Stop Self-Sabotaging: How to Get Out of Your Own Way

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I want to start today's episode with a story.

Steve, you in particular are going to like this story because we have to go back to fourth

grade clay at the Cider Mill Elementary School Turkey track.

In third grade, the year before I'm proud to say I came in third place, got a ribbon, got

my name announced on the loudspeaker in the school, which is great.

I got a little taste of a external public validation, which was wonderful for me and

terrible for my psyche.

So grade four, I'm lining up for the Turkey track, and I'm getting ready to repeat.

I want to get a bronze, or maybe a silver, maybe even a gold.

My nerves are absolutely through the roof.

I'm a wreck, but I tell myself, you know what?

Just get out there and run as hard as you can.

What happens?

I charge off the starting line.

I blast into the lead, I'm crushing everybody, and then after about 400 meters, I have

to pull off to the side and start puking up that morning's lucky charms because I was

so nervous, and I went way too hard.

What is the lesson from this story, Steve, would you like to guess?

Clay sucks at pacing and pressure, and it still haunts, haunts them to this day.

Fourth grade clay set clay up for life.

No, the lesson is don't eat too many lucky charms right before your race.

Certainly, that is one of the takeaways.

But for our audience, the lesson here is that I, on that day, learned a lesson, I'm still

learning all the time, that I can't get in my own way.

I cared so much about repeating that I got nervous, I got anxious, I let it completely

impede my performance, and it showed it led to me puking.

I did not get a ribbon.

I did not get my name called over the loudspeaker.

I didn't even finish the race.

So today, we're going to talk about this problem of getting out of your own way.

It's important for fourth grade.

Here's running a turkey trot.

It's important for people in the Olympics, but it's also important for anyone who is

trying to navigate an important creative project or a hard conversation or just make it

through something they care about.

So at its heart, it's really a question about how do we bring enough of our conscientious

selves to the things we care about most to perform well, but not so much that our

caring gets in the way our sabotages ourselves.

This is Exxonc actually.

I'm Clay Skipper joined as always by Steve Magnus and Brad Stahlberg.

So let's start by talking about what actually happens on a psychological level when we

get in our own way.

In your great book, Wave Excellence, New York Times Vest Seller, USAIDVest Seller, Brad,

you talked about how important the book, the inner game of tennis was to you.

And there's a framework in there that I think will be helpful for understanding why we

get in our own way.

So can you help explain what that framework is?

Sure.

So Tim Goway in the inner game of tennis separates what he calls self one in self two.

If one is the teller, it's the thinking self, the conscious self, the critical instructing

mind.

It's the voice that says, bend your knees a little bit more or you're only up two games

to one and he's about to break your serve or don't miss this shot or you're playing

way too hard or you're not playing hard enough.

It is constantly narrating your experience and it's doing this because it wants to help

you.

But oftentimes it is the precise thing that interferes with you performing your best.

Because what Goway calls self two is the doer.

And this is the innate knowing, the nervous system, the accumulated learning from practice

and repetitions that the body holds in the body generally can actually just do the thing.

And we are at our best when we perform when self one in self two are working in concert.

When the thinking narrating mind is putting a check on the nervous system, but it's not

overpowering it and the body is left to its own devices to do its thing, right?

Literally, self one doesn't get in the way.

However, what's so often happens is we get caught up in our own head, we overthink things,

we listen to that critical mind too much and that is one of the main ways that we get

in our own way.

Now a lot of people misunderstand this, Clay, and they think that it is as simple as

like, how do we turn off self one?

But as Steve has talked about extensively on this podcast, most performances aren't

flow states.

Like it's not just as easy as, oh, turn off the thinking mind and let the doing mind

go to work.

Because in your case, actually, the thinking mind got in your own way, but if the thinking

mind would have said, Clay, you're pacing way too hard, slow down.

Maybe it would have helped you not puke and perform your best.

So getting in your own way is not about turning off thinking, it is about turning off over

thinking.

There's a big difference between those two things.

It's also because self one does a lot of the important work to get you to the performance

right?

And we'll get into this a little bit more, but it's like the thing that makes you great

at discipline, at taking feedback, at learning, at being self-aware, at all these things

that in the lead up in the training are important, that's a lot of that is self one.

It's sort of this ego and this self-driven mind that is that is constantly thinking.

And so then to be able to just be like, I turn that off, you can't really do that.

And you wouldn't want to do it because it wouldn't help you in the preparations.

I was just going to say, I mean, that's exactly what the research tells us.

And contrary to what might work in like the growth science or Instagram world, where

we like nice neat answers, the answer is always in the messy middle.

And what Galway got right and where he was kind of decades ahead of the psychology is

that the self one, self two, he's describing, it's kind of what happens in the brain, except

what we know is that stress and pressure kind of corrupt the message.

And what I mean by that is like the thinking brain, we need that.

It is giving us the kind of prediction of what will happen next.

At the same time, if we're thinking, thinking, thinking, and overthinking and thinking

about every step or every moment, like we go off the rails.

And that's exactly what neuroscience tells us to simplify.

Generally, as pressure or stress increase are thinking part of the brain, our prefrontal

cortex starts to go offline a little bit.

It gets a little bit like corrupted where our emotional amygdala threat detecting parts

of the brain kind of take over and say, Hey, this kind of sucks.

I could die out here with my Cheerios and my stomach, like make us stop.

So we have this kind of like tug of war battle going on.

And when there's no pressure, when it's just practice, it's really hard to kind of overthink

it and get in our way.

But as that pressure goes up, it like gets, it causes us to get in the way.

In fact, there was a recent neuroscience paper that looked at brain scans, fMRI studies,

and they found that the actual like motor program, the pattern of doing the thing, as pressure

goes up, that gets like corrupted and disorganized.

So it almost becomes like we revert to fourth grade clay who doesn't know what they're doing

because they don't have the level of expertise.

So all of that being said, kind of where we end up at is like we have this balance point

depending on the task, depending on the pressure that is there, where we've got to find

the sweet spot of how do I think enough so that I'm prepared, but get out of the way

and let go enough so that I'm not overthinking, over trying, forcing it and allowing me to

like run that pattern, that program that I've practiced for so many freaking tons.

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I think before we even get to that, it's worth acknowledging one other form of getting

in your own way that we've talked about before, but maybe doesn't get acknowledged

quite as regularly in this conversation, which is it's almost the self sabotage that happens

before you even get to the performance where you're trying to navigate self one and self

two, which is when people either don't try something because they're just too scared

of the difficulty of of doing the thing because of that is idea of how it might go in their

mind, the sort of perfect ideal of how this creative project could go or how this marathon

race could go or how this competition could go. And then to actually get into the messy

nitty gritty of doing the work, you necessarily have to realize that that ideal version you

had in your mind is going to be nothing like the sort of muddy disorganized reality of

actually doing the thing or it's the person who doesn't actually get in the arena because

they're sort of scared of the vulnerability of failure and saying, well, if I actually

try for this thing, if I actually try to write the book or if I actually try to go for

a fast mile time, I might learn that I'm not capable of it. And those are two forms

of self sabotage and ways of getting in your way that are almost upstream of even getting

into the arena and doing the performance. And I feel like those are those are worth

addressing too because it's something I know you guys have talked about and written about

this idea of like the guy into school who pretends like he doesn't care. He's actually

protecting himself because he's too nervous to actually to try to give a damn.

The way I like to think of it from both before and after the thing is your brain is protective.

It's always going to err on the side of let's keep Steve or Clay or Brad out of danger

out of that threat. So during like we talked about, your brain's trying to convince you

like throw in the towel, slow down, don't do this thing. Why? Because it's trying to prevent

you from damage or going somewhere that might make you lose and not look good.

But for it does the same thing only it realizes like, Hey, we can prevent this Joker from

even stepping into the arena or we can protect his sense of self by like just self sabotaging.

Our brain does this because it doesn't like feeling like, Hey, we've gone into it. We've

laid all our chips on the table. Let's see what we can do. That's really freaking scary.

And that's often like that, that fear that comes with it is often what prevents most people

from doing it. Like the hardest thing that you can do is step into the arena knowing

that you've done everything that you could and realizing that if you fall short, it's just

because on that day you weren't good enough. That is like an existential crisis to our brain.

So protective self comes in and like tries to self sabotage so that we don't have to

deal with that existential crisis. I think there's a third way that we self sabotage

too. And I don't know if it is protective or if it's just born out of two high anxiety

levels or some combination of the two and perhaps it's different in different people.

But it's really common, which is the day before your marathon instead of carb loading,

you don't need it all where you do the opposite. You eat so much that you make yourself sick

or the day before your book launch when you've got all these newsletters prime that you're

supposed to write, you get so in your head, you're just like, fuck it. Like I'm just not going

to do this stuff that I know I need to do to execute. And then you feel like crap, you're

like, oh, well, now I feel like crap. So I probably won't perform my best. That is so common.

I find that like the day before the big event, people just make stupid decisions.

And I think that I know it's a combination of two things. It's anxiety because when you're

anxious, you don't make the best decisions. Or I think there is an element of like, man, like if

I execute everything perfectly today, tomorrow could still go to crap. And then if it does,

I have no excuse. So I think there's like the way upstream. You don't even really step into

the arena. There's the midstream, which is you step into the arena, but you don't try your hardest.

And then there you have tried your hardest. You've done everything right. But in the 24 hours before

showtime, you fall apart because you're just too anxious and or you're too scared of failure.

You can't keep it together. I think that's right. It feels to me like it's just anxiety management

all the way down. Like you're just constantly, because what happens? I feel like when you get

at least when I experience anxiety, right, it's like this inner chaos. And so what happens is I try

to regulate that internal chaos of feelings by recreating some external order by trying to control

how much and then that is exactly the great way to put it. And that's me going back to self one

versus self two because self one is that sort of controlling trying to exert or very sort of

neurotic spreadsheet brain in part two. Just all right. We're going to see what happens.

When you say that clay, I think that you're spot on about like anxiety is just self one. And it makes

me wonder like I don't think then infant turning into a toddler would ever learn how to walk.

If they had a fully developed adult brain. Like I think part of the reason the kids are able to

learn how to walk is because their self one is so underdeveloped compared to their self two.

But they're just like, all right, fuck it. Like here we go. Try to walk, lay it on the line. I'm

going to fail. It's going to hurt. I'm going to fall. Whoa. But like they have that that self monitoring

brain isn't even turned on yet. And that's what allows them to take this enormous risk, which is

like literally falling forward over and over again. You know, there's actually some fascinating

research on this that shows everyone take a shot. Steve's got the fascinating research.

We kind of do have a primitive self monitoring in it. You know, in there is toddlers.

But it's a very kind one. And that kind one is mom or dad. What we tend to do is if we look

on the research on toddlers is they look to mom and dad for should I persist or should I give up.

And mom and dad are nice. We're not an audience that's going to heckle them. We're not going to

punish them if they keep falling during their attempts to walk or whatever it is. Like we're just

sitting there smiling or giving a hug whenever something goes really poorly. And what that does is

it allows them to persist. I think their work is done by Kelsey Lucas Lab. I think I'm getting

that right. Who's done some amazing stuff on toddler persistence. The problem is, as we grow

and develop, we learn that our audience isn't as kind and forgiving. And having an audience transforms

from something that is supportive where I can fail as many times as I want to something like, oh God,

I'm getting judged. And they might find out that I'm not as strong of a locker as I as I portray

to be. And that's where it becomes this like if that self one transforms into like a voice of

persistence into a voice of hesitation, like I'm not good enough, just throw in the towel or don't

even start. So I think in a lot of ways it's like that expanded development pushes us more towards

protective because our audience isn't kind and supportive anymore. I love this especially because

it gets me into one of the solutions I was going to propose for how to work with this over time,

how to get out of your own way. It requires a little bit of explanation, but it comes from a child

psychologist whose name is Donald Winnecott. Rad, you're probably familiar with this because he is a

huge feature in Mark Epstein's books, which we both love. But Winnecott has this idea of parenting

philosophy that I think can actually be used for performance because I think a lot of the

relationship we have to our own performance is often like a bad parent. We can be sort of punitive

and demanding and and not have a ton of tolerance for chaos. And Winnecott has this idea of like

talking about a parent who is good enough. And I think the the features that make a good enough

parent are great features to adopt to be a good enough parent to yourself when it comes performance.

And those three features are one, a good parent, a good enough parent accepts imperfection.

So about themselves, they know that as a parent, I'm not going to be perfect and I hold myself to

a standard of perfection. I'm inevitably going to fall short. I think we can do that for ourselves

in performance, right? We can want to be perfect. We can, you know, if we're a race car driver,

we can want to drive the perfect lap, but we can hold that we're probably not going to and we

can just keep trying to approach it over and over or we're trying to run the perfect race.

Two is you create the good enough parent creates a holding environment for big emotions. So a parent

can like handle their child's temper tantrums without trying to fix their emotions or

become overwhelmed by their emotions. Again, I think there's a great performance corollary.

When you're on a starting line and you're freaking out, you're kind of having a temper tantrum

and you need to be able to hold those those intense feelings for yourself during that during

that pre-race moment or during during the race, right? And then last, a good enough parent,

Winnecott says he gets their children like explore and play. So they have a tether to them.

They're watching them, but they're not being the helicopter parent of thing. Like don't do that.

Don't get on the slide. Don't get on the swings. They let them explore and play. And again,

in performance, I think that's a great way to approach performance, right? You get out and you say,

let's see what happens. We're just performance and curiosity. So I love that theory. It's funny

because I don't have kids. I'm sitting here talking about parenting. So I'd be curious to hear what

you guys think about that. But I've always thought that's an interesting like an interesting parenting

philosophy that maps quite well onto onto performance. I wholeheartedly agree. The the other

element of a good enough parent in how we relate to ourselves is they don't neglect their child.

So they're not going to let their child fail catastrophically in a way that could cause like

a repairable harm. But they're also willing to let their child fail and learn.

And I think that like that's the fourth component that I would layer on to your wonderful

framework is we have to respect ourselves enough not to put ourselves into situations where we're

going to like absolutely blow up our careers or reputations or just like make total fools out of

ourselves. But we also have to let ourselves fail so that we can learn and grow from those failures.

And I think that like that that's the name of the game. If you can do that over a career or over

a lifetime is like create a holding environment for you to explore and be curious.

Allow yourself to fail but protect yourself from catastrophe regulate your emotions and like

be kind to yourself and encourage yourself. I mean that that to me is like a mindset that opens

opens the door for self to take that take over but at least be the dominant force into attenuate

self one. I think all this is spot on and I agree. I think the hard part comes when the rubber

meets the road. In the abstract all this stuff sounds really good like oh let them fail a little

bit curiosity over this and that's all true. From a coaching standpoint the way I always viewed

it is like I had to be the investigator to figure out where the kinkin the pipe is for why this

person can't just let it go. And everybody has that kinkin the pipe. Everyone has that thing.

And you're essentially trying to do your best pseudo impersonation of Freud to understand okay where

did this come from right is this clays fourth grade turkey trot that just like put him in a hole

of like I never want to be embarrassed like this again and throw up those those Cheerios. Well you've

got to you've got to figure out a way out of that or often it's like the way I think of it is

I think your spot on clay on this is like those voices in there are head the way I tend to think

of it is those voices came from somewhere. It could have been a teacher it could have been a coach

it could have been a parent it could have been a friend a colleague someone put that voice in the

head that said I'm not good enough or I shouldn't try because I might show that I'm not good enough

or whatever have you those voices came from somewhere my job was kind of to figure out okay where

is this voice coming from. And then how do we like show an experience that like we don't have to

listen to that voice. So as a coach I would often say how do I create an environment that frees

this person up from that right if it's coming from a parent then I'll say okay great your parent

thinks you suck at x y and z who cares like let's create an environment where like your parent isn't

the judge and jury who what who are how are we going to define success away from your parent other

times you you create constraints you say okay great you're afraid of blowing up in the race because

you're going to look bad okay let's reframe the goal and say the whole goal is to blow up in the

race. So the first mile I want you to do your best compression of clay and just go for it and

if you suck at the end you suck but at least we figure out what like what it feels like to fall

instead of having all this energy left at the end you're looking for that thing that like

frees that person up to try and experience it without that fear or that protective mechanism

coming in and if you can give them create the space and environment that frees someone up to

actually try and go to the well then that's where the good stuff happens like that's where the

magic occurs and I think the magic doesn't occur until you go through the anxiety in the fear

in the system one like I know we go here but if we're going to apply like the most evidence-based

clinical psychology framework there is it is exposure in response prevention for the treatment

of obsessive thinking and anxiety and essentially what it says is that system one or self one is

constantly getting in the way with the generalized anxiety disorder or intrusive thoughts and it's

shrinking your life so forget about performance it's shrinking your life so what's the evidence-based

therapy you go towards the things that you fear that your mind is over narrating that your mind

is telling you not to do and at first you do it and it's terrifying and you're not going to perform

well but then over time you realize that actually there's no real threat there's no real danger

so that disconnect between your mind and your body it calms down and the anxiety dissipates

now exposure in response prevention therapy only works if it's held in a container of like

compassion and kindness that is often done by the therapist but also eventually the person

undergoing it has to learn how to have their own back and you know we'd love to look for patterns

across different domains I think this echoes what we talked about in a recent podcast on youth

sports and parenting where the research shows that you know even though we had a newsletter

recently this other is no best kind of parenting so I won't use best but the evidence-based way to

approach parenting is a authoritative in loving essentially so not authoritarian where you're just

bossing your kids around but authoritative meaning like you have to push your kids but that only

works if you do it in a container of like kids just knowing that they are loved for who they are

so I think at the core of all of this is like you've got to learn how to have your own back you have

to put yourself in systems or organizations or with mentors and coaches that have your own back

and then you have to realize that before you can get to that you know just let go and win and

and let self to take over you have to deal with the chattering self one and essentially prove to it

that it can sit there and chatter until you not to do it or that you're going to fuck up but

you're going to do it anyways and then eventually that voice just quits down because it's not

effective anymore it's not it's not it's not winning can I add one other wrinkle to this that I

think most of us never faced which is clay when he blew up in fourth grade sorry clay I'm just

going to belabor this point you did not have to have to go home and see what your classmates were

saying about you on Twitter or Instagram or TikTok and I think this adds a completely new problem

that we face where our externalized voices aren't even people that we know necessarily or they are

a meaner than we could ever imagine because we know this behind our backs on social media people say

the crazier things than to our face and it's not just like people commenting on social media it's

that all of our results are tracked if you're a you know eight year old track or baseball or basketball

star guess what you're going to go on and find your times ranked compared to someone else or you're

going to find the you eight you know Asheville all star team and see if you made the list or not

and I think this has added this extra layer that almost almost pushes everyone to use the

mental health angle almost pushes everyone towards this like self one that is hyperactive and

sees threats everywhere because the downside of if you lose this game isn't just that your teammates

will be upset and your mom and dad might do or say something stupid or their coach might berate you

it's now you're judged by what feels like at that age everyone in the world and I think that adds

a layer of pressure that is inhuman in something that we just weren't meant to deal with especially

early on in our you know arrives towards our pursuits I kind of think of the difference between

self one and self two is self one is very like making it happen and self two is in some ways like

letting it happen I think in tracks even if you run trying to make something happen your body

just tenses up and all that energy that goes into the attention works against your bio mechanics

that's why they say you know loose loose muscles a fast muscle I'm just curious how you think about

coaching people sort of to like let it happen versus trying to trying to make it happen so I

think there's a couple of different things here is first off I taught try to tell people like there's

a time to think in a time but just throw it out the window and when you're thinking you want to be

thinking about things that will aid your performance so if you're thinking about tactically wins the

time to make the move do I move now do I wait a little bit how are my competitors and my close

enough like to agree you're gonna have to have those thoughts in a race because you're racing the

thing you want them narrow and directed and connected to the outcome or the behavior after and then

at some point you just say like screw it let it go and just like turn your brain off and just race

like you stop thinking about splits you stop thinking about can I make it with this move you just

react right so often with athletes we have race plans and I'd be like look this is kind of where

you want to be to three quarters of the race this is about the place or position you want to be in

and then when you get with the quarter or third of the race left like just forget wherever you are

you're at you're at throw it out the window let's see what we can do the other race yeah you go

you go race and I think the other thing that works here is especially in those latter moments where

you're kind of letting it happen is you like you occupy the critic you give it something to do

and well well I didn't like this tactic I know many did it came from Paula Radcliffe the famed

marathon uh world record holder at some point as she was like in the depth of like this the hardest

part should be like I count to a hundred and the point to count to a hundred was she was like I'm

going to occupy my mind a little bit with the mind numbing things so that I can essentially let my

instincts take over and just like do what I'm going to do now is every gun buddy got to work with

like that no but like you give yourself something to think about or focus on that like occupies you

so often during a race I would tell athletes hey when it's race time I want you to look at the person

in front of you and like pick the freckle on the back of their neck or the chain that they're wearing

or what have you and I would just want you to stare at that thing and like stare at it and either go

get it or stare at it and be like I'm gonna hang on to this this thing I'm not letting this thing go

and the last thing that I'd I'd often tell people especially if you're starting to spiral

is you break it down into like a simple game because in racing but this often happens in life

is we start letting ourselves one think a lot more and take over because uncertainty is high

and it seems overwhelming so you simplify the game instead of thinking I'm in you know across

country race I'm in 50 its place like I'm not going to catch 49 people you narrow the race you say

hey there are three people ahead of me forget everybody else like I'm racing these three people

and you simplify it so again your critic you're in yourself doesn't have this overwhelming thing to

think about it says hey there's three people like let's focus on this and get out of the way and

start racing yeah I think of golfers often have a swing thought and that's just they give them one

thing to focus on when they're swinging because there are so many things you could think about

mechanically when you're golfing and once you start thinking about all those things

you're you're sort of an automatic wisdom body wisdom goes to crap and so what they say is you

know focus on one thing so that all these other things that are also happening can just happen

automatically and I think that's a great example of like giving it's almost like giving a pacifier

to self one to go back to parent the parenting metaphor it's like you have to give it something

to chew on or or to occupy it one other way that I think it's interesting that gets at this and

this ties into some research on choking in sport is that there's all sorts of cool research that

shows that our attention plays a role as well we've kind of talked about the self and thinking

and all this stuff but one of the most effective strategies when we're looking at performing a

task under high pressure situation it's what they call the quiet eye which basically means like

you have a last second fixation on a singular point so if you're kicking the field goal you literally

stare up into the you know between the field goal whatever's and you say I'm going to kick the

thing there and you stare at it for a second and then you tend to kick the thing there what research

shows us is if your eyes instead are like darting all all around like your nervous wreck your brain

isn't kind of essentially quiet itself to let the action take place instead it's going to worry about

every single step to get to that action so similar to you know our good friend Cal Newport who says

deep work what is deep work you're focused on one task at a time and your brain is signaling well

I'm focused on writing this book it must be important important enough to shut everything out

and often shut out self one the same thing applies to other things and I think in a world of

cell phones and social media and notifications of everything instead we're primed towards like

our eyes just scattering all the time can we quickly spend just a minute going through for the coaches

or teachers or parents or managers how to help someone else get out of their own way

because we've talked a lot about like how to get out of your own way and I think that when you're

coaching someone you have like the same barriers right there's self-doubt overthinking negative

self-talk rushing the process comparison to others in in then some addiction to perfectionism

I think that let's take these like one one at a time for self-doubt I think people need someone

else to believe in them often before they can believe in themselves so there's all sorts of

research that shows that perceived support from someone else lowers the threat response in

someone's brain and increases a willingness to like take productive risks so a really good coach

doesn't demean someone or cut them down or make them doubt themselves more a really good coach

actually says I believe in you and you're up to this bat because I know that you belong there

in while the actual athlete or performer is working up the self-belief much like the good enough

parent the coach acts as like the the buffer or the source of self-belief for that person

I think that for for overthinking a good coach like you just have to make clear to to your

athletes early and often that like thoughts are not destinies and the goal isn't to make certain

thoughts go away the goal is actually to to teach someone that those thoughts can be there and they

can still perform well I think we spend a whole lot of time helping people try to create an

environment where everything is clicking I think a really good way to practice is negative visualization

so you visualize everything's going wrong you actually get in your own way on purpose and practice

and then you go sink the pot or you go do the presentation when you're a nervous rack in practice

so that if that were to happen on game day or when you're public speaking it's not as hard

I think negative self talk the you know the goal of a coach here it kind of comes back to like

believing in someone is you've got to hold your people accountable but without being such a shitty

voice that they then internalize it so Steve's talked a length about this research that shows that

after a bad performance the coach that yells and cuts their players down that team performs

significantly worse than the next match versus the coach who says like yeah that sucked but I've got

your back and then the next day in film they go through everything and they break it down because

like when we're emotionally primed after a failure that voice whatever happens like that memory is

going to be ingrained in the last thing you want to do is a coach or a teacher is like beat someone

up when they're down because then that that becomes their own internal monologue in their own

internal voice in terms of rushing the process I think a good coach is their job is to help people

find a pace in a rhythm where they can sustain some kind of momentum and I think this is this is

really just about helping people break the big goal that causes anxiety down into small steps

and then and then helping them focus on the the small steps I think for comparison you've got to

remind the people that you work with that the best comparison point is to a prior version of yourself

and that if you want to compare yourself to other people they need to be people that you know

and that you respect you know because you need to know that they're not cheating you need to know

that they're actually being honest and they're not just presenting themselves in social media one

way but their life is a different way and then people you respect like why would you compare yourself

to the person who's crushing it who has a terrible life and you think is an asshole like you don't

want to be that person that's the wrong comparison point and then finally I think that with perfection

isn't it kind of comes back to that model of being good enough and just reminding people that like

the goal is not to be perfect the goal is like to give what you've got to give on that day over and

over again and then we'll learn we'll break things down we'll get better in film and practice

but when it's go time like you just show up and you give what you've got to get where my

mind goes on this is a million different places because I've done this so so freaking often

but one of my favorite examples is from history the well-known Roger Bannister first sub four-minute

mile he was he wanted to call off that race before even attempted it he didn't want to do it it

was windy the weather sucked it was in England he was like I just want to jog this thing we're not

going to do it and on the train ride up to the track he ran into his coach Fran Stample

and he's telling Fran's about how he wants to call it off and Fran looks some dead in the eye

and the first thing he says is you can run 356 for the mile now that was five seconds faster than

Bannister ever had and what does that do exactly what Brad said it says I believe in you so much so

that even if the wind slows you down by a couple seconds you can still make it and then what does

he do after that he I forget the exact quote what he essentially says think about the regrets

you'll have if you don't try pain is temporary it will hurt but think about the regret if you don't

try and then John Landy essentially what he's implying his competitor John Landy goes and tries

and maybe gets it before him so what does he do they're he free frames and he's saying the point

isn't like necessarily to do the thing it's if I don't give it a go and find out I'll always be

second guessing myself and I think that's what a good coach does often is instill belief and then

frame it frame the endeavor in such a way that frees them up to perform sometimes that's going to

be in a positive light sometimes it might be in a like a regret light as a as a coach what I

often would think about is I would start with like who is this athlete in front of me and like where

are those kinks in the pipes for their weak points or that negative voice coming from and like how

do I address that for some people it's going to be positivity telling them what they can do for

other people it's going to like be reframing them for another it's going to be like disrupting

meaning they're in the cycle of doubt and I need to say something that like totally throws them off

one of my favorite examples of this is I had a young lady who was just last race of her college

career coming off entry was just like freaking out and she was deeply religious and I knew this

about her so I asked her I said well do you believe in Jesus and she says yeah of course and I say

well have you ever seen Jesus and she's like no I'm like okay well have you seen yourself run

fast recently and she's like yeah I'm like well why do you believe in Jesus not yourself when you

have evidence of yourself and for her like that serves as a vital like reframe point it says like okay

I'm just disrupt this and it's going to free me up two other things I look out for as a coach

is do I need to slow them down or speed them up meaning like do I need to get them to have

patience to kind of like slow down to breathe to have a moment or do I need to get them to be

and we used to call it like kill state literally one of my runners who became an assistant coach

would yell K-I-L-L-L or or Kilo Indigo Lima Lima the military speak you know with 400

go and every guy in the team knew like okay it's time to go hunting and sometimes you need that

intensity with it so as a coach you're sitting there being like do we need to turn the volume up

or do we need to turn it down and the last point I think to piggyback Brad's on on comparison is

it's not just comparison to others or yourself sometimes to me like comparison to your prior

versions of yourself gets in the way like that was my problem I'd always look at four minute

Steve and be like well I can't live up to that one so stop so sometimes what you want as a

coach is is I look at it as your comparison point is tied to your definition of success how are

you going to define success and I kind of hinted at this earlier but it comes into failure is

sometimes you want to like define success in a weird way that allows them to like go for it

again a quick example on our college team one year we came up with the golden brick which was a

brick that they painted gold and whoever failed spectacularly got to sign the brick now the key

was failed spectacular didn't mean like I gave up admit you were so freaking aggressive that you

like went for it and there was literally nothing in the tank and it was hard to watch you finish

because like it was empty and there was nothing but that failure was rewarding so you try and

figure out how do I define success in a way for this person to get them to to take that rest that

maybe their protective brain doesn't want to doesn't want to give them damn that was awesome

just listening to you real all those off the only final note I would add is maybe a capstone

I think there's a world in which you could listen this podcast and be like okay if I just do

all the strategies that Stephen Brad talked about I can I can get out of self one and I would just

encourage you realize that it is another way in which self one is turning back on and so I would

just say like normalize failure because I think part of engaging self-two is just and we talked

about this a little bit with the podcast we did a little loop recently is just getting comfortable

with the idea not just the idea but the reality that you if you do this enough you put yourself

in the rear enough you perform enough in high stakes high pressure situations you are going to fail

you are going to get in your own way and that is fine because that is the one of the best ways

you learn about how to not get in your own way next listen listen here's what it comes down to

yeah everything you're in this podcast is great but don't try to optimize it like show up take big

goals surround yourself with good people don't have idiots in in your year that are telling you

you've got to do it this way you've got to do it that way like you got to also find your own way

like you have to you have to be authentically who you are to perform at your best listen to good

podcasts like this read the way of excellence read do hard things have good friends um in like

and just fucking let it rip out there like go give it a go and realize that it's going to suck

sometimes and if you think that like there's any free pass to to self to there's not like I am

pretty elite at what I do and I still spend more time in in self one than self two and that's not

because I'm a grifter that's because I'm the opposite of a grifter that's because I'm real like

it just like it is there's no such thing as perfection and I think something that this whole

space of performance gets wrong is we set up the goal is like have that perfect day self two takes

over urine flow when like real good performance professional performance is actually about being

able to show up and get the job done when you're not that way and over time over time to slightly

diminish self one so it doesn't go away but it's not as judgmental it's not as loud it's not as

constant and then when the magic happens you just ride those waves but if you're pushing yourself

by definition the magic's not going to happen very frequently because how do you learn and grow

like Steve said in practice and sometimes in performance you have to bring self one back on to get

better because if you are always in self two I would argue you're just way too comfortable like

you're not pushing yourself so it's always going to be a conversation between these two

selves and in trying to eliminate self one is is not what we're saying here we're just trying to

give you a vocabulary for what's going on some tools and then also to normalize the ongoing

back and forth between self one and self two which every elite performer faces the only performers

that spend all their time in self two are full of shit or they're doing a lot of psychedelics all

the time all right that is I was beautifully said in a great place to end I fear that we will not

be getting a general mills sponsorship anytime soon after coming out lucky charms and Cheerios but

other than that I think it was pretty pitch perfect thank you as always for listening thank you

Steve and Brad for the wonderful insights we'll back next week with another episode as always

take care of yourselves and be excellent to one another