Hard Truths About Success Nobody Tells You: The Science of Winning - Brian Miles & Alex Auerbach

Welcome back to the show, everybody. On today's episode, we have two of my former guests, Brian Miles and Alex Auerbach. Brian Miles is the major league mental performance coach for the Cleveland Guardians. With a decade of experience in professional baseball and a background of working with the US Army, Alex Auerbach is a performance psychologist and executive in professional sports. As the founder of Momentum Labs, Alex has worked with elite athletes across multiple professional sports, as well as high performers in the military, corporate and entrepreneurial settings. This episode is brought to you by All Black Everything Performance Energy Drink, the official energy drink of the Athletic Fortitude Podcast, available in Walmart, Meijer and select GNC franchise locations. Are you a student athlete looking to take your game to the next level or a parent wanting to support your young athlete's mental performance? Let me introduce you to Metal, the ultimate mental performance coaching platform. Designed specifically for student athletes, Metal combines cutting edge AI technology with expert human coaching to help athletes build mental toughness, boost confidence and perform under pressure. Whether you're struggling with pregame jitters, recovering from an injury, or just want to sharpen your mental edge, Metal has you covered the best part. Metal offers flexible pricing tiers to fit any budget starting at just $49 a month. That's less than the cost of a single session. With most sports psychologists ready to unlock your full potential, visit Metal Coach today and use the Code podcast for a special 10% discount on your first month. Remember, champions are made in the mind. With Metal, you're not just playing the game, you're mastering it. And with that said, on today's episode.

Brian Miles and Alex Auerbach. What is the problem with hustle culture these days?

If you want us to spend the whole hour on just one.

Where do we start? Where do we start?

Yeah, I mean, I mean there's lots, lots of problems, but I think the main, there are a few problems. One is the idea that all of your results can be achieved by only working hard, which I actually think is not true. I think the second idea is that working all the time is somehow a marker of strength or excellence, which is also not true. And I think like, you know, Brian, I'm sure you could attest to this. Colin, you too. Like you've been around NBA, NFL, MLB athletes. They're not at the gym all the time. You know, despite the stories you hear about Kobe or some of these other guys, like, you know, Kobe gets hyped up for having worked out at 4:30 in the morning. No one talks about all the naps he took. So I Think, you know, the main problem is that it's a bad formula for actually becoming excellent in anything. But we've sort of misled people into believing that just this ingredient of working hard and working more will be the answer.

Yeah, I mean, I think the glorified nature of it is probably one of the bigger issues across the board. You could sleep when you're dead, rise and grind, you name it. The one liners are all out there. I agree with everything that Alex is saying. I think that. I think high performance culture is built on hardcore recovery. Really. And I get asked all the time, what's the most important mental performance thing or what's a high performance hack? And it's like, there are no hacks to high performance. The closest hack to high performance is sleep. The highest hack to high performance is probably rest and recovery. And it's about how you invest in that as either a performer or as an organization. So for me, we've been heavy on just the sleep stuff. Sleep hygiene. I mean, Alex knows it just with the travels in basketball, but I mean, baseball is just ridiculous. We played a game at 7pm Central Standard Time in Kansas City last night and then flew to LA and arrived in LA at 1am Pacific Standard Time. And it's like time changes sleep, things like that. You have to find ways to physically recover, but cognitively recovering the way you do that is through sleep. And so sleep hygiene and the value and impact of sleep is probably the thing that we emphasize. The most important part is, so what.

Do you, or I should say, how.

Do you quantify what's enough of hard work? Because even you two, I would look at you two and say you are both really hard workers, you probably take for granted probably how hard you work. So it's like for someone who probably doesn't work as hard, who may listen to this and be like, oh, I don't need to work that hard. It's like, where do you quantify what's.

Enough and what's working hard?

It's a hard question to answer, but I mean, there's some data that shows that your performance does drop off after 40 hours, that it meaningfully deteriorates after 55 hours of work in a week. So if you need some like hard and fast metric to use, you know, that would be a metric. I think for me, it's really just getting used to answering the question, like, did I feel like I worked hard today? Did I put in the effort that I had to give? And importantly, that's not really about every day being the same. Right. Like some days I have 60% to give. Like, you know, you both know this, but I have a six week old daughter and so like my max capacity right now is probably like a 70, you know, where my expectation of my max capacity is usually like 130. So to be functioning at this level, it's really like every day is like, let me just do what I can, right? Let me be present with what I'm doing, let me show up, give good effort. And if at the end of the day I feel like I've done that, then that to me kind of checks the box as hard work. And so some of it I think is also building some self awareness and understanding when you've left it all out there, whatever it is that you have to give and when is it that you could have actually given a little bit more, why didn't you? And what can you prefer? Fine. Moving forward.

Yeah, I mean, I imagine that the context environment plays a little bit of a role in this. But I would say too that the balance portion of knowing when to push and knowing when to pull back, which, you know, Alex mentioned the self awareness part. It's I think for anyone who's in professional sports, whether that's, you know, coaching, playing or on the performance team, you know, when we're on the road, I'm, you know, in a hotel and our bus isn't until 1:30pm So I had no. I have the mornings to kind of both take care of myself and do some things that maybe I wouldn't be able to do at home, put my headphones on, get in front of the computer and know that I'm going to have uninterrupted deep work to be able to engage and get after it. Whereas when I'm back in Cleveland, I know that my children will wake me up very, very early. I know that the mornings are the only time I get with my kids before I go to the ballpark. So my investment in time and focus and energy is completely committed to them knowing that I'm going to only have the time when I'm at the field. And once you get to the field, anyone knows anything can happen. And so you might have this plan to get after some work and then all of a sudden you're just in meetings or doing other things all day. So I do think that you as a person need to know when to push and when to kind of pull back. I also think you need to know when to say no and when to say yes. Because if you're Saying yes to everything, you're just going to be talking about this kind of burnout or exhaustion. But if you know what to say no to, you'll be able to say yes to the right things.

I have like conversations about this with people on different ends of the spectrum. So for example, I just spoke with someone who helped trained Olympic athletes and their big thing was, you know, doing less is more. You have to feel fresh. And we measure it doing xyz. And then in the football realm, you know, I talk with trainers who are like, you have to like earn rest because when you're playing football there's a physical element capacity that you need to be able to take and withstand. So it's when it comes to different sports in general, it's like, maybe how do you become more self aware of when do I need to push, you know, the throttle and when do I need to pump the brakes a little bit?

I feel like that's pretty accurate. I mean again, it's like, I mean I'm in LA right now, it's like 105 degrees out. Like, I mean, Alex, I know you're an az. Like, you know, so if, if, if it's the middle of the summer and yeah, like you've, you play six games in a row in baseball. Like, yeah, seventh day again, that's like the awareness part for the organization, the coaches, everyone of just being like, let's just do a show and go, right? Like, let's like, yes. You got to get working, you have to grind, you have to physically prepare yourself. You also have to read the room. You have to recognize environmental context. You have to know that you flew in the night before and everyone went to bed at 4:30 or 5:00am and you have a 7:00 clock game. So maybe it's not that next day. So maybe that day you arrive at 5am you go and you have your normal schedule, but it's the following day that you do the show and go and you sort of get back, get some people to rest and get it back to them. So I just think reading the context, reading the environment, that goes both as an organization, but that goes for you as a person too. Like you gotta know what you can handle. And I think people, you know, you need to stop having the fear to pull back.

Yeah, I think, I guess my view is, I think people probably sort of know intuitively when it's time to pull back and then the fear creeps in because of hustle culture. If you want to bring it all the way back right of actually doing the pulling back. Like, Brian made the joke, sleep when you're dead. But I kid you not, when I was coaching football, an older coach than me said that, that exact phrase to me, right? Like, don't, don't worry about being tired. You can sleep when you're dead. And I'm like, I'm on the path to dying pretty soon. How we're functioning right now, like, this is, this is not going to be great. So I think, you know, we sort of get conditioned into, like, you feel when you're going to burn out, you feel when you're not operating at your best, you feel when your body's a little bit sore, you're a little bit tired. But if you never take the time to sort of figure out, like, what is this? And how do I do something that refuels me, how do I do, like, do I need a nap or do I need to go outside? Right? Like, figuring out through experimentation what moves you forward can then help you figure out when to pull back or when to keep pushing. Unfortunately, I think most people just respond to the conditioning that the right answer is to keep pushing. And again, you both know this, right? Like, if you bench press every single day in a row for 30 days, you're going to end up with a torn pack. You're not going to end up with a 3:15 max. Like, it's just not going to happen. And so you have to really get good at tuning into the real things that are going on in your body, essentially your body budget to figure out what goes on from there.

What's really hard for me is knowing whether or not I've worked hard enough. I get this deep feeling of remembering of all the times I didn't do something. So whether or not you want to say I'm working hard or not, I think it's really hard for me to measure because I would argue probably in general, like I said about you both, I work harder than the average person. But then it's like, at the end of the day, I have this deep, almost emptiness, wondering, did I do enough? No matter how much I did or didn't do, I have that same feeling almost at the end of every day.

I mean, I also wonder, well, one, what your definition of hard work is. What your, your definition of like, that emptiness feeling. But more importantly is like, are you just talking about work? Are you talking about your family? Like, you know, I. I recognize that the world of professional sports pulls you in a multitude of directions. I recognize that there's sacrifices for Our families and things like that. And like, for me, I'm all about getting after it. But if I'm at home and it's the morning and my phone is ringing and I'm with my kids and I look at the phone and I recognize it's okay, I could probably deal with this in three hours. I deal with it in three hours. Because there's no worse feeling than knowing that I wasn't there and present and working hard for my family, for my kids, for the very few hours I get with them. And I wonder if sometimes that's the thing that we're actually feeling, is that we're not balancing it correctly, not that we're not working hard, because I have no doubt you're getting after it in your workspace. I think sometimes we feel like Alex talked about that intuition, that kind of sensation, self awareness. I oftentimes wonder if it's coming from the other place. And I know that for myself. I experience that when I'm overdoing it in one sense of work and I'm not feeling like I can be as present with my family, that's the thing that hits me the hardest and hurts me the most. That's what elicits change for me and how I go about my day. Because that professional sports, baseball, whatever, fill in the blank is going to come and go. My time with my kids, I only get so much of it. My kids in kindergarten now, it's crazy.

I think, to follow up to that, I think my big problem comes to periodization because, and I saw something today on Twitter, I'm gonna butcher the exact quote, but it was essentially, you need to be okay with sucking at something to improve in an area. So I think about my work, I think about all the ways I want to improve in the places I want to get and where I want to get great at. But then in the same breath, I know, like, for example, tonight, not going to get to put my youngest down, my five month old, not going to get to put her to sleep tonight. So I have a sense of guilt knowing I'm not going to get to see her till tomorrow. Fortunately, I'll be able to put my older one to sleep. But so I have a sense of guilt there. In the same breath, I know I'm going to have to edit this podcast. I'm going to have to make it look nice, right? I'm going to want everything to look proper as I grow through this and try and make it nicer. And I think about the other work. I still have to do the emails I have to send. And it's like, I know there's going to be emails I wait to send in the morning. And it's like that weighs on me. And I know because I talk with people who are like this as well, particularly athletes. And it's like, when do I know to just shut everything off? Sometimes I literally want to throw my phone out the window.

Good luck editing this podcast to make Brian and I look good. That's going to.

Yeah, you got to change the lighting stuff.

I mean, I think you're describing a little bit like the curse of being a high performer, right? What ends up happening is you have high expectations for yourself in all the domains of your life. And the reality is, like, Nobody does everything 100% well. We all have things that we're really good at, things we're average at, and things we suck at. And the hard part is really figuring out how you get rid of the things that you suck at and do less of that stuff and be okay with sucking at some things. You know, like Steph Curry didn't become the all time best shooter, worrying a ton about how he plays great defense. He happens to be a fine defender, but I guarantee you he's working more on shooting than he's working on defending. And I think that's just a conscious choice you make to become elite at something. And I think the same thing is true for guys like Tom Brady or Michael Jordan or Serena Williams, like Roger Federer. They all have this kind of signature strength, this thing that they double down on that they feel really good about, and they get to a point of feeling okay, letting some of the other stuff go. But I think, Colin, like, what resonates for me about what you're describing is really the idea of feeling crappy about not being to do anything particularly well. And usually when I work with someone who's in that space, my advice is to do less.

Right?

You really can't do it all. You cannot parent at level 100 and work at level 100 and learn new skills at level 100. And that doesn't mean it won't change or evolve over time. It might mean that right now, parenting is the single most important thing you can do at level 100. And everything else has to take a backseat to that. That can be uncomfortable. But that doesn't mean you'll never switch that. Right? Someday your kids will move out of the house, and that might be your time when you ramp up work or you ramp up more of the skill building. And so I would just encourage like the compassion for yourself around some of that and what it means to be a normal person who's not great at everything and to really focus on and figure out what does actually matter. Because there is a little bit of truth to the idea that if everything's important, nothing's all that important. And I think you're sort of describing living a little bit of that.

So let's talk a little bit about feelings and emotions, then let's define those. Because I'm very like. What helps me in my own world is making sure everything has a concise, specific definition. Feelings, emotions, how are they different? When are we playing too much into feelings and emotions?

I mean, I'll be honest with you, I'm actually kind of interested to hear how Alex describes this because I imagine that it's probably a little bit different. I know, you know, our backgrounds are somewhat similar, but definitely different in their own spaces. I, you know, if I'm being honest with you, I don't, in the work, in the high performance space, I don't, I guess like isolate emotions and feelings a ton. I look at it more from just like the thought performance connection, just that our thoughts drive our emotions, our emotions drive our physiology, Our physiology impacts our performance. And there's this big arrow back from our performance to our thoughts. And so I like to tune into the fact that while I know that our thoughts are driving a lot of these things, we are very in touch with our emotions, we are very in touch with how we feel. If I ask somebody what they thought about when they woke up this morning, or what you were thinking about at 8 o' clock this morning, it's really hard to remember those thoughts. If I ask you to remember the happiest day of your life, you all of a sudden have this picture and you start to feel a certain way. And so they are incredibly powerful. And I think that you can utilize emotions in a way like priming our emotions to help us get into a state that is effective for high performance. I also recognize that at times people give their emotions this godlike power that either will inhibit or hinder them in what they're actually capable of because they give their emotions and feelings too much power. And I might have said this in the last time we talked, Colin, but the fact of the matter is in professional baseball, no one gives a shit how you feel. You still have to go out there and play. And that's the honest truth. Nobody does give a shit how you feel. And so finding a way to make your emotions or Feelings work for you is, in my opinion, incredibly powerful. And that's what priming can do, and that's what understanding your physiology can do. I also recognize that being in tune with them when they're really effective for you can be helpful as well. But you can't let them dictate what's going to happen. I don't know. That's the way I view it. Sometimes I don't know what you got, Alex?

Well, I think you're raising like a couple points that I think are hyper relevant. So one is the idea that your emotions don't have to drive or dictate your action, right? It's just, it's a thing that you feel. And I guess to back up all the way to the first question you asked Colin, like, the way I think of emotions is, emotions are just data. It's just information. What you choose to do with that information is up to you. There are a few key myths about emotion that I think warrant unpacking at least a smidge though, about that.

Right.

So what? One is the idea that emotions dictate or drive what you do. Kind of like Brian mentioned, it's this idea that like action follows mood and the reverse is true, right? Your. Your mood follows your action. So if you feel low energy, go walk and you will feel higher energy, right? Go run. Like it's, it's that kind of connection. The second myth is this idea that thoughts and emotions live in different parts of your brain or somehow disconnected. The reality is you are always feeling something, whether or not you choose to name it and categorize it, which is really what the act of having a feeling is, putting your sensation and your current experience into a category and saying this collection of physiological sensations, thoughts I'm having, is sad. That's fine. You could choose to call it something else though, right? This is why calling nervousness excitement works so well, because you're just recategorizing the same experience you're having into something being more facilitative. So the third myth to touch on is the idea that you can't like control your emotion. You can, but by choosing what you name it. And part of that is figuring out how do you get a richer language around emotion so you can categorize more effectively. And part of that is learning to retrain yourself from framing everything the way we're all socialized into something a bit more adaptive. Right? So everyone today, for better or worse, not to pick on any generations, because I think it's true across generations, is this idea that when you're a little nervous, you have anxiety, right? Or when you're feeling a little sad, you're depressed. Like, some of this just might be that you're fatigued or you're burnt out or you're tired or you didn't eat well last night, or you're hungover because you partied too hard, right? Like, there's lots of possible explanations for the way that you are feeling, how you feel, but failing to examine the data behind that emotion is really what's going to impact what goes on downstream, right? So that's the way I'm thinking about using emotion with high performers. So to use you as an example, Colin, when you are feeling guilty about not putting your first kid down, that's valuable data for you that probably suggests you could simply alleviate your guilt by stopping working. And you have to decide if you'd rather feel guilty about not working or not guilty about not putting your kid down. But the other way to think about it is like, this is a sign that my kids really matter to me. And if I'm not going to have this opportunity tonight, I'm going to go out of my way to make sure I have a categorically positive experience with my 5 month old sometime in the next 3 days so that I can communicate how much I love them. So that the message isn't, I don't love you because I'm not putting you down. Which seems to be maybe like, what drives some of the guilt that we all have as parents when we don't put our kids down, right? So you can play with what you call it, you can play with what the data is, but you should use it to inform anything.

What a form of therapy for me. I tricked you guys into coming on my podcast so I could have therapy for free. So when is it an unproductive way to deal with your feelings or emotions?

I mean, I think the most unproductive way to deal with it is to sit there and ruminate on it endlessly and feel like that is making progress. But that's sort of a tricky thing to navigate, right? Like, we all feel like thinking really hard about a specific problem is work. And sometimes that's the case. But oftentimes thinking a lot about a feeling is not going to help you change how you feel, right? What's most likely to change how you feel is engaging in some sort of valued action or guided behavior towards something that you care about. Right? So again, like, you're feeling a little tired, but you really value physical health. Like, you might have to make the choice to go work out and give it a 70% effort like I did today on the bike, even if you're not, you know, not at your best. Right. And so I think that's, that's how I would choose to engage with it again, is examine what's the data here and then what can we do productively with this information versus, like, let me just sit in this and stew on it for as long as possible and hope that it goes away. You know, what you attend to is only going to be magnified. So if you're spending a lot of time in your own head thinking about how you feel, you're only going to feel worse, unfortunately. And so I think the best way to deal with it is to get out of your head and get going.

Yeah, I mean, I'll have really a ton much more to add to that. I mean, it's really well said. I just again, the thoughts, our emotion, I mean, we're constantly like, we have this, you know, Alex is describing as data, this information that is trying to tell us something. Our physiology is trying to tell us something. Like all of these systems and processes that we have in our bodies and our biology, it's all meant there to tell us like what's going on. And I think the more, I guess my only shift on it would just be like, be curious, right? Like, it doesn't have to be this, this finite thing, this means this. Be curious about it and consider what Alex said too. Do something, try something, make a shift, go outside, take a deep breath, put your phone down, go for a walk, listen to music. There's so many things that we've had and that we've done in the past that I think sometimes we can think through exactly what that might look like and just be like, okay, I'm going to give this a shot. I'm going to try and, you know, like Alex said, Even it's a 70%, you know, on the bike or go for the run that does make a difference and it can help shift a little bit of the way that you're viewing what you're feeling. So, yeah, I mean, really well said.

So post catastrophic loss, how do you not ignore your feelings or emotions and find a way to, to channel it correctly?

I'm gonna let Alex take that one.

Brian, quit punting, man.

All right, listen, listen. We're going catastrophic loss, like within sports. I'll dive into that. If you're talking about in life.

Yeah, we'll keep it in the sports realm. Even though I think it all does some. To some people, I mean, you miss a putt, you might miss out. I think a golfer just missed out on $2.5 million because of a stroke penalty. You know, I mean, to some people, that might feel like a, you know, death in the family. For people. I mean, I'd say for people who aren't very close with their family.

But in general, I mean, well, even if you take away just the word catastrophic, right? And you just think about loss and how people process it, and I get it. There's. There's ones that are bigger than. Than others. You know, I do think having, like, systems set up for. And again, this is. There's so much like baseball. We play 162 games. Like, we lost last night. All right, cool. Like, we're going to play again tomorrow, right? It's different in football. I get. It's different if, like, in golf, specific things going on. But, like, for baseball players, at least for us, we just say you have to have a system and process that works for you where you are allowed to feel how you feel. You're allowed to be frustrated, you're allowed to be angry. But there is really almost a kinesthetic part to it of when you stop. And that can be. A lot of guys will just stay in their uniforms, and once they take their uniform off to go shower and they put their street clothes on, it's almost like, I'm sweating, switching out of this baseball experience, and I'm getting into my real life experience. I'm going to let this go. We've had guys who have just said, I'm going to be pissed off and frustrated, and then I'm going to drink my one beer. And once I have my beer, I'm done. I'm moving on. I'm over it. We've described it like, hey, you have your baseball backpack and your life backpack, and when you get to the ballpark, your life backpack is left in the parking lot, and you pick up your baseball backpack. But when you're leaving, you drop your baseball backpack in the baseball parking lot and you pick up your life backpack.

And you go and you move on.

Like, having some sort of specific behavioral action I think helps guys be able to truly shift into that. Okay, I'm going to go, like, be myself. Because baseball is what they do. It's not who they are. And I think that's the biggest part, is trying to help these individuals be separators of not holding on to their performance as an identity of who they actually are.

We're Getting into my favorite topic, identity. So how do you convince some or not convince someone, but teach someone maybe to separate and compartmentalize their identity or their life? What are the best ways to do that?

I think for all high level athletes, it's quite hard, you know, like, if you really are invested in something and you care a lot, you're gonna feel really closely connected to that identity. And so I think a lot of it is doing what some of Ryan mentioned is kind of learning to like, think about the different dimensions and domains of your life and, and what really matters there and how you can sort of level up in those spaces too. Sometimes natural things kind of happen, right? Like, you know, to get back to the catastrophic loss question for a second, like in sports it can feel that way and then like you have a kid. And for most athletes I've worked with who have kids, like, it totally changes the way that they think about winning or losing a game or even winning or losing, like a Super bowl, right? And in many ways, like, just perspective changes a lot of this too. Like, you know, if you use a more academic example, like when I was in college, I cared about every test I took and exactly zero people the rest of my adult life have ever asked me about a grade I got. And so I spent like all this energy stressed out about this thing. Now in sports, it's like a little different, right? If you make a mistake to lose the World Series, like people are going to replay that every year for 30 years, but that doesn't mean you have to watch it, right? Like you could choose to sort of separate a little bit some, but by and large, the losses are things people move on from too, just with time and perspective. Perspective. And so I think the identity piece is about having a more realistic and well rounded perspective of who you are and where you add value. And I think to me the key is really recognizing that your worth as a person is not about what you produce on the field. That what you produce on the field is amazing and important and can lead to really great things in your life, but does not determine whether or not you're fundamentally good or bad. And if you can get to that level of perspective, then I think you could help people compartmentalize fairly simply.

Why do bad things or negative things hurt us? Maybe deeper than positive things or good things uplift us? Or is that purely a perspective thing for certain individuals?

It's, I feel like our, well, I mean, our brains were developed that way because of the negativity bias and like the capacity to remember Wait and see the negative more than the positive.

And.

And again, that was the old, like 17,000 years ago when we were cavemen and cave women, you know, we wanted to go for a hunt and there was a rustle in the bushes and we went out with our spears and we were like, oh, like, what is that? And a saber tooth tiger jumps out, right? Like, you look at all your hunting buddies and you're like, screw this. And you run back to the village and like, what do you do? You go and tell everyone, like, oh, my God, there's like the saber toothed tiger. When the, you know, bushes rustle. We had to be ready for that. We have to be like, you know, we got to be prepared. And that's a really scary thing. And they're like, oh, we should remember that, right? We should see that stuff. We should weight that more importantly than the good stuff. And fast forward 70,000 years, there's no more saber toothed tigers. But we still have this bias in our brains that create where we remember, wait and see, the negative more than the positive. I mean, I think that's why Colin, I think the last time we talked, we talked about hunting the good stuff, seeking the silver lining, the fact that hunt and seek are verbs, like, you have to go out and do it. And again, the biggest thing that's shifted for me is the way that we talk, like, the language that we use. And I mean, Alex and Colin, both parents, similar to myself, how we shift the question. Marlo's in kindergarten now, so it's not like, how was school today? Because she's just gonna, well, one, she's in kindergarten, so who knows what they're doing? But she's like, hey, what was the best thing about today? What was your favorite thing about today? What was the coolest thing you did today? And my wife and I have really tried to do this too. Instead of just debriefing the day on just, how was your day? All the bad stuff. It really is, hey, let's talk about one or two good things that happened to us today. Even in a day full of chaos, you can seek it out, you can find it. So it's fighting the negativity bias, in my opinion, that allows us to start to see the world for what it actually is. And there's just so much good there, you just have to hunt it.

Yeah, I think, you know, Brian mentioned, like, what I view as sort of the core here in the negativity bias. But the other one I'd mentioned, which is closely connected obviously, is Just the concept of loss aversion, right? Like, losing hurts more than winning. We all. We all feel that more. And so I think there's just a tendency to loom there. And I think part of that is also this idea that we learn from failure quite easily, which is just not true. Like, you know, most people, when you fail, myself included, by the way, like, you immediately start to figure out why that failure happened, not what you could have learned. It was like, well, I was a little tired, so, like, forget about it. Oh, I'm going to protect my ego with this thing. Oh, it's not that big of a deal. I'll get it next time. Like, I'm not really that interested in examining deeply what did I do horribly wrong here so that I don't repeat it again. I might be in two weeks, but by that time, I'm so far away from whatever it is that's gone wrong that, that it's quite hard to actually examine that. And again, there's good data that backs up this idea that people don't really learn from failure as well as we think they do, despite the fact that we all talk about learning from failure like it's the easiest thing we could possibly accomplish.

Right.

And so I think there's also an element of how we cope with losing loss or negativity that sort of does some degree of suppression. And that suppression then comes back to bite you a little bit.

I gotta, like, I gotta revamp my tweets with all the, like, learning from failure Twitter stuff that I put out there. Well, you know, it's funny, Alex. What's funny is, like, I I. On LinkedIn, somebody messaged me about. About, like, just like, minimizing the word failure or whatever. And I just like, run them back this long thing, obviously, because I was like, let's engage on this. This is fun. And I realized for me, it was like, it was just funny. It's going to kind of go back to the feelings part or emotions when you're experiencing the failure. I think I tie sometimes failure and feedback together because sometimes when you're getting tough feedback, it can feel a little bit like you have failed or not met expectations. But there's that physiological response pit in your stomach. You feel a little bit nauseous. You're like, holy crap. You're just feeling all of that. And I've realized that the natural inclination is to, like you described, defend yourself, let your ego get in there. That idea of leaning into that tension and the leaning in part, the dancing with it part, I Found that shift in perspective to be really helpful. Just on the personal side, when I worked for the military, we got feedback on every presentation we did. I'm talking. People were just sit up there and watch you. And at lunchtime, they would give you feedback, and it's like, yeah, of course you want to hear. You did perfect. You did great. But, like, they're kind of getting in your ass a little bit about it. And I remember, like, just struggling with it in the beginning. And then it was my buddy and I, who. My buddy who works at Tigers now. We. We were like, let's hey, like, okay, we'll get the real feedback. We'll get it. It feels like whatever. And then we're like, I want you. I told my friend, I'm like, I want you to pay attention to exactly what they said. Like, I'm going to go teach the second half of the day, and, like, I'm just going to focus on that. Like, I'm really going to try to make that change right now. And I found that when I did that, that shift for me was just like, yeah, let's go. Give it to me. I want to lean into this a little bit. I get it. Feedback and failure are a little bit different. But that leaning in of just like, oh, my God, this sucks a little bit, but, okay, something's going to come out of this. I'm going to figure it out.

And you're right.

When you get so far away from it, it's hard two weeks later to be like, yeah, let me implement that. No problem. It's a little bit of facing it, but I recognize that there's nuance to all of it.

Yeah, but I think what you're describing really is conditioning yourself with a skill, right? And you're conditioning this skill of actually trying to learn from failure. Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's not doable. Right. Or learning from feedback. You know, people struggle to learn from feedback, too, because, like, they shoot the messenger or they confuse the tone with the meaning. You know, like, all sorts of things go wrong when people get feedback. So it's not about this being impossible. It's just the idea that it's actually much harder than we think. And oftentimes we sort of default to this, like, oh, if you failed, it's a learning opportunity. And, like, first of all, sometimes that's just not true. Like when you lose game seven in the finals. I'm sorry, there's not a learning opportunity. Like, you fucked up and it's over and you have to sit with that and that sucks. And that's what it means to compete at a really high level. Sure, we can go back and talk about, like, oh man, we should have run this play, we should have run that play. But you both know this from being in sports. Like, it's very complicated. What happens in quarter two and quarter three impacts what goes on in quarter four. And like, you look at a game like Pete Carroll calling a pass play on the two yard line where the Seahawks like, and he'll even tell you, right decision, bad outcome, like, but we're going to sit here and criticize him because he lost on that one play. Well, he didn't lose on that one play. Like, he lost on everything that came before that too. Right. And so sometimes it's not really a learning opportunity. Like, it's just a loss. And that sucks. And that's reality. And there may not be a ton to extract from it. And there are other times when if you haven't developed the skill of actually objectively looking at what's going on, doing what you're suggesting, Brian, like being willing to lean in and actually examine it and sit with the discomfort, you are not going to naturally learn from failure. It's not going to happen automatically on its own just because something bad happened. And I think as a result, we often draw the wrong conclusions from the failure because we don't have the ability to tolerate that discomfort. So it's like, I see this all the time with people I work with in business. They, like, launch a new product and they're like, well, it failed because the copyright was bad. Like, no, probably not. Like, it probably failed because there were a lot of other things that weren't optimized here. But it's easy to say the copywriting was bad or when you deal with an athlete who struck out, it's like, well, I should have swung at that pitch. Like, maybe. But there's probably a lot of other things that could have gone on to making this a more successful at bat. And so it's not to say, like, again, that it's impossible. It's just to point out that it actually is a skill you have to develop if you really do want to learn from failure and if you want to learn how to not have failure stinks.

So much of this is why I can't watch sport sports talk shows anymore and how they've been so corrupted and terrible and none of it is nuanced. It's solely who wants it more and.

All this other garbage.

And I Continuously find myself. The more I interview people on, you.

Know, on the podcast, the more I.

Dive into, you know, my own, you know, psychology research. It's very hard for me to interact with people who aren't deep thinkers or aren't able to kind of think more about why certain things happen and like, kind of connect the dots. Am I going to drive myself crazy with this?

It sounds like you already are.

Yeah. Do you want to answer your own question? I mean, there's a.

Well, I'll say this. It's like I'm fine. Like, it's, I'm trying to find more people that I enjoy speaking with. And it's like in some ways, honestly, it's kind of like I'm changing my, my circle or my Mount Rushmore, whatever you want to call it. My inner, like my group of people that I, I confide in is changing, but I'm still surrounded by a lot of people. I'm just like, I don't know how you make it day to day. And it's, you know, I'm trying to think from an athlete's perspective. It's like sometimes you can't pick your team. So it's like, how do you get out of that and try and be less isolated?

I feel like they do have some control over their circle outside of their team. I mean, I've like, I mean, I've realized that I've gotten older, my circle has gotten exponentially smaller. Add kids into the mix and it does get smaller. Smaller kids are a great excuse to do nothing. It's like, oh, yeah. Do you want to come do it? Oh, can't, sorry. Kid's birthday. Oh, sorry. You know, but you know, I've found, honestly, Colin, like, if we really are looking at it from this, the team thing, like, I get it, like you're going to have personalities and people that like each other and I think you'll recognize teammates or people that you can go to for feedback or who you can be honest with versus who you can't. And I think that's any high performance culture and dynamic environment for the average person who's listening. I do think as an adult, you need to audit your circle. You need to identify people that. And again, doesn't have to be all the same archetype of person having like only your friends be the ones that are just like giving you the hard feedback. Like sometimes I like just like to hang out with my friend who I know we're not going to talk about anything work related and like, that's totally Cool. Or just like, you know, I know this is like on a. This is like a comedian talked about this, but it's like when me and my buddies go and play golf, it's just like, you know, we'll get back and my wife will just be like, oh, so like, what's going on with like, blah, blah, Blah's family and this and that? I'm like, I have no clue. We didn't talk about that. We didn't ask each other any personal questions whatsoever. We listened to Spotify, we hit the golf balls, we joked around. Sometimes I feel like just having people like that are really important. And then there's the professional circles you keep. While Alex and I might not text each other all the time, I like to read his stuff on social media. I like to read certain guys that post articles and things like that. I identify individuals that I know are just good at what they do and, or way better than me. And I'm like, I want to look and follow those people around to try to better myself too. I don't think it has to be this influencer thing where it's like, only surround yourself with the best people and the people who are 10 times better than you. I think it's about knowing what you need as a person and finding ways to get those types of people in your lives, whatever that might be.

Yeah, I think you're. I love the way you're thinking about it, Brian. And like, to me, I think broadly conscious curation of your own environment is like, really, you know, important for your own performance. And people are part of your environment. And if you're like, you know, an average athlete, let's say, signing up for club sports, right? Like, maybe you can't pick your teammates, but you can choose who you hang out with after practice and you can have a conversation with your parents, like, hey, don't sign me up for a play date with that guy. You know, I don't really want to. If you're in the locker room, you can choose, like, who you go out to dinner with and who you don't go out to dinner with. And of course, there are going to be times when, like, it's probably better if the whole team goes to dinner, right? And that sends one message. But there are also times when it's okay, like if you're in a different level playing stage of life, to just go with a couple people who understand you. So I think that's important. And then I think, you know, Brian raises a really interesting concept, which is like this idea of your environment also being people who you may not necessarily know personally, but who you admire or look up to and are people that you would want to sort of, like, learn from anyway, right? So we all kind of have models like that where it's like, you know, as a kid, it was like the person you thought was a superhero. You know, you, like, wanted to be Superman when you grew up or Batman. And, like, you try to emulate some of that. And as you grow up, that becomes like, you know, a particular person in a profession. Like, I really looked up to Daniel Kahneman. I don't know. Didn't know him at all. But the way he thinks, the way he writes, the way that he is sifting through information in the world, how he thinks about making mistakes, like, that stuff is really interesting. And by reading a bunch of his stuff, interacting with a bunch of his stuff, he sort of became like a distant mentor, right? Like someone who I learned from by absorbing a lot of what it is. And so I think you can also choose to find people like that that you want to work toward being more similar to that you can kind of emulate, and they become a of your environment and shape a little bit of the way that you behave. So it doesn't all have to be about, like, acquiescing to the people who are most immediate to you. And also, you know, last thing I'll say is, I think we're generally much more passive in the construction of our environment than we need to be. This is particularly true with athletes, but also true with managers. Like, the same concept of managing up applies in sports, and we're pretty reluctant to give feedback to a coach or give feedback to a gm or give feedback to another player who's higher up on the totem pole. But if you need something done, a specific way for you to perform well, like, you have a responsibility to share that a little bit. And that doesn't mean be an asshole. It means, you know, communicate clearly what it is that you need and why what's going on right now is or is not working. And I think that's a part of creating an environment or dealing with a team you don't want to be on. For example, that we overlook. Right. You're, like, assigned to this group of kids, and this is who you're going to play with. Well, like, that doesn't mean you can't talk to the coach about, like, look, I played really well with this guy, and I feel really connected to him or her, whatever it might be. And I'd like To explore that a little bit more. I'd like to play more with them. Right, you can make it about that. Versus like, Tommy over here is a real jerk and I never want to be on the field with him at the same time. But people just often don't give that feedback. They just assume, oh, it's not my job to tell the coach what to do. But like, coaches know, coaches know a lot. But a coach can't read your mind. A coach can't tell you who you're going to be great with or know exactly how you feel at any given point. So you have a responsibility at any level of performance really to give that feedback and help shape a little bit of what's going on.

Do you believe in momentum or the hot hand? Or do you think everything is kind of like its own isolated event?

There's two types of momentum that I think about, Colin. So I'm going to give you my soapbox here if that's okay. So hot hand, hot handed. No.

Right.

I mean, there is this idea like there's tons of papers on the hot hand fallacy. You know, some of it is, is I think like situational. I think there is increased confidence in those situations which can help performance. But I don't think that that necessarily makes your odds better. And if you actually watch like a high volume of something like shooting a basketball in the hot hand, like, you'll see the hot hand doesn't really exist. But what you'll also see is a bunch of really confident shooters, you know, and that's okay. Like I want that. I'm okay with you if you're feeling good. I'm okay with you taking a few more shots. I'd rather that than give it to the guy who doesn't feel great and ask him to jack up a three. Like that's not a good situation either. But I think the idea that like you're running really hot and so just keep feeding them while it, it sort of like makes some intuitive sense that just date the data just doesn't bear it out as a thing that we should say really exists. And so it's like hard for me to get to I believe in the hot hand when we just know that the hot hand is not a real thing. But all that said, I do know that there's also good data that shows stacking successes is predictive of future success. And so there's this interesting idea and that gets also to building self efficacy and building confidence. Right. And so when I say I believe in momentum, I do Believe that if you stack. Good decision, good decision, good decision, good decision. Not necessarily good outcome, but good process. Good process, good process. That, that can lead to increasing confidence and increasing success over time.

I mean, I'm not going to push back on any of that because I just, I honestly disagree with it. I mean I, I, you know, you hear the phrases in baseball, it's like, oh, they're seeing the ball really well. It's like okay, well yeah, they're, they're, they're seeing the ball, right? Yeah. So like the confidence of like I hit a, hit a home run yesterday.

And hit a home.

We have had some players like that this year where they're just like, just hitting non stop. I mean the season averages out just like the way that 162 game season should and would average out. But I fall back a lot more on some of the stuff that Alex is talking about just in relation to self efficacy. Just like understanding their personal experience where they're actually getting their confidence and their competence actually from fixated on the process. Again, even for us, we're not pushing the outcome result, we're pushing the process result of like did you swing at strikes? Did you swing at balls where you could do damage? Did you barrel the ball, did you hit it hard? And in baseball you can do all of that and still get out. And so it's like you put those things together as many times as possible, you will most likely have the result that you're looking for. And that's part of the stacking process that we're actually, I can't wait to.

Send this clip to. I was having an argument with one of my best friends who's in higher up in a professional organization and we were arguing to the death about this point. And I'm in agreeance with you both.

So.

And Alex, you, you've used the word data a lot to kind of wrap this up, this conversation. What is good science and what is bad science? And I know this could be its own topic in general, but I do think it's important to at least at a high level understand what's good science and what's bad science.

We don't really have enough time. I mean there's all different types of science too, right? Like there's, there's sort of this idea of like personal experiments where you have to figure out what works for you. There's qualitative experiments that give you like a sense of, you know, thematic insights and then there's quantitative stuff that all has varying degrees of quality to it right from like a true experiment with control group all the way down to like, look, anecdotally we observed this. I think what I'm really looking for that makes for good science is repeated results on the same concept over time. You know, and sometimes we don't have that yet because it's very new. Like we're just starting to look into a particular concept. But oftentimes you can find sort of like adjunct or related concepts in other fields. Like one of the things I really enjoy reading about is management because there's so many parallels between good management and good coaching. But we don't really think of management as coaching research. Right. And so that's where you can get some really unique insights about like what is the real impact of a leader relaxing after work on their team's performance the next day? Well, we don't have that data in sports because I know zero coaches who want to fill out that survey. But there are lots of managers who want to answer that question and want to talk about that. And you can reason by analogy and sort of assume like there's something here. It's not a perfect one to one parallel, but it's close. And so that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for sort of like thematic repeated results that allow me to understand like, all right, if we see this enough, we have some confidence that what's going on here is going to work.

I don't have much to say about the data part besides the fact that I think that this. Again, I'm not trying to go on a tangent here, but I mean, I think.

Alex, please go on a tangent.

No, I think Alex knows how I feel in relation to just the landscape and space of mental performance right now. You know, the cnpc, which is a certified mental performance consultant through the association of Applied Sports Psychology, has, I am hoping, and I think we are seeing is starting to become the baseline credential for mental performance. And like the education, understanding of scope of boundaries and practice, the understanding of research, the understanding of physiology, the understanding of exercise fizz, the understanding of psych mythology and things like that, that is the basis and foundation for mental performance. Coaching for sports psychology. And a professional sports organization would never just let somebody who enjoys lifting weights just go and program for their players and say that person's strength and conditioning coach and working with athletes in their mind should be no different just like that. We would never let somebody who just watches Grey's Anatomy be the medical doctor for them either.

You know what I mean?

And so as you talk about data and you talk about research, it really, in my opinion, puts in that scientific practitioner model of what mental performance coaching is. And of course, there's so much nuance to it. There's counseling components to it, there's field components to it, there's being, whatever, all that stuff. But I just can't emphasize enough the importance of that and the importance of hiring qualified practitioners to do the work. And I'm lucky enough to do a decent bit of interaction with the commissioner's office in Major League Baseball and educating them on what the CNPC is, educating them on baseline credentials, educating them on the difference between mental performance and mental health and where it intersects and so on and so forth. And so as a field, I'm excited about the way things are going and where it's trending. We still have a little bit of work to do. But I just, again, on the data part, it's like that's what this world is actually about, based in research.

So what's new?

What's coming down the pipeline in the mental skills, you know, psychology world? What's some of the new research telling us?

There's lots of stuff. I think what you're going to start to see, hope, is a little more thoughtful, structured, sequential way of thinking about how you help people perform based on what we know about how the brain works. So a lot of what we had in sort of like version one through, I don't know what version you think we're on, Brian. I think we're maybe like version 20 of sports. You know, whatever was going on in those versions, you know, a lot was based on kind of like the cognitive behavioral model of how people function. And there's some merit to the CBT model, but it's not a perfect model. Right. Nor is any model that we have. And I think what we're starting to learn is, you know, the brain is not the reactive mechanism we always thought it was. Like we're starting to learn the brain is kind of consciously continuously predicting what it thinks is going to happen next based on past experience and the current information that we have. And so I think the next iteration of sports I is going to leverage that science to figure out what does that mean for how we help someone perform better. Because really, what you're trying to figure out is how do you help someone make better predictions? And that may be we need to correct the working model. That may be we need to figure out what other information we attend to in a current circumstance to improve performance. Right now, it may Be that we need to learn a new skill. But I think a lot of what I've seen in sports before today has been like, well, you know, you've got performance anxiety here, like the five pills you take. And, you know, we'll see you in a few weeks, like, good luck, you know, meditate and you'll feel better. And like, sure, meditation might be helpful in some cases. It might also be harmful in some cases. And so we really have to be thoughtful. And so I think what you're going to see is a more conscious construction of programming around that kind of work and a real understanding of what is the underlying principle behind an intervention that's driving real change here. Right? So, like, you see, I'll use one example and then I'll shut up. But you see studies about imagery, right? And everyone talks about imagery as like, well, your brain's imagining it, and so therefore it's getting a rep and it's kind of like directionally correct. But what I think is really happening is your brain is creating a richer mental model of the possibilities of that experience. And that mental model is informing possible future predictions about what you do in a similar situation. And so that is how it's working. It's not working because you sat there and imagined bicep curls and now you're getting stronger, or you imagined yourself running up and down the field, and now you can run down the field. What actually happened is your idea of what could happen in a performance got better. You have different information to sort through. And if you do it repeatedly, you're going to keep enriching that mental model up until a certain point. Right. And I've worked with athletes, as I'm sure you have, Brian, who really likes. Can't imagine much more, right. Like, it's as good as it's going to get, sort of threshold. And so that suggests, like, the model's pretty good and maybe we need to try something else. And so I think if we could start to link back to some of those principles about how the brain works, you're going to start to see even bigger increases in the value of what we do. And so I think you'll see things like starting with learning to regulate your nervous system more effectively as the foundation for performance. Because if you have a dysregulated nervous system, it changes your perception, it changes what information you're seeking. And so you can start down the, like, let's do imagery path. But that's not going to help you if you're super wound up, right. To figure out how to like link them together in a meaningful way in ways that we just haven't as a field yet. In part because we didn't have this data until not all that long. Right?

Yeah. I mean, from a higher level perspective. And I agree wholeheartedly with Alex. I do think like the connection between how we're viewing what we're physically doing and then how our brain's actually working needs to be just like the couple layers deeper. I think we've gotten caught up in just saying some phrases that have gotten a little bit out of hand and a little stretch from the actual research and literature. I know I've probably been guilty of it too. Just in just like comes right out. You just say it because that's just what we've been taught. I do think that this might not be the way of the future. This is. I believe this is happening now, but I think it's going to be more pronounced. But mental performance coaching, sports psychology, however you want to phrase it, I think is starting to be seeped into and integrated into the principles of instruction, pedagogy, skill acquisition spaces and places where people are playing in those areas. And just like the coach part of it, people get so stuck on the performer, the athlete and the coach is like there is just this world of just work that is ready to be done with the coaching staff, with the managers of the groups and yeah, dope to get the CEOs and the VPs and the executives. It's awesome. But if you want to really fucking change, you want to change an entire group, get after the managers, get after that group right there that are just touching the employees constantly day in and day out. And so I just think there's some unique places to play around in our field in those areas. I think the pedagogy part, the principles of instruction, skill acquisition research is freaking fascinating. And there's just so much overlap with where we are in our field. I just think it's untapped. Don't get me wrong. Working for the military, working in pro sports, very cool. There is just some untapped work out there that, that I think people over the next five to 10 years are going to really start to find a very sweet space in that. I know some of us already are school.

Oh, I can't wait to see how our perception of what potential could be will change. But that's a conversation for another day. Appreciate you guys both so much for coming on. Go be with your kids. If people want to find you, they want to reach out to you if you guys want to want to promote anything, please take the time to do so.

Well, thanks Colin for having me. And Brian, this was fun man. We should do this, do this more often. It's been a while since I've seen you. You can find me on Social at alexauerbackphd on LinkedIn and X what was formerly Twitter I think is how you're supposed to call it now. And then recently started a mindset coaching business called Momentum Labs. You can find us at momentumlabs coach. Appreciate the opportunity again, Colin.

Yeah Colin, it's been great to connect again Alex, as always, awesome. Thanks to chat in person and catch up. Hopefully I see you at ASP this year in Vegas. I'm a pretty standard social media guy. On Instagram and Twitter it's Brian C. Miles. I've got my LinkedIn you can just find me under Brian Miles. It's a few years old but I've been trying to get Lauren Johnson and Justin Su and I to maybe do a run back of the mindset show 2.0 but if people haven't seen the first one, we put together a 10 episode show on YouTube called the Mindset Show. But yeah, otherwise man, I, I can't tell you how, how cool this is for, for Alex and I, Colin. Like we always see each other and like not just Alex and I but like people in our field. We see each other at conferences or social media but we don't oftentimes get a chance just to like riff on content together. It certainly like reinvigorates me of just like this is like you just want to get after it more like you, it makes you want to spend more like yeah, I gotta dive into this or get into this. So you know, I appreciate you giving us a platform and an opportunity to do that. It's, it's been a blast.

Appreciate the kind words. Can't thank you guys enough listeners. Subscribe Download. Five stars only, baby. Thanks guys.

Sam.