The One You Feed - Sam Weinman

Episode Date: May 3, 2017

Please Support The Show With a Donation   This week we talk to Sam Weinman about losing Sam Weinman is Golf Digest’s digital editor. He previously covered professional golf and the NHL for Gannett Newspapers. His first book is called WIN AT LOSING: How Our Biggest Setbacks Can Lead To Our Greatest Gains In This Interview, Sam Weinman and I Discuss... His book, Win at Losing: How Our Biggest Setbacks Can Lead to Our Greatest Gains The truth that we learn more from losing than we do from winning That you're far better served listening to those who have lost constructively than those who've simply won How you can learn to lose and fail better That sports are a window into everything else in life The difference between losing and failure The '87 Masters lesson How to find the balance between being hard on yourself and beating the sh*t out of yourself The power of talking to yourself like you would a really good friend Shifting the emphasis away from the results and more towards an ongoing process That if you're always the victim, there's nothing you can do about your circumstances The relationship between a growth and a fixed mindset and focusing on the goal vs the results Counterfactual thinking: Focusing on what could have been vs what is The fact that losing teaches you more about who you are than winning teaches you How your past doesn't define you, it prepares you What "not this but that" means Post Traumatic Growth Ways to foster resilience in yourself Cognitive Restructuring How important context and mindset is Please Support The Show with a DonationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We do a lot more inward thinking when we lose than when we win. 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 No 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 Sam Weinman, Golf Digest's digital editor. He previously covered professional golf as well as the NHL for Gannett newspapers. His first book is called Win at Losing, How Our Biggest Setbacks Can Lead to

Our Greatest Gains. If you value the content we put out each week, then we need your help. As the show has grown, so have our expenses and time commitment. Go to oneufeed.net slash support and make a monthly donation. Our goal is to get to 5% of our listeners supporting the show. Please be part of the 5% that make a contribution and allow us to keep putting out these interviews and ideas. We really need your help to make the show sustainable and long lasting. Again, that'sYouFeed.net slash support. Thank you in advance for your help. And here's the interview with Sam Weinman. Hi, Sam. Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Eric. I'm happy to have you on. Your book is called Win at Losing, How Our Biggest Setbacks Can Lead to Our Greatest Gains. And there's a few themes that run through this show week after week, year after year, but one of them is definitely becoming better because of the things that happen to us in life that are challenging. So this book, when I saw it, was right up our alley. But before we get into it, let me start like we always do with a parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, 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. The grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather 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. we are all given to cycles that we fall into. And we have kind of, you've heard of, you know, negative cycles or vicious cycles. So when you hear about feeding the sort of the bad wolf, I think of giving way to negative thoughts and insecurity and jealousy and all of those things that we want to avoid. And I feel like in the same way, confidence, success begets more confidence and success. And so sometimes we have to force ourselves to break out of those cycles. And I will occasionally get into these downward cycles where I'm second-guessing myself or not being positive. And I have to remind myself that sometimes you have to force yourself to, to know, to use your metaphor, feed the good

wolf in me and try to call on the things that bring out the best in me. And usually when I do that, then I find a way to sort of move in a more positive direction. Excellent. So your book, very simply say, my argument is we end up learning more from our failures than we do from our successes. Yeah. And that we're better served listening to those who have lost constructively than those who've simply won. 9.9% of people can associate with the concept of failure and disappointment and have had to grapple with the idea of how you rebound from that. And so if that is your guidepost and that's what you're looking for, that's a much more realistic example than someone who's just floated through life because that's not something we can relate to. And so the whole premise of the book is looking at people who have had failures or significant losses and have, in some form or another, found a way to persist and overcome them. Yeah. I mean, it does seem if we are going to lose and fail, which is pretty inevitable for most of us,

it'd be helpful to know how to do it better. And that, you know, everything we learn from it, and I certainly know for me, my failures have been, you know, some of the best parts of my life, not at the moment, but, you know, to your point, they have really turned me into the person I am. You sort of got on this idea a little bit because you've got sons who were playing sports and you were watching them wrestling with losing. And my son is a little older now. He's not in organized sports like he was when he was younger. But I remember those days so well. How do you strike that balance of like, well, yeah, I love your competitive spirit and I want you to go do that.

But at the same time, the world really hasn't ended because a third grade basketball game didn't go in your favor. Right. It's exactly the dilemma that I face as well, which is you want your kids to care. We want our kids to, when they take on an activity, we want them to be invested. And so sometimes when they're invested, that means they're disappointed with the outcome. So knowing that and knowing that we also don't want them to be sore losers or to be utterly disheartened when things don't go their way or give up, that's a very difficult balance. And in my case, it was very much the crux of the genesis of this book was recognizing that dilemma in my kids and realizing that what an important lesson these guys need to know. And we all need to know about how to lose, how to find positives in losing. And so, you know, in some ways, you know, I've said I've set out to write

the book for my kids, which is partially true, but it's also just because the concept was planted in my head because of what I was dealing with with them. You mentioned that sports are kind of a window into everything else so that what we ourselves can learn and what our children can learn is in sports can be a way of looking at other things in life and learning to succeed and lose gracefully in in all aspects of life right and to your earlier point like i said it's because kids happen to care about sports my kids happen to care about sports and so again if the if it's something you care about and doesn't have to be sports but in my world it is in my kids world it is if it's something that you're invested in and you're worried about the outcome and it doesn't go your way, that's a great training ground for dealing with other kinds of disappointments. It just so happens that when you're 9, 10 focal point, but sometimes those things dissipate over

time. It becomes relationships or your career or whatever the other endeavors that you're invested in. And so, like I said, I've sort of unapologetically have said that sports take on an outsized importance in my life because of my career and because of my boy's interests and because of my own futile athletic endeavors. And so it was just a great place to start for this book. One of the distinctions that you make is between losing and failure. Can you tell me what the difference is there? As it was explained to me, because I struggled with the difference for a while as well, and sometimes I still fall into this trap where I use the two words interchangeably, is that losing is an event. It's a fact. It's

something that happens. When you lose, there's no real room for interpretation. It's carved in stone. Whereas failure is very much an interpretation. And it's often a sort of indicting commentary on something you did. So you can lose a basketball game and that just happens to be what happened. But if you're a failure in a basketball game, it's because you fell short of executing or you fell short of doing what you wanted to do. And so part of what I talk about in the book is when we confront these episodes is trying to identify, is it a loss or is it a failure? Because sometimes when it's just a loss, there's some solace to be

taken in the fact that, okay, this just happened. This wasn't necessarily something that I did wrong. It's just something that was an event that happened in my life. And that's an important distinction to make because when we talk about losing, really what we're trying to get at is what we can gain from it. And sometimes what you can gain from it is to not beat yourself up and not, you know, obsessed over something that might have just been outside of your control. You use Greg Norman, the golfer as an example of this. And, you know, he famously lost multiple masters tournaments. And, and one of them was a case where someone else, you know, basically chipped in from off the green right into the hole and beat him. And then the other one was where he basically collapsed and played terribly.

And you're sort of saying, hey, the first one was a loss. I mean, somebody just made a miracle shot. And, you know, what are you going to do with that? Whereas the second time, it was more of a failure because he really did sort of implode in that round of golf and that being an example the 87 masters against larry myers was exactly that he got chips in make it's a miraculous shot well what are you going to do with that what are you going to you're not going to really plumb the depths of your soul to understand what you can learn about yourself once it's just something that happened that you can't really comprehend or can't really uh unwrap

um whereas when you fail as he did in the 1996 Masters, where he had a six-shot lead and he shot 76 and played terribly and did all these things wrong, there's a lot of growth and learning opportunities in that episode because you can point to, I did this wrong, I did that wrong, I wasn't prepared this way, I had the wrong mindset from the start. All things that you can now look at and hopefully study and benefit from. And like a lot of things, it's sometimes probably a little of both. You know, you talk about striking that balance between recognizing what you could have done differently and not being too hard on yourself at the same time, about facing the truth of what it is, you know,

getting the facts out there and learning, but also not turning it into, you know, self-immolation at the same time. Sure. I heard an interview with Bruce Springsteen recently. Can I swear on this or no? Yeah. Oh yeah. Swear away. Anyway, I heard this interview with Bruce Springsteen recently, and he talked about the difference between being hard on yourself and beating the shit out of yourself in the sense that it's good to be hard on yourself. It's good to be self-critical and analyze yourself for areas that you can be better and expect more from yourself. Those are good things, but beating the shit out of yourself is just kind of punishing yourself for things that go wrong, and there's not a lot of constructive to come out of that. And so we're just essentially what we're talking about. We're looking for ways to do it

in a constructive way, not just to, you know, self flagellate, if that's the right phrase. Yep. So much of that also, I think is tone. It's our internal tone. Like, how are we talking to ourself? I agree with you about that sort of like, I think, you know, I am, I don't know if I'd use the word hard on myself, but I hold myself to a certain level of accountability and different things. And yet when I don't live up to that, I recognize that, but I try to, you know, that idea of sort of talking to yourself as if you would like a really good friend always seems like a great way for me to think of it. Cause I wouldn't let a really good friend off the hook either if they wanted to be accountable, but I also wouldn't be like, you jackass, you suck. I mean,

I would do it in a decent way. Absolutely. And so that's a really difficult balance. And I would also argue that as bad as being unduly hard on yourself or sort of just punishing yourself for things, the worst alternative is consistently letting yourself off the hook because nothing good comes from that. No growth comes from that. You know, no learning opportunities come from those moments when we do mess up and we do fail in some form or another and we refuse to look at our role in that. I agree. That's the sort of blame everybody else, you know, all the time. But I agree. If I have to err on a side, I tend to agree with you. I think it just depends who you are and what your personality is. You know, there was a time in my life where I think I let myself off the hook on everything. And so now I, I've kind of gone to the other side a little bit to try and balance it out. And I know other

people who were just so hard on themselves all the time. It's like, okay, take, take it easy. It does speak to the kind of core message of your show, which is the bad wolf in the sense that when you're blaming others and never looking for your own role in it, you go down this negative cycle. It's never your fault. It's always someone else's fault.

That's a really vicious cycle to go through because you're never able of getting yourself out of it because there's always things that are happening to you and it's the world conspiring against you. 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 the way to the floor. We got the answer.

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us 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. Oh, yeah, 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. Hey everyone, the window for the One You Feed coaching program is now open until Friday, May 5th at 11.59pm. If you are struggling in your life, if you're not getting where you want to go, if you're trying to make behavior change, if you're feeling stuck, then this coaching program could be exactly the thing that you need. We will work one-on-one together. I will introduce you to some of the universal and fundamental principles that are crucial to successfully creating and sustaining your new habits. We'll also learn some of the biggest mistakes that most people make and we'll tailor the program to exactly what you're trying to do and exactly the changes you're trying to make. There are universal principles and there are things that are specific to you. And you've got to find the right balance of those in order to develop a program that works for you. So until Friday, you can sign up or at

least enroll for a 15-minute free consultation. Go to oneufeed.net slash coaching program you can sign up directly for the program or you can book a 15 minute free consultation either of those things need to be done by friday night at 11 59 p.m friday may 5th so i look forward to working with you i've worked with a lot of great people it's been a lot of fun i think we've done a lot of good, and I'm looking forward to the next round of it. So when you feed.net slash coaching program. And here's the rest of the interview with Sam Weinman. In the book, you talk about shifting the emphasis away from a concrete result. So did I win? Did I lose?

And more towards an ongoing process. And we've had a couple guests on the show where we have talked about that. And that ties to what we were just saying, because if you're always the victim, then there's nothing you can do, right? And if it's always, if it's always outside your control, there's nowhere for you to work. So tell me a little bit more about that, less focusing on the goal and more focusing on the process. To be clear, I think you can be focused on a long-term goal. Like, you know, I want to be the greatest baseball player in the world, provided that you're recognizing the way to get there is through a process of doing the little things every day and focusing on that

every day. Because when you set these sort of grandiose goals without having an understanding of the sort of small steps along the way, it's overwhelming. You know, you don't really know how to handle it. But if we focus on a process, we focus on, I'm going to take, you know, endless batting practice every day, and I'm going to eat right, and I'm going to study video. And if I do all those things, and I can check all those things off my list, I know I'm successful in sticking to that process. I've been successful in that regard. And hopefully it leads me to this larger goal, which is, you know, getting better at my chosen field. And so it's, it's appropriate for anything, you know, when, when your kids talk about, they want to get straight A's in school, great. But that starts with your first night of homework and just studying on Monday night and

Tuesday night. So, um, the more we can be honor that process and being faithful to that process, not only will allow us to feel successful along the way, but also is just a much more productive way of going after our goals. Ira Glass, This American Life famously talks about the talent gap. You start doing something, and the stuff that you start putting out is really just not as good as what you may be here. And there's just this period of time where you just kind of have to work your way through that. And being focused on a process allows you to get there. And it also, as I'm saying, it ties very closely to the next area that I was going to take things. And you quote Carol Dweck in your book, you know, the fixed and the growth mindset. And we had Carol on, but I think there's a lot of similarity between focusing on the process and having a growth mindset is a recognition that everything is a process and that as you go about your life and you face challenges and you stumble and you learn from them, you are basically partaking in this larger process of learning and growing. And if I fall short of that goal, then I am a failure. And you look at these things as a definition of yourself and you don't have as much investment in process. And so it's this whole idea that if you have a more pliable outlook toward whatever your endeavor, then you're able to roll with setbacks a lot easier. Yeah, I mean, I think that makes such a huge difference, that fixed and growth mindset. It's such a simple concept and yet so incredibly powerful. It really can be the difference between losing well and losing poorly and letting that really stop you.

Sure. I'm guilty of always going back to sports metaphors. But in this case, I think it's appropriate. My youngest son played a hockey tournament this weekend. And we played a team that we lost to pretty badly the first time around. So then we played in the second game. So we knew pretty much right away that we were in for a tough game.

And we said, let's just make sure that we play as hard as we can and give them as tough a game as we possibly could and really stick together and work hard. And we set, you know, that was the kind of the process goal that we were setting was, you know, really apply ourselves as best we can. And even if we lose, you know, we can still feel more successful. And we did, we, and we lost by two goals, but we played, um, as well as we could play. And rather than feel like

failure, we felt successful. You just lead me to the most perfect transitions. It's just like one thing after the other, because that leads us right to counterfactual thinking, right? Sure. Tell us about that and how that kind of applies to the example you just gave. Counterfactual thinking is this whole idea of focusing on what could have been as opposed to what is. It doesn't always have to be negative. It can be positive, but it's a dangerous trap to fall into. So to use the example I just gave, if we played that team and we went in and we lost and all we focused on was the fact that, oh, my gosh, we could have won this tournament. We had to play this team, though, that was much better than us. And it's not fair because they were better and they're a different team.

And, you know, I'd much prefer to have come away with a trophy. We didn't get a trophy. I'm so disappointed. That's sort of negative counterfactual thinking. Whereas the other way of using counterfactual thinking in a positive way is thinking, well, we could have played this team. We could have been humiliated. But the second time around, we really applied ourselves and we really showed a better outcome. And rather than have this humiliating end to our season, we actually showed some real growth. And so I choose to focus on that. So the famous example, again, another sports metaphor,

but it's a good one, is the whole idea of medalists in Olympics. So which is studies have been shown that people who win bronze medals tend to be happier on the podium than people who win silver. And the thinking is, is that the people who win bronze medals are happy to have won any medal at all. They have contemplated the fact that they almost didn't win a medal. They would have gone on empty-handed and they got this great bronze medal and they're happy. Whereas the silver medalist is saying, oh my gosh, I could have won gold. I didn't win gold. How disappointing that I fell short and I choose to focus on that. So that's like the great example of counterfactual thinking on both a positive standpoint and a negative standpoint. It's so much perspective, right? It's just what perspective are you going to take on what happened? And, you know, it's sort of back to that idea of

losing versus failing. There's a fact, you know, there's a fact. The fact is I got the bronze medal or the fact is I got the silver medal. But boy, everything that comes after that is so open to interpretation and so open for us to tell ourselves stories that are useful versus telling ourselves stories that are destructive. Right. And the phrase it's often used, and I use in the book a lot, is framing. It's how we frame things. Any picture in our lives, we can choose to look at one way or the other. And so the whole point of the book is to frame things in a constructive way, not just sugarcoating it, like there's something useful to pull from it, but it's also palatable. You can live with that outlook on it. In the book, you reference Dan Jensen, the famous speed skater. And boy,

there's a whole lot of lessons in his stories. But I really just want to focus on, you know, a line in there that you had that he said, which was, there's no doubt I got more out of losing. Losing is what teaches you who you are. Sure. Yeah. And in his case, he's living proof of that is that his whole story and his whole place in life was shaped by the earlier failures or I should say earlier losses he had along the way. And he had to reach down into – it sounds overstated – reach down into his soul to find out what he was made of when he went through these losses. And so the point of that is basically that we do a lot more inward thinking when we lose than when we win. When we win, we're just happy. We just want to kind of roll with it, not really give much thought to why. But when we lose, there's a lot of soul searching or we're looking for feedback in that so that we can understand why. And so

in his case, he lost in the 84 Olympics and the 88 Olympics and 92 Olympics, and he fell in his first race in the 94 Olympics. So constantly through that process, he's asking himself, why? Why did I do this? What happened? What was I doing wrong? All of these questions he's asking himself were hugely influential and led him to a place where he finally did win his final Olympic race. where he finally did win his final Olympic race. And again, that's just from a speed skating standpoint,

kind of how he got to become a better speed skater. But also as a person, he just learned more about himself as a person, as a character, because of how he went through these losses and how he dealt with them. Losing or failing is not fun, but boy, there are a lot of lessons if you do it the right way.

Sure. You know, there's compassion can come out of it for other people. I mean, there's just so many different things. And you've got a line in the book also that I love because we had Krista Tippett on the show, does a show on being, and she has a line that basically it's exactly what you said. You said that, you know, people don't find success in spite of their past, but because of it.

And I love that idea that it's, we tend to think often of, you know, okay, well, I overcame all these bad things and I was able to succeed. Whereas I love that idea that it's those bad things often that allow us to succeed. They are the reason that we become successful. Our previous failures and tough times are what lead to the good times and the successes. We wouldn't be there without them. They are the fuel that we're drawing on in some form or another, you know, whether it's in business, all the things, all the missteps you make along the way help to inform your decisions that lead to the better product or the success. And becoming, you know, a better

person, you tend to think about all the things you did wrong that you regret doing that helps inform the way you want to be and so it's this whole idea that that as painful as these episodes are they are the basically the blueprint for how we want to be there's a sports psychologist that i talked to he's not in the book but for another story i'm doing and he says he's a big believer in not this, but that. And basically the idea is that in order to understand what works, the that, you need to go through the not this part. You need to understand the things you don't want to do to help get you to a better understanding of the things that you do want to do. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know 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 the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us 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. Brian 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 I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Another term that you used in the book that I really like, and I think it's interesting, which is post-traumatic growth, right? We all know about post-traumatic stress. Um, but, but what's post-traumatic growth? Because I think it ties to what we just said. Yeah, post-traumatic growth, because you used the word traumatic, we're talking about serious things. And like you said, we've heard so much about post-traumatic

stress disorder, but you go through these debilitating episodes in our lives, and for obvious reasons and justifiable reasons, they leave a heavy toll on you but there are also occasions when you go through these episodes and you are able to look and see that you survived it and there is great strength to go from that and there's great strength to go through something and realize that you made it where you are brought to a higher place as a result of it i guess the dan jansen story would fall into that category because in his case, he was dealing with the death of his sister. And that was a really powerful point moment in his life. And so that was a traumatic episode. And from that, he emerged from it and grew from it. But you know, I wouldn't put Greg Norman, Liz and the Masters in the same category. But certainly, there are plenty of examples of people who go through these horrible experiences and because they persisted through them and survived and came to a better understanding of themselves, they are able to feel stronger.

And not just feel stronger, they are stronger. And they grow from the experience. Yeah, and I think understanding what causes that, you know, post-traumatic growth versus post-traumatic stress is, is such a fascinating thing. And there's no clear cut answers there, but it certainly is one of those things you look at who comes out of difficult situations better off and, and who doesn't. And I think there's so many factors in that. Sure. We talk about resilience. A lot of this, a lot of this is we're talking about resilience and there's, there have been studies about how resilience is not something that you're just born with,

that one person has it, one person doesn't. There are ways to foster resilience in all of us. And it can be factors as simple as the way you take care of your body, the way you take care of your mind, your cognitive health, your spirituality, your moral compass. These are all things that sort of contribute to the ability to be resilient when we're faced with adversity. And again, going back to the premise of your show, I would say the more you feed the good wolf in you, the better chance you have of being resilient. Yep, exactly. There's another term that you use in the book that some of the sports psychologists use called cognitive restructuring. Can you share a little bit about that? frame it in a way and potentially alter the way we look at it to make it more palatable and useful. And so I've used the phrase mental gymnastics before to describe it, which makes it seem like we're trying to distort reality. It's not that at all. It's just looking at an event and trying to

put it through a more constructive prism. So to use Dan Jansen as an example, he had this traumatic episode in which his sister died on the morning of his race, and with the help of a sports psychologist, he realized that actually he was sort of paying tribute to his sister, that the healthier way to look at it was that he was not letting himself win those races because it would have felt wrong to win so close after her death. And so through that process of looking at an event and sort of her death. And so through that process of looking at an event and sort of reframing how he thought about it, he was able to find greater peace. And that was a great example of cognitive restructuring. Yeah. And I think what's so fascinating about that is that there isn't necessarily a truth there. You know, it's so much an interpretation and that's an example of choosing to interpret

something in a positive way. You know, who knows what the objective truth is? I don't know that there is one. And I think we can get hung up on that sometimes, you know, where it's difficult for us to reframe things because we think we're, you know, we think something's true. And there certainly are facts and things that are true. And i'm never an advocate for ignoring those things but so much of this really is about interpretation i think in the book the the sports psychologist says context and mindset are pretty much everything yeah well exactly i mean if you talk about someone loses their job and in the days and weeks after losing their job

they're devastating i think this is horrible i'm never going to get past it and then months pass and they they get a new job and they start a new career and it leads them down the road they now look back at that event of losing their job and they instead of saying it was devastating say it actually was the best thing that ever happened right well that's that's that's cognitive restructuring that's looking at an event and now sort of again i'm reluctant to use the word twist but it's able to um you have you know you're able to shape it in a way that makes sense and that is helpful versus, you know, the fixed mindset does sort of limit your choices for cognitive restructuring, right? You've kind of, you've kind of limited what things you're going to believe are true. Right. Because you're much, you see things in a much more black and white way. I lost my job.

I'm a failure. You know, I'm obviously not good enough and this is a horrible thing. Whereas this is an opportunity and I'm going to learn from this. All those things that to where people can go to your webpage, can buy your book, all that stuff in our show notes. Thanks so much for coming on. I really enjoyed talking with you. Oh, it's my pleasure. I appreciate you having me. All right. Take care. Okay, great. Bye.