106 - Mastering Mental Performance with Sports Psychologist Alex Auerbach

Welcome to Farewell, a growth equation podcast about living a good, meaningful and high performing life in a chaotic world. I'm one of your hosts, Brad Stahlberg, every Thursday alongside Steve Magnus and Clay Skipper. We cut through the noise and hacks and grift to bring you ideas and habits to help you on your path to excellence. Hello listeners of the Farewell podcast and hello Clay. We've got a great episode today. Clay got to put on his reporter hat and go into full on interview mode. Clay, who's our guest this week?

Today we have Alex Auerbach, who is a counseling and performance psychologist. He has written a book called Call to Greatness, your personal playbook for the pursuit of excellence. Excellence. Something you talk a lot about, Brad. And obviously performance psychology is a lot of what we talk about, right? It's the tools, toolbox, strategies to help you become your best self.

And he spent some time, if I'm not mistaken, in the National Basketball association at one point of his career. So, you know, he's someone that not only has like the academic chops, but has spent time in a high pressure, high performance environment. I'm, I'm curious to hear, Clay, what are some of the most interesting insights that you gleaned from the conversation?

Yeah, you're totally right. He worked with the Toronto Raptors. He actually joined the Raptors right before they had to relocate to Florida for the pandemic. So that's like a really wild time to work with the basketball team. He's also working some Olympians, Fortune 500 CEOs, startup founders, and even worked with some paratroopers, which is really interesting. People in, I believe he's out in Arizona, guys who had to jump off of planes and land and diffuse bombs. So these are strategies like that. Obviously you're probably not, if you're listening, you're not maybe not doing that in your life though if you are, that's great. We have some paratroopers listening, but the strategy is still the same, right? It's like how do you regulate yourself? How do you calm yourself down? And to answer your question, I think that was the most interesting thing, Brad, and probably the thing we spent the most time talking about was he sort of has this two pronged approach, which is on the one hand, and again, this will be very familiar to our listeners, a lot of stuff we talked about, it's like figuring out what he calls self regulated learning. How do you first figure out identify what your unique skill set is? How do you develop a plan of deliberate practice to hone that skill Set so that you have a process of doing work, monitoring it and evaluating yourself, reflecting on the work, adjusting it, and continuing yourself down this path towards excellence. And then he combines that with all these really interesting physiological tools of like, okay, you know, when I get up regulated, or when my self limiting beliefs get really loud, or when my emotions get out of control, like what are some physiological tools I can use to keep myself in check such that I can stay in what he calls the optimal zone of functioning. So a lot of really interesting stuff about that in here. I mean it's everything from setting better goals. You know, he talks about performance goals, outcome goals, process goals, what the differences are. He talks about the highest leverage practices people could start to improve their mental strength and resilience today. Practices he's used with NBA players to help them with negative self talk on the free throw line. So a lot of, a lot of good stuff in here. A lot of tools I think people will come away with today feeling like they can get started on their own path towards excellence.

Yeah, I've known Alex for a couple of years now and something that I really respect about him is, is that those in the moment tools that he uses, they're just that they're in the moment tools. He doesn't brand them is like the secret or the quick fix. His approach to me has always been let's spend actually the vast majority of our time on the first part of that process, which is like self regulation, self directed learning, figuring out your strengths, figuring out how to continuously improve. And then the icing on the cake is when you're on the free throw line and your heart is racing, or when you're about to jump out of that plane and you have negative self talk. It's really important what are some things that we can do to deal with those moments. But all of that is secondary to figuring out like who you are, what makes you tick and how to pursue it. And I think what often happens in the space of performance psychology is that those things get reversed. And people spend 90% of the time focusing on these tools. And it's like Baskin Robbins, 31 flavors, 31 tools, and not enough time on the actual foundation. And of course I'm biased, right. I wrote a book called the Practice of Groundedness. It's all about the foundation. So it's no surprise that I like Alex because he to me spends the most time on the base of the pyramid and, and then sprinkles these tools on top. So if that came out in the conversation, I think Listeners are in for a real treat. All right, well, that seems like perfect context for this week's conversation. Listeners, hope you enjoy it. Without any further ado, here is Clay with Alex Auerbach.

What is, what was your first entry into this? And then sort of, I know you've worked with some NBA teams before. In your book you talk about working with, you know, CEOs as well, para jumpers, Olympians. So you've sort of covered the gamut. But yeah, I'm curious how you, how you just sort of like your backstory really quickly.

My brief background is I actually started my career as a college football coach. My first professional goal was to be a Division 1 head football coach. I was looking up to like the Nick Saban Urban Myers kind of book day. You know, this was right in the, the height of the Tim Tebow era. So I did my high school graduation project on coaching football. Chose my undergrad based on the only program that would let me work with the football team. So I came back to University of Arizona, which happened to be where I was from anyway, did a year working recruiting, then a year on offense, then a year on defense. In between, I ended up doing an internship with the St. Louis Rams. I graduated, I take a full time coaching job at University of Rhode Island. And after my first season with Rhode Island, I'm pretty burnt out. You know, I realized that, like, I don't want to spend 10 plus hours a day watching game film. What I really was drawn to was like the guys who are calling me at 4:00am like, hey, can you come pick me up from the bar? I don't want to get in trouble. You pick them up at the bar and they've been out all night because they're really in a lot of pain because their relationship with their girlfriend is struggling. Right? Or they're worried about their playing time or they're thinking about their major. Like, those were the things that I had the most energy from engaging with. And I still keep in touch with some players I coached back in 2010 because those relationships form around those kind of like core issues. And so I'm burned out. I'm looking around at like, what are the other things I can go do. I like sell newspaper ads, I rent tuxedos for a little bit. Finally find my way to a career counselor. And through the course of working with this guy, probably about three months in, I look at him and I'm like, dude, I think I want to do what you do. Like, this is really interesting, right? You gave me an assessment you're giving me feedback. I'm learning a lot about myself. There's like really good data here. And he looks at me and he goes, well, you could do what I do, but you could do it in sports. And it was this light bulb moment where I'm like, okay, this guy spends his whole day helping people like me figure out how to become the best version of myself. I can do that in an environment I really like and have this angle to helping people that I would have never thought of.

You've worked with a lot of pro athletes. Do they have similar things that all they all struggle with? Obviously you see some recurring issues, I'm sure, but I'm curious if they're like ones that stick out more than others.

By and large, most of them, when they come for individual work, are struggling with things like basic stuff like their role on the team or having clarity about what's asked of them, which is typical teamwork type stuff. Things like performance anxiety, dealing with distractions and focus managing. Even things like imposter syndrome or self limiting beliefs are quite common. And then I think the one that, you know, the few that fascinated me when I got there that I think were a bit different were dealing with pressure and these really kind of clutch moments. Like, you know, as a psychologist, I look at it, I'm like, well, all 48 minutes of the game are equal, they're all 60 seconds long. But we treat these last two minutes like they're the single most important thing that happens. And that does change the psychology of what goes on for a player, particularly in things like the playoffs, Whether it's game seven or you're just entering a playoff series. These peak moments that do have an outsized impact on the game do require a little bit of a different approach and a different way of managing how you're handling that. And then the other one that I always thought was really interesting was, was the idea of transition. One of the first things that came up in a lot of my individual work with pro guys was how do I like get into the game more quickly? So maybe I'm the sixth man or I'm the seventh man or I'm the ninth man in the rotation and I'm going to come in the game at these very specific time points and I'm going to have three minutes to do something and if I don't do it, I'm going to get pulled. Right? We had guys who like your role was we'll put you on the floor, we're going to ask you to shoot A couple big shots. If you make them, we'll leave you in. If you don't make them, you're coming out and like that's it. Your whole career is based on this. And so you look at it at first and you're like, well, it's about how do you get the right shot, right? How do you make the right decision or perform well when you're shooting and feel confident. But a lot of that actually starts much earlier where you're sitting on the bench. You have no idea you're going to go in. Coach calls your number. Now you got to get warm, get focused and get into the game as quickly as possible. Like into the rhythm of the game, into the flow of how your teammates are playing, into the responsibility that you have. And I think that's a pretty unique challenge. It's a unique thing to have to solve for when you're in one of those roles. And so I always thought that was like a really interesting puzzle to try to crack to figure out how to help players build routines to do that. We think a lot about pre performance routines, but this is kind of like a pre, it's a really shrunken pre performance routine in a really unique moment. So I thought that was always quite interesting to solve. And then when I look at what separates these players from the rest, I think there are a few things. But probably the biggest thing that we know is what separates kind of the highest, highest, highest level of athlete from even their slightly less elite counterparts. So I'm thinking like guys who make their national team in soccer versus playing in the English Premier League, like both are great players. But if you're playing for your national team like you're, you're it. And what the data shows is that self regulated learning, this ability to like set a goal, form a plan, move yourself through it, monitor and evaluate and then reflect and adjust is really what separates the highest level performers. And honestly a lot of that is just basically the cycle that underpins deliberate practice, right? It's the ability to like move yourself intentionally through training in a way that allows you to maximize your expertise. So I think that's one thing and then the other thing is more broadly self regulation, right? The ability to direct or control or modulate your behavior, your thinking, your feeling, your physiology to get into the zone that you need to be in to perform. If you can do those two things really well, chances are you're going to end up elite at whatever your craft is. If you're missing one of those two things, you're probably going to struggle.

Do you feel like? Not at the pro level, but I feel like, you know, at most at a lot of other places you could probably get by without talent if you mastered those two things. Probably in some ways it feels like it would make up for a lot of. For a lack of talent perhaps.

Yeah, it does. I mean, and you see this even in the college level and sometimes at the pro level. Right. You see guys who, yeah, they're maybe not the most physically gifted, but they just work harder than everyone else. What I think people mean when they say work harder is they've just developed some kind of expert skill set through working hard that allows them to show up and contribute on the floor. I'm sorry to burst anyone's bubble here, but like no NBA player gets put on the floor just because they worked hard in practice. They get put on the floor because they've got something that they can add to the team right now that allows the team to win the game. There's no coach in the NBA that's giving you bonus points for trying hard. So it does require having this built up expertise in a specific thing. And that's again where you see some guys who maybe don't look like they would be great NBA players or like an NBA body. Right. But who are out there playing and performing. I think it's because they've mastered this ability to stay poised to be in control of what they do and to execute a specific skill in a way that nobody else on the floor can do it. And what's.

So what's the like if is there, you know, I'm trying to look for like a tidy, clean takeaway and maybe there isn't one. But what is the lesson there for those of us who aren't professional athletes? Is it sort of find what your angle or your ability is and then get really good at the self regulated learning and the self regulation.

I think you nailed it. Yeah. So my big thing with this is find your signature strength and figure out how you maximize that. This is a clear basketball example I can give you. But Steph Curry is the quintessential example of a guy who figured out if I practice shooting in a way that no one else practices shooting, I might become the best shooter in the world. And if I become the best shooter in the world, I'm probably going to win four titles. Now that's a really neat summary. But all he did was figure out I'm not the biggest, most physically imposing guy out there, but I can do this one thing in A way that nobody else can do it. And now I'm going to practice it so maniacally that it's hard to leave me out. Because this skill set I've developed is so elite that it's going to show up and make a difference everywhere. And you even see glimpses of what his practice looks like pre game. Or if you go on Instagram, you'll see his highlight reel. He shoots it from the opposite tunnel. There's actually a method to that. Now, I'm not saying some of it's just fun, but some of it is the fact that he's actually engaged in variation of practicing a specific skill that allows him to execute more effectively in the future. And all that is, is he's figured, this is a special skill I have, and now I'm going to work to maximize it. So, yes, figure out your signature strength and then set a goal around it. Right. How do I want to get better at this or what do I want to improve? First, make a plan for reaching that goal. Monitor how you're doing as you're practicing, and then each day when you're done, reflect on your practice. Like, what did I do today that I want to keep doing? What did I do today that I want to do differently? What did I learn today? Okay, now what do I need to do tomorrow to keep going after this goal? Right. If you can do that, you're going to take yourself through a pretty rapid cycle of learning and skills development that'll help you get really good at whatever the signature strength is. And if you can compare that with some other kind of tactical things to control your own poise. Right. So I'm thinking about things like mindfulness training or box breathing or breath work more broadly, or imagery or visualization. Like, those tools can also help you then self regulate and kind of stay in your zone of performance while you're working toward this goal and getting better at this thing. And now you have a really cool virtuous cycle that allows you to rise to the top. Yeah.

I want to go back to some of the things you said. You're answering a minute ago, because there are a few things there I want to pick up on that I think are interesting. You talked about a lot of these. It sounded like when you were working, NBA players, guys came in who had imposter syndrome or limiting beliefs. You know, it's funny to hear that because you think, you know, you play in the NBA. I don't know the exact math. And there are 32 teams.

Each team has 12 man 450 guys? Yeah. Yeah.

So you want 450 best basketball players in the world.

And.

And I imagine some of these guys who are coming into your office, they're probably not the 12th guy on the team. They might be, like you said, the sixth man, the ninth man. I'm just curious what. What, you know, they're saying to you. I mean, I guess they probably want to be the best player on the floor. And I'm curious how you talk them through that, because, like, if I'm you, and this is probably why I'm not you, I'd be like, dog, you're, like, coming off the bench for the Toronto rappers. You're. You're doing okay. Sure, you're maybe not DeMar DeRozan, but, like, you know, you can't.

You can.

We can't all be DeMar DeRozan to.

Sort of start at the. At the. Where they come in with or what they bring up. You know, a lot of it comes up as, I'm just not feeling confident in my game right now, basically. Now, whether that's, you know, my shooting or my defense or the role that I'm playing or what's being asked of me, there's some form of, like, I just don't feel great when I'm out there on the floor. I don't feel fully present. I don't feel like I'm able to do what I need to do to the best of my ability. And they often sum that up as confidence. You know, there's sort of, like, the way that that comes out. Now, there's other. What I would refer to as, like, gateways to mental performance coaching that are also pretty common. You know, like, my sleep is struggling. Right. And usually those things are sort of like proxies for the real issue. Like, you're not sleeping because you don't feel great. And, you know, we need to be talking about that stuff. And it all sort of, like, coalesces around confidence. Believing in myself, trusting my training, you know, some of these kind of core principles. And so, you know, there's a little bit of work you have to do at that point to really look at a few fact. The first is past success. One of the best ways to rebuild confidence is to look at all the things you've done well and to identify how you were able to do those things. And one of the nice things about sports is, yes, college basketball is a little different from NBA basketball, but shooting a free throw in college is the same as shooting a free throw in the NBA. The Distance is the same, the ball's the same, the rim's the same height. So if we can identify some of these other places where you've been successful and figure out what allowed you to do that, those would be some strengths we can tap into in the future to help us kind of like build that foundation of confidence. Like, these are the things I know I can do. I have good data to back it up. Let me figure out how I double down on these things and really come back to these as sort of the fundamental principles of elevating my game. The second thing is to look at the way that they prepare. So one of the things, surprisingly, to people, I think, outside of sport is NBA players don't practice that much. Like, there are plenty of times where we would practice maybe an hour or maybe 45 minutes. And you're doing that because you're trying to recover, you're trying to save their legs. Maybe there's a back to back, right, Whatever it is. Or you've been on the road for 17 days at some points. But the reality is people need time to prepare, to feel confident. And so if they're not getting that time to prepare, like, let's say you're the sixth or ninth man, right? Well, if practice is 45 minutes, we're probably just going through a walkthrough with the starting guys. Yeah, you might be out there, but, like, your role is probably going to be to play the other team, right? Like, you're not going to be thinking about your game. You're going to be thinking about what coach is asking you to do to simulate something for someone else. So you really haven't had much preparation time to be thinking about, like, is my training high quality enough? Am I actually getting better at the things I want to be getting better at? Do I feel like I'm making progress? And if you reflect on that and the answer is like, well, no, I haven't practiced very much. That's going to hurt your confidence, right? Like, you're not going to feel great at that. So you have to look at how are we preparing and what are the ways we could improve this preparation, right? When I think about preparation, I think of two dimensions. I think of practice, right? So making sure your practice is high quality. A lot of NBA practice looks like taking, you know, 300 shots from the corner. And like, that's not good practice. You know, you need to take lots of shots under lots of different conditions. And you need to do some other things, too, if you really want to feel prepared for being in an NBA game. So we've got to have purposeful practice and then we've got to have good psychological preparation. We need to have a clear set of process goals that we're focused on. We need to be engaging in some kind of imagery and proactive self talk. We need to have a pre performance routine. And if you haven't had a lot of high quality practice, getting the mental side right becomes increasingly important because you can at least mentally rehearse or simulate some scenarios in your mind, for example, or you can give yourself something to focus on as you're getting ready that can help you feel a bit more in control. The third thing I would then look at is really how you're talking to yourself as you go out there onto the floor. So there's lots of really fascinating research about how people do what's called appraisals of their physiology. And everyone going on to an MBA game's a little bit activated, which is actually what we want. We wouldn't want you falling asleep, we want you hyped up and ready to go. And so how you think about that hype though, really matters. So if you turn that hype into, man, I'm nervous again, like, I wish I didn't feel this way. I'm feeling kind of tight, like, oh man, I'm not as ready as I thought I was going to be. Wow, what is that? Like, why am I thinking about missing that shot from the other night? Man, I wish I would have got that back in. All of a sudden all this physiology has turned into a pretty negative or at least unhelpful self talk spiral. Right. And so we need to be looking at that and thinking about how do we more proactively name and tame this physiology in a way that allows you to feel confident? And so we're looking at things like naming your physiolog excitement versus nervousness or talking about this as a sign that you care that you're energized or that you're determined. If you've ever seen that incredible clip of Aaron Donald before the super bowl talking to himself. He's saying things like, just be great. This is what you've worked for. That's the self talk that we're looking for. But it takes a ton of practice to get to that level. You're working players through these different things where you're building a database of past successes to draw on for confidence. You're helping them think about their preparation and then you're helping them get a hold on or self Regulate to use the language we were using earlier, right. That physiology and that unhelpful self talk to really lock in and be confident. Name and tame.

I like that a lot. I had not heard that before. You mentioned process goals in there. You, in your, in your book, you lay out outcome goals, performance goals and process goals. Can you delineate those for us?

Sure. I mean, the way that I think about these things is they're, they're obviously all connected. So, you know, big picture, you want to set goals that align with your values, like what it is you're working toward or who you want to become. Then when you think about setting your goals, you've got like you mentioned three types of goals. So the first type is the goal that we all kind of think of immediately when we think of goals is the outcome goal, right? It's finish the half marathon, score 30 points, right? Get my next contract, meet my KPIs, whatever it is, right? It's a thing that you want to say that you did. And that outcome goal gives you a sense of where we're headed and gives you like a marker for direction to understand how you're going, right. And whether or not you're going to make it or not. So it's good to have those because they let you know like you've got something to work toward and in some ways can help you figure out if you are or are not on the right track. Like if you don't know where you're going, it's pretty hard to figure the rest of it out. The second type is performance goals. And the way I think about these is they're kind of like milestone markers on the highway. They're not the final destination, but they're short markers of progress at different intervals that allow you to know that you're on the right track. So let's say you want to run a half marathon in under two hours. Well, if at mile six you're at 45 minutes, you're probably okay, right? Like you're going to be all right. You'll probably finish under 2 hours. If at mile 6 you're at an hour 10, you better pick your pace up, right? That's a performance goal. Would be run to mile six in 45 minutes. Right? Now I know I'm on track to that sub two hour half marathon that I've been working so hard for, right? Or if you think of NBA players who have a goal of I want to score 30 points this game, it's like, okay, well, your performance goals will be how many points do you have at the end of quarter one, quarter two, quarter three, so on to let you know that you're on the right track. And then the goal we really want people to focus on is what's called process goals. It's the thing you can do right now that's completely within your control, that allows you to make progress toward that performance goal, which ultimately connects to that outcome goal. So if I'm thinking of the NBA shooter, it's making good decisions and taking good shots, right? Like, you're not going to get to 30 points jacking up threes from your own side of the court, right? Most. Most guys are not going to score 30 that way. Most guys are going to score 30 by running hard, getting open, taking the right shots, you know, being patient, right? All those things. If you're the runner, it's as simple as like sometimes one foot in front of the other, right? Like, the process is just stay running at your specific pace. Like all you can control right now is the pace I'm running right now. And then that if you do that, enough will lead you to again, those performance goals and those outcome goals. And so we know from good data now that focusing on performance goals or outcome goals does tend to undermine performance a little bit. At the very least, it doesn't elevate performance and that keeping pretty focused on process goals goes a really long way for helping you rise to the occasion.

Interesting. Why is that?

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that when you're focused on a process goal, you're one fully present, which I think helps a lot for peak performance. Like if you're in the here and now, where performance is happening and your mind is fully locked in two, that's going to give you the best likelihood of actually delivering on whatever the performance is. I think second is you're in complete control of those process goals, right? So you can control if you take a good shot or a bad shot. In the NBA, yes, there are some, like, extreme outlier cases, right? Like shot clocks running down. But by and large, no one's like forcing you to take a crappy shot, right? So if you have complete control over it and you know that that's what you're locked into, it gives you a really clear sense of what to execute, and it gives you a sense of how confidence and complete ownership over your ability to actually do those things. And then third is, I think it anchors you to a specific action you can do when you inevitably make a mistake. Right? Like every Performance has failures or mistakes, whatever you want to call them. And if you've got a good process goal, you know exactly what to come back to after each of those things. But if after you make a mistake, you go, oh man, I'm never going to get my 30 points. Like now, all of a sudden you're going to start engaging in a bunch of behaviors that support the idea that you won't get your 30 points right. You're going to start self protecting, you're going to withdraw a little bit. But if you focus on I just need to take the next best shot, all of a sudden you're back in the game, you're still well on track and you're focused on ultimately getting where you want to go. Yeah.

You have the great example in the book of Tom Brady when they were down 283 in the super bowl against the Falcons. He just was like one score, just got to get one score. And I think that's a great, it's a great way to think of it because you can get really swallowed by the enormity of the task. Otherwise, if someone's listening in the head could change just one habit to improve their sort of mental performance resilience, what would you recommend?

Oh man, you're forcing me to just distill down the line.

Choose between your kids.

Yeah, exactly. If I had to pick one, I think the highest leverage thing most people can do is start a mindfulness practice. And what I mean by highest leverage is I think it has the largest impact across the most things. And so I think that that's quite useful. Right. So we know that mindfulness can help you be more present. We know that mindfulness can improve the quality of your attention. We know that mindfulness can help you better manage uncomfortable thoughts or uncomfortable feelings. We know that mindfulness can help you be a bit more process focused. We also know it can help you lower your stress. So there's just tons of benefits that come from a relatively straightforward practice of closing your eyes and paying attention to your breath for 10 minutes. We've got good data that shows as little as 100 minutes can change the structure of your neural circuitry. And that after six weeks of 12 minutes of practice, the quality of your attention can actually be materially different. What that means is you have more working memory capacity, you can make better decisions, you're clearer in the way that you're approaching what you do. I think that one skill has a really large ripple effect on basically everything else that goes on in your performance.

When you worked with People, were you able to get them to buy in on that or how was that received?

It's hard, right? It's hard to get a 19 year old player to think about sitting his, you know, sitting down in a chair and closing his eyes and breathing. So the way that I often tackle that actually was by introducing technology. So there's some cool kind of different pieces of technology out there, you know, basically like wearable headbands for your mind that can walk you through some mindfulness training and can track some element of your brain's activity. I'm not going to sit here and tell you these are like the most accurate trackers that you could find. I'm not sure that I believe that. But what I think is really powerful about them is they've taken the activity of meditating and turned it into something that you can measure and theoretically like get better at if you pay enough attention to it. And for a highly competitive group of 19 to 31 year old men, being able to compete and measure something works pretty well. Yeah, yeah.

I can imagine. What else is in your arsenal of tools?

Oh man, there's, there's lots of them. But I think the other kind of big ones I would give people to think about if they're just getting started first would be setting a goal. There's some research that shows that something like 86% of people never bother to set a goal. So just setting a goal alone puts you well ahead of most people. And goals are great because they guide your action, they guide your focus, they basically give you a context for everything that you're doing. And so it makes you feel a little bit more purposeful and intentional and gives you something to measure and track against all these things that are materially meaningful for actually getting better at something. So that's one that quite often comes up pretty early in the work that I do. Related to goals would be the idea of identifying your values. So I'm pretty deeply trained in a form of therapy called acceptance and commitment therapy. And values sort of serve as the anchor point for the rest of the work. Right. If you can identify essentially the qualities you want to embody or who you want to become, it becomes much easier to make decisions about the future in the context of this is the person I want to be or this is not the person I want to be. So for example, if you're the kind of person who really values honesty and being a transparent leader, but you're struggling to have difficult conversations, if we uncover the fact that you really value honesty and being Transparent. Then we can start to think about having these uncomfortable conversations or difficult conversations, not as just a thing you have to do, but as an act of becoming the person that you want to be, which is much more motivating and engaging than, like, well, I just got to get through this. So that's another key tool I draw on. And then, you know, I'll leave you with. With one more. But I think the final thing I'm big on is ultimately experimenting with different behaviors. A lot of talking is great, but most change comes down from actually trying something new. And so most of my work really does involve, like, spending a little bit of time sifting through the challenge. I think most of the things people are struggling with are kind of internal barriers to becoming the person that they want to become. It's my job to introduce a set of skills that helps you better manage those barriers. And then it's your job to go into the real world and practice. And so we've got to design some experiments that allow you to actually try these things out. And then we got to process what that trying it out actually look like and how it went for you. And most of the time when we do that, people find, like, oh, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, or I learned this new thing about myself. And that's kind of the magic of the performance coaching, right? Is you've learned something new. You now have a new way of thinking about yourself. You have a new way of thinking about managing a specific situation and a new tool you can deploy in whatever that challenging situation was to navigate it more effectively. And you've essentially become like, a more effective human at whatever it is you're trying to do in that process.

Do you have good examples of, like, certain strategies that are certain exercises that you have used with people or that people even listening could try?

Yeah. I mean, tons of them. So I'll try to give you. I'll try to give you, like, a practical one from each bucket. Right. So, okay. For the goals, what I would suggest is just think about what you want to accomplish in the next three months. Think about what it is that you need to measure to know if you're on the right track. And think about what you can do each day to get there. Right. Three months is the outcome goal. What you can do to measure and track is the performance goal. What you do each day is the process goal. Just like we talked about. There's no magic to three months. If you want to do six months or the rest of 20, 25, it really doesn't matter. But having those three goals I think could be really helpful. You can think about a smart goal. I'm sure people have heard of that concept. It's just the idea that your goal is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound forms the acronym smart. There's mixed reviews on whether or not smart goals really matter or not. But if it helps you have a cool framework to work through, by all means, a smart goal can be valuable. So that would be action item one for the values exercise. There are really two things I like doing here. The first is there's a really cool free online assessment called the Via Character Strengths Test that'll help you understand what you're good at and what your values are. So that's an easy way to take basically a 20 minute free assessment and get some data back on yourself. But the one I really like using with athletes that I think anyone could use, if you broaden the language out, is basically like to imagine that, you know, ESPN is going to do a 30 for 30 on you and at the end of the movie they're going to sort of like talk about the kind of person that you were. You know, what would you want them to say about you in this 30 for 30? How would you want to be known? What would you want to be known for? What qualities would you have embodied? How would you have been as a teammate, as a father or a mother or a leader or a brother or sister? Right. And if you start to think about that, that'll give you some real clarity on what it is that actually matters to you. So those would be a few things that you could try. We've talked about mindfulness. So, you know, there's a bunch of free tools out there that you can use to get started on that. Whether that's like calm or headspace or balance or just closing your eyes and paying attention to your own breathing. I think that's something you can use. So yeah, those are a few tools for you.

You mentioned paratroopers having to jump in and then, you know, go from jumping to calm themselves down to diffuse bombs. I'm curious what techniques and strategies they they use.

Honestly, some of them are quite similar. Right. So, you know, I think, I think the main thing there is regulating your physiology as much as you can. Right. Like jumping out of a plane over time, like the more practice you have, the less nerve wracking it becomes. Right. So you're actually trying to think about how do you kind of stay as well balanced and regulated in the beginning part of the process as you can, basically because you're trying to shrink the gap, right? Like if I jump out of a plane or you jump out of a plane, you know, both of us are going to be pretty jacked up. It's going to take a little while to like come down and actually do something right. But if we can stay not so jacked up when we get on the plane, that gap between the jump and now what we have to action is a bit smaller. So strategy one is figure out how do we regulate well while we're getting ready to jump. And a lot of that is through your box breathing, some other kind of slow breathing techniques, staying very focused, having clarity on the mission. Some guys like to talk to each other just to feel that sense of connection. So you're thinking about keeping people in their zone of good functioning while they're in that scenario. Same thing during the jump really when you're falling and out of the plane. In an ideal world, we're keeping you as calm as we can possibly do that. And again you get a lot of practice and experience and becomes a bit easier to manage. But honestly you still hear the biggest bad stories of guys whose shoots don't open or whatever it is. And so you have that running through your mind and you need to be able to let that go, right? And then be able to stay poised. And then when you get to the actual diffusion of the bomb, probably the most important thing is staying clear headed, right? Staying poised, staying well regulated. So managing your physiology, keeping your heart rate down, your sweaty palms down and following essentially like the clear playbook that you have, right? Like go through your. There's a great book called the Checklist Manifesto. But basically go through your checklist, right? Like what are the things that you need to look at? And again basically stay very, very, very process focused, right? As soon as you get out of like that process and into oh my God, what if I don't move fast enough? What about this? What about that? All that stuff is doing is just slowing you down. It's not helping you, it's not making your execution any smoother and it's not going to lead to any kind of good outcome for you, right? And so you have to take a lot of practice and staying really locke those things. And if you can do that, then you'll probably be successful. It'll still be scary, right? You have to do some work to manage the fear of death and like accept that that's a possible outcome on the job in a very Serious way. And, you know, that's a hard thing to grapple with, but if you actually, like, proactively grapple with that as a possibility, you can sort of lessen the hold that that has over what you do at any given moment, and that allows you to stay fully locked in.

Yeah, it feels like a very difficult or subtle but, well, both subtle and difficult to toe between not dismissing the thoughts outright because that, you know, if you try to dismiss the thought that like, oh, a bomb could go off, it's probably not going to be helpful for you. But figuring out a way to allow it to be there but still let it go. I feel like that's the. That's like the subtle art, right?

Yes, exactly. And that's, I mean, a big part of, you know, the work you do in acceptance of the commitment therapy, for example, is learning to see thoughts for what they are. To not have them have such a, like, direct stranglehold over everything that you're doing. But. But you're exactly right. I mean, you can't pretend like that's not a real thing here. Like, oh, don't worry about it. Like, no, it's normal to worry about it. It's just not helpful to worry about it. And so we've got to address what that is as practically as we can. Doesn't mean we need to dwell on it or talk about it every single time or make it the focus of everything. Right. But if you can demystify it a little bit by having a plan, by talking about it, by not running from it, it's a little bit less scary. And then ultimately you can find some more effective ways to deal with it. Yeah.

You have a few other tools in your book that I wanted to pull out and ask you to talk on because I think they're really interesting. First of them is semantic satiation. I thought that was a really interesting way of getting past negative selftalk.

This is basically that idea of diffusion I was just talking about. Right. But one of the things you can do is take a difficult thought that you have and repeat it out loud as quickly as you can for basically 30, 30 seconds. And there's tons of really cool research on this. My favorite one is this study from Stephen Hayes back in, like, 2006, where they did this with people who were putting their hands in ice and basically had them just repeat words around cold or ice for 30 seconds as quickly as you can. Right. So it's like cold, cold, cold on repeat. And if you're really creative, you can do this with Other things, right? So I'll have players do it to the tune of Happy birthday or in the highest voice you can do it, or the lowest voice, right? And what you find is after about 30 seconds, the actual meaning of the word starts to fade away. And you realize that all these words are just sounds. They're just like sounds that we make, and it's all arbitrary. And once you have this insight that, like, oh, if I just repeat this stuff, eventually it loses its meaning. It's pretty profound to sort of like, experience your own limits of human language, right? But you also realize just how much language or thought thoughts play a part in the way that you operate every day, right? And there's lots of really cool examples of this too, right? Like if everyone listening thinks of a lemon right now, like, your mouth will water a little bit, right? Like, it's just normal human nature. But if you Repeat lemon for 30 seconds, it definitely won't be watering anymore.

And the idea here is you can use that if you have a. Constantly have a voice that says, like, you know, you suck, or like, you're.

Not good enough 100.

Say that you can say that phrase over and over and realize that it's just a bunch of. Of vibrations.

Yeah. You just repeat that difficult phrase, make it as short as you can, right? So you can repeat it. And if, like, for most performers, I would take like the stickiest word, right? So if it's you suck, I might take the word suck. You know, if it's you're stupid, I might take stupid, right? But, like, just repeat that really sticky phrase for 30 to 40 seconds and you'll very quickly realize, like, this is nonsense. It's not going to totally free you up forever, but you're going to have a new experience with the word that's going to change the way you think about it.

It. Are there any other techniques like that that stand out that. That. That you like?

The other really fun one I like is when people. I've done this a lot with basketball players, actually, particularly around selft talk. You know, when you go to the free throw line, you can imagine what your selft talk is like, right? Like, don't screw it up. This is a free point, you know, like, you've got this. And so one of the things I love to do is put a player on the free throw line and then have a teammate act out the angel and act out the devil, right? And one person is in your ear telling you, like, man, you're so amazing. You've got this. You've trained for this, this, and the other person's in there. Like, you're never going to make this shot. You can't make this shot, right? And the goal is to really figure out how do you kind of quiet down that devil voice a little bit? And what you find is the way to quiet that down is by really focusing on what the angel has to say and then really focusing on your key points for executing your performance. And if you do those two things, the background chatter of the devil voice, if you will, sort of fades away. And most people have had this experience in some way or another, right? You're at work, maybe you work in a busy office and you find yourself in a, like fully locked into whatever you're doing. The background noise hasn't stopped. You've just gotten into the zone by focusing for long enough on one specific thing. And if you can direct your focus and keep it on one specific thing for long enough, you'll find that the background on helpful stuff kind of goes away. It doesn't go off, but it just gets quieter. It goes away a little bit and you're a little bit freer to execute. So that's one of the fun ones I like. I really like to do similar kind of exercise, right? Where when people have a self limiting belief, you can play it out in a really simple way, right? So if you're at home, you can try this right now, but sitting in your chair, you should stand up and while you're standing up, say, I can't stand up. And then you can do the opposite and while you're sitting down say, I can't sit down. Right? And again, silly exercise, but essentially you're acting the opposite and you're proving that your thoughts are not true, right? Whatever you think about yourself, it's not 100% true all the time, which is actually quite a liberating way of operating in the world. So those are a couple kind of playful things you could do to sort of test the limits around your mindset and move forward.

I like that. I like that a lot. Do you work with people who struggle to reconcile their off court and on court, or off field and on field or out of uniform, in uniform identities. And the reason I ask this is like we always sort of, we, Steve, Brad and I always debate this philosophical question of like having to balance these, these somewhat conflicting parts of yourself where like, you know, being someone like Steph Curry requires a relentless focus, some would even say bordering on like neuroticism or obsession, right? And then an extreme ability to let go. There are a lot of things about being a ruthless competitor. You'll get someone like Michael Jordan that maybe don't lend themselves so great to being a wonderful person off, off the court. Right. And I'm just curious how you think through those sort of, like, competing parts of one's identity and personality. And if that's stuff you have to work through with with some of the clients you've had.

It is. And it's complicated, right? Because, like, the Michael Jordan example is a good one. Right. Because it's the one people always come back to like, he's this most incredible competitor, wins six titles, is, like, ruthless, but he's also kind of a jerk to all his teammates. And I think the mistake people make is assuming that the only way he could have acted out this obsession was by being a jerk. Right. Like, there's lots of other ways to hold people accountable or to be maniacally obsessed and have a high level of care about what you do that don't involve being a jerk. He just didn't have that behavior in his repertoire. Right. So I think the first thing is recognizing that it's not such, like, a zero sum. You know, either you're a jerk or you're a great father. Like, you could be a relentless competitor and also not not be a jerk. Right. But I do think there's an element. There's a few things that I think are relevant here, particularly for pro athletes. The first is it's very hard for anyone, no matter who you are, pro athlete, no exception, to separate out the outcomes in their life from the way they feel about themselves. Right? Like, if I got off this podcast and I thought, man, I did a really crappy job. I'm a normal person. Like, even though podcasting is not everything I do, I'm going to care about the outcome because I care about doing a good job at this. And so you have to be careful not to try to minimize how important something is to someone just because you're trying to protect their identity. So where I think it becomes a little bit harmful is in this sort of difference between what's called harmonious passion and obsessive passion. And harmonious passion is this idea that you are doing something for the intrinsic love of doing it. You just value the activity itself and you want to get better at it. And I think for most pro athletes, that's really how it starts, right? You play basketball because you love basketball. You love playing with your friends. You love being out there on the court, and then somewhere along the way it morphs into obsessive passion, which is this sort of extrinsically motivated, very controlled by outcomes, focus on results, right? And that often comes from things we internalize from the environment. Like coach says, the only thing that matters is if I score 50 tonight or if we don't win the championship, like it's all for nothing, you know. And so the key is to get people back to that kind of harmonious passion, aligned with their values, recognizing why they're doing what they're doing, and just lessening some of the intensity around the sort of obsessive elements of it. But I do think that if you want to be great at anything, it is going to require a little bit of sacrifice. It is going to require a little bit of indexing on a specific part of who you are and ways that you will be forced to under invest in other areas. And that doesn't mean that you don't care. But there's a seasonality to it, right? Like if you're an NBA player, you probably got 15 years max to make the most of this time. So during that time it actually might be helpful for you to be a little over indexed on your identity as a basketball player and be working maniacally on that to have the best outcome that you can have. And then when that career ends, you can think about the other things. Now that doesn't mean during those 15 years you don't do anything else or you don't pay attention to your wife or your kids or any of that. I'm not suggesting that. What I am suggesting is you should surround yourself with people who understand what that's going to take and who are willing to support you on that journey and who can articulate to you how you can also be good to them in the process. That doesn't take away from you working on this part of who you are. And if you can do that, like you're never going to be balanced. If you're trying to be great at something, I just think that that's a fool's errand a little bit. But you can be appropriately integrated and managed if you do a good job building your circle correctly and focusing on what you really care about.

Great answer. I like that. Appropriately integrated. That's a good way of phrasing it too. I just pulled this quote out from your book because it was something that I found really interesting. You said the reality for most athletes, even those at the top of their game, is that they rarely step onto the field or court at 100%. This is likely true for you too. More realistically, the best performers aim on any given day to give the maximum of what they have on that day. It might only be 80% of their maximum capacity, but their commitment allows them to give 100% of that 80% instead of worrying about what it means to not be able to give the missing 20%. You'd be surprised the number of performance across industries that spend so much time and energy on the 20% that's missing that they fail to give what they have. I thought that was really interesting because you do think of elite athletes and you're like, oh, they must be showing up 100% every day, crushing it. And the reason I'm not, you know, an elite athlete is because I'm coming in and given 70%. And what you're saying there's a little surprising. It's saying they've actually just accepted that they can't be perfect and. But they are much better at showing up exactly as they are rather than showing up as they wish they were.

I think that's right. And I love that you picked this out of the book because it's one of my favorite parts to write is like debunking this myth that it's all or nothing, right? You either give 100% or you don't bother. You know, if you're not going to grind it out, like, you shouldn't even care. You know, I hear this all the time with startup founders I work with. Like, if I'm not thinking about my business, it's all going to fall apart. It's like just like chill. Like, it's not, it's not that black and white, right? It's not 100 or zero. And when you're in pro sports or really any high performance endeavor, honestly, like, it is incredibly rare that you will be 100%. It just is. Like, maybe on opening day of training camp, but on day three. You've practiced now for six hours. You're probably a little banged up, your legs are a little tired. Now carry that to game 44, where we just played last night in Indianapolis. Now we're flying in New York. We get to New York at 3:00am, we got a game at 7:00pm like, no one's 100% that night. But if you focus on, like, man, I'm not 100%, this isn't going to go well. I don't know how I'm going to do, like, I'm so tired. You're definitely not helping yourself, you know, and so the key is to shift that focus back to, okay, how do I give 100% of whatever it is I have to give today? And if I can do that consistently, I'm going to end up on that being much better than I would be if I worried about the fact that I'm never 100%. And so a lot of people will spend a ton of time and effort trying to figure out how they engineer themselves to 100%. And, and this shows up in the form of procrastination. This shows up in the form of for like knowledge workers, right. Trying out 50 different tools to use before you commit to something. Right. Like every little thing is this emphasis on optimizing. And that's sort of misguided because most people are not in the phase where they need to be thinking about optimizing from 98 to 99 or 99 to 100. They need to be thinking about how do I just give whatever it is I have today and show up and be my best. And you have to work really hard with pro athletes to get into that mentality. But once you do, again, it's pretty liberating because now the goal isn't to give something you can't. The goal is to do your best. And when people are asked to do their best, they actually do quite well and tend to push themselves farther than they ever would have imagined had they been focused on all the things they can't do.

Do you have a favorite MBA story from working in the NBA? Whether it's related to this work or not, I'm just curious if that, that this has to be a. A career that is that, you know, comes with some interesting adventures.

Probably my, my favorite NBA story. So the first year I was with the team in Tampa, we. It was Covid, right? So everyone, there was no fans really most places. And so I had this like incredible fortune of basically watching every NBA game with courtside seats for free for an entire year. So I'm watching like LeBron from 15ft away, Giannis from 15ft away, Luka from 15ft away, Jamal Murray, you know, all these guys who are like world class athletes, world class competitors. You can hear how they talk, you can hear how they think. You can hear what they say to their teammates. You can see their facial expressions. It was just like a perfect study in human behavior. And so one of my favorite moments is I'm early on the team, I'm getting to know some of the players and I'm working with a particular player who's playing a little bit but is struggling with consistency in their play. And so we work hard, we develop this kind of a simple release, reset, refocus routine, which is again something I teach people quite often. Release is like some kind of physical action you can do that lets go of a mistake, right? So maybe it's a yell or a clap. Reset is some kind of centering breath or some kind of focal exercise, right. Maybe it's snap your fingers, take a deep breath, whatever it is, and then refocus is basically ask yourself like what's important now or when? How do I direct my attention right back to the here and now so anyone listening can follow those three steps and create their own routines. Routine after they've made a mistake. And so we developed this routine and at one point this player, we're going down the court, you know, ball comes to him and he drops the ball and goes out of bounds and he's running down the court and he looks at me and he just winks at me. And I watch him go through his routine. And it's one of those moments where you're like, oh, that's pretty cool. Like all this stuff that we just worked on the last couple weeks is showing up right now and you're out there doing it. So that was probably one of my highlight moments, was seeing the work actually play out live in an NBA game.

Yeah, I can imagine.

Awesome.

Well, thank you so much for joining us. This is Alex Auerbach has your book called To Greatness. It's wonderful. Think of it as like a manual to get you to your own peak performance. Alex, thank you for joining today. I really appreciate all the time and insight.

Thanks for having me, Claire.

Okay, that is a wrap. Thank you to Alex Auerbach. Thanks to you for listening. A quick recap. Some of the things that I found most helpful in there. I loved his two step approach to achieving peak performance because I think it's something that can apply to all of us. So on one prong of the attack you have self regulated learning which is basically figuring out what skill do you have or what craft do you want to hone. Developing a plan such that you can practice in a deliberate way that allows you to grow, that allows you to monitor and evaluate how you're doing, reflect and adjust to your plan and just continue to make progress over time and then pairing that with the second part of the attack which is self regulation of emotions and physiology. So that is getting your emotions in check, your self doubting or limiting beliefs in check and regulating your physiology in such a way that you can stay in that optimal zone of functioning. So it's learning and developing your craft and then regulating your emotions and your physiology in such a way that allows you to keep staying on that plan of deliberate practice whether you consider yourself a performer or an athlete or anything else. I think that is approach we can all use. I like how we talked about goals. Set outcome and performance goals so that you have a long term vision in mind but then focus on the process goal. What's the thing I can do in the next moment to get me to that ultimate long term destination. Something we talk about here a lot. You are not your thoughts. I like that Alex said you don't have to listen to your self limiting beliefs. There's some practices and strategies to use to help that. One is semantic satiation. That's where you just just repeat a self limiting word or self doubting word over and over until it essentially becomes meaningless. He also used that example of basketball players on the free throw line. Having one player play the role of an angel and one player play the role of the devil and having the person at the free throw line learn to tune in to the kind compassionate thoughts coming from the angel and tune out as if a crowd in the background. The self doubting, loud limiting belief thoughts coming from the devil. Another thing we talk on here about a lot of we refer to it as behavioral activation. You don't need to be 100 to get going and waiting to be 100 is actually a form of avoidance. Those who are truly great at what they do aren't worried about getting themselves to give something they can't. They just focus on giving the best of what they can. Another little tidbit in here that sort of snuck in, but I want to pull out because I think is great. Alex pointed out that when you frame your actions and responsibilities as something you are doing to live out your values when you make them values based becomes much easier to get things done because you're not just ticking things off a to do list, but you're doing things as a way to build yourself into the type of person you want to be. And so it makes your motivations intrinsic rather than extrinsic. Lastly, that three step process he talked about seeing an NBA player do during the pandemic release reset refocus. So if something's getting you off track or you have a setback release release through doing something could be yell or a clap reset. It could be a deep breath, snapping your fingers and then refocus. What is the next best thing I can do. Almost coming back to those process goals, what is one step I can take to get me closer to where I need to be? Thank you to Alex Auerbach. Thanks to you for listening as we always ask, because it's very important in spreading the word about the show and that's why we harp on it every week. But if you enjoyed this, please share it it with one or a few friends who you think would enjoy it as well. We'll be back next week with another episode. As always, take care of yourselves and farewell.