PNTV: Executive Toughness by Jason Selk (#248)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes TV Today, another great book, Executive Toughness by Jason Selk. Executive Toughness Subtitle the mental training program to increase your leadership performance. Jason Selk is the mental training coach for the St. Louis Cardinals, the baseball team. He's one of the world's leading authorities on peak performance. The tagline on his website is the relentless pursuit of Greatness. That's got to be one of the coolest taglines ever. The relentless pursuit of greatness. This book is all about that. How do we pursue and attain greatness in our lives? He bases a ton of his work on John Wooden, who, as we know, in discussions on these episodes was all about the fundamentals. So if you want to be tough and you want to be able to achieve greatness, you need to master your fundamentals. We did another episode on 10 Minute Toughness. I love that book. I really loved this book. We're going to talk about product versus process that he unpacks in such an extraordinary way. A lot of people wonder, well, how do I get systems? What does it mean to be focused on process? I get that you don't want to obsess about outcomes too much and not emphasize the process, but what does that mean? And Jason walks us through that in a really cool way. I'll touch on it right now. I go off on it in the note. So we've got the Philosopher's Note, bunch of big ideas and five of my favorite ideas here. If you haven't checked out the Philosopher's Notes yet and the membership program, check it out. There's a ton more going on there than we cover in these short episodes and I hope you dig it. Everyone who signed up, thanks for your support. So, first big idea. Self image. Self image. Jason tells us that our success is going to be dictated by our self image. It's going to limit our upper threshold of potential. And he says, think of it like a thermostat. So your self image is basically how you see yourself, right? Do you think that you're successful and powerful, can do great things, or not so much? Because that's going to dictate the level of success you achieve in your life. And if you have a low self image, you're just not going to be able to get too high. You won't be able to do it. And he says, it's like a thermostat in a room. So imagine if you want to have 72 degrees is the temperature you're aiming for in your room. So you Set your thermostat to 72 degrees. Now, your thermostat is pretty cool because if it gets to 71 degrees, what's it going to do? Going to throw on some heat and get you up to 72. Now if you get up to 73 degrees, you told it your 72 is your target. So it's going to turn off the heat and let it come back to 72. That's pretty cool, right? It's never going to go too far, high or above or below your set point. He says people are just like that. You have a thermostat, which is your self image. You. And if you say you're about here, right, and you start doing pretty well, well, guess what, it's going to come down here. If you start underperforming, it's going to come back up. What we want to do if we want to relentlessly pursue greatness, is Jack our self image up. We need to see ourselves as capable of achieving great things. And he walks us through how to do that. The very first principle. The first chapter is defining your win. To define your win requires a self image of confidence, intense trust in yourself. So self image is a big concept here. We're going to talk about that a little bit more. We talk about it in other notes that I reference in the note. But there you go. That's first big idea. Second one is nuts. Writing your goals research out of Virginia Tech, forgetting the researcher's name right now. My apologies, David Cole. I think if you write down your goals, research shows you have nine times the likelihood of achieving your goals than people who don't write down their goals. I'm going to write that down again over here just so it's always present. Nine. Nine times. You are nine times more likely to achieve the goals you want in your life if you write them down. For some bizarre reason, only 20% of people, according to this research, have goals at all, and only 10% of them write them down. But that makes no sense because you have nine times more likelihood of achieving your outcomes if you actually write down your goals. I'm going to repeat that one more time. Nine times. So let's not allow another day to go by where we don't write down our goals and encourage our kids and our friends and our colleagues, whoever we are interacting with on an intimate, consistent basis, to write down what's important, what you want to achieve in your life. So right now, think about what's your number one thing you'd like to achieve over the next 12 months? It's attainable if you do the work. We're going to talk about that in a moment. But what is it? What's your number one outcome goal that you'd be thrilled to achieve in the next 12 months? Think about it. Enter the 20% that has an actual goal and then become one of the 10% who writes it down and experience that level of benefit. There you go. I still can't even wrap my brain around that nine times. And Jason says, well, why is it people don't do that? He says in his 10 years of researching this, it's one thing laziness. So let's not be lazy. Let's take the time and actually define our win. Again, first step in mental toughness is knowing what you want. So third big idea is product goals versus process goals. As I mentioned in the intro, we talk about this a lot. Process is primary. You want to focus on your systems more than your outcomes. Now, of course, you want to identify what your outcome goals are and you want to write them down. You need to have a target. You don't want to be aimless, right? So the Greeks told us we are teleological beings, right? Telos means target. It's like an archer who's aiming toward a target. You need to have the target, but then you need to figure out the mechanics such that you can shoot effectively, consistently. So you have your product. The number one thing that you want to achieve over the next 12 months, product outcome goal. Then you want to identify the process goals. And he says, those are the things you do on a daily basis to ensure that that you hit your product goals. Now in the note, I go into a lot of detail on this and I'm going to do a bunch of micro classes for our members on this because it's huge. The quick version now is identify three areas of your life that you want to optimize. For me, that's my creativity, this work, my family, and my vitality, my energy. Those are the top three things that are most important to me. Then Jason says, okay, you got your three domains. Identify your number one. Number one. That is an awkward way to write number one product goal for each of those three areas. So for example, my number one product goal, outcome goal that I want to achieve over the next 12 months for my creativity is to get 150 notes done. This year I played around with the idea of 250. That wound up being unreasonable, but I'm going for 150. This is my hundred and fifth think note that I'm working On and this is, I'm recording this in September. So I've got three more months left. My 12 month goal actually is going to be hit in the next four months rather. Right. So that's my number one product goal. I've got it. It's the most important thing I can do for everything related to my creativity, our business, etc. Then what are my process goals? He says identify three things you're going to do on a daily basis. One, two, three. That support that one goal. So for me it's I do an AM time block. I talk about this in my masterpiece days, right? But before I turn on the Internet, I do 60 to 120 minutes of work on my most important thing. That's usually writing a note or reading a book. I do that every single day, seven days a week, literally. Saturdays and Sundays. I do this as well before I turn on the Internet. Turning on the Internet is my treat, my reward for doing this process thing, right? That's my first one, my second one. Third one I talk about in the note, I'll talk about in other contexts. But that's the basic idea. Identify your number one, your number two, your number three process goals that allow you to hit this. Product goals. That's process versus product. It's huge. I hope that helps give more clarity on how to go about doing that. Third big idea, fourth one, 102nd mental training. He has a ton of practices and big ideas. The hundred second mental training idea is basically this. Five steps. The first one and the fifth one are taking deep breaths. So my favorite breathing pattern right now is inspired by Jason Sell. It's inhaling to 6, holding for 2 and exhaling to 7. Inhale through your nose. I exhale through my mouth. Tongue touching the roof of my mouth. I've talked about that in other places. You can do it however you want to do it. But inhale to six. We'll do it right now. Inhale to six, Hold for two and then exhale for seven. If you actually did that, you already feel more centered. It's extraordinarily powerful. We talked about this with Mark Devine. I did an interview with him where we talked about it. We'll be sharing that soon. But that's your centering breath. First step. Second step is to say your identity statement. So he helps us create an identity statement that captures our self image. So for me, my identity statement is something along the lines of I am one of the greatest teachers in the world and I'm an equally great husband and father. I'm confident and energized. That's my identity statement. I say that to myself as part of step two. What's your identity statement? Who do you aspire to be? Who are you? And who do you aspire to be in your life? That's how you ratchet up your self image. And you do this hundred second mental training program every day. So you turn up the heat in your life and you perform at a higher level. That's the second step. And the fourth step is to repeat your identity statement to yourself. The third step is really cool. Again, I'm not going to have time to go into it right now but. But I am going to go into this more. I do in the note and I will in the micro classes for our members. Imagine your five year ideal. So five years out, what does your life look like? Spend 20 minutes thinking about what your life looks like. Really cool. I give some great examples on it. But who are you? And then play that in your mind for 30 seconds a day. Groove it in. That's who you are. That's what your life is going to be like in five years. And. And then he has you connected to today. So play in your mind for 30 seconds your ideal day today. Because if you want your ideal future, that's only going to come from an accumulated compounded effect of great day after great day after great day. So you meditate on your ideal future vision. You meditate on your ideal today every day. That's how you relentlessly pursue greatness. So centering breath, nice deep inhale, hold, exhale. 15 seconds. Then you do your identity statement. Then you do the five year and today ideal vision. Then you do another identity statement. Then you do another deep breath. Awesome practice. He goes into all that in the book obviously. And then the final big idea here is PCT versus RSF problem centric thinking. PCT problem centric thinking versus rsf. Relentless solution Focus. Short story here is most people spend all their time thinking about their problems. He said if you spend all your time thinking about your problems, guess what? You're going to get more of problems. What we need to do in our brains are actually evolved to that. Rick Hanson, the leading neuroscientist, says our brains are like Teflon for positive stuff and Velcro for negative. And that made sense millions of years ago when we needed to notice predators to survive. Today doesn't make as much sense. Daniel Amen calls them ants a n t automatic negative thoughts. But we need to move from a problem centric thinking mode to a relentless solution focus. He says. Make it a game. Allow yourself to be in the problem for 60 seconds, but within 60 seconds, shift to solution mode. Think about what you can do. Just one thing that you can do to just improve your situation a little bit. Not how you solve the whole thing, which is how people stress themselves out, but how you move it forward just a little bit. How can you make it a little bit better than what it is right now? It might be just taking a deep breath or going for a walk or whatever, but have a relentless solution focus. If you want mental toughness, quit talking about your problems. Start talking about your solutions. 100 second mental training is awesome. Product versus process. You. You've got your number one product goal for each of the three areas of your life. Then you have the three things you're going to do on a daily basis such that those are the natural byproducts. Huge practice. Write your goals. Remember our nine times research. I don't even know what to say about that other than that's astonishing. And then your self image. Remember your thermostat. Believe in yourself. Have confidence. Intense trust in your ability to do what you want to do. Knowing you're going to do what it takes over the long run to continue to pursue your own personal greatness. Whatever that means for you. All right. Hope you enjoyed. I had fun with this one and I look forward to sharing more soon. Have another awesome day. See you. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that PNTV episode. A lot of people don't know all the stuff I do beyond these free videos I share on YouTube, so I thought I'd do a quick video to give you an overview of our membership program that you can get access to and and get a ton of other stuff. So here's a quick look. Ten bucks a month. Join the Optimal Living Membership program. You get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes on some of the best Optimal Living books out there. Old school classics, positive psychology, modern stuff, mindfulness, peak performance, purpose, neuroscience, wealth, et cetera. And what you may not know is that in addition to the PNTV episodes, I create PDFs on all these great books. So six page PDFs. What's a look at one of them? Joseph Campbell, you want to figure out how to live your hero's journey? Well, this is a great place to start. 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