The Nick Bare Podcast - 081: How Positive Psychology Drives Athletic Performance with Luke Hopkins

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

In this episode, I sit down with BPN athlete Luke Hopkins, a pro natural bodybuilder and hybrid athlete currently training for an Ironman. He recently graduated from USC with a degree in neuroscience. Luke shares how a positive mindset and psychological strategies impact high-level sport performance. He and I cover the physical and mental challenges of Ironman training, the importance of progressive overload, and the benefits of group training. This conversation is all about pacing, setting realistic goals, and the balance between training and daily life, with insights from both of our personal experiences. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction to the Podcast and Guest 01:09 Olympic Highlights and Athletic Feats 02:21 Mental Resilience in Sports 03:33 Personal Athletic Challenges and Training Insights 12:50 Moving to Austin and Pursuing Dreams 16:15 Use Courage to Take Risks 23:25 Mental Health and Neuroscience 33:36 Handling Mistakes and Constructive Feedback 37:32 Importance of Enduring the Process 40:37 How to Balance IQ and EQ 41:59 The Power that Social Media has 45:12 Mindset and Self-Talk 47:22 Positive Psychology and Performance 55:11 What Are Group Dynamics? 01:10:50 Progressive Overload in Training and Life 01:19:17 Ironman Training Insights Follow: IG: instagram.com/thenickbarepodcast YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Keep up with Luke: IG: instagram.com/lukehoplife Strength, endurance, and wellness supplements to fuel your performance. SAVE 10% at BPN Supps: https://bit.ly/nickbare10audio Follow: IG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness

Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today, I sit down with BPN athlete Luke Hopkins. Luke is a pro-natural bodybuilder. He's currently an Ironman prep and a hybrid athlete. And he also just recently graduated from USC with a degree in neuroscience. So we talk all about the parallels between sport, fitness, performance, and psychology. The impact and benefits of having a positive mindset. And something we really dove into that I'm extremely passionate about is courage.

And how you can have vision, you can have dreams, you can have aspirations. And those are all great. But none of those matter if you don't take the action and have the courage to do what you want to do.

And when you apply courage, that's when you start making progress. That's when momentary, mental begins in your life to reach your greatest potential. So let's dive into the episode today with Luke. Okay, we were just talking about this, the Olympics, the Paris Olympics is going on right now. Yes. And yesterday, I don't know if you watched it, but Cool Hocker, U.S. runner, took gold in the men's

1500 meter race and broke the Olympic record with a time of 3, 27.65. Unreal. Did you watch the race? I didn't watch the race, but I watched the highlights after it, and I was like screaming out my phone. Like, even though with knowing, like, what the end result was, you're like, no way does he make this back. And it's just, that second year is just unbelievable.

I watched that. You know, like, you'll see these things that happen with athletes who are reaching unbelievable feats of physical achievement. And watching that race, seeing him sit in like third, fourth place for the longest time, realizing that someone is just on reserve that long, and they've banked so much potential energy within the last 100 meters to go in a race, I watch stuff like that happened. I'm mind-blown that that much athletic potential and ability exists. Yeah, I think it's also a matter of psychological restraint with realizing that,

like, hey, you're in this extremely high-stress situation of, like, the most athletic event in the world, the Olympics, and like you know that you have the physical capability, but you have to have that mental restraint to be like, I know when I need to kick it in the second gear. I know when I have to push. Like I can't go out too early. I have to like trust myself. So for him to be like mentally that strong to push at the very end right there, it's just like a true demonstration of like a full athlete, somebody who's like not only physically capable, but like mentally capable as well. That's one thing I've had to learn over the course of some of these challenges that I've set out to achieve. Marathon goals,

triathlon, Ironman, ultra goals. Now I'm in this high rocks prep. You can have all the physical ability you want, need, desire. But like that discipline to execute is just as much of a ingredient in that recipe. And especially like the more you push, the better you get, the fast you become, the more that discipline on how you actually train and race is important. Yeah. And it's like also just like appreciation for yourself. Like after the good workouts, you have to like sit back and be like, I really worked right there. Like and just acknowledge the fact that like you are improving just by simply like

showing up because a lot of times at least for me like I've had workouts that go not at all as how they were planned. But it's just like the simple fact like hey like I put in my best effort today. I showed up in the grand scheme of things like I'm going to see improvement. So it's just like really appreciate. what you are doing and that you are being consistent, that you are showing up every day and that you are giving your full effort to the workouts. I think that compounds with obviously physical improvements

and seeing progress in your times or the weights that you're lifting. It uplifts you entirely. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, as I've gotten faster over time, when I watch something like the Olympics, I can have a greater appreciation for some of these times and efforts. I remember years ago when I was younger,

watching races or like professional athletes, elites, play their sport, run a race. You know, 327, you're like, that's fast, like, how fast is it? Yeah. That's 100 meters less than a mile. Yeah. Three minutes, 27 seconds, 1,500 meters. I'm like, how, dude? Yeah.

You go out and you give you like your best attempt at a mile and you're like well over a minute, maybe like closer like a minute and a half over that. time. You're like, how is someone physically capable of like pushing that much? You really develop like an appreciation of the human body as well as like the human mind and like how individuals are capable of pushing themselves that far to achieve these unreal feats. Have you, have you timed your one mile PR recently? So not recently. The only time that I've done a one mile PR test was a week after my first bodybuilding show. And I went like a five 34. I want to say, bold decision. Yeah. I was just like, you know what? We're hopping right back into this. body did not respond well to that one.

So I would be interested to see as I very much shifted over to Endurance Training in the past six, seven months, like what that baseline would look like. My PR, I want to say it's 453. And I ran that a few years ago. I was paced by Mitch Amunds, which having a pacer really did help. Also very humbling because as Mitch was pacing me, I'm putting out in the biggest effort in my life, he's just like talking casually. Of course. Next to me. But like just as much as an effort like that is physical potential, it's also strategy

and discipline. Yeah. Because I went out for one mile PR, this was probably eight months ago, thinking that I was going to crush that 453. And I blew up. I ran like 510, 511, something like that. Because I sent that first 400 so hard. Yeah.

And I realized probably six. 600 meters in, there's no way I'm holding this effort for another 400 or the remainder of that mile. And I blew up. You know, with a thousand meters, I guess it was then, a thousand meters ago, I was wheezing. I was just holding on. So just as much as it is, hey, you physically can do this. You still have to execute with strategy. Yeah, absolutely. I also think going back to that point about like the pacer, but like working with someone that's better than you or has more knowledge of you. I would love to hear what Hawkers coach had to say about like his race performance, like someone who's like very much so well versed in the area of, you know, the 1500 and just like

what improvements could he have seen? Because like you said, you know, Mitch, phenomenal athlete, great endurance runner. Like he could probably give you tips on like how you could improve your mile time simply because like he has more experience in that field. So it's like constantly having that student mindset of being like, okay, I can always learn more. I can always continue to progress as long as I'm willing to have that open mindset. Like you blowing up on that four or that mile time, like five, 10, like by no means it's like a slow mile time, you know, but there's something that you could take away from it. And like you explained, yeah, I went out way too hard. I was holding on for the last thousand. Like there's always learning lessons in training. So as like as long as

you're willing to take a second and like reflect on your training. Yeah, I mean, I'm not mad about a five 10, five a little of a mile, but I knew based off the shape that I was in, I had greater potential. That is one of the reason I love endurance events,

endurance races, is because just as much it is a physical performance and preparation, you have to have strategy. Like going into a marathon, which I like the marathon and half marathon distance

because you have more room for some like variability. Yeah. But going into a race, like I can pretty, accurately tell you what I'm going to run based off my conditioning, what workouts I've hit, what paces I need to stay within to hit that time. But the shorter that distance gets, the smaller that variability allows for.

I don't even know how you keep track of. It's all effort, I guess. You're not looking at your watch in a 1500 race. Yeah. It's also, so there's this really good book that I'm kind of in the midst of wrapping up. I've talked to you about it. It's Endurred by Alex Hutchinson. And one of the initial chapters talks about this idea of like the central governor

theory where like the brain has more control over your performance and like your physical capabilities does. So like in a marathon, you probably have more time to like settle into what you're doing and allow for a rhythm to develop where you're like, okay, like you can fully process what you're doing. Whereas like in a sprint event or something like much more short time, it's like pure high intensity the entire time. And like you can't really regulate what you are doing, which is probably why it's like

hard to pace yourself because like you want to go out so hot you have this idea you have the adrenaline going in your head where like okay I'm going to crush my time and like you don't allow your brain to kind of like settle into a rhythm to control you know your output to make sure that you are going to do so I personally I like these longer distance events because I like being able to settle in yeah I find joy I find comfort in that uncomfortable zone when it's too fast, I don't personally get the awakening joy from it.

Absolutely. Well, I think another big thing, too, is with your running, are you listening to anything when you're running? Or are you just kind of like being present? Right now, when I run in the morning, I will listen to an audiobook or a podcast.

Every morning. Yeah. I'll do that. And if I find the right piece of contents that I'm really interested in, I'll forget I'm even running. Yeah. And before I know it, the runs over, really settle in.

For some of these, like, circuit workouts, high rock stuff, I'll have music in the background sometimes. Yeah. But I'm more in my head thinking about the workout, trying to control effort and energy as opposed to zoning out. I'm more like zoned in. Yeah. And then when you're racing, what's kind of like your mindset?

Like, if you look back to like your last marathon, like, you weren't listening to any music. Obviously it was a big kind of like transition period with your life. Like, what did you feel mentally during that race? During the race, I was focused on a few things. It's like effort, controlling effort, and being very hyper aware of what that effort is doing in my body. Yeah. Like if there was a hill coming up, you know, based off training and experience, you kind of know how to evaluate and judge that effort.

But it was really controlling the effort based off the course, based off the conditions, off my speed. It was making sure I'm hitting paces in the range that I wanted to hold. And then it was staying on top of hydration, knowing when I'm grabbing electrolytes and water next, when I'm taking my gel next, and just focusing on each mile. Yeah.

So as I'm in that mile, all I'm thinking about is that one mile. And when my watch goes off and it tells me my time and I'm on pace or slightly above, I'm like, all right, it's one mile down. Now we're on to the next mile. Yeah. Effort, pace, hydration, fuel.

Yeah. So I'm very just focused on awareness of how I'm feeling. Yeah. And I think that's like the biggest takeaway that I've had as I've developed like more of a focus on endurance athletics is that like it's really becoming more comfortable with your body and mental, not just like your physical output. You know what I'm saying? I feel like a lot of times with weight to just like push as hard as you can, lift as

as heavy as you can. That's it. Whereas like running, it's a matter of controlling yourself, having that kind of controlled discomfort that you like to talk about because it's never going to feel perfect when you're pushing hard because that means like you're not pushing hard enough if you're like, oh wow, this is easy. But like understanding like your threshold and like your ability to push to a certain extent at a controlled rate, it really is just a different ballpark in my opinion. And that's like what I've really enjoyed about endurance sports is that you get more of a focus

on up here and how that affects your body. Yeah, no, I agree. I definitely want to dive into that. but I want to take a step back first to talk about kind of how you got to this point of training for now full Ironman. Let's start with you recently moved to Austin, Texas. I did. Two months ago.

Yep, just about two and a half. What sparked the move? Why did you want to move? What's going on right now? Yeah, absolutely. So I had no clue. I just graduated from USC this past math. And I had no clue what I was doing after college.

This was like middle of March. closer to April. And I remember I had a conversation with Tony and he was just like, hey, like, what are you kind of like thinking about after college? And I was just like, to be honest, like, I don't really know because there was a period of time where I kind of was having this like self-doubt in myself. I looked around the people around me and realized that I was doing something starkly different than my friends that were going into banking or doing these other kind of just like linear route jobs, which like there is nothing wrong with that. It was just like I had different interest in it. And I really didn't know what I wanted to do. But after you're taking a

step back and realizing my true passion for being an athlete, for talking about mental health, for creating content, doing what I'm doing. I was just like, I really want to go all in on on this because this is a period of life right now where I don't have dependence. You know, my responsibilities are very much so to just myself, like, I can go all on on my dreams. So like, it would be a disservice to myself down the road if I didn't take this chance. So I came out and I visited Ian, another BFN athlete. And I was just like, yeah, like Austin seems like a great spot. Everyone's super nice. Physical activity is a big priority forever in here. So I want to say it was like two weeks after I visited Ian. I found a lease. I signed it. My mom was like, are you moving back home after

college? I kind of was just like, no, I'm going to move to Austin. She was like, ha ha, what? Where's home? Yeah. Connecticut. Connecticut. So very different. But she knew, and I've like, I have a very good relationship with my mom. And I've always talked to her. I was like, this is something that I'm genuinely passionate about. And this is something that I like want to pursue wholeheartedly. She's like, do your thing. Like, I support you entirely. So graduated May 10th from USC, drove from California down here to Austin, five days later, like literally just took five days to pack up my room, sell everything. And then, yeah, I've been here for two and a half months now and it's been a damn

good time. I actually recently had a similar conversation with someone last week. And he recently graduated college. And he wants to start his own thing. And he's been working on it in the background and it's what he sees himself doing years from now. He's building this one thing, but he's afraid to go or has been afraid to go all in on it. So he's taken this job that he enjoys, but he knows it's just kind of like supporting him until he can have the confidence to go all in on this business he wants to start. And the conversation I had with him was, you know, I was building BPN while I was in the Army. for four years.

And it allowed me to grow BPN to a certain point, but I couldn't go all in. And that held back or temporarily just slowed down the growth that we were experiencing. When I transitioned out of the military in 2017 and I went full-time business owner, there was no backup plan. There was no support anymore.

And all that responsibility, I feel like that pressure was on me to, okay, if I'm actually doing this, I got to do it. Because if I don't do it, I'm not eating. Yeah. I don't have money or financial stability to pay for a rent and a home and all these things. I think sometimes when you take that big leap and you take the risk and you just throw away the backup plan, it's like, all right, this is what I'm doing and I'm all in. Yeah.

And this chapter of your life is like the perfect time to do it. Like when I transitioned out of the military, it's before I met Steph, didn't have a family, didn't have kids, very limited responsibility. It allowed me to just go all in on what I wanted to do.

Now, some of the people listen to this podcast are probably like, well, I'm not at that phase of my life anymore. And I recognize that. And maybe the answer to that, is eliminate all these other things you're doing and spending time on. And family might be priority. This job, this financial stability might be priority, but start building in the background,

but eliminate all the other distractions. And from my perspective right now, like you've, you've been able to kind of move into this next chapter of life, hyper-focus, remove distractions, and just go all in on this dream that you are truly passionate about. Yeah. So I read a really good book called Don't Believe Everything That You Think. And this goes like perfect with the concept of like thinking versus having thoughts where when you have a thought about something, it's just like the objective piece of information and then you act on it. You're like, I have this thought that I want to start a nutrition company and then you act

on it versus when you think about it, you attach energy and you attach emotions to it. And a lot of times what happens is people will have this thought and they'll think about it for too long, attach too much emotion to it. And suddenly it becomes this like big ordeal that they can't act on because in their heads It's this insane concept that'll never come to fruition. The logistics aren't there. The timing isn't right. There's all this other stuff where I've been kind of since I've really moved here,

I've been living by the mantra of like thinking less and doing more. And that doesn't mean like acting impulsively and living my best life. But it's just like, I'm going to look at my training and I'm going to get it done. I'm not going to attach this emotion. I'm just like, oh, those splits are difficult. Like that's going to be hard. I'm going to look at like the clients that I work with with coaching and I'm going to like, make sure I'm the best coach for them.

I'm not going to think like, oh, this guy's got a race coming up and that like I have to do all this extra wear it just like if you go through the process of taking action on a consistent basis all of the extra overthinking that you are creating in your head doesn't actually come to fruition in real life like people like to i mean it's just human cognition like we are the only species that has that ability to have emotion to create these like thoughts in our head these complex realities and when you overcomplicate things in your head and your mental you often like miss out what's happening happening actually around you because a lot of times people make things a lot more complicated in their head than it is in real life. You'll worry about a thousand different things and only

10 of them will actually happen in real life. I think it's exactly to your point that if you have a desire, if you have a dream about it, like start taking action towards it. Don't think about when the right timing is. Don't think about all the things that you might need to have figured out before you do it. As you start doing it, you'll figure out what you need to know. You'll figure out what you need to work on, what you need to outsource who you should be talking to, as opposed to trying to get everything in line beforehand. Then you start and realize, wow, I did all this extra work for nothing. Or wow, I was underprepared because I didn't look at this part.

You big reader? I love to read. So do I. Do you listen to more audiobooks? Do you read physical books? I'm a physical book. I take a highlighter pen and I annotate. I'm a really big nerd.

I've talked to you about it, but I studied like neuroscience and psychology. So I would just read, instead of going to like lectures, I would read the textbook and just like try and absorb as much information as possible because, I don't know, I just always believe that was like the best way to learn. I'm a big audiobook person myself, just because I can kill two birds with one step while I'm running. But if there's a part of an audiobook that I really want to hyperfocus on, I'll screenshot it while I'm running. And I'll go back to physical copy. And like really leaning into what you're talking about in terms of simplicity and overcom. complication. Many people overcomplicate many things. I've done it myself. And it's always made

things worse. Communication is less clear. You are less effective. One of my favorite books is called The Courage to Be Disliked. Very interesting book because it's like this, this narrative between a philosopher and this younger gentleman. And this younger gentleman is asking this philosopher questions. And the philosopher, kind of the whole message and meaning behind the book is that all of the issues that we experience in life are interpersonal relationship issues. And if you were the only person in this world, you actually won't have any issues if you really think about it. And the one thing they say in this book is that we live in a very simple world. Life is simple, not easy, easy and simple, or two different things. Absolutely. We live in a simple world

And this younger gentleman argues that. He's like, no, we don't. This is a very complicated world. And the philosopher goes, no, you make it complicated. We make it complicated. It is actually very simple. But we create all of our own issues. And we complicate this life.

And what so many people are missing, and it's in the title of the book, is the courage. And that courage is the action that you're talking about. Or instead of thinking about what could go wrong, what will go wrong, what might go right, I mean, you have to do that.

You have to forward, think, backwards plan, analyze, mitigate any problems that might arise. But at the end of the day, sometimes you just got to say, I'm just going to do it. And the courage is the action on the vision. Absolutely. And I think the other part of that is not only thinking about what could go right, what could go wrong, but like, I know a lot of people that I've at least talked to who have been like, hey, I'm super passionate about working out and fitness and mental health and whatnot. And I want to create content. I'm just worried about what other people will think of me. which ties into Mark Manson book like, I'm blinking on the name, but it's the idea like what,

the subtle art of not giving a subtle art. The subtle art of not exactly. People are always going to have opinions. Like I said, it's just like us as human beings. Like you said, if you're the only person in the world, you would have no problems because it's just kind of like your life. And a lot of times what we do is we let our life be affected by others perceptions of us who they don't even know the full picture.

Like even like you and I, we could spend a lot of time together. We work out through all this stuff. like you won't fully know who I am because you haven't lived every single experience that I've had together. So like a lot of times on social media, you'll have like these people who don't know you, they see one video of you and they'll instantly develop this perception of you and they'll outwardly project it. No matter what, like you can't let that affect you because you have to realize nobody truly knows you. The only person that spends 24, 7, 365 days a year, every single moment with you is you. So like as long as you stay true to like your true intentions and

And you know, like, hey, like, I'm working for something that I genuinely believe in. It doesn't matter what these other people are going to think about you. Because at the end of the day, like, the people that are important to you, the people that are supposed to be in your life, they're always going to support you, like, no matter what. And those that don't that, like, are just, like, trying to belittle you or bring you down, they aren't relevant enough pieces in your life for you to spend energy worrying about. with you graduating college from USC, degree in neuroscience, and then picking up your life, moving to Austin, Texas, to not necessarily pursue any of that, but to create content, train for these races, coach people in fitness. Was there a lot of pushback around that? Did a lot of people question, or were you making the right choice? Definitely. I thought it was pretty funny that, like, during, during college graduation, I would be talking to my friend's parents and like, oh, like, what are you doing next? And I would explain like what I'm doing. Oh, I'm a full-time athlete and I run my own business. And they're like, that sounds like a good like side gig. Like, what do you actually? No. So it's not

necessarily that like people were trying to like talk me down from it. I think it was more so that people didn't fully understand it. And that's totally okay because not everyone in life is going to have the same opinion as you. Not everyone in life is going to have the same desire as you. So like, I would just explain myself. I'm like, yeah, this is something I'm truly passionate about what I'm going to do. And they're like, okay. I didn't need to convince them that it was the right decision. I didn't need to pull up all the logistics of my social media interaction or, you know, my whatever. It was just like, this is what I'm doing.

If you want to support me, sweet. If not, it's totally okay. But I'm very lucky. Like, I always had a very supportive family and very supportive friend group because I've tried my best to be like truly authentic and like very genuine with every single thing I do. I ran my first marathon, my sophomore year of college. And my buddies were like, that's crazy. but like we know you and we know you're going to do it. So they've always, I've always been surrounded by people that like understand, hey, I'm going to do something different.

So it's not even worth like trying to like talk them down because like in my mind it's like, this is what I'm passionate about. This is what I'm going to chase. That's all there is to it. One of the things my wife, Steph says that she heard from Jesse Itzler's wife, who's Sarah Blakely, founder of Spanx. the way she describes being married to Jesse she says sometimes you don't have to try to I'm my paraphrase but it's not exact sometimes you don't have to truly

understand a man like Jesse you just got to love him and Steph says that about me like she knows I have these crazy ideas and visions and I'm going to act on them because it's something I know I want to do and need to do and sometimes she doesn't try to understand

why I'm going to do it, she's just going to support me and love me through it. Because I used to be the person who would have this vision. I'm a visionary. I'm always thinking into the future. And people would challenge those visions. And I would feel the need to try to convince them to fully understand my vision. I want you to see into my brain.

I want you to understand the context of why I'm making these choices and doing these things. And I got to a point where I was exhausted from doing that. And it was a waste of mind. energy and why am I trying to win the love and support people who truly don't want to love and support me. I'm just going to keep leaning into the area that I'm passionate about and then bring people along for the journey who want to be a part and understand that vision. That vision is so necessary.

Like for you, when you went to school and you were pursuing a degree in neuroscience, what was the vision then? So the vision was, and it kind of still is. It's stemmed out a little bit. So I pursued a degree in neuroscience because my two older brothers, I have our oldest brother. He's kind of always struggled with his mental health. Again, as a younger brother, you want to protect your family at all costs, especially me.

I'm a very family-driven person. So my other brother and I had an agreement that we were both going to pursue neuroscience and figure out a way to help people who struggle to help themselves. So my brother Joey is actually applying to med school. Or no, he's about to start med school. Props to him. He wants to be a psychiatrist. And psychiatrist is basically someone who can prescribe like medications to individuals who struggle

with their mental health, whether it be like anti-anxiety, anti-depression medicine. I as a human being, I'm a very social person, not to say like Joey isn't, but like I always want it to be on like that social behavioral side of things. So I went like the Bachelor of Arts route with neuroscience, more so like psychology focused. And eventually I want to stem and work in clinical psychology, especially with young athletes because I think with that period of time in adolescence where the brain is still developing, there's so much to be learned about a human being. And if you can be surrounded by, you know, positive psychology and the right type of affirmations,

I think one's mental health could be, one's mental health could be, like, extremely boosted, as opposed to like some individuals who go through this period of, you know, high school and college, and it's a very scary time. It's a very, like, big transition period. And they might be getting into these. negative feedback loops of, you know, self-doubt and belittling themselves. And as a result, it affects like every single aspect of their life. So I've always just really had this passion of helping people to help themselves, whether they know, whether they realize they need it

or not, I think we could all go about having some positive experiences with someone who understands, like, hey, like, life's going to be difficult, but you're going to get through it always. Can you dive into that a little bit more? Like, the younger athlete, what is being done in a wrong way that's facilitating some sort of outcome as opposed to like what is the more preferred method. Yeah, absolutely. I don't necessarily think there's like something like right or wrong, but like speaking from personal experience myself, like as a young athlete, you have a lot going on outside of just like your sport. You know, you have school, you have family, you have relationships, you have hormones as you are going through puberty. There's like a lot of different moving parts.

And a lot of these kids will use sports as an outlet. They're like, this is one thing that's pretty consistent for me, so I can dive entirely into it. And that's what I did. There is a lot of stuff that I was dealing with personally when I was in high school and the early years of college that I just focused entirely on my training. And I was like, I'm going to dive entirely into this and make this be like my number one priority. But in doing so, I put a ton of pressure on myself to perform at like an unreal level. I thought like I was incapable of making mistakes and that anytime I did, I would get like really in my own head about things. And what I realized, that like any time like a football game or rugby game would come around, I lacked the confidence

to play up to the level of my training because I was so nervous about what other people were going to think about me if I messed up. And I think just that idea of social perception and how much we value others' opinions from like a young age, especially like if you don't necessarily have like the best relationship with your parents or you're struggling to find like a friend group that you can integrate into. It's really you and you up here and how it affects your life out here. I think just being able to work with younger individuals and just remind them like, hey, like, you don't have to be perfect. Like, you are growing up.

There's going to be times where you have a great day of practice. And that's absolutely awesome. There are going to be times where you're more worried about a test that's coming up and you have to kind of like pull back a little bit on your focus. There's just a lot of moving parts as athletes, as human beings. And I think sometimes as kids, you kind of have this like invincibility perception where it's like, oh, yeah, like, I'm just living. I'm just going to focus on my sport.

I'm just going to keep doing my own thing. Where in reality, there's more to life than that. I didn't know sports psychologists were a thing when I was younger. And then moving to college and after college, realizing my brother was a collegiate athlete. He went to school to play baseball. But he could have went and played football or baseball, stud athlete. And when I was in high school, I played baseball. And I had a case of the Yips.

You know the YipSar? Yeah. Dude, where it was one day it happened. And I went and threw the ball and it went right into the ground. And then I vividly remember thinking, hold on, how do I actually throw the ball from where I'm at to that other guy? Where does it release in my hand? Yeah. What is like the motion?

what's the form. And from that moment on, I almost couldn't throw a baseball anymore. I was in my head. Like, if I had to throw the baseball from where I was standing 50 feet away, I would overthink it. I would almost rather throw it underhand than overhand because it would, I had no control of where it was going.

Like, what's happening in that case? And why is it, I know it's common because I've talked to so many other younger athletes, collegiate athletes that experience something similar like they, yips and they just can't get out of it. It almost ruins their whole career. Yeah.

I mean, I think it goes back to what we were kind of just talking about is you said it yourself, like you were overthinking. You thought about every single specific mechanic that goes into throwing itself, whereas like in the past, it's just a fluid motion. It's just throwing a baseball. It's like the objective thought, it's like, I'm going to throw this baseball. Versus like when you start to think about it, it's just like, okay, I have to have my arm at this angle.

I have to release at this period of time. I have to make sure it goes in this specific direction. there's too much unnecessary energy on the simple outcome or the simple process of throwing a baseball. And I think that could be a result of just like obviously mental fatigue if you're working a sport for so long and you kind of hit that burnout point where you're like overthinking every single aspect of it. And you're like, oh my God, like am I the athlete? I think I am. Or am I just like a fraud? Or it could just come down to a fact that like as human beings like we mess up sometimes. and as opposed to just being like, oh, like, I have to rethink entirely how I throw a baseball.

You're just like, I threw the ball in the dirt one time. You know, that's the first time I've ever done that. As an athlete, I know how to throw baseball. I played baseball for an extended period of time, you know. And it's everything with athletics. Like you'll see these, not even like high school and college athletes, but like professional athletes who will like mess up. They'll trip on a route in football.

They'll, you know, miss a hurdle in the hurdles. And it's just like, that doesn't define them as a human being. that simple mistake, that one time that they have that negative experience, it's like how they respond to that. And growing up, when you have those experiences, they're just like, oh, my God, like, why did my performance suddenly just go horrible as opposed to really trying to dive in and think about the entire process of exactly where you went wrong? You just accept the fact like, hey, like, today wasn't my death.

And then you can, like, progress on from there. Yeah, even outside of athletics, I see it happen here at BPN all the time. Yeah. where there's people on the team here now or in the past that may not have had a lot of job experience prior to. And they haven't been provided a lot of constructive criticism or feedback on their performance. And they're doing a good job. They're crushing. They make one mistake or they get feedback that isn't necessarily in their favor or something that they would like or prefer.

And that crushes them. absolutely breaks them. And the feedback was not intended to crush them. No, no, no. It was intended to help them get better.

Recognizing what they're doing wrong and where they can make improvements and then grow from there. And people either take that one of two ways generally. They receive the feedback, check, Roger, got it, move on, improve, get better.

Then they don't think about it much after that. But they use it as like, oh, this is my toolbox, this is my toolkit, I'm not going to make this mistake because I've seen the results of it before. There's the other person, though, that gets crushed by it. And then they become paralyzed.

And everything they do moving forward, they overthink. They make assumptions based off of like, well, I'm going to try to do this, but he or she might not like the way I'm going to do it. So I'm not going to do it at all. So they'll sit on their hands, not moving forward, backwards, side to side, anywhere, because they're so paralyzed by the analysis of, well, if I do this wrong again, what's going to happen? And I think a lot of people act in that way.

Oh, 100%. And that's why I've talked to a lot of people about it, but you never really fail at something in life. You either succeed or you learn and pivot. Because like you said, if you get this criticism or this constructive feedback and you just let it sit there and you don't do anything about it and you're just like, I don't want to mess up again,

that's staying stagnant. You're not going to be able to see growth map. But if you take it as a chance to pivot and be like, okay, like, this is an area that, like, I can now see improvement in. And then you're going to be able to, like, progress. You're going to be able to expand your toolbox because you're willing to accept the fact that, hey, I don't know everything right now. Hey, there's room for improvement.

That's where I want to be. And I think tying it kind of back into athletics, that's why I believe working with people that like Mitch, you know, with the mile time, someone who's better than you. Because you get to see what you can improve on by working with someone that has more experience than you. It's not necessarily that you're doing something wrong. It's that, like you said, they might not have that previous experience to build upon. So it's just like, okay, I'm going to allow you this opportunity to learn. And I want to see what you do with it. I want to see how you grow from this. And it really gives people a chance to develop as a human

being, as an athlete, as an employee, as a creative, like whatever you want to do with that opportunity that didn't go necessarily your way right off the bat, like that is all your choice. Yeah, dude, over this last like decade plus, I mean, this month we're celebrating 12 years in business. Oh, yeah. And over these last 12 years, I have made every single mistake. Every mistake.

I've made mistake in terms of managing money and cash flow. I've made mistakes in terms of building a team and culture, hiring the wrong people, managing people poorly. I've made them all. Yeah. You know, I've, I've lost a lot of money along the way by bad decisions. And like if I would have ever gotten stuck on one of those being like, oh man, I can't recoup from this or, you know, this bad decision put us back so far, we can't come back. I would have stopped 11 years ago and 11 months. Yeah. You know, after like, the first month in. And it's just part of the process.

I'm writing this book right now. It's called Goin More. It's launching next spring that I'm super excited about. Deep in the process right now, we're going back and forth with the editor to just like dial in the manuscript. But one chapter is all about enduring the process. And if I could just like wrap up my entire last 12 years of like how I got, from where I started to where I am today.

It's just been enduring this process. Absolutely. And during the process is just settling in, like one of these big workouts or races, and you're getting punched in the chin, and you're hitting speed bump and obstacles, you're getting flat tires. Everything that could go wrong goes wrong.

But you still got to make it to the finish line. Yeah. You still got to endure that whole journey. It's why I love ultramarathons, for example, is like you start an ultramarathon, mile one, if you start thinking about mile 100 right away when you cross the finish line,

you ain't going to make it. You got to settle in, endure the journey. And that's a good part of the book that I'm super passionate about right now. Yeah, and I think that stems into, there's the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, and it's the idea of responding, not reacting.

And we kind of keep getting back to this idea, but like when you respond to something, you make an active decision. You're like, okay, like here's the current situation. I'm going to take action on it versus when you react to it. You bring in all these emotions and you start to overthink things a little bit. Like you said, like if you would have reacted to every single thing that went wrong with starting BPN, you would have stopped 11 years and 11 months ago. But instead it's the matter of like responding.

It's just like when adversity presents itself in business, in relationships, in a race, how do you respond to that? You get a flat tire. You just throw your bike on the side of that. run and be like, yep, I'm done. Or do you change out your flat tire? You have a conflict with your partner? Do you just like, yep, we're splitting up? Or do you like address that conflict directly? You make a tough financial decision and you realize like, oh my God, we lost some money. It's like, how do you respond to that situation? Not necessarily just like, I'm going to throw my hands up and

just be like, oh, that's a bummer, you know? Life's going to happen. There's going to be things that don't go as we plan for them, but they're going to go how they are intended to go because like everything in life allows you for a chance to grow if you like look at it that way. Something really interesting to kind of like talk about their response is to be like this proactive approach, right? Reacting is this emotional approach. Let's talk about like emotional decisions in planning and acting for a little bit. Because I think that is one of my strengths is being able to do by removing or eliminating emotions. But when I say that, I want to encourage people like, find a way to proactively respond without being emotional.

But it's not saying be emotionless in your life. It's not being cold. Like some of the greatest, two traits and characteristics of a very effective leader. One, empathy, which is all emotion. And then two is being able to remove emotion. and operate or act in a way that is a response. Yeah. Well, I think it's like IQ versus EQ, which is like intelligence versus like emotional intelligence.

Like you could be very objectively well versed in a specific subject. But if you struggle with that emotional restraint or control in certain situations, like specific instances or adversely like might get the best of you because like you don't know how to sit back and just like respond. as opposed just like something goes wrong and like you didn't necessarily have that planned out in your head. And now you don't know where to pivot to. Like it's that kind of balance back and forth where it's not just like you are an absurd athlete who has the best sprinting capabilities. But you also have that psychological ability of being like I have to control my emotions if my race isn't going right. It's the idea that like with an ultramarathon like yeah, you're going to be running for a while.

So you have to have that objective knowledge of your fueling and how to pace yourself. But also that emotional restraint. Like you said, mile one, I can't be thinking of mile 100. I have to be present. I have to be in the moment and continue to respond and see how the race, see how life plays out. I mean, that's what makes humans so unique is we actually have the ability to think creatively, logically. We're not robots. Yeah.

And I think it's, I like to compare, like, thinking to, like, social media where, like, it could be a very, very powerful thing if you think in a positive manner. or it could be a very negative thing if you think in a negative manner. If you're using social media or like any type of content creation as a way to like compare yourself to others or like try and belittle others, like that's going to be like very prohibiting to like your self growth because it's just like all you're focused on is like what's happening outside of just you. Versus like if you use social media as like a positive thing to like share your story to share what you're going through mentally to show like, hey, this is how I got from point A to point B like telling your story. People are going to find a lot of value in that. You're going to be authentic to yourself. and being like, yeah, like, this is how I started BPN. Yeah, this is how I trained for high rocks Dallas, you know, if you're very out there, and this kind of goes back to like we said, like, people are always going to have opinions, but it's just a matter of like who do you value those who support you or those who don't fully know you and are choosing not to support you, you got to use it in a positive manner. You have to use, you know, support in a positive manner

as opposed to just like only focusing on those who are trying to belittle you or only focusing on those who are doing better than you. And you're like, oh, I have to catch this guy's time or, oh, I have to make more money. It's not a matter of that. It's your specific journey that you should be focused on. Social media in itself, I view social media as a tool and a resource. And it's a personal responsibility to use it in a way that supports you. And what brings you happiness and joy, like, for me, the way I use social media is to create and share. not to consume. I try to consume very little.

And when I'm on the platforms, it's because I'm connecting with or sharing lessons that I feel are very applicable and valued to myself that I think other people can benefit from. Exactly. I mean, right now, if you opened up my Instagram

explore page, it would be Ford Raptor trucks and meat. Yeah. Some of this big, like, learning how to perfect smoking meat right now.

Hell yeah. Especially with baby two on the way. I'm going to be spending a whole lot more time at home. And so now my back porch is a little side tangent, but my back porch is we got a Traeger in one corner. I have a green egg in the other. And then I have like one of those cheap Weber charcoal grills. And I'm just trying to master like the,

I'm moving away from the Trigger and actually more towards like using charcoal and smoke. trying to master how to use smoke and heat to make the best piece of just meat I possibly can. But I found, like, you can use social media in a way that if you have this very strong interest and you want to get better at something, it is a resource that has all the answers, all the information out there. If you are looking to use that platform, those platforms and that resource to spread negativity, to make yourself feel bad, to contribute to all the hate and the criticism,

you can use that as well just for that reason. So it is this chameleon where you get to choose how to use these platforms, but you can't be mad at the platforms himself because it's a self-responsibility on how you use it. Absolutely. And that's literally everything of life. And I feel like a lot of people don't realize it,

but you have entire control of how you think therefore, like, you have an entire control of like what goes on in your life. Like obviously there are going to be certain circumstances where you're like, yeah, I don't have any control over that. But it's your perception of that circumstance that you always do have control over. So if you go into a day and you're like, today's going to suck, today's going to be horrible, not a single thing is going to go right. I guarantee most things are going to go wrong for you because like that's where you're

constantly reassuring yourself. That's like the idea that's being like repeated in your working memory. And as a result, it's getting encoded into your long term memory that like your life is horrible. versus if you take someone that is just like, I'm going to see improvement today. I'm going to spread positivity. I'm going to live my best life. You're going to start to realize, like, you have so much good surrounded in your life

just by accepting that this is your reality and that you have control over your thoughts. Because really, that's all we are at the end of the day. We are just a composition of what we choose to tell ourselves and what we choose to believe in. There's a video right now, or not right now, but it's from a few years ago, actually. Michael Phelps, greatest U.S. Olympian of all time, I believe, like 23 medalist, 14 gold maybe.

I don't know if I'd probably mess that one up, but he was talking about during the times when he would struggle with his own mental health, every time he'd walk through a doorway, he'd say one thing he'd liked about himself or like one, like self-affirming thought. Like this is someone who's like so beyond successful talking like, hey, like sometimes like I get in my own way.

Sometimes I have like these negative thoughts about myself. But as he continues to reassure himself that like, hey, like I am a good person. and hey, I'm a hardworking individual, his life continues to progress in a positive manner. And that's like everything. It's just like you are what you continuously tell yourself you are. So if you are telling yourself, I'm going to go on social media and I'm going to be a negative person because that's just how I think.

Life is horrible and I don't want to do it. Like, yeah, like that's your life. And that's unfortunate. But like that's you're making that active decision to live that way versus like if you're making the active decision to think positively, to understand that like even if you are going through a troubling time right now, like things are going to get better over time, you are going to see improvement in your life. You are going to see a better just well-being or quality of life as a whole. Yeah. Well, last time I texted you, I was like,

hey, man, what are some things that you'd like to kind of dive into and talk about? And two things you kind of send over positive psychology and the connection to performance and also social psychology and group drive. And kind of piggybacking off what you were just talking about, like with Michael Phelps, I believe that most people who are listening to this podcast are what we would consider high achievers. We want to accomplish a lot in life. We want to reach our greatest potential. We are typically unsatisfied with where we're at right now because we know we can do better. I'm the same exact way. Yeah, as am I. Like, I will go to sleep, angry often, and I will wake up angry, actually often because I know I can be. I know I can

be doing better. I know I can be doing more. I know I can be faster. I know I could be spending more time with my family. I know I could be building this business at a greater rate. I know I could be leading this team in a better way. I'm constantly trying to improve and identifying where I'm not necessarily succeeding, but being a high achiever can also be very self-destructive because you know you can be doing more and you want to be doing more. And I don't know if there's any way around that, but something that I do as I was thinking about positive psychology

the connection to performance there's this thing that I started doing on my morning runs and it wasn't even like a very conscious decision where I was like actively I'm going to start doing this

because I'm not the type of person who's going to wake up go look in the mirror and be like Nick you are great you are beautiful you are like all these things but I was finding myself waking up in the morning

getting ready to go on my run and being frustrated with like what I wasn't accomplishing at the moment. And then one morning I was on this run angry at myself and I'm thinking, dude, what are you so mad about? Like you got this business that's growing. You got amazing people in your life. You have a beautiful wife. You have a daughter who's healthy. You have a baby on the way. I'm like, what else do I need? Like what else do I need to be happy? And literally, like I shit you not. All that frustration just like fell to the wayside.

You probably felt it in your shoulders too. Like something like there's like less tension. So like it affects everything. Dude, completely. I came back to the house like pep in my step. And now that's something I frequently do in my morning run is if I start feeling those feelings, I'll just take a second on that run. And I'll just think of all the things that I have in my life that I'm grateful for.

and I'm very quickly like what what can I be mad about yeah absolutely I um I don't want to say like I created this I have no idea like where it came from but I started doing this really like my sophomore year of college where if I ever noticed like I was like super anxious while studying or like going on a run or in the midst of a workout and I was just like frustrated I would take a deep breath and think about my life going from like a first person perspective of like us having this conversation right now to like a third person perspective of almost like a narrator seeing your life. And when a narrator is telling a story, there is no emotional attachment.

It's just very much like the objective experience that's going on. There is no thinking going on. It's just like the thought, like what's happening right now. And a lot of times what you realize is just like you're going for a run. You're having all this frustration, all this negative emotion. You take a deep breath and you imagine like someone seeing you from like an outside perspective. It's just like, oh, Nick's going for a run. And like that's really what happens a lot of time in life.

It's just like you could be in the midst of a workout missing every single split and you're so beyond frustrated. Then you take a deep breath and realize I'm working out and going for a run. You could be in the midst of a very frustrating conversation with a business partner and you're trying to like articulate what you want. And then you take a deep breath and it's just like we're two individuals having a conversation. And it's like a grounding experience and it really helps you to like bring back to like the simplicity aspect of life where it's just like if you were the only person in this world, yes, you'd have no problems. But you aren't. There's millions, billions of other people who live in this world. So you have to remind yourself of just like when things start to get complicated,

it's not that deep. And you can like really simplify life by just looking at like what you are actively doing in the moment, not what you are like continuously thinking about or could be thinking about or should be thinking about. It's just like what are you doing? Albert Einstein has these levels of intelligence. It's like a hierarchy of the. intelligence. And he says that the highest level of intelligence is actually the ability to simplify things. In the grand scheme of everything, when you think about it, just like you were

saying, that is often the hardest thing. Simplifying is the hardest thing for people to do. But when you actually get better at it, it improves all aspects of everything you do. Yeah. And I think people have like a greater respect for you. Like if you knew every single little detail about running, for example, but you failed to articulate that in a simple manner that like other people could understand, like they might not like fully appreciate just how hardworking you are. And like that might in turn cause frustration with you because you're like, I know all this information yet like I'm struggling to outwardly project it when I'm trying to help other individuals. Whereas like if you have all this information, if you understand this kind of basis of running of business, of relationships, and you are then able to, in modified terms, explain it to someone and meet them where they are at, it just becomes like a more constructive. And those people probably have a greater appreciation for you. And that could be, you know, a beneficial relationship that develops because it's like, hey, this person is supposed to be in like super overbearing and using all these complex terms and assuming that I knew everything. Like, they explained

it to me exactly how I needed it for it to be explained. Just dumb it down. Not even necessarily dumb it down, but it's just like meet people where they are. Like, that's where I like to say. It's just like, I don't need to explain what protein is to you because obviously you know what protein is, but it's just like, what can I provide for you in a way that like you understand to help you progress towards your goals. So I guess a better way to describe it from instead of dumb it down would be being aware of who you're speaking to and speak to them in a way that communicates exactly a way that they

can absorb and comprehend that information. EQ and IQ, emotional intelligence and just objective knowledge of the situation. Having that balance between the two, it's everything. Some of the smartest people with the greatest IQs have zero EQ. Now, that's what makes them ineffective. Yeah. That's what like a lot of people in college, and I actually don't want to say a lot of people in college, it's a very generalized term. I've met some ridiculously smart human beings, computer programming, you know, mechanical engineering, just these individuals that have this, like, gift of just like, they understand concepts so well. However, it's like the outside eye they're perceived as like weird or like, oh my God, like he has no social awareness because they fail to

articulate their specialty, their set of skills because it's just like not in like their personality. So if like you as a human being are able to develop both on like an intellectual and an emotional level, that's how life is meant to be lived. We're talking right now because like we've developed the ability to understand, okay, when I'm talking, you're listening, when you're talking, I'm listening. As opposed to just like, I'm spewing all this knowledge at you that like might not make sense. There might not be any fluidity to it. You have to have that balance of social awareness. I've had a lot of conversations in podcasts that are IQ driven.

Yeah. And it's painful. It's tough because like you want to understand what people are saying. They're so like they're so clearly passionate about what they're saying. But you got to read the room. you know what I'm saying? Yeah, dude, for sure. So let's talk about group drive.

I'm really interested in the concept of group drive. And I believe I understand what it means. But I'd love to hear just like your initial take on it so we can have a conversation around it. Yeah. So this is a theory that I learned in one of my social psychology classes. And it comes from the idea of like an in-group versus an out-group where like an in-group is a group of subjects that like are all similarly meshing.

You know, you feel like you belong, you share similar values. A tribe. Yeah, exactly. It's your tribe. Whereas an out-group, it's like you're a part of it, but like very different beliefs. You don't feel like you belong. And how this kind of transitions over into training is that like if you are part of like a culture of like high achievers of hard workers who are pushing themselves, you naturally are going to follow their path. You're going to push yourself.

It's like you like we're as human beings, we are social creatures and we are a direct product of the immediate environment that we surround ourselves with. That's why having like a good culture or like a good friend group is so beyond important because you're going to start to develop the same traits, the same characteristics, the same values as them. So and say like these high rocks workouts that you're doing, you could be doing it by yourself. And it's just like, yeah, like you're going to push yourself to a certain level. However, you're surrounded by other individuals who are working as hard as you, if not. harder, you're going to push harder. You're going to continue to work harder. Versus like the outgroup aspect of it. If you're doing a workout, if you're in a group that like is not necessarily belittling, but like doesn't align with you, you might start to

overthink. You might start to like get in your own way about things because just like, am I doing something wrong? Am I the one in the wrong because I'm choosing to do something different? And this kind of is something that happens a lot of times where people conform to a group by identity that they don't necessarily believe in because they're more afraid of being an outsider than like, or they're more afraid of like being discouraged and being, I guess, not necessarily hate it on, but nobody wants to be an outsider. Nobody wants to be looked at. Be like, that person's not normal. Like, we don't like them. So like these people that are a part of these out groups that don't necessarily align with who they want to be, they'll like play down to that level. They'll

get in their own heads about things because they are the ones that are quote unquote different. So whether it be like a team that you're a part of that you're doing different workouts or even if it's just like the culture is negative. It really does transition and affect you as a human being and it affects your performance because there is no uplifting. There is no kind of like support system there. Whereas like in the in group where everyone's working towards the same goal, everyone's pushing each other, everyone wants to see everyone do well. A couple thoughts on that. And just like this is my initial just thought. You know, within groups, you can choose groups that you're part of.

You can choose tribes that you're part of. Like a team or a run group, a run club. I think endurance training actually facilitates a lot of ability to train with other people in groups. That's one of the reasons that I believe a lot of people are moving towards endurance training. I think we could probably talk about this, but run clubs have become so popular over the last two years. Yeah. especially coming off the pandemic, there's got to be something there where so many people were extremely isolated

and then we're looking for this group dynamic tribe culture. But you can choose groups to be a part of. But then sometimes you're in groups that you didn't necessarily choose. Like say work. Say like a business, you get hired by this business. You're now in this group setting. And they are kind of bringing your energy down or it's not a culture that facilitates

or aligns with your values. Those are just my two thoughts initially. And then I guess like a response to that or to get your thoughts on it. When it comes to choosing your tribe or your group, I believe you first have to identify what your values are.

What do you believe in? What do you want to accomplish? What are your values? Your non-negotiables? and that's like the floor. You have to be firm on that. And then you find tribes and groups that align with those values. I believe the issue that a lot of people experience

is that they say these are my values and then they either choose a group that doesn't align or they're put into a group, say work that doesn't align and they conform as opposed to making a decision through courage to leave and find a new tribe that kind of aligns. But I think of a big issue that we're experiencing worldwide right now is conformity. People don't want to be on the outside and they're less likely and not encouraged to be

transformative. But conformity is like something they are attracted to because no one wants to be alone. Yeah. And I think that's like kind of what you were saying with that first part about. like the rise of run clubs and even like I was seeing like there's like an increase in like the amount of like book club started or like the amount of people that are just like experiencing the outdoors and like doing like group activities together whether it be like yoga sessions hosted in like the Republic Square and downtown people crave that idea of community and especially after the pandemic where like you're in this isolation period and you might have spent a little too much time with yourself you you want to be out in the world as human beings we are social creatures we want to interact with others so There's that sense of belonging that people are looking for, which is why I think these like increasing group activities and, you know, endurance activities, it's going to continue to rise because people are realizing, I can find a lot of value in spending time with people that have

just like one common trait with me. Because you don't have to necessarily be friends with every single person in the run club or every single person in a book club, but it's just like, you share values. You share at least one commonality where like, okay, you're headed in the right direction. And I think go into that group of just like if you're in a group, unfortunately to say like work that like you're surrounded by people that don't share the same values as you, that's only like one group in your life. You don't have to conform your values. And it's kind of like what we were saying. Where it's just like those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. So if these people that like you are surrounded by are not necessarily in the same or

trending in the same direction as you regarding your values, you don't have to. prioritize those relationships nearly as much as those that like do align with your values or do support like the person that you want to become it just matter of like you'd have to put in like slightly extra work to then stem outwardly uh to find that other group of individuals that do support you and do support your values in your iron man prep right now are you doing a lot of group training group workouts i'm starting to find like other individuals i think like this first like two and a half month period. I was so sad on, like, getting a good, just like base and just like moving in and whatnot, especially because I moved here and had about a month till my half iron man.

So, like, okay, like, let me get into a good rhythm. Now that I've settled then, now that I have like an understanding of like the lay of the land, I'm finding other individuals to run around Lady Bird Lake with me to go on these bike rides. Even like sharing a lane or a swimming pool and you're having a conversation with the people around you. And I think that's one big thing that's helped me to really embrace the culture and continue to just, like, progress in my kind of like social awareness and just like my appreciation for life is that the best way to meet someone or the best way to, like, develop a relationship is if you give like a very simple compliment to someone the first time they ever meet you, instantly they're inclined to talk to you.

Instantly, they're inclined to be like, okay, like, who is this person? Like, if there's someone that, like, I want to develop a relationship with, I'll be, like, going on like a run on the track and I'll run by someone and I'm like keep it up you're killing it and then after the workout him and I start talking or like in the pool I'm going and I'm like wow you're really fast and me and the girls start talking and it's just like these are now people in my life that I can have these developed relationships with that like I can become a part of like their in group or we create this in group of individuals because just like not only are we sharing the commonality of like yeah we're athletes yeah we're triathletes yeah we're training for something

but we're human beings that are willing to talk to strangers. Because talking to strangers is definitely a scary thing. But if you realize at the end of the day, it's like, hey, like you and I are just people. Like anyone out there, they're just people. So if you treat everyone the same and you treat every single person, like they're just like an initial conversation and you kind of like don't think too much about like, oh, who is this person? Where do they come from? What do for work? It's just like the thought of you're having a conversation.

It like facilitates developing relationships. Well, a lot of athletes and a lot of high performing individuals are really good at putting up shields and turning everyone into an enemy. I mean, I will be honest, I've been there. I used to view everyone as competition and naturally everyone is an enemy. And I eventually realized that was so immature, very unprofessional. It was holding me back. It was setting the wrong standard as a leader to people in my life and my business. And I've slowly learned and realized people were only enemies if you make them enemies.

100%. We can all be allies. I was listening to this podcast the other day about the founder of Whole Foods, John Mackie. And he was talking about this concept. of having secret allies. And when he first started Whole Foods, it was just like a market in a home here in Austin. Damn, that's sweet.

And because, you know, Whole Foods started in Austin. I do know that now. That's crazy. The Whole Foods downtown is like HQ. Wow. That's HQ. So it started here. And when John Mackey started Whole Foods,

it was just one store in a house. And it was like the first floor, I think it was grocery. The second floor was like, like, odds and ends for like your house. And the third floor was offices. And they would sleep in those offices. Yeah. One store. And all the grocers in the area were buying all their groceries from this wholesaler.

And the more stores you had, the better pricing you got because you're buying in volume. Yeah. He had one store. And he's buying from this wholesaler. He's getting the worst prices. So what he ended up doing is going to all these other smaller grocery stores or grocery chains, mom and pop, groceries, natural stores specifically. He's like, hey, let's create this parent company that like, you know, owns us, all of us. And because we'll have higher volume, we will get better pricing.

Now they were all competing against each other, but they created like this secret alliance of allies so they could all win. Yeah. And I thought that was very valuable because a lot of people that go into business, a lot of people in athletics, everyone's an enemy. Everyone's competition. They're only competition and an enemy if you make them that way. Exactly. And like those small like grocers, like the mom and pop shops and like the Whole Food Jamacky, like they created this in group because they all have the same value. It's like, hey, we want to succeed.

And it's like, yes, individual success is prioritized. But as a whole, in order to see that success, you have to work together. as a team. As a group of athletes, everyone has the same goal of like performing their best. But if like one person starts to do better, you're going to see that and you're going to push yourself. And that's going to call someone else to push themselves. So it's like you can have these different goals or like self prioritizations, but it's the realization that like you aren't alone in the process and that you could gain significantly more by working with individuals that are going to push you to like want to be better. I mean, that's that is one thing you can

intentionally put into your training to improve. It's a variable. Or I'm not going to do all of my workouts with other people. I'm going to do majority of my workouts in the gym, running the circuit training sessions. I'm going to do most of them by myself. But there are certain workouts where if I know it's a big effort, I might do it with someone else.

When my first big, when I actually did my first Iron Man, all of my training was by myself, So I was trying to learn all these new things on my own. And there's just such a huge gap of like starting from scratch to actually being proficient in triathlon. Absolutely. You can't learn it on your own. My second Iron Man, I started training with a bunch of athletes.

And people were much more knowledgeable in the space. They were pushing me. I go to the track and train with Jeff and those runners on Wednesdays. I got so much better, so much faster, and I improved significantly in a small period of time because I was learning from people who were much better than me. Absolutely. And it's like the idea of like starting a business like, yeah, you probably could run this by yourself and learn every single aspect of starting a business, investing, the financial

like marketing. But that would take so much effort and so long. So you develop a team. You like kind of delegate where it's just like, okay, I trust you with this aspect. I trust you with this aspect. And it's similar of like working out with other individuals. We're just like, okay, you're a better runner than me.

So I'm going to run with you so I can get better. You're a better cyclist than me. So I'm going to like cycle with you to get better. And like you have these people that you work with actively or just like I can learn from you. But I don't have to like learn everything. You know, I don't need to be like absolutely perfect in every single aspect that I do because that is all involving.

And then you lose every other aspect of your life. Like you could probably like dive an entirely on. try a lot on and be very, very good at it. But then it's just like, what about your relationships? What about your business? As human beings, we're supposed to have balance. We're supposed to have this moderation. So it's the power of being surrounded by individuals

that are pushing with similarly aligned values as you. That's where like true progress is seen. I was training for my first sub three-hour marathon. One of my biggest issues when I'd go into these tempo workouts or these track critical velocity workouts, is that first rep, I would always send it. Second rep, send it. By the 8th, 10 rep, I was just holding on for dear life.

And I wasn't able to hold these consistent paces. So Josh, our CFO, CFO, CFO, before he started working at BPN, I met him actually through Jeff's running club. And he would run with me for a lot of these workouts. If I had like a big 17 to 20 mile marathon pace workout, he'd come and join me. And his biggest thing was like restraint. He'd be like, I'd go out fast. He'd run next to me.

He'd say, dude, slow down. Yeah. I know you can run this fast, but you want to run this rep just as fast as you run the 10th rep. Yeah. And if I didn't have him there with me, coaching me, guiding me, I would have never gotten better. Yeah. Because my approach was run hard, run fast, hold on.

Yeah. Doesn't work. And it's the idea, too, of, like, working out or, like, working with other individuals, like, you don't have to, like, think nearly as hard as it. So, as a result, like, you're not wasting as much energy thinking about how much effort you're putting into every single rep instead. It's just, like, the thought is like, okay, I'm running with someone. That's it at the end of the day.

If I hold pace, if I'm working with this individual who's better than me and they're guiding me and I trust in them. And I literally just the only thing I'm thinking about is running stride for stride with them, you're going to see progress. That takes out so much emotional involvement That is taking away from your human performance Because you're more caught up in your head Than what you are doing physically.

So I want to talk about Iron Man Prep briefly. But I want to hyper focus on one specific area And it's progressive overload. So I think progressive overload It's also another section in my book. But there's this clear parallel between training, strength training, endurance training,

progressive overload, and then life as a whole. So my thought process, like what progressive overload is obviously for people who are listening is you take from right now or when you first started training to where you want to be or the future indefinitely, the volume of your training should increase steadily. Whether that's being able to do more weight,

more reps, more sets, more volume, more intensity. There should be a gradual increase. And the way you do that is you intentionally add more volume in to stress the body. And so you create adaptations and become stronger, faster, better. It's where you build on programming and fitness, but the same thing in life. Where in life, we have to actively choose these challenges, or set these goals that almost feel unrealistic. And that overload of a stimulus or stress

because stress is good, it creates an adaptation, facilitates growth. So we want to incorporate that not only in our fitness, but also life as a whole. I think the biggest word that you said in all of that is gradual because I know a lot of people that have the passion, have the desire to get really good at something to go all in on something.

And then you start out way too fast, way too hot, burn out. you won't see progress, injury, whatever it may be, it's gradual because life is gradual. If everything we ever wanted always happened tomorrow, there's like no value in like the process itself. And that's where you learn the most about yourself. These days where it's just like, I know that I'm doing just a little bit more. I know that like I'm continuing to push, but like there's still a lot more work to be done. Because it's not necessarily about like on the microscan. This is what we can like talk about with like, you'll have workouts sometimes where like things don't go well. And you're just like, wow, like, I failed today.

But then you look at it from like the macro scale and you're like, I've never done this workout before. Like if I would have thought about doing this two months ago, three months ago, a year ago, I'm significantly further along in my journey than I was back then. And I feel like as human beings, we often get caught up in like instant gratification where it's just like we want to be the best at something. We want to immediately feel good. But it takes time and it takes a lot of effort.

and if you can just sit back and enjoy the process, continue to show up every single day on a consistent manner in the grand scheme of things, things are going to continue to gradually trend upwards. One of my favorite quotes is that you build a brand in drops and you lose it in buckets. Absolutely. And I kind of view workouts as like those drops

where you are not going to feel or experience the growth in that moment. Like say you have a big couple of work. water. Yeah. You take a little droplet dropper. You drop one droplet in. You're not going to see anything change. You drop even like, yeah, you drop like five droplets in.

You don't see anything change. But you do that every day for a year, multiple years, you're going to overflow that cup. And even when you do something and fail, I still see the positivity where it's, okay, I applied a stressor, a stimulus. Yeah. That out my body and my mind, my mentality. will adapt to and become stronger over time. Yeah, you applied this stressor in a controlled and

gradual manner that you know is like positively affecting you, not just like, oh yeah, like I'm going to go out and run as far as I can today because that's going to be stressful and I know that that's going to be more mileage than I've ever done because like you continue to do that, you get injured. There's always like a plan for the process itself. It's not just like a simply matter of just like overstressing yourself, overstressing yourself, overstressing yourself, overstressing yourself until like you're the most stressed out you can be and be like oh yeah like this is the first of long i've ever gone it's it's gradual and it's controlled discomfort because it's going to be hard it's going to be a process like you said like the workouts it's not always

going to feel the best but it's always going to be exactly what you need in the grand scheme of things well that's like when um jeff cunningham came on the podcast it was a few years ago now and he said it's better to be consistently good than occasionally great and that quote struck such a nerve in so many people. I really actually remember hearing that and that was just like, whoa, that's crazy. So true.

And if you can actually harness and appreciate that, just to focus on being consistently good rather than occasionally great and just depositing daily into the things that you want to do and achieve, if you can actually just deposit and do and work, set a North Star and work towards it and just like an endurance race settle in. You will achieve success. 100%. But so many people, if they don't see the success tomorrow or next week or next month,

they get discouraged or they start chasing the wrong things because they won that instant gratification. But that's so short-lived, that's so short-sighted. that you stay on that path, two, three, maybe nine, four years later, I guarantee you're not going to be on that path anymore. You're going to be looking for something new. Absolutely. And I think it goes back to like when you think this is exactly what you want and you need to get it and you're so product driven as opposed to just like process driven of just being like, hey, like, I'm going to settle in and I'm going to keep working. A lot of people that focus on like the pure end goal and like whatever that is are often like unfulfilled whenever it happens because just like all they cared about was like the very end, the very end.

Marianne came and they're like, well, now what? Versus like, if you're just like more so in love with the idea of getting better at something and you just enjoy showing up every single day, it's not necessarily going to matter whatever happens in the end. It's going to just be like, hey, like, I've done this for me. I've shown up every single day for me. I've put in the work for me. I'm proud of myself.

So I love building a business. Yeah. You just keep depositing into and building and building and building and making it better and improving and helping people. And my personal, like, financial outcomes don't change. And that's not even my focus at all. It's all like just building and being so passionate in the process and falling in love of the process that you forget about everything else.

Absolutely. Well, dude, it's great having you here in Austin, Texas. I'll tell you that. It's great to be here, man. And how far out are you from Sireman? I am just under five weeks now. So I think it's 32 days. You feel good?

I feel great. That's awesome. Thank you. We're ready to see you. Let it rip. Are you going to use this Cervillo? I think I might have to. Do you should.

Have you talked about that at all? I can talk about it. I talk about it. I showed up after my 70.3, which is about three weeks ago. And I was just at like the headquarters. and I was talking to Tony and Hope, and I was looking at the two bikes out there. And they were like, would you ever want to use this bike? And I'm like, this bike's worth more than my car.

Like I don't know if I'm like physically capable or like mentally there to use this bike. Because like if I did anything wrong, I'd feel so bad. They're like, no, like I promise. Like Nick would say yeah. And then you text me, you're like, use the bike for the whole prep. Use the bike for the rate. Like whatever you need. Like we got you.

And that thing is like the difference between driving like, a 1990 like stick shift car and like a 2024 hybrid automatic like it is the best bike I've ever ridden it's wild it's like a spaceship like truly yeah it's pretty wild and I haven't used it for like two years yeah and it's gonna either sit on that shelf or it's gonna be used I'd rather be being used I'm taking good care of it don't worry about it let it rip I mean what I wanted to text you was like hey man don't hold back on that thing like take it everywhere let it Break it. I don't care. I hit 80 miles on it last Saturday. And I think I've got 120 this Saturday. So I'm excited. It's been good. I think Iron Man as a whole really ties into this idea of love in the process because like it is just how much can you endure? Like how long are you willing to push when you know you've been like working very hard for a while? So this has definitely been at least for me and my favorite discipline to train because of just how. How long are you willing to push?

when you know you've been like working very hard for a while. So this has definitely been at least for me and my favorite discipline to train because of just how not like physically taxing it is, but like mentally. It's just like you have to be hard on yourself because the work's not going to do itself. You can't be mad about the results you don't get from the work you didn't do. And Iron Man is just about like the simple work of showing up every day sitting on the trainer for two, three hours going for a run and you know the 100 degree Austin. And it doesn't matter.

Like the race doesn't care. The distance isn't going to change. Like what does your training look like? How do you show up every day for it? What's the longest period of time you spent on the trainer so far? Three and a half. I like to do my outdoor ride. So I did four on the Velo way, which is like a three.

People think I'm crazy when I say this. But there's a three and a half mile loop. And it's cyclists only. So there's no stopping, no pedestrians. It's only bikers. And I love it. so much that I do all my outdoor rides on there. And I can just like turn my brain off.

There's good elevation. And before I know, I'm three and a half hours into a ride. And I'm like, I've been going in circles for 25 laps now. That's pretty crazy. Your mind will go to interesting places during a long cycling experience. I'm learning to enjoy it. It really helps me because when I am cycling, I kind of like take that step back and like almost ride like passenger seat in my mind.

It's just like, okay, like this bike, this ride is going to end. What do I do with the rest of my day? Are there people that I want to reach out to? Is there work that I want to get done? How can I use this period of time where I have extended mental reserve when you're in a long bike or on a long run? How can I use that to then see positive, I guess, like, experiences after that experience ends, you know, after that workout ends. Because, like, you could have a really good bike workout and then just, like, lie on the floor the rest of the day and then you don't get anything else done. But there's more to life than simply training.

and I'm still like actively working to find that balance but it's I enjoy it a lot. It's awesome. Thank you. Well, we're here to support, man. Whatever you need. We got you. Appreciate it. Thank you.

All right. Thanks, man. Of course.