Dr. Alex Auerbach on the Intersection of Mental Health and Sports Performance

Welcome back to another edition of the Athletic Fortitude Show. I'm super excited to announce our Special guest today, Dr. Alex Auerbach. Dr. Alex Auerbach is the Senior Director of Wellness and Development for the Toronto Raptors. He joined the Toronto Raptors after serving as the Director of Clinical and Sports Psychology for the University of Arizona. He has worked with the NCAA Division 1 schools in the PAC 12, ACC, Big 12 and Conference USA. He earned his doctoral degree in Counseling psychology with a specialization in Sport and Performance Psychology from the University of North Texas. He received a Master's in Business Administration from Salve Regina University and a Bachelor in Business Administration from the University of Arizona. With that being said, welcome to the show. Feel free to say hello.

Colin, thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here with you and looking forward to participating with you. It should be fun and I appreciate you creating this show and putting it together. I think it's highly impactful.

I appreciate it and you know, it's just, it's an honor to be able to speak with professionals as yourself who've achieved a great deal and work with such elite level athletes, being able to share the perspective, the solutions that a lot of these guys deal with. You know, guys, girls, all athletes in general. So super excited to dive into this conversation. So, you know, really want to get it kicked off here. I start with every interview. I think it's one of the most important ones with imposter syndrome. You know, would love to hear, you know, assuming again that the athlete has a, an effective work ethic and they have the skills necessary, you know, what practical steps can athletes take to, to where they feel that they belong all the time and they can avoid that feeling of imposter syndrome.

Well, it starts with the word you just used, which is belong, right? So I think when I think about imposter syndrome, I'm really thinking about two things. One is creating connection, cultivating that belonging, helping athletes recognize, like, this is my group of people, this is my team, I deserve to be here and I fit in, right? Feeling like there's something in this group of people in the team for me and I add unique value, right? So first is thinking through, like, where are your teammates connections strongest? Where are they weakest? What might you change? What could you do? How did you build those relationships? What would it look like for you to be more connected? Because often that sense of belonging helps sort of reduce that sense of. I'm not sure if I fit here. I'm a little anxious about whether or not I actually belong in the NBA or the NFL or whatever it might be. And those people can sort of help remind you and give you some of that feedback. Right? Look, Colin, you deserve to be here, man. You've worked really hard. You have somebody to contribute here. Oh, it's awesome to see you out there doing your thing. Those little bits of feedback go a long way for helping someone feel a little bit less like an imposter. But the second bucket for me is around identifying your signature strengths. And one of the things that I believe is that athletes actually need to lean in a bit more to a fixed mindset. And what I mean by that is we need to recognize, like, what natural talent, what ability do you have that allows you to be great at what you do? If it's all about work ethic, unfortunately, everyone can work hard, right? Not everyone does, but everyone can. And so it doesn't separate you. It doesn't make you feel special. It doesn't make you feel like you've got something you need to contribute. You really got to figure out, what are my signature strengths, what am I really good at? And then double down on that. Right? The way I think about it is the more you focus on maximizing your strengths, what you're doing is raising your ceiling. Right? And that helps to reduce that sense of imposter syndrome by clearly specifying like, this is my signature sauce. When you focus a lot on minimizing weaknesses, all you're doing is raising your floor. Right? And that doesn't necessarily help you feel a sense of belonging. Right. Or feel less like an imposter. Right. It just helps you feel like there's no chance you're playing not to lose. Right. Versus playing to win. So my two buckets around imposter syndrome are always, cultivate some belonging, and let's figure out your signature strengths so we can double down on those.

You know, it's funny you articulated it, but I had that circled as one of the things I wanted to ask you about was the. The growth mindset with the dash of fixed mindset. And I wanted you to dive into it. So that's awesome that you did do that, because I do think it's really important for people to understand that you are uniquely you. You have a unique talent that not everybody has, and that is something that is technically fixed.

Right.

And that's kind of like your. Your differentiation factor, your separation from those around you. So it's really cool to hear you say that and articulated. So then on the flip side, with the growth mindset, how do you incorporate that into the. Your, I guess, attack at imposter syndrome, or do you kind of just separate that into something different?

Well, I think in an ideal world, right, and this is where we've moved so far away from the stuff that I get really excited about as a psychology nerd, right? Like in the original research around mindset, what Carol Dweck really found was the sweet spot is actually to be high in both, right? You want a lot of growth mindset and a lot of fixed mindset, of course. Like, look, you've been a professional athlete, right? You don't make it to that level without working hard. Like, it just doesn't happen, right? So, of course you have to believe in the value of effort, persistence, resilience, recovering from adversity if you want to get to and sustain a career of excellence at the highest level of anything. But certainly professional sports. But unfortunately, as we popularized the idea of growth mindset, we've kind of like villainized fixed mindset, right? And it's like, oh, no, Everything is about learning from failure and growth and opportunity. And it's like, no, that's. That's not right either. Right? We really need a bit of both. And so when I think about growth mindset for imposter syndrome, what comes to mind for me is really around persistence, right? Recognizing that it's not going to go away in one or two weeks, right? And it's probably going to feel different at every stage of your career, right? Rookie year, imposter syndrome might feel like one thing. Then when you sign your next deal and all of a sudden there's different responsibilities, different things that are expected of you, you might feel it again. And then if you're put into a leadership position, you might feel it again. And then if you're retiring, you're the tail end of your career, you might feel it again, right? And so it's going to take work to sort of move through that and recognize at each stage what makes you special, why are you here? What are your abilities that separate you from other people? And if you can marry those things together, you've got a really good formula.

And I'm going to jump around here a little bit with you because you're talking about some really good things, and I think it relates well. So can you tie this into performance anxiety then? Because it sounds like growth mindset, fixed mindset, maximizing both plays a significant role in reducing performance anxiety. And I'd really love to hear how you work with athletes and how you get them to overcome that element of performance. Anxiety?

Yeah. Performance anxiety in my view kind of comes from a few different places, right? So one is fear of failure, you know, sort of being nervous about the outcome. The second is sort of from a place of identity, right? Like if I don't do this, well, what does this mean about me? Who am I if I can't perform at this level? And then third is often like skill related or task related, right? You see athletes in my world who, you know, I'm not going to name any names, right? But get on the free throw line and take forever and you can tell that they're really nervous because they just don't feel like they have this skill. And so each type sort of requires a little bit of a different intervention, right? Like not all performance anxiety is created the same. Just like not all anxiety generally is created the same. So when it's skill based anxiety, a lot of what we do is work on building confidence around that skill. So that takes practice, that takes good preparation, it takes good self talk. It takes giving yourself goals and seeing yourself make progress. All those things as you develop the skill help that performance anxiety sort of subside. And perhaps the most powerful factor there is good preparation plus good self talk, right? I practice the skill enough, I know, I know how to execute. Let me just walk myself through it, okay? Get out of my own way. Let's go out there and shoot the free throw. So that's bucket three, right? That's performance anxiety around a skill. If you've got performance anxiety because it cuts really deep, right? It's like, who am I if I can't do this, right? Who am I if I can't perform in the NBA? Who am I if I don't go out there and score 20 points a night? Who am I if I never crack a starting rotation? And you get so nervous because you're holding on so tight. You know, a lot of that work really for me and the way that I think about high performance and conceptualize the work that I do involves things like acceptance, right? Recognizing you can't fully control all this. All you can control are things like great effort, good preparation, giving your best, going out there and following the game plan and trusting that that process will lead to the results that you want. That's one part. And then the second part is seeing if we can sort of play with other ways you can think about yourself, right? Like we all have multiple identities, but any one of us who's a high perform performer, we tend to really over index on the things that we think we're Best at, right? Like I'm guilty of this too, right? I over index on being a performance psychologist all the time, sometimes to the detriment of the other things I'm actually good at. And so I feel a sense of performance anxiety at times. I'm like, oh goodness. Like my identity as a performance psychologist is being evaluated, questioned, may not be good enough. And a lot of that then is subsides by sort of letting go of that, trying to coach myself through it and recognizing, look, even if I don't perform well, like on your podcast today, Colin, I still get to get off this podcast today and go try to be a great husband, a great father, a good teammate, those sorts of things. And that gives me a bit of sense of comfort. Like this doesn't define me and there's more I can do here. And so a lot of this work comes down to things like values, right? Who do you want to be? Who do you want to become? What motivates you? How do we help you connect with those and spread your identity out a little bit? Not over index so much on being an athlete, but recognize all the different parts of you that are complicated. And I'm sure you've heard the saying, like, we contain multitudes, right? That I think really helps get to the performance anxiety around, around identity. And then if you've got performance anxiety around fear of failure, a lot of that involves kind of unpacking, catastrophizing, right? We all have a tendency, especially around things we care about, to go to worst case scenarios, right? Oh my goodness. You know, if I don't hit this shot or if I don't play this game at my home court in front of my friends and family, they're all going to think I'm a loser. It's going to be terrible. It's like, well, is that really accurate? Like, let's, let's unpack some of that, right? Let's look for places where that may or may not be true. Let's look for places where you're totally misreading the data. And let's see if we can find a more balanced assessment of what's really going on here. Because oftentimes the failure people fear is not really that bad. And for anyone who's been a high level athlete, like, you're actually really good at failing, right? You know, like most sport involves a ton of failure and yet there's a ton of fear around this. And so sometimes if you can help people kind of connect those dots, see those links point out, like, look, you Know how to do failure. Right? You miss 60% of your shots in any game and you're still one of the best shooters on the floor. Like, that's amazing, right? So you know how to deal with those 60% that you misses. This is just the same thing on a slightly larger scale. So what would you do do if it did happen? How would you cope with that? What would be the way to approach it? And if you get into good problem solving, if you help people sort of see the unrealisticness, if you will, of the, the fear of failure, oftentimes that can help the performance anxiety subside.

So a lot of goodness to unpack. There are actually a lot of phenomenal things that you just said to unpack. I think a lot of athletics comes down to being able to compartmentalize. So when you're talking about being able to, to diversify your identity, like you said, you know, I'm a father, I'm a son, I', uncle, whatever the case may be, I'm a good teammate. How do you balance that with being hyper obsessed and focused, with being really good and actually caring about the outcome? Because like you said, I know we talk a lot about process and letting go of the outcome. At the end of the day, the outcome does matter.

Right.

But like you said, you have to be able to at the same time put it into perspective. It's not the end of the world. How do you teach athletes to compartmentalize? Or if you use another terminology or practice, how do you get them to kind of detach from the outcome while still caring about the outcome?

Yeah, you know, I'm one of those people who believes it's, it's actually okay to care about the outcome. It's okay to feel real disappointment and sadness when you don't achieve what you've worked hard for. I hope you don't define yourself by it. Like, I don't want the outcome to become internalized as, oh my goodness, like I'm not good enough, but I'm okay with you, like, really caring about it. I'm okay with you hurting because of it. Because that's usually a sign that you really care. Right. And you probably worked really hard to get here. So again, it comes back to identity for me. You know, a lot of the work I do in this area is really around helping people recognize, like, this isn't all that you are. This doesn't define everything that you do. And so if you can help someone recognize, like, look, here's what I really value. Here's the person I'm trying to become. I care most about being hardworking, honest, dependable, connected. Those are things that you can do all the time, anytime, that don't depend on an outcome. And so how do you stay focused and grounded on doing those things and becoming that person? I think helps us to sort of separate out, like, yeah. Each milestone, each time we're evaluated, at the end of every game, we get a scoreboard. Right. Like, those are all the points of evaluation. Those don't really have any bearing on the quality of your character or the quality of your approach. Right. It's just a milestone. It's just a marker. And so we've got to keep sort of marching toward the things you care about most, the values you care about most. And oftentimes those values coincide with things like being the best that I can be. And so that's how you get that sort of in between space where, like, one of your values is to maximize your athletic potential. That's awesome. Let's focus on doing that. But that's not going to be measured by every Saturday or every Sunday or every three days of you playing the NBA. That's going to be measured by the whole of your career. That's going to be measured by your own assessment of whether or not you're actually doing the things that lead to you being great. Right. So you should evaluate being great in your sport not by all the wins and losses necessarily, but by, like, did you give your best effort sometimes you're going to be an incredible player and play on a crappy team. It happens. It happens all the time. And so you can't judge yourself based on the collective of the team's performance. But if, you know, look, I showed up every day, I gave great effort, I worked out hard, I did treatment, I took care of my body, I ate well, I took care of my mental health. You should feel pretty good about the career you had. And so a lot of this involves just, you know, essentially introducing more nuance. Right. And helping people understand there's more to you than just this.

I don't know if I can say this, but this is maybe my favorite interview thus far because you're talking about identity. So identity is the founding pillar of why I started Athletic Fortitude, the Athletic Fortitude show, because I experienced it deeply in myself. So hearing how you talk about it, how you approach it, how you work with athletes really just excites me because now I know my listeners as well are going to have an opportunity to hear the greatness of the work that you're talking about so phenomenal so far. You know, just want to thank you mid episode because it's been awesome so far. I think a big part of identity and probably. And part of that issue though too is when we start looking at social media, we start looking at the criticisms in the media in general, particularly in the NBA. You look at people like Stephen A. Smith, not the name dropper like Skip Bayless, but these guys who have a platform to levy an insane amount of criticism and get millions of people to buy in on that criticism. How do you circle back? Because it's impossible not to hear for some guys, you know, maybe some guys don't have social media, are able to ignore it, whatever. But when you hear it consistently and constantly, how do you work with them to either block it out or actually take some of the criticism and apply it to getting better?

Yeah, I think this is such an important one because I actually, like, I don't believe that you can even avoid it necessarily. Right. Because even if, you know you don't hear it right, you don't have social media. You know, your friend has seen the clip of Stephen A. Roasting you or Skip, you know, like, it just is almost unavoidable. And so, you know, the first thing is to sort of be realistic about it, right? Like as. As crappy as it feels, it's to recognize like, ultimately this is this guy's job, right? So we have to take everything they say with a grain of salt. Like that's just what they get paid to do, right? And you get paid to do something completely differently, right. If they could do what you do, they'd be out there on the field or on the court. If you could do what they do, which maybe you can, you'll prove it at the end of your career, right? Like those kinds of things. I think just helping people have a realistic conversation about it can often be really useful. And then, you know, to the extent you can, right. Try to mute that, tell people in your family network, hey, don't send me any of this stuff. I don't follow this on social media. Try to block it out, I think is really important. And then again, like sort of recognizing when it is affecting you and being willing to talk about it, I think is really important because nobody can help you if they don't know. Right? And so you know this, like people say terrible, terrible things on social media, 99.999% of which is not true, is not grounded in fact. And it's some like Saturday morning quarterback who's Sitting there in their boxers, drinking, you know, orange juice, criticizing what they saw on Friday night, right? So, like, we shouldn't take it that seriously. And I'm sure you've heard the Dabo Sweeney quote, right? Don't take criticism from a person you wouldn't take advice from. That's, I think, the mantra to take into all the stuff around social media. But when you're trying to figure out, like, what is it that you could use for motivation? For me, what I try to drive people's motivation through is through really like two factors, right? One's intrinsic motivation. This idea that, like, I just love playing my sport. This is what I'm trying to get good at. It doesn't really involve the noise. Like, I'm just so dialed in to building my own skill. And the second is around, like, identity. Like, I'm the kind of person who does this, right? I'm the kind of person who is motivated. I'm the kind of person who works to be the best that I can be. That's often a place where you can pull in some of this fuel because every now and then people will say something like, I just don't even know that he works that hard, right? Or, oh, she must not even care about practice. Those are your places to sort of be like, you don't know me. Like, let me show you, right? Let me show you what it's all about. And that takes a really special mindset and is a special skill, but is something you can kind of like tease apart and pull out of people if you work hard enough at it.

So I listened one time to Steph Curry. He was on the Old man in three with JJ Redick, and they were talking about, you know, the way Steph plays the game, how he celebrates. And I think the favorite part of the interview was Steph was like, listen, do I, Do I go over the edge sometimes with my celebration? He was like, yes, absolutely. But he was like, that's how I have fun playing the game amidst all the other nonsense. So is it an emphasis for you when you work with athletes to encourage them to enjoy the game, to go out there and have fun, even if it's on the edge of maybe excessive celebration or whatever the case may be.

I for sure value fun more than just about anything else in sports. I'm one of those people, despite a career now working at high level sport, who ultimately believes, like, look, this is just a game. And that's not to say it's not important. It's not to say it doesn't impact your life, your family's life, the people and the lives of the organization. It's just to remember, like, we're not solving global crises, right? We're not doing brain surgery. Like, we're here, in my case, to put a ball in a hoop repeatedly and see if we can do it more than the other team in front of 20,000 people. Like, that's kind of it, right? And so it's an incredible opportunity and it absolutely should be fun. That's not to say that it shouldn't be stressful, but hard and fun can be synonymous sometimes. And if you can get people to sort of like lean into that, like it's okay for this really challenging thing to also be awesome, then you can have a ton of fun. And so I try to encourage play as much as I can. Like, what do you love about basketball that keeps you coming back every day? And how do we get more of that in your day to day? What do you love about competing that we could tap into as you get ready for a game that's going to help you perform? Well? I think those kinds of questions and really unpacking those things allows you to sort of reach your full potential and climb to the highest level in your sport. And if you can stay like in love with it and in love with the fun, which is honestly how that mostly happens, it's why Steph is going to have such a long, storied career. You're going to have a really, really wonderful time playing your sport. You're going to leave it all out there. And then at the end, when you retire, you'll know you give it your all.

So this brings me to a question. How do you balance the mindsets of being stoic versus maybe embracing the surfers mentality? If you want me to elaborate more on the surfers mentality, I'd be glad to give you my perspective. But how do you balance that or is it individualized to the particular athlete?

Well, I'd love to hear your perspective on the surfer's mentality first.

Yeah, so. So the way I view the surfer's mentality is there's always gonna be waves and there are always gonna be waves crashing. So when you're riding a wave, that doesn't mean you shouldn't enjoy it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't get up with the ups. You should certainly enjoy riding that wave because it's a blast. Understand that at some point it's probably going to crash, but then when it does crash and you're in Those low moments, you know, another wave's coming. No matter how, no matter how long it takes, no matter how low you are, another wave is coming. So find peace in that pain and wait for the next wave to ride. So that's how I look at it. But at the same time, you know, you hear a lot of people talk about being stoics. Don't get too high with the highs, too low with the lows. Just stay even keeled. So I'm just very curious to hear your perspective on that.

Yeah, I wish I could say that I felt like it was an either or choice, but I think it's probably a both. And, and what I mean by that is like there are probably times and roles and situations where cultivating that stoicism is valuable. Right. So thinking about like an 82 game NBA season, you know, odds are you're going to have a rough stretch in there, you know, to have a little bit more of a stoic kind of. Okay, this is where we are. Like, let's just keep pushing. Don't worry about this. I think can be valuable for some athletes, particularly those who ride the lows. Really, really low.

Right.

Like who need the energy of the winds to sort of carry them. So I think again, learning to see it for what it is. Trying to be more of an objective scientist about the course of your career, the course of your performance. That's how I tap into stoicism is really around being observational and sort of learning as much as you can and almost being like an observer of what's happening versus being so in the thick of it. But I also love the surfer's mentality because the part, part of what you're talking about is this idea of presence, right? Like being fully immersed in the moment, being two feet on the board, fully present at the top, recognizing when it feels crappy at the bottom. And that's where a lot of peak performance emerges from, right? Flow comes about from being present for a really long time, not from just like randomly showing up. Right. And so I want some of that too. I want a little bit of that surfers mentality. I want a little bit of that. Like I'm gonna feel this, I'm gonna get into it. I'm going to be accepting of the highs and lows because I think that's going to allow for these states, psychological states where peak performance can happen. And so I think what we try to do to teach that is things like mindfulness meditation or breath work, you know, things that allow you to really be embedded in the moment. And then, like I said, we teach stoicism through, like objective observation, right? So one of the simple things I have a lot of athletes do when I work with them at the end of every training period is write down three things. 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? It's not what did I do great? What did I suck at? Right. On purpose. Like, we're using non judgmental language to help people figure out what should I repeat, what should I change, what did I learn? And keep moving. And so you can balance, I think, those two cycles or those two mindsets if you just practice them enough. And that's probably where I'd go.

I love it. Real quick follow up to that. How do you teach visualization?

It's a great question. And it's hard for me, actually, because I'm pretty poor at visualization or imagery myself. Like, I'm a very verbal thinker, so I think a lot of words. There are a couple other people I know like this. And then there are some people who think like, amazingly vivid and images. And often many of the athletes I work with have this, like, incredible, incredible capacity. Like sit down, close their eyes, and like, boom, they can, they can take you there. When I teach imagery, I teach it in a pretty structured way. So usually the first time we do an imagery, it's around, like seeing if you can tap into all five senses in a particular location you're familiar with. So with athletes, oftentimes it's the gym, right? Can you close your eyes? Can you actually see a 360 of the gym? Can you feel the hardwood beneath your feet? Can you smell the basketballs? Can you hear the music? Can you really get into that and fully feel or experience that? And then once we've gotten through that and we've kind of cultivated the ability to really dial in, we start to layer in some skill, right? So it's like, like, okay, let's figure out if we can get you imaging a specific play, right? And we start with just one short sequence, maybe five to seven seconds. And again, feel your body, you know, moving around a screen. Feel your feet on the floor. See if you can hear the crowd, see if you can smell the ball. Like little things to tap into all senses. You know, the full sensory experience, I think makes it a bit stickier. And then you can kind of expand out. I personally, and I think Huberman talked about this on his podcast. Try to keep the imagery pretty Short and sweet, right? If you ever just like sat there and tried to image a bunch of stuff, it's actually like kind of hard, right? You just lose focus. It's not really that interesting. Like, even if it's your sport, you know, it's like, okay, I kind of know. And you sort of move on. So these short five to seven seconds, you know, four or five times a day, is kind of like doing four or five mental reps. And I try to keep it really short and simple. And then you can also use game film to kind of augment that. So if you're not sure, like, what exactly does this look like where you're trying to sort of map, like what's the perfect execution look like versus what you see in your mind? Maybe you see yourself making a mistake or planting your foot in the wrong place or not quite getting around the screen easy enough or taking an unnecessary dribble. Whatever it is, here's what it looks like on film. Here's your image. See if you can see that now, see if you can see yourself doing it. You can kind of balance some of those things out and move back and forth to refine the image to be exactly what you need it to be.

So one thing that I find found out on my own is I'm very visual. Like, I can picture anything with the snap of a finger. I can put myself exactly like you said, in the moment and I can feel everything. I didn't realize, to be honest, that was unique to me until I started talking with other athletes. So do you, for visualization, teach it from viewing from your own eyesight, or do you teach it from like an outside point of view as if you're, you know, a ghost hovering over yourself? Or do you do both?

I default to whatever is more natural for the athlete. I'm not big on me telling you, especially because I'm not good at this one. Right. So whatever comes more naturally and whatever you feel like is richer. That's the one I go with.

I like it. Fair enough. So again, I want to unpack a lot of the goodness that you said. But, you know, for. For the sake of time, I do want to. To talk about something. Burnout. Because one of your, you know, three mindsets for every elite performer is recovery is an investment mindset when it comes to burnout. And I'm going to have some follow ups to this as well. But first touch on that piece for me.

So burnout to me is kind of what happens when you've been working for a really long Time with inadequate recovery, and this is really around for me, comes from, like, more of an understanding of brain science and the metabolic brain. It's this idea that, like, the things we do in sport are actually the most taxing things that we can do for our brain and body. We know that moving our body and learning something new are the two most effortful tasks our brain actually goes through. And, like, that's what a game is, right? You're moving your body for two and a half hours, three and a half hours, and each time you're out there, you're learning something new about your opponent, about the game plan, about what coach wants you to execute, about what you know you need to do after halftime. So it's like an incredibly taxing event. If you go through that with no recovery, right? Or inadequate recovery, eventually what happens is you're spending, spending, spending, spending, spending without investing, and eventually you run out of money and you got nothing left to spend. That's when you hit burnout. That's. That's what burnout is to me. And so we try to teach this idea that recovery is an investment because it helps change a little bit of the way people see and think about, really time away from sport, right? You're a football guy. I'm a former football guy turned NBA guy. I am almost positive you heard at some point in your career something like, well, if you're not working, the enemy's working while you sleep. You can sleep when you're dead. It's all going to fall apart if we don't watch this extra film. We've got to work harder than the other guy. It's like, maybe, maybe we do, right? But chances are, like, when it's 11pm that guy's probably also asleep, too. We're probably not all just working for everybody. And so having this idea that recovery is an investment, what it's really about is recognizing that time away from sport, time with your friends, time with your family, time taking care of yourself. It's not time you're not working, it's time you're investing in being better tomorrow, right? So just like physical training, you can't go into a gym every day and bench six days a week and hope you never tear a peck, right? Eventually you're going to tear a pec. So what do you do? You rest, you work other body parts. You take time away. You eat well, you hydrate, you sleep well. We got to do the same thing for our brain, right? We have to do the same thing for our emotional health to really Sustain performance over time. And so if you can start to think about time away is not time you're getting worse or time the enemy's getting an advantage, but instead as an investment in your performance tomorrow and the next day and the next day in sustainable excellence over time. Now it's a little bit less of a big deal to go away. It's a little bit less of a big deal to say, you know what? Instead of getting up another thousand shots tonight, my arms are a bit tired, it's a bit heavy. I played hard last night. Maybe just focus on rest so I can come back and have a great practice tomorrow. It totally changes the dynamic you have with time away from sport. And that allows you to mitigate the risk of burnout, but sustain your performance over time.

Two follow ups here. I think this is one of the hardest ones to tackle because there is an element, like we've talked about a number of times, sports are a lot of hard work. Like, you have to be working hard, I guess, and you probably won't know the answer is, I don't know that it's answerable. How do you know when you are working hard enough versus when you can work harder? Or maybe how do you build that mental endurance? And then I'll follow up with the second one later.

Wow, what a question. So my short version is like, I don't know that I know a couple data points that I think about. There's a great book written by a guy named Alex Hutchinson called Endure that's kind of about mental endurance. And the main takeaway from the book is that people are really bad at perceiving their effort. So there's some signs that shows that around like 30% of our physical output, our brain starts to send signals to our body about things like pain and fatigue. So if you've ever gone on the long run and your legs start to hurt, you're like, man, I don't really feel like this. Some studies show that might only be like 30% of what you can actually give. Right. And it makes a ton of sense. This is the very adaptive actually, right? Your brain is here to protect you. It's here to keep you safe. And so if it thinks you're going to run into pain or risk or hurt, it's going to try to get you to stop doing that. Now, it doesn't mean you have to listen, but it is there to try to protect you. So I think that's one kind of interesting variable I might play with in this equation, is learning to see is there Real pain here or is this me being self protective? Is there real pain here or do I actually have more in the tank? And we have the ability to kind of consciously raise our effort. Right. We've all heard these incredible stories of, you know, the man who lifts a car off the dog. Right. Well, it's like, how does he do that? In large part, he does that by, like recognizing just how much effort is required to do this. And humans are like, pretty remarkable. He might rip muscle from bone in that instance, but, like, he's going to move the car most time because it's just like, this is really what he's capable of. This is sort of that true Max Heifer. So those would be a couple things I would think about that would sort of allow you. But I think often I would sort of default to relying on, like the internal signal. Right. Like, you know, when you've worked out, if you've actually pushed yourself, you know, when you've gone through practice, if you were like dialed in or you were daydreaming about the, you know, meal you were going to have afterward. Right. You know, when you watch film, if you were actually focused or if you're kind of like scrolling your phone at the same time, you know. And so that internal signal, I think, is probably the best guide here. And regularly checking in with that can help you figure it out. Right. Like, if you notice that, you know, every Monday, for example, it's hard for you to give great effort, that becomes a place where you can now say, okay, I'm going to make a conscious choice to ramp up my effort on Mondays. Well, what would that look like? Maybe it means put my phone down. Maybe it means get to the gym 30 minutes early. Maybe it means do a few extra reps in the weight room. Maybe it means work after practice. Whatever it is, right. That helps you to sort of raise that. That's how I'd play with that idea of like. Like getting to max effort that you can do.

Amazing answer to a really tough question. My final question in relation to this is there's a concept I've become obsessed with, and it's the idea of character creation. So, you know, the. The Mamba mentality, you know, prime for Deion Sanders. If you're a Beyonce fan, I believe hers is Sasha Fierce. When they create these identities to embrace things that normally feel very uncomfortable to them. Now, are you from. I'm sure you've seen the concept. What are your thoughts on it? And do you think it helps with burnout to be able to Create someone or an element of your personality to come out to handle some of the things that may feel exhausting.

What a fascinating way to think about it. Like, what a fascinating question. I. I have never connected, like, the concept of Sasha Fierce, for example, to, like, mitigating burnout or prime to mitigating burnout. But I guess I can see it. Like, I mean, there's a lot of really interesting stuff there. I can see this sort of world where, for a moment, you sort of externalize the hard things and put that onto another person and how that might help you carry some of the weight of performing. I could also see how having kind of this alternative identity or character or ego, whatever you want to call it, would allow you to maybe enter, like, a different psychological space and push yourself differently and sort of make it again, like, a conscious choice place to lean into, maybe some stuff that you wouldn't do. And so I can see ways where that would be helpful to me. This would come back to, like, is this useful for you? I can't say, like, I would do it or I wouldn't do it, but I can say this very obviously helps some really high performers do some incredible things over time. And so there's probably, like, something there. I don't know what that thing is, other than maybe it's another identity that you can sort of shift into that allows you to behave and be something that you don't always feel comfortable being when you really need to be that thing. And the closest parallel I guess I could think of in my own life is, like, often when I know I have to have a crappy conversation with someone, I try to, like, channel my inner dad. You know, my dad has always been, like, so good at just saying exactly what he thinks, exactly how he feels. And so I'm not sure I'm, like, fully tapping into something like a Sasha Fierce, but I can see this sort of connection where you're trying to kind of channel these characteristics that you associate with someone else that may be harder for you or less natural for you to access. And I can see that being valuable for you, then kind of shifting through some of the challenging stuff that you deal with.

I'm sorry, I got one more question based off of the things that you were saying.

All good, man.

I think a really tough question to answer to is how do you balance the science versus what's applicable to athletes? Because there's things that may be scientifically proven that an athlete can't get around versus something that may not be as scientifically proven that an athlete adopts and will claim to help them. So when you're working with athletes, how do you balance? How do you balance that? I think that's a really tough thing to balance.

I think it depends on your criteria for good. Right? And so what I mean by that is like, are you trying to do what's right or are you trying to do what, what works? And for me, I came up in a school of thought that was all about pragmatism and functionality. So, like, when people say things like, you always have to be positive, it's like, that would be nice. But no, that's not true. I know athletes who, they aren't positive with themselves and it actually does work. It does help them. And so my criteria for science versus athletes is always, is this working for you? If the answer is yes, this is working for me. This helps me think, feel, perform better. This helps me become who I want to become. I don't have any reason to change that or mess with that. It's my job to bring whatever knowledge I have to augment that process for you. And maybe there are ways I can fine tune it. I can help you make it better. Maybe not. If there's not, we're not touching it. If there are. Here's some things I would think about. I try to do everything I do from an evidence base, right. Like, I think it's important to be grounded in what we know works, what we believe to be helpful from people based on the research. And oftentimes that comes into play when someone doesn't really know what to do. But if you've got something that's working for you, there's a reason that you've made it to the level that you're at. And I have tremendous respect for all the athletes I work with because what they're doing is literally top 001% of stuff in the world. And so if it works for you, like, I am not here to mess with that secret sauce.

I love it. What a wonderful place to end. Can't thank you enough for coming on. This was, like I said in the, the, in the middle, and I'm saying at the end, I think this is my favorite one yet. Everyone I have on here is phenomenal, but this was awesome. If people, if you have, if people want to access more of your information, your thoughts, your solutions, where can they find you? How can they get access to it?

Well, I appreciate the opportunity to join you and I appreciate the kind words and I'm hoping you have a few more really awesome guests so that it you can keep having these better and better and better experiences. You can find me on on Social at Alex Auerbach, Ph.D. and I also write a newsletter on substack called perform. So it's perform.substack.com I occasionally have my own podcast on there. I write about a whole host of things ranging from mental health to mental performance to behavioral science and behavioral economics. And all of this through the lens of, like, how do I help people think, feel and perform their best?

Incredible. We're gonna have to get you back on because this was awesome. Thank you so much for coming on listeners. Please like like rate subscribe. You know, write to us if you have any questions. Really appreciate you listening. Tune in next week.

Thanks. Colin.