Ryan Teigen and Jim Johnson Discuss the Importance of Mental Fitness for Athletes and Entrepreneurs

So you mentioned something earlier that you were visualizing what practice was going to look like, you were going to set personal records, what running again was going to look like. And that stuff started to build your confidence a little bit. And then at the end of that, you said, well, what is the stuff like, what does it look like before that? So that sounds to me like process or discipline. Can you explain more about that?

Yeah, I mean it when I guess in my. In terms of what I was doing, I. I was doing a lot of cycling while I was just kind of sidelined because I, you know, I couldn't run. I couldn't put any real weight on my body without. You're really feeling it. And that was totally fine. But while I was doing that, I would just close my eyes and just put myself, you know, out on the road, out at a cross country course somewhere. Sometimes I would look at, you know, actual photos of whatever course we're going to be on, you know, throughout the season. Just look at those. Before I really started prac, you know, my practice of really just getting on the bike for an hour at a time and then just close my eyes and just embellish that. Just live it. Just learn what it felt like to run on that course. You know, kind of learning the turns just mentally in my head or even just getting on the track, you know, if I was pushing myself on the bike, just closing my eyes and thinking about what it meant to be in that dark space, you know, thinking about what thoughts I might have if I was pushing myself really hard and learning how to accept that. You and I talked a little bit about acceptance right before we kind of went live and what that looked like when we acknowledged that sometimes our inner dialogue is messy or noisy and it doesn't like us, but the reality is we can put it in a box and we can just build this mental distance on it, which is something I work with with athletes all the time, especially on the endurance end. You know, if you think about where you are when you hit the wall in a marathon or at the end of a 10k, sometimes your. Your self dialogue isn't that nice to you. And sometimes it does take a coach to help you and kind of take a step back and say, is this dialogue helping me towards my goals or is it just pushing me back?

That is powerful. The people that are listening or watching on YouTube, this internal dialogue that we have with ourselves, human behavior studies tell us that we are going to lean towards the negative. Is that a fair statement? I just want to ask the Guy with the Masters.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think some people always wonder why. And I think for a lot of people, it's a defense mechanism. Right. But that's where the sense of getting out of your comfort zone really comes in, is that when you're stretching yourself outside of that, that voice is just going to get louder. And with mental training, you learn how to accept that volume and just build and keep going.

So when you say a defense mechanism, what do you mean by that? So I, you know, I've got a hurdle, whatever it may be, I'm hurt in athletics, or, you know, mistakes keep being made in my business, and we've got drama happening and stuff. Like, you start to defeat yourself with these things. You're saying, maybe I'm just not good enough leader. Maybe I don't have the right processes. Maybe I don't have the tools. Maybe I have a bad brand. Maybe, like all that stuff on a business or entrepreneurial side, both apply. Like, it seems like they apply very cleanly. And so we start saying these things. Are you saying to lean into them and be mindful of what they are so that you can then disarm them?

Yes, yes. I think physically what's happening is when we. When that internal dialogue starts, sometimes it's a script, and sometimes that script is something we've been telling ourselves for a long time. And the reality is, I mean, if you think about it just in terms of sports, Right. That voice is trying to make sure you don't get injured. For people in the business world, it might be so they. They don't get rejected, they don't have those feelings of guilt, so they're really holding themselves back. They're limiting themselves so that they don't have that necessarily that pain that they feel on the other side in case things go wrong. Well, in sport, if you think about that, if you acknowledge that that wall is there, that hurdle is there, and you still just keep pushing forward, even if it's just with curiosity. That's when we get into those states of flow where we really just start to dig into it and say, you know what? The other side isn't actually that bad. Or the other side just looks like the same side that I'm on right now. So just learn. That's really stretching your limits in the most real sense that I can tell you.

Yeah. The word you use there that I think should really sit and, like, resonate with the folks that are listening is the word curiosity. Don't look at it as even a positive or a negative. Just A curiosity like, okay, why? Why is this thing holding me back? Why am I thinking what I'm thinking? Why am I allowing this to get in the way? And there's a great book about this actually, like the Power of why and asking the question why three to five times. Usually we'll dig into where the root of it is coming from. Did you do any studies along that of, like that curiosity aspect, asking why, getting clarity on it, of this is why, so now it's easier to overcome?

I would say it was more of self exploration. And that's what I encourage most of my athletes to do is just when they find themselves in that dark space, whether it's a long run or whether it's, you know, some type of workout that they're doing, just ask themselves what's going on? Instead of checking out, just check in harder and really just think about what it means to be present and accepting what's going on in that moment and then just realize why you're there in the first place.

Yeah, because I think most of the time you hear whenever you feel that coming, positive affirmation, right. Like, get rid of the negativity to get that out of your world and go to the positivity. Start picturing yourself winning the race or personal record or all that other stuff. But if I'm understanding you correctly, like, dig into the dark place first and get control of that before you start to do the positive side.

Yeah, yeah. Or really just learning what you can control in that dark space. And sometimes it's just being there, being present, and just acknowledging that you're there in the first place. And that can be, you know, even while you're working. I know contractors work long hours. Some days they just have that impulse to get up and go home. Just sit with that, you know, just take a couple of minutes, sit with that and just really dig into it and say, okay, what is this feeling or this thought that or the script that I'm telling myself that's making me feel this way.

Well, that was really good. Why do I want to check out right now? So, yeah, in a lot of the world out there for these guys, they're running appointments. They may even be knocking doors, which is always uncomfortable, comfortable. They may be on a project that they're not thrilled about. And so, you know, quitting times five, but they're leaving at 4:30 or 4:00 as, hey, I got to go to Home Depot and pick something up. They really don't. They're making all these excuses of why they don't want to be there. Digging into why that's happening, I think is like, that's great advice. What's telling you to stop right now? Is it just this mental script that you're telling yourself the. That the next one's going to be even worse or that type of thing? Or is it something that's more deeply rooted? What do you find? Like, is it something pretty surface or is it something deeply rooted from when they were younger?

You know, I think just in my capacity of a mental performance coach, I can't dig necessarily too much into, you know, their childhood trauma and things like that. So everything I do is still performance based. And what I find with them is most of the time it's their own voice. It's not somebody that they had in the past, or it might just be a coach. You know, it might have been something that. It might have been a memory that just really stuck with them, whether it was, you know, a meet or a practice where a coach just told them something and they just bought into that logic. And just because that logic served them at that time doesn't mean it's serving them in the moment that I'm working with them. Right. It's not helpful. So it's learning.

People react differently. Yes, people. So, for example, I can remember this back in high school, play basketball, baseball and all this. I played sports quite a bit, and I had a coach, and we had these two guys that played on our basketball team. They're twin brothers, and he always called them Gumshoe because it looked like they were running with gum on their shoes. They were slow. Right. They just weren't fast. And I met him years later, and that's stuck with them. Like they. They always just decided they were slow. But there was another kid that he did that to as well that ended up becoming one of the fastest kids in our school. And at the time, they were pretty equal. But the one, it drove the other, they let it determine. Do you. Can you talk about any of that?

Yeah, I. I think that, you know, that really just depends on their relationship with the coach too. You know, somebody buys in. Yeah. How they buy in, how much rapport they have built with them. Because if somebody that I have as a coach tells me something and I've bought into their program, they mean a lot to me as a person and as a mentor. You know, I'm gonna listen, I'm gonna add some more weight to what they have to say. But if I have a coach that's just kind of there, he's doing it for a paycheck. And I don't have a great relationship with them. They tell me to do something, but my instincts or my history of training tells me to do something else. You know, I'm just going to brush it off. And sometimes I work with that, with athletes of saying, do you have that relationship with the coach still? Do you still talk to that person? Right. And if they say no, you know, I might tell them, hey, let's think about rewriting that script or acknowledging that that script was helpful at some point in your career, but that's not who you are now as a person or as an athlete.

Yeah. And I comment on this quite a bit whenever I'm coaching. And I set the expectation too, like anybody that works with us as a client, that I'm not here to be your friend. It's not my job. My job is to provide you with the tools, the fundamentals, the skills and strategies to achieve your fullest potential. And if I love you enough, I'll be hard on you when it's time to be hard on you, but I'll also high five you when you do something well. And that kind of gets it off to the right tone, I think. What do you think of that approach? Is it a worthy approach or should I do something differently?

I think that's good. You know, there's one study, long, long time ago in just terms of therapeutic alliances and coaching and what really makes behavior change happen, and a third of it is just a relationship. So obviously building that rapport and that relationship with the people that we work with is, you know, that's a third of the battle. But at the same time, we can't put ourselves in their shoes at the time, all the time. We can be empathetic. Right. But I tell athletes that at the end of the day, I'm trying to coach myself. I have a job them, and in terms of I'm going to build the skills. And I think that's what you're alluding to is I'm going to teach you the skills to apply in your own life and your own practice so that I, you know, at the end of the day, if you're racing, I don't have to tell you anything. I'm just going to sit back and watch.

If, if I do it right, you're going to fire me one day because you're going to need either somebody better than me because you've achieved goals far beyond what you ever thought, or you've achieved what you need and you don't need me anymore. That. That's my perfect situation. So you say you said a third of behavior changes, relationship. What's the other 2/3?

The actual work that we're putting in. Right. The actual techniques, whether it is imagery, confidence building, even just practicing, staying present, you know, that's huge for people. Or even breath work, learning how to take a deep breath and just building that in listening to your body and just building that physical and situational awareness. And the other third could really just be that space in between. Right. The space that during that session and just the emotions that we're talking about, the physical aspect, the mental component, all of that. I really like to call that the deep work. And that deep work is so critical for the things that we do. Right. And that could come in a multitude of ways. That could come just through journaling or that could come through just having a conversation. You know, I can give someone a technique to use and say, hey, I want you to do this Monday, Wednesday, Friday. But when the client that I'm working with really starts to dig into where that, you know, they have to figure out how that's going to work for them. Right. So they have to figure out when they need it, why they need it, and what it's, you know, what purpose is it going to serve for them in the long run. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. Like that. That's a. That's a key part of this, that deep work, as you called it, Taking what it is that I've learned, taking what has happened and transpired between me and a coach or. Or me in a situation and digesting it, like, literally, like honing in on it, maybe even meditating on it. I tend to do some. Some reflective thinking. Like each day, at the end of the day, I try to think about that day and was I productive, was I helpful, did I serve somebody? All of those things are really important to me as a coach, is like, am I doing the right thing by the people that I'm working with? And there's days where I go like, yeah, great job, Jim. Good job. High fives. There's other days where I'm like, God, could have probably done a better job with that and not taking the time to reflect or think. I think there's a root cause for this. I think so many of us don't do this because you mentioned journaling a couple of different times now. And it's one of those things I know I should do. I know I'm better when I do it, but taking the time to do it. There's this. Maybe this is one of those mental, psychological things. There's this dialogue going on in your head. Well, God, man, that journaling is going to take me 15 to 30 minutes. I could be so much more productive doing this thing that produces something that's either revenue generation or increase in athletic ability, like taking more batting practice or running more, practicing your start or whatever it may be, instead of taking the time to actually think about what it was that you did, take time to digest a little bit. Is that part of what you do as a coach? Like, how do you. How do you get people to actually do it? Because the world today is a world of absolute distraction. 95% of the time, like, when I do a podcast, I have to, like, leave my phone in a different room. I have to turn off every other tab on my computer. I don't want any distraction. I want to be totally focused on you while I'm here. I think so many people have a hard time with that because of this constant need to be connected to everything else but ourselves. How do you help people, like, get to the point of actually understanding and doing that?

I think we've already answered that question a little bit, Jim, in sense of, you know, that wall that people experience. Right. That mental wall with that script. Because that's going to apply to the same situation. And one exercise I like to put some of my athletes in that really want to work on staying present under pressure is when we're talking just on a screen, I literally just have them take their thumb, put it on their knee for two minutes, and just focus on solely that. Right.

Well, that's a long time to put your thumb on your knee. I bet most of you have a hard time doing that.

Yeah. And they just have to see how long they can keep that focus on that sensation or that feeling as long as they can. And nine times out of 10, they can't focus for that full two minutes. So sometimes it's really just teaching them how to stay present and learn how to play the long game. Right. And sometimes we might just even do that practice for a while, for sure.