 Oh, it's so great to be with you. How would you describe your background, all of the stuff that you've done in your history to bring you up to this point? Well, I've really had two parts to a professional career, and the first half of that was as a basketball performance coach. And for 15 years, my number one objective was to help elite level players improve their athleticism and bulletproof their bodies on the court. And then five years ago, I made a very distinct pivot, pun very much intended, over to the corporate space as a keynote speaker and author, where I translate the lessons and the strategies and the disciplines that I learned from the world's best basketball players. I show folks how to apply those to their lives and their businesses. Who are you working with back in the day? So my main area of expertise was at the high school level. And I'm a Washington D.C. resident, and I was able to work at two different high schools here that have produced over a dozen players currently in the NBA, the most notable of which is Kevin Durant. So I had a chance to work with Kevin Durant when he was 15 years old and got a peek behind the curtain of what it takes to ascend to the top of the mountain and be world-class at your craft. And that actually led to work with Jordan Brand, Nike basketball, USA basketball. And I got an opportunity to work events for already established players like LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Stephen Curry, Chris Paul. And I got to see the other side of the curtain of what it takes to actually sustain high performance and excellence once you've already reached that mountaintop. It's an interesting discussion because a lot of conversations that I used to have maybe four or five years ago, were about getting from that zero to 50 stage. It was about focusing on basic skill acquisition, habit building, life hacks, stuff like that, routines. And increasingly now, the conversations I'm having seem to be more about sustaining that performance over time, iterating, avoiding burnout, avoiding stress, understanding when it's time to move to a slightly different angle, whether you should continue doing the thing that you're doing, how to find mentors, how to be a mentor. And that seems to be a little bit more of a rare conversation, I think. The vast majority of people by definition are trying to get to the middle 50% of excellence in whatever field. As you begin to ascend up and up and up, there are fewer and fewer people trying to do that. So there's less of a market to market that to. Oh, so well said, yeah. And it's an interesting dichotomy because I still very much consider myself on the climb. And I'm still moving up that ramp, if you will. But now my focus has shifted, as you just said so insightfully, not as worried about optimal performance as I am sustaining that for long periods of time. And a good portion of that, which is really at the crux of my work at present, is doing that with a sense of joy and a sense of fulfillment and a sense of meaning. That it's not just about high performance, that's certainly important. But it's also loving what you do and deriving fulfillment and meaning from what you do. And I find that that's actually the key to being able to sustain excellence for long periods of time. I mean, it's simply unsustainable if you're not enjoying the journey. Do you think that high performance is sometimes at odds with joy and fulfillment and meaning? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, especially when you... And I'll keep using basketball as a reference since that was my playground for so long. You would hear Kobe Bryant use words like obsessed. He was obsessed with excellence. And I know that every single word in the English language has a different emotional connotation. We all perceive words slightly different. And Kobe was certainly someone that was obsessed with what he was doing. He used that as a word to describe me and certainly don't want that to be a word that describes my journey. Why? Again, there's nothing wrong with the word itself. It's just the emotional connotation for me. And for some reason it's hard for me personally for the word obsessed and the word fulfillment and joy to coexist simultaneously. Another word that's very popular and vernacular, especially here in the States, is grind. You know, you need to be on that grind. You need to constantly be grinding. That's another word that just doesn't resonate with me. Again, this is not about words being right or wrong. It's just a matter of fit. I don't want obsessed or grind to be anything that describes how I live my life or how I perform my work. I think that something very few people realize is that the strategies that are used by the absolute elite and the best in the world, they don't scale particularly well for pretty much anybody else. They're only good for those people that are prepared to sacrifice their entire lives to go and do that. And those are the people that quite rightly we look up to as heroes. You know, you see Michael Jordan's almost tyranny in The Last Dance, right? He seems like this complete sort of tyrannical leader forcing players to do other things, almost sort of talking down to the other guys in an effort to try and get aggression and motivate them up. He's motivated by aggression. You know, there's very much a resentful mentality that he's got going on there. No one would ever look at any of those things and think, yeah, that's a psychologically well-rounded human being. But what it did was it was able to facilitate a very specific type of performance in a very narrow domain. Tiger Woods is another amazing example of this, right? He has been able to hone his skills into one very particular domain. I don't want Tiger Woods' ability in relationships. I don't want Tiger Woods' psychological profile when it comes to the psychiatric drugs that he's on, or his obsession with training that's meant that he's spent half a decade out of the sport due to injuries. So this is where the real devils in the details that how can we take the things that the best in the world do in terms of principles, but then filter them through the understanding that this isn't everything to us. We might have a family on the side of this. We might be prepared to look after our evening time football practice or whatever it is that we want to do that's alongside close to our calling in life. And unless you're prepared to commit absolutely everything to be the very, very, very best in the world, and it's the source of income that you've got, and it's what your entire family's prepared to support you with, all of those other things. Those strategies from the top, they can be used, but they need to be mediated, I think, very much. Oh, absolutely. There's so much insight in what you just shared there. I love the direction that this is going. You know, I think one of the big distinctions is the guys you just mentioned, whether it's Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, or Tiger Woods, their sole focus was on being the best, and that's not my focus. Mine is being my best, and there's a difference between the two. If your goal is to be number one in the world, an absolute world class and best in craft, then as you said, you almost need a maniacal obsession and have to be willing to sacrifice everything in your life, and those guys have done that. Whereas for me, that's not my North Star. You know, having some semblance of harmony and balance being my best, and please know, I mean, I work incredibly hard at my craft. I pour everything into my speaking engagements in my books, but I'm not comparing myself to anyone else. My goal is to do the best that I'm capable of. And one other distinction that I've noticed, and this has been something I've used to help guide myself, those guys were heavily attached to achievement and to outcomes. It was, you know, I win an NBA championship or bust. There was no gray area. If I win an NBA championship, this season was a success. If we don't win an NBA championship, this season was a failure. It was incredibly black and white. Whereas as I choose to look through a lens now of being much more process oriented, you know, I certainly would prefer to hit certain outcomes and have certain achievements. But my sense of self, my confidence is not derived from those. I've learned to detach from those outcomes and learn to simply love the work, love the steps, love the process. And I feel like if I can enjoy the work, then I've already won in advance. And to me, that's taken a process of unlearning and reconditioning myself, because I was incredibly outcome driven and very achievement driven for the vast majority of my life. And what I found was it put me on a roller coaster of when I achieved, then I felt good about myself. When I fell short, I didn't feel good about myself. And that was a very rocky road to be on because I'm a huge believer that you should set your goals and aspirations so high that you're stretching that maybe you're only hitting them at a 50% clip. You know, if you're achieving every goal you set, I think we could make a compelling argument. You're not shooting high enough. So with that being said, that meant half the time I felt good about myself, the other half the time I felt lousy about myself. And I just think life is too short to spend half of your time feeling lousy. Well, the thing as well is that you'll remember the failures and forget the successes. So even if you win 50% of the time, you'll focus on the losses 80% of the time or 90% of the time. That negativity bias is awful. The other thing as well is that other people's heads or external achievements are a very fragile place to position your sense of self worth. Because you're constantly, you're not doing a thing in the hopes that you've done it well. You're always looking at the reflection of what your things achieved to see whether or not it's worthy. And yeah, I mean, take me through that process of unlearning because this is a process that I went through throughout my 20s. I ran a lot of nightclubs. If the club nights were successful and busy, then that meant that I was good that week. And if they weren't very good, then that meant that I was poor that week. And it was a very similar process for me. What did unlearning look like to you? Well, and let me go on record saying that this is not coming from a place of mastery. This is still something that I occasionally struggle with, still something I find challenging. You know, I'll occasionally find myself going down that previous path. But what I have now at present is a heightened sense of awareness. And I usually catch myself pretty quickly when I start playing the comparison game, or I start getting too wrapped up in external measures of validation or any sense of achievement. And I usually catch myself pretty quickly now and then kind of tongue in cheek get myself back on the right path. But ultimately it was taking a step back and examining this, and I'm saying this in air quotes, the game that we've all been told that we have to play. And the reality is we don't have to play that. You know, we don't have to derive our self-worth from external validation and achievement. You know, many people choose to do that and that's fine because I think everyone's on their own path. And I say that with no judgment whatsoever. I have nothing but compassion for everyone else, but it just wasn't the right fit for me. So I had to slowly keep reminding myself that there's nothing wrong with desiring or preferring certain outcomes, but I can't be attached to them and they certainly can't be the sole source of my self-belief and my confidence in my self-worth. And this untethering process has been going on for the last few years, but I have to remember I spent, you know, well over 40 years building that muscle, playing that previous game. So I have to give myself some patience and some grace knowing it's going to take some un-time to unlearn and recondition. But I don't see any reason why I'm not going to be on this planet for another 50 or 60 years. So it's well worth the investment I'm putting in now. Talk to me about the common traits or the common threads that you've seen working with some of the most elite basketball players on the planet. What are the most common themes that you've noticed between them all? Well, the two that I've noticed the most and I covered this in my first book, Raise Your Game. The first was high performers never get bored with the basics. They embrace the fundamentals. They understand that the fundamentals build the foundation to which the rest of the house is built. So in the game of basketball, it's obvious. Your fundamentals include your footwork and your shooting mechanics, how well you handle the ball and so forth. So they work on those basic skill sets relentlessly every single day. For the rest of us that are not playing in the NBA, we just need to figure out what are the basics or the fundamentals that we need to commit to during the unseen hours to work towards mastery of in any specific domain of our life. Being a brilliant podcast host like you are, you have to ask yourself, what are the handful of fundamentals that go in to putting out a world-class podcast and how can I continue to sharpen the sword in those different areas? So never getting bored with the basics is one common theme. And the second is they do a brilliant job of blending well-earned confidence with humility. So they've earned confidence on the court by putting in the work during the unseen hours. Taking hundreds of thousands of shots in empty gems when no one's watching gives them the right to be confident when the whole world is watching. But at the same time, they brush that with a humility that leaves them open to feedback, leaves them open to be coached, leaves them open that no matter how good they are, even at the Kobe Bryant or Kevin Durant level, they know they can still get better and they welcome anyone that can help them do that. And I find that towing that line between confidence and humility and staying open was another one of the main themes of high performers. Talking about stresses, how should people think about managing the stresses that they face? Well, the first is, and this sometimes comes across as a rather controversial statement, but stress is a choice. Stress is a choice because stress is not actually derived from the circumstances or the events in our life, but it's derived from our perception or our perspective of those events and those circumstances. So if you can start to look through the world through a rather neutral lens and just say that this thing that happened, yes, it might not be my preference, it might not be to my liking, but there's nothing inherently stressful about what just happened. It's the emotion that I choose to attach to it that will either increase or decrease my stress. And I find that mindset incredibly liberating because it gives you the power. It gives you the keys to the car. Ultimately, it says, and this is again something that I'm working with and still struggling with, is being able to say that it doesn't matter what happens in the outer world, I'm going to dictate my life through the inner world. So circumstances, events, what people say, what people do is not going to dictate my mindset, my perspective and my attitude. That's going to come from within. And of course, that's really put to the test when really challenging things happen. So I by no means ever want to make any of this stuff sound like it's easy. Everything I've shared with you so far and everything I will share for the remainder of our conversation are very, very basic principles, but none of this stuff is easy. There is nothing easy about not letting the outer world and what goes on to infiltrate your inner world and cause you to increase stress. So the very first step is just learning to have an acceptance of what you control and what you don't. And I find peace in the acceptance of it's not the universe's job to do whatever it is that I want. The world is just going to do what the world does. It's my job to respond to that in a way that moves me forward and takes me closer to my North Star and being the best version of myself. And I find that very liberating and empowering. Were any of your players during your coaching career dealt dealing with a particularly bad period of stress or were there any stressful situations with championships and titles and stuff like that? Oh, absolutely. I mean, almost on a daily basis. I mean, you know, there are several professions that I think we could all collectively agree tend to be of high stress and certainly being a professional athlete is one of them, especially in today's day and age where you are literally living in a fishbowl and every single thing you do is going to be heavily scrutinized and criticized by everyone. Not just the talking suits on ESPN, by everyone with a Twitter account is going to comment, you know, on the fact that you had a poor shooting night or that your team lost, you know, because you turned the ball over in the last possession. So I think it's incredibly challenging and difficult, but that's why those guys understood how important their mindset and their approach was and almost all of them worked with some type of sports psychologist that would help them continue to build these skills. Because they understood that things like mindfulness, you know, are a skill set that need to be practiced just like free throws. You know, that's one of the advantages of being a professional athlete is they understand the power of repetition. They understand the power of purposeful practice. They understand the power of getting feedback and constantly trying to tinker and tweak what you're doing. So those guys actually get it. What about the stress of pressure to perform or of criticism? That's something that even if it's not on the scale of an NBA superstar, everybody has in one form or another, courtly reviews at work, their current business growth, their relationship with their partner. What did you learn from basketball players about dealing with pressure to perform and criticism from others? What's very in line with what we've been speaking about. It's taking your eye off of the result or the outcome and putting it on the process. So once again, using a basketball analogy, a basketball player, I know this, this might sound crazy. They don't have 100% control over whether or not the ball goes in the basket. If they did, they would never miss a shot. I mean, what player would ever not want to make the shot? But all the basketball player control is how they approach that shot, their footwork. Are they on balance? Are they shooting with correct form? Are they in rhythm? Is it the appropriate shot to take time and score wise? Where is the defender? There's all of these different things that they need to have this really quick mental checklist to do. And the great shooters will tell you that the vast majority of the time when they can check off each of those boxes, there is a much greater chance that the ball goes in the basket. So they have a heavy influence over whether it goes in, but the influence comes from the process. And it's the same thing with all of us. You know, if you work for an organization or a business or a team, your goal should be within your role to show up as the best version of yourself and do everything in your power to make a meaningful contribution to those around you. That's the part you have control over. Now you can break that down further and say, well, what are the things that I need to do to show up as my best self? Well, part of that is physical. I need to make sure I'm well rested and get sleep. I need to make sure that I work out consistently. I need to make sure that I eat healthy foods. Part of that is mental. You know, I need to make sure that I'm feeding my mind with the same discernment that I feed my body. So there's a list of steps that you can do to increase the chance that on any given day, you will show up as your best self. And then once you know your role, embrace your role and start on your role, then you use that to make a meaningful contribution to your team, to empower your colleagues and your coworkers and better serve your clients and your customers. So that's the part that you have influence over. And when you put your focus on doing those things, it's been my experience not only will you perform at a higher level, but you'll also have more fulfillment from doing it. And then you just have to realize if I'm doing those two things to the best of my ability, I don't have any control over what my quarterly evaluations going to be or my year end evaluation or whatever others think of me. That part's outside of my control and I just have to be okay with whatever those things are. And it doesn't mean you'll prefer them, but it just means that you're going to be okay with them. I wonder how much of the disgruntledness that people have around their performance or lack thereof comes from the fact that they realize that they were culpable in causing that to happen, but the fact that they know that they left a lot on the table and that deep down there may be to blame for the fact that the performance hasn't come the way that it did. I have a friend, David Perel, who wrote an article called Think Like an Athlete has absolutely nothing to do with this, but the title set me off on this understanding that almost nobody treats their chosen pursuit in life with the same level of rigor that athletes do, except maybe professional classical musicians, people on the come up in music and stuff like that maybe. But my point is that when you're looking at an athlete, their recovery, their mindset training, their sleep, their nutrition, their game day planning, the people they spend their time around, their drills for technique, their sports and conditioning, their strength and conditioning work, everything that they do is built toward trying to maximize their ability on game day and almost no one else treats their chosen pursuit with that same level of rigor because there's so many degrees of freedom in between your preparation and your performance that you can always just let it go. Everyone's rocked up, not prepared at all to some sort of presentation or meeting or discussion about whatever, and nailed it and gone, fucking hell, I can't believe that I did that. You go, okay, just because you were managing you were able to fluke this performance doesn't mean that that's a replicable strategy that you should continue to go forward with. But the same thing goes for, let's say that you decided to go out last night and stayed up until two in the morning and had a few too many beers and then you rolled in today and everything seemed to be okay. You still may be able to do okay, but you're not going to be able to draw the line perfectly from poor sleep last night or that pizza that you had a couple of days ago or the fact that you haven't read anything new in three weeks and you've just been binge watching stuff on Netflix. The line between performance and preparation is so messy and blurry and pretty much everything outside of sport because the parameters are too fuzzy that nobody is particularly concerned about chasing things down in that way. And I just thought, I thought it was interesting to apply that same level of rigor to stuff and I also believe that it will help people to feel more bulletproof in their confidence and less regretful because they go, look, I did all of the things. I did all of the things that I was supposed to do and it didn't come off. So there it is. There's no more that I can do. Oh man, there's so much gold in what you just shared there and there's two things that pop into mind. The first is kind of what we were talking about earlier is this comparison game with external validation. This is someone saying that, yeah, I was good enough because I'm comparing myself to external metrics. But the real test is, are you the best that you're capable of being? And that takes a very high level of extreme ownership. So someone shouldn't fill fulfilled by doing less than their best even though that was just good enough. One of the questions that I asked during my keynotes in my workshops when I'm working with high performers, is are you a high performer because of your habits or are you a high performer in spite of your habits? I mean, in every industry, there are people that are so riddled with natural talent that they can get away with mediocre work habits and still be at the top of their field, but they're not the best that they're capable of becoming and that's the yardstick that we want to make sure that we're measuring everything with. And that does, that takes incredible ownership. Extreme ownership, Jaco Willink wrote an entire book on it which I'm a huge fan of and that is always looking at yourself first. You know, that is not falling to the tendency of blaming, complaining and making excuses and deferring accountability and responsibility to others. It's holding yourself fully accountable and I love this idea of treating yourself like an athlete. That is how I approach everything that I do. You know, I know that it's my job to get on stage and be at my best to be in service of the audience. I also know that if I stay out till two in the morning the night before, if I have several drinks, if I eat a bunch of really unhealthy food, if I decide to sleep in, if I do those things incrementally, they give me less of a chance to be my best which means now I'm cheating the audience and I have too much reverence and respect for the groups I speak with and the clients I have that I won't let that happen. So there is a time and a place to do some of those things. I'm not saying you have to live a completely sterile life but if you're very serious about your craft and very serious about showing up as your best self then you will have a checklist, a system, a process for doing just that and you won't worry about the external validation or measures of achievement. You'll know that you did everything to be your best and to me that's what puts you on the path to real fulfillment. How do elite performers think about managing their time and energy? Well they, one, they understand that time is finite and that when it's gone, it's gone and we can't get any more of it so they understand how precious it is but at the same time they understand that energy is something that we can replenish and we can rejuvenate and that's why they take time off to recharge their internal battery. That is why they do things like eat well and get sleep so that they can have the requisite energy so energy is something based on our lifestyles and the habits that we have we can constantly replenish. I mean I can tell you as sure as I'm sitting here right now with you at 46 years old I have every bit as much energy as I've ever had at any point in my life. Statistically speaking, energy levels usually start to decrease as we get older. You know, we're usually most vibrant and alive in our teens and twenties and it slowly starts to go downhill. Well, I don't want that to be the case in my life so I go the extra mile in all of these different measures to make sure that I can maintain an incredibly high level of energy but time and energy are the two variables that we need to play with on a regular basis and another area that I've worked to make improvement in is I'm a self-diagnosed people pleaser. I love saying yes. I love saying yes to things I probably shouldn't even say yes to because it makes me feel good to be of service to others but I learned that when you say yes to one thing you are by default saying no to something else and you need to get crystal clear on what you're saying yes to and then by default what you're saying no to. You know, both you and I have agreed to say yes to spend this time together for this recording which means during this hour we're recording we are saying no to everything else that could potentially happen and we have to be okay with that trade and now I'm at a point in my life where I have much better discernment and feel much better about what I say yes to and what I try to say yes to now are only things that are in perfect alignment with my North Star, with my core values with the things that interest and fascinate me and then I respectfully and politely decline and say no to things that aren't in alignment with that and that's the other part that took some reconditioning is making sure that I can say no with some graciousness and some tact and manners, you know so it's not about being harsh or rude to anybody else it's just simply guarding your yard and protecting your time so that you can work towards being your best self and I'm better at that now still got some work to do but I'm better than I was several years ago for sure. What was that story about the college basketball team where the coach had worked out that if they won on four metrics 97% of the time they were going to win the game what was that story? Oh, so he actually just took another job but Bart Lundy was the coach at Queens University down in Charlotte, North Carolina which is one of the top division two men's basketball programs in the United States and coach Lundy is one of the best coaches I've ever been around and he figured out that there were four key stats four key analytics that would heavily determine whether or not Queens University would win a basketball game now for one other distinction and Simon Sinek does a brilliant job covering this in his book, The Infinite Game but basketball is a finite game around the globe we've all unanimously agreed that the team with the most points on the scoreboard when the final buzzer goes off is the winner we all agreed to that life and business is much more evergreen there's not a distinct start and stop and we all haven't unanimously agreed on what winning looks like in life or business you know you've had some amazing guests on your show brilliant minds and I'm sure that if you asked each and every one of them to define what winning looks like in life and what winning looks like in business yes you would see some overlap but you would also see some things that were different so the point is that's an infinite game it's not unanimous however there are some threads that we can pull from that and certainly apply but back to Coach Lundy he figured out that when Queens University comes out on top in these four statistical categories the first was turnover differential so if we can have more possessions than our opponent it gives us a better chance to win the second was offensive rebound differential if we can take more shots than our opponent it gives us a better chance to win the third were free throws attempted which in college basketball is the highest percentage shot per possession if we can take more free throws than our opponent it gives us a better chance to win and the fourth were three pointers attempted a massive weapon in the college game and if we can take more open looks from three than our opponent it gives us a better chance to win and Coach Lundy as you just perfectly pointed out when Queens University comes out on top in those four categories they win 97% of their games which means they are statistically almost unbeatable when they do those four things now the lesson to pull from that is what do you think Coach Lundy and his staff talk about, emphasize and remind every workout, every practice every film session and before every game it's just those four things he doesn't talk about winning he doesn't talk about championships he doesn't talk about banners because he knows if they can do those four things the winning the championships and the banners will just take care of themselves you know it's the old adage the scoreboard will take care of itself so he puts all of his focus on the process and designs every practice workout and film session around those four variables so that his team will be prepared to execute and the lesson the rest of us can pull from that is we need to get crystal clear on what winning and you can use a different word if you don't like the word winning but what does winning look like in your business or what does winning look like in your marriage what does winning look like in your life get crystal clear on that and then figure out what are the the steps or the measurable analytics that will increase the chance that I will win in that domain and then just focus on those things so you don't have to you know sit up at night with a cold sweat worrying about your marriage all you have to do is figure out the three or four things that go into a healthy marriage and do those things as consistently as you can and your marriage will be just fine well the problem is that we're finite creatures surrounded by infinite complexity right there are an unbelievable number of ways that I could try and contribute to having a better marriage to making more money to improving my business or whatever it might be and you're right refining down the metrics of success that you're bothered about to the ones that serve you that grow out of your values that are aligned with your integrity and so on and so forth I think that that's important and I think that the sense of overwhelm that also contributes to stress is often born out of a lack of clarity around what it is that you're trying to achieve what the contributing factors are to that a lot of the time people say that they want success and you go okay what does success mean to you and you go I don't know or what's the route towards success I'm not too sure okay well I mean if the thing that you want in life is indefinable by the person that's saying that it's the most important thing to them you're the blockage right you're the problem to yourself here another word that you use which I haven't heard very much is poise what do you mean when you talk about poise well first of all I love the fact that you bring up clarity you know clarity and I think a cousin of clarity is awareness especially self-awareness and those things are are non-negotiables when it comes to being on the path to both high performance and fulfillment you know you'll never improve something you're oblivious to you'll never fix something you're unaware of and it's the same thing you're never gonna just arbitrarily reach a goal that's ambiguous and unclear so the more clear you can get on what it is that you're pursuing the better off you'll be so I really I'm really glad that you made that point poise ultimately is the inner calm that you exude amidst all of the chaos you know it's it's it's kind of a combination of several of the things that we've been talking about you know Wayne Dyer is a little bit before my time but with somebody that I actually really studied and listened to and read a lot of his work and during one of his presentations he picked up an orange and he asked the audience he said if I squeeze this orange what comes out and the audience was kind of dumbfounded they didn't even really know how to answer it so he basically you know led them down the path and said will apple juice come out you know will grape juice come out and then they started laughing and he said no orange juice will come out why will orange juice come out and everyone said well because that's what's inside and his point was yeah when you squeeze an orange what's inside will come out when you get squeezed with with adversity or challenge what's inside of you what's going to come out and that's really that the epicenter of poise it's it's the ability to maintain that inner calm stay aligned with your core values understanding the concept of standards over feelings you know knowing that emotions are going to ebb and flow but your your standards of excellence and your principles and your non-negotiables those should never waiver and and the real test of that is actually during adversity and you know one of the the extensions of that that I love a good friend of mine who's the mental performance coach for the San Francisco Giants and major league baseball says our emotions are designed to inform us not direct us and I love that because to me that that coincides with poise that that it's okay that if you're feeling angry or upset or dejected or frustrated but you can't let those feelings dictate your behavior or dictate how you treat others you know you can't let those feelings rattle you when the stakes are high and really that's that's poise is not letting the emotions in the moment overtake your true essence you see this when people get put under pressure if you've ever been locked in a lift with someone or stuck in traffic waiting to get somewhere that's when someone's true nature comes out you don't need to be in a war zone with somebody injured on the ground and you've got to is he going to drag it out it's like no no no just get stuck in traffic when you're late for an important meeting like that someone's pure nature comes out there one of the things that we do a lot with club events is we need to manage queues outside of very busy venues so it's let's say it's Halloween and we've got 2,000 kids trying to get into an event that we're running and the coordination problem between all of the different queues there's this one for tickets and there's this one for guest list and there's this one for tables and VIP and the door staff are shouting at you and all of the door staff are mid 40s full of testosterone gorillas from the northeast of the UK and they just they don't care in the event and enjoyable experience they just want to have as little stress as possible and we have these lads that come and work for us Angles as well that are you know 18, 19, 20 years old they were children a couple of years ago and then they get brought into a business they're operating a business and then after a little bit of training we throw them out onto the to the sort of lion's den of look there are 2,000 people waiting outside of this venue you've learned the skills of how you need to coordinate this stuff one of the coolest things that we see is some young guy or girl that's arrived at uni a couple of years ago and is like a a beautiful conductor just holding off the door staff shouting and screaming get these fucking people into the queue right now he's like just give me one second I'm just going to go and sort it over there I'm going to go get it and you just see these and they just own it it is that pure sort of presence in the midst of what is very sort of tangible chaos now it's not super emotional but it's very visceral right like it's there it's acute it's in your face as soon as it's finished they're going to forget about it but it's really cool to see that and being able to watch the skill acquisition of young guys and girls to become so present and have so much poise during that stressful situation it's pretty cool it's one of the coolest things we do that is so neat I admittedly wish I would have had that level of poise when I was 18 or 19 years old because I most certainly didn't this is another one of the rather newfound traits that I've been very cognizant of to work on but boy what those folks you just described they're setting themselves up for a much smoother life down the line because they understand that they are in control of their response going back to something we talked about earlier whether they're doing it consciously or unconsciously is irrelevant they recognize that the chaos and the madness of 2,000 people possibly many of which are disgruntled is outside of their control they have nothing to do with that what they can do is control their poise and their response to those folks and it sounds like from what you described they choose to pick a they choose a response that helps move them forward helps improve the situation and certainly adds a level of comfort and service to those they're working with and that's beautiful what they understand as well is that the more calm that they are the more calm the situation gets so it's almost as the tension of the night outside gets more you see the guys even lean in today they're sort of they'll speak more quietly to the door staff they'll go over and speak to them really really close as opposed to having to shout across the queue it's really really smart it's really cool what they do but yeah and you're right as well that you know 18, 19, 20 years old these kids go on one of the lads they have a very powerful job trading out in Singapore and you know some high pressure trading desk and I have absolutely no concerns at all for him he's going to walk in there and be one of the most competent people when it comes to a high pressure environment because who else in here has managed 50 or 100 or 150 club nights with hundreds and hundreds of teenagers screaming at you because they want to get into this venue none of them so yeah it's and it's a sort of I feel like everybody should have to manage the exterior of a club night at one point in their life just so that they get to learn some of the lessons from it but you talk as well in the book about how stress can enhance performance one of the problems that you have is that the response to stress can often be for us to freeze for our thinking to become more narrowed is it simply an experience game is it just getting repetitions in or is there something else that people can do to try and expedite that improvement Cove well a good portion of it is simply repetition and life experience which is why generally speaking once you have an awareness of this and I'll use myself speaking in the first person I mean I'm much better at managing stress now at 46 than I was at 36 or 26 because I can only imagine how many reps I've gotten in over the last one or one or two decades and you know we said something earlier that I want to circle back to and that's this concept of unlearning and also tying that in with what we talked about from an extreme ownership standpoint I just want to make sure that folks know that your response to situations is in your control many people have had the same knee jerk visceral reaction to certain things of stress and you mentioned a major trigger before which is sitting in traffic that they no longer feel a sense of control they feel that when they are stuck in traffic and they are late for an appointment that the only response they can have is one of being irritated frustrated agitated like they don't even believe that there's another option and I was certainly one of those folks until I saw the proverbial light and realized that there is nothing inherently stressful about cars in front of you on the freeway the stress is the emotion that you choose to attach to those cars and you know using you and I as an example I can be stuck in traffic and I can white knuckle the steering wheel and I can honk my horn give somebody the finger curse under my breath start to sweat blood pressure goes up get frustrated and then I look over and you can be as cool as a cucumber sitting literally in the car next to me and you can either be embracing some quiet time or some stillness or maybe you choose to call a close friend and catch up or maybe you choose to listen to an awesome podcast like you put out and use that as a time for some professional development but both of us are sitting in the exact same external circumstance but we would choose to view that very differently and obviously in that hypothetical example I'm inviting stress into my life and choosing that to be a stressful situation where you would be choosing the other and I just want folks to know that if at present you're kind of the white knuckle honk the horn type person you can unlearn that behavior and you can go down a more peaceful path I'm living proof of it, I know for a fact it can be done. What was that Kevin Durant strength session story? Oh so I had a chance to meet KD when he was 15 years old and there's actually two stories about KD that I always love to share both of which I think speak volumes about him and the first was it took a lot of convincing to get him to come in for a strength workout you know I watched Kevin play for the first couple minutes of watching him it was really obvious that this kid had unbelievable physical talent potential he had a very high basketball IQ and he loved the game of basketball but it was also very obvious that he was rather slight of frame he was a little bit frail you know at the time I met him KD was almost 6'10 and less than 180 pounds which made he was very rail thin so it was obvious to me as a strength and conditioning coach that one of the only things that could limit his ability to play at the highest level would be lack of strength and power but it did take some convincing for his mom to let him come in for a workout he had never done any type of formal training before and when he came in I got a little bit too excited because man I laid the hammer on him I absolutely blasted him and he didn't say very much during the workout and about 20 minutes in he was literally laying on the gym floor in the weight room dripping with sweat muscles were shaking and since he didn't say much I wasn't sure whether or not he liked the workout so I just asked him point blank and I still remember to this day it makes me smile he said no I didn't like the workout but I know this is what I need to do if I ever want to play in the NBA so when can I see you again coach and I remember being blown away at his maturity at his perspective at his mindset that he was willing to embrace doing something that caused a tremendous amount of physical mental and emotional discomfort and anguish but he knew that that was what would put him on the other side of where he was trying to go and he was willing to make that sacrifice and we ended up enjoying a very great good relationship for the next couple years I was able to make some tweaks on my end so he would actually enjoy the workouts more but nevertheless he made a commitment to doing something that he didn't necessarily want to do in the moment but he knew that he had to do to get where he was trying to go and I think that that ability to lean into sacrifice that ability to make commitments to do things that we know will lead to our growth and development as opposed to taking the easier fork in the road is really really important and one other quick KD story and I don't tell this one near as often part of our morning routine was you know I would drive halfway around the Beltway here in DC about a 50 minute drive to pick him up before school to take him to the local YMCA to get in a workout beforehand so you know I'm up at 4.30 in the morning picking him up at 5.30 in the morning to get in a workout before school and most teenagers don't love or embrace the super early morning hours at least that's been my experience and we are walking into this YMCA one morning and there was an elderly woman working the front desk I didn't ask for her driver's license but I'm guessing she was 75 years old and we were both walking in and Kevin had a hood on and he had his head down and she said good morning guys and he didn't say anything he just kept walking and then the lady said it again a little bit more sternly this time she said good morning guys and I remember having this brief pause thinking oh my gosh I don't know what's about to happen you know Kevin is a he's a teenager you know so he's riddled with all sorts of hormones and confusion he's an absolute alpha male one of the best basketball players in all of high school basketball what is he going to say to this lady at this time I had only been working with Kevin for a few weeks so I didn't get to know him well enough to know how high his character was and he turned around he took his hood down and he said I'm sorry ma'am good morning and I just remember in that moment realizing okay this kid is cut from a very high moral fabric that he's he's a good person he's high character you know he understood that he made a mistake was a little bit impolite in the moment and he decided to correct that you know and and I knew at that point that he would have the character to support whatever greatness he was going to achieve on the court and I certainly didn't know at that time during either one of those times that Kevin would go on to be you know one of the best basketball players of of our generation and certainly one of the top scores in the history of the NBA I couldn't have predicted that by any means but at that point I'm not even remotely surprised by it you know once I saw his work ethic his commitment his sacrifice and his character I'm not even remotely surprised that he's as good as he is that's a dope story really cool to find out about people that are that humble and prepared to take on their own failures you're right it is kind of a little bit of a superpower one of the other things that you've been talking about a lot is stagnation where do people start if they feel well it starts with your inputs you know I'm a huge believer and I believe you said something earlier that alluded to this and I really love the way that you said it you know our inputs determine our outputs the things we choose to read watch and listen to the people we choose to invest our time with heavily influence the way we see the world our philosophy our mindset in our perspective so if you start to stagnate and you want to start improving your outputs then you need better inputs you need to switch up what you're reading watching and listening to you know you mentioned something earlier maybe you've kind of lately created the habit of just binge watching something mindless on Netflix instead of listening to a podcast or maybe watching a documentary or maybe reading a new book so you just need to turn that dial and you need to start improving your inputs and same goes with the people you invest your time with you know I know I don't remember who said it originally I think it was one of the guys on the Mount Rushmore of the personal development space you know Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy and Jim Rohn but one of them said something about you know you are the equivalent of the five people you spend the most time with and you need to make sure that you're constantly recalibrating that list and constantly having high discernment with the people that you are choosing to spend time with and many times when you stagnate it's because the people you're spending and the things you're reading, watching and listening to have been stagnating as well and you're the one that controls being able to jump start either one of those so that's definitely taking control of those is a great first step I like the idea of changing environment I can't remember who it was someone asked on a Q&A a couple of months ago they were at university or something and they were feeling a little bit stagnant even though you're going through a university course you're progressing right there is a trajectory to that it's like dude just go and do a season abroad over your summer you know you're in the UK you can go to Spain or Greece or somewhere and go and work as a barmaid or a barman or something in some local bar you're going to meet an entire new group of people you're going to develop yourself into learning about a new culture there's going to be completely everything is going to change and I'm aware that it's not doable for everyone but I do think that a short trip to go somewhere else abroad to just eat some new food smell some new smells meet some new people understand different things about different cultures it changes your perspective and you're right it's such an obvious answer when you think about it like what is stagnation it's a lack of movement it's a lack of new stimulus so how do you fix that okay well just get some new stimulus the it's very difficult to no matter how ingrained your habits are for you to be picked up out of where you are deposited somewhere completely new with different people and different everything else and you somehow be able to completely recreate the existing life that you tried to leave behind in a completely new environment oh man so much power behind that and yeah our environment dictates so much of this and that's the first place you need to look to to shake things up I know part of it very in alignment with what you just shared you know is also stepping outside of your specific vocation industry so an example I always use you know as a professional keynote speaker I actually don't spend a ton of time studying other keynote speakers I do that a portion of my professional development but I actually spend a ton of time studying two different art forms based on spoken word one is hip-hop and the other is stand-up comedy those are two areas that I try to study religiously to learn new ways to communicate more effectively through spoken word to challenge me in my physicality or my staging in my you know boxing the way that I emphasize different points you know both are usually genres that are brilliant at telling stories and I want to be a really good storyteller when I'm on stage so I try and study those things outside of my specific domain and then something else I do personally and this is more from a physical fitness standpoint is I always try and have something on my calendar to be training for you know I'm 46 years old I don't play sports competitively anymore you know I'm a weekend warrior so you know it can get easy to fall into stagnation of just kind of going to the gym three or four times a week following a mundane workout so for me I like to have something 6 to 8 to 10 weeks out that I'm training for specifically a Spartan race was something I did a couple of months ago the next thing I have in my calendar I'm actually doing a Navy Seal experience it's a 36 hour experience where you're kind of put through the ringers a civilian version of what Navy Seals go through I would never in a million years believe that I'm going through what they go through and then I actually have an ultra marathon scheduled for the end of the summer so for me I like the variety of training for different things because then I have to prepare differently I will prepare differently for this Navy Seal experience then I will for an ultra marathon at the end of the summer and I like being able to shift those things and once again I'm not saying that's going to work for everybody but that's something that I've used that I you know really embrace that keeps me from getting stagnant just in my physical fitness well yeah you've got a consistent cycle externally that's always sort of tumbling something through the strange thing is that taking control of a situation and knowing that you can direct your life is one of the first things that gets forgotten during a stagnation period you're very much sort of at the mercy of whatever occurs in front of you you're always very reactionary you're not leaning into discomfort you're not taking the first step and I had this conversation with a guy who's just written a great book on anxiety yesterday how both of these things spiral down and spiral up the same way when everything's going well you begin to get more resilient you lean into more discomfort which gets you more positivity and more confidence and more good feedback and the reverse happens as well when you feel like you're getting blasted around by life and what I'm fascinated by is the ability for people to step in and pattern interrupt that downward spiral like that for me is where so many people get caught and obviously the sooner that you can do that the easier it's going to be the longer that you instantiate a habit the harder it is to break that the longer that you've had a mindset or a routine you know there's people who are in three year long downward spirals where they've kind of always just been at the mercy of something and it's no longer that this is a downward spiral this is their nature this is who they are in their because it's been our memories are really really short you know you do something you take up a new sport you start doing crossfit for three months you can't remember what it was like to not do crossfit you are crossfit right you and crossfit have become one in this single being and the same thing happens in both ways so I think one of the important things that I try to remember especially during stagnation periods is look the quicker that I can try and pattern interrupt this the quicker that I can give myself some new stimulus to make myself feel a little bit excited to get myself something that I can focus on to try and be positive to get back into leaning into discomfort all of those things seem to really benefit me and they always seem to sort of get me back on that upward spiral particularly that's so so true and you know as we were talking about kind of extreme ownership and always holding the mirror up to yourself first at the same time I want to recommend that folks insulate themselves with people that can help you see some blind spots and can help tell you when you start to stagnate because one of the tricky parts about stagnation is it's not as over dramatic as hitting rock bottom you know most people when they hit rock bottom basically propel them into making some type of massive life change but stagnation is just kind of this this numb feeling it's this mental cruise control it's just treading water and often I know it's been the case in my life I was one of the last to realize I was stagnating it took other people in my life that cared enough about me to tap me on the shoulder and try and push me a little bit further you know get me to stretch I need to break out of that and turn the downward cycle and spiral into an upward one so as much as I believe in self reliance and extreme ownership I also don't want folks to think that you need to go through life in isolation and that it's all on your own shoulders you know we are communal creatures we need to surround ourselves with people that can help us see these blind spots and that starts with a humility of an acknowledgement that we all have blind spots and we can't see them hence the reason they're called blind spots but other people can from their vantage point and they can bring a blind spot into our consciousness or our awareness and for that we should we should welcome and encourage that so I know there have been a few times in the past decade that I've put on the mental cruise control and hit stagnation and each time I was kind of the last to realize it took someone else to bring it to my attention and because I welcomed their feedback and was caring enough to tell me then I was able to quickly have the pattern interrupt love that phrase and reverse that cycle to move it upwards Talking about hitting rock bottom and stuff like that you say that burnout is the long term effect of misalignment what do you mean? So many people think burnout just comes from working long hours or making sacrifices and that's not the case we talked about at the very start of this conversation and made a meant sacrifice unparalleled sacrifice and he certainly wasn't burnt out on the game of basketball I mean the man was at the top of the mountain for close to 20 years it comes from a misalignment when the work you're putting in the hours you're logging and the sacrifices you're making are no longer in alignment with your interests with your core values with where you're fascinated with feeling like you're making a meaningful contribution so if you're just putting in the work but you're not getting any fulfillment from the work that's when burnout is inevitable because we all know folks and I'm sure you and I are two of them that can love the work that we're doing so much we don't mind putting in long hours and making certain sacrifices because it's in harmony with where we're trying to go and who we're trying to become and that's the most important part so when someone starts to experience burnout that's where they need to look and it's not just about cutting back on hours it's making sure that the hours you're putting in are meaningful they're purposeful they're in alignment with who you're trying to become they're in alignment with your core values they happen to be doing things that you're fascinated by and interested in that was one of the reasons that I left the basketball training space five years ago was that was no longer filling my bucket and lighting me up helping players run faster and jump higher for 15 years but it was no longer as meaningful to me so I had to switch to something where I was fascinated and curious and I found more meaning and that was why I shifted to keynote speaking and writing so we can avoid burnout if we're willing to keep our eyes up and open and pay attention to those two different domains I do think as well with burnout no matter how passionate you are no matter how fulfilled you are no matter how much you put your foot on the accelerator is something that's really important because you need to protect your passion and you need to do that by making sure that the thing that you love doesn't get turned into a labour very easy to do this I see friends do this a lot of the time so a friend will have a huge interest in fitness they've always loved going to the gym they decide to become a PT they decide to become an online coach then they decide to coach online coaches in the fitness world but now they're answering 200 emails a day they're running a business with a sales team of 15 people they're trying to organise this huge business they're still in the fitness industry but they've monetised their passion so much that they've no longer protected it they're miles away from doing the thing that they actually used to love which was fitness they don't do fitness anymore they're 4 degrees removed from the closest person that's actually doing fitness and because they've monetised it they've got a consistent convey about so that's something I think as well that you need to be very cautious with when it comes to burnout there's not a lot of things that you get offered on a plate that is your passion right here is a thing that the universe has just delivered you that you've also stumbled on that you're also able to do and yet you can destroy you can erode that passion one arduous day at a time by forcing yourself by turning it from a get to to a have to you are just going to erode your desire to do that thing so that's something that I think when it comes to burnout if you want to play that infinite game if you want to be able to think how do I sustain my motivation and my enthusiasm for this pursuit for the next 15 years don't throw everything that you've got at it right now know that you need to take a break even if it's going to mean a sacrifice of revenue it's going to mean a sacrifice in terms of growth of whatever it is the project that you're doing pull back off it a little bit I think that's an important lesson that I don't hear very much for sure in fact the single best advice I ever got as a young person was find what it is you love find what it is you're naturally pretty good at and then find where those two things intersect and where those two things intersect that is your strength zone and the more time you can invest in your strength zone you'll perform and the more fulfilled you'll be now keep in mind as we get older we will develop new passions and we will improve skill sets so that point of intersection is not going to stay static it's going to change but yeah in the example you just gave which was so insightful and so perfect that person started to move that point of intersection unconsciously away from what they loved and what they were good at it was no longer even in the same ballpark they're now basically managing other PTs and trainers and spending all of their time on email when that's not what they love and that's not what they're good at so we have to take control of that and also to circle back to much earlier in the conversation when you talked about that book about running our lives the way athletes do athletes understand that proper rest and recovery is not a nice to have non-negotiable after a really hard strength workout you have to have a period of time where you let your body recover and you get good sleep and you eat healthy foods and then your body will build itself back stronger you can't go in the gym and lift a maximum amount of weight every single day for you'll burn yourself out and in this case you'll injure yourself when you look at professional athletes like NBA players they have a distinct off season you know where they can actually change the way they approach life and training which is different from the end season or the pre-season so it's important that we do the same thing I love your analogy about putting the foot on the gas you can't have it on the gas at all times even elite level IndyCar drivers or NASCAR drivers don't have their foot on the gas the entire time they have to be willing to take their foot off the gas or hit the brake a little bit when they're going around turns or they're trying to maneuver around someone your analogy that jumps out with that foot on the gas concept is you know regardless of someone's fitness level I just want you to think how fast you're capable of running a 100 meter dash and then also think about how fast you're capable of running a marathon two distinctly different different distances obviously you cannot run a marathon at the same pace that you run the 100 meter dash it's not sustainable so we have to be willing to sprint intermittently when times need it you know you might have a work project or finishing a deadline for a client or finishing up a book or a manuscript where you have to put the foot on the gas to drive through that finish line but then you need to balance that with times of rest and recovery and then take more of the marathon approach and learning how to toggle in and out of those different mediums is how you'll sustain performance and fulfillment Did you say that you'd work with Steph Curry? I did, yeah I met Steph Curry back in 2007 I was working the Kobe Bryant Skills Academy and Steph was actually a college counselor at the time and this was the year before he blew up on the national scene so this was a year before anyone even knew who he was or anyone had even heard of Davidson that was the first time I met him and I knew there was something really impressive about him then and then I had a chance to work with him again when he decided to enter the MBA draft the agent he signed with was a DC area agent and brought Steph here for about 8 weeks leading up to the draft and I got a chance to train him every day leading up to that so yeah it was a really really cool experience and then I had a chance to work Chris Paul's camp a few years and Steph would come because him and Chris are really good friends so I got a chance to be around him then as well so he's one of my all time favorite people I don't know that I find a more humble superstar than you can with Steph Curry what's he like, what's unique about him one he has an immense sense of gratitude like he is incredibly appreciative of the opportunities that he's been afforded he's a family man incredibly gracious with his brother and sister as well as his parents as well as his wife and children he has an immense respect for the game of basketball he respects the players that came here for him and understand that they laid a foundation that allows him to play this game at a high level but he's also incredibly confident for those of your listeners that really follow the NBA Steph Curry has literally changed the game he has changed the way NBA defenses are played, he's changed the way teams utilize the three pointer in one season Steph and Curry made more threes than Larry Bird made in his entire career which just shows the evolution of the game and that's not a detriment to Larry Bird, he's one of the best of all time but the three pointer was kind of an afterthought in the 80s and early 90s and now it's arguably the number one shot teams look for and a good portion of that is because of Steph and his commitment to his craft and I don't think the average person understands the time, energy effort and focus that he puts in during the unseen hours you know, I don't know when this is going to actually air but if the NBA playoffs are still going on and the Golden State Warriors are still alive and you happen to turn on the game and at the end of it you see Steph had 60 points and made 12 three pointers most people would be so blown away by that but if they knew how much work he put in and empty gyms when no one else was around you'd be less surprised I mean it's still an incredible feat but when you know how many times that young man has gone in the gym to make shots he expects to go out and make 12 threes he expects to go out and drop 60 points because he's put in the work to earn the right to be able to do that he doesn't leave anything to chance doesn't leave anything to happen stance or accident he puts in the work to deserve that success and one other thing that makes him incredibly unique and is why he will go down in history as the greatest shooter the game has ever seen is his ability to be in the present moment and wipe the slate clean it does not happen very often because he's so good but Steph could miss the first seven shots he takes in a game and he will shoot that eight shot with the same confidence as if he had made the previous seven he doesn't bring baggage from the past and he doesn't miss from the past affect the present he takes every single shot as if it's its own shot that joker could miss 30 shots in a row and with two seconds left in the game tied he will still be begging for the ball because he believes the next shot is always going in and that is a really really difficult mindset to master but he's about as good as anyone I've ever seen Alan Stein Junior ladies and gentlemen if people want to check out the stuff that you do online why should they go they can go to alansteinjunior.com I also have a supplemental site strongerteam.com I'm very active on social media on all the major platforms at Alan Stein Junior and if they're interested in either one of my books you can search for raise your game or sustain your game on Amazon or Audible or wherever you get books and I'd love to keep the conversation going so if you like something that we chatted about today just shoot me a dm on Instagram and would love to keep this rolling Alan I appreciate you cheers man thank you