Brian Johnson introduces Dr. Nate Zinsser’s book The Confident Mind, praises its lessons on confidence and mental toughness, and highlights a central idea—the “first victory” (from Sun Tzu): win in your mind before entering the arena. He summarizes Zinsser’s credentials, recommends the book, and issues a short call-to-action to visualize and achieve today’s most important win.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. In our last little sequence of plus 1s, we spent some time hanging out with Alden Mills chatting about some great ideas from his great book Unstoppable Mindset. As it turns out, after drafting those plus ones, I spent some time connecting with Alden in a one on one interview. You can check that out here. I got it linked in the plus one. It was awesome. As it also turns out, as I was reading Alden's book, I got another book he recommended called the confident mind by Dr. Nate Zinsser. Alden referenced Dr. Zinsser and his wisdom from his book a bunch of times. So midway through reading Alden's book, I Amazon Dr. Z's book and thanks to the miracle that is our modern world, the Confident Mind arrived the following day. I started it the following morning and finished it that day. It is fantastic. In fact, I think it's now at least tied for first as the best mental toughness book ever read. The first three chapters in particular are mind bogglingly and life changingly good. I highly recommend it. Check out the notes and get a copy of the book. We got links to Both in the one as per the inside back flap of the book, Dr. Nate Zinsser is a renowned performance psychology expert who has taught three generations of soldiers, athletes and executives to master the art of confidence and mental toughness. For over three decades, Dr. Zinsser was the Director of the Performance Psychology program at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He's also worked with world class performers including two time Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning, as well as many Olympic and NCAA champions. As per the inside front flap, Dr. Zinsservice has come to understand that one single trait above all others makes peak performance possible. Confidence or the belief in oneself. You perform best when you are so certain of your abilities that your flow of fear, doubts and confusion slows to the barest minimum. Confidence is a skill that can be taught, improved and applied by anyone to to enhance nearly every aspect of our lives and careers. Now the book is packed with big ideas. We'll define confidence and chat about how to get more of it soon. For today, I want to briefly chat about the very first quote with which Dr. Z starts his book and the very last quote with which Dr. Z ends his book. It's the same quote. It's from Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu says victorious warriors win, fight first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. I repeat, the victorious warriors win first and then go to war. While defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. That's what Dr. Z calls the first victory. We need to win in our own minds before we enter the arena. Do you? We'll talk about how in our next plus one for now. What's your most important win for today? See that target. See yourself hitting that target. And go do what needs to get done to hit it now.
