Perform Podcast #2: Steve Magness

I'm Alex Auerbach and I'm a performance psychologist with experience working in the NBA, NFL with elite military units and Fortune 5 executives. I'm excited to bring you the Perform podcast where we unlock and uncover the principles and practices of health and high performance for teams, individuals and organizations so that you can be your best when it matters most. Super excited to be joined by Steve Magnus today. Steve, how are you, Alex?

I'm doing great. Thanks so much. Really looking forward to this, Alex.

Likewise. This has been a long time coming from our budding Twitter friendship to live podcast buddies here. Here we are. Before we jump in, tell the audience a little bit about you and your background and we'll jump in.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think the simplest place to start is my background. I got my sporting background is I was a good runner. I was a 401 miler in high school who had dreams of Olympics and all that stuff and then didn't measure up or improve whatsoever. And I mentioned that because I think that shapes what I did with my career, which is at first I was not interested in anything academically and just simply went to college because I wanted to run. And after I stopped and proving, I started to actually be interested in things. So it first started out with the physiology of sport. So my undergrad and graduate degree are both in exercise physiology, and that was mainly to understand what went wrong in my own training and performance. And then somewhere along that line, I realized quickly that like the physiology didn't explain everything. So I got interested in basically everything else from the mental performance psychology to anything that touch performance. And that kind of shaped what I've done since, which is first I was in athletic coaching and track and field, and then I ventured outside of that into what I do now, which is like writing and consulting work on basically anything performance related from the, from the physical all the way to the mental. So that's me.

I wish I could run a 401 mile. That would probably be an incredible experience to have. And in many ways I'm on the inverse journey of you. Right. Like I started as a psychologist and I'm curious about all these other performance elements. So it's very cool to be sharing this space with you. I know you've recently written a book, released a book called Do Hard Things. It's fantastic. I really enjoyed it myself. What was the genesis of that?

You know, it started, I think, a long time ago. We tend to write the books that we need and like Do Hard Things is all about kind of redefining mental Toughness. And that's the subject that I've been thinking about for a really long time. I mean, quite honestly, I remember as like a 15 year old budding runner running cross country. My go to was essentially like, oh, I'm going to be tougher than you. I'm just going to be able to suffer more than you. Because that's like what we thought were. And I remember so many races where, you know, when things were going down, you are going well, you'd like dig down, you'd reach down and be like, okay, time to suffer and you do it. But then there were other points where you'd be like, okay, time to put my head down and push through this. And you'd reach down and literally nothing was there. And if that was the only tool you had in your toolbox, you were going to fall apart and, and fail. And I had races where I just fall apart and didn't do well. And I think that kind of stuck with me because I always had been sold this kind of like old school model of like, you know, whenever pain comes, ignore discomfort, like just push it away and just push through. And I quickly realized in my own running capacity, like that didn't always work. Like it failed a lot actually. And when it did fail, all it did was make you kind of feel like, oh, like I'm weak, I'm useless, like what's wrong with me? I'm a head case, all that stuff. And fast forward, you know, decades from there. I think what really, you know, set me out to write this book now is I wanted to give like coaches and other individuals a kind of updated version of like, hey, hey, like we don't have to do this stuff that maybe your high school or junior high football or basketball or track coach made you do to get better or to become quote unquote tougher. We have a much more nuanced understanding of that topic and that idea now. So I really wrote it for people who almost like a younger me or even a younger coach me was like, hey, I had no idea what I was doing and you just copy what you've done and, and I wanted to kind of, you know, shift the narrative a little bit.

So now having written the book, what's your definition of mental toughness?

You know, that's the, should be the easiest question. But it's like this nebulous catch all. But the way I like to frame it is pretty simple, is like you feel some sort of discomfort, that could be stress, that could be pain, that could be fatigue. What it could be anything, just discomfort. And then you navigate through it to take wise action. And the reason I kind of frame it that way is like, I think a navigating is really important because whenever we feel some sort of stress or discomfort, our brains kind of go to is like, hit the eject button and just like find a solution quickly. And I think navigate kind of tells us, hey, we need to learn how to create space to get through the spot. And then I say, wise action because, like, we never know what the best way through is. We never know what actually being tough means unless we look retrospectively. And what I mean by that is, I'll give you an example is like, I could think I'm being tough by like, you know, oh, I'm going to push hard here and suffer through this pain. But if that pain was my body saying, hey, you're about to tear a hamstring, then the tough decision would have been to like, stop, pause, and listen to that. Because the wise decision was, don't tear a hamstring or whatever have you. So, so that's why I kind of frame it as like that decision making where it's not just like, put your head down, it's like, hey, step back, create some space so that you can work your way through whatever you're feeling and get to the other side and then look back and either say, hey, that worked, or learn from it.

So much of this resonates for me because I think, you know, especially playing football growing up, soccer, you know, these sports where you do have a little bit more of that, you know, coach how you were coached. I think the idea of toughness has often been pushed through no matter what, you know, and you see that even on the scientific side, right? There's like 70 something definitions of mental toughness that all sort of revolve around this loose concept of just keep pushing. And one, it's like not always effective, right? It's not always the right decision. Two, it's like pretty myopic. And three, it's not usually a good strategy. I mean, there are a lot of other potential ways to get through something challenging. And I know you're familiar with this research, but the research done with Navy seals on mindsets and stress mindsets shows that actually the people who try to will their way through it and just keep pushing our worst teammates. And so maybe in a sport like track and field, that's okay if you're out there kind of running by yourself, but you also have teammates in that sport. But certainly in a sport like football or soccer or basketball, this kind of one size fits all, just keep bulldozing ahead is very rarely the best way to do it.

You know, I'm glad you brought that out, because I think what it gets at is something that's very, you know, never discussed, really, and. And what I wanted to get at in the book, which is like, the nuance of all these things, the way I kind of summarize it is like, everything works and doesn't, right? It's. It's all kind of situational. And what I tell athletes and coaches and practitioners is like, whenever you're going through something that, you know, some sort of performance thing is, the reality is you want to have as many tools at your, you know, at your exposure as you can, right? So that I don't just have a hammer and say, hey, I'm going to push through this, and if it doesn't work, like, I'm screwed. Instead, you want to have all these different capacities because sometimes, like, you know, that stress mindset, as you said, maybe you're running an individual race, like, that could work well. But if, like, your teammates are relying on you and you have to be selfless instead of selfish, like, that approach isn't going to work. And so much of that is for everything. It's the same with, you know, the example I like to give is like, how Michael Jordan tended to kind of motivate himself, right? He took everything personal. He turned every single thing possible into, like, a slight against him. And for him, that motivated him and made him a little kind of petty and maybe bitter years later, but, like, it worked to make him one of the greatest of all time. If I tried to do that, it probably wouldn't work. I'd probably be miserable and probably choke because if everything felt personal, I. I'd be like, oh, my gosh, like, everything is on the line. I just talk trash to whoever. And if. If, you know, I don't make this shot or win this race, like, I'm going to feel like I'm exposed in a failure. And all that pressure would have overwhelmed me. It didn't Jordan, but it would have me. So I think that, that. That that's where we get to the nuance of understanding that lots of things work and lots of things don't. And a lot of times it's like being aware and familiar with kind of when things tend to work more and then the individual sitting in front of you so that, like, they have the tools that might help them in this situation.

Absolutely. I mean, I'VE been. I remember the very first kind of like, keynote performance talk I gave, and the highlight that I ended up coming up with was like, I think high performers are just the performers who know what skills to use in what context. I don't really think it's more complicated than that. Of course, there's lots of layers to that.

Right.

But ultimately it's, it's not really just do the same thing over and over. And one of the things that I really liked about what you wrote about was you took these, like, you know, popular stories. You're doing it now with Michael Jordan, right?

You.

You talk about these experiences or times in sport where people, like, idolized this particular event. The one that jumps out to me is the, the football event, of course, where you're kind of just running guys into the ground and we weading out the bad guys. And I've. I've seen a Twitter duel you had about this. I'm not going to name any names here, but I really thought those kinds of examples were illuminating throughout the book because it illustrated one, I think our tendency to just read stuff like that and be like, yes, of course, that makes a ton of sense. What a brilliant idea. And not really question what else might have been going on. And obviously some of that's how the information is presented and all that, but some of it's just our own tendency to accept this great football team did it. Maybe we should do that too. I'm curious, kind of how you teased through that to arrive at this more nuanced approach without, you know, buckling to the typical stories that we've all been told about how sports should be done.

You know, I think part of it is that's like my tendency and my personality. So the first book I ever wrote, which I self published, was this, this, this tome that I wrote actually in grad school. It came out of. Came out of a failed thesis or a thesis that I had to abandon where I had 100 pages of stuff written on basically the physiology of running. And then a couple years later, I was going through some stuff and was like, okay, I need to put a book out, be financially in a better place. So I wrote a book called the Science of Running. And in that I wrestled with half the book is like just hardcore nerding out science. And then the second half of the book is like, forget the science. Like, this is the history of coaching and how coaches do it. And sometimes that goes against the science, and sometimes that is correct to go against the science. So part of me has Always been this person who wrestles with like, yeah, yeah, my background is this, but I'm going to put this hat on over here to see it from different angles. And I think in writing the stories that you talk about, one of my favorite to research was the Paul Bear Bryant Junction Boys story. Mainly because I'm from Texas, so everybody knows that story here. And also my wife went to Texas A and M and I give her a hard time. So it was a nice time to rib on Texas A and M a little bit because that's where Junction Boys and Paul Bear Bryant story took place. But I love playing with the nuance there because I want to see like from different angles of like, hey, we've, we've sold this story, we've interpreted it one way, we've gone this classic route, but is there something that we've forgotten here? And more often than not, when you look at whether it's research or science or stories, what happens is, generally what happens is we cut the messy details out and then just get left with like the, hey, this is kind of right, but it makes for a good story. So I like, I guess the long, long answer to your question here is I seek those things out. Whenever I see a kind of like so what? Or just write kind of story. I say, hmm, I wonder if there's more to this or if we can have a different framing towards it or how would I interpret this if I was looking at it from, you know, a perspective as a psychologist or you know, a physiologist or a track coach or whatever it is, you try and put different hats on so that you could see it through a different lens so that maybe, maybe there's like something new to come out of it. And I was, I was lucky, I think, to a degree in the research where I found a lot of things where I'm like, oh, this is the traditional path, but like if we shine a different light on it, it tells a different story.

What did you uncover with the Junction Boys story?

So that one was, that was again one of my favorites. And what it was is traditionally the Junction Boys story is told as like this heroic tale where Paul Bear Bryant went to Texas A and M, had a horrible team and took them all to Junction, Texas, which is literally the middle of nowhere and hot summer, miserable, took them to a camp, they came in on three buses, the story goes, or two buses, whatever it is, and came back on one because so many people quit. And there's a book, popular book, best selling book, written about it, ESPN movie written about it. And the story is essentially one of like, tough people survive. And that's what led to them winning a couple years down the line. But the real story was they were absolutely horrible that year and they started winning when they got better recruits. So I think in their, their big season a couple years later, there was maybe seven players, eight players, something like that from the Junction team still left, which is still important. But the bulk of the team came afterwards and a lot of really good athletes quit who went on to, you know, one went on to be a very good baseball player to switch sports and said, forget this, like I'm going to go do a sport that is fun, that I can excel at. Another went on to become like a war hero in the military. So obviously like they were tough enough to survive the military and do great things. So. And what that story told us is it's not that the tough ones survive. Is that often what happens in those weeding out situations is we just weed out people who don't have better options. And it's not a development thing. It's, oh, okay, these people survived. Yes, it might be pretty tough, but they didn't have the option to switch to baseball or go join the military or do something else. And the players talked about this years ago. They said it was either stick with football or, you know, at that point go back and work on the farm with my family, which was going to be miserable. So I stuck with football. So it wasn't like this, hey, this is how you create tough teams. But for so long, especially in football, but also in other sports in Texas especially, we've kept that narrative like, hey, you want a tough team, Go create or mimic your own version of the Junction Boys Camp. Like do crazy things in preseason camp and your team will be tough. And it just doesn't work.

I've seen these crazy preseason things you're talking about, right? I mean, I've seen the military groups come out and put a group of 18 to 22 year old kids through some crazy log PT as though this is somehow transferable to sport. And we should, you know, this is going to give us all the answers we need to who belongs on the team and who doesn't. And it reminds me of, you know, David Epstein's book Range and the grit study he talks about with the military where a lot of the people leaving, you know, the easy explanation is all the folks who stick around are just grittier, right? And that predicts cadet performance. Maybe a better answer or more nuanced answer is the People who stick around are the people who don't have any better options and the people who go, go find better matches. Right. Like the baseball player or the military member. And that concept of match quality I think rings true here as well.

Absolutely. I'm going to give you a behind the scenes. I don't think I've talked about this but years ago when I was coaching collegiately we had the athletic department had one of those like military things come in and I remember protesting and I was like, we can't do this. Like it was. And it was for the women. They said we have, we have. The behind the scenes was like our women teams need to be tougher, blah, blah, blah. Like we're going to have the military come in and do like, you know, as you said, log carries, all this stuff. And it was right at the beginning of our cross country season and I remember going in and saying we can't do this. Like I have a bunch of 18 to 22 year old cross country women and if you look at them like they're very like they're very petite and thin because that's what a cross country athlete is generally. And I was like, we don't have a problem of toughness because like our sport is literally suffering. Like we learn how to suffer at practice all the time because it's like what you do. And we went in this argument and I lost it of course. And then what happened is one of our top, our actually our top female recruit who was like state champion all this and that got injured and missed the season because they were carrying a log and they hadn't done any strength training in high school whatsoever. They just kind of ran. And those are the. I remember being so upset about those. But that's generally what tends to happen is we see situations like that and we forget about that. That transferability is that yeah, to a degree. Doing difficult things outside of sport like might give us some general qualities there. But if I'm already training that quality in a different manner, such as going to run 400 meter repeats or doing a whatever long run and being alone in my head, I probably don't need to get quote unquote tougher with carrying locks.

I wish that the story you just told wasn't true of a story that I also lived. But you know, my time in college athletics was marked by some of that too. And I think what I always left with was this idea that you know, when a kid left, right, they quit the experience or they walked away from it. To me it wasn't really about toughness. It was like, why should they care about this? Like, why should they care about how neatly they organize their cleats on a sideline randomly for this one day? Why should they care about carrying this log? Like what is actually in it for them beyond this completely manufactured test that really serves the coaches sense of who's tough, right? You're asking and answering a completely different question than the one you're really trying to get at. You're conflating kids surviving this experience with kids caring about and being willing to persevere in sport and it ends up with injuries, it ends up with disdain for your coach. It ends up with a lot of unpleasant, unhappy student athletes.

And you know, this is why I love, you know, I'm biased, I love running, I love track. But I think this is why it, it gets at this, this, this topic really well. Because if I put an athlete in a race that they love, that they, they are motivated by that they are like enthused to do, that person is going to like suffer like crazy to do it, right? They're going to go through the depths of hell and cross that finish line and be splayed out on the track or maybe even throwing up and just emptying. If I put that same exact person and I put them through something that they don't think is valuable or haven't shown to be valuable or is kind of, you know, in their head useless or what have you, they're going to quit very early, right? If I take someone and make them do, and I've seen this, if I take a distance runner and make them do burpees all day, they're going to quit if they think this is just stupid. I'm being punished because of xyz. It doesn't have anything to do with their perseverance or what have you. It has to do with that care. And I think so often as you pointed out there, we forget that as coaches and we mistake that. So what we do is we look for small stupid things that don't actually matter instead of the big things of how do you act when you're performing the tasks that like you say you want to do whatever, playing a position or game or running a race, like those are the things I look for. Not, you know, did you put your shoes up perfectly on the sideline or what have you. Like that doesn't tell me anything actual about the performance that matters.

You use the word punishment and it's one of the things that rang true for me in reading this book was the whole, and I'm sure you've seen this, the whole exercise is punishment debate and discussion. And so I can't think of a better person to take this discussion up with than you because of what you've just written and what you're describing. This idea about this is pointless. Why am I doing this? This is not creating some additional investment in sport. As you wrote the book. Did exercise as punishment come up for you? Was that something you started to think about and I guess what other things from your coaching experience also started to be illuminated as problematic or misguided?

Again, we write the books that we need or want to based on our experience. So so much of it is you see and observe things and you say, that's probably not good. And exercise as punishment is one of those things. At various levels, from high school to college to professional, I'd see in a variety of sports exercise be used as punishment. And I always saw that as wrong. And I think the research holds this out because what it does is it generally shifts your motivation to bad place. Like, what do you learn when after you don't do something, well, you're told to go run laps or do intervals or like, do, you know, suicides or burpees or whatever the exercise punishment is? You learn that running laps is bad and something that I need to avoid. And like, you're essentially ingraining avoidance motivation. Like, don't screw up because I'm going to be punished if I screw up. And I think that's such a poor thing to ingrain over the long haul. And again, this was relatively clear to me on the kind of running side, because, like, what, you know, I learned this early on, I'm like, what am I going to do? You're already running. If we're talking college kids, you're running 90 miles a week with, you know, two intense workouts a week. What am I going to do? Say, hey, you showed up late, Go run some more, like, that's your sport. Or you showed up late. I'm going to make you do this exercise, which then, because exercise is literally our sport, you're going to be sore and fatigued tomorrow. So you're not going to get the training adaptation that we want out of the workout that is supposed to get you better. It just doesn't work. So you have to find different ways to like, motivate than the kind of cliche exercises punishment. I mean, most of the things that I found like, that were, that came from two things. A, they were like the old school. What I'd call the military approach, which is like, you know, coming from the 1940s 50s version of the military, which is like authoritarian, dictator, I'm in control. And the coach made them do X, Y and Z exercise or punishment or what have you, because it was about control and authority of the coach. Most of it came from that. And there were a number of instances. But in the back of my head while I'm writing this thing, I'm not going to lie, I had instances where I'm like, oh yeah, remember when I saw person X do X, Y and Z? And then I'd write in general about that and how it probably doesn't work. Well.

I'm glad that you're sharing this and I can appreciate. I read your book and I felt the same, right. Like, oh, I've seen this, um, and I definitely agree with the militaristic approach and, and that being I think a bit overplayed. I mean I like, I've always been a person who just despises the false parallel between sport and war. You know, I think it's like absolute absurdity. But there's a ton of, you know, people who I think really subscribe to that. I think for honestly probably some good reasons, right. Some of the ideas around like loyalty team above all else having a core set of values that then morph into these other punitive, negative sort of ways of doing things that just cloud your ultimate vision. And the one thing I want to add on the exercises punishment thing that I always thought was interesting for the non track sports was not only are you conditioning people to be like averse or conditioning that aversive motivation like you described, you're actually conditioning people to avoid the very thing you want them to do. Right. You're training people to not want to exert effort like you're, you're training them to hate working out basically. And every time they show up in the gym and you want them to get motivated for a lift, they're going to have to swim upstream against their natural tendency to want to avoid that. Because you've just told them that usually when I've done something bad, physical activity comes next. Not when I've done something bad. Someone will approach me with kindness and ask like, hey, what was that about? What do you think would be a realistic way to be held accountable? How could we better manage this next time so this doesn't happen and you really get to the root of the problem solving, which I think is sort of the ideal outcome here.

Absolutely. I mean one is kind of covering up the problem. And the other is like, getting to a solution. And I think that it's far easier as a coach. And I get it. Like, I understand it. I've done things like this in the past where it's far easier to just be like, all right, I'm going to tell this athlete what to do, command them what to do, instead of investigate and explore. But more often not if you investigate and explore, you get to, oh, this is the root cause. This is why you didn't show up, you know, until five minutes later, you skip this or like your grades have been suffering or whatever the quote, unquote, bad thing is happening. And when you explore, you get, you get to an actual answer and then you can come up with solutions that don't just involve, like, telling this person or like creating this hatred of exercise or giving effort, which is absolutely. Because if you ever watch things like the exercises, punishment, it's like people going through the motions and trying to give the least amount of effort without being called out on it, versus what we want to be able to do, which is, as you said, is like train people to be able to give the maximum effort when they need to. So I, I think you're spot on. It's like you need to investigate and explore so that you can come up with a solution that works for this individual in that situation.

I'm curious, I mean, you alluded to it some, but are there any other really specific practices that you think are common that you've seen in coaching, that through your research for this book, you uncovered what you'd advise people against? Right. You know, I don't know what that would be, but I'm just trying to think if there's another thing like exercises, punishment, we should be steering people away from.

You know, I think the other one that came up, and I didn't write about it much, but that that is out there is, is how we handle losses. So too often, and you see this again at all levels, but too often after a loss, the coach thinks the best thing to do is light into the athletes, just like scream, yell, tell them they suck, blah, blah, blah, and be miserable. And I'm not going to lie, like, occasionally, very rarely, like, that might be the tool you pull out. And I'm going to use that analogy again, but I think far too often coaches pull out that tool because they feel down, they feel like, oh, I just lost this game. Like, my sense of self worth, which is tied into the sport and winning is at a low. Like, I feel down and without actually knowing it there, it's almost like, what makes them feel better? Well, I'm going to yell at these players, which like, diverts some of this blame and makes me feel like I do something. And far often, far too often what that does is it backfires. And there's some interesting research on, on, on this after losses. But generally what that does is it makes players feel pretty miserable. It causes many of them to be stressed longer. Right. And we see some of this in the research on cortisol hormones afterwards and after losses and things like that, especially in the research around rugby. But it kind of delays that you get stuck in that kind of miserable, stressed state after a loss, which you're already in because no one likes to lose. So I think far more often, instead of just going to that tool of like, you know, how do we handle losses? We be miserable. I tend to frame it as like, especially, you know, if the loss is, you know, regular season, what have you, not that big of a deal is my mind goes to, okay, how do I get these, these athletes out of that stress mode and into like, okay, we've got to just accept that happens, then learn from it and grow and get back to where we can, you know, get back to work so we can, you know, play the next game or practice so we get better for the next game. So that's another situation where I think again, far too often coaches go into light them up mode and you should be miserable mode. And I think that does a lot of athletes a disservice.

I really like your alternative suggestion too. Like, I like the concept of just thinking about it as, okay, how quickly can we essentially learn and get into what I'm hearing is almost like recovery mode. Right. We just have this big taxing stressor. We have two options. We can either like drag that out and prolong that and make the recovery harder, or we can try to kickstart the recovery process with this post game intervention, essentially. Right. That also takes a big group who's also suffering and tilts them back in the right direction. And this seems like a huge missed opportunity for coaches.

Absolutely. And you know where I see this, and I experienced this as an athlete and I probably did it, unfortunately a couple times as a coach is generally, if you went the place of like, hey, I'm going to light into these athletes and we need to be miserable, like, the body language is down. People get stuck in that stress mode more often than not. If you know something simple as if, and everyone's experienced this after a Tough loss. You go get pizza or ice cream with the team or what happens. And at first everyone's kind of moping, but by the time the pizza comes and they're eating and they're talking with each other, the mood has lightened and you're like, back to somewhat normal. I feel that that helps us get us in a place where it's like, okay, the world didn't end. We're now in, as you said, that recovery state. And now we can, like, we're in a better spot where we're going to be recovered and, you know, both physically and psychologically for, like, what has to come. And. And I think, again, it's one of those places where, where we miss. We miss it more than we.

We make it on that 100%. And the. The other thing I. I'm thinking about as I'm listening to you talk about this is some of the research that comes out around this, around watching film too, right? That shows that, you know, the more negative and critical and lighting up you do in film, the less learning you have, the more general tension, lower willingness to explore. All stuff that's very intuitive, right? Like, no one is really interested in examining their failures in the context of a place where they're going to get screamed at. But, you know, it's one of those things that is common, right? It does happen a lot. I'm mindful of time. I want to spend a few minutes with our attention turned to some of the good that came from this book because there was a lot of uncovering and demystifying things and sort of turning over some myths that I thought was really, really. So start us off with some just general practices you'd recommend on the other side of writing. Do hard things.

Oh, man, there's so many. I think, you know, a couple of the ones that really kind of resonated with me were a. How we kind of talk to ourselves. Because there's that fascinating research by Ethan Cross that looks at creating psychological distance by the way we talk to ourselves when we were going through stressful things. So what he eventually found is that, like, when we switch from first person to second or third person, we kind of decrease that emotional hit with us. And it's something that, again, as a runner, when most of the time you're just talking to yourself in your own head most of the race, it really does have like those subtle differences, have these profound effects, right? Where if I start saying, come on, Steve, like you can do that or whatever have you, that has a more profound effect. Than if I just sit there with like, first person I, I, I, I. So I thought that was really interesting. And then the, the other things that I, I, you know, in terms of takeaways that I thought were really powerful were just some of the stuff around, you know, having a sense of autonomy and control whenever you're going through tough things. And it's intuitive, right? If we feel like we have no autonomy, no control in the situation, of course we're going to be a little bit more down. But research kind of shows that we, we default towards, like, what's the point Mode. And I think this is brilliant in the athletic world, but also outside of it, because we've all been in some job or situation, especially early on, where we're like, micromanaged to, and we've all had that experience where you're just like, I could work hard, but what's the point? Like, is my boss really going to change or pay attention? Is it really going to make a difference? And even if you're quote unquote, tough and resilient or hardworking, more often than not you default to, why try? So to me, whenever I'm going through, one of the big takeaways that I found is whenever I'm going through something tough is like, I kind of break it down on like, okay, you've got to get a sense of control here. Like, what's the smallest thing that you have in this moment that you're in control of that can make a difference? And often that's something as simple as, like, you know, well, I can always give, you know, my best effort or I can in my writing career. You know what, I feel very good that no matter what I can write or sentence or two, so I'm going to, like, take that as my, my barometer for sitting down right now instead of, like, trying to write the rest of this chapter. So I think there's again, a lot of, a lot of interplay between sport and life. But that autonomy piece really kind of hit me hard.

Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. I really like the simple idea of just finding one thing that you can control as a starting point. And I think, you know, obviously we both think a lot about self determination theory, but that whole idea of, you know, in these difficult moments, figuring out just what is within your control, is there a skill you can develop or work through here? You know, what are the opportunities essentially that lie within this challenge? And I think really, you know, one of my big takeaways from your book was like, doing Hard things is a skill. Like, you can totally develop this with some practice.

I'm glad you bring that up because. Absolutely. I think too often we think, like, we assign labels and we say, oh, that person's tough or not, or that person. Unfortunately, in sport, often, like, that person's a head case or whatever negative pejorative we want to give to people. And the reality is it is a skill and you can improve it. And, like, there's tons of research on this. Individually, coaches understand this, but I think too often we just kind of push it to the side and say, hey, do you have it or not? Because, you know, maybe we didn't know how to improve it. So my hope is that, you know, reading the book, listening to this podcast, people kind of adopt that tool mindset of, like, no, I can work on developing new tools and then sharpening those so that, you know, whenever the time comes, like, maybe I'll be able to be a little bit tougher in this situation or moment.

Absolutely. And there's a ton of research on pressure training, too, and how to do that effectively that don't involve translating log PT to a soccer field and seeing what happens. But I think what you're getting at is this idea that, like, look, regularly trying and practicing, doing something challenging, deploying different skills, like seeing what works for you, taking some notes, recognizing where you were successful or not so successful, adjusting that simple process is going to be enough to build your. Essentially build your toolkit out, right?

Yeah. And I think important on that is occasionally do things where you put yourself in situations where you're not that competent and. Or you're trying skill sets or coping mechanisms that you're not very good at. You know, I learned this actually from an athlete who I coached for a long time who's Olympic trials finalists who essentially said, you know what he called it? Like, I want my head to go to a bad place every once in a while. So he'd pick a workout and he'd be like, you know, I want my head to catastrophize and ruminate and go towards all this negative stuff. And then I'm just going to try something different to get out of out, you know, get out of this headspace. And it sounds really weird and strange. And often he'd tell me this. He'd be like, hey, I'm going to try and, like, go to a bad place today. And I was like, okay. And he'd tell me that because he'd want me to know that, hey, if I can't, and I Fail. This is why I'm running slower or blow up in this workout. And I think that's, like, something, again, so powerful where we frame almost like failure is, again, this negative thing that panics us. But sometimes developing that skill is being okay, failing in practice so that you can see what happens or how you cope with, like, being in that deep, dark place or what strategies work or don't work when you're down in that dark place. So then when it comes time to, you know, game time or whatever you're performing at, like, you'll have a better inclination and understanding.

In many ways, it reminds me of that idea that practice should be harder than a game, right? Like, you're just really pushing the limits of what's possible. Reminds me of the Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin. I'm sure you've read that. But he. That was one of the first books I read. I'm like, man, this guy just, like, really pushed his own limits totally from this place of mastery, in large part, because it was like, I just kind of want to see what this is like and can't. Can I do that? And so I admire this athlete you're describing for being willing to kind of put themselves through that. If you were going to give one bit of advice, action step people can take today to start working on their capacity to do hard things, what's the one thing you want them to go do?

Oh, gosh, I would just say I, you know, I'm going to keep it simple, is choose something that is challenging in your life and consistently do that thing. And what I mean by this is, I'll give you an example from my own life, like, as you here in this, like, I used to run competitively. Now I don't. I just stay in shape. But once a week, I still either go to track or go to a hill or whatever have you, and just, like, run hard and do some intervals and what have you. Not to run faster, compete or what have you. But because that is that one thing in my head or that I am doing where it takes me to that place where I'm like, this sucks. Why are you doing this, Steve? Like, you should just quit and give up. And I think it's important to have something in there to keep that mental muscle going where it's like, okay, hi, little devil on my shoulder telling me that I suck and I should quit. It's nice to hear you again. Because if you go away from things that put you in that spot, it's almost like that mental muscle detrains a little bit and I think that's where athletics and exercise is a great thing, but you don't have to do it for that. You can have all sorts of challenges in your life that can kind of put you in that spot, but I think it's important to have something in your life where you do that.

Steve Magnus this has been awesome. Before we let you go, where can people find you, follow you and learn more about your work?

Thanks so much. I really enjoyed this conversation. You can check me out on all of social media, Twitter, Instagram, even TikTok, Steve Magness and then you can check out all my books, stevemagness.com or wherever books are sold.

We will link to a copy of the book. It's one of my favorite books that I've read in the last several months. I'm excited to do a little bit of a deep dive myself and share a little more about it on social because it was one of the few I read where I really felt like it spoke to the realities of sport and some of the real lessons people should be trying to extract from these things and not the folklore kind of hokey stuff that we typically latch onto. So I'm very grateful for you and your work. I know you also just released a new newsletter that gives us some really cool science breakdowns. So thank you for all you're doing to advance the high performance space and hopefully we see you again.

Thanks so much. I really appreciate that.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Perform podcast where we unlock and uncover the performer principles and practices of health and high performance for individuals, teams and organizations. Until next time, thanks for joining.