#9 - Alex Auerbach | Overachievement, Media, and Maximization

Down the right field line. Pretty well hit Levine way. It's the right way here tonight.

Yogi berra said it's 90 mental. The other half is physical. My name is Ryan Lavarnway, major league catcher and minor league grinder, and I've spent the last 15 years playing professional baseball while evolving my mindset. I'm fascinated by optimizing that 90. In this show, I'll talk to elite athletes and mindset coaches about what makes them tick and how they've overcome obstacles in their own careers on the way to finding success. This is Finding the Way. Hey, guys. Welcome to Finding the Way. This is Ryan Lavarnway, and today my guest is Alex Auerbach. He is a licensed counseling and sports psychologist, board certified mental performance consultant, and currently acting as the senior director of Wellness and Development for the Toronto Raptors. His goal is to help people adopt the mindset that they need to be their best when it comes to what matters the most. And that is exactly what this podcast is about. I'm so excited to get into this with you, Alex. Thank you for joining me, Ryan.

I am happy to be here and glad to be spending this time with you.

So we were talking just now off, off of the recording about how you didn't set out to get into sports psychology. You were a college football coach first. You kind of got burnt out on that and you kind of fell into sports psychology because it's a passion of yours and you like the relationship base. Can you tell me what it kind of means to you and how you ended up in this field?

Yeah, for me, this is just a really cool avenue for helping people kind of express themselves and express their performance at the highest level. So what I always gravitated toward when I was coaching was these kind of off the field issues that were normal and appropriate for kids in college, right? Like, ranging from everything from how do I pick a major? To like, I'm having this issue with my girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever, right. And at the time, obviously, I didn't have anywhere close to the skill set I had now to kind of like, help manage it. But I always just enjoyed that there was this level of trust and connection and some depth to this relationship that moved beyond the field. And so I set on this quest for, like, how do I get more of this? Basically, like, this is a place where I feel like I could help. And of course, I looked a little bit like my own, you know, marginal athletic success. Right. I was nowhere near as athletically gifted as you were, but I was trying to figure out like what, what allowed me to do what I did. And a lot of what I landed on was really the psychology. And so it was this kind of cool marriage between what I loved most and coaching and where I was most interested and most passionate. And then, you know, I've gone through a series of iterations in my own career around like where do I actually fit and what sort of moves me the most. And what I always come back to is ultimately trying to figure out like how do you unlock high performance and how do you unlock people achieving their full potential? And I don't have the answers to that, but I'm kind of on a quest to figure it out. And so I can help as many people do that because I think that's what we're all after.

I think that's 100% what we're all after. One of my greatest fears in life is not living up to my potential. And I think that's maybe one of the greatest fears of most coaches and most excellent people is underachieving. And the goal is to overachieve and find a way to maximize your human potential at this point. You've worked with elite athletes in the NBA, in the NFL, Olympians, Army Special Forces, Fortune 5 companies and venture backed startups. Have you found any similarities in high performers, whether it's in the sports world or the business world that that's maybe common amongst all high performers?

A few I think jump out to me. So the first is this kind of dynamic. Speaking of your overachieving, is this what I would describe as insecure overachievement? It's this idea that there's like always more to prove. We're after something we never, not in a bad way, but you never quite feel like good enough. Like there's always more work to do, there's always more improvement. Now there's some dark sides of this sort of trait, but there is this element of like there's more for me to do here and I, and I always feel like there's more to give. So I think that's one. And that kind of cuts across industries. I think the data points to this idea of the most elite performers being really, really good at self regulating. So that's the idea that you can sort of modulate, control, direct your thinking, feeling and physiology and your behavior. You can set goals and coordinate and plan your actions accordingly and evaluate how effective you are and then sort of recalibrate and readjust and then more and more I'm stumbling into and I'm sure some of this is confirmation bias. But I'm stumbling more and more into this commonality where the best performers are finding ways to leverage recovery to enhance their consistency over time. And as I've read about it more in the corporate space or learned about it more in professional sports, I'm finding that the best performers really seek ways to sort of like give themselves a breather so they can maintain a high level of engagement when they need to and don't sort of like burn their fuse short when they're not needed at their, at their peak. Right? So like if you're on the bench in an NBA game, it's going to be locked in and cheering on your teammates, right? But you probably don't need the same level of intensity that you need on the court. And so using that time effectively to recover, I think is highly valuable. And the same is true for CEOs, transitioning between meetings and all these things. So those would be kind of like the three dimensions that I think are most top of mind. I'm sure I could find other ones, but those are the ones that jump out.

No, those are really interesting and I'd like to dive a little bit deeper into each one. What was the term that you. Self conscious? Overachieving.

Insecure. Overachieving.

Insecure. Overachieving. So let's talk about that. I like immediately relate to that and I'm embarrassed by it because.

Me too.

Because there's so much of, of everything that I've done, everything that I accomplished making to the big leagues, winning a World Series, Olympics, everything that you, you go back and you're like, well, but I'm still just a guy, right? I'm still the same person I started off with. I still have the same ambitions, I still have the same hopes. And nothing about me intrinsically has changed. I still feel like I have something to prove. Every day that I wake up in the morning, talk to me about, about the, that, that concept.

It's very complicated, right? Because I think there's, there's all sorts of sense, like, does this come from. Where does it come from? Right Is one interesting question. Like, does it come from the way you were raised, socialized sports, teams you played, how have you internalized it? So does it, in what ways does it kind of negatively impact you? Right? Like, what are the times when not feeling like you're enough is problematic or limiting? But then I think what you're describing is how this sort of idea creates a sense of fuel. Like there's this evergreen source of motivation to keep working hard, to keep Driving towards something new to keep trying to up your game. And I think that's really what the best performers are doing and leveraging is they're finding things that they can get better at. And where I would sort of push and encourage people is like to separate out your identity as a human being from your identity as a performer. Right? To not be so locked in that you're evaluating your own worth based on, say, for you, for example, like, how you did at each at bat, that's probably not super adaptive or helpful because it's a long season with a lot of at bats, right? But to know that, like, you still on some level, are fundamentally okay and, like, you feel like there's more to go improve. So to me, it's this. This kind of, like, dynamic both and right, where you're simultaneously comfortable and accepting of yourself and also recognize there's more to do. I think that's sort of like the sweet spot. But with super high performers, I just find, like, there's so many layers to this, right? There's the fear of other people passing you. There's the looking over your shoulder. There's the feeling like you have more to prove. There's the not, on some level, not knowing or believing you're good enough. There's like, the inability to sort of, like, relish in the joy of winning because there's still more to go. Like, it's a very, very complex topic. But ultimately, I think it does serve as a bit of fuel for these really high performers who are trying to figure out how do they maximize themselves. And I, I can relate to this too. And I think, like I said, the place to do the work is to really figure out how you use it effectively without letting it kind of destroy you. And I think for where you are, you know, this, this what you're describing, like, I think it's okay to be humble and be kind of grounded and centered in your own reality. Like, I don't think we should when we're super successful like, you've been. I don't think it's always adaptive to go the other way and, you know, think that you don't stink at all. Right? But this, this sort of balance, I think, is. Is really important.

I've. Over the years, I've played for 13 different organizations. I. I've worked with all sorts of sports psychologists over the years. And when you were talking just now, I was reminded of two pieces of advice that have helped me in my own career. I'm sure everyone has heard this. This first quote of practice like you're in last, but then play like you're in first is when you're putting the work in. Make sure that you have that drive. Make sure that you're not, you know, acting like you're the best because you have something to prove. But then once you go out there and play, play with the confidence. So. So that seems to relate to what we're talking about. And then when I was with the Red Sox and I was really, really struggling mentally to find a way to stay balanced and if you go in a slump, how do you get out of it? Our sports psychologist was always saying that you have to find a way to care without caring. Which is, it's interesting because you have to care about the results. But then you also have to remember that at the end of the day, you still have your family, you still have your house roof over your head. So don't live and die by the at bats, by the results, but still care. You know what I mean?

Yeah, that resonates. Yeah, I like the care without caring. To me, that's about perspective. Right. It's just this idea that like, I mean, baseball is such a long season, you know, 162 games, there's plenty, plenty of opportunities. And the best of you are, you know, failures 70% of the time. Right.

We try not to, we try not to frame ourselves as failures 70% of the time. But I know what you're saying.

I know I intentionally did that. You know, I think it makes it a little bit more accessible. Right. Like, I think it's the same thing is true in the NBA, right. You're the most successful baseball players are bad at, you know, 300. Right. And the most successful NBA shooters are shooting 35, 40%. You're, of course, none of you are failures. Right. You're all at the top of your game. You're all elite performers. But, and anyone who's playing the sport, like you're not a failure when that happens. But it's just this idea that like failure is way more common. Right. And it's part of, you know, it's a way to stay grounded a little bit.

Yeah, I want to, I want to double click on the third of the three key concepts of top performers that you mentioned. Being really good at self regulating and finding a way to break and take a break when you're not on. And this is something that I learned without maybe putting a title to it later in my career, early in my career, I played almost every day. I would either catch or I Would dh I was in the lineup in some capacity, and on off days, I felt like I had to work that much harder to. To keep improving, but also to show face, right? To show the coaching staff that I was working. And you never know who's watching. You never know who's evaluating you and what are you working hard enough? Are you a team player? Are you cheering your heart out from the bench? Later in my career, I kind of found that when I'm not playing, I need to, like, almost check out. We call it a spa day almost. Or like, you're not. You're not playing. Maybe I won't even take batting practice today or what? I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna turn my brain on or my competitive juices on until maybe the fourth or fifth when I might get in the game. But those first few innings, I'm really gonna take a break, and that's gonna benefit me tomorrow because then I can be more on when I need to be on. Whereas right now, it doesn't matter what I really do. I'm here to be a good teammate, to encourage others, but. But I'm not contributing on the field. Can you give me some more examples of that with either athletes or business people?

Yeah. Well, so. So first I. I'd kind of like, gently push you back on the idea that you weren't contributing on the field. Because if you're cheering and giving energy, right, like you are, you are helping. And I think that's one of the things that, you know, in sports or in the corporate environments, like, we sort of minimize the people who aren't in the limelight, or it's, like, harder to see the direct relation. But just because you're not at bat or you're not out on the field doesn't mean you're not, like, in some way contributing to the. The energy of the group. And that's part of this recovery process, right? That's part of being in the position you're in is like, you do have this opportunity to play a different role and to support. And so I think what you're talking about, you know, you sort of. You hit the nail on the head. It's the idea that this rest, recovery time, this is not time away from the game. This is not time where you're not getting better. I, like, can't stand. You're either getting better or getting worse like this. The world is not that black and white. But it's this idea that this is just an investment in future performance, whether that future performance is the fourth or fifth inning, when you're going to be called, called upon, or that future performance is tomorrow when the team might need you to play a different role because someone's tired from today's game. And you see this all the time in basketball. You know, call timeout. Players will put a towel over their head and just breathe for a couple of minutes or they go to the bench and they sit at the end of the bench so no one talks to them for a little bit. And they just kind of like recover and recuperate. Because it is different when you're out there running up and down the court, you're making decisions like the physiological challenges, the cognitive challenges are different than when you're not playing. But in that moment, it's most effective to sort of like rest, recover versus try to be fully back in the thick of it. And I think it's just taking advantage of those opportunities allows you to repeatedly give good effort. And ultimately that's sort of one of the keys to high performance, is being able to consistently deliver high effort, not ebb and flow in the consistency with which you approach the game. Right. That's one of the things I think, that separates the really, really great athletes, the really great performers from the other performers who are working to get to that level is this idea that they know how to show up and manage their energy. And it's often something I hear where in the corporate world, I mean, especially for CEOs, I think energy management of their team and of themselves is a really big challenge because you're going from sales pitches to board meetings to managing a team and they all require different sort of states of presence and different ways of being. So knowing how you can shift and make those transitions effectively, how you can manage your energy, I think is really important. And the best way to do that is to recover, right? Stress plus rest is some growth stress, no rest, you're going to end up burnt out. And so that little, just simple shifts, I think can help us figure out how to sort of sustain high performance over time.

Dude, I just had, I just had a light bulb moment when you were talking right there. In baseball, it's very common that the starting pitcher does not really participate in team activities on the day of their start. If generally the entire team shows up at 1 o' clock for a 7 o' clock game, the starting pitcher's not showing up till 4. If there's a team stretch, the starting pitcher's not going to that team stretch. And then during the game, especially when it's Going well, you don't talk to the starting pitcher. He sits in the corner of the dugout. You leave him alone. And. And it's always kind of been a weird, like, why do. Why is that tradition? Why do we do that? I never really understood it until just now. And you're letting him rest so that the next inning he has the energy, the focus, everything to go back out there and give it his all again. Because ultimately the pitcher is the most important person on the field that day. They're performing the most, and they're. They have the most value. So thank you for that. That's. I just understood something that I've been a part of for a long time and didn't really get.

I'm honored I could contribute to that. And I like that you've drawn this connection. And it actually reminds me of a study I read not too long ago where they actually showed that soccer players who meditated at halftime had less cognitive fatigue, made better decisions, felt better generally after halftime than players who did sort of a typical, like, review game film and go over mistakes on the board. Right. Things that are still stressful and demanding. And so I think, you know, to your point, if you can find those little windows to rest and recover, it's going to help a lot.

So cool. Um, so one. One other thing that you. You talk about is there's two ways to. To build an athlete for top performance. You can work on the athlete or with the athlete to work to get their best from the inside out. And you could also build an environment around them to support their success and, and support them from the outside in. How do you, as a sports psychologist, as you're working with an NBA team, how do you kind of play both of those roles and what do each of them look like?

Yeah. So wonderful question, I guess. Let's start with the inside out piece. So I think it's important to understand that every athlete and any high performer, really, we're all starting at different points and we're all on our own journey. And sometimes that means, you know, we have some athletes who have never been exposed to a mental health professional before they show up here. And so that process of getting comfortable with a psychologist and understanding what that relationship could look like might look very different from someone who had four years of sports psychology services at college and then came in. And so the first step is to, obviously, you just meet them where they are, right. And then you try to put together a sense of a plan for what it might look like for them to improve specific aspects of their psychological performance, right? So I, the way I view my role is like I just play one part in this high performance puzzle, right? We need the coaches to nail down the strategic parts of this, the technical and tactical parts of the game. We need our sports medicine team and our strength and conditioning coach to really nail down the physical parts. And then there's a psychological element of this that I'm responsible for. And so everyone needs kind of different things, right? Some guys, and I'm sure you experienced this in your playing career, like do better when they're self critical. Some people do better when it's only positivity. And so part of my role is like figure what is it that you need and how can you in essence like learn to give yourself those things so that you can be the best that you can be. So oftentimes we're doing things like exploring values like why are you here? What do you want to get out of this? What's your long term goal? We're doing things like introducing mindfulness meditation and breath work so we can do things like better control our nervous system or manage our attention. We're leveraging things like goals and self talk to sort of figure out like how do we propel you forward. And then we're talking about more complicated things like your role on the team and team dynamics and how do you feel like you fit and how does that impact you? Because we're all social creatures, right? So the more accepted we feel, the more that we feel like we belong. The more we understand our teammates, like generally, the better our performance can, can be. And so there's a lot of sort of in that space exploring the individual experience essentially and trying to figure out the gap between kind of where you are, where you'd like to be and what skills and tools we need to give you to help you bridge that gap. And then we can reassess and start the process over because there's more growth for all of us to sort of go through and get through to get to that point. And then the outside in framing is really about creating conditions that allow peak performance to emerge, right? So much our, our behavior is driven by what's happening in the environment around us. So you know, a lot of people can kind of like relate to the idea of showing up to a more tense workplace. Like it just doesn't feel good, right? Like it's just not a place that you look forward to going. Well, if you don't look forward to showing up to work, like it's going to be Awfully hard to look forward to going to play a game, you know, in front of 20,000 people. If the crowd is hostile, like it's going to be a little bit more uncomfortable when you walk into that space. If you're having difficulty with a coach, it's going to be harder to sit through meetings. So there's like lots of elements that are just impacting the experience of the athlete that are. They're not independent of like what he can do or she can do individually. Because we all can do some things to sort of change our experience a little bit. But ultimately, like it's a kind of a both and it's a bi directional process. Like I'm not of the mind that an individual performer can just will their way to success despite all the conditions around them being terrible. Like you kind of have to have both. And so my work in that realm involves sometimes looking at super pragmatic things like what's the best way to manage a schedule and how do we prioritize things like sleep and rest and recovery so people have enough time. And how do we kind of optimize the functioning and relationships between players, staff, coaches in between other units. And then sometimes it's a bit more, I guess, like ethereal. You know, you're looking at things like team culture and you're trying to figure out like, how do we make this a place that people feel like is an organization they want to be a part of. And I think that's where, you know, the best teams have a group of people who are really imagining those things together and thinking about both the individual performer. But also how do we create this environment that allows for peak performance to emerge? And essentially we don't. The environment should not put up any barriers to that. Right. The environment should be pushing people along that path and then the individual performer can kind of express that in the game. But oftentimes the environment creates blockers. Right. It makes it challenging for people to do that. People feel tense or pressure, like someone's always watching them. Like you're just describing those things do kind of impact a player's ability to perform their best. And we're trying to manage both parts of that process.

So the first thing that comes to my mind when you talk about creating the environment that's positive and supportive and that people want to go spend their time in and which allows for peak performance. I've played for so many different teams that I've experienced what the media does to a locker room. When I played in Boston, it was a very different experience than when I played in Oakland or in Baltimore. And if you have a good game and you're going well, Boston is the best place in the world to play because everybody loves you. You get recognized on the T, on the train and the elevator at the hotel. Everyone's pumped that you won. The season's going great. We all feel great about it. But I've also. So that's what the experience was in the World Series year. We were kings, and in the year before that, and coincidentally the year after that, we were in last place. So it was the exact opposite experience. People were still cordially, still treated you like a human being. But the media is tough. I remember they asked our first baseman, they said, hey, what? How are you going to get out of this mini slump that you're in? And he had got two hits the day before and went over three with a walk that day. He's like, what do you mean, mini slump? And now he's answering questions to having to defend himself when he was one of the best hitters in the league, and he was. And he was having a great year. How can you control things like that that are outside of team control? I think to the Yankees, they haven't won a World Series in a long, long time, since you could go to a Blockbuster Video and rent a video. And the New York media is tough like that. I think, you know, you're just. I'm wondering and just ideating right now, before Cancel Culture came along and the media started blaming people and holding people accountable and really being a negative news cycle. The Yankees were awesome, right? They won all those championships all the time. And I wonder if maybe could that have something to do with it or how do you try to control things that are out of your control on the team?

Yeah, I guess I think about two layers, right? So one is there's a layer of things you can control, right? You know, and coaches will give you kind of the proverbial, like, your attitude and effort. And sometimes that's true and sometimes not. But there are always things that you can control, right? And then there are things that you can kind of influence, right? So you can influence by how you answer questions like this teammate you're describing who's like, what. What slump are you talking about? Right? Or, you know, you've seen it most recently with Kyrie Irving talking about, like, the fans and, you know, come down here and try to play, right. I'm not saying that's the right way to handle it either, but there's just this general sense. Right. You can give feedback essentially to the environment that sort of shapes the way that it behaves. And so I think that's really the goal, is to sort of recognize, like, what's the limit, right? Where do you get cut off from this place of what you can control and what can you then influence, and then what do you have to just kind of let be? And I think, you know, media is a tough one, and social media especially is really hard. You know, it's one of those things where one. People are trying to generate news. Right? People are trying to generate stories, and that's sort of like some of their job is to fill that gap. And then people can kind of say whatever they want to say on social. And it may or may not, you know, is often out of context, and it's often unfriendly. And so you've got to recognize, like, there's nothing you can really do about that, but you can control how much you read it or how often you're responding to those things. So that. That would be how I think about it. Right. And we try to train our players at least to think about, you know, how do you want to respond if someone says something critical on social? How. What. What is the best way for you to handle that? How can you cope effectively with that? Because you may not want to tweet something back at someone. Right. That might not be the answer. Say something that you're going to regret in the media. It might be the best solution to just come up with your own kind of internal process for coping with that kind of thing. And so those are some of the things we're trying to, you know, teach our players. And I would encourage other athletes to kind of think about, but ultimately, you really can't control what someone else does. All you can control is the way you cope and respond to it.

Yeah, I'm thinking of the TV show Ted Lasso right now and how when he walks in the door, the media is harsh and the team is losing, and him just effusing positivity and authenticity, it changes the media experience. It changes the feel in the locker room. I'm just thinking to some of these teams, like, for instance, in 2011, I was called up to the Red Sox for the first time, and we were the best team on the planet. We were in first place by 15 games. I got sent back down to the minors, and when I came back 10 days later, something was different and nobody could put their finger on it. And in the media, they blamed fried chicken and beer, which I don't think was really the issue, but we, the focus was on the losing streak. The focus was on how can they turn this around and what's wrong. Whereas before the focus had been we showed up every day and we knew we were gonna win, it didn't matter. And the front office tried everything. They brought in Rick the Nature Boy Flair with his wrestling championship belts, and they brought, they sent us out on the owner of the team's private yacht for team bonding. It's just this, this team dynamic, this winning culture, it seems like it, it's lightning in a bottle and trying to capture it is, is always elusive. I, I wonder what you think about trying to generate that on a consistent basis.

It's super hard, right? I mean, there's a reason that teams, you know, there's a reason we kind of like make dynasties out of teams that repeat and repeat and repeat and are able to sustain that over time. I think, you know, to me it comes down to sort of figuring out what your core principles are, being flexible with those things and being willing to adapt them. I do think one of the places where teams kind of like go wrong is they stay fixed too long and what they have and they don't sort of evolve to the new talent they have or the changing demands of the game. So I think that's one thing is sort of like, you know, strong values, lightly held kind of concept, right? Where we know what we believe in, but we're willing to sort of flex to accommodate the group and make everyone feel included and adapt over time. I think the second is to sort of, you know, not force it when things go wrong. I mean, I think this is like one of the slump busting myths that often comes up. And whether it's a team slump or an individual slump is this idea that like you should just try harder. And oftentimes that's, that's not the solution, right? And that leads to all sorts of things, whether it's, you know, sinking a billion dollars on a project that, you know, has failed repeatedly, or, you know, I'm reading a little bit this morning about another guy from the Orioles who had like a 214 day hitting slump. And the way that he managed that I thought was like pretty artful, right? Because it was just this sort of like, I'm just going to go out there and do my thing. Like all I can do is go out and try and at bat. I can't like force it. I can't at bat harder, you know, and I think that that's Sort of the natural inclination. And so I think at a team level or an organizational level, it's like sometimes these interventions you're describing are helpful and other times you just kind of have to let things unfold a little bit. And it's just the normal ebb and flow of a game, right? It's the normal ebb and flow of how teams operate. And you're going to have some hot streaks and some cold streaks and you'll typically net out around your talent. But I think really probably the main thing to me is for everyone to acknowledge and recognize that they are owners and stewards of the culture. And I think one thing that sports has often mystified and made a bit mythical is this idea that the head coach should be the person who unlocks the culture for everyone, who creates the culture, and it's their responsibility. And to a degree that's right. But in many ways it's pretty limiting. And it's a ridiculously large responsibility to put on one person and everyone. How everyone shows up contributes to that. Right. So if the media shows up and is critical, it's going to undermine a little bit of that. If it employees show up consistently and gossip or complain, it's going to undermine some of that. You know, if people start underperforming and there's more pressure from ownership or on high to behave differently, that's going to impact some of that. And so we all have a responsibility to show up and try to create a high performance culture in whatever way our role suggests we should be doing that. And I think often that's where people typically slip up, is we just leave all the responsibility to one person and everyone else doesn't maybe do as much as they could to bring it to that point.

Yeah, I've experienced that, especially with the Tigers and the Indians the last few years where the head coach was very well known and very respected. And what I noticed was they set the tone, but then player leadership maintained it or player leadership took it from there. And I think if everyone takes responsibility versus leaving it to the one guy who's not even on the field playing right, it's very interesting. One other thing that you talk about that I want to click on before I let you go is you talk about leveraging your unfair advantages. Tell me what that means to you.

Yeah, I think to me an unfair advantage is just like your signature strength, Right. It's the thing you have that can't easily be replicated. And I believe that everyone has one or two or even three of these, right? We all have things that make us special or unique or add some value that allow us to do what we do at an extremely high level, whatever that performance is, whether that's playing major league baseball or parenting a nine month old or doing sales pitches right, you, you've got something in you that's a strength, that's a unique ability, that's a talent. And I think, you know, I blame growth mindset a little bit here, but we've so over indexed on this idea that like, just try harder, just give more effort, have a growth mindset, learn from failure. Like everyone can do everything and that's just one, not true. Like not everyone can do everything. And two, it minimizes the, in, you know, sort of individual characteristics that you have that make you special, that allow you to do what you do differently and better than other people. And we all have some things we're excellent at, some things we're average at, and some things we're not so good at, and that's also okay. But in that bucket of things you're really, really special at, you should be trying to maximize your strengths as much as you can because that's going to take you to peak performance much faster than you'll get there. Focusing on all the things you're not as good at and trying to figure out how to problem solve that. And so to me, that's what fun, fair advantage is all about. It's about doubling down on your strengths, understanding what makes you unique and specially gifted to be doing what you're doing and figuring out how you maximize that to achieve your full potential.

Yeah, I love that so many people are so worried about fixing their weaknesses that you forget to keep improving your strengths 100%.

100%. And I think it's sort of like, it's one of the fallacies, I think, of high performance. Right. Is that if you just fix everything that fixes whatever that means, everything that's broken or perceived to be broken, that somehow you'll be, you'll be better. Um, and, and often that fixing is not really raising your floor. Right. It's just fixing your floor. And, and I think you're more effective raising your ceiling. And, and that's what's going to get you to that next level.

Oh, I love that. I'm, I'm thinking of Shaquille o' Neal right now. He's never going to be a good free throw shooter, but he's a seven footer that's going to kill you in the paint. Wonderful. All right, well, I don't want to. I don't want to keep you all day. I really appreciate you. I ask every, every guest I have before I let them go, if you could speak to young Alex or if you could speak to a teenager or young kid that has huge dreams, what's the best advice that you could give them?

This is such a hard question. Yeah, I think. I don't know. I guess I would probably say this is not going to be the most eloquent way of answering this, but I think I would probably say something along the lines of the goal isn't to get it right. The goal is to get progressively more correct. And if you can do that, things will be all right.

That's wonderful. Wow. So, I mean, I've taken so many notes on what you've said today. You've helped me understand complex problems that I've experienced for years. I really appreciate your time, your knowledge, your expertise. Thank you, Alex Auerbach, so much. I'm Ryan Lavarnway and this has been Finding the Way. See you next time.

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