Greg Harden, Michigan's legendary performance coach, taught 400 future pros and 120 Olympians a "short memory" strategy: feel bad for one-tenth of a second, extract the lesson, rehearse self-affirming statements like "I'm capable, qualified and competent," then move on. Tom Brady and Michael Phelps used it.
Questions this episode answers
1/10 of a second.
About 400 future professional athletes.
50 NFL first-round draft picks.
120 Olympians from over 20 countries.
Over 30 years.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. Not too long ago I asked you, what's your recovery time? As you may recall, we talked about my AM protocol ritual of reading the notes from my prior one on one session with Phil Stutts in between our weekly connections. Now in that recent set of notes, I reflected on the discussion Phil and I had about how important it is to quickly recover when when you get knocked off center. In that +1 I connected Phil's wisdom on collecting turnarounds to Marcus Aurelius Equanimity game and Morihe Uceba's ability to find his center so quickly his students thought he never lost his balance. Today I want to chat about another one of the world's greatest peak performance coaches who challenges us to move so fast through our whining, complaining cycle that we make those guys look like they're standing still. Let's get straight to work. The guy I want to talk about today is Greg Harden. Greg Harden is one of the world's greatest peak performance coaches. He tells us that champions aren't born, they're built. He spent over 30 years building champions at the University of Michigan where he worked with 400 future professional athletes, 50 NFL first round draft picks and 120 Olympians from over 20 countries centuries. He gained national recognition when 60 Minute Sports profiled him as Michigan's secret weapon. Now to put it in perspective, Harden has worked with seven time super bowl champion Tom Brady who wrote the foreword to the book, and 23 time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps, two of the greatest athletes of all time. In his great book Stay Sane in an Insane World, he talks about some of the ideas he used to forge change champions. Today we're going to talk about his take on immediately alchemizing challenges. He tells us, and I quote Greg Harden, so now it's all about your beliefs. It's all about how you treat yourself, how you talk to yourself, what you believe about yourself. I'm not talking about becoming a robot. When you fail, it hurts. It really does. And it should. You should let yourself feel that. I just gave up a home run and I'm not happy. I going to acknowledge that this thing happened, then I'm going to give myself permission to feel crap about it for 1/10 of a second. Hit the start button on the stopwatch, feel like crap, then hit the stop button 1/10 of a second. Now get back to work. If there's something to learn from the mistake you just made, learn it. Make the adjustment. Hear the words in your head that reinforce your commitment you to give in your best effort. I'm capable, qualified and competent. Then move on. It's one trait so many of the great athletes I've ever known have in common. A short memory. My shot doesn't go in. I drop the ball. I miss the wide open net. I give myself 1/10 of a second to feel bad. And then I keep playing. That's from chapter number 22 the value of a Short Memory so many things come to mind when I read this. First, there's Sean Casey and his call to his mental toughness coach the great Harvey Dorfman. See the plus one on go over 12 lately linked in this plus one and the notes on coaching the mental game for more Sean was struggling. He called Dorfman. All Dorfman cared about was whether or not Sean was working his protocol. Then there's another mental toughness coach Jason Silk. He's more generous than Greg and gives his peak performers 60 seconds to whine before they shift to a relentless solution. Focus. Then there's Tom Brady. I can vividly remember watching one of the seven Super Bowls he won forever ago. He threw an interception in the red zone. As I recall the very next drive. He was in the very same position and ran the very same play. Touchdown. He seemed to run that play out of spite to to the heroic gods for disrupting his plans in the prior attempt. Great performer, terrible short term memory. Complete amnesia for failures after the lesson had been learned. How about you? You got anything you need to alchemize and let go of? If you feel so inspired, practice some targeted thinking. Radically accept whatever is happening, get clear on what you want, decide what you need to do right now to get a step closer to getting it and dominate that next win. Repeat forever. Starting now.
