PNTV: Mind Gym by Gary Mack (#120)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, Mind Gym by Gary Mack. Mind Gym. We have the Philosopher's Note, which has about eight big ideas, maybe nine. We're going to look at five of them real quickly now. Gary Mack is one of the world's leading sports psychologists. I'm kind of going on a mental training binge right now, combining neuroscience with some great stuff and athletic mental training. A lot more coming soon on that front. But Mind Gym basic idea is we go to the gym to build our bodies. We need to go to the Mind Gym to build our minds. All the great teachers tell us nothing is more important than being able to put our attention where we want, when we want. That's why optimism is principle number one in my optimal living 101 series and all that good stuff. If you want to be an extraordinary athlete, no matter what game you play, whether it's a sport or, or creating a project at work, or creating a business or raising a family or doing artwork, whatever it is, we're all in the game of life. We're all athletes in the broader, bigger game of life. And we've got to hit the Mind Gym if we want to excel and reach our potential. These five big ideas are pretty fun. Number one, act backward. Act backward. Okay, let's act backward. What does that mean? Well, a all great performance, he says, do this A they accept where they are. They know their strengths, they know their weaknesses. Accept. And then they create their ideal. What do you want? What's your goal? What's the vision of your greatest self coming to fruition? We got to know that. And then t we take action. Accept, create, take action. That's what it's all about. Act. So accepting is pretty straightforward. We need to embrace where we're at, understand ourselves well, and then to create the dream. What is your broadest dream? And the note I go off on Sonia Lybomirsky telling us about the science of happiness and that one of the primary ways to build our optimism muscles is to do what she calls a best selves diary. Again, this is research based positive psychology, science, etc. Proven to build your optimism muscles. Imagine your ideal life, 1, 3, 5, even 10 years out. You work hard, you put in the effort, everything goes well. What's your life look like? Take 20 minutes in a quiet place and think about that. Create your ideal. And then what? Then take action. None of it matters if it's all in our minds. We've got to start there. But Then we got to take action, consistently move through the fear, move through the doubt, etc. These ideas will help us do that. The next one is limits. He has a great, great quote in here. Great thought. He says, let me find it. He says that limit begins where vision ends. Limit begins where vision ends. And he uses the story of Roger Bannister. So most of us at this point know the story of Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile mark. But scientists and everyone in that era was convinced that it was physically physiologically impossible to break a four minute mile. And I'm always blown away by the fact that Bannister had the audacity to say really? Well, I'm going to go break it. And then he did. And then what's fascinating is that no one in history up until that point had broken the four minute barrier. But once people had a vision of Bannister doing it, they knew he could do it. 50 people in the next two years broke the four minute barrier. That's nuts. No one ever. He does it. Vision is extended, limits are expanded. 50 more people break the four minute mile. That's unbelievably cool. So think about it. Limits begin where your vision ends. What's your vision for your life? We need to take the time to imagine that otherwise we're going to set these artificial limits in our life that just don't help us optimize and reach our potential. Next big idea is a good one. Breathe. Focus. It talks about choking, right? So great athletes, all athletes choke. Everyone chokes at different times. What goes on during that part of the process? And the short story as we know is we get anxious, we get stressed, we get in our head that little monkey is swinging from vine. Divine, Divine, Divine, Divine, Divine. Going crazy in our minds, right? Well, the key way to, to slow down that process to ground ourselves is to breathe and then focus on what needs to get done. But it starts with the breath. It's literally impossible to be simultaneously super anxious and super relaxed physically. What happens when you're anxious is you get tight, your breathing gets shallow. Rather than breathing deeply, you're breathing up here really quickly. So what you need to do is learn to notice when you're in that state, which is itself its own skill, which we'll talk a lot more about. Just having the mindfulness to observe where you are and then disciplining yourself to breathe deeply. So let's do that right now. Let's breathe in to at least a count of four and then out to a count of six. This is what other researchers tell us. Boost willpower. You want to boost your willpower. The best way to boost your willpower. Kelly McGonigal tells us we'll do one of these episodes on her great book the Willpower Instinct soon. But the best way to build your willpower in the moment is with a deep breath. She says inhale to four, exhale to six. So let's inhale to four. And exhale to six. Do that again. Inhale to four, Exhale to 6. One more time for good measure. Inhale to four, Exhale to 6. If you did that, you feel different already. I do. You do that two more times and you just meditated for a minute. You want to start a meditation practice. You don't know how. Start there, take five deep breaths like that, into four, out to six. Five times. You just meditated for a minute. Congratulations. So breathe and focus. It's the way to get out of our heads, to let go of the anxiety and perform at a high level. He had his athletes, he gave away thousands of little stickers. Breathe and focus. Breathe and focus. Breathe and focus. And his athletes would put them on their baseball bat or their hockey stick or underneath their hat to remind themselves to breathe and focus. Big idea. Next one is confidence. Confidence. I looked up the definition of confidence. Confidence comes from basically intense focus and intense trust. From the Latin. Go up and in here. What is it? Confidere con. Intense force is what it is and fidere is trust. My apologies to Latin scholars. Intense trust is what confidence means. He says it's the bottom line. The bottom line is high performing. People who hit the mind gym consistently have confidence. They believe in themselves and it's earned. They've done the work to know that they have what it takes, mind, body, spirit, to do what it takes on game day, when they need to perform, when it matters. That's confidence. The final idea is consistency. Consistency, consistency, consistency, consistency, consistency, consistency. We talk about this all the time. He's got a great line in here by Jack Nicklaus that great athletes are consistent. Good athletes are less consistent than great athletes. Jack Nicklaus says the hardest thing in golf is to learn how to play badly. Well. To play badly well. We're not going to be on all the time, but we've got to learn how to play well when we're off. How do you do that? Well, you do that by training yourself to do what needs to get done, whether you feel like it or not. You show up, you turn pro, you have a day, even if it's not a Great day. That is full. I talk about David Reynolds in the note who wrote a great book called Constructive Living. His big thing is now what needs to be done. Now what needs to be done. You feel great, awesome. Do what needs to get done. You don't feel great, awesome. Now it needs to get done. Michael Beckwith says, what is not feeling like it have to do with it. If you set a commitment to yourself to do something, who cares what you feel like in the moment? You said you're going to do it, do it. Consistency. That takes a strong mind. That's best built in the mind gym. So there you go. Take care of something over there. We've got our five ideas here. Act backwards. We accept where we are. We create our ideal and we take action. Act backward to move forward. Limits. Limits begin where your vision ends. Limits begin where your vision ends. Expand your vision and your limits will expand. Roger Bannister four minute mile. Impossible to do. All of a sudden he does it. 50 other people do it in two years. What? What are you telling yourself is crazy and impossible? We talked about that in Spartan Up. Maybe it's just really really hard. It's not impossible. It's just really, really hard. Breathe and focus. A little breathing exercise we did into four out to six. You're feeling stress. Calm your nervous system through deep breathing. Impossible to be breathing that slowly for 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 minutes. And continue to be hyper anxious. Try it next time you're super stressed. Confidence, intense trust in ourselves. That's earned by doing the work at the Mind and the physical gym. So we trust ourselves. Mind, body, spirit, consistency. Be able to play bad. Well, show up. Doesn't matter how you feel. Do what you said you need to do. And of course that includes resting. We need to make sure that we rest. That's a given. We're going to talk about that a lot more coming up. But what was your favorite idea here? Which one really landed with you? And how can you make it a bigger part of your life today? Take it from theory to practice. Embody this stuff. Think about that. Have fun implementing it. Hope you enjoyed this little episode and look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have an awesome day. See you.