The Psychology of Athletic Excellence w/Dr. Alex Auerbach

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We know quality of relationships is a predictor of life satisfaction too. And people feeling like they've lived a life well. And I don't think that's any different for high performers in any industry. And again, the relationship between an athlete and a coach, for example, is really critical for high performance. The relationship between players in a team sport is really critical for high performance people. The importance of those relationships cannot be overstated because those are the people. You know, the people around us are what give us the sort of fuel that we need to keep pushing when things get hard. They motivate us in ways that we don't always know we need to be motivated. They give us alternative perspectives they help us feel supported. There's a ton that comes with having high quality connection.

Hello and welcome to the Psychology podcast where we explore the depths of human potential. Today we have Dr. Alex Oyerbakh on the show. Dr. Auerbach is a licensed counseling and sport performance psychologist who works with the best athletes in the world. Olympic champions and NBA, NFL and MLB players count on him to elevate their game. He has also worked with high performers in other domains like elite military units, Fortune 5 companies and venture backed startups. In this episode, we discuss his book called To Greatness, your personal playbook for the pursuit of excellence. Specifically, we discuss adaptive capacity, resiliency, the foundations of wellness, the role of self awareness in high performance, the importance of values identification, and the science behind confidence and self belief. Dr. Oyerbakh believes that we all have a chance to be great. We just have to answer the call. I really love his work and I know you will too. So without further ado, I bring you Dr. Alex Oyerbach. Hey, Alex Oyerbach. How are you, Scott?

I'm good. It's nice to see you.

Nice to see you. Thanks for coming on the Psychology podcast. Really been looking forward to featuring your work for a long time. Can you introduce yourself a little bit for our audience?

Definitely. But first, thanks for having me. This is kind of like a little bit of a surreal moment for me. You know, I grew up in graduate school listening to this podcast and now to be here with you is pretty cool. So thank you for having me. I am a Ph.D. counseling and sports psychologist by training. Got my doctorate in counseling psychology from North Texas and most recently was the sports psychologist for the Toronto Raptors and now for the Jacksonville Jaguars, along with one of my good friends. So I spent a lot of time helping athletes and other high performers across areas. I work with folks in private equity founders and folks in venture capital. I've worked with some musicians helping achieve peak performance and balance that with holistic wellness and becoming the best version of themselves.

I love that, as you know, I love that balance and it's. And, and it's good to see there's a trend for that balance to be appreciated among sports psychologists and among sports coaches. I've noticed a real increase in the past couple years in understanding just how important that balance is.

I think that's exactly right. And I love seeing this in coaches in particular. They're starting to think of themselves as performers, which I think is a generally good trend. But as you know, you know, the best athletes are doing a great job Balancing rest and recovery with a push for excellence. And understand that that recovery and rest and balance is actually a key part of becoming the best that they can be.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very, very well put. So, yeah, you're making me feel a bit old saying you listen to my podcast. In grad school, you say in your book you spent the last 15 years studying what enables performers to deliver consistent results and make meaningful progress toward achieving their full potential. I think that this idea of consistency is a central theme in a lot of your writings. Would you agree?

Absolutely. I think it may be the most important thing. It's definitely up there. But to show up every day and give as much as you can. Right. It's not about giving 100% every day. I think that's a bit unrealistic. But giving 100% of whatever it is you have to give every day is sort of the foundation, really, for getting good at anything.

Yes. And a lot of my research on creativity shows that creativity is not necessarily characterized by consistency. So how do you balance expertise acquisition, which does require consistency, and allowing a little spontaneity there, Alex, so that you can allow some unexpected connections to happen, or is that just irrelevant to sports?

Well, I'd be really curious how you make sense of that, because you've got an interesting background in working with creative experts, too. I mean, I do think in sports, creativity sometimes comes as a function of being really expert at what you do. And so because you put in the practice and you've seen so many different variations of what the game might look like, it does allow for a little bit of improvisation. And as you know, there are other cognitive factors that go into that, too. Right. High intelligence, for example, might make you a little bit more creative and a little less rigid on the basketball court or on the football field. And so I think you might see some of those factors play out, too. But I think consistency in training gives you that good foundation for understanding the most common ways the game might unfold and also allows you to see opportunities for being a little bit more creative and innovative. But I do think the reality in sports is we're playing from a playbook. Right. In most sports. And so there is a bit of structure. And I think the best coaches are trying to find ways to give athletes freedom within that structure, but still sort of move the mission forward in ways that perhaps like a creative artist, a painter, a writer may not have those same kind of constraints. But I don't know. You tell me. What do you make of that?

Well, I'm still formulating my thoughts about this. But let's think of some examples of some of the most artistic, creative athletes and see what separates them from the rest. I think that may be a useful exercise. Obviously, Michael Jordan enters my mind because I grew up with him and I felt like he was an artist on the basketball court and he did creative things that other athletes can't do. Alex, what do you. Who are some artists that come to your mind?

That's an interesting way of thinking about an athlete. I think you've. You've given two great ones. Barry Sanders comes to mind for me on the football field. You know, someone who could sort of make anything happen even with less than ideal circumstances. I think if I'm thinking about football, I'm thinking about guys like Lamar Jackson right now. Right. Kind of a creative, different outside the box player. Patrick Mahomes too, I think is a pretty creative player. I'm thinking about guys like Leo Messi as a pretty creative soccer player. So I think there are a few artists out there. I think we might have some selection bias. I'm not sure we're picking anyone who's not also the best of the best here, which is interesting, but I think that's noteworthy too.

But yes, and in all those cases, they still put in the work. I mean, consistency was not at odds with their creativity. I mean, my gosh, I think for these individuals you mentioned, they're probably also in the list of the hardest workers of all time. So maybe you kind of have to put in your reps in order to be able to have enough to be able to improvise on. I think that's kind of a general consensus in the creativity literature. And would you say that applies in sports as well?

I think that's exactly right. How does that play out in the creativity literature? What does that look like?

Well, in the world of ideas, the more knowledge and information you have, the more fodder you have to play around with in a way, the more unexpected connections you can make. You can't make unexpected connections among things that aren't in your head.

Very fair.

But creative people don't just stop with the expertise. That's the thing. There really is a beyond expertise element there to creative people. So I'm just trying to think through how that works in sports. I don't think that most athletes have as their goal creativity. They have high performance. So a lot of your work really is delivering consistent results, which is not necessarily at odds with creativity. So how do you respond resiliently to adverse conditions and setbacks? What are some techniques or strategies you have found really important?

Well, with athletes in particular, I'm always thinking about a couple of things when it comes to dealing with mistakes. The first is how do we respond in the moment to not let that mistake totally derail performance. And I'm sure you can think of people you've worked with too, but it's not uncommon when, when people make a mistake to spend the next, you know, 15, 20 plus minutes in their head beating themselves up for whatever just went on. But in the context of a basketball game, let's say it's not super helpful to be in your head beating yourself up while the game is going on, right? It takes you out of the moment. It limits your ability really to perform at your highest level. And so we've got to find a way to help you deal with that mistake effectively in the moment. And so there are some, you know, simple techniques we would teach athletes like a release reset, refocus routine where we help them learn the skill of basically letting go of the mistake as quickly as possible and refocusing as quickly as possible so they can be in the game as much as they can. I think the second element is often learning when the right time to deal with the mistake is. So one of the things that happens a lot in sports is that a team will lose or a turnover happens and player comes off the court or off the field and you see the coach yelling at the player right away. And I think we've got good data that shows that that kind of response delays recovery and actually increases cortisol and makes players obviously more stressed out. Interestingly enough, players who perce their coaches to be more stressed also perceive their coaches to be less competent. So it's all around a bad cycle where the, you know, players feeling more stressed and not recovering and also has less trust and faith in their coach's ability to help them. And so we've got to teach athletes the right time to deal with the mistake, which is usually after they've had some distance from the game or from the mistake itself. I don't think most people deal well with reflecting on a mistake in the moment or right after the fact. We're still trying to defend our ego a little bit or justify whatever's happened or kind of explain it away way versus look at it like a scientist and really try to understand what happened here and what can we adjust in the future so it doesn't happen again without it being so central to the way that we see ourselves or how good we think we Are as a performer, just because we made a mistake.

Thanks, Alex. I really like that. Do you find in your work with professional athletes that they are. Well, certainly they are humans. I don't need to ask. Do you find they're human? But do you find they get affected by what the media says about them? You know, like, if the media is harsh or. Or tears someone down, can that really affect a player psychologically? Have you seen that up close?

I have. And, you know, I think you're exactly right that these athletes, even though they entertain and we sort of see them as superhuman for a lot of the things that they can do, they're people first. And so if they're getting torn down consistently in the media or even on social media, when you try to get them, you know, I spent a lot of time trying to get players to not go on Twitter, right. Or not go on social media and avoid the comments because there's usually nothing good waiting for you there. But the reality is, for all people, right, words heard and language really matters for the way that we think and feel. And so it's not uncommon for an athlete to be disrupted by what's being said about them. And of course, we can teach them, you know, good tips and tricks for managing that effectively or distancing themselves or coping with whatever's being said, but especially amidst, say, like a bad streak in the season. Right. It's not uncommon to have, you know, 10 articles written about how you're underperforming in the course of two or three days. And for anybody, I think that that would get to them a little bit. And we've got to give them skills to manage that. And I do think the best athletes find ways to either use that as fuel. Right. And become a source of motivation or something that helps them overcome, or they find a way to just disconnect and not be so impacted by the opinions of people who write about them and sort of find ways to let that go.

Wonderful. Well, what is this expression, adaptive capacity that you talk a lot about? What is that?

Our friends Brad Stolberg and Steve Magnus, I think, put it quite well in one of their books. But it's the basic idea that stress paired with rest can lead to growth and progress. Right. The idea is that the more challenges we take on and the higher, harder challenges we take on, and then when we rest and recover, we build our ability to do harder things again in the future. It kind of dovetails with things like stress inoculation theory and some of these other principles where we know that when people are provided or do experience a bit of stress or tension, and then they again, they recover, they can take on more. So the. The easiest metaphor to use here is the weight room, right. If we're using sports like, if you go. Go to the gym and you get on the bench, and you bench press on Monday, and then you give yourself a break on Tuesday, by the time you come back Wednesday, you should be a little bit stronger and ready to take on a little bit more. In contrast, right? If you go to the gym on Monday and you bench, and then you go on Tuesday and you bench, and Wednesday you bench, and Thursday you bench, by Friday, you might tear a peck. And so adaptive capacity is really about giving yourself the adequate amount of stress and the adequate amount of rest to consistently grow over time.

Yeah, that's really not compatible with having an obsessive passion for your. Your activity. You know, Valoran's distinction between harmonious passion and obsessive passion. I think a lot of athletes have that idea that I need to be the hardest worker in the room or else I'll never be a Michael Jordan. And in order to be the hardest worker, I need to be obsessively passionate about it, even when it's not bringing returns on my investment. Is that a myth?

I think you're exactly right. I mean, I used to see this with the rookies we brought in in Toronto. You know, you draft a rookie and then you fly him to the facility right away. And, you know, you'd hear the story of, oh, he was in the gym at 3am for the next five. Five days. And I'm like, I'm not sure that's a. That's a good thing. I'm not sure I want him in the gym at 3am I want him sleeping at 3am Ideally so that he can come in the gym and perform well the next day. But I. I do think sports has an unfortunate way of sort of lionizing consistent work. And then there's all these sort of pithy sayings that cut against the idea that recovery is useful. Right. So you've heard things like, you're either getting better or you're getting worse, or while you're sleeping, the enemy is working. You know?

Yeah, that's a big one. Yeah.

Yeah. Those kinds of sayings then discourage people from taking the rest and recovery that they need to be successful. But if you actually look at the best athletes in the world, they're all resting and recovering at an incredible rate. Right. There's been articles written about LeBron spending more than $1 million a year on his recovery routine. There was just an article written a couple of weeks ago about Cristiano Ronaldo and his longevity and the routine he goes through. There's a ton written about Kobe and his, you know, famous 4:00am workout sessions, but less written or said about his naps in between, you know. And so the best athletes really are engaging recovery as a part of practice and using recovery to facilitate their excellence so that they can be consistent over time. We just don't talk so much about the recovery part because it's not as sexy or interesting as, you know, an athlete shooting 5,000 shots or whatever it might be.

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A little bit? Yeah. I mean look, I think I think the persistent push to optimize everything ultimately probably leads to underperformance in the long term. You know, I think it's a recipe for either burning out or building, you know, unhealthy habits or potentially taking shortcuts. Right. Like, I think this is the slippery slope that leads to people, people taking like growth hormone is. You're feeling like you're being left behind and you're looking for whatever edge you can. I mean, we both know that the, the bro science community is also not using science so much. And so I think, I think that's part of it too. But again, I think probably across, across industries, right, the best performers really are taking their time to rest and recover. I'm sure you've seen it too. But I think Adam Grant wrote a little bit about the idea that leaders who engage in post work recovery have higher performing teams because their teams feel comfortable recovering. I think he wrote a Twitter post or a blog post about that at some point, like across spaces, this just really matters. Same thing with sleep and surgeons, right? Or sleep and pilots. We know that that's really important for them performing well. So I mean, look, you can wake up and get a nice bath all you want, but you're still, you're still going to have to recover. You're still going to have to find just the basic ways of doing it sustainably over time if you want to be great at anything.

When I go in the ice bath, I spend the rest of the day recovering from going in the ice bath.

I don't even get in the ice bath because I won't make it out.

Oh man. Okay, so what are some other foundations of well being in a sports context? You've already mentioned a couple, obviously, but what are some others?

I think probably the most important one would be sports sleep. There's just tons and tons of great data about the value of sleep for both well being and emotional health and psychological health broadly, but also for sports performance. There was a study done at Stanford in the early 2010s ish that showed that basketball players who slept a couple hours longer each night had an increase in their free throw percentage of about 20%. We've got data that shows that sleep is when you know, your brain cleans itself and you consolidate learning and you grow muscle. So if you want to be a high performer, you know, all those things are really critical. And I think in most cases sleep is probably the number one thing we can improve for athletes to raise their performance quite quickly. Second would be something like nutrition you know, I'm not a dietitian or a nutritionist, so I won't wax poetic about that for too long. But we do know, you know, there's more and more being written about like the gut brain axis and the role of nutrition and mental health. But we also just know high quality nutrition, nutrition and hydration is really important for, you know, again, muscle building and taking care of your body and things that are required if you want to be a high level performer. Really anywhere to be great. I think a lot about the idea of play and having fun as something that's really important for, well, being. You and your work on creativity, you probably know a bit more about that than I do, so I'd be curious what you think of that concept. But I know for me, if I'm even working with pro athletes, if we're not having any fun, that's going to be a problem. And I think play is a huge foundation of getting more creative in the work that you do and finding innovative solutions and also engaging in, you know, something socially that that makes you feel better. And the fourth one I'll give you without going through all of them is movement. And you know, for athletes, of course, movement's kind of baked in, right. In practice you're running around or you're going to the weight room, but for performers outside of sports, again, the link between, you know, physical movement and brain performance and brain health is pretty robust. And so making sure you're getting exercise or yoga or whatever it might be, I think can be really important for building that foundational well being.

Yeah, I know that this is not very like, broly of me to say, but what's the importance of connection?

I love that you're not going the broy route there. That's okay. I support that completely. I mean, you know as well as anybody, right, relationships are one of the biggest predictors of resilience that we have. Strongest predictors of resilience that we have. Again, athletes kind of have that built in a little bit, right? With teammates and the people in the locker room, though, those relationships are not always super high quality. That's one of the places where people like me and other sports psychologists or psychology practitioners can help intervene and make a big difference. We know quality of relationships is a predictor of life satisfaction too. And people feeling like they've, they've lived a life well. And I don't think that's any different for high performers in any industry. And again, you know, the relationship between an athlete and a coach, for example, is really critical for high performance. The relationship between players and a team sport is really critical for high performance. But even in individual sports, I don't know if you're watching any Wimbledon right now, you can see, you know, the best athletes out there are still interacting with their coaches while they're on the court and they're thinking about the people in their circle and they're taking coaching, or it happens in boxing and UFC too, where the coach kind of comes up on the ringside and sort of coaches them up. Like the importance of those relationships cannot be overstated because those are the people, you know, the people around us are what give us the sort of fuel that we need to keep pushing when things get hard. They motivate us in ways that we, we don't always know. We need to be motivated. They give us alternative perspectives, they help us feel supported. There's a ton that comes with having high quality connection. Also not built into the BRO protocol, but highly important.

Yeah, well, the idea of relational tends to. It feels at odds with the need for dominance. And I mean, I feel like you need to integrate both in a way for high well being. And so I'm wondering how that works in a sports context where dominance is really such a coveted state to be in. That's why you go into sports, because you want to dominate the competition. But as a youth sports coach or as a sports coach at any level, how can you kind of foster a healthy integration there of even creating relationships with your competition?

I think you see it at the highest levels of sport, there's a really healthy respect for people on the other team. Because if you're an elite athlete, if you're a pro athlete, you understand what it takes to be on the other side of the ball or be on the other side of the court. Right. It takes a tremendous amount of work and dedication and persistence to reach that level. And so I think there is again, in pro sports like this mutual respect for each other that's sort of built in on top of the fact that, you know, you never know who might be your teammate next year. So you don't want to have, you know, bad relationships with everyone. But I do think there's this sort of element where for a few hours every other night, you've got to find a way to sort of increase the sense of connectedness and camaraderie you have with the people in your locker room and then channel that toward dominating the people across from you. And for three hours be a little bit ruthless about that. It doesn't mean Be disrespectful. It just means be focused on establishing your team as the superior team. And I think you can do that in a way that still demonstrates, again, a level of healthy respect for your opponent and respect for the game and really just prioritizes the connection that you have with the people around you. And I think probably the best example I've seen of this in recent times is Steph Curry. You know, Steph has been with the warriors for a long time now, but there was an article written not too long ago as the Kevin Durant trade rumors circled about him maybe going back to Golden State. And there was an article written that talked about Steph sort of basically saying when Kevin Durant came like, okay, man, this is your, your team now. Which is pretty uncommon. You know, in a lot of pro sports locker rooms, the player who's most established simply tries to reestablish dominance over any new player that comes in. And so for someone to sort of step aside and recognize it'll be best for the group and best for the team and best for me if you take over and we follow your lead, I think is quite uncommon, but speaks to this really high level of relational intelligence and the way that he's thinking about building a team that I think is quite special. And so to your point, I think people mistake that level of relational savvy and understanding how the pieces fit together for weakness, essentially. Right. Or being less than in the dominance hierarchy. But in some ways, I think being that attuned is actually a sign of obviously significant strength, but a little bit of dominance. Right. If you can be the one that decides whose team this is, I don't think you can find a higher position than that.

Yeah, it's a really good point. It's a really good point. Well, what's the role of self awareness in adaptive capacity?

Again, I think if I'm, if I'm looking at the highest level athletes, they've all got this incredible ability to understand what they need or what's important to them at any given moment. Again, to use Steph as an example, he talked not too long ago about the thing that he believed made him so excellent or makes him so excellent is constantly paying attention to how he's feeling and what his body needs or what his brain needs to perform well. And I think you've seen this with athletes like a Michael Phelps or Simone Biles, you know, these folks who are paying attention to their well being. Right. Simone is probably a great example from a few years ago where she recognized, like I don't feel well going out here. Right. And if I keep doing this, I'm likely to get hurt and that injury is likely to be much worse for me than pulling myself out of this competition and taking care of myself. But I think you can only do things like that if you're aware of how you're feeling, if you're aware of what you need, if you're aware of how your body feels, how your mind feels, what your energy levels are like. And so to get to that level of excellence, you really do have to pay attention to yourself. You can't just go through the motions. You can't blindly follow whatever your coaches recommend because they don't know you. They're not living your body, they're not living your experience. And so you've got to be able to build that because that's going to let you figure out what's the next challenge you need to take on. How much rest do you need and what's that going to look like for you to get better and better over time?

Yeah, you talk about some foundations of self awareness such as values identification and feedback serving. What the heck are those two things?

Well, I mean, I think for me, the way I think about self awareness starts and I was trained pretty heavily in act, so I'll acknowledge that ACT informs a lot of the ways that I think. Right. But, but figuring out what you value and what's really important to you, I think serves as an anchor for a lot of the decisions you make. And so if you're unclear about what matters most to you or the person that you want to become, it's going to be really hard to make decisions that serve you well in the long term. And I think what you're going to find is you consistently optimize for the short term, which for most people is fairly counter to long term success if you really want to be a healthy competitor. But what's right in front of you is three pints of, of chocolate ice cream every night. Like, I'm not discouraging people from eating chocolate ice cream. There's just a reality that you can't eat three pints of chocolate ice cream if you also want to get to the highest level of nutrition and pro sports. Right. To use a simple example. And so being clear that becoming the best, for example, is important to you can help you make that decision to sort of forego the short term pleasure for long term gain. So I think that's an important part of values identification. And again, I think it just helps you make decisions in the moment when things feel tense or you're unsure about what's happening to do. Knowing what's most important to you can help you get clear and then commit to whatever that decision is. And then I think feedback is really important because, you know, I wrote in the book about self awareness being a little bit of essentially what we know about ourselves and what others know about us. Right. And I think feedback helps us understand the impact that we have on the people around us and adjust our behavior so that we can have the impact that we want or understand more effective ways of being. Right. And again, this is why the best athletes in the world have coaches. Because even if you think that you're doing footwork correctly or you think that you're being a good leader or you think you're practicing enough, right. Someone else's perspective about what's missing or how your footwork is or how effective your leadership is can really inform what you need to do more of, less of, or differently to be as successful as you want to be.

Yeah, that's really quite profound. Nothing to gloss over. Yeah, yeah, really like that. Along your path on being, going where you want to be. I think low self confidence can rear its head, you know, especially if you're not performing how you want to be performing. How do you keep your confidence and self belief masking for a friend? I can't resonate with that at all right now. But how do you maintain your confidence in your self belief when you're not necessarily getting paid what you want to get paid or getting the successful results you want to get? It's cyclical, right? It comes and goes. No one is. No one, including us, is high performing. 24, 7. Correct. So how do you maintain that confidence and self belief when it's not going well?

I think of confidence as being a function of really two things. Of course there's more, but the two that I think are most important are past success. So being able to sort of account for things you've done well and understand the strengths you use to get there and how you made those outcomes happen, and pushing past the initial tendency, we all have to sort of be humble and say, oh, I just got lucky. Like, no, you didn't just get lucky. Right. You worked hard. There are strengths that you had that allowed you to make that outcome happen. And we should figure out what those strengths are and figure out how we double down on those things so that you can be the best version of yourself and more consistently. And then the second piece for me, when I'M thinking about high performance and athletes is really about high quality preparation. Good practice and feeling as ready as you can be is going to help you feel more confident and believe in yourself when you get to the big game or when you get to whatever your performance is. And of course, you know, you know as, as well as anyone, right. There are other sources of self efficacy, right, like physiological arousal and selft talk and, you know, vicarious learning. But I think the preparation and past success give you a really good foundation for feeling confident about yourself in whatever endeavor it is you're. You're going for. And so if you're feeling not confident, right. I might start by asking you to reflect on the things you've done well and how you made those things happen. And if you're preparing for something, I might ask you to think about, you know, what's missing from your preparation or what else you could do that would help you feel as ready to go as possible going into that performance.

Yeah, yeah. Um, a lot of this is easier said than done, but it, it's very good advice, but you have to not just think it, you have to feel it. I think a lot of people, you know, can tell themselves all they want, you know, to pep themselves up and have the humbleness and, and think about. But, but maybe deep down they feel like they're kind of broken and well, anyway, that gets into trauma. And I mean, but, but, but, but athletes are human, right? So this stuff's not irrelevant. Have you ever dealt with an athlete who, who had kept having, like, trauma triggers?

Unfortunately, more often than. Than I wish were the case. You know, I mean, many athletes come from a place of, of like either great hardship or a lot of difficulty growing up. You know, I can think of athletes I've worked with who suffered, you know, significant childhood trauma, whether it was like, physical abuse by a parent or some other kind of disruption in their life. You know, I've worked with athletes who have experienced homelessness, you know, a full range of things that really have impacted them. And it's hard because in the course of a season, it may not be the right thing to do to sort of get deep into the trauma because there may be, you know, they may have to play right every other night. And so if it's really disruptive or it's really hard for them or taxing, you know, dealing with that and coping with that during the season can, can potentially hurt performance and then sort of make things worse. And so you've got to find ways to do that work kind of Essentially, in the off season so that you can be as successful as you want to be and heal. Heal a bit.

Healing. Healing is a big one that we don't give enough time and space. I think there's a kind of. Yeah, there's that mentality of, like, you know, who's got time for healing when. When your competition is shooting jump shots in the gym at 5am, you know.

Yeah.

Okay. So a lot of what we've talked about is mental strength, self care, self awareness. Let's talk a little bit about the building blocks of high performance. You talk about passion, perseverance and resilience. Ppr. Right. So are you a big fan of Andrew Duckworth's research on grit? Do you. Do you bring that into your. Your work on high performance?

I do. I am. I am a fan of Angela Duckworth's work. And one of the things I respect most about her is the fact that she kind of evolved her thinking and the way that her work went in response to how the data unfolded. You know, she's not. I don't experience her as, like, super dogmatic about. About the work that she's done, which I really respect. But I think, you know, look, in sport, again, if you want to be great at what you do, you do have to essentially like it a little bit. Right? You have to care about it. You have to be passionate about it. It has to be something that you want to show up and work for. And then you also have to be willing to push when things are not going well or. You know, the way I like to think of resilience comes from Keenan Sheldon. He talks about resilience being the idea of seeking growth even when conditions don't support it. I think that's a lot of what it means to work hard and be good at something in sports. Right. I think the best athletes. I talk a lot. And I think James Clear's written a bit about it, too, about falling in love with boredom. Right. And, yeah, it's not all that pleasant to be bored and show up to work, but you. You've got to do it if that's something that you really want to achieve. And, you know, again, Michael Phelps has talked about this in his work. Steph Curry's talked about it from his warmups. Kobe's written. Talked about it. And so I do think you have to have that combination. I've never. I've never turned it into an acronym like PBR before. Maybe I'll steal that from you now. But, you know, I think the combination of those characteristics allows you to show up day after day to keep working hard at the things that are most important to you, and to push yourself even when you don't feel like it.

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That's a great point. And I think that we can break down this idea of boredom as well. Falling in love with monotony. That's really what we mean by boredom. A lot of people find monotony boring, but I think a lot of athletes don't find it. The word boredom is a judgment call though. That's why I'm saying what is it exactly? It's doing the same thing over and over and over again. But I think that a lot of high performers kind of retrain their brain in a way where they don't need constant novelty of practice, routine. They get excited to wake up. They get excited for the monotony because they know that it's going to really solidify some skill that'll give them an edge in competition.

I think that's exactly right. And the cool thing about sports is you get to see that monotony basically play out and see if it's working or not for you on game day. So you get to see if all that high quality practice and the monotony is leading to the, the results that you want. That's right. And I do think these highest level athletes are motivated by trying to perfect their craft, right. And trying to become the best that they can be. We talked earlier about the idea of dominance, but I do think for the athletes who have the longest, most successful careers, a lot of what they talk about being after is really self actualization, right? It's becoming the best athlete that they can be, becoming the best version of themselves. It's not about winning as many championships as they can. That's sort of an outcome that, that comes by way of pushing to be the best that you can be. But it's not the thing that they're seeking. You know, if you watch starting five on Netflix, for example, there's an episode where LeBron breaks the all time NBA scoring record. And the interviewer asks him something about like, you know, did you set out to break this? Like, did you have any idea you would break this record? And he responds with, I had no intention of breaking this record. Basically, like, I just wanted to be the best that I could be. And as a function of being the best that I could be, I broke this record. And so I think, yeah, it's really pretty special to hear these, these players think about what it means to become high level. And it's all about becoming the best that they can be. And I think if you then treat monotony as a Part of that. Right. It's underpins deliberate practice. It underpins the development of expertise. It can be something that. But look, it may not be the most energizing thing every day. I've been to enough pro sports practices to see that there are some times when the energy just isn't quite there. And it doesn't feel great to go out there and work through the monotony. But the reality is doing that repeatedly is what helps you become expert at your craft.

Yeah. What are some of the best mindsets that a high performing athlete can harness? You talk about a challenge mindset in your book. What is a challenge mindset? And, and are there other mindsets that are important for athletes?

Well, look, I want, I want to hear a little bit about the mindset you're writing about a little bit too, because I think that would be an interesting one to incorporate into the three that, that I've thought about or talked a lot about. But I'll start where you. I'll start where you left it, and then I want to hear from you. But, you know, we, you know, Dr. Aaliyah Crumb, her research is, is on stress is enhancing mindset. And the idea that the way that we perceive stress as a challenge or a threat does impact the way that we think, feel, and perform. And so for the highest level athletes, we're trying to train them to see stress as enhancing. And the most common way that we see stress is really as a debilitator. Right. We see stress as bad or harmful, and that leads to, of course, worse performance individually, but also worse team performance. Right. And we've all kind of seen that play out, right? You know, it's the, the athlete who picks up their ball and goes home, right. When, when things get hard, if you quit, it's really hard to obviously reach the level that you want to be at. And so to be a high performer, we really need to figure out how we harness that challenge mindset. So seeing stress as an opportunity for growth or a chance to show what we're made of or a sign that we're determined or as excitement can help us kind of tap into that stress is enhancing mindset. The second mindset I talk about is this combination of growth mindset and fixed mindset. And we talked about this a little bit last week on a webinar we did together. But you know, people present growth mindset and fixed mindset as though they're sort of like two opposites, but the reality is they're sort of, they're orthogonal. Right. You can be high in both. You can have a high level of growth mindset and a high level of fixed mindset. And I think for elite performers, you do want to believe in the value of hard work and effort and persistence. That growth mindset oriented part of you to reach the outcomes that you want. But you also have to recognize that there's something special about you that allows you to stand out. And that's where harnessing that, that fixed mindset really comes into play. And then third, we've talked about the importance of recovery, but I think learning to see recovery as an investment in future performance, not as time away from the game, but time that you're actually putting in to get better, can facilitate high performance over time. But I want to hear about, you know, I know you're writing and have written now about the victim mindset. I want to hear more about this mindset you're exploring and see if I can think about how that folds into the way I think about mindset too.

Yeah, definitely. I think that it's very relevant in a sports context where you can feel as though forces outside yourself are conspiring against you, that you don't have any agency left, that you keep trying to reach your goals and practicing and you reach a plateau and you can't get past it. And it's the world's fault for that, you know, and that can really hold you back from persevering and maybe even changing your goals in ways that are healthy and, you know, and moving on productively. Sometimes you do reach plateaus. You know, I, I don't think that grit can get you in everywhere, Alex. You know, I don't think that grit can make everyone a Michael Jordan. You know, I agree. So I think it's equally as important to have a healthy mindset where you take responsibility for what you're putting into it, the amount of work you're putting in. You also take responsibility for your challenges and what, and how you show up and what decisions you make when faced with those challenges and how you react to things. All those things are within your control. And when we have a victim mindset, we really, we outsource all those problems to the world. So, yeah, I do think like harnessing an empowerment, I call it an empowerment mindset, is probably very helpful in a lot of sports contexts. What it really is is it's self empowerment. So, yeah, I'm just kind of adding in a self empowering kind of mindset that I think is complementary to the other ones you mentioned. I don't think it can be reduced to any of the ones you mentioned, but I think it belongs in that canyon of healthy mindsets for success.

I completely agree, and it's really interesting to hear you unpack it because I think this idea would resonate so much for coaches in sports. You know, there's so many times I've seen and worked with coaches who get frustrated because athletes essentially make excuses. Right. And that. That's sort of what you're saying is an empowerment. Empowerment mindset's about finding your level of responsibility, your level of control, and taking ownership over that as much as you can. Which is, of course, what every coach wants to see in their athletes. Right. Is them taking complete ownership for it. I'd be curious if I can flip the interview on you for a minute here, but I'd be curious, like, what are the skills you would teach either a coach or an athlete that would facilitate that empowerment mindset?

Well, I would really. I mean, I would love to sit down with you and design a curriculum that. That brings all that together. Some things off the top of my mind include bringing in the idea of learned hopefulness, which is a construct that is only a recent construct because the construct of learned helplessness has existed for many, many years. This idea that our default state is to be helpless, well, we know that we learn to be helpless through repeated failures. But Martin Seligman and colleagues have found more recently that actually our default state state is helplessness. That's not what we learn. We actually have to actively learn the skills of hope. And that often involves coming up with plan B, plan C, plan D. What are you going to do if this first route is blocked? You know? Well, I have a plan, you know, so hope is not just a feel good feeling. It's a cognitive mindset as well. So I think that would be a big part of it. Helping with emotional regulation skills is a big part of it. Being able to not identify with the emotion that you're feeling so much that you're saying, well, I am anxious. So you're on the court, you're like, oh, I'm feeling some anxiety right now, but I'm so much more than this. So you just. I think that's a whole skill set right there. I'm basically just thinking of this on the spot spot, because you asked me, but I think I'm thinking within. Within a sports context, those. And you asked me for. Did you ask me for three?

You can give me as many as you want. I just asked for a couple. Yeah. Or a few.

Oh, yeah. I Can't remember if you specified give me three. But, but also. Yeah, I think like cognitive distortions can, can really be big on, on the, on the court or whatever. Whatever. The field. The field, the sports field. I think that. But you can kind of get things distorted. We're not seeing the reality clearly. And you maybe catastrophize. I think catastrophizing is a big one. If you miss a shot, you know, oh my gosh, I'm having an off day, you know, well, you just missed a shot. We'll see if you're having an off day. But don't, don't shoot yourself in the foot just yet. So those are just some immediately coming around. But I think there's a whole bunch of things that we could add and that I bet, you know, when the day comes where we can, can come together and really share our mutual knowledge base, I think we come up with a really valuable curriculum for, for, for, for coaches of all ages. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. That's really, really cool to hear you unpack in live time. Sorry for putting you on the spot there, but.

No, I loved it. No, I loved it.

Yeah. Everything you're mentioning, I think would be huge for really athletes at any level.

Yeah, no, you really got me thinking, which I appreciate. You talk about the principles of peak performance as preparation, immersion. I think adaptation is one of them. Energy optimization and resilience. I want to double click on energy. The newer generation, they don't even know what that means. Double click. But what, what is energy optimization? Is that different than staying motivated for.

Elite athletes and I think performers at any level? Yes. You know, I think it's about finding, at its core, it's about finding the right level of energy for the task at hand. Right. The reality is, you know, speaking to what we talked about around falling in love with monotony, for example, like, you're not always going to feel like it, Right. You're not always going to feel good again. If you watch, you know, some of the best athletes, if you, if you've watched the show Quarterback on Netflix, for example, Kirk Cousins talks about how basically from day one of training camp onward, you never feel 100%. You know, the idea of you feeling good is basically done the moment you step out on the field. And so you've got to find ways to get yourself into the optimal energy state to perform, whether that's ramping energy up, which we don't talk a ton about because we're, you know, most of us are used to running a little bit High and needing to calm down when it comes to performance. But there are athletes who, you know, are not as. As energized and activated as they need to be to perform well. And so figuring that out, I think is really important. And then, of course, if you're one of the more common people who runs hot, right. Figuring out how to calm down and get yourself into a centered place so that you can execute your skills as well as possible is also really important. And so it's a little different than feeling motivated. Right. It's not necessarily about feeling like you want to or don't want to do something. It's about getting yourself into the right psychological stuff state to be able to execute that skill at the level you need to.

Oh, man, I love that. I need some energy optimization. I recently got this drink that has high caffeine content as well as a lot of nootropics in it, and they sent it to me to try it out to see if I want to advertise it. I was like, this is optimal. It gives me a lot of energy, but I want to do it more naturally.

Yeah. Is it working? Do you feel. Do you feel optimized?

You know, the word optimization is a funny one for someone like me who studies self actualization, because I've often argued there's. That the idea of optimization is really not what I'm after. You know, self actualization is a journey, and it's one where it's only. Only you can, you know, choose that. What path you want to go down. There's no optimal. Objectively. There's no objectively optimal path. I mean, so anyway, with all those caveats aside, I do think that when I am able to maintain a high energy and a high. Yeah, like when I have the stamina, I think stamina is a big thing here, you know, and when we have high stamina, I mean, we can just handle so much more things even in our own cognitive. You know, our cognition is so tied to our physicality. Our outlook just seems so much greater when we have the stamina for things. When we're just really lethargic and tired, we really. We're like, I can't be bothered to do anything. And so I just think this is such an important facet of peak performance.

Yeah, absolutely. I think we've. If you want to be great at anything, you've got to get used to finding ways to do things you don't really feel like doing and not. Not being so, you know, hung up by the initial kind of emotional response. And Let the. Let the mood kind of follow the energy and the action a little bit.

Absolutely. Okay. We've already talked about resiliency, preparation, immersion. I think people get that, you know, like becoming an expert. Yeah, we get that. Right. But what is adaptation? Let's end there. What is adaptation? The last principle of peak performance.

Well, now you're bringing me back to the roots of earlier, but, you know.

The foundation of that's true adaptive capacity. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. And the way I write about it in this chapter is really about leveraging the principles of psychological flexibility, Right. And acceptance and commitment therapy to help yourself respond in the moment more effectively. Right. And actually, I think a lot of it fits with what you were talking about, with an empowerment mindset, Right. It's this idea that you can, you know, identify what you value and choose to commit to that path even when you don't feel so good about it. Or you can let go of the cognitive distortions, right. If you miss a shot and you catastrophize, you can learn to let that go effectively, essentially diffuse from that thought, right. And stay in the moment and stay. Stay present and stay performing and I think be really attuned. You know, we've got good data in sport that shows that being a bit more attuned to your external environment versus your internal environment allows you to perform a bit better. Right. You're basically like reading the game and present with the game versus, oh, my gosh, I missed that shot. You know, how am I. How am I feeling? Or am I going to miss the next 30 in a row because I just missed this one. Right. And so I think the skills of psychological flexibility really facilitate that quite well. Right. Being able to recommit consistently to the game plan and to the things that are most important to you as a player. Being able to work through and accept difficult emotion or discomfort in service of the game you're trying to play or the skill you're trying to execute. And being able to let go of these unhelpful thoughts, I do think allows you to stay present and perform well. And so adaptations about being essentially like the skill set. You need to stay fully immersed in the game to stay fully present and be your best when it matters most.

Yeah, it's so good. So good. I love the work you do, Alex. And your book is called Called to Greatness. So you really do believe everyone has a high performer possibility within them. You make that clear. I'll end on this quote. You and everybody, you know, have the chance to be great you just have to answer the call. Hopefully that inspires our listeners to answer that call. So go, go, go, go. That'll be the coach in me. That's the coach in me. I'm saying that to all our listeners right now. Hope this episode inspired you, Alex. Keep up the great work and I really look forward to continuing our collaborations.

Likewise. Thank you so much for having me and thanks for the opportunity.

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