Interview - Attainment with Troy Bassham

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson.

More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimal Living Interview series. Today I am really excited to be chatting with Troy Basham. Yesterday I spoke with Troy's dad, Lanny, who wrote With Winning in mind. Troy wrote a great book called attainment the 12 elements of elite Performance. And he's an elite champion in his own regard, an accomplished competitor who's won 12 national championships, set four national records, and is a former world champion in international rifle shooting. He and his father work on the mental management system that we talked a little bit about yesterday. And I'm just really excited to have you here. As we talked about before, Troy, your work is just so solid and I've gotten so much out of it, and I'm excited to tap into some ideas today.

Sounds great. Looking forward to it.

All right, let's do this. So we'll just start with Attainment. So the book is called Attainment, and in the book you talk about what that is vis a vis accomplishment. Can you just walk us through the difference between those two?

Well, growing up, my father obviously, you know, going in his journey with discovery, mental management, so forth. And I didn't want to write a book. That was what he was going in that realm. I want to write a book, kind of what I did on my realm. And when I was growing up, I have a twin brother that's five minutes older, and we got into rifle shooting. My dad was running the International Shooting School. And more world champions, Olympic champions, were coming out of that program in the 1980s than any other program in the world. One of the things he used to always tell us was this word, attainment. Attainment, attainment, attainment. And of course, as athletes, you want to accomplish, I want to win. As academics, I want to accomplish and get A's, you know, and so we're looking at accomplishment. The world revolves around accomplishment. What have you done? And let's talk about it. But attainment goes one step further and introduces becoming. So attainment is both becoming and accomplishing, not just one or the other. So when people say accomplish, it's attaining something, but when you add the full word of attainment, it really is becoming. Who do I need to become in order to accomplish what I desire? If you seek to become, accomplishment follows. And it's not the other way around. And so when I started my journey of looking at putting something in writing, that's just what has always been in the back of my mind ever since I can remember being a Teenager, this word attainment. In all through college, all through my career and then working with my dad for the last 11 years, it's been that that way. And so when I'm working with people, I come from the view of we're going to focus on attainment but coming first. And then let's look at accomplishing. I think both are very important, but I think both are very necessary.

That's amazing. And then starting with the who do.

You need to be?

And let that accomplishment kind of be the byproduct of you being the type of human being capable and kind of worthy of those accomplishments and then be able to celebrate it from a much higher place.

Yes. My view is becoming an accomplishing is very similar to being process minded versus outcome minded. You look at a coin, you got one side of the coins process, the other side coin is results. And a lot of people focus on results. Where we come from the idea of if you focus on the process, results tend to take care of themselves as opposed to focusing results and trying to create it yourself. One is more of a trusting format, the other one is a trying format.

Yeah, that's great. Your dad and I had a great chat about process versus outcome. And I want to go into that a little bit more in a moment, but before we dive more deeply into that, the subtitle of the book is 12 Elements of Elite Performance. And the book is broken down as you know, but for those who haven't read it yet is broken down around these 12 differentiations between the elite performer and and how they show up in certain ways and the others, the kind of non elite performers. So can you just describe for me what is an elite performer vis a vis the other? And then I want to walk through some of the characteristics that differentiate them.

Elite performer is a person who occupies the following five things. One, they're very passionate about what they do. They have the opportunity to do it. Three, they train with a purpose. They are very mentally strong in what they do. And they have the self image that I'm a winner, I'm a champion. They possess all five of those things. And within those five things there's 12 elements that I talk about in the book. And the elements are really just how they view something versus how another performer or individual will view something. I guess we could just take one as an example. One of my favorite ones is element number three which states elite performers focus on opportunities, others focus on obstacles. And what I simply view there is every obstacle that you're faced with is an opportunity for something Great to happen. The elite performer is going to focus on what is that opportunity that's being presented to me. Most other performers are focusing on the obstacle that's in front of me and why is in front of me, why is this happening to me instead of what's the opportunity that's presenting itself. And that's a key component to the difference of a mindset of an elite performer versus the average performer.

So just that ruthless solutions focus. Right. Problems don't exist. What's the solution to it? Opportunity. Opportunity. Opportunity, Right.

Correct. I'm solution minded, not problem solving.

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. So good. And one of the, the next things I wanted to ask in my little notes here was, is reframing that and seeing that obstacles are actually good. So not only do we. Do we look at opportunities within them, but tell us why obstacles are actually good?

Because obstacles show us areas that we need to grow in. So without obstacles, I don't have any way of growth. How am I going to grow if I don't know where to grow into? So if I'm a, an athlete, I'll give you a personal example. When I was in rifle shooting, one of the biggest challenges I had was shooting kneeling really well, which is not too good when your dad is the king of kneeling. When he was in the day, he held the national record in kneeling. It was his forte. And if you're shooting three position, you got prone, standing and kneeling. And when I was shooting, kneeling was the last position that you shot. And if you're really good, you can just slam the door in your competition and win. If you're not, it's a struggle. Can I just keep the lead? And you're. You're struggling to keep it. I was okay, but I wasn't. I wasn't great. I wasn't good enough to really reach and get at that national level and beyond. And it was a huge obstacle standing in my way so much that my father couldn't help me. My coach in the army, Bill Creeling, who is arguably one of the best technical coaches ever to, to be involved in our sport, just didn't know what to do. They were just sitting there how we're going to get Troy to break 390 out of 400, because if you can't do that, you're never going to get to the, to the elite level. And so I'm sitting here looking at this major obstacle and we're at a champions of champions match that Fort Benning, Georgia hosts. And my dad just asked me a question. He goes, look, who do you know that that's the best dealing shooter? Who's you personally seen as the best dealing shooter? And I, I told him, it's Kurt Fitzrandolph. Now this guy who's 6 foot 3, left handed, I'm 5, 8, right handed, and he happens to be at this match. And my dad says, well, why don't we look at the opportunity of seeing if he can help and. Because there's a reason why you think he's a really good shooter. Well, the reason is because he always had the highest kneeling score at every match I went to that he shot at. He was. If he didn't have the highest inner score, it was second. I mean, nobody was beating this guy. And so my dad knew him, said, hey Kurt, can you come, I need five minutes of your time. And he comes over and I'm at my point trying to figure out this position. And he says, all I can tell you is these, these things. And he said some key things that resonated with me, with the sport and immediately had a connection with him. And it was an opportunity to change the way I shot the position I was shooting, to kind of keep it simple. My elbow was on top of my knee. And one of the things he did is he moved his elbow behind his knee and he leaned forward instead of staying upright. And at that moment I'm like, well, shoot, this could work for me. So it was no longer an obstacle. It was now an opportunity to see if this new position or works for me. So we, we teach. There's two ways you can get better. One, you can take what works and make it work better, or two, you can find something else that's better and make that work. This was an opportunity for me to take this something new and make it work for me. As a result, I became one of the best kneeling shooters during my era and set a national record in kneeling a couple years after that. And so that was a personal example how I took what was an obstacle that I couldn't overcome. And then when my dad said, look, here's an opportunity to have this guy maybe tell you something that we're missing. And that's kind of a mindset that I learned. You know, there's early in my career when I was at the Army Markership unit back in the mid-90s, and if it wasn't for that, I would not have had the next four or five years other success that I had.

Wow, that's awesome. And your dad used a phrase yesterday that I went down and Told my wife about win or learn. There's no win or lose. Win or learn. You either won or you had an opportunity to learn something, Right?

Exactly.

Oh, that's so good.

Sometimes we learn a lot.

What's that?

Sometimes we learn a lot.

Yeah, exactly. That's great. And then also the metaphor of you don't learn when you're standing at the top of the mountain, you learn as you're going up that mountain and to embrace the whole process and with that mindset, it's amazing what we can do.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's awesome. Okay, so I'm going to actually jump ahead here. I was going to ask this later, but I want to hear your thoughts on what I found to be probably the most remarkable. There are a lot of great things I loved in your book. This one jumped out at me, and I've shared it, and people have really resonated with it, the idea of reloading. So what we say to ourselves after we perform matters. Right. Can you walk us through the whole framework of. Or whatever you want to describe with reloading and how to respond to the different outcomes that we might experience after we perform?

Yes. I'll dress it this way. When we're looking at an individual in a sport or an activity or so forth, every phase or every task that we. We perform. Right. Has three phases. Reloading is a part of the reinforcement phase of a task. So after I do something, I'm going to think about it and do something about it in some way. And we refer to that particular reinforcement phase as reloading. And I look at it as. You have two choices. You can either one, react to something, or you can respond to it. And when I'm teaching someone how to reload, I'm teaching them how to respond to something, not react to something, which simply means that reacting is when you do not have a preplanned way on how to handle the action when it comes. Responding is when I have a prepared way to handle the situation when it arrives. So if I'm shooting and I shoot a shot, obviously I want to shoot the bullseye. Right. Want to hit the 10 ring? I don't hit the 10 ring. I have two options. I can react to it and say, oh, that was horrible, or I can respond to it, which follows the key components of what we call reload. One is, I'm going to evaluate what happened, and I'm going to choose how. I evaluate it very carefully. I would choose it as three things. That was great. That was okay, or that needs work. In this example, that Was needs work. I didn't get what I wanted, but I don't complain about it. I just say it needs work. And when I think of needs work, I immediately go into, what is the correction? What do I need to fix? What's the solution? And that goes into number two. Step two is I'm going to rehearse what the correction is. Because there are many reasons why I could have missed that shot. Maybe I was late. Well, if I was late on executing the shot, I would rehearse the correction of timing that shot earlier. Therefore, the imprint is I hit the bullseye, not that I missed it. And the third one is, Is very important, is I have to let it go. Because if I don't let it go now, that thought process goes into the anticipation phase of the next task, which is how one mental error causes another one. The next thing you know, an individual snowballs and they have this period of time where I was just not productive. And for an elite athlete, you don't want to be in that trap. You want to be in one that I'm in control of how I respond. I'm not letting the environment control how I react.

Yeah. So good. So then the evaluate phase. So we do something, whether it's shooting or we have a discussion with our significant other or with our kids or with our colleagues or whatever. And if we do our best and we feel great about it, then we say great. And I love the way that you, you focus on feast on the success. So if it's a good thing, then imprint that and say, yes, that's like me. Kind of build that self image concept. If it's okay, just get to neutral. Okay. And then that needs work. That phrase is so good. And I use it all the time. It's like, okay, needs work. But we don't need to get dramatic about it. Right. And we don't need to get upset and react to use your language and then further drill that negativity into our consciousness and make it more likely. Just step back. Needs work. And then to your point on rehearsing, well, what do I wish would have happened? Boom, done. And then go on to the next thing. It's an amazing model. And that's good stuff.

Yeah, I think it works really good in all aspects of life you're talking about. And it's easier to handle things when you look at it from that perspective, then when you just react to it. I found that when I react to my kids, that they react back. But when I, when I respond to appropriately, you know, a Bad report card. I'm like, okay, this needs work. It works with them just as easy as it works with me in my own way of doing it. So I wish I could take credit for that. But that was. Dad always put that. He goes, it needs work. It needs work. It's not a problem. It just needs work.

Yeah, it's so good. And he was sharing the three questions after performance that are kind of tied to that, but just that idea of what'd you learn? How did he go? You tell me the three questions. Do you remember them?

Well, first of all, what went well?

Yep.

Would be one of them. What's the correction? And then what do I do about it? Those are three that I remember coming up. If he's talking about that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If those are the ones he was talking about, it would be. It'd be those three. And I put myself in perspective of which one am I answering? And we answer in that correction, because what went well? I want to feast on it. If I didn't. If it didn't go well, then. Okay, what do I need to correct? Of course, that goes into solution. And then how do I solve it? And so forth. Yeah.

Yeah. So good. Okay, so another tied for first favorite story from your book.

How do you pronounce?

Is it Caroly? Takash. How do you say his name?

Oh, you're gonna. You're gonna kick yourself on this one. It's Caroly. Takis.

Takis. It's that easy. This is good.

That easy. Yes.

Takis. I like it. Much easier than what I was trying to do there.

I wish. I wish I knew him. I mean, he was. He obviously was. Was a shooter back in the 1930s to 1940s. But his story, you know, got passed down generation to generation. So I can't tell you the first time I heard it. I just remember dad telling it, but never shared it in any of his writings.

Wow.

How could you not put this guy in your writings?

Wow.

So share it with us.

So the. The inspirational part of this individual is this goes back when, you know, you have countries that just these people hurting, you know, and many times they're shooting because it's a way to get out of what they're doing in the military. And for Caroly, he was a pistol shooter that was in the Hungarian army. And it was a way for him to kind of get out of doing the regular infantry stuff and go for a dream of competing in the Olympics. And like many shooters at different countries, you know, shooting is the second most expensive sport in The Olympics. So that's why most people who shoot are tied to the military and his duty in the military. He was an infantry soldier and he was a right handed shooter and one of the best in Hungary. He was actually one of the ones that they were looking at representing them in the upcoming Olympics. And as events would, would happen, he was unlucky where he was in a hand grenade exercise and a defective hand grenade went off prematurely in his, in his shooting hand. So if you can imagine, he threw it and before he could get his hand down behind the barrier, it went off and it took his right hand with him. And so here he is in the hospital and the way I understand the story is he's literally in the hospital for about a month and recuperating. And most individuals would focus on, I just lost the hand. Going back to the obstacle, right? I lost the hand. I don't have this, my career's over. I what am I going to do in the infantry now? I don't have a hand, how am I going to shoot? I don't have my hand. But he didn't, he looked at what he had. I have, I have an attitude, experience, a competitiveness that's second to none. I have a good left hand that if I can teach myself how to do, do what I know what to do with the right one, why can't I be as good, if not better? And so there's a famous picture of him where he's holding the pistol in his left hand with his right eye and he's shooting, which is interesting because if you shoot left handed, use your left eye. If you right hand, use your right eye. But, but he didn't, he shot pry side with his, his hand. And he secretly trained for a year and didn't tell anybody about it, didn't tell his family, didn't tell his friends. He just trained. And I don't know if it's because he wanted people to, to try to keep him from doing it. So you're setting yourself a failure, don't do this. You know, it's or a coping mechanism for him, but saying, you know what, I'm going to do this for me. But it was the right thing to do because a year later when he went to the national championships that following year, everybody greeted him in open arms, are happy to see him, but they were, they were a little surprised and taken back when he says, I'm not here to watch, I'm here to shoot, I'm here to compete. And then they were totally shock when he won the match. And then you, you fast forward to the Olympics. The Olympics get canceled because of the World War. Of course, that follows with the following Olympics that gets canceled with the World War. And so now you're, you're at 1948 and he's still shooting, and he's one of the best and still going at it. But he's going into a competition in which the, the number one shooter at that time is from Spain by a guy by the name of Carlos Valente. And this guy held a world record. He was world champion. He was the favorite to win the Olympics. And the story goes that he asked Caroly, why are you still here? Why are you still shooting? Your day is over. And he says, I'm here to learn. Imagine that they're in England, London, England. He's like, I'm here to learn. I think you brought, you brought that up in, in your review. And there was nothing more said until the event's over. And there are podium and Caroly Takis is sitting there on the gold medal stand. He just defeated Carol Carlos and he beat his world record by 10 points, which is massive in the, in the port of sport of pistol shooting, where literally one to two points separate people. And he beat his world record by 10 points. And, and the story goes that when they were receiving their medals, after Carlos received his medal, he looked up at Carly Caroly Takis, and he says, you have learned enough. And I just think that's awesome because he not only took that, he took that as a, you know, it's a, you win or you learn. Obviously he wanted to win, but he went there with a mindset of, I'm here to learn, I'm here to learn, to see how good I really am. And he found out he was the best in the world. And then four years later in Helsinki, Finland, he wins again, which just does not happen that often in any Olympic sport. I mean, it's amazing when you see dominant athletes that can win back to back Olympics, which is why my father's totally upset about 1980 being boycotted, because he felt like he had a really good chance of, of winning back to back Olympics. And so for him to do that in that manner shows you how mentally strong he was. And a lot of people will share that story as, look, here's a guy that overcame all this. I like to look at the other side of it and say, here's a guy who's mentally strong that never doubted where he was going. You know, I don't have to have a right hand to win. I have a left hand. So that's why I present the story in the book and, and talk about how mentally tough you need to be. This is what the elite athletes do. This is what the lead performers in anything they believe. They believe in the fact that they expect to win, but at the same time they don't demand it. And so many people go in there wanting to demand it, wanting to do it rather than just trusting that it's going to happen. And this man did an excellent job of that.

Amazing. Well, that perfectly ties into another one of your elements, self image. So a big part of your work with mental management system is that concept of self image and building and protecting it. Can you walk us through what that means and why it's so important?

Yes, actively building and protecting your self image I think is where you're going with this. And elite athletes understand that there's a self image. Performance is a function of the conscious subconscious and self image. And self image is your total imprints of your life form, your self image of your belief. I like to use the phrase Henry Ford. I think it's absolutely awesome. You know, whether you think you can or you can't, you're right, that is self image. That's exactly what Henry Ford is stating. You can have the ability to do it, but just because you have the ability to do it doesn't mean you will. You must believe you can. And belief and confidence comes from, from self image. So an individual who's an elite performer is focusing on his successes and his losses aren't losses, they're not defeats. He understands that I can't win without having losses. It's a part of the, the equation, so to speak. I, I'm not going to win every event. If you won every event, it'd be pretty boring. But at the same time, if I don't win, I'm going to take that, that, that event, I'm going to reload it. Okay, I didn't win. It was an okay performance. Maybe it's a needs work performance. But what's the correction? What's the solution moving forward? And when I'm working with individuals that compete a lot, you know, they go from one event to the next event. We divide that training period into three parts. One is evaluation. What do you need to change based on what happened here to better perform the next time? And then you have a conditioning phase where you go into your training mode to become that individual that can do that. And then you go into the mindset of competing, getting Ready for the competition. So when I get there, I'm ready to compete. Where a lot of individuals just, it was a bad day. And then they spend the next two weeks just practicing the same way they practiced before the other tournament, expecting to do better in this competition. And then they're shocked when they don't. And I'm like, but you just did the same thing and you got the same result. What would you expect to get? And this is where self image is either built or torn down. When I do something well, I need to credit myself and I will say it needs to be warranted. You know, warranted praise is important. False praise is not. False praise can be very, it can have some bad effects to it. I call it the American auto effect. You know, why are you here? I can sing. Really? Who said? My mama said. And then they sing. And then the judges said, well, tell your mama she lied. Sing. And I, you know, you can tell someone they're good when they're not. And it might make them feel good, but it's not building their self image in the correct way. They're becoming, they're becoming overconfident in a bad way, not confident in a good way. But if someone is doing good work and we're not praising them and building their self image, how can we expect them to grow? How can they become a great athlete if they don't have confirmation that they're doing great? And so we need that now. I can, I can perform really, really good at what I do. But it doesn't mean I will win. But it doesn't mean I lost either. If I performed really well. But you were better that day and I performed my best. I didn't lose. I won. I shot my personal best. I forced you to have to shoot your press. You're just better than me that day. I can accept that my self image is going to stay where it's at as long as I view it that way. If I view it the way that society wants to pull us. Oh, you lost to Brian. You're. You didn't have a good day. And like, yeah, man, I can't believe you not beating this guy three times. And he beat me and thought I did good. Nice focus on all the things that I did wrong not to have success. What did I do to myself Image, it just shrunk. And elite athletes aren't going to let themselves in a shrink. They're going to keep it and they're going to try to let it grow. And so you're constantly focusing on Protecting it or building it. And this is why I'm big on keeping a performance journal. I'm not very big on keeping a lack of performance journal.

Love it so much there. I want to step back a little bit and talk about when process and outcome. So one of the things that in my work comes up a lot is people trying to orient around setting goals. How do you set goals but how do you really focus on the process and is it either or how do they go together and that sort of thing. So for you, when you were competing and you were striving for and achieving these goals of the national championships, the World Championship, how did tell me about your process as it relates to setting goals and then looking at how to focus on process and make it primary and all that good stuff.

Well, for starters, up until 1998, I made every mistake everybody else did because I'm like every other kid growing up. Dad knows nothing. And so there were a lot of times I didn't listen to his great wisdom and teachings when I was growing up. I wish I did, but it wasn't until 1998. I share their story in the book of Tame it. I missed making a world championship team by 1/10 of a point. And it was really, it was the only time I went home really mad about not making a team. I was ranked in the top three in the country at that time. I mean I should imagine we'd be top three. Top three, top three. I was fourth and I missed about 1/10 of a point. I mean that's just gut wrenching in my mind and. But what I failed to realize at that time was I was getting the process and outcome mesh together when they're really not, you know, you need to be outcome minded. You need to be process. Mindy, depending on when you're at. I cannot think about winning while I'm competing in a, in a competition. But that doesn't mean I don't think about winning when I'm not competing. So if I'm going to focus on a goal, in this case the goal was to make the world championship team. I didn't. Now I'm going home. I wish I could say I reloaded correctly. I did not. I totally reacted and I threw the, you know, the, the typical pity me party. Got home and we have an equipment bag that weighs about 60, 70 pounds and I just threw it against the wall of my house and you know, just totally upset. And my wife comes out of the house. Of course she knew I didn't make the team at that Point I didn't have to tell her and, but her point was, well, then you need to prepare for the next event that's coming up. And the event that was during the world championships was the national championships. And what I was focusing on was the fact that it doesn't matter if I win the nationals. The top shooters in the country aren't going to be there, so what's the point? They're all going to say, well, the best weren't there, so it doesn't count. And her reply to me was, I guess you're gonna have to set a national record. And she walked in the door and shut the door. And I'm thinking, what? Yeah, thank you very much. And but it made me think that night because I don't think I ever really, at that point ever really thought about winning and setting a national title, a national championship and getting a national record at the same time. I think I thought about winning, I think I thought about, you know, that kind of thing and a goal setting for it, but I never really thought about it. How do you go set for a national championship with the national record? And that next day I made it a point to focus on what do I want this outcome. I want to win, I want to set a national record so no one can take that away from me. And then the next thing I did is I said, why do I want it? I listed the pay value of why I wanted it. I listed the obstacles of what's in my way. One of the big obstacles is I've never won this national championship before. And my worst performance ever in my career was at this competition. Two big, two big obstacles to overcome. But then I put a plan together that would give me the benefit of doing that. And then when a part of the plan was to have a process minded goal during the event. So when I got to the national championships that were held at Camp Ohio, all I did was run my process. I didn't care what the outcome. I really could care less about the score. And it was the first match that I ever really did that. And I just shot and I ran my program. I trusted my process and basically just took all this training and said, okay, I want to see if it works. And it did. I said, national, national Rafa. I set four national records during that, that match. And one of them was, was annealing. So outcome is when you're goal setting. And I tell people when you're goal setting for event, that's outcome. But when you're in the event, you need a performance goal Something that's process minded and something I can control. You can control outcome I can't control. I have no control over you. I have no control over my, my opponents, but I can control me to a certain degree. And that's how I divide the, the two.

That's great. And then your training. Right. So your plan is part of the process as well. Pre competition and showing up and doing the work you needed to do to get ready for that event. Right. Versus oftentimes I think people who get stuck in kind of the vision boarding are just imagining the outcome the way they want it to be and then forget the fact that that needs to be a byproduct of all the hustle you're doing between here and there.

Correct. I had to, I had to train in a way that I didn't want to, that I used to just train like I liked to train. I had my little regiment, my own little way of doing it and I was successful. I'd make a national team, but I wasn't winning at that national to world level at that point. I was winning at the regional state level, but I wasn't winning at the national world level. And once I started realizing, well, how do I need to train? And oh my gosh, I have to train the process at the same time, technical skill at the same time, protect and build self image at the same time, be disciplined to stick with it. And that is something that I believe the average person struggles with. Elite performers don't.

So good. Well, let's, let's talk about your first big idea with this. The number one differentiator between elite performers and others is their passion. Tell us about passion as you see it and define it and why it's so important.

Passion to me is something that someone has a strong desire to do and they don't have to be asked to do it. They wake up wanting to do it. It's different than liking something. You know, I like to shoot pistols, I like to shoot shotguns. I'm not passionate. I don't have to do it every day, but I like to do it. But when I was competing, I was passionate about winning. I wanted to win. I really want passion about shooting, but I was passionate about winning. And shooting was a vehicle for me to win. And because of that, I also had a passion to shoot. How good can I be at this sport? How good can it be at this point? And I think you see that with a lot of great individuals that, you know, Wayne Gretzky was definitely passionate about hockey. There's Stories about when he was a kid, he was on multiple teams where he would he compete in the morning, and his mom would be busing him across town to try to. To get to a game that he's playing with another team. And most kids are like, okay, that's great. Let's go have ice cream and go play with my friends. And he's like, no, no, no, I want to. I want to go play with this and this. And so it's, it's a whole different mindset. And so I found that when people are really passionate about what they do, you don't have to remind them to do it. They go do it. I work with a lot of high school collegiate athletes, and the ones that are passionate, easy to spot. They're the ones that you don't have to remind them to show up to train. They just show up. They're the ones that you don't, you know, they're at the library studying because they're passionate to learn. You know, they want to grow. They want to. I don't have to tell them they do it. And the people who like to do it, they'll do it, but not on a daily basis, maybe once a week. And to me, that's the big differentiator where a person likes to do something they're going to be better than. Somebody doesn't like to do it, but they're not going to be as good as probably the guy who's going to be really passionate about it. And you hear people say one of the best things you can do in life is to. Is to earn money doing something that you're passionate about. Yeah, because then you're loving what you do.

It's amazing. So then, you know, again, for all of us who may not be performing athletically at this stage, what is, what are you passionate about? You know, you're dragging yourself through your days. How do you find something that you don't need to even think about? The way I like to frame it is, what do I love so much that I would pay to do it? And then how do I get paid to do that?

Well, when you're mentioning that, I think about my wife as a school teacher. She never wanted to teach. She's like, I. I became a school teacher, but it wasn't what I wanted to do growing up. And what she found is that she was really passionate about helping kids learn. She teaches fifth grade. And every year, the only thing that she asked is keep me in the fifth grade. And I'm like, why does it Matter. And she's like, yeah, because I really, really like working with these guys so much that I think about them all the time. Well, that's passion. Where we're at the store getting something and she's looking, you know what, that'd be good. In my classroom, I could see the kids using this. We're gonna get it. And I've learned to say, yes, we're gonna get it. And she'll use it in her classroom, she sees the kids. And this summer, even though she's got her break as a teacher, I guarantee you she's gonna be talking about her kids. And you know, this one did this and this one did this. And it's positive. It's about how they learn, how they clicked. And, you know, nothing that, that she says is ever, you know, I don't like this, I don't like that. You know, when it comes to kids, it's all about being passionate. Passionate, passionate where if she had all the money in the world, I, I'd be surprised if she wasn't at a school somewhere helping 10, 11 year old kids. That's what passion is all about. My father is definitely passionate about middle management. There's not a day that he does not wake up saying, what am I going to share with someone today? And how can I impact someone's life? And sometimes he gets impacted, which even drives and fuels it even further with that. I think that's why you see some people that they can't retire because they're passionate about what they do. Look, you don't need to work. Why are you working? Because I love to do this. And I think that's really where you find the passion sometimes in the areas that you would least likely expect it. So I would, I'll tell you, I work with, probably 60% of the clients I work with are under 21. They're the teenagers. And if you would have told me when I was in my twenties I'd be working with teenagers and loving it, I would have said, you're crazy. But I love working with the team. I love working with them one on one.

That's great. Okay, so I love to wrap up these chats with one final question, which is if you had to step all the way back and think about one thing that you could share with individuals listening to our chat now that you think could most positively benefit our lives, what would that one thing be?

That's an easy one. Always focus on what you should do, not what you did. That's what I would share. Always a little more always focus on what you should do goes back to reloading, focusing on if I did something really well, I'm reinforcing that because I want to do it again. If I didn't do it well, I'm going to focus on when I have the opportunity the next time, what I'm going to do differently to be more successful. It's not important what happened. What's important is how am I going to use that to better prepare me for the future when that similar situation shows up. And that's what I mean by that. I think that's one of the biggest lessons I've learned in my life that has helped and I think it helps anyone in life where we're reacting rather than responding. And if you focus on what you should do rather than what you did, it forces you to have to respond and not react to it. And I think that's probably a good way to kind of tie in what we're talking about today.

Love it. Right answer. Well, thank you. Troy, how can people learn more about you and what you guys are up to?

Well, our website, mentalmanagement.com we have Facebook page, Mental Management. There's Facebook coach, Mental Middle Coach Troy is on there as well. And that's probably the best way outside watching your clips, which are awesome. That's the best way to find this is through our webpage.

Right on. Well, I appreciate that. We'll put links to all of that as we share this. And again, I highly recommend Troy's book attainment. It's 100 pages. It's a quick read, it's packed with wisdom and I really enjoyed it. Troy, I really appreciate you taking the time and I'm excited to be connected.

Thank you. And I enjoyed listening to your work.

All right, thank you, sir.

Take care.

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