Unlocking Your Signature Strengths: Sustainable Excellence with Alex Auerbach, CEO of Momentum Labs

Figure out what you can be best in the world at in your, in your own world, right? If you want to understand yourself, you're going to need to figure that out, right? If you want to become the best version of yourself, you're going to need to figure that out. And if you want to produce great results, you're going to need to figure that out, right? So look to figuring out what is your signature strength, the thing that makes you special, doesn't mean that no one else in the world could do it, right? It just means it's the thing that you believe you can be best at, that you've identified as a real strength for you and then figure out how you maximize that, right? Whether that's through additional practice, coaching, other kinds of experimenting. There's lots of ways to sort of maximize this signature strength, but that would be my, my one action step that would cut across all three journeys I think, is if you can identify that it'll help you in any of the paths that you're on.

Welcome back to the Mental Training Lab where we have deep conversations with elite performers and coaches and practical tools and expert insights to help you perform your best when it matters most. Today we're diving deep with Alex Auerbach, CEO of Momentum Labs and performance psychologist who's helped some of the world's top athletes, executives and teams achieve sustained excellence without burning out. In our conversation today, Alex flips some outdated ideas on their head, asking us to consider if chasing peak performance isn't about you grinding harder, but really about understanding yourself better. Building on this, Alex is going to walk us through his three stage framework for self discovery. One, understanding who you are, two, becoming your best self and three, consistently producing maximum results. We're going to explore why recovery isn't just downtime, but also an essential investment in your future success. And why embracing discomfort and even failure is critical to true growth. If you're ready to let go of short term gains and heed the call to lasting greatness, lean in because Alex is bringing the tools and insights that can transform the way you perform. Lead and live. Let's head to the lab. Alex, thank you so much for joining me on the Mental Training Lab. We've crossed paths, you know, at conferences and things like that, but this is the first real time I've had the opportunity to sit down and, and chat with you and talk shop and so thank you for making the time.

Thanks for having me, Pete. I'm excited to be here with you.

And so when I asked you what topics were really lighting you up or you wanted to explore, you highlighted something that is still work in progress. And for me, that's really exciting. And it's specifically around sort of your framework or stages of self discovery. And so can you outline the three stages first, and then I think we might just take them one by one?

Yeah, we could do that. I mean, you're. You're skipping the part where I said to you, why don't you just tell me what you want to talk about? You know, and then you. You made me come back with. With some options. So, yeah, I mean, I guess I'll give you a little bit of the background and then I'll kind of lay out the framework. And like you mentioned, I'm still working through it in my mind as far as, like, what it means and, and even all the layers to it, probably. But the quick backstory is I was out to lunch with a friend who I'm working with and building his business. He's a pediatrician, thinking about how he helps parents navigate new parenthood from a more centered place of being. Um, and you know, this from having a young kid. Like, a lot of parenting advice is really built around, you know, like, your kids first. And his philosophy is really, you know, a parent first kind of philosophy, which was interesting. And so as we were just kind of kicking around some ideas and thinking about, you know, kind of the core transformation that he's offering people, he was like, well, I really want them to see themselves differently, like, develop a new identity as a parent. And I had this sort of aha moment where I was like, that's not quite what I do. That doesn't mean what you do is wrong, but it's like, this is interesting. Like your. Your transformation is you help people better understand themselves. The one that I really like, think about for the work that I do is I help people become the best version of themselves. And then I think the third one, which stems a lot from the way I see founders operate and a lot of the work I do in the venture capital, private equity space, but I think is true with athletes too, is the. This idea of, like, how do I produce maximum results? And I think they're all kind of related, obviously, but I do think there are some distinct differences that, I don't know, have really been teased apart. So the first one is this sort of like self discovery, right? Who am I? Right? What am I about? What do I value? How do I raise my awareness of myself, the way I interact in the world, the way I influence other people? How do I best understand who I am today. It's not really like a future focused view, which I think is an important distinction here, at least as I'm thinking about it right now. Like it's really about understanding who you are today in the here and now. And I think that's quite useful. I think this is often what people think about when they think about self discovery and self growth. But I do, like I said, think it's distinct from thinking about then knowing myself. Now, how do I become the best I could be? I think is like a second order question, right? So again, that's the second order, which is sort of like, how can I become my best? Right? So you've got who am I? How can I become my best? And then the third is what can I produce? How can I become my best? I think is really like the kind of core of the self actualization journey that we've all been educated about in psychology, right? It's like knowing what I know about who I am, how do I become the best version of myself? And if I'm not currently a great version of myself, what is this future focused growth oriented path look like where I can become this highest, best version of who I am or who I want to be? I see this one as being connected to understanding who you are, but also, like I said, a bit distinct. And then third, like I mentioned, is what can I produce? And I think this is the one that maybe you don't need to know yourself for. And you might not also be thinking about becoming your best, right? You might just be thinking about, you know, your proverbial bottom line, right? Like, how do I get the most out of myself? As far as, you know, I'm thinking about NBA players or, you know, NHL players, right? Like, how do I get a max contract? It's not the same question as how do I become the best player I can be? Or how do I understand myself better in an NBA locker room? So I'll pause there, but those are the three I'm kicking around.

Well, and so what I'm curious about next is I remember hearing Jim Collins and Brene Brown talk about conceptual rappers, right? Like, what's the appropriate way to organize these three stages? And so are they sequential? And you kind of teased this out already in an open question like, do you have to understand yourself before you can be the best version of yourself? And then can do you have to be the best version of yourself before you can then produce the best results in your field? And it sounds like maybe, but not always. And so I'd be interested to kind of explore some of the nuance there.

I'd be curious what you think, because I think my short answer is I don't know. I think they are connected. Right. So I do think to get to the how can I become my best? For example, it does help to know a little bit about who you are today to sort of understand where you want to go. And we often think about self awareness as a core part of the work we do as performance coaches and understanding who you are and how you are, what you value and what your goals and what your needs are. Um, and so I think to really think about becoming the highest, best version of yourself, you do have to have a little bit of a sense of, you know, self discovery and understanding of who you are. And I think obviously you produce the best results if you're producing, you know, focused on becoming your highest, best self. But that's the one that I think the link is not clear to me yet because I do meet people, as I'm sure you have too, who really don't care about becoming the best version of themselves. They care mostly about producing whatever outcome they think they need to produce. And that may or may not be the right way to handle it. Right. Like they might get better outcomes if they're focused on becoming their best. I think of some of the all time great athletes like a Michael Jordan or, you know, I don't know if you've watched Starting five on Netflix, but Lebron talks about breaking the scoring record. And the first thing he says is like, I never set out to break a scoring record. Like I just tried to become the best player I could become. And as a byproduct of that, I had this most ridiculous result. You know, Kobe had a very similar mentality and Michael Jordan had a very similar mentality. But I don't think most people internalize that. I think there's sort of this like still narrative that you can produce, you know, great results without being the best version of yourself. Whether that's kind of like the old school, you know, grinded out culture that sort of shows up, or if it's just being like a very outcome focused, bottom line driven person where, you know, maybe you're willing to cut some corners, for example, which would cut against being the best version of yourself, but might produce better outcomes than you would otherwise.

You, you really hit a few of the different aspects that I think about when I'm trying to figure out how to connect these pieces. And for me, you know, you can get the best results now, and your ceiling is at a certain point, right? But you can get the best results now by cutting corners potentially, right. Short term gain. But one of the things that I love about your new book called the Greatness is that right in the very first paragraph, you highlight the fact that without a foundation of well being, you can't sustain peak performance. And so I think we see a lot of burnout in high performers because of this idea that I need to perform right now. But I'm not taking care of the aspects of me, whether it's being the best version of myself or, you know, as Stephen Covey talks about, sharpening the saw, so taking good care of yourself to make sure you can do it repeatedly. And so I think that you can look at social media, you can watch the highlight reels on espn and it's easy to get pulled into this idea that I can do a couple of things right now to make that happen. Right. Or I can work for a really long time to lay the foundation to become the best version of myself, which will then allow me to do that for a really, really long time. And I think one is very shiny and seductive and the other one is just sort of the way that Steven Kotler put it at one point, just like a short to do list done every day as best as you can and then go to sleep and wake up and do it again. And that's not very sexy. And so I think, you know, again, it seems like it's in line with the way that you are approaching this, right? That to sustain success we need to be the best version of ourselves. But you can cut corners and get some of the way there, your ceiling will be lower, right. And you can't stay there, but you can maybe cash in on a contract now. And if that's what's important for you. I guess for me there's no explicit judgment, like if that's what's important, then that's great, let me help you do that. As long as it's ethical and it's not hurting anybody else. Right. But I think in the long run, I want people to be happy and healthy and fulfilling their meaning. And to do that for the rest of your life, I think you need step one and step two. Maybe they're not again, directly connected, but skipping steps I think is consequential.

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think if you're on kind of this third journey where you're focused on results, like, I think that that's short sighted or Short term, I think is probably right. Like, I think it's very hard to do that over a really long time and feel great about what you're doing because it's very like undertones of hedonic treadmill kind of vibes, you know, like you're going to reach your goal and then you're going to be thinking about the next goal and you're not really going to be feeling like you're getting any better. You're going to constantly be searching for like the next way to one up yourself. Right. And I think about some of the scandals we've seen in professional sports, whether it's about like steroid use or you know, sign stealing. Right. There's lots of ways that this kind of like bottom line focus manifests. I do think in the short term sometimes that can be quite helpful. You, there are times when it's probably worth it to sort of prioritize like ruthlessly focusing on outcomes or ruthlessly focusing on results and sort of ignoring for a short period like some of the other elements. But I don't think that you can sustain excellence over the long term. And you know, what I learned from some of the best NBA players I've been around is they actually make the opposite choice quite often, which is like if we're on game, say 37 of an 82 game NBA season and we're down six or eight points with a minute or two to go, some of the better players kind of shut it down, you know, and it's not because you want them to shut it down. Like of course you want to win the game, but they're recognizing like, look, I can push myself hard for this 60 seconds, but it might cost me the next five games. Or we can kind of like see what unfolds over the next minute. And if we're in it, okay, I'll, I'll ramp up a little bit. But if we're not super in it, like, I'm okay to let this one go and show up again for the remaining 4:48 that we've got or whatever it might be. Right. And that's a tough choice to make when you're a really competitive person, but I think illustrates this commitment to long term growth, long term excellence over any specific immediate outcome that you could prioritize.

Yeah. If you ask an athlete, do you want to lose on a random day in February but win the NBA championship, that's an easy answer. Right. But in the moment, because we're wired to, and there's so many forces then that Pushing us outside to say that like, you gotta be in the fight every second of every game, right? That it can be really hard to shut it off. And I wouldn't recommend it for everybody if you're an expert, right. I think you have a better feel for the switch and you can flip it on and flip it off. But if you haven't already patterned that level of intensity, you talk about it as immersion, right? To be really sort of like pulled fully into the experience as a way of being when it's time to compete, then I think you start pattering a habit of when things get tough, you start to eject yourself from the present moment and that's unproductive when it comes to high performance.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And look, you, you get my book as well, or maybe even better than I do, so thank you. But you know, I think, I think that's, that's exactly right. Like you've got to be thinking about what you're training yourself to do and what your, what habits you're developing essentially. Right. Is the simplest way I think about it. And so if you are going to be consistently picking the ejection from the present, as you put it, right, like over the long run, that's going to be incredibly hard to do anything well. If you're consistently ignoring who you are or what you need, it's going to be hard to do anything well over the long term. And if you don't really care about becoming the best version of yourself, like I don't know anyone that, that doesn't care and makes it to the top, right? Like you're just sort of accepting being average. And I actually think for some people that's okay. Like that's, that's what some people want is to sort of be squarely in the middle. And I think if that's what moves you, like, that's all right. Um, but if you're trying to be, you know, a world class athlete, which is what we both deal with, that, that settling for the middle is not going to be very appealing long term.

And so I have a couple of ideas that I want to run by you on that train of thought. And so first, one of the things, because I was a professor in another lifetime before all of this unfolded for me, and I taught in the mental training for peak performance class a whole week on the dark side of mastery. And we would spend a lot of time thinking about what does it cost. And so we'd look at people like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, and kind of look at, well, they, they reached the pinnacle of their careers, right? They were the best of all time. And that had to come from somewhere, right? There's a zero sum in terms of energy, attention, time. And, and so I'd be curious for your take on this idea, right? You can be the best version of yourself in maybe that domain, but can you be the best version of yourself, kind of spread across sport, family, hobbies, and then also reach the pinnacle of your, your craft or profession?

I think it depends a little bit on your timeline, right? So sports is interesting because it's very compressed, right? Like, you know, unless you're a Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers, like you're probably not playing into your 40s, right? And so you've got this incredibly short window to maximize what's physically possible for you and what's mentally possible for you to see if that gets you to the pinnacle of your career. So for a normal non professional athlete like me, you know, my timeline, to get it right at family and get it right at work and get it right in other areas, pretty extended, right? So I could kind of work on those things simultaneously. And of course there's, there's a trade off, but I think it's exacerbated when everything is compressed into essentially like for an NBA player, 15 years maybe, like you've got, you've got 15 years from drafted in the first round to being in your mid-30s and being a rotation player that's probably not going to rise to the top barring a couple, you know, extreme outliers. And so I think in that case, yeah, I mean there, there is a sacrifice to be made and I think that sacrifice is usually some other area of your life in exchange for optimizing what needs to happen in sport. The way I think about it is sort of less about the dark side and more about the sort of idealized idea of balance that I just, I don't think is real, you know, So I don't necessarily see it as dark to be, you know, to be that kind of maniacally committed to what it is that you do. Like as, again, as long as you're not like harming other people, people. And you've got varying degrees of harm that you're describing, right? Like MJ is just kind of a jerk as a teammate. And like, I think most of the players I've ever worked with would rather work with a jerk who leads them to six titles than, you know, work with someone who's super nice and they never win kind of thing. So I think that's kind of one layer. And then you've got, like, Tiger woods where it's, you know, all sorts of personal stuff, right? And other people kind of harmed in the making of the Tiger woods machine, which is maybe, maybe a little bit different. But to me, I think the trade off is. Is just necessary if you want to be great at anything that you're doing to some degree. And so rather than seeking that kind of balance, I think it's finding the optimal integration between what's going on around your life, you know, in your life, whether that's family or friends or whatever other crafts you work on, and the thing that you're trying to be best of the world at. And it's never going to be 50, 50. If you could move away from this idea of balance and 50, 50, I think you can totally find. I believe you can find a healthy way to do it that does not require sacrificing, you know, morality or being a jerk. Though there may be a time and a place to be a little bit of a jerk if you're a Bolts fan.

Well, and for me, that idea of balance is dynamic, right? It's like slacklining across a chasm somewhere out in Arizona. He's like, it is in real time. And the other way I've heard it described is like, there are seasons to these things, and for the athletes we work with, there are literally seasons, right? But there are also seasons of your life. And you speak to that in the sense that for a professional athlete, because of the physical demands of the craft, right. That you only have this much time to maximize that particular skill set. And so you might go heavy, heavy on that side and to the exclusion of time with family and friends during the season, to the exclusion of a lot of other things that might interest you and excite you.

Right?

But you have a. After your career that you can then reinvent yourself with a second career or third career. Whereas for other folks, it might look a little bit more dynamic in the moment where you might, you know, for me, I play golf when the weather allows, but I'm not so committed that I'm, you know, at the simulator in February, grinding it out, know, working on my swing plane. And so there are seasons, and my balance, in that sense is very different, you know, in the spring, summer than it is in the winter. And so I think it's helpful for folks to think about that and say, all right, well, if I'm paying for it now, right, maybe now is the time to do it. I think this Is great for like business as well. Like if you're getting a business off the ground, Right. That's a season of your life where you're going to be spending a lot of time pouring your energy into that. We make the mistake though, and we don't necessarily transition. And when you've built it, then thinking about what does it mean to maintain that and how can I step back and find a different level of meaning or balance. And so this actually leads into the other point I wanted to bring up around well being and performance, which I often talk with the clients I work with about well being and performance tracking together. Right. So when well being goes up, your capacity to perform consistently at a higher level goes up. Right. But there's acute moments where that wouldn't be true. And you talked about this, right. That there would be times where you might want to empty the tank and it would be against your well being. Right. But at the same time it's going to help maximize performance. And so this is like the couple weeks during the Olympics or it's during the NBA playoffs. But helping athletes and performers really tease that out so that they can understand that most of the time you want to be working on the foundation so you can support the sort of the pinnacle of the performance. But every once in a while you kind of got to hit the NOS button and damage the cards to be able to get across the finish line first. I'm wondering how that fits for you in terms of your framework and how you deliver this to the clients you work with.

I love the NOS reference. Is that too fast, too furious throwback there?

Yeah, that landed right in my sweet spot. I was 17 when the first movie came out, so I was, I was doomed.

I love it. You probably got a souped up car after that, which I wouldn't, I wouldn't blame you for. I mean, yeah, I think you're right. I like the way you're talking about it as far as these two things tracking together. And I really think about it, you use the word capacity and that's the word I use a lot. Right. Is this concept of adaptive capacity. Right. Having a strong foundation of well being sets you up to take on higher and harder challenges. Right. The way I've often talked about it with athletes is if you sort of think of your ability to give a hundred percent as a fixed number. Right. 0 to 100. Like the more you take care of your well being, the more often you're going to have a hundred percent to give. Sometimes you're only going to have 80% of your 100% to give. And in that time, your goal is to give 100% of your 80%. But if you want to give yourself an opportunity to consistently give as much as you can give, you've got to take care of yourself and of your well being. Sleep, hydration, nutrition, have some fun, spend time with friends, right? Like these things fill you up and give you the energy you need to sustain over time. And if you're not taking care of them, your ability to deliver in those highest, hardest moments, your capacity is going to be quite limited. And yes, you're right, there are going to be some times again where you might make a decision that says, if I took my foot off the gas here, I'd be better recovered tomorrow. And that might be good for my long term in 10 years. I'll be glad I was recovered tomorrow. But if that game is game seven of the NBA finals, there's no need to be recovered tomorrow. You know, we don't want to be thinking about that. We want to be thinking about how we go and win game seven to the finals. And so in that moment, you know, you might make a different choice. And to me, that's not necessarily not prioritizing well being. I think it's recognizing, like you said, the dynamic interplay between these two things, which means if you're going to have a giant energy expenditure, right, if you're going to leave it all on the floor, so to speak, you're just going to need more time to recover. And that's the point that people often miss, right? Is they think they can empty the tank and then do the usual tomorrow, you know, like, oh, I can go really hard and give 100% today. And then if I sleep four hours and drink a couple of glasses of wine and get up on the road tomorrow, like, I'll be okay and ready to go on the second night of a back to back, like, no, you will not. You know, you will be on the court, but you will not be, you know, performing anywhere near the level that anyone would expect, nor that you would want for yourself to, you know, save face and keep yourself in a good position to get that next contract, for example, right? So it's just recognizing that these two things do kind of pull on each other. And I think the other side of that then is recognizing that if you don't do anything to take care of your well being, that sort of if you think of like your battery or your 100% meter, right, like the not taking care of yourself, just Pulls that hundred down consistently until maybe your max capacity is 50 or 60, you know, and the metaphor I often use from NBA time is like, you might get through one or two quarters on a twisted ankle or a bad ankle, but you're probably not going to make it through 82 games with no rehab. You know, like, it's just not going to happen. And the same thing is true for your mental well being. Like, you might make it through a couple games if you're not taking care of yourself, if you're not engaged in rest or sleep properly or doing some other extracurricular activities that interfere with your performance. Right. Like, you might, you might make it for a couple games, but the odds of you performing at the level we need you to perform at for the rest of the season are quite low. And so we've got to figure out how we put that foundation back in place to get that possible hundred back for you and then figure out how we maximize that.

Yeah, I mean, you end up like an old iPhone. You plug it in all night and then it says 100%, but then you look down at like 10 or 11am and you go, how am I already needing to plug it back in? And so it really speaks to the lack of sustainability there.

Yeah, I think that's right.

And I have, I guess, a question that, as I was reading through the introduction of your book came up. For me, it is like this holistic approach. The idea that we need to start with a foundation of well being. This makes sense to me, but it's preaching to the choir. I'm wondering what it is from your perspective that you can see that we need to keep sending this message to high performers. Right. That this still seems like it's new ground to break. Because for me, it's sort of like, yeah, if you're not sleeping well, it just makes sense. Right. But there's a lot of people out there that are really, really good at what they do. Who it still doesn't fully connect, or there's something else that's still more seductive. And so I'm wondering how you square those up.

To me, I think the, the biggest thing to overcome here, the myth or the obstacle to overcome here, is the old school sports mentality that essentially like, more. More is always better. Right. And you know, I remember when I was first coaching college football, you know, I was 21 years old, coaching guys who are a couple years older than me, working with a much older staff, obviously. And I'm out there, you know, we're working like 5, 30 in the morning till 11 or 1130 at night every day. And it's like, no one's making good decisions at this point. Point we're all sleep deprived. You know, I was like. And I'm walking off the field one day and I say to the offensive line coach at the time, who's. Who's since become a friend, but at the time was kind of like trying to mentor me, but wasn't doing it super effectively, bless his heart. And, you know, basically looked at me was like, you can, you can sleep when you're dead. You know, and you're like, well, that's. That's like sports in a nutshell right there, right? That, like, sums up this myth that that continues to persist. And look, I'm not. I'm not that old. Like, this wasn't that long ago that someone said this to me, right? And so I think that's what we're fighting is this idea that, oh, you can give more. You don't need to rest or recover. The idea that, you know, being in the gym at 4am is the only path to greatness. Like these sort of mythical stories about how hard people work without accounting for the things they did to rest or recover leads to this belief that if you just keep working, you're going to get the outcome that you want. And first of all, that's just not true. Right. There are plenty of people who work awfully hard who never get the outcome that they want. Adam Grant wrote a pretty good article in the New York Times not too long ago about this trend of students telling him they want A's because they worked really hard. And it's like, no, you don't. You don't get an A for working hard. You get an A for producing quality work. And quality work is a function of working hard, but also having some other stuff go well for you. Right? Whether that's knowing the material, being smart, whatever it might be, right? Well, in sports, it's the same thing. You can work super hard. Working super hard is not going to guarantee you an NBA championship. You're going to need a little bit of luck. You're going to need a little bit of talent. You're going to need some good coaching. You're going to need the right people around you. But we just ignore all of that because the greatest players that we've seen are all sort of like, lionized for the way that they work. So that's. That's what I think we're speaking against, right? And I think you and I both suffer from the curse of knowledge a little bit. Right. Which is like, oh, of course this makes sense to us. We know it. But, you know, for the average, like, person who hears the story of Kobe Bryant working out three times before his teammates even show up in the morning, the lesson that you take away from that is, oh, I should start working earlier than everybody else, because no one talks about Kobe taking a nap in between his training sessions or all the extra things he did to get rest. And so we've got to balance it out a little bit more than it is. And I don't think we're quite there yet.

Yeah. And it's something that comes up because you are prolific on LinkedIn, and if listeners haven't got a chance to follow you on LinkedIn, there's a ton of really great content that's really accessible. But you point out regularly that it's about working smarter, and then only then, you want to ramp up the volume. And that really stands out in the book as well. When you talk about preparation being a really central piece to peak performance, and that you need to be really purposeful about your practice because you can work really hard in the wrong direction and not get the results you want. And I think there's another piece here. When I think about the barriers I've run into is that the doing is active. Right. So if I go put up another hundred shots today, I'm doing something about it. Or I have a colleague who talks about panic. Practice after a tough round of golf is like, guys will just go to the range and just beat ball after ball, being like, well, I'm exerting my will here. And it. It's a kind of an anxiety trap. Right. I don't feel certain about tomorrow. And so if I put up more shots or if I take more swings today, I'm doing something about it, whereas recovery often feels passive. And so I think trying to reroute this idea for performers, that recovery you're actively engaging in and actually the quality of your presence, that immersion piece. Right. The quality of your presence while you're resting, recovering, whether it's a body scan script or receiving a massage like that plays a huge role. So let's attack recovery with the same zeal you bring to your active doing. But it's a tough shift for people because of all the things that you highlighted already.

Yeah. And that's why I often talk about recovery as being an investment in future performance. I think too often we think of recovery as time away. Right. Like, oh, it's off time. Right. I'm not doing the thing. So therefore it's not good. It's like, no, no, this is, you need to be doing this because doing this recovery is going to allow you to do tomorrow more effectively. And there's tons of data that backs us up. Right. And a lot of it comes from the world of work, but I think it's just as applicable in sports. It's like, you know, if leadership or management, for example, take work home with them, if you will, right. They show up and are less effective leaders the next day, even though they're not working that whole time. If they're thinking about work or distracted by work related thoughts, it actually interferes with your ability to be creative or lead effectively the following day. So there's data that sort of backs this idea up that you have to fully disconnect and be present in whatever your recovery is for that to be maximally effective. And there's also some other interesting studies that sort of confirm this anxiety type hypothesis that you have here, which shows that basically people conflate thinking about something with doing something about it. Right. And so the act of thinking a lot about something, like how you solve a problem, feels productive and is what often keeps people trapped in some cycles of rumination and that sort of process where you just get stuck on trying to essentially like hammer your way out of a hole. Right. Is, is, feels good, right. It feels like you're making progress. But there was a strength coach I worked with a long time ago who had this great saying who would say, you know, be careful getting used to running on a treadmill. You'll get used to running nowhere fast. That's what this feels like. You know, it's like you're out there hammering these golf balls, but you're not fixing anything. You're shooting another hundred shots. But these shots are not emblematic of what you're going to face in a game. And so those are very different goals to have in the face of getting better for tomorrow.

Yeah, yeah, I, I really resonate with that idea that, that anxious rumination, right. That it feels good to think about something because it's like, well, at least I'm doing something about it, right? I have a big workshop coming up and I can just lay in bed and go, okay, what about this and what about this and what about this? Like, I'm not putting any ideas to paper, I'm not helping design the presentation specifically. And sometimes I think it's a protective mechanism rather than have to go try and then go, man, this is really Hard. And it's not coming together as well as I want it. We can kind of just hide in the thinking of it. And all the while there's kind of this underlying sense that the rumination isn't helpful. It doesn't feel great. Right. But at the same time, it also feels great. There's this weird dialectic to it, and like you said, you end up getting trapped in that space.

Yeah. I mean, there's a lot we could unpack here. But I think ultimately, like, to me, so much of this boils down to trying to figure out how you get out of your head as quickly as possible and test whatever it is you're thinking about. Right. Like, I mean, I had this experience not that long ago where I. I had to. You know, I've been very fortunate in the number of people who pre ordered a book which requires me to hand sign and write a note for everyone, which has been awesome. But it also turns out there's a lot of, like, mailing and handwriting and all sorts of other things that goes into sending this out. And so for a really long time, I'm like, all right, well, thankfully, the books aren't going to be here for a few weeks, so I have time to, like, strategize about this. You know, I find myself in bed at 2am thinking about, like, well, what if I do this and what if I do that and, oh, I can, you know, come up with five different scripts and blah, blah, blah. And then all the books get here and I just kind of sit there for a few days. I'm like, man, this task is really daunting. And then as soon as I just open the box and I started writing it, it's like, oh, it's not so bad, you know, like, it'll get better. And I think just confronting reality in any of these situations from a place of, you know, intention, I think can go a really long way for kind of fighting that ruminative pattern. But it is rewarding to feel like you're making progress by just thinking about something which is sticky. And I think it's, you know, like you said, sort of comforting in a way to feel like you're making progress without actually having to do any work. Of course, it's not the same, but it feels that way.

Yeah, that's right. Well, and something else stands out as you described your experience with the books in that you talk about embrace in the book, you talk about embracing discomfort. Right. And that as a recovering procrastinator, I'm aware that it's the fear of the thing that I'm actually worried about. And that when I actually get into it, it's not what I thought it would be. Right. And so like you said, you open. You crack the first box open, and you get the first page flipped open on the book, and you're like, okay. And then you start. And as you start, things just kind of unfold from there. And it doesn't mean that planning isn't useful. Right. But it's this idea that we're often avoiding an idea of something and not the direct experience of it. And that, you know, you just said getting it out of your head and testing it. Right. Actually meeting the experience where it's at, that that actually allows you to recognize that the discomfort is more tolerable than you thought it would be.

Yeah.

And I think about cold exposure a lot because I don't love cold water. Right. But the idea of cold water is way worse than the actual experience of cold water. And if I remind myself regularly that that's true, my zone of tolerable discomfort gets bigger. Right. But if I don't do any cold exposure for a month, it is. The thought of it right now is awful.

Well, cold exposure in Chicago in February doesn't sound ideal to anybody, but I think that's exactly right. And I think a lot of this is just our human tendency to make things much bigger than they ever really are. And in a lot of ways, that helps us cope with whatever it is that we're dealing with. Right. Like, if you blow it up in your head to be really terrible to get into a cold tub in Chicago, then when you get in and it's not so bad, you know, that gap between what you expected in reality is going to feel pretty enjoyable. That you were wrong by so much, you know, and that that alone can be kind of rewarding and reinforcing a little bit. But I think you're exactly right. We've got to just find ways to. To get out there and sort of live it a little bit. And ultimately, I think that's what a lot of high performance is, is sort of like figuring out and experimenting with things that are a little bit uncomfortable, comfortable. Pushing yourself a little bit farther than you feel ready for, not farther than your body can handle, farther than you feel ready for, you know, and then being. Being thoughtful about then what you learn in that process and iterating from there.

Yeah. Yeah. By the time this comes out, I'll have dropped a solo episode called find your laboratory and you're hitting all of the beats perfectly perfect. I'm on brand in the. In the idea that what we're trying to do is really get it out, battle, test it, Recognize that the experience of being wrong is actually a great thing. And it's really interesting because I remember my counseling classes back in the day where we talk about helping clients get their expectations in line with reality. I think that's generally helpful. But what you just pointed to is having a certain expectation and then being proven very wrong in a positive or pleasant direction actually feels better than if I was like, you know what? The cold exposure is not going to be that bad. And it turns out that it's not that bad. And so there are times maybe where it's delightful to be proven wrong and that we might actually be excited to do some sort of experiment and then be like, man, I was so far off. It turns out that was really easy. Or it turns out, you know, X happened when I thought A, B or C was going to happen. And rather than having that ego attachment to, like, well, I won't tell anybody that I was wrong, instead being like, well, you know what? It's pretty cool. And let me share that so that other people know that being wrong, again, being purposeful, practicing in a direction and working in a direction that's meaningful.

Right.

But looking for those opportunities to figure it out and then iterate. That's a huge piece of it, too.

Yeah. If you've ever read any of Daniel Kahneman stuff or listened to him. Him talk, he's like, you know, was just incredible at the way he thought about enjoying making mistakes, like enjoying being proven wrong, enjoying making mistakes, enjoying someone challenging him and showing him evidence that he hadn't considered before. And he's someone I really looked up to. And, you know, so I've tried to kind of internalize some of that for myself where it's like, if you can figure out how to just appreciate when you've been off and recognize how misguided or miscalculated you were and learn from that, that can be, like you said, just as powerful as getting your expectations to match reality. Exactly right. Which is, of course, not how the world works anyway. So you're always going to be a little bit off. And so if you can. If you can figure out how to make the most of and enjoy being a little bit off, it's much more productive than being frustrated with yourself that you missed it.

Well, what I love about this is that I talk a lot about leveraging mistakes or hunting for them as springboards to Growth. But you're really adding an extra layer here, which is that we. We ought to savor. Right. Or delight in or find a little bit of enjoyment in. And I think that becomes really reinforcing as opposed to just sort of like the Terminator being like, let me find the next mistake so I can continue to grow. Right. You're infusing this idea that it could be a little bit more playful or a little bit lighter in terms of the way we relate to our mistakes.

Yeah, I mean, I think you almost need that if you're actually going to do the learning from mistakes. There's this, you know, famous motivation research researcher Ayelet Fishbach, actually in your neck of the woods at University of Chicago, who talks about how difficult it actually is for people to learn from failure. And what their data shows is when you've made a mistake, what you often do is you engage in all sorts of ego defensiveness and explanatory behavior before you actually look at anything that's gone wrong. And like, I think we're all guilty of this. Even if, you know, us sports psychologists who are out there telling you to embrace mistakes and use them as learning opportunities. Right. Like, you make a mistake and then the first thing you do is like, well, that wasn't my fault, or I was tired or it didn't work the way I thought it was going to work, or I was a bad day or whatever, you know, that was someone else's issue, or they didn't pass the ball to me correctly, or the plane got in at 3am and we didn't get to bed until 4. And so, you know, all these things are just you guarding against learning from whatever that is. But I think that's right. Like, I think it is. It is quite hard to actually step out and learn from whatever it is that's gone wrong. You do have to have a mindset like the one you're describing, where you're looking for it intentionally and trying to learn from it, or I think, trying to make it enjoyable in some way. And that requires, of course, like, lowering the ego threat to making mistakes. Right. And so some people might call that psychological safety in the context of teams. I'm not sure I love that term. So I still wrestle with it a bit. But the idea that you could, like, be okay with making a mistake, I think is quite important. And then better yet, if you can find a way to. I don't know if celebrate mistakes is exactly right. Like, I think people talk about that a lot and I don't know That I believe that that's directionally correct in a high performance environment, that we should be celebrating all the things that go wrong. But I think we can certainly make it more enjoyable to be discovering where we've missed and learning something from it and integrating that into the next thing that we do. And if we can make it a more enjoyable process, I think you let go of some of that ego defensiveness and get more out of the mistakes themselves.

Yeah, there's just a ton of nuance that I could peel back and start diving further into. And this is always the happy accident. It's like we could keep talking for another three hours and not run out of things to discuss. I guess right there. I'm curious about this idea that, you know, teasing out the celebrating from the sort of like enjoying the process of finding or being at least interested in the fact, and I think that's just maybe important to highlight, is that you, you don't want to celebrate mistakes in a way that like, I'm happy and pleased that it didn't go the way I wanted. Right. But if you miss, miss a, a three pointer and it's short and bounces off the front of the rim. Right. That feedback on your mistake, that's really important and we can find a way to appreciate that. And some of it's just inherent in the motor learning that we've engaged in. When you're that good at your craft is like, we take for granted that the feedback loops are tight and that we're able to adjust, but there are parts of our lives where we struggle to do that because the feedback loops are either not as tight or they're so ego threatening that it's really hard to then not slap a judgment label on it right up front and then try and distance ourselves from it as fast as we can.

Yeah, I think that's. Yeah, there is a lot of nuance here. And I love the example that you're, you're giving. And I think to me, the key thing you pointed out is the idea of feedback. Right. I mean, ultimately, when I work with high performing athletes or really any high performer, what I'm first trying to get them to do is become a scientist about their own performance. So a little bit less like, that was great or that was terrible, and a little bit more like, what worked here, what didn't work here. Okay, what could we do differently here? What did I learn from this? What should I change next time? Less evaluation, less judgment, a little bit more observation, engagement, experimenting, iterating. And I think that Alone gets you half the way there at least as far as appreciating the data that comes from say, clanking a three pointer off the front of the rim or whatever it might be. And so I think that's an important step to take is to be looking at it like it's just data feeding you back information about how you change your execution next time to be a little bit better. And then I think as far as celebrating goes, I'm always careful with this because I think what happens in our world, sports, psych or psychology broadly is these concepts that feel good. Now we're going to really need another three hours because this is a soapbox moment here. But these concepts that feel good end up permeating the way that we think about everything that we do and they catch on to. And then people latch onto it like it's the right thing all the time, right? So I can think of at least like five or six different things this has happened with, since I became a psychologist. And I come from a world outside of psychology. So it's not that I'm always skeptical of everything that comes up in psychology, but I have a different layer of skepticism than I think most, most of my peers, at least in graduate school, I'll keep the, I'll keep the comparison group narrow. And so what happens is like, you know, I think of growth mindset, right? Is like the example that comes up and like, look, I was guilty of this like when I was in graduate school, like, man, this is really interest thinking I should be doing my dissertation on growth mindset. And I did. And then a few years later I'm like, eh, I feel like this is too far. Like we're, we're missing something here. You know, we're missing something about the benefit of recognizing your own natural talent and having a fixed mindset. But we took this concept from this book, that great book, and made it this thing that now everyone should try to have. Growth mindset should be everything we teach in school. Growth mindset is important for medical students and it's important for workplaces. And like, I'm not saying it's not important, but to pretend that it's the only thing that we need, right? Or like it's the right thing and fixed mindset is the wrong thing, I think is right. And so ideas like celebrating mistakes, right, or psychological safety, these are all ideas that have that same undercurrent where people don't, I think, think through the real consequences of doing some of this stuff right? So if you celebrate mistakes every time they're happening. What you're really doing is reinforcing the incorrect behav behavior. Right? Like, and I'm not saying that that's always wrong, but I think to pretend, like in an MBA environment we should be thrilled when you screw up, I think is, is silly. I think it's nonsense to be pretending like that's the right thing to be doing. And I think similarly, like in workplaces, if you're trying to produce some high level outcome, celebrating all the mistakes you make along the way is probably not going to help you get there. It doesn't mean be hard on mistakes or be overly critical or berate people when a mistake happens. Like, we don't need to punish people, doesn't go wrong because they're already doing it for themselves. Like, I remember every coach I worked with in football, for example, a kid fumbled the ball and they come off the field and the coach is already meeting them, you know, at the hash mark, screaming at him like, this kid doesn't need you screaming at him. This kid knows that he fumbled the ball. Like he's already figured out that a mistake happened. Right? But it also think of how incongruent it would be if the offensive coordinator ran out there jumping up and down cheering that this kid fumbled. Right? Like those are the kinds of things that, that I want people to think through. And so it's not to say mistakes are, you know, you should punish people when they've made a mistake. It is to say, we should not go so far and say, oh, all mistakes are learning opportunities. Failures are to be celebrated. Like, that's nice, but that's just not real life. Real life doesn't work that way. You don't get rewarded for screwing stuff up a bunch of times, right? You get rewarded for iterating and getting it right. And that doesn't mean you won't make mistakes or that you should punish yourself for making them. But it does mean you should be thoughtful about the way you respond to them, try to learn from them and move forward as quickly as you can.

One, let me see if this piece kind of adding a little more nuance is, is helpful. It is like I, I talk a lot about say, having two very separate jobs for performers, right? The one is to learn as much as you can, as fast as you can without cutting corners, right. The other is being able to put those lessons into play under pressure. But when we're trying to do both at the same time, we're doing neither really well. Right? And so in that training mindset mistakes. I think again, you're talking about the kid coming off the field having fumbled, right? That's a performance mindset. You're there to do the best that you can and you need to go out for the next series and execute. And so me hammering you or you hammering yourself about the mistake you made, mistake is a distraction, right? It's pulling you out of that immersion. It's throwing you out of your energy sweet spot. Right? And so the, the best, the way I try and coach it is to just as best as we can, let it go, right? But after the game, when you're evaluating your performance or the next day in practice, shifting over and saying, okay, well, I didn't need to. I certainly didn't want to celebrate it in the moment, right? But I can be curious about and say, okay, well, if I fumble like that today and I can address that today in practice, right, Then that means that it's less likely to happen in the future. So I can appreciate that it showed up. It's just a more of a timescale thing. But I agree that to the bigger point that the popularization of psych concepts, right, Whether it's grit or psychological safety or growth mindset that things get flattened down because they have to fit into a 15 second reel someplace and it can be really hard to have the nuance to be able to deliver and tease out what does that actually mean? When is it appropriate to whom is it appropriate? I don't even know if I used whom. Right, we'll ignore that. And so I hear what you're saying in terms of being careful to just paint with a really broad brush because a lot of things aren't appropriate for everybody and they're certainly not appropriate for everybody all the time.

100%. Yeah. And I think this is, you know, again, soapbox. So we won't, we won't take all the rest of the time on it. But I think this is one of the things that happens a lot in the world we share together, right? As you take these ideas or platitudes that sort of have some, some validity to them, then extend them to the, you know, farthest possible point and it becomes ludicrous, right? So it's like, you know, control the controllables. Like, yeah, that, that's nice, but like, there's also stuff you can influence and you should be thinking about that there's stuff that you can't control that you should still be thinking about. Like there's, you know, there's a lot more nuance than Just control the controllables or consistency, you know, like I'm not going to name any names here, but I was away at a retreat and there was a fairly well known kind of performance guru, let's call them at this retreat, and someone asked them what's the most important thing you can do to become great? And their answer was just be consistent. It's like this is the worst advice I've ever heard from this answer. It doesn't mean don't be consistent. Of course you need to be consistent. But being consistent at what? Like be consistent at the wrong thing is going to take you in the wrong direction. Being consistent at an average practice is going to make you very average, right? So like this idea that any of these things can just be turned into some kind of solution or taken at face value I think is just a, it's a disservice we do to the larger community. So I try to rally against it as much as I can.

Well, and I'll be honest, this is one of the reasons why I started this experiment in the first place. So I'd leave conferences and I'd go, you know what? We just bounced off the surface of a bunch of ideas and I know that there's other stuff to discuss, right? But we're not, you know, some of its format, some of it is pitching to sort of the, the middle of the group. But there's so much nuance to get into and mechanism to discuss. And I'll be honest, when I first heard your take on growth mindset, I was like, I was the grumpy guy. Wait a second, hold on. And it took a little while of thinking through because. And again, you're going to call BS on me if this isn't the way you're thinking about it. But I remember you talking about athletes, especially in high performance environments. And we can generalize this to any high performer. They need to have some self belief that they trust isn't going to go away. And that a lot of times growth mindset translates as things are transient, right? We're always shifting, things are always moving in a way that it makes it really hard to fall back on that core of here's what I do great, right? Whether it's talent or skill or just my sense of self belief, I can handle challenge and continue to grow. And so for you it sounded like it was really important that high performers have that sense of immovable core, right. But that everything else around that you want to continue to grow. And so again it's a more nuanced answer than just slapping a growth mindset on top of it and saying, we're good. Is that. Is that accurate or am I full of it?

No, I mean, I think you've got it. Yeah, I don't think. I don't think you're full of it. I mean, for me, it's yes, Growth mindset matters, of course, right? Like, hard work and effort are very important in any good outcome. I don't know anyone that won an NBA championship without working hard. Like, so you do need it, but it often gets treated like it's the only thing you need, right? Like, oh, if we just work hard, it'll all work out. And that's just not true. It won't all work out. If you just work hard. Hard. You're going to have to be really intentional about what that hard work looks like, and you're probably going to need to identify some special things that you do that allow you to maximize the value of that hard work. So my. My favorite example of this from the NBA is Steph Curry, right? Like, Steph Curry could have come into the NBA and just worked really hard, globally, worked hard. Would he have become the best shooter of all time? Probably not, right? Like, he needed to figure out, hey, I'm pretty special at this whole shooting thing, and if I spend a lot of extra time doing this one thing I'm really special at, I might have this elite skill that nobody else in the world can replicate. And if I do that, I might win more than some other people, right? And so he figured this out, and he channeled that hard work into this signature strength and skill. And so even when he's having a bad night, he still keeps shooting. Not because he's selfish, but because he believes that this is the thing that keeps him on the floor in addition to working really hard. And so the way I see it is like, yes, a movable core is good language for it, right? It's these signature strengths or things that, you know that separate you, that you believe can make you the best in the world at what you do, figuring out what those things are, figuring out how to double down on and maximize those things, and pairing that with hard work, right? And the real research on growth mindset. And Carol Dweck will even say this herself when you look back at her research, what she really found was that the best performers were high in both growth mindset and fixed mindset, right? They believed that they had something special, that their talent mattered for the outcomes that they were producing. And those outcomes were made Possible by working really hard. What she didn't find was that high performers only had a growth mindset and no fixed mindset. But that's kind of how we've positioned it since the book's come out.

And it reminds me of the way that people approach sort of the mastery and ego orientations in terms of how they approach outcomes. Yeah, it's like Michael Jordan was exceedingly mastery oriented, but he also wanted to kill you every night and he wanted to win. And you could be high in both of those. And so again, we could. We could roll for another day and not run out of stuff to talk about. But I want to be mindful of time. And so I've got just two questions left. The first is, you know, we talked about these three stages or three quests. I really liked how you use that language. The first is to understand yourself better and know who you are. The second is to be the best version of yourself. And the third is to produce the best results you can in your field. I'm wondering if we think about one of those three, is there a particular skill that you think is most applicable or useful for the folks listening that they could start incorporating into their own practice so that they could do that a little bit better?

Well, I think we can sort of pull on the thread where we ended because I think it cuts across all three journeys, which is figure out what you can be best in the world at in your own world. Right. If you want to understand yourself, you're going to need to figure that out. Right. If you want to become the best version of yourself, you're going to need to figure that out. And if you want to produce great results, you're going to need to figure that out. Right. So look to figuring out what is your signature strength, the thing that makes you special, doesn't mean that no one else in the world could do it. Right. It just means it's the thing that you believe you can be best at, that you've identified as a real strength for you and then figure out how you maximize that. Right. Whether that's through additional practice, coaching, other kinds of experimenting. There's lots of ways to sort of maximize this signature strength, but that would be my, my one action step that would cut across all three journeys, I think, is if you can identify that it'll help you in any of the paths that you're on.

And is there a single action that somebody could take today? And again, I'm flattening it down. Right. But I'm thinking about actionable steps Is there something that somebody could do that would allow them to take that journey or start that journey or continue on that journey?

Yeah, there's a few. So, I mean, one would be like, there's a great free assessment called the Via Character Strengths Test. You can find it@viacharacTER.org that'll help you understand and have, like, a sort of a simple framework for understanding what your strengths might be. And you'll have to do a little bit of thinking on your own, obviously, to figure out like. Like, you know, which of these is most applicable or is that true? But I think it's a good way to sort of illuminate some of the things you're good at. I think the second thing you could do is what's called a confidence resume. So you can sort of look back at your successes over the past 10 years, 20 years, your whole lifetime, like, what are the things in your life that went well? And then look at each of those events and figure out, okay, how did I make that happen? Right. What were the things I did that allowed this outcome? Assume hard work was part of it. Right. What are the other things that I did? And for a lot of people, it's things like, you know, I communicated very clearly if you were in a corporate environment, or I was really clear in my thinking, or I made the right decision repeatedly. If you're an athlete, right. Or I, you know, I shot the ball lights out, like, okay, that might give you some insight into shooting being a strength. Right? So those would be a couple actionable steps you could take. And then the third one I'd give you, if you're feeling a little interpersonally vulnerable, but is probably the most impactful, is reach out to 10 to 20 people in your network and ask them to tell you a story about a time when they witnessed you being the best you could be. Don't ask for anything else. Just say, hey, I'm working on this. Write me a short story about myself at a time where you observe me being my best. And then at the end of that, synthesize all those stories, look for the themes, and whatever themes you pull out will be your strengths, and then that will give you some direction as far as what you can do to double down on it. And for those who are feeling really brave, that's the path I would encourage. It is awkward and scary to do, and everyone I've done this exercise with, bar none, has said it's one of the most impactful things that they've ever done in their life. So if you're looking for something exciting to do and willing to push yourself a little farther. That's what I would do.

Yeah. I immediately went, oh no, not that. Which tells me that's going to be a really great tool for me to use. And yeah, I suggest that people take the Via Character Strength Inventory because it provides such really valuable insight. And so all three of those are great and I appreciate your generosity with sharing those ideas and folks can take those and put them into play starting today. Last thing, tell us a little bit about the book again. I've found a ton of value in exploring the concepts and they've come they plugged in here over and over again just in this conversation. But yeah, let us know where we can find it and we can make sure that it's linked in the show notes and everything as well.

Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity to share. So the book called the Greatness came out on January 1, just in time for your New Year's resolution to become the best version of yourself and is really broken into two parts. The first part is about sustainable excellence and how you grow and progress over time and the second part is about how you perform in the biggest moments. You can find it anywhere books are sold really. So Amazon is probably the big one, but it's in Barnes and Noble and some other places like that too.

That's awesome. So definitely recommend folks who are listening take a chance to pick that up again. One of the things that I think is your super strength is that you are consistent. You deliver over and over again with high quality stuff stuff. But you also bring a really important flavor of evidence backed and scientifically supported ideas. And so you can know that the practices that are being recommended aren't just things that you've made up. And so I'm grateful for how you've continued to push our community and what you're offering to performers out there. And just want to thank you again for your time today.

Thanks for having me. It was fun. Let's do it again.

We will be back in two weeks with a new episode and in the meantime, if you're interested in checking out other episodes or accessing show notes, head to the website MTL Academy or follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. If you got something out of today's episode, do me a favor, leave me a review or send this over to a friend or a teammate who could benefit from listening. Better yet, do both. The Mental Training Lab is produced by the team Palmtree Podco. Anthony Palmer is the Executive producer and thanks to our digital team, Emily Miles and Caitlin Craig. The content for this episode was created by me, Pete Kadusha.