Heroic Chat with Dr. Nate Zinsser: The Role of the Mind in Human Performance

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Welcome to a very special heroic chat with Dr. Z. Michael here, head coach and president heroic. And I'm fired up for this one today. For joining us live, I'm actually going to say hi, although Nat. No, I think I'm good. Yana, great to see you as always. Just said hi. Nat, Tanya, Kathy, Lanny, Nettie, all you guys were here. Anthony, saw you earlier today. Rob, Lisa, great to see you. Stacy, Amy, Kevin, Coach Kevin, what's up? Dan, Sherry, Mr. Garvey, you as well. Twice in one day. This is like, this is a great day. Lori, oh, my gosh, I miss you. Lori, great to see you. And swiping to the next screen here, Brian, is it two for you? And today, Marcus Rose. Man, we got a lot of doubles up. This is amazing. Andrea, love the hat. Timmy B. David. Andrea, Justin. Dana. Murillo. Lily. David. This is a popular one. This is exciting. I'm going to just keep scrolling. Barnabas. Getting the elliptical workout on there. Fired up. Lisa, great to see. Your energy is always amazing. Lisa. Everyone else who's checking the replay on the podcast or on YouTube, welcome, welcome, welcome. Dr. Z, fired up to connect with you. Good sir. Dr. Nate Zinsser, author of the Confident Mind. We've got that featured today on the today screen. The Confident Mind. I just listened to the philosopher's notes on the Confident mind. Brian's distillation. Six page PDF, 20 minute MP3. Then we've got that quote. Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. Love that quote. And we actually might, I think the real one, we'll have to change it. Seek, seek to win first. Right. Or win first. But looking forward to connecting with you, sir. Learning about your hero's journey. Right, that Joseph Campbell, Hero's Journey, the call to adventure, separation, initiation, return. Back with the boon. I'm excited to hear some of your top 10 highlights. Right. You've guided some of the most elite performers in the world, elite athletes, et cetera. You've taught 10, excuse me, three generations, right? Three decades at West Point, helping our future soldiers and leaders in the military to forge heroically confident minds. Is very much looking forward to connecting with you. I shared a little bit earlier on my appreciation for you and a proactive appreciation from everyone on the call. Your book is amazing. Brian was reading it, I think it was like a couple chapters and he's like, hey, Michael, go get this. Get it for the entire team. This is really, really, really good. Number one mental performance book. I immediately Then told all of our coaches, all of our workshop instructors, hey, like, go get this book and read this book. It will change your life. And many of them within hours were like, I got it. It's already changed my life. So thank you on behalf of them, on behalf of myself, for the work that you have done, the people that you have served as well, and that includes all of us. So. And we're looking forward to connecting today.

Thank you so much for the kind introduction. I'm delighted to be here. I will do what I can to live up to the hype that you have provided for me.

Well, you know, it's genuine. Let's start with your hero's journey, right? So tell us a little bit about the journey that's brought you to the work that you are doing and some highlights along the way and challenges the dragons, all the things, sure.

My journey probably began back in middle school. I was a aspiring competitor. I was not particularly big, not particularly gifted, with remarkable speed or any physical characteristic that might distinguish me. So I had to hang in there and work pretty hard. And I sort of formed the opinion that if I outworked a lot of people, I'd probably succeed, at least at some level. And it was during those middle school years that I was exposed to a remarkable coach at the small boys private school that I was attending. He was the coach of our soccer team. Now, I didn't play soccer, but I noticed year after year after year after year that the soccer program at the school was a powerhouse. And it was the only team at the school that was a powerhouse. And that intrigued me because back in these days, this was when athletic boys played at least two and often three sports a year. So you could take half the soccer team and put them on the basketball court or the baseball diamond or the lacrosse field and something remarkable would happen. They were champs in soccer, but just chumps and chimps in any other sport. And I didn't know why this was the case. And it occurred to me later in my high school career that this coach was creating a very positive expectation. He was creating a self fulfilling prophecy, starting with kids down in the seventh grade and getting them to think that if they stuck with the sport, they could be really good by the time they were in 11th or 12th grade. And so there was this all kinds of psychological momentum that his particular soccer program had and no other team in the school seemed to have it and one particular experience. And when I was in the ninth grade, I was very enthusiastic about becoming a state wrestling champion. And I was Telling the guys at my table at lunch one day, I think we're going to be really good in a couple years. We've got four or five guys in our class who are really good. And I think if we get some competitive experience and continue this season, we're going to be really good in a couple of years. And a guy in my class on the other side of the table looked at me and said, nate, shut up. You're never going to be any good. Guys at this school don't wrestle well. Now think about that as a statement. Guys at this school don't wrestle well. He went on to say, we're good in soccer sometimes we're good in swimming, sometimes we're good in tennis, but we're not good in wrestling, and we never will be. Now, curiously enough, he had the weight of history on his side because at that point, the wrestling team at the school was a doormat. Okay, we might win two dual meets a year, but it was that expression of the belief that something can't happen, as opposed to the soccer coach's expression of belief and continued expression of belief that something can happen, that really impressed me. And I'm proud to say that in my junior year, our wrestling team did indeed have a winning season and had another winning season my senior year. And I did become the independent school state champ. And it was that experience that really got me to think seriously about the role of the mind in human performance. And I have been pursuing that ever since as a wrestler, as a mountaineer, in my college years, as a lifetime martial arts participant. The role of the mind in human performance is exceptionally strong. It's exceptionally misunderstood, and it is only recently being treated as something that can be indeed learned and practiced and with sufficient practice, mastered. So that's how my journey got started. I certainly had my highs and my lows. First ascents of major Alaskan route in Alaska in 1975. Multiple black belts in a very traditional Japanese karate discipline. Six knee surgeries, three hip surgeries, bicep tendon tear, shoulder separation. I have paid for my art and I continue to come back and stay in the ring. How's that for starters?

I love it. What was the coach's name? Let's give him a shout out, right? Heroes get guides, right?

His name is Miller Balari. B U G L I A R I He is in the National High School Soccer Coaches hall of Fame. As far as I'm concerned, he's a national treasure. He is still at the Pingree School. P I N G R Y in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. He's been coaching there for 60 years, and he is now a special assistant to the headmaster, still connected to the soccer program, but just a wonderful ambassador of positivity and optimism which young people really need.

I love that we're going to define confidence in just a moment and maybe you can tie it back into this. But you said the role of the mind in human performance is so powerful and also misunderstood. What are some of those common misunderstandings that people have and how do you shift them?

Well, a common misunderstanding is, you know, perhaps even the term mental toughness. I mean, if you ask most people what that term means, they'll tell you something about, you know, being willing to get up at 5 o' clock in the morning and lift weights or run or condition. Okay, well, those are all good things to do. But that doesn't require a particularly tough mind. I mean, I can get my dog to do that, and my dog doesn't have much of a mind at all. Okay. Mental toughness, as far as I'm concerned, means, you know, of a particular state of mind that works for you and you fight to maintain it no matter what is happening in and around you. So people think that, oh, yeah, he's a really mentally tough guy. That means he just works out a lot. Well, you can work out a lot and hate every minute of it and be worried that you're not working out enough or that you're not working properly. And even though you may be developing size and speed and strength and technical knowledge, you won't necessarily be building up your sense of overall competence, let alone your sense of confidence. Which means that when you get in the arena, you may have everything that you need, but you don't believe in it because the way. Because of the ways you've been thinking throughout your various tough, tough, tough training.

I love that. Let's define confidence. And I know we've got in the philosopher's note, it's literally one of the big ideas that Brian pulls out. Confidence defined. But I'd love to hear in your words, how do you define confidence?

Okay, my definition, a little bit different than what you'll find in any dictionary, is a sense of certainty about any given ability that allows you to execute that ability with a bare minimum of conscious, deliberate thought. It's the idea that you know something or can do something so well that you don't have to think about it as you are doing it, and you perform it very naturally, very automatically. That's confidence. I use the example in the book of you know, the ability to tie your shoes, which is a very complicated activity given the number of nerves and muscles and joints that are involved. But none of us think about tying our shoes past a certain age. We had to think about it while we were learning it, but once we learned it, we didn't think about it anymore. And you contrast that to the way somebody might be nowadays on a golf course thinking, oh, I have to keep my wrists a certain way, I have to bring the backswing to a certain point, I have to increase the downswing to a certain way, I have to pivot in a certain way. And they're giving themselves all these sort of technical and mechanical discursive self talk pointers. And all of that thought simply interferes with the smooth transition of nervous system impulses, two muscles to make the body move. Now that's a physical example. But the same thing occurs in an operating room with a surgeon, a salesperson making a sale, a manager communicating a vision and following up with his or her team. The interference of all that self talk that is irrelevant to the actual application, actual execution of the skill gets in people's way. So my definition of confidence is the ability to know what you know and trust it.

And if we notice ourselves in that environment and we notice that we are not as confident as we might be, right, There's a thought that maybe is questioning, or there's some guidance on shaping the mechanics of the swing or whatever. How can we in the moment of execution bring ourselves back to a more confident state? And I know there's a lot that goes into setting yourselves up for that, right? You've got your mind in your past for prior successes and the top 10 lists and the affirmations and excited to dig into those more. But thinking in this moment of that moment of performance, right, the tendency for many people to visualize or flirt with a worst case scenario, or what, what if this happens? Or what if this happens? Or I need to think about, I just, you know, the golfer just hit a slice. Well, now I got to overcorrect this way. What are some of your practices for in that moment of execution? Bring us back to a, a state of certain, a sense of certainty about your ability which allows you to bypass conscious thought and execute unconsciously.

Okay. In the moment, in the performance moment, in the moment of execution, your best bet is always to simply decide on a particular target, decide on a particular outcome, or decide on a particular feeling state that you wish to have and commit to. Will be easier to do that if you've done the proper mental preparation. But no matter how much preparation you have or have not done, you still have to have a clear target, a clear intention, and commit to that. At the moment, very easy to talk about, somewhat challenging to do consistently, but that's the challenge that we all face in order to be heroic.

Yeah. Decide, set that clear target, make that commitment to that clear target, Recommit to that clear target over and over and over and again. It's built on that foundation of prep work that we might do ahead of time. I've teased already a couple times that top 10 list those affirmations. You have a brilliant take on affirmations. As I was listening to Philosopher's Note again, having listened to the audiobook a couple of times, thinking about that end of day affirmation statements and revisiting those three affirmation statements to plant those seeds in our consciousness of positive thoughts. I'd love some personal coaching and collective coaching on how do we go about creating those affirmations. A lot of affirmations has the who's the SNL character. You might know, but there's like, oh, gosh darn it, people like me.

I'm good if I'm smart enough. And gosh darn it, people like me.

Yeah, there's that flavor of affirmations that people have an allergy to. Right. And then you shifted Brian's perception of affirmations from one of like, okay, cool, whatever, to scientifically rigorous. No, this. This works. And I'm gonna. I'm gonna go all in on this. So I'd love to hear about affirmations, how we can go about crafting them for ourselves, repeating them to ourselves, and using them to create a confident mind.

Okay, very worthy question. I think I can handle it in a few short minutes. It starts with the idea of being willing to think about what you want a lot. Even thinking about something that you know you need to cultivate a skill or an attribute or a characteristic. I know this is important in my work or in my life. I have to be willing to think about it as if I already have it. Okay. I break it down in the book to think about a particular skill that would be useful in your work, a particular quality or characteristic that you would love to have in your work or in your life, and then a particular outcome or achievement or accomplishment that you'd like to have. So starting with the first one, something skill related. You know, again, if you're. If you're a tennis player, you know, the idea of thinking about how you want your game to be, or how you want an aspect of your game to be, thinking about it how you want it, but phrasing that wish in the present tense. My groundstrokes are deep and powerful. My personal groundstrokes are present tense, deep and powerful, how you want them to be. And you can get rather descriptive and imaginative with your language, and that's fine too, as long as you're expressing everything in the first person and in the present tense and with affirmative language, as opposed to I never hit a weak ground stroke. No, that actually reinforces what you don't want. You have to be very clear about what you want. And you're thinking about it in terms of the present tense. Not I will have it. I want to have it. Oh, I have it. Because that creates a little bit of cognitive dissonance. I am that way. It gives you a bar that your body will pursue if indeed you keep feeding it with that thought. So we think about a skill that we want to have. We think about a quality that we might want to have. Greater presence, greater calmness under pressure. I easily resolve conflicts in my work. I provide the maturity and the calmness in a sea of chaos, because I know a lot of us live in a sea of chaos. And then I can further affirm an outcome. I am a $1 million a year salesperson. I am the MVP of the new York jets or the whatever team you're interested in. Affirming a skill, affirming a quality, affirming an outcome. And you have those three statements, and by writing them nightly, it just reinforces and reinforces and reinforces. And as I share with a lot of clients, your body does what your brain is full of. So fill your brain with the things that you want your body to do, and your body is much more likely to do them again. It's not a rock solid guarantee, but it is always giving you the best possible chance.

Your body does what your brain is full of. You come back a couple times to repetition, right? The repetition. How important is repetition in this domain?

Well, I think repetition is how we learn all kinds of things. We learn language through repeated execution. We learned our arithmetic skills, our multiplication tables through rigorous repetition. We have these conceptions of ourselves that are formed through repetition. We get told something about ourselves or we repeat something about ourselves to ourselves over and over again. I don't know how many reps are required in order to create meaningful change in the human animal. And other people say it takes 21 days to form a habit or 30 days to form a habit. I don't know, maybe if it takes 21 days, invest 21 days. I'm dealing with a lot of people who have had very ineffective cognitions about themselves in performance for 30 years. It's going to take a while for these new opinions and beliefs to to take hold. We are all creatures of habit. We have cultivated habits of thought and hence habits of feelings, you know, throughout our lives. It's just a question of which ones we are cultivating and feeding now, as opposed to which ones we want to cultivate and feed. It's very much an aspect or a question of free will, which we all have, by the way. Let's use it.

I love that. And in that vein too, this quote jumped out of me. It's jumped out of me several times. You never know how much you truly have in your tank until you go out and empty it. When you're talking about being in high school ride and wanting to perform, to be a competitor, but lacking maybe some of the physical qualities that you saw around you, I'm going to outwork these people and that will help me when I think about confidence, when I think about things like affirmations and top tens and revisiting these statements, adding my mental bank account, looking at effort, success and progress, doing that, esp. Not a review or those esp. Mid practice reviews or midday reviews of how was my effort, what successes did I accomplish, what progress did I make? And the desire to focus on those wins, to add those to the bank account when we're not showing up at our best, to not add those into our mind, not repeat those scenarios, effort to me was an interesting one because in many ways I feel like there's not an excuse for having full effort, right? You, you never know how much you truly have in your tank until you go out and empty it. So if we're looking for moments of effort, max effort that we've given in our performance in our day or whatever, how do we think about moments where we didn't give max effort and. Or how do you think about coaching effort in the context of. Because again, if confidence is able to show up and do it, it's like, well, then it's effortless and am I bringing my full effort? But it's a deeply trained skill, so I know I said a lot there. How do you think about effort in this area?

If you look back on your day or your game or your match or your meeting and you honestly can say, yeah, I really didn't give it my full effort. I really wasn't as present as I needed to be or as forceful or I wasn't in command enough of the details regarding the conversation. If your introspection reveals that you didn't put the effort in, then the first thing I would advise everybody to do is, once you've acknowledged it, forgive yourself for being an imperfect human being and recommit yourself to your journey. Nobody gets there without some setbacks. You know, I think about all the heroic journeys that I've ever ridden, read about, seen in a movie, or been on myself. They all beat you up pretty good. It's. It's not a walk in the park. If you're going to be your hero, you're going to hurt. And you got to be able to admit, okay, I wasn't good there. Somebody got the better of me. I got to forgive myself for being imperfect. I've got to put that experience in the past. It was a temporary thing. It happened that time and I got to recommit, realign with my intention, and get excited about how good I can be next time, as opposed to, oh, gosh, this really hurts right now. That just keeps you stuck. How's that for an answer?

No, I love it. If you're going to be a hero, you are going to be heard. I know. I say, I love, I genuinely love it. If you're going to be here, you're going to be hurt. Acknowledging that I didn't bring it all, forgiving myself for not being perfect. There are no perfect humans, which is a perfect segue to what I'm also curious about. But then recommitting to that journey, recommitting to giving it more effort the next time, right? And to close the loop on the ESPs, this nightly ESP review, thinking about or the end of game, end of practice, mid game, mid practice, looking for moments where you gave full effort, right? Celebrating those, looking for moments where you made progress on something, skill acquisition, progress towards a goal, whatever it is, and then moments of success, which might be the coach commenting on you, hey, great work, or you scored the goal, or someone saying, hey, thank you. That was, that was a really meaningful, impactful piece. There's been a really powerful practice for me to do on a consistent basis and it's been one of my favorites from the book. So I know I mentioned that esp, but thinking about no perfect people. Those of us in the community who have kids will know that we often say the joke of, oh, the kid makes a mistake. We all, oh, I'm so sorry. You're not going to be the first perfect person or like, oh, you're not perfect, but that's okay. Dad's perfect. My. My daughter's like, you're not. You make someone mistake. Yeah, you make whatever mistakes. And there's a whole string of plus ones and content on there are no perfect human beings. I'd love to hear your advice to parents on how to help their children create confident minds.

That's probably going to be the next book. Confident Mind for Kids or Confident Mind for Parents of Kids.

Is that a serious. Is that coming as a. Oh, that's.

That's a serious undertaking which is, you know, in the works right now.

Can I pre order? When can I pre order?

I wish you could pre order it. It's still in the manuscripting phase. But I will say this for parents, first thing. First thing, you better be modeling some confidence yourself. You better be modeling looking at the best in self and presenting in the family environment a sense of certainty about yourself not carrying the weight of past mistakes or past difficulties forward into today, and even anticipating all kinds of difficulties in your future being clouded by what you think is going to be a very gloomy tomorrow. You gotta model some of this because your kids are just gonna pick it up osmotically. It's remarkable how sensitive they are. You don't even have to say anything. It's your body language, it's your tone of voice, it's the look on your face. All of that is really important for parents. Okay? Secondly, please give your kids reason to believe in him or herself a whole lot of positive feedback. And when you make a correction to your kids, which, Lord knows, has to be done, often you connect that correction to a success that matters to your child. If you do this, this great outcome is going to be more likely. If we do this enough, then we can achieve this. Oh, that's great. You try to link it to something that's valuable rather than making a correction for the sake of making a correction or making a correction because I said so.

And third, I'd love more tips on that because I find when I'm not parenting at my best, it's a, hey, no, don't do that. Hey, stop. Stop jumping on a thing. Stop spraying water everywhere. Don't. Whatever. When I am at my best, it's.

A.

Focused redirection on the thing that I want and. Or the thing that. That. That they want. So this idea of corrections are inevitable, right? Starting with giving kids reasons to believe, celebrating positive feedback, looking for significantly more of those and celebrating those, hey, great job and all those things. But then when we have to make a correction, connecting that correction to something that they care about, something is excessive. They care about defining what the ideal behavior looks like. Is there a language we might think about using or you know, some sort of framework?

The language that you want to use is very simple and plain. Because kids understand things fairly concretely. You know, the abstractions that we adults are capable of usually fly right over their heads. Okay. X leads to Y leads to Z. You have to be very simple and concrete about it. I have a six year old granddaughter who has her share of wonderful qualities. She also has a few peculiarities that I know drive her parents nuts. Sometimes I find myself getting a little excited about.

Not you doctors either.

Yeah, but you know, I'm calm down, I'm pretty chill about it. Let's try this. Let's see how well this works. This could be really cool. And can you make an exploratory game out of it? Can you connect it to the idea of, you know, exploring a new universe, a new, A new mythical landscape? Let's say we are explorers here. Let's say we are members of a tribe exploring the wilderness and we're going to discover something. How cool would that be? I'm speaking somewhat metaphorically, but the idea is to engage a little bit of the kids curiosity in as specific a way as possible.

And how about. So you mentioned making a connection to something that matters to them. Right. And I can feel the playfulness in let's explore the mythical land and that some innate that many slash most children play is part of what matter and fun. And that's a way to draw them in. But if you're looking for a specific domain or facet or whatever that matters, then that you can bring bring that back to particularly for those behaviors that they may be doing that aren't helping them to move towards that. How do you have the conversation to draw that out of them?

Slowly and carefully and redundantly I'm afraid. You know, you want them to pick their room up, for example. Maybe, maybe all these toys and objects would, would be happier, would feel better if they were put on shelves rather than lying on the floor. You know, it would make their lot, their situation easier again mythically and metaphorically speaking. Oh, and it'll also allow you to have a lot more room to do plenty of other things. Hey, we can't do our, we can't do our gymnastics, you know, with a cluttered room. If we do that, if we clean up the room a little bit, we'll be able to do a Lot more things in here. Let's try that again. Takes a heck of a lot of patience with that, but I'm pretty sure that's going to work better for you than just being. Than just condemning and saying, you have to do this because it's important thing to do. The reason, you know, doing it because I say so is not going to work any more than that's going to work in some adult workplace where the boss gives you a task. Well, why am I doing this task, boss? Because I said so. That ain't gonna fly. The boss has got to give the staff reasons to engage. Parents have to do the same with kids.

I'm so excited to. I don't have my kids. My kids are with my parents this week. My wife and I have a week without our kids. They're at camp, grandparent camp. Basically. They go stay with them for a week and we call it grandparent camp. It's amazing. I'm driving over there tomorrow to pick them up. So I'm excited too, frankly. Play this game with both my kids and also with my parents. We'll see how that goes. But I so appreciate that. And starting with modeling, Right. It always starts with modeling that positive feedback, making the corrections in the direction of what we want. Same as we're on the golf course, not focusing on what we don't want. Don't hit it in the water or. I never hit in the water, but I always hit the green. I'm going to aim for the pin. And that redirection towards what do I want? Taking an action towards it. Yeah. Slowly, carefully and redundantly. When you are meeting with someone for the first time who's interested in working with you to create a confident mind. Right. What are some of the things that you're asking? What are some of the things that you're looking for to assess whether or not that person's someone that you're excited to work with?

I asked a question. Why are you participating in a particular sport or profession or occupation in the first place? I started with a young lady last week who is a very good young golfer. So my question was, why golf? Of all the sports that you could have played, what brought you to that? Because I want it. I want to understand where her passion and where her energy really comes from. So I have to know that. And then the next question I love to ask, and people usually love to talk about it because it rarely gets asked, is, tell me what it's like to play. Great. Tell me what it's like when you are at the top of your game. Let's talk about moments where you have been really successful. Tell me about your fulfilling, memorable performances. I want to hear what they've experienced and then I really want to know what was your state of mind? To the degree that you can articulate it, what was your state of mind during those particularly memorable, fulfilling, successful moments? Because that gives us all kinds of clues about things that we can try to cultivate. It also gives us a whole lot of clues about things that are thinking that we have to minimize and draw way down, hopefully eliminate if possible. So that's how I get going with pretty much anybody. Whether we're talking a high school golfer or a person who's completing their residency in orthopedics or neurosurgery.

Do you ever have folks who are referred to you and, or mom, dad, whatever, thinks it's important for them to, or coach or whatever, and they aren't as bought into the idea of.

Yeah, that's happened. I had many cadets who were, were referred to me by their coaches or by their, their tactical officers, their military mentors for, you know, fix this kid, Doc. You know, this kid's a head case. Fix them up. You know, I'm very matter of fact about that. You know, the young man or young lady comes into my office and says, yeah, Captain so and so, or coach so and so said, I have to come here and talk to you. I said, okay, well, you're here and we're talking, so if you want to stick around, we can talk some more. Otherwise you can leave because you came and you talked. I, I can't do anything to anybody who doesn't want to be here, you know, so I, I don't waste their time. I don't waste my time. And I will explain to coach so and so, or Captain so and so. Yeah, he or she was here. We had a brief conversation. I'm not sure he or she is ready to really examine herself, examine himself, and move forward when he or she's ready. I'm here too. So I'm not in any hurry to try to push anything on anybody. People change when they're ready. If I can help them get ready, I'll do that.

Do you have any.

In fact, as part of the hero's journey, nobody really changes until they hurt. When they've been trying something and trying something and either they've been banging their head against the wall, not making progress, or they're pushing the boulder up the mountain like Sisyphus and it keeps rolling back on them. Okay. Well, instead of pushing the boulder up, maybe we need to stick a little chalk underneath it and get it part way and then take a break and then push it some more and move that shock. So we'll change the part, we'll change the technique. But they got hurt before. They're really listening.

And that, that hurt often causes the impetus to change. Do you, do you have questions or, you know, take home homework that you'll send them with or, or start those conversations with.

Oh, all the time. I will ask for, you know, the best narrative description that they can provide about a successful performance. Okay. What was it about that success that was so valuable to you? What do you, what does that success tell you about yourself? Lots of introspective exercises and just general introspection about the process of being successful or the process of improving towards success.

Amazing. And then I want to circle back on a piece we haven't touched yet, but your description of physiological changes in the performance day was, was, was my absolute, all time favorite description of how your body's preparing you for performance and what that means and how it often gets labeled as nervousness or whatever. And you know the science around saying something like, I'm excited, my body's getting me ready. But the, the description was just so, so brilliant and something that so many people misinterpret. Right. Or, or mis. They take that energy and try and cool it down versus to focus it. So I'd love just to hear your thoughts on how do we interpret the physiological responses that we may have in advance of a performance and, or, you know, the, the public speaking joke. Right. Like most people would rather give the eulogy than then. Or receive the eulogy. Be the one that give the eulogy. But yeah, talk to me about physiology.

Sure. This is one of those things that it's just a matter of accepting an aspect of human nature. It is wired into our biology to experience a acceleration of our energy systems when we're about to do something that has importance to us. And the greater the importance it has to us, the greater the acceleration of our autonomic nervous system, particularly the sympathetic wing of the automatic autonomic nervous system will take place. This occurs whether we're doing something that is important to us because we want to do it. Play in the super bowl, give that big sales presentation to a potentially huge customer. Well, we want to do that. Sometimes there are things that we have to do that are important to us that we don't necessarily want to do, but we have to do it anyway. You gotta take the final exam in physics, or you've got to take your oral arguments in your PhD process or you have to get grilled by the attending. When you're a surgical resident, you have to do these things. You have to step into spotlights, whether you have to step into it or whether you want to step into it. Once you're in it, as you're moving into it, your body is going to accelerate. Your autonomic nervous system is just going to kick in and it's going to produce some hormonal changes, adrenaline, etc. And that's going to make your heart beat faster and your blood flow a little faster and your muscles twitch a little bit and your palms might get sweaty and your mouth might get dry and you might have to run to the bathroom a whole lot. And oh yeah, the hundreds of millions of nerves in your stomach, they're going to start vibrating a little bit faster and more powerfully and that's going to create that butterfly in the stomach sensation. So my reminder to everybody is once you feel the heart, the butterflies, whatever, you just have to tell yourself, oh, okay, well this is what my body is supposed to do. This is my body getting ready for me to do something important. Thank you body for bringing my energy up. You're going to make me stronger, faster and more perceptive and more alert. Well, that's pretty cool. Thank you. As opposed to, oh my gosh, my stomach is turning over, my heart is pounding, what's the matter with me? Does this mean I'm not prepared enough? Which is precisely where most people go when they experience these physical symptoms. They interpret it for a variety of reasons as a statement that they're not ready, that they need to calm down, or that they have not practiced enough or studied enough. That's a misperception. And that simply opens the door for all kinds of self doubt. And now your mind continues to spiral downward. So the idea is to respect the wisdom of your body that it does enter this enhanced biological state. Expect it to happen, be ready for it, anticipate it, and when it does happen, embrace it and bring it in and say thank you. This is, this is basically a fundamental process of trusting yourself. Trust is my favorite five letter word.

Why is that?

Because if you're not trusting yourself, then you're always asking yourself a lot of questions and you're introducing a lot of that external unnecessary thought process which is going to interfere with you taking in the information from the environment that you're in. It's going to interfere with you retrieving Proper responses from your acquired experience and it's going to interfere with the proper response getting its way out to your mouth when you're speaking, your hands when you're playing tennis or golf, your heart and lungs when you're running that 10k or that marathon. You want to trust so that you don't have to quit. Think as much.

You know we were joking ahead of the session. I said, I said almost everyone who's here on the session will have either read the book and or already started to practice some of the ideas from the book in their lives to make their lives better. And you playfully joked, oh amazing. Does that mean that I can quiz them? I said absolutely yes. So I'll actually pop in. For those of you who are Joining here live, Dr. Z's favorite five letter word is trust. What does that make me think about? Where am I going to go next? You can drop your answer in the chat. I'll give it, we'll give it actually 10 seconds and collectively take a breath. Love it. So do what you say you will do. Do what you say you will do. Do what you say you you will do. Let's take it one step before do what you say you will do. Etymologically the word confidence means intense trust. Nettie. Ding ding ding. Confidence confidary with intense trust. Not that the outcome's going to go perfectly but, but that we have what it takes to show up. Antifragile confidence as we define it objective to in the book. Right. Obstacles make me stronger. I have intense trust in myself that no matter what happens to me in life, I have the capacity to show up, to use it as fuel. Never perfectly, but always giving my best. In the next rep. In the next rep. Confidere intense trust. Love that. And how do we create intense trust? Yes, we do what we say we will do. Number one law of leadership. Great work. Plus one plus one plus one. Let's go. Dr. Z, bringing it back to you. You shared one of your mentors guides right here on the hero's journey. They get guides, they get buddies. Is there anyone else, and I can think of actually a couple that may actually fit for you. But any other guides or mentors that have had a pivotal role in your life influencing you and shaping you and guiding you to the person you are today?

Oh yeah. When I was 16 I took a month long survival course at the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School off the coast of Maine. And my instructor who was in charge of 1416 year old chuckleheads like me was a class of 1946, West Point grad. A retired army colonel, one of the very first Green Berets. His name was Robert Rowe. R H E A U L T Bob. I only knew him as Bob. I had no idea that he had spent the 28 previous years in uniform. That he had been the commander of the 10th Special Forces Group in South Vietnam in the late 60s. He was in his mid-40s and he could run a six minute mile in combat boots. And he combined all the elements of an energetic, forceful personality with a very gentle demeanor. It was a wonderful juxtaposition. He has been a model for me ever since that summer. Another very important role model is the gentleman under whom I have studied karate since 1975. His name is Tsutomu Oshima. He was the very first karate teacher in the United States going back to 1955. And as I say in the acknowledgments of my book, there is not a warmer, humbler, yet more powerful human being on this planet. And his message to all of us is, you know, face yourself, go on. There is a journey that is important for all of you. There is this most beautiful mentality deep inside you and you can bring it out. And it's important that you bring it out before you're dead. Otherwise you're going to be on your deathbed going, what the heck did I do with my life? And I have, I have nothing but respect and gratitude for those two gentlemen and a couple others I could mention. Not sure. Time permits.

No. I'm, I'm struck by the similarities in both of them. This combination of intense power and intense warmth. And we often do an exercise here of picture your heroes. Who's here? Number one, Heroes, number two. See how you are, the integration of those two heroes. And I, I can feel in you those same qualities that you admire in those gentlemen and modeling those gentlemen. So thank you for demonstrating that power and that warmth and parenting. Right. Good parenting is high standards and high warmth. And I think back on our. How do we form the children? With a confident mind, parent. Confident mind. Right. That combination of clear ideals we want to move towards and making corrections when necessary, but doing so with high warmth, with high playfulness, with that sense of curiosity and wonder. And I, I can feel that from you and again appreciate you for being one of our guides, one of our mentors on this journey as we seek to face ourselves and go on that journey of bringing forth the best within us. So deep gratitude to you for that. And then I know I've talked about it a ton but please don't everyone listening to this. If you have not yet, go buy the book. It's absolutely phenomenal. You will love it. Audiobook is great as well. Best places wherever you buy books. You can download the Philosopher's Note. If you're not in the app yet and you're watching the podcast or the YouTube replay, we'll drop a link. You can go get the Philosopher's Note on the book to download and the Philosopher's Note will say, hey, go buy the book. Go buy the book. Come buy the book. It's amazing. Dr. Z, where can folks go to connect with you, to learn more, to go deeper into your work?

Certainly I have a fairly sizable stable of advisees, paying clients, etc. Nate.zinsser.com it's really easy. I receive probably five inquiries a week these days, so I have to be very careful with my time. But all of you who have been exposed to the book and these principles through the heroic network, I think you're primed for it. So by all means, Please, please connect nate.zinsser.com Couldn't be simpler.

Nate.zinser.com, will drop that link in the show notes in the resources as well. Final question here. If you had one piece of advice, some guidance that you could give to somebody starting out on their journey or excited to take that next chapter of their journey, what would you offer to them?

This is the. This is the one time I only get to talk to this person.

Sure.

You know, before they head out. Or this is the last piece of advice I get to share before I pass from this.

Repetition is the key to a confident mind. So this can be either the last one in a while before you talk with them or the first thing that you say for someone that's starting off on a journey with you.

Okay, I will echo Mr. Oshima's comment or statement. You have something very special inside you as a human being. You have remarkable capabilities. Look for them, look for them, look for them. Bring them out. You all have it. Sometimes we don't see it, sometimes we don't look at ourselves honestly enough. But there is something special inside you. There is a special mentality that releases competence and skill. Search for that. Bring it out, enjoy it, because you have it. And it can have a remarkable effect on your life.

Dr. Z's call to adventure. You have something special within you. Let us each bring what is special, unique, most powerful within us. Bring our gifts and service to the world as we forge excellence, activate our potential, fulfill our destinies and change the world together. Dr. Z, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for dropping so much wisdom on us. I'm sure this is just the beginning and I look forward to seeing everybody again soon.

Thank you all. It's been a pleasure.

Bye.