactic and that allowed me to I think have a pretty good presentation do you think though that could hurt because the audience may be wondering why is this guy up here then like what are we doing should I even pay attention to this guy like do you think that could hurt you starting like that absolutely but I think what it is and this is where the nuance is is it's got to be genuine to it. There was another time, again, early on in my career,

for some God unknown reason, the entire strength and conditioning governing body for the United Kingdom invited me to talk. And if you look at me, you're looking at me, right? I'm 5, 10, 140 pounds. Like, and I'm standing in front of all these dudes who are just, and ladies who can lift a hell of a lot more than I ever could. in that environment, you know, I remember standing up there and be like, everybody in this room

can lift more than me. I'm not here to tell you about that. You're not going to learn anything about me about that. But here's what I am going to. And it was genuine. And I think that is the key. You're not going to use that in situations where people bring you in and they're like, you know, Steve wrote a book on, on, you know, striving.

Like, we're going to come bring them in for striving. if I say, hey, I don't know anything about striving, that's going to backfire because that's their expectation is they're going to learn from me about it. So I think you have to be, again, intentional on how you're using these tactics. But sometimes like doing things to shift that perspective are really important. I'll give you one more example before we move on from this that I think is important is when I was coaching an athlete of runner who was struggling for this, right? They'd get through halfway in the race and they'd look great and then just, it would just

you could tell in their eyes. They had more, but their brain was going to doom loop, right? So what we did is I said, you know what? Forget it, right? Your goal is this. I want you to be with the lead pack at halfway. If you blow up, great. I want you to blow up and fall apart.

And what you're doing there is giving them permission to, it's okay if I blow up. But as long as I put myself in position, that's what mattered. And guess what? They put themselves in position and held on pretty good because they weren't worried about blowing up anymore. So I think there's all sorts of these kind of like reframing or shifting techniques where if you're in that rut, we need to find some way to shift you out of that perspective to give you their permission to see what you're capable of. It's funny to see what happens.

I coached the girls like football team in an all boys league this year. And our girls were tough. They were awesome. and we ended up winning the whole thing. But we had one girl on our team who was scared to carry the ball. But we wanted everybody to get a chance to carry the ball. The boys are kind of big and strong and fast, but we were too. And I said, listen, you're getting the ball display no matter what.

And I don't care what happens. I don't care if they grab your flag in the backfield. I don't care whatever happens. I just want you, the second you get the ball, to run as fast as you as humanly can, as you can and do whatever you can. And they get your flag, they get your flag. Maybe you'll run in the end zone. Who knows what happens?

And this girl got the ball and absolutely took off as fast as she could. And all of her teammates knew she did not want to get the ball. Like they all knew. And she takes it and scores, you know, 40-yard touchdown run. And her team goes bananas. And the look on her face was like, it was like a life-changing moment, man, because someone who goes from, I don't want to do this. I'm scared to death.

It's easier to not carry the ball. I don't want to be embarrassed to this. to then this belief, this self-belief of like, I can do it. And sometimes you need others. Sometimes you need teammates. And sometimes your self-talk is just not accurate. It's not right. And I think those stories are useful because like we all can draw from moments like that,

whether it happens to us or happens to other people. And that's why I think it's useful that you talk about this stuff so much and how you could implement it, whether you're learning from somebody else or for yourself into your own life. Yeah, you know, your story, I love that coaching. I'm going to hire you as a coach because that's brilliant. But it reminds me of, you know, some of the research and practice of what I've seen with elite field goal kickers in NFL. So if you look at the research and you talk to them, if someone's struggling, you know,

what they tell you to do is the exact same thing that you just did there, which is you simplified and gave like one specific direction. Literally the research tells you struggling NFL kicker, what do you do, or starting kicker, What do you do? You tell them, pick a point between the upright, focus on that, kick the ball there. And what happens in the reason this works is because stress, pressure, anxiety, feeling over threat, it tells our brain to go haywire. We start ruminating, catastrophizing, thinking if this goes wrong, if that goes wrong, what do I do if I do this? You know, the crowd's doing, making me go nuts, all this stuff.

when we narrow in on one precise thing and say this is this is it just for a moment our brain says okay i'll tune the rest out and just focus on this and it's almost like we get tunnel vision and it allows us to perform in situations where often you know it feels overwhelming one of the phrase i use steve when i would be scared as a quarterback especially in my like freshman sophomore year when i'm young and they're older guys and i felt like intimidated by them this simple phrase, execute my job. Execute, there's, you know, there's 22 guys on the field. I'm like, all this crazy stuff, execute my job.

And I know what my job is. I know what I'm supposed to do. And so it's just execute my job. And that had this like calming feeling to myself of this self-talk of like, I can execute my job. I can do that. Like I know what I know my read. I know what I'm supposed to do here.

And then I've just this, that little focus on. narrowing, I love how you put it, narrowing the focus, almost just freeze you up to then let it rip versus thinking about 22 people and all the craziness and the chaos is like, execute my job. I know what I'm supposed to do and then just let it rip. And I feel like that could be applied in all areas of life. It does because again, stress causes go crazy. You know, one of the tools that I learned early on. I used this in speaking, but I learned it from running as, as you can see, the audience who can't, I wear glasses.

If I take out my glasses, I can still see kind of, but not very well. When I started to feel the pressure, when I started getting good at running, I decided, you know what, for certain races, I'm going to run without my glasses. Why? I could see my competitor ahead of me, but I couldn't see jack shit around me, right? And that forced me to do what? Narrow my focus. I'm going to stare at the guys I'm competing against in front of me.

Forget the crowds. Forget anything else. Forget everything else going on. Like this is all I can literally see. And that's why, you know, again, speaking, sometimes I do that as well. But this is why when you, you know, they tell you public speaking, go focus on a couple individuals who seem engaged. Yeah.

Because you narrow your focus. and you're like, I'm just going to talk to this guy who's smiling. Go find those eyes. Go find the head nods, right? You know what, Steve? You find the head nods and you look for those eyes. And I'm with you. Like, I'm always looking for the head nods and find those eyes and those are my people.

It's so funny how that works. That's it. But it's the same as when you're a quarterback. What it does is it narrows you on to, okay, this is my job. I'm going to do this. Forget all the noise. And that's how we perform best. I can't believe it's almost been an hour.

Okay. One more thing I want to hit before we have to run, man. And that is your three-part, you know, I love sustainable excellence. You love sustainable excellence. We both study it for a living. I'm fascinated by people who have sustained excellence. And you have a three-part framework for sustainable excellence. Be, do, and belong.

Can you go deeper on what it means to be, do, and belong? Yeah, absolutely. So here's what you said. We've talked a lot about threat and pressure and survival mode. and what it takes to perform at a high level over the long term is essentially what I call clarity on yourself, clarity on your pursuits and clarity on where you are or how you're connected or your belonging. And if we can get those things, we're a more resilient performer over the long haul. So if we look at B, what does that mean? It means clarity on yourself, meaning that again, we talked about intertwining yourself in the success and all that stuff.

we want to be a diversified person who acknowledges that, yes, I care about these things, but I'm also like complex, meaning, as I said, I'm a father, I'm a dad, I'm a writer, I'm a runner, I'm all these things. And when you have that diversity, what it does is it gives you, it gives you the ability to bounce back and handle the tough spots. spots. And the other part on being, I think, as well is it also centers you on what actually matters. Again, too often when we get pulled to the external, the things we're chasing start to, we start to believe that they are the thing that matter. But you ask anybody in sustainable excellence, they'll come back to, you know, some insights on how they define success. They'll

come back to values that they have, the things that they hold deeply and stand for. We've got to know those. If we do, we're going to perform well. And then when we look at our pursuits, that doing part of it, I think it comes down to a lot of how we take on the challenges that we pursue. We've talked about this a lot, is that if we get stuck and prevent defense, we're never going to be able to explore our potential. So how do we get out of that? Give ourselves the freedom to try, explore, to fail potentially.

Because it's only in that exploration do we learn, A, what we're capable of, where we went wrong, how we could get better, and again, whether we want to keep going down this path. So I think it's, again, that complexity of understanding that our pursuits can have multiple definitions of success. And the last one we've touched on a lot is that belonging. And you know, you just can't go places without a great support network, without feeling that we're connected, without feeling part of a community. And what I try to outline in the book is that, A, that's essential. but B, sometimes we fall for the candy version where we just try and fit in. And the difference is this is when we belong, we're bringing our whole selves to the activity and we're essentially expanding ourselves or leading to growth of the group.

When we choose fit in, we're just looking for a place temporarily to, it's like middle school. I'm just looking for a table to sit at, right? And that might satisfy you for a couple days, but we know from middle school it feels a hell of a lot better when we feel when we find that, you know, football team or track team or chess team or math club that is like, these are my people, man. And that's what we're looking for is don't, don't try and just find a table to sit on. Find your people who support and challenge you. and that's where your true growth is going to happen. The new book's called Win the Inside Game, how to move from surviving to thriving and free yourself up to perform.

Steve, you killed it with this one. It is so good. Not surprised considering I've read, I read all your stuff with Brad on the growth equation and your previous books. Grateful for your friendship and how generous you've been with sharing all of your book proposals and notes you probably don't even remember that you've shared all that stuff with me, but it's been a massive help for me as a writer because I really look up to how generous you are, but then just how excellent you are as a thinker and an explorer and a writer.

So thank you so much, man, and I highly, highly encourage people to read win the inside game. It's so good. But thanks again, man. And as always, I'd love to continue our dialogue as we progress, man. You got it, man. Thanks so much for this. I appreciate all your work here. We're doing a great job.

So keep it going. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learning leader.com. Let me know what you learn from this great conversation with Steve Magnus. A few takeaways from my notes. To live a meaningful life, we need to feel four things. That's coherent, significant, directed, and belonging.

Coherent means life adds up. You have a cohesive story. Significant means you matter and you can make a difference. Directed mean there's a purpose to your life and pursuits. And belonging means part of something that is bigger than you. You're a part of something that is bigger than you. Then we talked about clearly defining your purpose and what you want to do. For Steve, he said it's, quote, explore interesting ideas that will help people.

And those things will help them too because he's curious about them. And I think that's useful for all of us, defining that one sentence will free you up to say no to things outside of your purpose and then to narrowly focus on actions that align with your purpose. Clearly define that and it's freeing. And then Steve's framework for sustainable excellence. Be, do belong. clarity on who you are, do clarity in your pursuits and belong, clarity on where and how you fit in. So good. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two.

Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leaders Show with Steve Magnus. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that and you also go to Apple Podcast and Spotify and you subscribe to the show. important you write a thoughtful review and rate the show hopefully five stars by doing all of that you give me the opportunity to do what i love on a daily basis and for that i will forever be grateful thank you so so much talking soon can't wait