Dr. Don Greene Recap: Train Your Own Hero

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I want to take a moment to talk about others helping on our journey. Look, I was fortunate to win seven World titles, two World Solo Juvenile titles, and then five World Pipe Band and World Pipe Band Drumming Championship titles at the top level. But I need to stress that I didn't do that by myself. That was not my victory. I did that with others. And what I mean by that, you know, my parents were there. I had coaches, teachers, trainers, supporters, you know, people that were there every step of the way. And I want you to think about your life and what you've achieved or what you're trying to achieve. The people around you are crucial, all of it. Look, one person that really helped me was Dr. Don Green. He never knew he helped me. He just wrote an incredible book called Performance Success. I read it in my teens when I was starting to experience nerves when competing not just at the World Championships, but competing on a stage in front of my classmates. Just being in front of others just generally made me nervous. And so I read this book and it truly helped me understand how the mind works under pressure. And I'd won two World titles before reading it, but my playing was deteriorating quite quickly, actually. And after reading this book, my playing improved. And I guess Don didn't help me with my technique, with the skill sets. He helped me with the mind side of things, the mental skills. In my last episode here, I chatted to Dr. Don. It was incredible to finally meet him and to tell him that, that he was really instrumental, pardon the pun, in me winning five of my world titles and me helping others win their world titles. Dr. Don Green is a peak performance psychologist. He has taught his comprehensive approach to peak performance mastery at the Juilliard School, Colburn School, New World Symphony, the LA Opera, Young Artists Program, Vail Ski school, and the US Olympic Training Center. During his 32 year career, he has coached more than a thousand performers to win professional auditions and has guided countless solo performers to successful careers. Some of the performing artists with whom Dr. Don Green has worked with have jobs, you know, in the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Opera, the National Symphony, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, and look, the list goes on and on and on and on. He's incredible. And he's helped so many Olympians win gold medals. He's authored so many great books. And his most recent book, which is Train youn Own Hero, has just been released. I wanted to share with you just some of the key takeaways from our last episode. In the hopes that it might support you or support someone that you know in an area of their life. And first things first. Don said leadership is about taking people where they aren't used to going. If you've got a pen and paper, please write that one down. Leadership is about taking people where they aren't used to going. We don't need leaders where we know where we're going. If you're walking that mountain and you've done it 20 times, you don't need a leader to take you to the top. Sir Edmund Hillary didn't get to the top of Mount Everest by himself. The Sherpa took him up. Tenzing Norgay was the Sherpa. He was the leader that led Sir Edmund Hillary. So leadership is about taking people where they are not used to going, taking them into those areas that are uncomfortable for them and helping them get used to change and walking them through it. Now we got talking about what wins gold medals because essentially that's what Don helps performers do. Before I share the takeaway on this one, what is your gold medal? What's the thing you're chasing? Is it sport related? Family related, Finance related, leadership related, career related? What is it? What's your gold medal? Whatever it is, I want you to picture it in your mind. I want you to think about it. I want you to hold that prize, that medal, that trophy in your hand, whatever the end result is. And I want to give you the answer to what's going to bring that to you. And this is from Don's words. This is from a conversation we had. If you haven't listened to the full episode, I urge you to go back and listen to the full episode. It was phenomenal. Here's what wins gold medals. Optimal performance. That's right. Optimal performance is what wins gold medals. When we're performing sub optimally, the chances of us winning gold or winning it consistently decreases greatly. So then it comes back to this. What drives optimal performance.

In your field? What is that? Is it the skill set, the mindset, the teamwork, the communication, the collaboration? What is driving your optimal performance? Is it a set of behaviors, actions, maybe habits? That's the question I want you to really dwell on for a little bit. So Don shares a lot about the shadow, and some of the stuff that he shared was very enlightening for me. And he talks about the ego and the super ego around the Freudian theory. He said, look, when we have failures and rejections in life, we tend to suppress and rationalize them away. That's the Shadow. And we're pushing it down to protect the ego. What the shadow really wants is to be recognized, not suppressed. Acknowledge the shadow as a real part of your personality. When you suppress too much, that's when the shadow decides to wait until it really matters and then it shows up. Look, I remember this. For me, it showed up. You know, we've all got shadows. We've all got things that happened in our lives that we don't want to talk about that we're ashamed of. And you know, I can go back to things that happened to me that felt like I didn't want to tell people about, but also things I'd done in my younger years that I'm like, oh my God, I'm not proud of that. Like I don't. And I'm not defined as that person. That's, that's not something, you know, I said this thing to someone and I feel terrible or, you know, it's just horrible. So those things get suppressed. And I remember it showing up for me. I was a performer, a percussionist and performing at a really important championship, like a medal winning championship. And there was an incredible adjudicator there that I really admired. They were a former multiple time world champion. I had prepared for this event thoroughly, very focused on it. It meant a lot to me. Preparation had went really well. I was feeling confident, got to the site of the performance, was feeling those natural normal nerves right beforehand. And my mind went into overdrive thinking, what are they thinking? What do they want to see? Will I do that? How do I do that? Can I do that? What if something goes wrong? What if I get a sweaty hand and I drop the stick? This conversation started and this conversation had happened before, but it was on a whole new level of intensity and, and when I started to perform within about 30 seconds, I could not execute the most basic rudiments, we call them drum rolls, flams, paradiddles, these funny percussive words. But I couldn't do the simplest things that I could have done 10 years ago. They just didn't come out. They were awful. And my performance deteriorated. It was embarrassing. I swatted buckets. It was horrible. And when I chatted to Don just in our last episode, it made me realize that was my shadow. That was all those things I hadn't dealt with that I'd put down coming up to go, oy. You need to acknowledge me and know that you've got things you need to work on in terms of your spirit and your mind. And you've got to acknowledge this stuff, and I wish I hadn't known that at the time, I would have been able to deal with it earlier. But, you know, I think we've all got those things that they end up coming up at the time. We really don't want them to be there. It's that big performance, it's that, you know, big show, that big conversation, and all of a sudden, as you're about to have it, the rug gets pulled from beneath your feet. Have you been there? I'm pretty sure you've been there. We've all been there. And if you haven't, you're going to get there. And so Don's book, Train youn Own Hero is about how do we find our shadow and identify it, and then what do we do to remove it? And he has some really incredible journaling exercises, and he shared some of them on the show, but he just said, the one thing we've got to acknowledge is that your shadow is the source of your creativity. That's right. Your shadow is the source of your creativity. Don't suppress it because you're holding yourself back. So I hope those takeaways have been valuable. There's so many more. I could have shared another 20, but those were just some key overviews. And I'd love you to go and listen to the episode, take your own notes, go and buy the book and share the book. I mean, everyone's got a shadow. We've all got it. So go and do the work and enjoy the benefits. But for now, get out there and lead your life on purpose.

Sam.