This is a transcript excerpt from a YouTube conversation (Brian Johnson interviewing Tom Sterner) about how interpretation creates experience. Sterner argues that many feelings of "not being good enough" arise from shifting internal thresholds rather than actual lack of progress — illustrated by a former corporate-worker-turned-graphic-artist, a beginner piano student, and a young golfer. He emphasizes that struggle signals being at a skill threshold (an opportunity to execute practiced skills) and that judging performance (attachment to outcome) blocks learning. Sterner also applies the observer stance to emotional situations (e.g., caring for his dying mother), recommending having a clear handling intention (a target) so observation becomes purposeful rather than reactive.
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I think that what would be helpful is to understand the concept of interpretation creates experience, because what you're describing there is a judgment of how you handled the situation. So in other words, you're thinking, well, I've been meditating all this time, and. And I should be better at this. This is the thing that, you know, it's kind of crazy. I had one time I had a woman, I've told this story many times, who had a corporate job, and she left the corporate job and wanted to be a graphic artist. And so she set up this coaching session with me, and on the first thing I asked her was, what was she struggling with? And she said, well, I've been doing graphic arts now for. I've been studying it for six months, and I'm not as good as I should be. And so I asked her what I thought was a pretty straightforward question. I said, okay, well, how good should you be? And it was just silence. And she said, you know, I don't know. I said, well, if you don't know how good you should be, how do you know you're not better than you should be? And she said, yeah, I don't know that either. And I said, well, if you could do what you can do now, six months ago at that time, would you have thought you were good? And she said, yeah, I would. And I said, so it's not that you're not getting better. It's that your perception of what good is is changing. And so the reason I bring that up is because what you just described is, well, I've been meditating for 10 years. I should be able to do this at this level. And that is creating this interpretation of your response. In that situation. You're having this judgment of, how good am I? How good should I be? I should be farther along in the skill thing, when actually you may be way better than you were 10 years ago, but your. Your threshold has changed. And this is what I tell people. Like, if you look at someone taking a piano lesson who's never had music before, they go to their first lesson, and on the first lesson, the teacher says, okay, here's the note on the page on. It's on the ledger line here, and here it is on the keyboard. And this is the finger that you press it with at that moment in time, that person is at their threshold. They are up against. That's as good as they can perform at that level. Now that's what it feels like inside. I'm at my threshold. This is as good as I can perform at this level now, you've revisit that person five years down the road. Now they're playing, say a Schubert or a Beethoven piece. But they're at their threshold. They're not. They don't have to put figuring out where the note is and where the. That's way back there. But what do they feel inside? What's the emotion they feel inside? The emotion is, I'm not getting any better because I still have this feeling inside. I should be past this feeling. No, you're just up against your threshold. So we're always in skill development. I think this is really a really important concept. We're always up against as good as we are. If we, if it was, if we didn't feel struggle, it would mean we'd already mastered it. That's the reason why we feel struggle. We're in that place where we're getting better. And so what I would say to you is, when you look at that, when you have those moments, the way that you have to interpret that is, this is great. I'm up against my threshold. This is my opportunity to execute what I have decided I'm going to do. When I have this feeling inside, this feeling that's making me feel like I'm not as good as this as I should be. Now you have the opportunity to work on that. You don't have that opportunity when you're not having that feeling. And this is what you always get into. Like the story I told in Fully Engaged, where the young golfer hired me to work with her for a year, you know, so that she could be competitive in this very high level tournament. And she was an excellent player. And I was asked to caddy for her, which normally didn't, wasn't allowed. And out on the golf course, she was just playing terrible. And she had all these dreams and pictures of the trophy on she would look at every morning. And you know, she had all these ideas, positive thinking of how she was going to play so well in this tournament because it was a stepping stone to an invitation to play in a professional tournament. And because she was so attached to playing well, she surrendered all of the natural talent that she had already developed. And so she was playing terrible. And initially I didn't want to, I didn't want to say anything because I thought, well, look, this is what you paid me for a year to tell you how to deal with this. And I don't. I want to let you deal with it. And. And by about the fourth hole, she was so far out of the tournament that I thought, well, you know, now she's just suffering. So I. I just asked her a simple question. I said, why did you ask me to work with you? And she said, I asked you to help me learn how to deal with this situation. I said, which is what? And she said, when my dreams are broken, the wheels are coming off. I'm leaking oil. I can't do anything right. I feel terrible inside. And I said, okay, so how do you think you do that? She said, I don't know. I've tried everything. I know it's not working. I said, no, you're missing my point. You have to be in this position. I said, if you want to learn how to play in the rain, it's got to be raining, doesn't it? I said, if you want to learn how to push through your threshold, you got to be up against the threshold. That's when you have the opportunity to execute what you've worked for. And I said, so you're there. I mean, you really stink right now, and you're way below your playing ability, so see what you can do. Just let go of the tournament. I said, you're so attached to winning this tournament. That's over with. Just learn. Just look at this and say, hey, man, this is. This is what I've been waiting for. I've wanted to. This is going to. How you. If you figured this out, you'll take it with you the rest of your life on every. Every area of your life. So you have this tremendous opportunity. So let the tournament go. It's not going to determine whether you get a pro, a scholarship, or you end up as a pro. This is just what you've been waiting for. And so I think that in the thing, if I was working with you, the very first thing I would have said was, I detect that you're judging your performance in that situation. And that's the first thing we got to work on. Because as your performance level grows, your ability to take on tougher situations will arise and you will feel the same as you do when you're way back here. And you need to recognize that you're not looking at the wake behind the boat. I think is what I'm trying to say. Does that make sense?
Yeah, I think that makes absolute sense. And I know you write about this, too, around having kind of a goal or an outcome focus versus being focused on actually the process of getting there. And when I'm in that moment potentially feeling like, oh, I missed it, or there's a judgment about, I'm looking Back, oh, man. It took me this amount of time to show up and invest. That judgment comes in. That judgment is the thing to first look at and get rid of and recognize that when I'm in those moments of struggle, it's because I'm up against my threshold. And that practice of being up against the threshold and enjoying that and focusing on, wow, I love this process of the threshold because this is exactly where I want to be. If those things I'm excited about never actually getting to because we can't in the future. But focusing on this moment, loving that process of being against the threshold. And then I suppose coming back to that observer around, oh, wow, I'm having a judge. A judgment is essentially emotional, which is unconscious. It's not me kind of at my best. If I were at my best or thinking about it, I'm getting caught in that situation. So to remove the attachment to it's got to be this way and just get back into the process, into the practice.
Yes. And you can use this with absolutely everything. And when I say everything, I'm talking about, you know, my mother passed on 20 years ago from cancer. And because this is what I talk about all day long, you know, I found myself, you know, as I watched her going through the process of dying and spending time with her, there was a lot of emotional stuff there. And I was able to say to my. To notice that. And I asked myself this question if. If I could handle. Because I'm observing these thoughts now, I have the opportunity to explore this instead of just being in the emot of the moment. I asked myself if I could handle this any way I want. Do I know what that is? Because if I don't know what it is, I'm an archer who doesn't have a target. I'm just drawing the bow and letting the arrow go. But I. And if you have a target, you'll find that that will really go a long way to pull you into the present moment when the emotional content is trying to pull you in to the emotional content. When, you know, this is how I want to handle this situation.
Hi, this is Michael, the head coach at Optymyze. And I hope that you enjoyed that wisdom from one of our brilliant luminary guest faculty members. For more on Optimize Coach, head to www.Optimize.me coach. It is time. Let's master ourselves, serve heroically, and empower others to do the same. Closing the gap between who are capable of being and who are actually being more and more consistently expressing the best versions of ourself. That is how we change the world, one person at a time, together. Starting with you and with us today. And that, of course, is what Optimize Coach is all about. Head to this site for more information and to join us. Class three starts soon.
