Dr. Haley Perlus Recap: Become Mentally Tough

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In the previous episode I had on Dr. Haley Perlis. She's an incredible world class sports psychologist and she works with some of the world's top athletes, brands and and fitness experts to move past mental blocks. She's also been working with a lot of corporates and Fortune 500 leadership teams. And so look, we went deep on what it is to be mentally tough, but also what it is to be mentally weak. And there's some key takeaways that I wanted to share with you. But before I do that, look, I'd love to ask you to take a moment to just quickly subscribe to the show and leave me a rating and review that helps made impact more leaders. And in fact, if you leave a review and a rating, take a screenshot, send it to me by DM on Instagram, you can see me @jameslochlanofficial or you can send it to me by email, just go to my website, you can contact me that direction. But if you send me a screenshot of that, I want to send you an incredible gift in return. So look, let's get into it first. Big takeaway. Mental toughness is showing up when you don't have to. Look, it's easy to do what you love doing, but you need to overcome the struggle. You're giving it your all. Like go all in. When you don't want to get up at 5am to do that workout or that cold shower, do it. That's what mental toughness is. It's just continuing to punch, continuing to get back up, continuing to keep that pace focused on where it needs to be focused. Right? So doing what you know needs to be done even when you don't want to do it, that is a sign of someone who's mentally tough. And when you look at the world's greatest leaders, athletes and teams, they're all very mentally tough. They're all doing the hard work when many others would give up. So where in your life do you need to develop more of that mental toughness. Is it the daily exercise? Is it the tough conversations with a staff member? Is it that you need to balance your time between key priorities? Is it that you need to learn to say no to people? Where is it? And look, mental toughness. This was something I took away from Dr. Haley. Mental toughness is having unconditional confidence. You know, it shouldn't come and go with the results. Often, you know, our confidence in our mental toughness is at a high. When we're winning. We just won the World Cup. Yeah, we're mentally tough. But then you get beaten in the quarter, you know, say, like the quarterfinals. Yeah. All of a sudden you've lost that mental toughness and that edge. Don't let it come and go with the results. Mental toughness should be developed and maintained over the long term. Okay, the next big key takeaway here. How do you learn a new skill? Right. And coming from a sports psychologist, this is really valuable. It doesn't matter whether this is a sports skill or a business skill or a life skill. There's three key ways to do that. So, number one, you watch and observe others. So have a role model, someone that's already doing what you want to do. Watch them. It could be a mentor or a coach. Right. Secondly, educate. So read about it, learn about it, listen to a podcast about it, which you guys are doing right now. And thirdly, just jump in the deep end. Now, most of us think to learn, we've got to just jump in the deep end, but that's not true. You get the watching, observing, the educating, and then the jumping in. And if you can do all three, you're going to learn much quicker and you're going to embody that new skill much, much deeper. Now, before I share the last one, guys, I'd just love you to take a moment and think about the last few podcast episodes you've listened to here. What's been your favorite? If you could take a moment and just take one lesson from that podcast and implement it in your life, it's about taking action. You know, we can passively listen and agree, but when you can take it and implement it in your life, that's when it's truly powerful. I get such a kick when I hear from you guys, whether it's a message, whether it's a post saying, hey, I listened to this on the podcast, James, and I'm taking action, or I've shared it with a friend. So please take a moment to. To integrate one of those lessons, and if you can, go and grab an episode and share it with a friend. Please do. So here's the last lesson. Embrace the suck. Yep, you heard it right. Embrace the suck. So embrace the anxiety that you're experiencing and use your best self to go and conquer whatever stress you're experiencing. Often we try to avoid the suck. You know, the suckiness, the crappiness, whatever. We want to call it the adversity, the challenge challenge. But when we can embrace it and go, hey, that's life, well then we're owning it. We're taking ownership. We're not passing the buck. It stops with us. So I'm going to challenge you to look at where you don't embrace it. Maybe where you bicker about it, where you gossip about it, where you complain about it and you use all that energy. I want you just to identify that and go, hey, I'm going to embrace it, own it, and then make some decisions and pivot from here so I can move forward and look. Everything rises and falls with leadership, self leadership, team leadership, family leadership, community leadership, global leadership. But please remember this. You've got to learn to lead yourself before you can lead others. So lead yourself, lead others, lead always. And with that, folks, it's a quick little wrap up and a recap of Dr. Haley's podcast episode. I hope you enjoyed it. If you haven't had a chance to listen to the episode with Dr. Haley, the full length one, please go back and listen to it. It's phenomenal and I look forward to connecting with you guys in a few days time with our next special guest. I know you're gonna love it. So for now, get out there and lead your life on pur.

Sam.