The Mindset of World Champions w/Tim Grover EP 1111

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Father's Day is coming up, and for lots of dads out there, dad doesn't quite cover it. They're groundskeepers, patio whisperers, and rogue leaf vigilantes too. So this year, show dad some love with gifts from the Home Depot. they've got fast free delivery on handy gear that helps dad do his thing. We're talking Ryobi cordless outdoor tools like the Ryobi 40 volt expanded string trimmer. Find the perfect Father's Day gift at the Home Depot. Shop in store and online at homedepot.com, free delivery subject to availability. This is episode number 1111 with world champion trainer Tim Grover. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Taoist, former pro athlete turned 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. Napoleon Hill once said, A quitter never wins and a winner never quits. And Suzy Kassem said, Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will. My guest today is Tim Grover, best known for his training with Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade and thousands of athletes and business professionals at the highest level. He is the CEO and founder of attack Athletics, Inc. and author of the international bestseller Relentless, from Good to Great to Unstoppable. And he's got a new book that is extremely inspiring called winning the unforgiving race to Greatness. He appears around the world as a keynote speaker and Consultant to Business Leaders, athletes and the highest achievers in every field. and our conversation was so powerful that I had to split it up in two parts. So make sure to stay tuned to part two coming next. In this first part, we discuss the mistake most people make when understanding success. Also, the three greatest lessons Tim learned from Michael Jordan. These are powerful. Why we shouldn't allow other people's doubt to get into the way of our own success. It's not about other people, it's about ourselves. The reason Kobe Bryant was Tim's most demanding client and what he demanded from Tim. Tim's story of meeting Michael Jordan and 30 days turned into 15 years working with him. How to create balance in your life the right way. The truth about obsessing over your craft and so much more. This is going to inspire you. And if it does, make sure to share this with one, two, or three friends, text them, post it on social media, tag myself and Tim as well over on social media as you're listening to this. And a quick reminder, if this is your first time here, click that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or Spotify right now, as well as leave us a rating or review letting us know the part you enjoyed most about this episode. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Tim Grover. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. I'm extremely excited about our guest, Tim Grover, in the house. My man.

Louis, what's happening? Long time no see, man.

Good to see you, man. Very excited about this. You have been training and working with the greatest athletes and leaders of our generation. Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Dwyane Wade, and many others that rave about you and your mindset. more than just you as a trainer, but the way you think and the way you show up, the habits, just the rituals, the routines, everything you bring to the table. And I want to ask you my first question is, what do most people misunderstand about success in general? You're around the most successful people, you train them, what do people misunderstand about success?

I think the thing that people misunderstand about success is they're looking for the easiest way to get there. And it's funny, how many people books have you read or I won't say promoted, but had on your show and everybody goes, five easy steps, 10 steps to greatness, eight steps to this. And those steps for success, they're infinite. they are infinite. You cannot count them. It doesn't matter how long you've been doing it, those steps are constantly shifting. You don't know if they're there. Sometimes you have to trust that the next step is going to be there when you can't even see it. And sometimes when you step on that step, you go right into quicksand. But you got to be able to pull yourself back out of it again. So everybody's looking for these steps and there are no steps. Those steps never, never end. And you just can't climb steps. Sometimes you got to crawl though, those steps, and you finally get to the top and everything shifts and you're at the bottom again.

That's crazy.

All right.

What does that mean? Sometimes you're at the top and then you're at the bottom again.

Well, you may get to the top and you're like, I'm here. And then you look back down and you look up again, you're actually on the first step. You're on the first step again. and where you thought was the top is not even the top. It's the beginning. It's literally the beginning of where you're supposed to be. And that's when most people just quit. I just like, it just drives me crazy because everybody's like, here to look at. I always, people that I do the interview with, I always like to use them as an example because people can relate to that. All right? You've been climbing steps for how long to get to here? to get.

I mean, since starting this, it's been over eight years, but the journey before then, it was, you know, decades to build myself, to prepare myself for this. And now I feel like I'm just getting started.

Right, exactly. So you have just. Right, exactly. So all the steps that you climbed just to get started.

Yeah.

Just to get started. And people don't want to talk about those steps. They don't want to talk about those steps and how difficult those steps are and how many steps that you stumbled on and how many steps you didn't even see, and how many steps that people placed in front of you and they pulled them off, pulled away. People that you were very close to, people that you knew, people that you thought that were like, hey, these people actually have my back, except yeah, they did have your back, but they were actually pushing you down the steps.

For stabbing you. Yes.

No. And it's funny when you talk about those things, when people talk about it, they seem surprised. But you should know that in that path, all those things are gonna be there. They're going to be there.

It's the obstacles. You know, Ryan Holiday says the obstacle is the way. Do you think that anyone can become a winner? Your book is about winning, the unforgiving race to greatness. Do you think anyone can become a winner?

Winning is in all of us. That's what I always say. Listen. And we have wins. every single moment. And those are the steps that get us a little closer to what we want. We have a step, every minute you have an opportunity to win. You really do. But with everything that went on in the world in this past year, people forgot how to win. People don't even know what a win looks like anymore.

What does it look like?

Yeah, people don't even know, like, and so many times a win just comes by because there's a constant change, there's a constant shift. And now with the paradigm of way everything is being handled now, you have to look at things completely different. Everybody's waiting for normal, a win doesn't look like what it used to look like anymore. Right. All right.

What does it look like now?

What does it look like now? For each individual, it's different. For each individual, it's different. For a lot of individuals, it's just like getting out of that routine that you were stuck in for so long. and did the pandemic allow you to say, you know what? Yeah, I was in a routine, but the routine wasn't getting me anywhere. I was in a routine of comfort. And the pandemic put a lot of people in a routine that was very uncomfortable that they weren't used to. They weren't, but it was a necessity. It was needed. You know, people always wish for this time during this thing that happened, I want to spend more time with my family.

And now they have it.

Now you have it. Okay? Schools aren't doing a good job with educating my kids. Now you're homeschooling. I'd love to work from the house.

Now you're doing it.

Now you're doing it. Now you have all these things going on that you wished you had, as you thought were wins, and for some people they were. And for others you're just like, no. these were not, these are not wins. I do a lot of Zoom stuff at home and I got a cat and I got a very lively dog and you'll see the cat run right across the screen. I don't have little kids in the house anymore, but trying to work and have them in the background asking for school help or, you know, they're on their bandwidth trying to study in their school stuff. and winning became a distraction. It became a distraction. And people were trying to balance all these different things and forgot, hey, this is what my win is. You need to recognize what that win is now. And during the pandemic, it's not getting back to normal. It's getting beyond normal. Figuring out what your next win is. how to place it and how to continue to move forward on that win. Because it's easy to talk about the setbacks because so many people can relate to that. That gave us a nice little comfort thing. Everybody can use the pandemic as an excuse. And then you have other people that thrive during that time. They're like, I gotta find out a new way to win. I gotta find out like a real, real new way to win and you had some people that really, really won big during that time.

Absolutely. They stepped up.

They stepped up, yes. They stepped up, they saw the steps and I was like, okay, are these steps stable? Are they unstable? It doesn't matter. I gotta climb them. Right. I gotta climb them.

Right. You've probably been asked this question a million times. So I'm not going to ask it, which is. I'm not going to ask you to answer it.

Okay.

Which is who is the best basketball player you ever trained? I'm assuming you've been asked that many times.

I have.

What I will ask you is who is the hardest for you personally to train? Who is the hardest for you to show up for mentally, physically? What was the most, the biggest challenge for you for whatever reason? Maybe because they were more demanding or they were, you know. needed different skills that you didn't have, whatever it is, who is the hardest.

For you to train? Well, you know, it's funny, all my top guys, I didn't have any problems with those. They always showed up. I knew what was expected. Now, Kobe was extremely demanding on knowing everything. Like, why are we doing this?

Exactly.

Tell me the science behind it.

Yes. Otherwise, I don't want to do it.

Exactly. You know, you had him on your show, and, you know, he's like, Every question you ask him, there's gotta be a purpose behind them, otherwise you get that mamba glare. What are we doing here? What are we doing here? What are we doing here? And so he wanted to know why we did every exercise, why we worked out at this time, what was the rep count, why am I eating this, why am I resting this long. He wanted to know every single thing. detail. Why am I giving this particular day off? He needed to know all of it. Why did I change the sequence of this stuff? So he was very demanding in that way, which I really enjoyed because it made me sharper in my skills. Because Michael, in his career, he was just like, I hired you. If I have to question you, that means I don't trust you.

I trust you. I'll do whatever you tell me to do.

Yeah. I hired you to do a job. I have to focus in on this. You go out, you do your job. Results were tremendous. But Kobe wanted to know every single detail along the way. Everything. Like, why am I changing his diet? What's going on here? Everything. If he didn't shoot well in a game, like, hey, we changed that exercise up. Did that have anything to do with what was going on? And you couldn't BS him. And a lot of times, I wouldn't know the answer, and I would say, Give me 24 hours. Then I would call somebody who had a better expertise in that. And that was a level of respect that he had because I didn't come across as a know-it-all. I don't know it. I'm gonna ask somebody who's better at it than I am.

Who was, so he was the most demanding.

He was, oh, you know, he was relentless. Louis, you being out here, his 3 a.m. workouts, Crazy. Crazy. You know, having to keep the state, having to keep the Staples Center open later because he wasn't happy the way he performed at that game. And I would not leave till he would leave.

Really?

Yeah. So we would be, we would be in the arena sometimes two, three o'clock in the morning.

Shut up.

Yeah. We, and this, you know, one security, one security person there because they can't leave them alone.

Oh, my gosh.

Why? All the lights are turned off, but except on the court, and we just keep going. We just keep going. We just keep going. We just keep going. The hardest thing with him was getting him to stop.

Yeah, okay, take a break. Rest.

Yes.

Take the day off.

Yeah, that was the most challenge, you said, what was the most challenging thing? That was the most challenging thing with him. Because over all the years that he had his success, it was about go, go, go. And then when I came on, I was the complete opposite. I gotta get you to stop.

Otherwise you're gonna hurt yourself.

Yes, that was a very, very difficult concept for him to understand. And I said, not only physically, mentally. I said, I need you to stop mentally. I need you to stop mentally for a little bit. You gotta give this game a little bit of break up in here. I'm not going to tell you how to do that, but you have to, you have to find that way where for 20 minutes we can just, I just need you to shut it off. Yeah.

And when you were training with a Kobe or a Michael Jordan, was it five days a week? Was it in the off season mostly? Was it during season? How would it typically work? Year round.

Year round.

Full time, year round. Were you training other people at the same time, or was it This is it.

So, with Michael during the season, it was just him. It was just him. Well, we had what was called the Breakfast Club. The Breakfast Club was during the season, I would train Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Ron Harper. They would come on, they would show up at Michael's house. I would train them, they would get together. If they worked out intensely enough, their reward was breakfast. And Michael was the judge of that.

Really?

We don't eat unless we win. you don't eat unless you train hard. You don't get breakfast unless you're in here. They all had to be here at the same time. We would finish the workouts at different times because each one had different needs that had to be addressed separately. But once they were done, they sat, they all had breakfast together, they all got in their individual cars and they drove to the arena. Some would leave a little bit earlier because they needed treatment or other.

They were training hard the day of a game.

The day of the game. They trained. And that was something.

What if they're sore? What if you're like, oh, I can't lift my arms. I can't run.

See? So it was funny. And I talk about this in this book, winning it, because when I, I have a master's degree in exercise science. All right. My bachelor's is in kinesiology. So I spent a lot of time in school, and they taught me what to think. Here's the book. This is how the body works. This is what you need to do. Then when I started working with these individuals, I said, okay, between travel days and game days, if we were to work out, if we did not work out on those days, we would literally work out maybe once a week.

Because you're practicing.

Practicing, you got to travel. You know, you got you back then there were almost three to four games a week. You know, now the schedule is a little bit more diverse, but back then it was, you know, you would play minimum of three games a week. So I was like, if we don't work out on game days, we're never going to make any progress. You will actually be more sore once a week working out. And there were no books. to tell me any of this. There was no nothing. I couldn't go back then, remember no internet. No cell phones. No Google.

No YouTube.

It was the Dewey Decimal System for the young people that don't know what that is, is when you go to a library where they have books and you got to check out a book, you couldn't find this information in there. So to me, I started to develop the skill of how to think. I was like, well, you know what? This makes sense to me. So I'd say, Michael, we, Michael, we got to do this. We have to work out on game day. Yes. It's going to be detrimental early.

First month, first eight weeks, it's gonna, you're gonna be paying in pain.

Right. I said, I'm not gonna tell you you're not. But I said, if we started early enough and get you, we started in the preseason, your body will acclimate. Then when the season rolls around, you'll be, you'll be fine.

I said, it will pay off.

Dividends in the long— How many years.

Had he been playing in the NBA before you told him we're gonna be training on game day?

I started with him right away. I started with him in '89. I think he came into the league, I can't remember the exact year he came into the league, but I started training with him in 1989.

And how did the story go again? Didn't you call, like, every player on the team or something?

So again, back then, It wasn't easy to pick up a phone, so what I did was, unless you had a landline at home. And I wrote a letter. I wrote letters. There's 15 players on an NBA team. I wrote 14 letters to the Chicago Bulls. I wrote a letter to every single player except Michael Jordan, because I was.

Like, He's not gonna do it.

He's not gonna do it. I'm like, I've never worked with a pro athlete. All right? I've never worked with a pro athlete. No one's gonna, he's not gonna, the best of the best is not gonna come in and say, Hey, I'm gonna hire this, I'm gonna hire this kid. But he saw a letter in somebody else's locker and pulled the letter out, read it, and gave it to the athletic trainer, the team physician at that time and said, Hey, find out what this kid's about.

Really?

Yeah.

How old were you then?

I was 22. 25, maybe 25, 26.

You're about the same age as Michael, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Michael's born in. I'm a 62. I'm a 64. He's a 60. He was born in 62.

I was born in 64. Gotcha. So he's a, he's a couple years older than you. Older. Yeah. And so he saw a letter in.

Someone else's Locker and said, oh, why didn't I get this letter? Yeah. Competitive. Wow. Why, why isn't this guy reaching out? You know, I don't know if that was the case, but everybody knows about Michael's Competitiveness and he was just like, why didn't he reach out to me? So he gave it to the team athletic trainer and the team doctor got together. They gave me a call. I didn't know who they were interviewing. Yeah, I had no idea. They said, Listen, we have a client that's interested. We have somebody that's interested. So, okay, so for Lilly for three months, for three months, they drilled me. They brought me in to see my, to ask me questions, to take tests, to, you know, see if I knew what I was talking about, to go through a rehab process, to go through a workout, all these, and that just went on for three, literally four days a week for three months, every single, every single day, every single day. And then one day they finally said, Hey, listen, we want you to meet the client.

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Okay, no problem. Didn't tell me who it was. Said, Be at the house, gave me an address, and say, Be at this house at 1:30. All right. And back then, it was still a nice house, but it wasn't a gated house. You could just walk up and ring the doorbell. So I get there. I ring the doorbell.

You didn't know who it was.

Not a clue. Not a clue. So I ring the doorbell. No answer. I ring the doorbell again. No answer. I ring the doorbell a third time. Michael Jordan opens up the door. All right. Luckily, I'm not a Starstruck person. I'm not a Starstruck person. So he goes, I said, I'm here. He goes, yeah, I know. And then I looked down at my shoes. I'm wearing Converse. Oh, no. And I'm like, Do I go in this house with Converse? So now winning is literally talking to me back then because I'm like, this is the only opportunity I'm gonna get. Do I go into this house with Converse or do I take them off? So I took them off. I got holes in my socks, both of them. Not just one, both of them. So what do I do? I turn my socks around. So the dirty parts on the top, but the holes are on the bottom. Wow. So I walk into the house, we go downstairs, we talk for about 40-45 minutes. I tell me your philosophy, tell me what's going on. I go through the whole process, the whole program. everything. And he goes, this doesn't sound right. I said, this doesn't get any writer. I said, trust me on. Trust me on this. He goes, I'll give you 30 days, and 30 days turned into 15 years. Wow.

That's crazy.

It's unbelievable story. Then when I walked out of the house, I grabbed my shoes and he looked down and said, never again.

That's amazing. Did he give you a pair?

No, I had to go out. I couldn't, you can't go into potentially a new client in the first 15 minutes. Give me some gear. Yeah, and ask him for something. So I left there, went out, had to equip the downstairs basement as quickly as possible, had to get a new pair of shoes, and we literally started the next day.

15 years. Was it like five days a week for 15 years? Was there some months off?

So we would go year round. We would see, he would stop usually. They usually played until the end of June because that's, that's during this, that's what was a schedule back then after the championship. And then he would take off through Labor Day because he had to take care of his endorsements, his different, different deals, spend time with the family, take his trips. So Michael was extremely smart during that time, and this is that's the concepts of why a lot of reasons why he was able to win over and over again. So he would say, listen, I have all these obligations. He would tell his people, you have me from July 1 until Labor Day. Every endorsement deal, every obligation I have, every family trip, every over, whatever I'm going to do, has to be done in those time. Because once Labor Day starts, I start training again. I start to train to get ready for the next season. And once that happened, there was like, that was it. There was no more. I got a Nike commercial here. I gotta do a Gatorade thing over here. I gotta do a Hanes thing here. I mean, no, it was. workout golf, workout golf, workout golf. And that was that we literally went, we'd go anywhere from five to six days a week, almost sometimes two to three times a day, not always working out. You know, people always love these stories, oh, I work out six hours a day. Yeah, you might work out six hours a day, but that includes your recovery time.

Yes.

Warm enough. Yeah. And you're easy to talk to. Yes, you're easy to talk to about that because you've been at, you've been, you've played at the highest level. Yeah. Well, people always animated about, oh, my God, Kobe works out for eight hours a day.

No, no. Game film, that's preparing, that's stretching.

Yes, yes. It's everything that's ice tubs, whatever. Yeah. Yeah.

That brings you towards that width. Of course. Yeah. That's exciting. So for those two months then, you.

Weren'T really training him during that time. I wasn't training him during that time. I would train other athletes that. That he allowed me for the first three years. For first three years, he didn't. He did. And this was a great, this was his standard answer. He would tell everybody, he goes, I don't pay Grover to train me.

I'm not to train you.

Not to train anybody else.

Wow, that's crazy.

Yeah. So I don't pay him to train me. I pay him not to train anybody else. So then he would allow me, after about three, four years, he would allow me to work with other individuals, but he would always say this. He goes, you, need to tell every single one of your clients, that if I call, and I would always tell everybody, I said, listen, I'm willing to take you on as a client, but this is the one and only stipulation. I said, well, the reason you're here is because you saw the work that I did with him. Let's get that. Let's not mistake that. But I said, if he calls for whatever reason, and we're in the middle of a workout, I'm gone. I gotta go.

Wow.

I gotta go. No questions asked. No, no, no. I said the chances of that happening are slim, but I'm just letting you know.

What were the three greatest lessons that you learned from Michael?

Three greatest lessons I learned from Michael. I would say competing, accountability, and then winning at all levels.

Winning at all levels, what does that mean?

You just don't win in one arena. You win in your sports, you win in business, you win in your personal life. Other people win because you win. It isn't just about you. It's about being able to pull the team and show them what it feels like to win. What kind of feeling that gives it. When you win, your family wins. When your family wins, you win. When you win, your friends win. The people that have supported you. Every time Michael played, I always said this. I said, and I said this in the last dance, he would say.

These.

Individuals are giving me something that's way more valuable than the price of a ticket. They're giving me their time. Which is non-refundable. Which is not, you can't exchange it with somebody else. You can't take your ticket and exchange it with another individual. These people are literally giving me their time. Whether they're at the arena, They're sitting in front of the TV. They're watching the news, listening to it on the radio back then, whatever it may be. My accountability to myself and those individuals has to be at the highest level. Has to be at the highest level because they're doing something that is so... They're giving me something that's so valuable. I have to be at my best. I have to be at my best.

Is it possible to win at everything if you're going to be the best at one thing?

No.

Because even in the last dance, he was talking about how certain things, you know, in his life maybe were out of balance because he was all in on the obsession of winning in basketball.

Louis, we've all been there. We've all been there. And one of the chapters I talk about in winning is there is no balance. There is no balance. And everybody loves to talk about balance all the time. And the people that have kind of maybe finally created balance, they don't talk about the times where there was no balance. Right.

For years they weren't in balance and now they're like, okay, I've got some resources, I've got more time, I've got.

A staff, I got people that help me do things. And I always said, you know, people ask me all the time, How do you find balance? I say, you don't find balance. You create it and it's different for each individual out there. What's balance for you may not be balance for somebody else and I'm not here to judge what your balance is and so forth. All right. It's different across the board, but the one way to get closer to balance, everyone does a complete opposite. People always ask me this, you know, well how do I create more balance? Well, I say, well what are you trying to do? I'm trying to, you know, people are telling me I need to spend more time with my family. I work too much. You know, I need to pay attention to my kids or I pay too much attention to them. I don't pay enough attention to my career and all this other stuff. And I said, well, what do you do? Well, you know, I'm trying to add all these different components. I was like, that's your mistake.

What should they do instead?

Delete.

Delete what?

Your unessentials. There's so many unessentials that you carry wrong around in your head. or in your daily life, in your daily life, in your routines or whatever. When you try to balance things, if you add more things, it becomes more difficult to balance. Delete the unessentials. Delete the things that are not creating that balance for you. And if you look at it, if you really sit down, you'll be like, yeah, I really don't need to do this. I shouldn't be doing this. I got a little time wasted over here. And that way it brings you a little bit closer to what you'll create, what balance looks like for you. But like you said earlier, is everything going to be perfect? No. And I give this example. When I'm speaking to individuals, and again, I talk about it in the book, I'll ask individuals, who wants zero happiness? Nobody raises their hand. All right? I said, who wants zero success? No one raises their hand. All right? And I go, who wants a zero life? No one raises their hand. I said, who wants zero love? No one raises their hand. I said, what's the number on a perfectly balanced scale? It's a zero. It's an absolute zero. So I said, if you're trying to balance all those things all the time, you're gonna end up with none of them. You're gonna end up with none of them. Now, I never want your scale to be tipped all the way this way, all right? But then you have to decide how much where things are going to be. And the time, listen, if you are one of those individuals as a person that's dedicated to their craft, want to do this, there are things that are going to have to take a back seat.

If you want to be the best at something or great at something, one of the best at something, something has to take a back seat.

And it always is. But then when you take whatever's in the backseat and you put in the forefront for that moment, make sure you're all in.

All in on that moment. Present, giving, attention, all of it.

All of it. All of it. Be all in. You know, people always tell, and I could tell, listen, you have very calm demeanor about yourself.

Unless I'm competing on the sports arena.

Right. Exactly, all right. But let's go back to your competitive days. How many people would tell you, man, you need to loosen up, you need to unwind. No, no.

It's like, I'm focused, man.

I'm in the game.

Exactly.

You're like, you're most uncomfortable when you are unwound. When you're relaxed. Yes.

You're thinking about how do I do more, how do I create, how do I train harder, what do I need to watch, film, study. Yes, you're obsessing over it.

And that was one of Kobe's favorite words when it related to winning. He says, you have to be obsessed with whatever your win is. And everybody looks at that word obsessed as a bad word. As a bad word. But look at this. If you weren't obsessed, would you have the guests that you have?

No, we wouldn't be impacting people the way we are. And that's okay if that's the life you want. which is not obsession, that's okay. But that doesn't mean you're gonna get the results that obsession brings.

And don't judge the people that are obsessed and allow you not to be.

Mm-.

Because they're doing all the work for you.

They're carrying a lot of weight.

Yeah. Listen, how many people do you know, you just did an interview recently with, was it Tony?

Tony. Tony Robbins, Russell Brand, yeah.

All right. Well, if people want to hear what they have to say, you have to be obsessed in order to get that information for the people that aren't obsessed.

Absolutely, otherwise they wouldn't bring the information to me.

Right, so they should be thankful that man, you know what? We're really, really thankful that Lewis is obsessed at doing what he's doing because it brings us joy, it allows us to Not to be obsessed in that area and we can be obsessed in some other area.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I think it's, yeah, I think it's important to, to recognize that obsession over winning and whatever that looks like for you. That can be sports, business, parenthood, anything. Being a good friend, whatever it may be. You know, if you want to be great at something, you can't half-ass it. You can't be tiptoe in a little bit out, spend a little bit of time on it. you've got to be committed to it. If you want to be great at that thing. And that means other things might have to struggle or suffer for moments or you just need to negotiate with the people in your life. This is what I'm up to and here's what I can give you. I can give you time here or two months a year I can show up for you or one day a week, whatever it is. And you've got to negotiate with others around you so those relationships don't suffer.

That's a great way. excellent way of putting it. And that's exactly what I talk about. It's like, listen, if you ask somebody who's very important to you in your life and you say, I need two years. Yeah. Stay with me for two years. This is what I have to do. You better deliver in those two years, right? You better deliver in those. There better be some tangible stuff in there that you've won at. And also the person that waited for you, they get a chance to win also. Because if they're gonna put where if you tell them, hey, I need you to wait, this is how I'm gonna be for the next. And after those two years, you better have measurable results. You can't ask for another two years and nothing. And then you have nothing to show for it for that period of time. You're warranty's over with. It's done. It's done.

And speaking of negotiating, how does someone learn to negotiate with their own minds when they want to, when things get hard, when they want to quit, when they're in pain, when they're struggling, how do we negotiate with our negative thoughts for our vision so that we don't give in to them?

So, hey, listen, you're gonna love, you're gonna So again, it's just like you're picking this book apart for me. I absolutely love it. So I have this, I talk about the battlefield that goes on in your mind. There's literally a battlefield that goes on in your mind all the time. And there's bombs that are exploding all the time. Fear, anxiety, I'm not good enough. And a lot of times you're making those bombs explode. and or somebody else is making those bombs explode. You have to take control of that space. You have to, too many times, the space between our ears, we don't have control over it. A lot of other people have set shop in it. They've taken the most expensive real estate in the world and they're literally sitting in it and they're not paying any rent.

They're making you pay the rent.

Yes.

They're sitting here and making you pay.

And you're sitting in there and those individuals, boy, they know exactly where all the bombs are and they know which ones to push and which ones to push and how to get you emotional and how to do those things. And they also do it in a positive way also, while what's considered a positive way. You don't need to work that hard. you're good enough the way you are. You're already successful. Boom, boom, boom, all these different things. Because what they're trying to do is instead of being supportive, they're actually pulling you back because now you're starting to create distance between you and them. And they don't want that. You got to make sure you control that battlefield that's going on in there. It's your space, it's your mind, you're going to have negative thoughts. You are, but you don't act on all your thoughts. And just saying, thinking positive is just not going to get it done. All right? You need to think positive, but you need to act on whatever you're thinking positive of. Just changing your thought is not going to change your action. It may change your perspective, but you still have to continue to push forward.

So when someone has a negative thought, how should they respond? Should they analyze it? Should they replace it with a more positive thought? Should they act on it and say, okay, I'm feeling tired and like I'm not enough today. Should they say, okay, when it happens, I actually do something to get out of it. I move my body, I call a friend, I work out. What should they do when a negative thought comes?

Also, I always look at it this way. What is causing that negative thought? Is it you? or is it something that somebody else said about? So just like you have something that triggers that negative thought, you have to have a trigger that gets you out of that negative thought. I have negative thoughts just like everybody else. All my clients did. And then they each had a trigger to get themselves out of it. And I could see it. For me, literally, when I see a negative thought come in, and if I'm walking, I will literally stop. I will literally stop in my tracks and I'll do like this.

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That's my trigger. Now, obviously I can't have my athletes sitting out there doing it, but that's what works for me. But the important thing is I come to a complete stop because I don't want that thought to gain traction. I don't want that. So I need to address it at that moment. I need to address it at that moment. Now with my athletes, they each, and I can't share the different triggers that they had, but each had one when they were like starting to maybe doubt themselves or... It was very difficult.

You could see it.

You could sense it. You could see it.

Whether they were saying it or not.

You could sense it.

A little.

You you can look my language exactly you and down and down Yes, everybody ha everybody ha has those little things, the way they're looking at something, the way their head is being held, the way they're breathing and, you know, in the way when they go sit down on the bench and, you know, the way they look, you could always see something. Okay, they're not they're not doing how.

Tell you were they coaching themselves out of that? orr were you just supporting them with a mantra or process for getting out of that? Like what did MJ or Kobe do?

I would give them a bunch of things and I just say, listen, you got to decide on which one you want to use. You have to decide. And a lot of times, the most successful people that you've had on your show, they're the most coachable.

That's it. They're not resistant to learning. They want to improve.

Yeah. So a lot of times, I'm sure the stories, the episodes that I've watched you give, a lot of your guests are asking you questions.

Absolutely, yeah.

You know, it's like, wait, wait, who's interviewing who over here? Who's interviewing who over here? And it's a learning process back and forth. So when I would talk, before I would go to the individual and say, hey, I noticed, they would all be like, I already know what you're talking about. And we like, so we would have that discussion and noticing and being able to be aware of the mistakes, be aware of the negative thoughts, be aware of the negative emotions. That's on you. We're always looking for somebody else to point those things out to us. Well, you need to recognize those things before anybody else does.

I'm a big believer that you can't win consistently. And you can't be great consistently if you're constantly doubting yourself and allowing doubt to make decisions for you.

Lou, you sure you didn't write this book? And.

I'm not saying, I'm not sure if we'll ever be able to eliminate doubt because every new level and every new opportunity, every new adventure we take on, there's going to be a level of, I've never done this. and you're gonna have to step into the courage, you know, bones inside of you and say, I've got to leap into courage in this. And there's gonna be a little bit of doubt or insecurity, but how do we eliminate it from holding us back? When we have self-doubt, how do we remove it so that we can continue to strive for greatness?

So how I look at this thing is we talk about fear and doubt. in the book, I said, you've talked to the Michael Jordans and Kobe Bryants of the business world on a regular basis. Yeah. All right. And every single one of them, I'm sure, no matter how many times they've done things over and over and over again, there's always been a little bit of fear. There's always been a little bit of--.

What if it doesn't work out? What if we lose? What if this risk Yes.

All right. There's all but that fear is what allows them to take that next step. It's their instead of fear paralyzing them, it's their energy. It's their energy. I always say you can have fear, but you can't have doubt. All right.

So how do we eliminate doubt?

When you have that fear, when you have that fear, Know that what you're doing is the right thing because if it's not fearful enough, your goals are too small. They're too small. And then you never doubt the outcome. Don't overthink. A lot of times doubting is overthinking. And what is overthinking? It's creating problems that don't exist. You start overanalyzing. You started there, well, this could go wrong, this could go... Michael always used to say, why should I worry about a shot I've never taken? Ooh. And people are always thinking about the negative things of something and they've never even done the thing yet. And that creates more self-doubt, more self-doubt, more self-doubt.

So how do we let go of that? Is it just don't worry about the outcome, just focus on the process? Leaning into the fear, knowing that's the thing that we're supposed to go after.

Yes, exactly.

That's the trigger to move forward.

To move forward. All right.

What happens if I fail? What happens if I miss it? What happens if I humiliate myself?

Then what? But you know what? Here's the point. I'd rather have those things than to say, I never did it.

And regret. I always say that too.

I never did it. Yeah. All right. I knew I wasn't good enough to be a professional basketball player. I knew that. but I gave everything I had. And I think both of our careers, you had an injury. I had an injury, even if I didn't have the injury. I wasn't the one making the injury. So, no, I'm not never gonna say, I just did, it just wasn't gonna happen. All right. But I never doubted myself. I never doubted that I was going to win at something. And it was gonna start off in the sports arena. Even when everybody told me, you know, you're not going to, this is not going to happen. This is not going to happen. This is not going to happen. People have to understand that winning has no loyalty to you. Exactly what you said, you know, you're going to fail. How am I going to look? What if people laugh at me? Well, look at the most successful people in the world. All right. When you had, they did a TV piece on Jeff Bezos way back when. And could you imagine people left when he first come out and says, you, know what? I'm gonna start a company and we're gonna have everything that you want shipped to you in a week. Man, this dude is crazy.

In a day. In two days, yeah.

And then it's like, you, know what? That's not good enough. We're gonna do it in two days.

It's crazy.

That's it. You're crazy. That's still not good. People are just laughing. They're doubting it.

You're doubting yourself and you're like, I'm gonna do it in a day.

Now you get your groceries delivered in two hours from Whole Foods app on Amazon. What normal person thinks that way? All right? And the people that are a little bit off, a little bit crazy, a little bit like, Hey, so what? So what? They have the least amount of doubt. They have the least amount of doubt. You usually have doubt because of what somebody else is going to think of you. How somebody else is going to react. All right? And people call it self-doubt, but that self-doubt is usually afflicted by somebody else. You think about, you have the greatest idea. All right. You had, you've been at this for eight years, but previously.

Other things, yeah.

Other things, all right. How many times did you tell somebody, I'm gonna go do this, and they're like, oh, that's a terrible idea.

It's funny, the day I came up with the idea for this show, I was in LA. I just moved here from New York City. probably six to eight months prior to that. And I was stuck in traffic. You've lived in LA for... Oh, yes. And I moved from New York City, loved it. I'm from Ohio. Came out here. I'm stuck in traffic for hours every day to go see someone or whatever. And I remember having the idea to do a podcast because I was feeling a little stuck in my life. I was feeling like things aren't working. Like, I need to learn. I want to go and I was also stuck in traffic and I was like, oh, a lot of people are stuck in traffic. What if I could learn and also give them something while they're stuck in traffic or they're commuting? This is kind of pre-podcast days.

Sure.

And I remember I called a friend who had a show. There was only like two people I knew had a podcast. And I said, I've got this idea and I want to call it the School of Greatness because I want to create the school I wish I would have had growing up. Where they teach you the things about life, loss, failure, doubt, insecurities, like how to grow. They never taught these things in school. I learned it from sports.

Right?

So I was like, I'm gonna call.

It the School of Greatness. That's your how to think moment.

Exactly. Exactly. And I call one of my friends and he goes, that's the dumbest name I've ever heard. And I go, okay. And every time I talk to him now, he goes, I was wrong. That was the greatest name. That was the Greatest Name and I just didn't see it. So people that aren't going to see your vision, people didn't see Jeff Bezos' vision, people don't see Elon Musk, people don't see Kobe and Jordan's vision. And that's okay, but you've got to be willing to see it in yourself. So how do we not allow the doubt of others saying, take it easy, you shouldn't do this. You sure you want to work that hard? Why don't you do this over here? How do we not allow other people's.

Doubt to make it Our own doubt. So, you know, we always hear this thing about when you have fear, you play to win. When you have doubt, you play not to lose.

Yes, exactly. Interesting. So when you have fear, you play to win. Yes, doubt. You play not to lose.

Yes, exactly. Interesting. So when you have fear, you play to win. Yes, doubt. You play not to lose.

You play not to, you play not to. A lot of us, I've been there in the past. you know, you. I've played not to lose many times, and you always end up never playing your best. You never end up playing your best.

You never. And you never win, right?

Either way, whether you win or lose, you never win if you don't play your best. Great example.

And then, you know, fear is instinctive. Fear is instinctive. Like, okay, like, you're like, hey, I'm gonna do. I'm a little fearful here. It's to. It's either to protect you or it's to go. All right. Doubt is created by you. Fear is an instinct. Doubt you create.

So others don't create doubt in you.

Initially, well, you have to allow them to create doubt.

You have to receive their- Yes, you.

Have to receive their doubt. You have to receive their doubt. And then now it becomes you, all right? Fear is pressure, and pressure is a privilege.

It's great.

It's the greatest thing. You had somebody on here just talking about stress the other day. and how it keeps you alive, how necessary it is. Doubt you start to panic. Doubt you start to panic.

So how do we learn how to not let the doubt stay in us? How do we remove it? How do we get out, how do we turn doubt into fear and action towards growth?

Continue to work like a maniacal individual on what you want.

Is that the only way to get rid of doubt, you think, is by working, obsessing over something and proving something so you don't doubt?

Prove it to yourself. We have so many other individuals that are trying to prove it to everybody else. Don't worry about proving it to everybody else. Prove it to yourself.

And here's what I'll say around that. I think that's beautifully said because most of my life until I was about 30, I was living to prove others wrong.

Yes.

And it was the second most powerful fuel and energy that I think humans have is like, I'm angry, I'm hurt, I'm frustrated. I'm going to go prove these people wrong about me. And it drove me to be obsessed. around winning, around achieving, around accomplishing my goals. And I did. I accomplished them. But it left me feeling very unfulfilled, lonely, insecure, doubting myself even more. Why am I not feeling what I want to feel? Why am I not still getting what I want inside? Because I was driven by the wrong things to prove other people doubting me wrong. And you hear that a lot by like people say, prove them wrong. But I think it's prove yourself right.

Prove yourself right.

And like you said, I love that you're saying this because you'll prove others wrong by proving yourself right. So you don't need to go prove them wrong.

Just do your best. You just gave an example.

Yeah.

You're one of your closest friends. Yeah. Man, that's a terrible name. That's a terrible name. All right. Prove yourself right. Yeah. Don't prove him wrong. Right.

Say, okay, I'm gonna go do this for me.

Whether you like it or not.

Right.

And the best validation is when they come back to you. I was wrong. I was wrong. That's the best, that's the best value.

You don't mean to say I told you so.

No.

You just say, I told myself so.

That's it.

It's a shift in it.

Right, and that person, what did they try to do? They tried to create self-doubt in you. And if you would have, this would have been called.

School of average.

Yes. Yes, normalcy. Right, right. Whatever it was. Whatever it would be.

Yeah.

Whatever it would be.

So when doubt creeps in and we start to believe the doubt, go back into proving yourself right. Go back into obsessing over the craft, doing it for the right reasons, not to prove others wrong, not to look good in front of a crowd or whatever, but doing it 'cause you love the art of it, the expression of it, the creation of it, the vision of the thing you wanna work on. not to validate something that's lacking, right?

It's perfect. You look at when Kobe, his first playoff series.

How old was he, do you remember, his first one?

It was early in his career. I think he was like 18. Yeah, no, no, I'm talking about before he won the finals. This was on the playoffs. In the playoffs. In the playoffs. I think he had this— no shot, pre-shot. Yeah, he had this horrible game against— I think it might have been the Utah Jazz. I can't remember. Well, he shot, like, four or five straight air balls.

I remember that.

Yeah, four or five straight air balls. All right? Now, he could have came back next year and said, I gotta prove everybody that said, man, you're too young. Why'd you take? No, he was just like, you know what? That's on me. I have to own. I have to own that. I have to own that moment. All right? I owned that moment. Now I gotta prove to myself. I can overcome this because now everybody else is doubting me, but I can't doubt myself. I can't doubt myself. And everybody's had that moment. Everybody told MJ, don't go to North Carolina. You'll never play. You'll never play. And one of the stories I share with individuals is Dean Smith, who was a coach at the time, He introduced Michael. He said, Michael, I want you to meet I think I got the name right. I'm pretty sure. He thinks I want you to meet Buzz Peterson. Buzz Peterson was the number one recruited player in the nation.

To go to North Carolina.

To go, yeah, like the number one anywhere. He was number one player in the nation. And Michael goes to Dean, says, How could he be number one? He ain't never played me. He said, how Dean saw Sutton, he saw that competitive nature in MJ. And he wanted to see, now if I tell him that, is that kid going to start doubting himself? Because everybody else has already told him, you shouldn't be here. You shouldn't be here. And Michael went out and he said, I don't need to prove to Coach. I don't need to prove to Buzz, I need to prove to myself that I belong here.

Did they end up competing? Did they do one-on-one?

Yeah, they ended up, yeah, and it didn't turn out well.

For the other guy.

Yeah, for the other guy, yeah.

And.

Coach Smith made them roommates. Oh, wow.

Yeah, that's hilarious. Speaking of one-on-one, how many times did you get to play one-on-one against MJ or Kobe?

Often they never turned out well.

Did you ever score a point against either of them?

Yes, I did.

Really? What was that?

And it was the last point I ever scored. Really? Yes.

What was that like? Where was the moment?

It was during it, it was during, well see, it was kind of like a setup. It was a, it was a, it was a setup. So it was, I was playing, Michael and I were kind of messing around and we had just finished a grueling leg workout. He's like, came a rock.

Grueling leg workout.

So you get him when he's at his lowest moment.

Oh yeah.

And he's up there and he's, you know, we go up there to get loosened up a little bit and he's just like, he's shooting. He goes, man, I can't even, I can't even feel, I can't even feel my, I can't even feel my legs. I said, I got a great idea to kind of loosen you up a little bit. I said, play a little one-on-one. And he thinks I'm just, yeah, he goes, I pass, I pass, I just go right around him, that high score, and he's, oh, big mistake. Big mistake. You saw Lily, the lactic acid just flush out of his body in that second. And he goes, all right, mother.

That was the last point.

That was the last time I touched the ball.

Really? He wouldn't even let you play with anybody anymore. He couldn't get the ball back.

I couldn't get the ball back. I couldn't get the ball. I would get the ball back after he scored in the basket and I pass it back to him.

But then when you got the ball, he was just swatting it away.

Yeah, it was just like, I couldn't get around him. I mean, when you're a professional at something, people don't realize how good those individuals are. I love the people that sit on the sidelines and all this other stuff and they doubt. They doubt how talented those individuals are. And I always tell them in any sport, I said, listen, you give me who you think are the five worst.

In the league, yeah.

In the league. I don't care who that is.

You can dominate. Anyone.

You get your top five, they will literally dominate.

There was a show, I think, like 10 years ago by some guy a basketball player from the Celtics, I think, who was like the bottom five in the NBA who like scored five points in eight years and they would bring out these college like superstars and wreck superstars and freak athletes. They claimed to score a point on this guy after he retired.

Yeah.

I can't remember the guy's name, Bill something or it's a tall like redheaded white guy and it's just like oh, Scalabrine. Yes, Scalabrine. Yes, yes. There was a whole show about this because he's kind of like all star Star Joes.

Yes.

They could compete against a retired NBA guy. They couldn't even score a point years after he retired.

Yes.

It wasn't even good in the NBA, but still, you're number 500 in the world at something. You're gonna destroy everyone else.

Exactly.

You're gonna destroy them.

Their talent level is so unbelievable. You played, is it football and team handball?

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Get 90% off for three months. Limited time only. Terms and conditions apply. Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments Inc. Licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Team hand- For people that don't know what team handball is- Most people in America don't know.

You know, because you've been to the Olympics probably.

You've seen it, yeah. It is an unbelievable sport.

You talk about competitiveness, Here's the thing. My first year playing with Team Handball was 10 years ago. I moved to New York City to join the New York City team because they were the national champions. And there was only, there's only clubs in the USA. There's no one getting paid. No one really knows what the sport is. All Europeans who have moved here who play the sport once a week. And I made the USA national team nine months after starting to train with the New York City team, made the USA team. And I remember going to Argentina to compete in the Pan Am Championships. And this is, I had a chance to play against the top teams in South America, Brazil and Argentina and Chile and all these teams. And I'm going against Olympians. These are professionals playing in Europe, Olympians. I'm on the USA national team. But I remember the first time I was up against an Olympian, I had zero chance. Like they just made me look like an idiot. And I'm an elite player for the country on the USA team. But these guys were so talented. They knew every nuance. They just knew what to do at all times that you had no chance. So it doesn't even matter if you're elite at the college level, you can't compete against these NBA guys.

So, and this is how-- so I have two stories that you can relate to on this and how competitive these individuals are and how important winning is to them. Kobe was a big soccer fan. Huge, huge soccer fan. So, you know, when we would take the Nike trip to Europe, and he would always want to visit all these different teams, and we were always-- challenged to stop a goal. So like we would be the goal. We would be the goal. We would be the good luck.

Good luck.

And we were just, and now remember, you're talking about one of the best to ever play in a sport.

Yeah.

Basketball.

Couldn't stop him one probably ever.

We did this for seven years. Not one.

They're not even trying. They're just tapping.

We didn't even touch the ball. No, no.

We didn't even touch the ball. I mean, if professional goalkeepers can barely do it, how are you gonna do it? Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you were inspired by this as much as I was. And part two is coming next and we are talking about what happens to us when we acknowledge our self-doubts. The three biggest lessons he learned from Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade. How to change your life by adapting a winning mindset to yourself. Why we need to rethink our idea of selfishness and so much more. If you enjoyed this, click the subscribe button and leave a rating and review over on Apple Podcast. Let us know which part you enjoyed the most about this. Post it over on social media. You can use the link lewishouse.com/1111.

Or.

Copy and paste this link wherever you're listening to this episode. And I want to leave you with this quote from Oren Woodward, who said, more powerful than the will to win is the courage to begin. Whoo, that one gave me chills because a lot of us have these dreams, these goals, but we don't have the courage to actually just get started because we're so afraid of failing down the line, of looking bad, of embarrassing ourselves, of not succeeding that we never even take the first step. So have the courage today. Take a step towards your goals, towards your dreams, and put yourself out there in an uncomfortable way. That's what this is all about. And I want to remind you, if no one's told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And you know what time it is? It's time to go out there and do something great.

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