6 Steps You Must Take To Confront Your Fears & Visualize Success w/George Mumford EP 1238

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This is episode number 1238 with George Mumford. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turn lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome back, my friend. Today's guest is George Mumford, who I had such a pleasure sitting down with. And George is a globally recognized speaker, teacher and coach since 1989. he's been honing his gentle but groundbreaking mindfulness techniques with people from all walks of life, but most notably professional athletes like Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, and Michael Jordan, who credits George with transforming his on-court leadership and helping the Bulls to six NBA championships. He's written the book, the Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance, as well as a new course to dive deeper into his lessons in the book. And in this episode, we discuss what separates the 1% of high performers from the rest. We dive into the five superpowers we can all focus on to be the best versions of ourself. The Practical Steps to Stop Living in Fear. The Greatest Lesson George Learned from Coaching Mindfulness to Great Athletes like Kobe, Michael Jordan, Shaq, and so many others, and so much more. I think you're gonna love this one. And if you do, make sure to share this with a few friends. Text some friends, post it on social media, and make sure to tag me and George as well over on social media. And if you are new here, please click the Subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify right now for the School of Greatness so you can stay up to date on the latest greatest from this show. every single week. We've got some incredible content coming up, so make sure to click subscribe right now. 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What do you think is the difference between the 1% of the athletes or the leaders that you've worked with mentally? What is the difference between the top 1% of high performers and the 2% to 100%? You know, what is the difference there?

The willingness to succeed. When they've done this study and they ask coaches and experts, what is the one thing is, the willingness to succeed, the willingness and you might call it the pursuit of excellence. You could talk about never quitting and having a goal says, yeah, I'm going to do this. I'm going to take it to the next level. So it's the hunger and the thirst. You have to go for it. It's not something that's going to come to you. It's something that you have to pursue.

There's a lot of people that don't have hunger. They're not hungry. How do you train someone or is that not something you can train?

Yes. So it's interesting because I've done a lot of research and study on this even on my own. I had a sense of urgency. You had a sense of urgency. Some people have to create a sense of urgency. And before I was motivated by my butt being on fire or just survival, just wanting to get to living. But you can create a sense of urgency by creating a possibility, a vision of possibility that you want to live into, or you want to serve more people or something. So initially it was me just getting out of that, you know, butt on fire, then the game I'm playing now, I'm pursuing excellence and wisdom with grace and ease. So there's a hunger for me to want to get to the next level, to want people to help people get to the next level. And to me, it's about helping people understand they have a masterpiece and that their job is to express it and share it with the rest of us. But it's an inside job and only they can do it. So unless they have the will and the desire to do it, but not to say do it, but I'm, I'm, I have this will to succeed. I'm going to do whatever I need to do to get there. And so that's the 1%, that's 1% that says I am responsible and I have a masterpiece inside of me or I have greatness inside of me. And it's my job to develop it and express it. And that's why it's so challenging because if you want more than the other person, then that's a problem. But if you can help them discover that they have this greatness inside of them, this masterpiece that can be developed and can only be developed by them.

So let's say you're, there's a lot of really good athletes out there. There's a lot of really good humans, good people at their jobs, but they stay good and they don't transcend to the next level for themselves. Not meaning they have to be the best in the world, at what they do, but they stay very comfortable. You know, maybe they did well in college as an athlete, but they didn't take it to the next level because they didn't have the desire or the willingness or whatever it is. Maybe someone stayed well at their job for 10 years, but they got to a level of comfort, but they didn't want to grow and develop their skills to another level to see what's possible. How can you inspire, evoke, empower people that are at a good level? that have been stuck there for a while, that haven't been willing to do what it takes to see what their true masterpiece is. Is there a level of coaching?

Is it a-- It's what I said, you have to create a sense of urgency. Because why would they change? They're, I gotta be working with young athletes and say, what's up man? How you doing? I'm chilling.

Yeah, relaxing.

And I say, you, chilling ain't gonna get it done. You know, you can be chilling, but you gotta be willing. Yeah. So you can chill Now, but then you have to step to the next thing. So the way that it works, especially if you're thinking about getting in a flow, you got to look at it as a step function. Because once you get to a certain level, then it becomes normal. And so if you don't challenge yourself, it's like a step function and the high challenges will get you revved up and and you have to have a vision of possibility. We live in the future we see. So if you're if you're not uncomfortable, then you're probably not learning. And I don't mean being uncomfortable all the time, but I talk about getting comfortable being uncomfortable, which means keep moving and increasing your capacity to grow, learn and experience life in different ways. And that's what it comes down to. So it's an inside job without the will. They're not doing it. And the will, some people look at will as having three components. One component is motivation, one component is commitment. But the third component is security or confidence. And so people who have a strong self-efficacy, like myself, like you, that we embrace the challenge. We see things as a challenge and a venture and something to move towards. So we're always trying to expand in capacity, you know, our capacity, but we have this adventurous spirit that says, I don't know how far I can take this, but I'm just going to take it as far as I can take it. And it's fun and it's something that I know creating a service for others, I want to help others by expressing or being a leader in terms of how am I going to not get so comfortable that I'm chilling. And when you get to that phase of of, you know, even boredom or just relaxed and, you know, just sort of satisfied. That's when you have to challenge yourself. And if you challenge yourself, then you can, you have to raise everything to meet that challenge. And unless you do that, you're, that's where the self-regulation comes in. And that's why when you talk about MJ or Kobe, some of those, those guys like that, Tom Brady, there's a lot of them out there. I'm not naming all of them. Of course, you know, the ones that are there now, you know, I could name them all, but what it comes down to is you will know them by their fruits, right? You will know them by their ability to not settle and the ability to keep getting better. If you think of Steph Curry last year, he knew he wasn't going to, well, I can't speak for him, but it was pretty obvious they weren't going to win without Clay, but he took his game to a whole other level. and see that's the thing. If Clay was there, would he been doing that? Probably not, because the situation probably didn't call for him to be extraordinary. And that's why if you think about going to a team that's already loaded, you might win championships, but you really have to look at just my opinion, whether or not you're challenged enough so that you can get out of your comfort zone and go to that next level. Without that sense of urgency, you can't do it, or unless you're committed to excellence and you're taking it to the next level. So let me give you an example of that. I can talk a lot about MJ, but let's just talk about Kobe for a moment. So Kobe won a championship in 2009. I think I have it right.

You were working with him then?

When they come to Boston, yeah, I've always been, you know, come to Boston, I work with them, talk with them. The process they use is the one that we developed when I was here in the early 2000s. so that's the thing. So that's what I'm talking about. It's like, okay, you won, but you want to go to the next level. So you, you know, you retire, you could reflect on, but you got to keep getting better because now the team, the team knows you won. Every team is going to be coming for you. Coming for you. So you have to keep getting better. It's Progressive realization of a worthy ideal. So you're not there, but it's in that day to day, just making today your masterpiece, getting better today. It's that incremental process. And that's what I mean. And there's other people that do that. I don't have to name names. People don't realize that Tom Brady probably spends 10 to 12 hours a day in the off season getting ready. Now he's 44, now he just came this close from going to the next level at the defense held. He probably, knowing him, he would have got the ball and scored, and they would have won, but that's a mindset. It was 27-6. Snow quit. That probably just inspired them even more. Yeah. So that's what I'm talking about, that idea. So it's not about how do we get them, it's how do we help them go inside and make that become willing to go to the next level because some people just don't want to do that. They're not interested. That's why they say many are called, few are chosen. It's about you having a vision of possibility for yourself that has to do with being great or helping others be great by being a role model and by taking it to the next level.

What happens when people stay comfortable for a year after year after year and they don't challenge themselves? What happens to them?

They become relaxed and bored. That's what boredom, we spend most of our time between boredom and anxiety. So if you look at it that way, So you're bored or you're relaxed, but you're just a couple of levels up from boredom. But if you're bored or if you're anxious, it's saying to you, if you're bored, you need to challenge yourself more. You need to have goals setting and set goals. Or as Steve Harvey said on the video I heard, he said the reason people have a hard time getting up in the morning is because they don't have a good enough reason for them to get up. So you want to create a raison d'être or a way of being where you jump up like a kid at Christmas. so Christmas Eve you can't go to sleep because you know it's going to be. So you have to have that kind of a process where you are getting up and you're going at it because it makes you feel alive, it makes you feel like you're making a difference. And I would say what we're really talking about is people being who they are and not somebody that they're supposed to be or somebody wants them to be. but coming from that masterpiece and when you're being real, so it's like we used to talk about it when I worked in the corporate structure, you have, you know, Hump Wednesday, TGIF Friday. Like so five-sevenths of the time you're doing something you're not happy about. When in actuality, why not have it be seven-seven? So having a work, and it's interesting because I was just reflecting, I was reading this book by Eric Butterworth called spiritual economics. And in there he talks about what's been my experience. It's not, so the job may not be that great, but it's what you bring to the job and how you apply yourself. And it's interesting because it's not so much about the compensation, it's about your soul growth. It's about you growing as a person, just being fully engaged in everything. And I think Jesus talked about this about going the extra mile. You know, like, I guess back in the day there, the Romans could say, okay, I want you to carry this for a mile. He said, go two miles. And so this idea of giving more than what you get, and there's something about applying yourself, be fully engaged, your whole mind, body, heart and soul engaged. So that's what, that's what healing is, is wholeness. So just fully engage in yourself. Or in, or as in Zen, they say, burn yourself in the activity. Do not leave a trace. so fully engaged, fully present, just doing it. And what you bring to it is what makes the difference. And it's interesting because I'm thinking about this book I read called the Way of Man. They talk about this idea of just fully burning yourself in the activity, just losing yourself. Just really, just really because what is that about? It's like, so he talks about this idea of What can man do that angels can't do? And the answer to that is that men or man with a woman with holy intent can hallow anything. We can make something holy just by intention. So we can make something holy, whole, just by intention. So that's what we can do. We can intend to make things holy. We can make heaven here and now just by bringing that love, that compassion, that presence that's fully committed and a productive act of love. That's what love is. When you love something, you help it grow. So it's the intention. So do you have to stay in a job? I was in a job I didn't want to be in. Or I woke up and I'm making missiles. I used to work for Northrop back in the day, 16 years working on that stuff. And then I went to a high tech after that. But it was really more about and I got into that job, how did I end up being a financial analyst, getting an accounting degree? Because my high school coach told me they make money. So I did it. So I did what I thought I was supposed to do. And it wasn't until I stopped that I started doing what I wanted to do. So I go from working in corporate, wearing a three-piece suit, going back to graduate school, studying the soft sciences, like psychology. And then I'm there with people who are in the soft sciences wanting to go into business because they want to make money. And they look at me like, dude, what's wrong with you? You come in here with a three-piece suit trying to do what we're doing. And it was very simple. That's because I was following my bliss. I was doing what I was supposed to do. It had nothing to do with what the conversation was. It had to do with me getting into a situation where I could fully express myself, be fully in, all in. I think you talk about that a lot, being all in. And it's what I bring to it. And of course, that can change. But what can't change is me being fully engaged in the moment with as much love and joy and compassion as I can have. Yeah.

Something you mentioned there was healing is wholeness. Of the people that you trained at the 1%, it seems to be like a lot of those people have a chip on their shoulder.

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They have something where they're, maybe not always, but it's like there was a pain somewhere that drove them to be great. And correct me if I'm wrong. When I was training as an athlete, I was very driven to be great to prove people wrong. People that hurt me, the pains that I went through, the sadness I felt, the being picked on, and all those things. I was like, I'm gonna become so big, so athletic, so strong. so needed that, you know, I'm gonna prove them wrong. And it worked. It got me to achieving results and being like captain of my team and playing professional football, all these different things. But I always, when I would achieve my goals, I felt so empty and alone and angry and angry. It's almost like it was like, well, this isn't what I thought it was supposed to heal me, and it didn't. And then I went for a bigger goal. Bigger goal. We kind of talked about this before a little bit, and. it wasn't until I started doing the healing work that I was able to create from a place of peace and love and generosity as opposed to I got this chip on my shoulder. I gotta keep showing up and like proving these people wrong or whatever. Do you think most of the top performers in the world create and build from a place of there's something that's still not healed or whole inside of them? Or do you know some that you worked with who have completely healed or on a healing journey and they're creating their masterpiece at a high level from wholeness.

I think, and I'll speak about it this way because I don't get into people's hearts and I mean I do, but I don't want to talk about people's hearts because I have to talk to them and even if they express to me what it is, it may not be what it is, it's their interpretation of what it is. And I watch their behavior. I think what's important is maybe that gets you there, that anger or gets you to prove people wrong because I always like that too. When you told me I couldn't do something, I'm gonna show you. I would show you. But what happens is at some point, you're right, that's empty because that's coming from a place of fear. And so I talk about coming from, you know, you're either coming from love or fear. And when you're coming from fear, you're in survival mode, which is that flight, fight and freeze or growth mode or love mode, where it's rest and digest. It's something that's coming inside of you. It's an expression of you. and something that comes from the inside out, not something coming from the outside in. And so even though you get there initially by that, you can't sustain that. And as you mentioned, there's emptiness there. There's no meaning there because you're not whole. You're just acting out of fear instead of coming out of love where you can have your whole being be engaged in it. So even though, like, I'll use the example, sort of where I used to work in prison, do mindfulness-based stress reduction and recovery units, people who have substance abuse. And some of them, they would mandate to be in the program. And so I used to teach where it was voluntary, and they were very different. People were mandated and said, well, I'm forced to be here. And I said, yeah, there's some choice you got here. out of force. But you can decide to be here for you now. You can decide instead of letting somebody's bad behavior affect you, or you'll be at bad behavior, or you being doing something you don't want to do, you can choose to do it for yourself. You can choose to change how you look at that in a way that's healing. You can say, okay, I'm here. I'm gonna be here for me, even though they got me here. I can fight it or I can just embrace it and say, okay, how can I find myself in this mix? As Hans Selye talked about, in this place, there's an opportunity for me to express myself, to me to get in touch with myself. And it's an inside job to do it for myself. And so that's, so I can't speak to all of those athletes, but I think at some point the ones that are happy are the ones because if you do that and you're not in the field anymore or in that sport, how do you deal with life? Because now you don't have that place to express that, that outlet. Whereas, yeah, it gets you there, but why not be there for yourself and then deal with the whole person? You know, how you feel, you know, your body is physical, your mind is a mental, the heart is emotional, social, and your soul, your spirit, that you want all of those aspects of yourself to be there. So when we talk about the spiritual thing, It's like how do you embrace, how do you get out of survival mode into growth mode and then embracing those parts of yourself that haven't been so helpful. But you have to make peace with that. We all make mistakes. And so those two wolves, I talk about this idea of the two wolves with the Cherokee grandfather telling his grandson, I have two wolves, this ferocious battle inside of me, and the grandson's concerned and says, which wolf will win, says the one we feed. So we both have those two wolves in us, but it's a question of which one we're going to feed. So the fair wolf gets us there, but then once we get there, can we just start feeding the love wolf? And this idea of getting beyond the illusion of separateness and being a service, and I like to call it forget yourself to find yourself.

Forget yourself.

To find yourself. So when you give yourself in service and you help other people, you're also helping yourself, but you have to get to a place where you have something to give. So you have to develop enough so that you can actually give. And so a lot of things we give, we can give money, but when we can give our time, when we can give our heart, when we can give our soul, that I think that pays a bigger dividend. Yeah.

You talk about superpowers in order to achieve your goal. I think there's five superpowers you talk about.

Right.

What are those? And, and why are these important to develop?

So I talk about mindfulness, this effort or diligence, this Focus, concentration, this Insight, wisdom and faith. Good faith. Last. So they're all connected. So for me to be mindful, what, what I talk about being mindful is having a mirror mind or being able to see let things be as they are, like they're in the mirror, just interpreting them or letting them speak to you in their own language instead of us interpreting them. So it's like being vulnerable and letting the unfolding moment unfold without you interfering. And so what you want to do is you want to create, you want to elongate the perceptual process. So first there's a very short time where there's where the raw data is there. And then immediately associative thinking, abstract associative thinking, like, oh, I remember the last time this happened, abstract thinking, selfing or self-importance, all of that stuff. And of course, the way the visual system works is it's trying to relate what's happening based on what we've already experienced instead of seeing it in fresh and new ways. so we have to create this ability because as human beings we have this ability to sit back and watch things as a silent witness without being critical. And that's what it is, uncritical observation. Seeing things in a certain way and that when we create space between stimulus and response we start to be able to see things as they are, not as we remember them or as our mindset that we happen to be in is interpreting it in a certain way instead of seeing the raw data. So we want to be able to be mindful. So you have to have faith. You have to realize, like Einstein said, the most important question to ask yourself is, is this a friendly or unfriendly universe? And let's just go with the friendly. If it's a friendly universe, then you will use all your resources to understand how things work and then align yourself with how things work, like gravity. You don't have to believe in gravity, it works. If you align yourself with gravity, you'll be okay. and so you have to have the faith that what you're going to do is actually going to be possible and it's going to be helpful. So you have to have faith to make the effort to be mindful. But then you need. So we're talking about Faith, we're talking about effort. Then you have to have the focus, the here and now, you know, being able to be locked in so that you could be mindful. And then you also need the wisdom or understanding. What am I being mindful of? and what are the essentials? What's the principles involved? And so all of those things are always working. So mindfulness helps us cultivate effort or this idea of being diligent, like the sustained effort. We can't do anything without the sustained effort, but the effort to do what we say we're going to do and just to keep doing it until we get it, not quitting, not giving up, and that sort of thing. But that's really more mental. to get into it because when you're in a positive mind state, then it's easier to do it. If you're coming from love rather than fear. Let's just talk about that, that wolf, those two.

How does someone get more into love though if they've been living in fear their whole life?

By recognizing they're in fear and understanding how it's not helpful and how to get out of fear.

Well, how do they get out of it?

Yeah, so this is part of our effort. It's like you're in fear once you notice that you're reacting to things instead of responding to things. and if you can pause and notice that you're reacting, then well how do I not react? Be still and know, by just stepping back in the set of leaping in, interpreting, just let it speak to you, but you have to be vulnerable. That's where the faith comes in and that sort of thing. By being that, then once you say, oh, when this happens, this happens, and if I want to change something, I have to change, I have to self-regulate, I have to change my thoughts, my feelings, my behavior. And so you understand, how do I not be fearful noticing you're in fear and realize that you're in survival mode and if you can just breathe and focus on one thing and get your nervous system into rest and digest or focus generating what I call a Hall of Fame, HOF. A Hall of Fame. Hope, optimism, faith.

Okay.

So if you get into a positive mind state, it's called the broaden and build theory. When you're coming from optimism, hope, faith, then your cognitive functioning is enhanced. So you actually start to see, instead of being locked on channel five, there's 200 channels. And then by opening up, you say, oh, there it is right there. So you have to be able to understand, that's what we call right effort. How do you abandon an unwholesome mindset like fear? So one way you can do that is do the opposite of fear. That's love. Another way you can do it is understanding the consequences of coming out of fear.

What's holding you back from that?

Okay, so if I'm in fear, then I'm going to be reacting and I'm not going to be able to create space between stimulus and response. And in that space, I get to align with my core values, with my goal, with my aim. So that's the third thing is to divert your attention from it to something else. if I focus on what I want or I focus on what's going to work, then I can't have two things in my mind at once.

Right.

If I focus on what I want versus what I didn't want, then that changes it. So you divert your attention to it. So that's the third way, the fourth way, I'll just talk about four today, is you actually turn towards the fear and you say, okay, when fear is present, I noticed that there's this tightness. I noticed that I have tunnel vision. I noticed that it's keeping me small and like choking. I can't breathe. And if I understand, so I get intimate with fear. So I know, oh, fear is here and it's okay. Just breathe through it. Just feel whatever the fear is in your body and just let it be. You know, just notice it. But if I can breathe it and I can open with it and say it's okay because I'm not reacting to it, I'm actually creating space and then now I'm not, reacting. So an example of the fear, I had this fear of talking in public. And I would get up and I was in this program called Toastmasters.

I did too.

And I get up there and I'm at the podium and I'm shaking and the more I try not to shake my shock. So at the time I was in graduate school and I was studying paradoxical intention. This is Viktor Frankl and he was saying that instead of running away from the fear, embrace it. And so I decided I was going to be a shaking fool when I got up there. And when I got up there, I stopped shaking. So the only way out is always through. So the fear is, and then we talk about exposure therapy. So the thing you fear to do, just do it a little bit in increments that are manageable, uncomfortable, hard to do, but doable. Then what happens is you actually create this, what they call exposure therapy, the more you're exposed to it, the less it affects you. So there's all of these different ways, but it's really embracing the fear and generating the hope and saying, okay, there's a lesson here for me to get, and if I look at fear as an acronym for false evidence appearing real, or some fears are healthy, like fear of being hit by a car when you're walking across the street or touching a hot things. So it's really understanding when fear arises, I embrace it, and by embracing it and working through it, it is no longer fear. It's just a reaction, and we're learning from it. We respond to it. And so you embrace it, and you get comfortable being uncomfortable. And by embracing the fear and understanding it, it no longer is fear.

What was the biggest fear you've had to overcome?

Being myself.

When did you learn that?

I didn't learn that. I just observed myself self-sabotaging and being uncomfortable. So this is what Marianne Williamson said, our greatest fear is not embracing our masterpiece, our divinity, but it's just uncomfortable. And we know the nervous system, if something is unpleasant, it's going to avoid it. And if it's pleasant, it moves towards it. And if it's neither, it spaces out. So we're afraid of our greatness. But it's by embracing that greatness that we can, we have to, once again, that exposure therapy just taking it a little bit more. Yeah. So I do it more and more. But it's yeah, my greatness, and it's not something I thought about, it's just something I observed.

When did you realize that you weren't fully being yourself? Like how old were you?

I think when I was in recovery. in 1984. I was about 32 and a half, something like that. When I started real, I started getting glimpses of it, realizing, oh, there's more to it because I lived in my own little fantasy. But just to open up and to see that I was responsible and that I could choose my response and. And stuff like that. I realized that on some level, I was hiding out in plain sight. There's like those folks that. That don't want to. Don't get up. You can't keep up with the diesel. wasn't interested in getting up. So that's it. But it's really fear, the process of fear, is probably the main thing. But that's how it manifests and not realizing. And you know how it feels to realize that you're afraid of your greatness? You really feel like a loser when you do that. But that's just a thought. It's not reality. It's just, okay, that's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is fear is sort of taking care of yourself. Oh, I can't do that. That's great. So self-care can be looked at, I mean, fear can be looked at as self-care and is, is not self-care that's helpful or effective, but it's a form of, of survival. And that's what we call survival mode. That's what that is. It's like a prey animal.

When did you learn how to overcome self-sabotage and how can people do that today? Learn if they've been doing that in their relationships or their career, how do they learn to stop doing that.

By observing, by noticing that you gotta get into the love mode. You gotta get into a positive mind state and look at it as an uncritical observation. You have to, the mindfulness, you have to be able to see it without judging and just see how things arise and fade away and then think about, how do I get out of it? How did so and so get out of it? What does the research tell me what are the role models out there that have overcome their fear and then ask them or read the books and just study. You know, I've been been in recovery going on 38 years. I've averaged over a book a week.

Wow.

So my way, the best stress reducer is best stress reduction, dealing with fear, is wisdom, understanding. Because as Frankl says, because we're really talking about suffering, right? Viktor Frankl says, suffering ceases to be suffering when we find meaning in it. So when you find meaning in it, then it ceases to be suffering. So we got to touch our suffering, we have to go into it, and we have to understand it.

For some reason, it's hard to understand the meaning of suffering when we're in it sometimes.

That's right.

It's, I always look back and I'm like, man, that was a rough time in my life, but I wouldn't change a thing because it helped me overcome this adversity and it helped me learn this skill and it helped me have more courage or whatever it is. But it's like when you're in it, you can't, I shouldn't say you can't, it's hard sometimes to really step back and have wisdom and observe, oh, I'm in this whole...

Unless you have a habit of doing that. Yeah, unless you're able to feel it in your body and step away and get out of the mindset, but this is the whole thing. It's creating this ability to observe experiences no matter how challenging it is from this silent witness and not doing anything but just observing and asking, what is this? And how is it manifesting? So you're absolutely right. That's why you got to get out of survival mode and get into growth mode. If you react to things, there's no way you can do it because there's no space to do anything but react. But if we reflect on it, and then we look at it and reflect and say, okay, I reacted. What training do I need to do? What learning and practicing do I need to do so the next time I can create a little bit more space, a little bit more space. Then once I create the space, then I can really see. But you're right, when you're in that mode, that consciousness, that consciousness is like a tractor field that only allows you to have certain options. and so you have to raise your consciousness or expand your ability to pause, slow things down, and in that space, learn from your mistakes. And then at some point you understand, oh, here's how you do it. But it's the inside job, and it's something that you have to practice. So if you're going to do it and just say, I did it last week, and I don't want to do it this week, but you're not learning and practicing anything, then how do you expect to not do the same thing? So you have to actually reflect on experience because the true understanding reflects on, comes from reflecting on experience. So how did I, I did this, how can I do it differently? Well, first thing you gotta understand, if you don't look at it differently or if you don't have a different mindset, you're gonna keep doing the same thing. So that's why you gotta get out of survival mode into growth mode. Yes. Or that hope optimism faith I talked about, or the willing suspension of disbelief and saying, okay, why don't I try it this way? But once you change, this is what Dr. Wayne Dyer said, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. So it's the perspective from which you are observing experience, that's the whole thing, your mindset. If I have on the fear glasses, then I'm going to be looking, if I have on the love glasses, then I have on possibility. If I come from half full, that's abundance. If I come from a half empty, I'm coming from scarcity. That totally changes everything. But if you just notice, oh, I'm in fear.

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Get out of fear and be in love, and then it'll be clear to you what you need to do.

100% agree. And I remember for probably most of my life feeling like I would get in these waves. Sometimes it'd be a good season of life and sometimes it seems like, oh man, I'm in breakdown mode, right? And I felt like stuck and I couldn't get out. And I remember it was something happened four years ago where I went through a challenging moment in my life and it felt like, oh wow, this is a, this felt like a heavy moment, like a season, right? A few months of heaviness. and for whatever reason, I think because I'd experienced a few different seasons of that in the past, like 15, 20 years, I remember thinking to myself, oh, okay, a lot is happening. It was almost so emotionally, mentally overwhelming. I was like, okay, I've been here before. And every time I've been here, three, four, five, six years later, I look back on it and say, I'm so grateful for what that taught me. So I would reflect back. and have wisdom. So what are the reasons? This happened four years ago. I decided when something was challenging, I said, I'm gonna reflect forward and have wisdom. Like, I know this is going to be happening for me, and I just have to wait six months, a year, two years until I'm gonna see the benefits and the fruits of this. And it worked. It helped me stay in peace mode, not reaction mode.

Right.

Helped me focus on love, what I can control, not what I couldn't control. and it put me back on my mission. Like how can I improve? What's the lesson? What's my mission? Not how can I be angry at the world or whatever. And it was a beautiful experience to reflect forward for me. I don't know if that's something you teach as well in kind of like moving forward, but time travel.

Yes.

And see yourself a year or two away.

Yes. So you live into the future you see. So when something bad happens, we look, we see it happening again. so what are we really talking about here? Louis, we're talking about something happens, then we interpret what it means. So in the interpretation, if you interpret it as from survival mode, then things are going to get worse. Interpret it from love, you see it, okay, what's the lesson here? How do I learn it's going to be okay? That's where all those like the faith and the effort and the mindfulness and the concentration and the wisdom, they all come in and you just look at it and say, okay, I interpreted it this way before and this is what I got. So I don't want that, so I have to do something different. This was self-regulation, so something happens. Why not interpret it in a way that empowers you, motivates you, inspires you? That's what you did. And that's the whole point. The whole point is we learn from mistakes, we are not our mistakes. And that's the challenge we have, we make a mistake and we identify with it instead of realizing, no, it's just Behavior. It's not who you are. It's just, it's an event. But then we carry it. So when you were talking about that and all of that carry on, I was thinking about when I worked with baseball and softball players, when you haven't got a hit, each time you go up, you keep adding on to the drama.

The pressure.

You're going up with a 16, 20 pound vest on instead of saying what Yogi Berra, when, when One of my philosophers, when they asked him about that, he said, I ain't no slump. I just ain't hitting. So what he's really saying is, I just have to get a hit, but I'm not bringing those other 16 at batch into the moment with me. Let him go. But more importantly, reflect on those 16 and see in each case, what could you have done differently to get ahead? So now you don't look at the string. You look at, okay, what do I need to change? what are the principles involved in getting hit, seeing the ball, having my hands right, being ready, having to relax, having the confidence. It's your mindset. There's a certain mindset that you need to have. And then physically, you've got to have your body ready. But more importantly, you have to have this idea that you're going to do well. That you have what we call outcome expectation. You expect things to turn out just like what you talk about. oh, this is happening, but I expect it to turn out. So now you can let go to grow and you can say, okay, this is just a stepping stone. It's not a roadblock. So it's all about the mindset. It's all about this growth mindset that says, okay, everything that happens, I need to reflect on it and understand what worked, what didn't work, and. And then figure out what didn't work, how to make it work. So that's the thing we have to focus on this moment. not the previous 16 at bats, but this at bat and just focusing on it. And that's how MJ or Kobe can go in the fourth quarter before 3-4-3-4-11 or something like that. And then hit the game winner. Hit the game winner. Because it's always about resetting and beginning again, make a mental note how, okay, I have to keep my arm in, but you expect to make the next shot, but you forget about the previous shots other than understanding, okay, I'm not using, you know, my legs or you saw it in the last dance. Michael, you know, he was tired, so he didn't get his legs in it. So when he made that last shot, he didn't make it for style. He put forward only because all these shots were short. So he was adapting in real time to what happened. And that's what the key is. Don't focus on what happened before. Focus on the moment. and focus on what you want. And when I talked about, don't focus on what you don't want, because that's what you're creating. You focus on what you want. And then you reset. It's just like my iPhone. It was probably the same thing. If it gets stuck, turn it off and turn it back on. It's reset the factory settings. And I can roll. That's what we have to do mentally when we make mistakes, not just athletes that, like you talked about, when we get stuck, we make a mistake. Can we bring compassion and forgiveness? and say when I know better, this is what Dr. Maya Angelou, one of her sayings, I love when you know better, you do better. So no blame, no being critical, just notice what needs to change and then go from there. And the rich get richer because when you understand that, you automatically do it because you know that why would you take confidence from yourself? You know, confidence is really important.

Absolutely. what do you think is the best way to build confidence and self-belief and overcome self-doubt for people?

Depends on the situation, but I think the main thing is to be able to listen to that still voice inside of you. So obviously prayer and meditation, focusing on what you want, cultivating that hope, optimism and faith that I talked about, having social support, So there's this thing I talk about, predicting success in a job. Shawn Achor, Happiness Advantage, talks about the research that says there's three things that are important. The positive genius, what I talked about, the hope, optimism and faith, cultivating a positive mindset. Second thing is social support. So it's not just being around somebody and commiserating, but being around people who, in relationships like you talked about, your mentor, that are encouraging you, the only way out is through and that you're not by yourself and you have help. And then the third thing is seeing the crisis as an opportunity or seeing it as a challenge. And like we said before, people don't look at things as challenge. They just look at, oh, that's bad. I don't want to go there. Instead of saying, no, this is an opportunity for me to learn something. And even if I don't want to do it for myself, my kids, I want my kids or I want to, impact society in a way where people are saying yes to life and not no to life and are leveling up and embracing challenge, seeing opportunity rather than staying back and being reactive to be proactive and then really talk about how can you express yourself that master piece within it comes out when it's challenged.

Absolutely. Absolutely. You taught a lot of people over the years and coached people and you were saying before that you learn a lot when you're teaching. You get some of the best lessons when you're teaching someone.

Yes.

What would you say were the three greatest lessons you think you learned from people you coached? Maybe there's someone well known, maybe someone not well known, but what would you say just like, wow, this person actually just gave me an incredible gift.

I'll give you two right off the top of my head. you can only be yourself. Because if you don't know who you are, you can end up being anybody. That's number one. Number two, if you don't know where you're going, you can end up going anywhere. Number two. And number three is you have a masterpiece inside and when you access it, even a little bit of it, it changes everything. When you realize you have the power to do whatever you need to do, you can learn whatever you need to learn. and that you don't have to do it alone. So it's really more about understanding who you are and where you're going and that you have everything you need to succeed.

How did you have confidence when you were coaching some of these, you know, superstars? When some of these guys and gals have some of the powerful mindset out there, you know, how did you, as a coach and a teacher, make sure you went in there with confidence knowing that you could contribute to to these people as well sometimes.

Be honest with you, I pray. Yes, I focus on my masterpiece and knowing if I could be still and know and just trust that the universe was lawful, just trusted my higher power, God, the universe, whatever you want to call it, that if I was aligned with divine will, I was going to be fine. So that means love, how can I help, how can I serve, worrying about so forgetting myself to find myself in that case is not worrying about how I'm going to perform or how they're going to take me, but focusing on how I can serve and just coming from my own experience, knowing from my own experience and being authentically myself. So understanding that if I can be still and know and come from the love, come from the inside out, and how can I help? So the two questions I usually ask people So I work with a team, says, what do you want? And then the question is, are you willing to be who you need to be to do what you want? Those two questions, it's really simple. It doesn't matter who you are. It's like, okay, here's what's happening. What are you gonna do about it? Are you gonna react to it or respond to it? And if you understand you have everything you need to succeed and you have that will to win, remember I talked about the desire to succeed, the will to succeed, if you have that and you realize that it's going to take as long as it takes, but if you sustain your attention, if you're paying attention, then you're going to learn what you need to learn and you're going to do what you have to do. And even if you don't get the result you want, if you can walk away and say, I gave everything I had, that's a winner.

Absolutely.

Where no regrets. I was fully engaged in what was happening and sometimes that's the way it is. You don't always win, but you win when you are, when you got better today, when you played your best, when you express your potential.

-In that moment.

Yeah. -In that moment.

My friend Rory Vaden says, It's hard to be nervous when your heart's on service. And I used to, Yes, I like that one.

That's a keeper. I might steal it.

My buddy Rory Vaden, that's his quote. It's hard to be nervous when your heart's on service. For years, I would be nervous before a game, a speech, whatever it might be, an opportunity to present something. And it wasn't until maybe six years ago, seven years ago, where I reached out to a coach right before a big speech. And I've been speaking, I did Toastmasters as well, because that was my big fear. And I overcame the fear and having the skills to be able to present an idea in front of an audience. It took me a year to really get there. Every week practicing at Toastmasters, terrified in the beginning.

And.

Years later, after I'd been speaking professionally for a while, I was still getting nervous like the day before and I didn't understand why. I was like, I should be better by now. I was judging myself, it's the first thing. But I reached out to a coach and I said, I don't know why I'm still nervous. This was about an hour before a big speech. I go, what can I do? And he said, you,'re focused on yourself, not on the audience and serving. He's like, no, you're gonna make a mistake. No, you're not going to remember every line or every point or joke or whatever. Stop thinking about you and what people think of you and start focusing your energy and attention on how you can be a service to them. And that was a big shift for me. And, you know, I still maybe get a little nervous here and there, but it's like whenever I feel that insecurity, I just think I'm not going to be 100 perfect, and that's okay. But if I put all my energy on the message, the mission of what do I want to get across and focus on that? Realizing I'm not the best speaker in the world and I'm trying to do that. Then it relieves the nerves. Yeah, it's helpful.

You forgot yourself to find yourself. Yeah, right. So I'd like to say a couple of things about nerves. It's not the nervousness that's the situation, it's how you react or respond to it. So I'll give you an example. Well, people don't know, but Bill Russell, I grew up in Boston, so I watched the Celtics. And Bill Russell won 11 championships in 13 years. 11 championships in 13 years.

That's crazy.

And he used to get nervous before a game to the point where he would have to throw up. And one game he was before the game and Red Auerbach said, Russ, did you throw up yet? He said, no. He said, Go in the locker room, don't come out until you do. Well, what's that about? Because he knows when he's nervous, he plays it to pass. And part of the nervousness could be for a lot of reasons. It could be maybe because you want it so badly or whatever. But in the moment of the game, if you change your consciousness or your focus from being nervous to doing the next thing, I call it the, the, some people talk about the win, W-I-N. And what does that mean? What's important now?

Yeah.

So if you manage a moment, it doesn't matter how you feel or how you see things. You make the next, if you manage this moment, then the next moment goes the next. moment goes. So it's not about we have this interpretation that we're nervous because there's people who are not nervous. And then in the moment of truth, they're nervous, even though they weren't nervous before. In that one second could make all of the difference, you know, making a. Making a play or whatever. So we have to realize that stuff can happen, but it's always about the mindset, and it's always about what's important now, managing this moment and. And forgetting yourself to find yourself when you're in flow. there's no self-consciousness there. You're doing the thing in and of itself. You're not focused on the results because you're focused on the results. That's where a lot of the nervousness might come from because you're focused out there instead of being in here and just managing the moment. And that's the most important thing is right now there's nothing wrong. Right now there's nothing wrong. Think of how profound that is. There's nothing wrong. But if we think about the past or the future, or we say, yeah, but Then it's a problem. But if we just say there's nothing wrong and just focus on what you're doing, even if you make a mistake, correct it in real time and keep it moving. But that's too simple. We have complicated minds. But that's it. It's like, so you're nervous so what? Like with me, I was shaking. I was nervous. And the more I tried not to shake, I shook. Like this. And then once I just said, I don't care. I just, I'm gonna be shaking full.

I'm gonna be the best.

Shaking and- the most nervous there. person there ever was. Now once you do that, you change your relationship to it and then you don't make it a thing. Then it totally transforms everything. So that's it. So that, so you're absolutely right. It worked for you as long as you focus on service, you won't be nervous. But even if you are nervous, who cares? The thing is, can you make the play? Even if you are nervous, can you do the next thing? What's important now? And if you focus on what's important now and forget yourself, and just focus on the task, then you find yourself. That's the paradox. That's one of my Georgeisms, forget yourself to find yourself. Once you get out of the way and just let what's inside of you, your divinity express itself and being real and being authentic. So being authentic means you're nervous, you're expressing your nervousness. But it's your relationship to it. In that space, how are you going to respond to it in a way where it actually helps you get to the next level.

So you had a drug addiction for a while, is that right? How long was that period of time for?

I couldn't really tell you. I didn't know I stopped in 1984, but I was, I don't know, 15, 20 years, whatever.

What do you think is the root cause of addiction in general? Why people get addicted to substances? And then also, what was the biggest lesson you learned from your recovery? from rehab, recovery and getting off of that.

Yeah, well, not speaking, that's a big question to speak about it, but I think the nervous system is programmed to go for things that is pleasant, approach things that present, avoid things that are unpleasant and space out if it's neither pleasant or unpleasant. Now, the neutral that's positive is when you're in equanimity or when you're in the center, in Hurricane, where there's not a preference, it's not indifference. So you're not moving towards or moving away, you're just holding your center and just observing things. I just didn't want to be in my experience for whatever reason, I was trying to get away from reality and I found a way to, I could hide out or I could just kind of dull the pain. And sometimes people just start using drugs and alcohol because it's the thing to do. And then some of us, because we get addicted to it, we need it more and more. And so it wasn't, I think the most important thing is just to notice that I was doing things that got to the point where I was just, you know, I was a functional addict, you know, I still worked and everything, but it was robbing me of myself. And it's like people, some of us, my father was an alcoholic, so I, you know, all my uncles, I probably came to some, some part that's just nature and nurture. But I think the main thing was that, you know, I found out, well, for me, especially I was, I was always drinking. All right. But with, with that, with the alcohol, I mean, with the drugs, it just made me feel more. It got rid of some of my inhibitions, and I felt like I could just. It just changed me. It gave me courage and stuff like that when I think about it. But it doesn't matter so much how you start. What matters is that once you start, you can't stop. And some people could do it in safety. I couldn't. So it wasn't until my butt was on fire when I realized that I had an issue. And so I had to come to the realization that if I don't take a drink or a drug, I won't get high, I won't get drunk. And so the best lesson for me is that it was a way for me to deal with life and I wasn't dealing with me, I wasn't going inside and dealing with my greatness, with my masterpiece, with my ability to just be myself in spite of what everybody else wanted me to be, because people will tell you who you should be or who they want you to be. And when we're being authentic and authentic or when we're doing what we're supposed to do instead of doing what we want to do, that creates a whole, I mean, there's a lot of conflict, there's a lot of self-hate, who knows? It could be a lot of reasons, but to me, I just didn't know how to deal with life on life's terms.

Maine, where life the way it should be transforms all who encounter its spectacular landscapes. Rugged coastlines, pine-scented trails, sandy beaches, sparkling lakes, and tranquil forests inspire you to reflect and make meaningful moments. They offer endless opportunities for adventure and exploration. Whether pedaling or paddling, hiking or biking, Maine has more than enough outdoor spaces to make the most of long summer days. Relish in exquisite flavors harvested from the ocean and the rich soils of orchards and fields. Maine's makers are rooted in its heritage while boldly branching into new ways of thinking, doing, and being. Connect with its people in warm and authentic towns which beckon you to stroll art galleries and locally owned shops. Where generations of artists, writers, entrepreneurs, and craftspeople see the world anew. It's tempting to do it all when you visit, but take a beat and a breath. Get a feel for the time and tempo of Maine. Simple pleasures, Scenic Adventures, where every route is the scenic one. Discover more at visitmaine.com.

Should it stay or should it go?

What if I mess it up?

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I'll just put it in some place, that. And then once I got clean, now I had to deal with that dealing reality for the first time. And that was overwhelming my nervous system. It was really challenging. So I had chronic pain. I had all kinds of stuff. that's when I got into meditation and some of the mind-body experiences. But the main thing I learned was the mind and body are connected and that I am responsible and it's an inside job. So that was the lesson for me, is that it's up to me. I can't worry about what you're doing. I got to focus on what George can do. George can't drink, George can't do drugs. George is not interested in this. So I was doing all the other stuff. until when I got clean, that's when I just started saying, I'm gonna do what I want to do. I'm gonna take responsibility for me and what resonates with me. And I don't really, I still cared about what other people thought, but I kept weaning off of that till I got to the point that the only opinion, the most important opinion is my opinion of myself and me doing what I needed to do and continuing to embrace that. So that's challenging. I'm still, you know, I feel 40 years later, I'm better at it. But it's something that's constant, like you talked about nervousness or fear. You can get traumatized anytime. I was working, actually I was working with the Lakers during the championship run against Boston. And I go in there and his voice says, you shouldn't be there. They don't want to hear from you.

Inner voice.

Inner voice. Because of my training, I said, oh, that's interesting. but I ain't listening to you. I got work to do. But you see what I'm saying? But for me, I've been doing this for a long time. And a moment, you can have a voice or you could have fear or you could have nervousness or whatever. But when you're a professional, which I think really helps me in my role as a professional, it doesn't matter how I feel. I just have to show up and do up and do, you know, show up and show out. So it can happen at any time, but it's me creating that space and being able to observe it and not judge myself. Oh, that's interesting. It's time from the Pena Gallery. I call it the Negative Committee. It was just, okay, so it could be there like background music and just go and do what I needed to do. And no one knew the difference. No one knew it. It was just me, but it was a blip. But that could have sabotaged the whole thing. Absolutely. I could have just said, well, you know, I'm not feeling good. I see you're like, well, come on, they're on the championship run.

You can't.

Can't do that. No, it's show.

Step up or step out, right?

Yeah. And so it happens, but the training of being able, I can't explain, I mean, I can't overstate how important it is for us to be able to be in a moment and observe experience as this silent witness from the eye of the hurricane and just notice it without judging, without being critical, without pushing it away, pulling it towards you. Then once we get the intel, then out of that silence, there's a knowing. I can't really explain it. there's a knowing that there's some part of you that knows what to do, that masterpiece, that divinity within just knows what to do. We call it intuition. Sometimes it could come as a gut feeling, but it's just a knowing. But a lot of times I tell people, I have no idea what I'm doing, but it's great. And that is because I'm not in there, but I'm being like, what? I'm just going with the flow. Okay, I hear that. Okay, you got your opinion. and thanks for sharing that, but I got to do my job. I have to be present and staying in the moment. And then, like you said, when you serve, you know, when you focus on service, you're not nervous. And it's the same thing as when you focus on how you're going to help somebody, you forget yourself. But by helping others, you're also helping yourself. And then when you get through it now, and I noticed this answering that voice, that voice is not there so much. But a lot of us have been traumatized in one way or the other. Or once again, here I am on a major stage in prime time, and then things could happen. Things could happen. Something comes up and I was fortunate enough to be able to not listen and just focus on the task. And that's why I think being a professional, what I mean by that is being a professional when you do a job or you go the extra mile, you do it, you forget yourself, you just focus on the task. And it doesn't mean I don't take care of it later, but it means unless I can't breathe, I'm gonna do what I can do. I can show up and show up.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

So does that make sense?

It makes a lot of sense. What was the biggest lesson you learned about yourself from the rehab recovery process then, would you say?

When we can't express ourselves, there's something It's not a feeling of wholeness, I'll tell you that. It's, you know, like having two sides, you know, like just really trying to hide our secret self, not wanting anybody to know who it is, so this surreptitious kind of sense of being, I'll show you who I want you to see, but you can't really see my real self. And I was identifying with that negative stuff instead of identifying with the masterpiece of saying, okay, that's the fair wolf, you're feeding that. stop feeding that and feed the love wolf. They're both there. But the one that's going to win the battle is the one that you feed.

Absolutely.

So, yeah, I think, to be honest with you, I so focused on getting high and stuff. I didn't really have time to think about stuff like that. It was just survival. When you're in survival mode, you're not thinking about tomorrow or yesterday. You're focused on the next thing, putting out the next fire and that sort of thing. And I think for me, I was just thinking about how am I gonna get high? When am I gonna drink? Or how am I gonna get through this? And it was nothing positive. There wasn't something that I was looking forward to. Like say, okay, I'm gonna go on vacation or, you know, I'm gonna have this this spell of really positive results and whatever. I was doing work, level play. It was more a consumption of of just trying to not be present.

Was there a mentor or someone you saw or an incident or was there someone die or did you?

There was a couple of things. One thing was because I was riding around with like 105 degree temperature, I had a strep infection. And because when you're drug, when you're dope sick and when you're having that, it feels like a bad cold and all sorts of things. So I had no idea, but I had to go to the hospital. And then they kept me for five days. And so when I got out of the hospital, a couple weeks after that, a friend of mine that I used to get high with came by my house on April Fool's Day. and he took me to AA meeting.

On April Fools.

On April Fools. But I'm looking at, dude, man. It's a joke. Yeah, exactly. Dude, he's a dope fiend. Looking at him, he's so... What'd you do, man? It got my attention. And that's the first time I had real hope. I hope that, oh, there's a way for me. Then I went to the meeting, you know, the AA meeting, and then I saw other people that were, had the same issue I had, but they sharing their experience, strength, and hope. And it gave me a vision, a possibility that, okay, I could do this. It took me months after that, but I went into a detox for 21 days. And when I came out of there, it was very interesting because I think it's the first time I ever saw my house.

First time you saw your house?

Really saw it where I was really living on life's terms. I've never gone 21 days without having some kind of drug or some kind of living in fantasy or something where I was dealing with life's terms. for the first time at 32 and a half. But it's a blur and it was just kind of like in and out of my own little fantasy, but I didn't know I was in there until I got sober and I started seeing clearly. So it was profound and it was even more so because when I went, when I was going into the detox, I heard this voice say to me, if the St. George that goes in there comes out, you're in trouble. Yeah. So I knew I had to be different. And of course that's probably because that implicit learning I got being around recovery and people who were clean, that I believe that I probably is what they call implicit and non-declarative learning. I think there was some stuff there that I got that told me that, and I was on methadone program before, so I knew taking methadone when I went in there trying to detox in 21 days was not gonna work. Right.

So, wow. So this was 37 years ago?

1984.

Yeah, 37, 38 years ago, I guess.

Yeah, it'll be 38 years in July.

Wow.

After going through that, man, everything is a blessing, man. Man, life is amazing compared to what it used to be.

I want to ask you a question about fears. We talked about a little bit before, you know, the fear therapy, exposure therapy. Yeah. And really, you know, facing the fear, the only way it's always through and exposing yourself to it, to feeling it, and then going more into it.

But you don't have to go look for it. It's there.

It's just how you- To lean into it. Yeah, lean into it. Embrace it, is what you say.

Yeah.

What do you think people are afraid more of? The fear of failure, success, or the judgment, the other people's opinions about them?

I'm gonna go back to FDR during World War II. we have nothing to fear but fear itself. So it's a mindset. It's being in that survival mode. I think that'll cover everything. In recovery, we talk about dealing with fear, doubt, and insecurity, but I think it's hard to know what people are going through because you can't paint with a broad brush, but I will say that they're in survival mode, I guarantee you that. They're in survival mode where they're doing either fighting, fleeing, or freezing. freezing, which is numbing out or just not being there. Right? In that kind of indifference. And so that's what I think. So when we think about it, it's hard to get into all of the complexes and the psychological terminology that we have for, you know, character disorders or psychosis and neurosis. I think the main thing we need to understand is that they're in survival mode, so they're either fighting, fleeing, or being frozen and feeling like life is happening to them and they don't have the ability to respond to things rather than react to things. And they don't even know the difference between reacting and responding. I didn't. I was just reacting all the time. But then once I realized that I could pause and reflect and I could actually think about things before I did them, and then even while I'm doing them, I can reflect on, is this working? Is it not? And then adjust in real time. And then afterwards, true understanding comes from reflecting on experience. So reflecting on, okay, so I used to get high or I got clean or I got through this. How did I do that? And so when I talk about people being mindful of their behavior, we need more of, let's catch each other doing something right. What works? Attitude of gratitude.

Absolutely.

Grateful heart. It's just saying, okay, as long as I'm breathing, there's more right with me than wrong with me. The life I used to live before now, this little stuff, to say, this is nothing compared to that. But if you look at it and say, okay, what's the lesson here? And this is an adventure. We're on an adventure. Then I come from that hope, that Hall of Fame, hope, optimism, and faith. And say, okay, there's something here. There's an opportunity for me to be a service, like you talked about. Be a service, not nervous. And then, then it's a totally different experience. So it's my attitude, and that's the self-regulation self-regulated thoughts, feelings, behaviors. Well, I'm choosing joy today. Joy now and never. I'm choosing compassion. I'm choosing love. I'm choosing to be present. I'm choosing to fully deploy myself. That changes everything. And so that's the habit. Get into that habit of saying, okay, what is this? And how am I going to relate to it in a way that's in alignment with my core values? Do I have core values? Do I have a worthy cause? What is my intention? So if you're trying to impact 100 million people or a billion people, then you have to be engaged in that day to day. You have to have a strategy in which you are getting this progressive realization of a worthy ideal where your success is on a moment to moment, day to day basis because when you get off, you get back on. You talked about it. That's all. It doesn't matter. It's a zigzag. It's not straight. So when you get off, all you gotta do is get back on. Don't judge. What did you learn and keep it moving?

I love this stuff, man. You've got some amazing wisdom and lessons and experiences that I hope everyone dives into more. You do a weekly show on Instagram, is that right? Or a weekly YouTube thing?

I do YouTube. You've been at home with George during COVID Yes. and last week I talked about this idea of a grateful mind is a great mind and it attracts great things to you. So attitude of gratitude. And I want to acknowledge Thich Nhat Hanh's passing. And a lot of my teaching comes from, you know, he's been inspirational. He's been a person that has led the way to mindfulness in daily life or bringing this contemplative practice to everyday folks. and just really talking about it in ways that makes a lot of sense. You know, compassion, love, just smiling and embracing people's divinity, seeing the greatness in everyone and just training the mind and the heart to be open.

You've got a course out right now, right?

Yes, I have a course I've been teaching for the last last three years, it's called the Mindful Athlete course online. And what I've done with it is so you sign up for the course, you're in it for life. And so we have actually next week we have a quarterly call. So each quarter we have a call where people can get on it. But in the spring we'll have a six-week study group. This past November, October, November, we did a study group called Being Courageous. so what we do is we go over six, six weeks, you know, once a week, we'll get together and we'll have an hour call. So we'll do a little practice and then we'll go over the homework and I'll say a little, little something. But it's mastering those five superpowers I talked about. Mindfulness, effort, concentration, insight and, and faith. And so we apply those to a topic like the last one, being courageous. How to be courageous, how to feel the fear and do it anyway. And what's the relationship between being courageous and faith? You know, your courage, you know, it means this fear. We talk about fear. You feel the fear and do it anyway, or you have to have faith. Faith helps you to be courageous because you don't know what's going to happen, but you know something good is going to happen if you just show up and show out and you're true to your, you know, you just learn from your mistakes. You just kind of do that. So we go through it over and over is what we, what I call circular learning. I read my book probably 47 times.

Wow.

And this last time I'm reading it, it's interesting because I have this client of mine who goes into prison and he's using my book. And so we go over each one of those superpowers and so of course, me being a recovering perfectionist.

You're going over it all the time.

And each time I go over it, I learned something new. And I say to myself, man, this is a really good book. And I say that because I wasn't there when I wrote it. I just was expressing that.

Yeah, it was flowing through you.

It was flowing through me. But I keep reading it, and each time I read it, it gets a little bit deeper. It gets more my psyche. So when I said to you, the best way to learn something is to teach it. because when you teach it, what you give comes back to you, but also you have to understand what you're saying in a way, and then you have to present it to other people. So it encourages me, encourages us to know that if you have something you share with your family and friends, you talk about it, it gets more into your psyche because you repeat it over and over. So you keep going over this idea that you embrace whatever comes up. That's what I talk about embracing, generate the hope. You have to keep finding the courage to say yes and to say what's the lesson here? And then kind of move through that. So yeah, so I have the, I offer these things. I have a master class on dealing with anxiety during the time of COVID and I'll do more master classes and I'm developing a youth course. And the other thing is I'm writing a new book. It's going to be about unlocking our potential or embracing our masterpiece, discovering a masterpiece within something along that line. But it's really more about how I got through that, you know, my experience and how I teach people. But the idea is you talk about this idea of being happy when you're doing something that, you know, when your work is happy, your work life is happy and that sort of thing, then you're happy. and my thing is that if you're being your authentic self and you're living and you're embracing that masterpiece within, it's going to be amazing. So no matter work, love and play, you're going to bring this, this aliveness to it. Yeah. This quality of authenticity and, and being present and getting beyond the illusion of separateness. I mean, that's what we need a lot now, because we have people who are at each other, crazy things, and we just need to know we're all connected in the best way. is to do it together and not stop demonizing each other and stop talking at each other, but to realize that I and the other one, and then how about just seeing that just like me, that person wants to be happy, just like me, a person suffers.

Absolutely, yes.

So we have to get to a place, and it's not polyandrous, because I come from a really challenging background and all that stuff, I'm not a simpleton. I'm not talking about anything that I haven't experienced or witnessed and I know we can do much better if we can remember who we are. Because like I said, if you don't know who you are, you can end up being anybody and if you don't know where you're going, you can end up going anywhere. So why not decide to be yourself and then go where you want to go.

The Mindful Athlete, the book, Mindful Athlete course, you got the masterclass on anxiety, then get everything at georgemumford.com, is that right?

Georgemumford.Com That's right.

They can follow you. What's your main social media platform you're on the most? Instagram?

Instagram, mostly Facebook, YouTube. Yeah, like you man, I want to reach a billion people.

That's big.

Yeah, I probably won't do it in this lifetime, but maybe I will.

Never know.

I never know, but to me, I don't know, I asked you 'cause I don't know where that number came from. I just put it out there. I want it something that's going to stir me and encourage me to just really get out of my comfort zone and to really just go out there, get beyond the realms that I'm normally in and then just embrace more realms. So if I only got 20 people or 100 people, that would make a difference. But I know I'm reaching more than that. And it's not like I'm reaching it. I just want people to be themselves. I just want people to know that they have a masterpiece and that they can develop it and only they can develop it. But my platform is to help them do that.

That's great. Exciting stuff, man. I got a couple final questions. This is called the Three Truths. So imagine you get to live as long as you want to live, but it's the last day for you. on earth and you accomplish everything, you reach the billion people, you do whatever you want to create and you have the life you want.

But for whatever reason, everything you've created.

Has to go with you or has to go somewhere else. So it's not here available for us anymore. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world, three things you know to be true that you would share. And this is all we would have from your, from your teachings and your information. What would you say are those three truths?

For you. You have a masterpiece that you can develop. Number two, only you can develop it. And number three, the quality of your life is going to be a reflection of how much you develop. It can be developed on. You can develop it. And to the degree that you develop it, the quality of your life and the quality of your service is going to be a reflection of it.

If you only develop it a little bit, you'll, at the end of your life, you'll be like, oh, look at all this. I did not develop that I could have. Yeah. And you'll be frustrated or resentful or regretful.

And I hope at my last days that I can continue to be in joy, enjoy now and never, and to just be as loving and as present as I could be.

That's beautiful. I want to acknowledge you, George, for how you have transformed your life and how you've used your lessons for service. You know, I've never been addicted to drugs or alcohol. I've never been drunk or high in my life, believe it or not, because I saw what it did to certain people in my life, My brother was in prison for many years for drugs, for selling drugs. And so I guess fortunately I got to learn from other people and realize I don't want to go down that route. So it kind of scared me, but I think it helped me as an athlete and other things. So I don't know what that feels like, but I do know how challenging and almost seeming impossible it is for people to overcome addiction. For a lot of people, it seems almost impossible for a lot. So for you to overcome that and wake up for yourself and realize I'm going to use myself for good and develop into who you become now is really inspiring. So, and the fact that you're doing it at such a high level to serve people, you know, anyone listening or watching and people of all spectrums of life from high achievers to people that just feel stuck, I really acknowledge you for the gift that you've become and the gift you keep sharing to the world.

So. Well, thank you. I'll take that in. I mean, that's, that's powerful, but I believe that's why I'm here. Yeah. I'm just being myself. Yeah. About being myself, being a service. So thank you for saying that. And, and that's my challenge, is continue to, to take that in. But I love helping people. I love everybody, man. So why wouldn't I? You love what you labor for and you labor for what you love. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Final question. What's your definition of greatness?

My definition of greatness is doing, getting better today. Expressing yourself as much as you can. That's greatness, it's just getting out of yourself and just being real, just being the best version of yourself at whatever you do. So it's about not what you do, it's what you bring to it and who you are being. So greatness is somebody who's gonna show up in and be themselves consistently and in a way where they're progressing. So they're getting better each day. That's greatness. Every time you do something, it changes people. It makes things better. But it gives this realization that we have this unlimited potential. And that if I get better today, I'm being great today. But once again, I'll go back to my quote for my last week, A Grateful Mind is a Great Mind and a great mind attracts great things to it. So, greatness is being grateful and being great.

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links and also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple podcast as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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