The One You Feed - How to Unlock Your Inner Greatness with George Mumford

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

In this episode with George Mumford, we discuss how to unlock your inner greatness. Through his work with people from prestigious athletes to prisoners, George explores the surprising truths about mastering personal growth and self-awareness. You'll also discover ways to overcome self-limiting beliefs and learn to find balance and contentment in your life. In this episode, you will be able to: Master the art of self-awareness to unlock profound personal growth Overcome self-limiting beliefs and unleash your full potential Discover powerful strategies for reaching peak performance in all areas of life Learn to balance the pursuit of success with finding contentment in the present moment Harness the power of neuroplasticity and incremental improvement methods for lasting personal development To learn more, click here!  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We have choices, and we can have wise choices, and we can choose, if we can slow things down enough to have that space between stimulus and response, to choose wisely, to choose in alignment with not only our values, but how the universe works. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do.

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit but it's not just about thinking our actions matter it takes conscious consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living this podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor. What's in the museum of failure? And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition

signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is George Mumford, a globally recognized speaker, teacher, and coach. Since 1989, he's been honing his groundbreaking performance and mindfulness techniques with people from locker rooms to boardrooms, from Yale to jail. Michael Jordan credits George with transforming his on-court leadership, while Mumford has also worked with Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, and countless other NBA players, Olympians, executives, and artists. Today, George and Eric discuss his new book, Unlocked. Embrace your greatness, find the flow, discover success.

Hi, George. Welcome to the show. Hi. It's great to be here. Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on. I've been following your work for a number of years. And today we're going to be talking about your latest book, which is called Unlocked. Embrace your greatness. Find the flow. And discover success. But before we do that, we'll start like we always do with a parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking to their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and

hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Thank you for asking that because that's a prime directive in my work that I do.

I use that story. I've summarized it down to fear and love. Yeah. It's the same principle, and it's the one that you feed. And so I use that. That's the essence of what I teach is that you have to be clear about, are you feeding the love wolf or the fear wolf? Because if you feed the love wolf, then you're going to be open and you're going to have access to your masterpiece within. You're going to be able to unlock. As long as you're in the fail wolf, you're going to be in the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, I guess is another word for it. But

you're going to be on your heels and you're going to be reactive and you're going to be in scarcity mode. Yeah, I love that. Listener, as you're listening, what resonated with you in that? I think a lot of us have some ideas of things that we can do to feed our good wolf. And here's a good tip to make it more likely that you do it. It can be really helpful to reflect right before you do that thing on why you want to do it. Our brains are always making a calculation of what neuroscientists would call reward value. Basically, is this thing worth doing? And so when you're getting ready to do this thing that you want to do to feed your good wolf, reflecting on why actually helps to make the reward value on that higher and makes it more likely that you're going to do that. For example, if what you're

trying to do is exercise, right before you're getting ready to exercise, it can be useful to remind yourself of why. For example, I want to exercise because it makes my mental and emotional health better today. If you'd like a step-by-step guide for how you can easily build new habits that feed your good wolf, go to goodwolf.me slash change and join the free masterclass. I love the way you've sort of boiled that down to, you know, fear and love. So I want to talk a little bit because, you know, you've done work ranging from the top of the top pro athletes, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, those type of people. And you also have done a lot of work in prisons where we might say people are sort of at the bottom of the bottom, right? And you talk about this idea that greatness can be discovered

in every one of us. And I'm curious, how do we think about that if we think about it from a few different levels, right? One level is the Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordans, right? But you also coach teams in general. And so, you know, the next level might be your average pro athlete, you know, and then let's talk about somebody like me. And then let's finally talk about somebody in prison. What is the common thread that allows each of us to use the word great in our own lives? Thank you for asking. And it's interesting, I see my mind working as you were asking the question. And so when you think of Michelangelo or Michelangelo,

depending on how you pronounce his name, when he was being interviewed back in the day and they asked him, well, how do you create these masterpieces out of these blocks of marble? And he says, all I do is chip away to get to the masterpiece that's already there. And he says, all I do is chip away to get to the masterpiece that's already there. And so in my mind, whether I'm doing that work that Michelangelo was doing in a prison or in a sports facility, it's the same work. Even though the marble might be in a different location, whether you're in prison or you're in jail or you're in a locker room or boardroom, you represent that block of marble. And then the question becomes, how do you chip away to get to the masterpiece that's already in there? So it's the same work, even though they're in different places.

Now, how they manifest would be different. But my job is just to release the divine spark or the masterpiece within and how they express themselves. Well, that's up to them. But my job is to help them access it. But you might say, and it's interesting because back years ago, there was this guy, his name was Matthew Fox and it could be accessed. But the interesting thing is whether you're in Yale or jail, locker room or boardroom, the interesting thing is it can only be accessed. It's an inside game by you. So my job is to help the person embrace their greatness so that they

can find the flow so they can discover success. But that's the challenge. But the work is the same, whether it's in a jail or in a locker room, whether you're Kobe Bryant or you're just everyday Joe or Sally. It's the same work. It's how do you unlock. And that's the process we get involved in is unlocking. So we're starting off from a basic premise that there's nothing wrong. It's just a matter of uncovering or releasing a divine spark, if you want to call it that.

Do you know when they interviewed Michelangelo about that? Did they do it on a podcast? I can't remember. Yeah, it was. I don't know if it was in secret or in the public square, because back in those days, there's something you couldn't talk about and survive. So I'm not really sure. That's right. I'm not really sure what the context was, but conversation is interesting. The conversation is the same conversation.

Yeah. So going back to what you said earlier about fear and love, right? When we think of greatness, right? One of the things we have a tendency to do is compare ourselves to things that we see outside of us that are great. And so we could say that's a little bit more of the fear mode. It's the fear mode. And I think when people are looking at greatness what we're talking about here because obviously you could unlock the best version of me, right? But I'm never going to play basketball like, I mean, even an average college athlete, right? At my best. And somebody in prison, the number of things that they actually are able to do is very restricted.

are able to do is very restricted. So how do you transition someone from an external concept of greatness to an internal concept of greatness? Because I think that's what you're saying, right? Yes. So we call it the locus of control. It's internal. It's always been internal. But we have been programmed to think that everything's out here, that the environment, people, places, and things give us value. And what we discover is that we have our own unique value and we have to go inside to figure out what that is. So one size does not fit all. So maybe one person's value is to play basketball. Another person's value is to write poetry. Another person's value is to be a leader, be able to bring people together or be able to help people help themselves. So we all have this uniqueness and there's only one of us. So I would say I think of you, Eric, there never will be and never was anybody like you, your essence, what's inside your masterpiece.

And so your job is to be you. I can't tell you what that is. That's an inside job. But if you follow your bliss and you follow your heart, if you pay attention, that still small voice that's easily drawn out will help you access why you are here and how you can do things in your particular unique way. And that's what we need. We need everybody to be themselves. And I'll go back to what I refer to Søren Kierkegaard, this existential

philosopher going back in the 1800s. One thing he said is, the most devastating kind of despair is not being yourself. And so that's our job to be ourselves. But what gets in the way is what he called the alarming possibility of being able. So if I take a quarter, a coin, and one side is heads, that's my potential. That's my freedom. The other side is tails. That's uncertainty, anxiety. They come together.

And so I would say our biggest challenge is being able to overcome the anxiety that comes with the freedom. And I believe they called it in existential psychotherapy or philosophy, They called it the dizziness of freedom. Yeah. You know, it's like you're walking on shaky ground because you're embracing the unknown. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, one of the great things about modern society is the degree of freedom that we largely have. And it is dizzying for many, many people because many of the old rules about who to be, how to be, they're not there anymore in the way that they were. And so in addition to being like if you want to be a good person, right, it's a lot of work to be a good person, just like living up to it. Right. But on top of that, right, we kind of got to figure out what that means at the same time, right? So there's a lot of work to be done there, I think, in being the person we want to be, because we have to figure out what does that actually mean to me, which is, you know, this gets to the dizziness of freedom

piece. And then the second part is now how do I actually live that? Although I do think that, you know, I know you've studied extensively in the Buddhist tradition. So there are frameworks and reference points that we can use as guideposts so that freedom isn't quite so dizzying. Would you say? Yes. Well, when you really think about it, you can be spontaneous of one's free will, but it's really challenging to do because we get challenged when we do that. And so from a point of view, what we're really talking about, we're talking about freedom, and it's interesting depending on your circumstance. So I'll talk about Viktor Frankl. You know, he wrote the book Man's Search for Meaning, and he was in a concentration camp.

And he said that man's ultimate freedom is no matter what happens to us, we get to choose how we react and respond to it. And that's space, the other freedom and power to choose. to choose how we react and respond to it. In that space, we have the freedom and power to choose. And so on your way, you know, if you have unavoidable suffering, whether it's cancer or just something really bad happens to you, something that's very devastating, like a loss of yourself or a loved one or your way of being, that you always can choose the attitude or how you interpret what it means.

And that's the ultimate freedom. And so being in the concentration camp, you're right. You don't have liberty, but you have freedom in your mind because you can choose to let things affect you or you can choose to interpret them in ways that empower and inspire you. So that's the ultimate freedom. Now, a lot of us make choices, but how do you choose when you're about to die or you have the choice of saving yourself or doing what's right, being selfish or being selfless. And so that's the ultimate freedom. And so we always have choice. And even when we don't make a choice, we are choosing. And so that's the main thing that I

love about this is like I am responsible. I have a self-awareness and because I have self-awareness, I can self-regulate. I can regulate my thoughts, feelings, behaviors. I can choose to create space between stimulus and response. And in that space, I have the freedom and power to choose. And I can choose based on my values, based on what I believe is important. But I get to choose that. Yeah, I love Viktor Frankl. And that idea of the space between stimulus and response was transformational to me the first time I heard it. And I think you and I talked before getting on the air that we're both recovering IV heroin users, right? And, you know, a big part of recovery for me was recognizing there is that space between stimulus and response, right? If there wasn't, I never could have gotten better, right? It was recognizing that, okay, the stimulus is here telling me I should use drugs, but there is a space and I can choose it. And, you know, my understanding of a lot of meditation, mindfulness, awareness practices for me is that it increases that space, right? It makes that space bigger. Yes. It gets us out of reactivity and into being in the moment as it is and seeing it in new and

fresh ways. So if we get out of our habitual ways of being and recognize this idea of wisdom begins in wonder, or can we look at the unfolding unknown moment with fresh eyes, with a beginner's mind, with a mind that's open to everything and not limited to what we already know or what we expect, but really just being willing to be vulnerable enough to let the unfolding unknown moment express itself as it is. You talk about awareness a lot and acceptance, right, of the moment as it is. And at the same time, you are also, you know, considered a performance coach, right? So you're not teaching people just be with what is and

that's the way it is, right? I think you're pointing towards this awareness and this saying yes to the moment as it is as a step on the way to then being able to make the best response and to become better versions of ourselves. So the sort of yes to life is not an ending point. It's kind of a beginning point, I think, is the way you're talking about it, right? Yes. Thank you for sharing that. And awareness I'm talking about is like a mirror mind. It's just reflex what's in front of it. It's not an interpretation. It's just letting things speak in their own language. And so I talk about the four A's. So the four A's are awareness, acceptance, compassionate action, and assessment. And so be able to say yes to what's there.

But saying yes is not just having a reflection of it or seeing it, but it's accepting it as it is. It's the acceptance of it. Yes, saying yes to it is the acceptance of it or seeing it, but it's accepting it as it is. It's the acceptance of it. Yes. Saying yes to it is the acceptance of it, but without accepting it, we won't see it. And so there's this combination of accepting and seeing it. And then the compassionate action, which is, you know, based on this space between stimulus and response, whatever my values are, if I value life, if I'm about love and compassion and seeking to understand, then that action, that choice that I make is going to be in alignment with those values. And then afterwards, the fourth, the assessment, that's where we reflect on experience because true understanding comes from reflecting on experience.

So we reflect on it. Well, you know, was that helpful or was it not helpful? And if it wasn't helpful, how do I get what wasn't helpful to be helpful? But it's just, as the saying goes, an unexamined life is not worth living. You got to examine it. And you examine it. Why? Because we have this ability to self-regulate, to change what we're doing so that we can get a different result. We're not locked in. We're not boxed in. We have choices and we can have wise choices and we can choose if we can slow things down enough to have that space between stimulus and response to choose

wisely, to choose in alignment with not only our values, but how the universe works. So I'll give you an example. You don't have to believe in gravity, but it's lawfulness. If you jump up, you will come down. It's nothing about belief. It's just the way things are. So once you embrace that, then you can use gravity to do whatever you need to do because you're working in alignment with how it works. And I could say that about a lot of other things is this is a friendly universe if you see it that way and there's a lawfulness to it. And there's certain principles that don't change. Principles don't change. They're timeless, they're universal, and they're self-evident. I know for myself that whatever I give, I get back. So if I give you grief, I'm going to get grief back. If I give you love, I'm going to give love back. There's a

lawfulness in this universe. If I'm coming out of that fear you talked about, then I'm going to be coming from scarcity and I'm probably going to be more hostile or more fearful. But if I come from love, from an openness, I'm coming from abundance. I'm coming from this place that says, okay, something happens. I make a mistake, but I can learn from it. I can correct it. Versus I made a mistake. I'm a bad person and there's nothing I can do about it. No, you just have to be willing to understand how do I, the how-to question, how do I do what I say I want to do, even though I got feedback that said that didn't work? Am I willing to learn and practice so that I could do it? I'm going to come up with a pretend scenario here. I'm a coach of a, I don't know, a university

sports team, and I've got a player who has a lot of potential, but they're not really living into it, right? We look at them and go, well, why are they not better? And obviously, you know, we as the coaches are working on the X and O's of their game, their shooting technique, all that kind of stuff. So you don't come in to help with that piece of it. But when you come in, you know, how do you start with someone? And how do you work with them on getting to, and we're going to talk about this later. You don't like the term peak performance.

You like the term pure performance, and we'll get to that. But how do you work with somebody on improving their performance? Like what things are you looking for? What kind of questions are you asking? What does this look like? Yeah, so basically I come in and I ask them, what do you want? And then based on that, then they'll say, okay, so if you want something, you have to be something. And so meeting them where they are and really getting clear, because sometimes you go in and

they may be doing something they don't really want to do, or they might be doing it because somebody else wants them to do it. So the first thing I do is understand what's your intention. You know, in other words, I want to teach them the self-awareness and the self-regulation. So basically, it's like you have self-awareness, you are responsible. And if you don't like what you're getting, then you can do something about it. You have a masterpiece. You have this ability to change how you see yourself, what you're doing. And normally when somebody is talented and they're not able to express that talent, it's because there's something in the way, some self-limiting belief. And normally it has to do with their self-concept, how they see themselves. And so just really getting clear about that. Or it

may be that they say they want to do it, but they don't really want to do it. So it's just really getting honest, getting clear with, you know, who are you and why are you here? Because that's usually the question I ask. It's like, okay, you're here. Why are you here? What's your intention? You know, do you have a goal? Do you have an idea? I worked with this one football player. His goal was to make the team. So he tried out for the team, made it, but then he didn't have anything else. So he had to set another goal. You know, okay, you made the team. So you have to keep engaging yourself, keep challenging yourself, or keep that intention for being able to do something alive. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all baffling questions like... We got the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by.

Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging.

Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So assuming we've got someone and we are at the point where, you know, we know that they want to be doing what they're doing.

They've got the right goal. Right. Right. But they're still just not getting there. Kind of where do you go next? What's the next things that you start looking at with them? Yeah. So you want to look at what's in the way, what's getting in the way. And it could

be a variety of things, but basically one scenario might be that they want to do it, but unconsciously they don't think they deserve it, or they don't think they're as good as they could be. It's their self-image, how they think, feel, behave about themselves. But whatever is in the way, it could be maybe something happened when they were younger and they just don't think that they can succeed. Maybe they never finished anything or whatever it is. It could be somebody that told them that they were never going to amount to anything. There's some self-limiting belief that's in there that's operating. And so then that becomes the work.

What's in the way becomes the way, as Marcus Aurelius said centuries ago. What's in the way becomes the way, as Marcus Aurelius said centuries ago, what's in the way becomes the way. But just knowing that something is off or something's missing or he's just not clicking. And usually it could be, you know, if I look at the whole person, the body, the mind, heart and soul or spirit, it could be something in there. It could be that maybe they're wanting to please somebody. Maybe they're playing because of their parents or they want to please the coach instead of them just performing and being okay to make mistakes. So the fear of failure could be there, the fear of success. It could be something, but it's like we talked about it, they're feeding the fair wolf and the fair wolf is dominating. And as a result of that, they're withholding or they're trying too hard or they're not trying hard enough. So there might be this balance of, you know, trying too hard, then not trying at all, trying hard and then withdrawing

energy and then, you know, being confused and not knowing what they need to do. So the idea is to help them get clarity about the fact that they need to make choices and they're making choices. And what do you want to do? Take responsibility for what you're doing. So if I get them to a place of courage, as Dr. Hawkins talks about, where they say, I am responsible, no excuses. There's a book called I'm Becoming a Leader written by Warren Bennis. And he talks about the four lessons of self-knowledge, because you got to know yourself to be yourself, to express yourself, to have yourself. So it's really about them knowing who they are and knowing how they really feel about things. But in those four steps, he talks about the first step. You can learn anything you want to learn. So you got to be a

learner. Be responsible. No excuses. The third thing is you're your own best teacher. So that's another way of saying you're responsible for what you learn. You can't have somebody else come and say you should learn this and that. At some point, you got to own it. And then the fourth lesson is true understanding comes from reflecting on experience. And so it's really meeting them where they are, getting to see how they're seeing things, and then helping them make adjustments so that what's in the way becomes the way. And once you remove those obstructions, then you become unlocked. But once again, it's not a one-time thing. You get unlocked, but then you're having success. Like this guy, his challenge was, the football player was, okay, if he doesn't have any goals, he's just showing up with no passion, with no purpose. So there's got to be

a purpose. There's got to be an intention. And sometimes the best intention is just to help other people succeed, is to say, okay, I'm part of something greater than myself. I'm part of a team. And that means that I care about my teammates and I'm going to do what I need to do to help them and they're going to help me. So it's really getting them to be a whole person, to really understand that just, shut up and dribble or just play football and don't think or I don't care how you feel. That's not realistic. You got to deal with the whole person. They got a body, mind, heart and soul. And so you talk about the mental, the emotional and social.

That's this one. Interact with self and others and the spirit, you know, contribution and being something greater than yourself. So you got to deal with the whole person. And then you got to really be clear about, well, why am I here? Because being a student athlete, you don't have a social life. All your work is on academics and athletics. And so you have to want it. It has to be an intention. If you're just doing it because it's something to do, you may not have the energy you need to really succeed or to really take responsibility and want to get better. Does that make sense? So when I talked about the self-awareness,

the four A's is like, you'd be aware, okay, here I am, and I'm not living up to my potential. So there's awareness of that and then accepting that. Because see, that's the biggest thing, because it's really challenging to say, well, you know, I don't know if I really want to be here, the biggest thing because it's really challenging to say, well, you know, I don't know if I really want to be here, you know, or, you know, I don't trust in myself because no one wants to say I'm not happy and, you know, I'm inadequate. People aren't going to tell you that, but they're thinking that and they're behaving that. And unless they embrace the fact that, yeah, I'm not happy or I don't have confidence in myself, then once you see that and accept it, now we can work on it. Now we can say, okay, what confidence comes from understanding this stuff,

but putting in the work and getting the results. So this whole idea of being a learner, I'll talk about it that way. So it doesn't matter what sport it is. You got to learn. You got to be a learner. You got to learn how to do it. What's the essentials? You got to learn about yourself. You got to learn about how do you know when you're being yourself,

when you're not being yourself? How do you know when you're doing something because somebody else wants you to do it or because you want to do it? That's where you got to go to the inside job and you got to know yourself and really be honest about how you feel and how you're seeing things. And that can be challenging because we live in a society where we don't necessarily do that. We don't necessarily see the whole person. You could be a coach and with good intentions, but you have, depending on the size of your team, if you're talking about a soccer team,

you might have 20 plus people on your team. And how do you attend to all of those? And you only get 20 hours a week or 22 hours a week to work with them. And so your tendency is probably going to be focused on what's wrong, or you don't have the time to just go in and ask each person, I have to know you so I know how to motivate you or how to get you to motivate yourself. And so there's all of these variables that are involved, but it really comes down to just

knowing that you have a whole person and they have a mass piece within. So how do we get them to embrace that, to accept it and put in the work, the awareness, the acceptance, the compassionate action, and then the assessment, you know, how do you keep getting better? You learn from your mistakes, you're not your mistakes, that sort of thing. So it's really challenging to do it in that like one size fits all, but basically it comes down to seeing what's in the way and then that becomes the way. So if it's self-limiting beliefs, then we got to work with that. If it's, you know, feeling like you don't deserve to be there, then we got to work with that.

Or maybe you try too hard, you want it, but you don't know how to do it. And so helping people to understand that. But a lot of it is the regulation, self-regulation, what I talked about, and the four lessons of self-knowledge, and that is you're your own best teacher. You can learn anything, and that you've got to be responsible. It's your responsibility. It's not people, places, and things. You have to do it.

It's an inside job. And once you embrace that, then you start developing what we call strong self-efficacy belief because you know no matter what happens, you can choose your response if you can create that space. And even if you're reacting to something, you can learn from that and decide not to react that way. But it's not simple or simple but not easy. But it's really clear about, you know, getting to know who you are. So you got to know who you are so you can be who you are. And that's the thing. And it's not emulating somebody else. You can do that. Like when you learn how to play guitar or something. Yeah, we do that. But we emulate people. We might play somebody's tune, but at some point we got

to own it and we got to find our own way, but we emulate other people. We copy other people, but at some point we have to make it our own. Does it make any sense what I'm saying? I wanted to pause for a quick good wolf reminder. This one's about a habit change and a mistake I see people making. And that's really that we don't think about these new habits that we want to add in the context of our entire life, right? Habits don't happen in a vacuum. They have to fit in the life that we have. So when we just keep adding, I should do this, I should do that, I should do this, we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what we're not going to do in order to make that happen. So it's really helpful for you to

think about where is this going to fit and what in my life might I need to remove. If you want a step-by-step guide for how you can easily build new habits that feed your good wolf, go to goodwolf.me slash change and join the free masterclass. So I want to go back to something you said earlier, and you said oftentimes somebody is trying too hard. And, you know, from reading your book and just reading things in the press, right, when we think about people like Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant, what we know is that they worked incredibly hard, perhaps harder than anybody else. So tell me the distinction between that, like I'm willing to put in the work, I'm going to work really hard versus trying too hard.

versus trying too hard. So a lot of times we think it's the elbow grease or the physical effort. And I talk about this as my rightful athlete, it's the right effort. It's not like working hard and then stopping. It's about this idea of slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Or slow motion gets you there quicker. But you got to understand what is it you're doing?

What's your intention? And what's the well-defined outcome? So you have to master the fundamentals. You have to understand that working hard but working smart, it has to be with a purpose. It has to be intentional. You need to understand because this is what happens. We call it deliberate practice.

And in one book, the talent code, they call it deep practice. You got to know how to do something. You got to master the fundamentals. Both of those guys I just talked about, they master the fundamentals. But you got to be willing to do the repetition, the skill development where you make thousands and thousands of repetitions and error corrections. And so what can happen is what helps those two guys is this idea of learning and achievement. So you learn something, then you achieve it, then it generates this, I want to say, enthusiasm or energizing enthusiasm.

And so once you know that you can learn anything you want to learn, that you're responsible, and you're your own best teacher and you learn from reflecting on experience, then you got it going on because you know, oh, I could figure this out. It's going to be great. Being a learner is the joy of discovery. It's the willingness to put yourself at risk and do it anyway. So you're going to fail. So let's talk about Michael Jordan. So when I started working with him in 1995, I started working with the Bulls in 1993. And he took an 18-month hiatus. And when he came back, if you think about his experience, he got cut from his high school basketball team.

So when I saw him in 1995, 1996 on up, he acted like he was still trying to make the team. Nobody outworked him. So something happened. He got cut from the team. The coach said to him, I'm going to come pick you up at five o'clock in the morning. We're going to put the work in. Of course, he grew four or five inches. That helped. But that wasn't as much as the mentality of the work and saying, I'm never going to get cut again. That's never going to happen because I didn't put in the work and I didn't figure it out or I didn't have people to help me. So you see where I'm never going to get cut again. That's never going to happen because I didn't put in the work and I didn't figure it out. Or I didn't have people to help me.

So you see where I'm going with this. No struggle, no swag. People who had adversity, they overcame that adversity. And then they'd start developing this self-belief, this unshakable self-belief. Because they know that if they figure it out, if they put in the work, if they work smarter and harder, but really understanding what is the one thing that I need to focus on that's going to help me instead of trying to do everything. It's like the Pareto analysis or the 80-20 rule. You just focus on this with deliberate practices. Okay, so Kobe, one summer, you know, he was working on his three-point shot.

So how did he work on that? He decided he was going to make 1,300 made threes a day. So it wasn't just working harder, but it was specificity with an intention, with a purpose. Same with MJ. One of the things Bobby Knight said about MJ is he's the most fundamentally sound athlete he ever worked with. I said, man, he's so great because he mastered the fundamentals. Same with Kobe, the footwork. So you have to mastered the fundamentals same kobe the footwork so you have to master

the fundamentals and what we see the fancy stuff but we don't see all of the work that he puts in all the work that they do and so it's not just working harder working smarter but working with a purpose with a deliberation of this is what i'm going to work on and it's going to enhance my performance and every year whether i talk about talk about Larry Bird or Magic Johnson or Dr. J, every year they were working on expanding their game or expanding their production capacity. But it was a joy. I mean, these guys who play these sports, they would pay for free, but they don't have to because it's a love. So you get to the point where you can love and there's no difference.

Because one of the fascinating things I noticed about Michael Jordan, when I started working with him and watching him, number one, is you didn't know the difference between practice and games. Because he was always coming at you with that idea of dominating, of being the best today. Today I got better. And that was the thing. He was always pushing the envelope, always encouraging, challenging himself. And that's how you get in the flow when you have that challenge skill ratio there. But you have a clear idea of what you're doing and what you're getting, and you're able to make adjustments and to fly. which means there's some things like you may not be a basketball player or you might play basketball.

You know, maybe you want to shoot three point shots, but you're a better rebounder. That's your skill. Then you got to embrace that and try not to be somebody else. I mean, I'll share something because I think it's really important what we're talking about. And I don't mean to demean anybody or whatever, but I was in a barber shop a couple of weeks ago and was talking to one of the barbers. And he was upset that for the Super Bowl, you know, in the playoffs where he expected Baltimore to win with Lamar Jackson. And he was upset because he said, you know, Lamar forgot who he was. He tried to be a pocket passer instead of just letting his legs win the game for him. So this is what happens. We get hung up because the media says, well, you're not a true quarterback because you don't do this.

You can't listen to them. You got to be yourself. You got to be OK. This is what happens. We get hung up because the media says, well, you're not a true quarterback because you don't do this. You can't listen to them. You got to be yourself. You got to be, okay, this is what got me here. Okay, you know, I can make plays with my legs. I had to do that. So you get what I'm saying? So you have to learn. True understanding comes from reflecting on experience.

What happened there? Okay, you weren't yourself. And I can't tell you how many times that happens because we think we have to be somebody or we have to win a certain way. I can go back to a boxing match between Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin Hagler, who I knew. And he didn't want people to think that he was a brawler. That's who he was. You know, so if you're not going to do his eye out, nothing personal, but this is how I have to play. But if I'm worried about that and I'm going to change my style because I want to be accepted, not going to work.

So we do this every day. I do it. You do it. We all do it. We think we have to be somebody else rather than being ourselves instead of being to thine own self be true. Know the truth and the truth shall make you free. That's what we need to do.

We need to be able to say yes to it, even though it's inconvenient sometimes. But these folks, they spend a lot of time and energy mastering their craft. And we all can do that. Can we do it at the level they do? Probably not. But our job is to be our best version of ourselves, to get better each day. It's not about trying to be somebody else. It's about being who we are and embracing it and not letting anybody tell us that we're

somebody else. But when we're in the fear, when the fear wolf is there, that's what happens. If you're in the love wolf, then the chances are you're going to say, no, I'm good. Thanks for your opinion. But my opinion is the most important opinion here. Let me ask a question about the relationship between striving and accepting where we are, right? This is one of the things I look at in my own life that I find to be a really nuanced thing to figure out, right? It's this idea that, you know, I want to be better. I want the circumstances of my life to be better. I want to accomplish more, right? And that feels sort of natural and inborn, right? But there's also a really unhealthy version of that versus the other side, which is to be content with what I have, be content with who I am, be content with the way

things are. How do you see those things? Because one of the things I knew him and you didn't, and I don't expect you to say anything about him. I'm just making this observation, you know, watching some of the stuff with Michael Jordan, I'm like, a guy looks extraordinarily driven and intense, but I can't tell if he's a very content person. And so, and again, I'm not expecting you to say anything about Michael Jordan. I'm just saying in general, how do you think about that balance between contentment and striving? Well, let me talk about myself. Yeah. July 31st, I'll be 40 years of sobriety. Congratulations. It's a long time. 40 years of sobriety. I've averaged over a book a week, minimal. Okay. So I'm pursuing excellence and wisdom with grace and ease.

I didn't have the grace and ease before. I was doing it with this warrior energy. Then I realized, oh man, that's right. Effort is slow, it's smooth, smooth, it's fast. Just do what you know to do. And the next step will be given to you. Just go with the flow. And there's times when you'll be more intense and times when you're ease, but that's a read. That's an understanding. Like sometimes you got to get after it, but you're right. We spend most of our time between boredom and anxiety. And anxiety is when we are challenged and our skills and knowledge experience, our know-how doesn't meet it. Then there's sometimes where we have a lot of know-how and experience, but we don't challenge ourselves. So we get bored. So this is the thing. So you're

finding that balance between not settling and not being excessive. And that's why this whole flow genome that Steve Kotler and his groups talked about in his book, The Out of the Impossible, he talks about getting up to 4%. But some people who are like type A, like myself, we may have to go up to 30% of anxiety to get there. But that's why you got to know yourself. But you got to know yourself, know when you need to push and when you need to hold back. And that's why when you have coaches and folks that are around you, they could be helpful. So there was recently, I think Phil Jackson was when they made the Kobe.

But I know Phil, I was there. There was one game, I think Kobe had like 50 points or an extraordinary amount of points in the third quarter. And Phil wouldn't let him play in the fourth quarter because he knew if he would have played in the fourth quarter, then that energy he took to do that, it might take him two weeks to recover from. So sometimes you have to have people around you that are able to say, dial it down or let's slow down because the intention of wanting to achieve a goal may overcome your well-being. You see what I'm saying? So it's always about heart and compassion for yourself, empathy, compassion for yourself. And you can get out of your comfort zone, but it can't be so far out of your comfort zone that the anxiety is going to have an impact on either you physically or emotionally where you're not able to be rational. Yep.

Right? And you're pushing yourself. And sometimes you've got to be unreasonable, but you can't sustain that. And you've got to know what's your motivation. Are you doing this for selfish reasons or are you doing it for the greatest good? That is huge. That is really huge because when it's selfish and you're coming from the fear of being driven by, like Joseph Campbell talked about being in that place of rest when we're

performing at our best, where we're not compelled by fear or desire, we just hold our center. That's pure performance. That's why I call it pure performance because it's the activity in and of itself that's the motivation. It's what Sax Saksenamiya called autotelic personality. You do the thing for the activity in and of itself. Being in the moment, being fully engaged, fully deployed, that's it. Now, the results, all the other stuff, yeah, that's that. But the main driver is to feel like I got better today and I left everything out there, but I didn't do it in a way where it's going to cause harm to myself physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And sometimes we're going to go over.

Sometimes we're going to go under. But that's the titration. That's the calibration. That's the reflection. And that's the assessment of, okay, yeah, I went a little bit farther. I'm going to need to tone it up. I could have done more. And you do more.

Does it make sense? But it's the compassionate action, the awareness, the acceptance, the compassionate action, that compassion for yourself and others, and then the assessment. So without the compassion, once you lose your humanity, that's when you see people that are driven humanity and still be a lead performer and still push yourself and push others to have that killer instinct. But having that killer instinct with losing your capacity, your humanity or your capacity to be compassionate, that's a problem. That's why, you know, the Golden State Warriors for their core values used to be. I don't know if it still is joy, mindfulness, compassion, then competition. So the compassion piece, the empathy piece, and this is emotional intelligence. The IQ will get you the job, but the EQ is going to get you the transformation and the promotion. So what is EQ? What I talk about is self-awareness and

self-regulation. That's the first part of it. That's the internal journey. The external or the relational part is social awareness and relationship development. I'll say, I don't like the word management, relationship cultivation. We'll call it that. And that is where you have empathic listening to other person. You care about the person you listen. They're a whole person and not somebody has a body that's a means to end, but they have a body, a mind, a heart, and a soul or spirit. So it's the whole person. And when you treat somebody as a whole person, they'll give their heart to you.

If you treat them as a thing, if you leave out any one of those four components, now you're relating to them as a thing or I and it, what Booba talked about. And they might rebel or they might do what you ask them to do but hope it doesn't work. But they're not going to give you their whole heart you're not going to have a partnership you're not going to have a collaborator who you know think win-win you know synergy it's better together yeah teamwork makes a dream work we want that as individuals we have this desire to connect to something greater than ourselves so when we can use that in ways where we have a worthy cause and we have core values that are in alignment with, you know, not losing our humanity, being compassionate and having empathy, seeking wisdom and loving kindness, then we're into something. And so that's what's missing. The missing is when you talk about you can be so

ruthless or you're, you know, you can push yourself. I've done that. I sat to my knees, not right. Cause I sat through the pain because I had that warrior energy before I realized no compassion is important. You know, I can move my leg and just, it's not about reaching even a goal at any cost. It's about achieving a goal, but not losing my compassion. That's why I call it compassionate action, not just action, compassionate action. It's based on non-harm, on goodwill. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast,

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It's called Really? No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. you get your podcasts. So you talked a little bit there, and I think you've alluded to it in the conversation a little bit, and it's in your writing a lot about this sort of parasympathetic versus sympathetic response, right? And broadly speaking, right, parasympathetic is what we consider sort of the rest and digest or the relaxed state, and sympathetic is the more keyed up fight flight. And as I was reading that, and I is the more keyed up fight-flight. And as I was reading that and I was thinking a little bit and reflecting on my own life, I started to wonder, it seems to me there's a lot of things that are either at the high end of one of those or the low end of the other, where I don't really feel like I'm in like a deep, calm, relaxing state,

but I certainly don't feel like I'm in any sort of fight flight. How do you think about that? Like everything, mindfulness, compassion, whatever, on a scale of one to 10 or whatever, there's variation. You see what I'm saying? So you could be relatively relaxed and alert, or you could be relatively keyed up, but you need to key it up. It's the balance between them. And this is why I say to people, a lot of times people don't want to meditate. They don't want to be still and know, but I'm right-handed. So my left brain dominates and the right brain. So the left brain has the one plus one equals two, the words of the song, the sequence, reading the first chapter, and then start with the first and going linearly.

The nonlinear is one plus one might equal six. It's the melody. It's the big picture, all of that stuff. And it doesn't get a word in edgewise if we stay in the active mode and we don't stop and focus on one thing or just relax and meditate, pray, whatever it is, and just be locked in so that now you're using both sides of your brain and this part is not dominating. So we have to have these practices that allow us to allow our intuition. That's why I say, you know, you're in that place of rest. Now that right brain, although they're connected, they're not totally separate, you know, there's combinations. But that right brain, that's where the wisdom and

the creativity comes from. But if you're not at rest, if that love wolf is not dominant, then that fair wolf, you're not going to have access to that wisdom and that creativity. It's just not going to happen. So when you talk about sympathetic and parasympathetic, that's the fair wolf and the love wolf. And so we need both because I need that sympathetic because when I'm walking across the street and a car or some danger is happening, I can't reflect on, well, should I move? My body will move me out of the way. Right. You know what I'm saying?

So we need both, but we just don't live in a hostile environment. Well, some of us don't live in a hostile environment where your reptilian brain is seeking danger. And believe it or not, the research says that nine out of 10 thoughts are negative because of that. That's why if we don't train this ability to rest and digest, because if we don't, we're going to have GI problems and we're going to have stress-related issues because now your immune system is not working properly and stuff you know you don't have access to because when the brain is stressed out, you don't have access. You're like 40% dumber. It's just nothing personal. So there's a value to being able to have a balanced brain, however you want to look at it. Does that make sense? And knowing when you need to

rev things up and when you need to calm things down. And that's the interesting thing. When I first started meditating and I first started just being doing relaxation or just being in my body and just sitting and breathing, I hear this gurgling and all these other sounds. Well, that's the rest and digest. Yeah. That's the body actually doing its thing without your permission, but you're not getting in the way. Being relaxed is one of the most valuable skills we can have. Not so relaxed where you're chill out, but relaxed, but yet alert. That make sense? And so that's why it's a balance. Like you said, the variance. So sometimes you got to be really locked in. Other times you can be relatively locked in or relatively calm,

like just being able to watch over something. The analogy they use is like, you know, you're a farmer and you have cows in the field. And when there's a crop, you got to really pay attention. You got to be mindful. You got to be diligent about keeping them away from it. But then once the crop is harvested, then you can have this relaxed alertness to just kind of watch and make sure they don't get into trouble.

That's like mindfulness. That's an observation of mindfulness where you're just noticing, but you're not doing anything other than taking in the information. So let's talk briefly as we near the end of our time here about comfort zone. You say you can't push yourself so far out of your comfort zone that your body breaks down or that you ultimately give up because you can't sustain it. And then you went on to talk about people like Dr. J, Jordan and Kobe. You said their comfort zones were like a horizon, always moving forward in

front of them as they approached. Right. And I love that idea because like you said, it means we don't have to go far outside of our comfort zone, but we have to continually be redefining our comfort zone. Yes. Yes. Another way of saying that our production capacity, capacity to produce and whatever. So it's in alignment with actually neuroplasticity. If you really think about it, the four optimal tips of neuroplasticity, that is creating new brain connections. You know, the first step is you got to have access to oxygen.

So that means your aerobic rate up because it needs oxygen to develop new brain connections as well. Second thing is it's got to be incremental. And the third thing is it's got to be hard to do but doable. That's what we're talking about here. Hard to do but doable. It's got to be so you're just below your edge and then you're moving beyond that. But you're moving with compassion. You know, slow motion gets you there quicker.

You know, you just ease a little bit out, and it's a flow. It's not this herky-jerky thing, just like if you do yoga. You get to a place where it's tight, and then you just breathe through it. You just honor it, and then you're able to just slightly move to it. And then you keep doing that. You keep doing that, and you keep increasing capacity. And the fourth thing you need for neuroplasticity is this idea of interest. Because when you become interested in something, it stimulates the motivational circuits in the brain. So think about how that's connected. You know, you get your oxygen rate out, you do it in increments, baby steps, short feedback loops. It's hard to do, but doable. And you bring interest and curiosity into it. So the stimulation motivational circuits. Yeah, I really like that. So listener and thinking about that and all the

other great wisdom from today's episode, if you were going to isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what would it be? Remember, little by little, a little becomes a lot. Change happens by us repeatedly taking positive action. And I want to give you a tip on that, and it's to start small. It's really important when we're trying to implement new habits to often start smaller than we think we need to, because what that does is it allows us to get victories. And victories are really important because we become more motivated when we're feeling good about ourselves and we become less motivated when we're feeling bad about ourselves. So by starting small and making sure that you succeed, you build your motivation for further

change down the road. If you'd like a step-by-step guide for how you can easily build new habits that feed your good wolf, go to goodwolf.me slash change and join the free masterclass. Well, George, we are at the end of our time together, although you and I are going to continue to talk a little bit more in a post show conversation. And I really want to focus in there on the five superpowers. So we're going to talk about what the five superpowers are. Yes, they're listeners. If you'd like access to more of our time together with George and I, ad-free episodes, if you'd like to support a show that makes a difference in your life and the difference of many, many others, you can go to oneufeed.net slash join.

George, thank you so much for coming on. It has been a pleasure to talk with you. Yes. So if people want to know more about my work, obviously, you can go toorgemumford.com and you know, I have a YouTube channel and whatnot. And of course you have the book, The Mindful Athlete and Secrets to Pure Performance. I mean, we're just scratching the surface, but I'm so excited for this opportunity and your podcast is so much in alignment of what I've been teaching. Thank you. You're very welcome. You're very welcome. It's a pleasure. And we'll make sure we have links in the show notes to your website,

your book, and your YouTube channel. So thank you so much, George. You're welcome. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the

show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.