Brian Johnson tells the story of MLB player Sean Casey going 0 for 12 in a great season. His mental coach Harvey Dorfman told him to stop chasing results and execute his protocol instead. When life gets hard, focus on who you are at your best and commit to the daily practices that actually work.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. One of my new dear friends is a guy named Sean Casey. Sean is a former major league baseball player. He was an all star who played first base. They called him the Mayor because he chatted up everyone who made it to first base. And he was such a nice guy that Sports Illustrated declared him the friendliest guy in baseball. Now, I met Sean through a mutual friend named Brian Kane, who happens to be a longtime student of mine and one of the world's best mental toughness coaches. We'll talk more about Kaner and his wisdom soon. For now, I want to talk about a story Sean told me about his playing days. It goes something like this. Once upon a time, while playing with the Cincinnati Reds, Sean was having an insanely great season. It was summertime, and he was batting near.400, which, if you know anything about baseball, you know is an insanely hard thing to do. Then Sean went 0 for 12. Now, going 0 for 12 is never a good thing for a professional baseball player, but going 0 for 12 after starting the season that strongly is especially painful. So Sean called a guy named Harvey Dorfman. Harvey was that era's greatest mental toughness coach. By the way, check out our notes on his great book called Coaching the Mental Game. And check out our full collection of notes on a ton of mental toughness books, which, for the record, is probably my favorite category on heroic. We've got all those linked in the one in the app. Now, Sean tells Harvey that he's struggling. I'm 0 for 12, coach, and Harvey doesn't care about those stats. All he wants to know is if Sean is executing the protocol they committed to. Sean tells him, yeah, of course I'm doing exactly what we've talked about. I'm hitting the ball hard and guys are just making great plays. Dorfman listens a little longer. Then he says something along the lines of perhaps with a little profanity. Why in the heck are you calling me? We have nothing to talk about. Quit looking at the results and keep on dominating your protocol. Click call over. Of course, that story has nothing to do about Sean or baseball or batting.400. It's all about you. Are you going through a rough patch? Not feeling very energized or productive or connected? Perfect. I love you. And ultimately, I don't care about those things. What I do care about is this. Are you working your protocol? Do you know who you are at your best in your energy, your work, and your love? Are you recommitted to being that best version of yourself every single morning? And do you know what virtues that best version of you embodies? Are you recommitting to showing up with those virtues every morning? And do you know what specific things you do when you're most on fire? Are you recommitting to those things every morning and then actually doing those things every day? I get it. Life can be incredibly challenging and love ya. But life doesn't need to be that hard. And the process of showing up as your best self is definitely not that complicated or that hard. It all comes down to this. Know who you are and and what you do when you're at your best. Then recommit to being that version of yourself and doing those things you do when you're on every single day. Not someday and definitely not only on the days when you really feel like it today. That's the only way to move from theory to practice to mastery. So we can change the world together. Day one all in. Let's go hero.
