The Competitive Advantage You Don't Want Others to Know About

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From others over self. It's hardcore and at ease. A show about people who are keeping their edge without going over the edge. I'm host Shelly Rude and today's guest is Andy Matthews, who went from professional golf to coaching elite athletes across every major sport for over a decade. He co founded a successful aviation tech company. In his spare time we dive into Andy's science backed approach to performing under pressure, the mental frameworks he developed while working with champions, and the counterpart counterintuitive stress technique that helps high pressure leaders like you and I stay sharp when it matters most. This is hardcore and at ease. Andy Matthews is with us today and Andy is a professional coach with Neuro Peak Pro. And Andy and I connected on a deeper level because what he does not only affects every single human being out there, but but it has a special effect on people who perhaps struggle to maintain control of some of their body's biological movements. And I'm going to let Andy talk to me just a little bit more about what he does. So Andy, why don't you let our listeners in on the secret of who you are and what you're doing these days.

Sure, Shelly, thanks for having me. It's great to see you. We've all had those moments where we get a little bit nervous when we're about to do something right and that's our body's natural fight or flight response. And what I do as a performance coach is help teach breathing techniques to help manage that stress so that you can perform better under pressure. I'm fortunate to work with a lot of professional golfers, elite amateurs, college teams, but like you said, the foundation of what I do breathing applies to every single one of us as human beings. And little did you know, you can actually do it better and reap some pretty cool benefits because of it.

So you started right off the bat, Andy, talking about how we've had those moments where we've really just, we have those nerves hit. For me, it's not necessarily getting ready to go on a stage. I mean it can be, you know, I do a lot of keynotes and talking and obviously recording sessions, but that's not necessarily where my nerves kick in. Can you share with me outside of the box like what some of those instances or those moments might look like where we might need to have a system or a mantra to really help us control our breathing.

Yeah, those scenarios could be for a student walking into taking a test, For a business professional, it's walking in to give a pitch or a presentation. It might just be us as regular human beings kind of replaying the events of the day or perhaps anticipating the events of tomorrow. And we either get ahead of ourselves and that anticipatory stress, if you will, starts to activate that stress response, because frankly, the brain doesn't know the difference. But retrospectively just the same, when we look back at those kind of woulda couldas I wish I would have done that differently or man, I did something that I know I shouldn't have done. And you just get that pit of the stomach feeling that you'd like a do over. And that's our stress response doing exactly what it's designed to do. But when it comes to breathing, that response doesn't always have to be the default response of all of those automatic functions that our body does when we're in stress. And then for every one of us, it shows up differently. It might be higher heart rate, it might be cold, sweaty hands, it might be muscle tension, it might just be that pit of the stomach feeling or butterflies. But of all of those automatic functions that our body demonstrates when we're in stress, breathing is the only one that when you put attention to, you can control. And it essentially serves as a metronome for all the other physiological functions that are attached to our nervous system. So our nervous system, the way that we breathe, can actually put us back in control of our nervous system, even though when everything around us is telling us otherwise.

So what I heard you say is that irregular breathing is a stress response.

Irregular breathing is stress.

I feel like that is, that's so like basic 101 level. And yet I feel like that's a step that so many of us either don't recognize or we skip in our day to day lives. How do you know when you're in an abnormal breathing response state?

Yeah, you started to lean into it there. It's about awareness. You don't know what you don't know. Even outside of a stress response. If you're thumbing through your phone, sitting on the couch, watching a show at a traffic light, when you're just kind of doing what you normally do on a day to day basis, chances are you're breathing wrong. And when I say you're breathing wrong, biomechanically, yes, but the first thing that we see when we start to look at the way someone is breathing is how fast they're breathing. And we measure that it's in 15 to 18 breaths per minute, which, if you never thought about your breathing, may not have a ton of context. But when we start to look at how the nervous system responds to our breathing, it starts to respond best and maybe find that balance or in the context of this conversation, find the opportunity to be at ease. It happens at around six breaths per minute.

It's like nothing.

Yeah. So here we are, living our daily lives, breathing two to three times faster than what the body really needs to do to be able to find the break, let alone maybe let the foot off the gas for a little bit.

Andy, is this lifestyle because you and I, I mean, we are very, very well off Americans. And so we have. We're not out here foraging for food and we're driving cars on highways. So how come I'm breathing unnatural? Why would the human, your average American, be breathing the wrong way? You said we're not biomechanically breathing the wrong way. But if we do all just breathe so naturally, is this lifestyle because we're in cars and staring at phones? You see what I'm going?

Yeah, it very much is lifestyle. And it's the cumulative effects perhaps of our lifestyle over time. Like that stress response. Super helpful when we're facing a predator. Right. But it's not helpful. And frankly, it gets in the way of fine motor skills and some of the things that a lot of us require and depend upon when we're doing our day to day. So it's those cumulative effects of stress, and I would even say it's a lot of it too, is body image and even posture. We want to have a nice tight core and have that stability that that requires. And yes, is that necessary. But when we keep that core really tight, it makes it really hard to allow the diaphragm, our primary breathing muscle, to move the way that it's supposed to. So here we are, we're either standing super erect and really tight in our core, or we're in a really bad posture if we're just kind of lounging on the couch. And so all of those things that we do on a daily basis have an opportunity to kind of interfere with our body's ability to breathe properly. You may not have an opportunity to realize what the benefits could be by making some super simple changes and just changing the way that we breathe. Something that we do every minute of every day, really, without thinking about.

Sounds like the two extremes where, right. We're either like really, really, really rigid and Tight and holding everything in, or we're finally taking off the bra. Well, maybe not you, but taking everything off at the end of the day and letting it go and letting it all hang out. And because we're bouncing back and forth between these two extremes, we're kind of losing sight of that normal natural middle. Whereas if we transported ourselves perhaps to a more less developed type of human existence, we wouldn't be quite so comfortable or we wouldn't be quite so out of our place when we have to talk to.

Yeah, I think that's really well said.

Andy. There's something in you that is personally attracting you to this type of work. You don't just wake up one day and decide, I want to help people breathe better. It's incredibly meaningful work. And I mean, it is life changing. But how do you go from you've got this internal instinct to want to help people, to want to be a coach? Because I know that's what you do. But how do you attach that to breathing?

There's a story behind that. And I played golf professionally in my prior life, and I grew up playing golf from a very young age and was fortunate to have some success in the game. But I often found myself, especially when I was playing professionally towards the end of the season, in an all too familiar position of kind of looking at the order of merit, seeing guys that I needed to beat in order to keep my status for the next year. And it was frustrating because I knew I could beat those guys. And I also knew I was doing all the right things off the golf course to be able to beat them. But when the lights came on and it came time to put a score on a scorecard, things looked and felt really different. And it was my golf coach who introduced me to this company, who specialized in precision breathing training. And so I was a client of Neuropeak Pro Starting Shoot 2008. And honestly, I didn't know breathing was something we could do wrong and live to tell about it. And when I saw, after a few short assessments, how my breathing was impacting my stress response and how my stress was impacting my ability to play good golf, I knew I had found kind of a missing link that I was long in search for. I had worked with mental performance coaches and sports psychologists, and even though I knew what I should do, I had a really hard time putting it in play. But when I learned how to.

Because you said it, you said, you said when. When I was thinking about everything I had to do off the course, you said you were doing all of the right things. What does that mean to you?

So from a golfer's perspective, it's putting time in, working on the mechanics of your golf swing in your putting strok, spending time in the gym, making sure your body's strong and flexible, nutrition, hydration. All of those things that I think a lot of listeners can relate to, of what they want to do to be able to put themselves in a really good opportunity to do whatever it is that they do really well.

So not Friday night at the bar.

Not Friday night at the bar.

Are you sure?

Dare I say, some may say that the state of balance needed to play good golf is actually at the end or the bottom of a bottle.

And maybe that's. Our next segment is where we talk about what you need to do on the course to be a good golfer, because I know a lot of golfers that spend their bottle on the course as well.

So to bring that to full circle, learning how to breathe completely changed the trajectory of my golf career. And then, as life would have it, had an opportunity to come back to Neuro Peak Pro and start coaching. And instead of competing against some of the best players in the world, I was in the position to start helping them and helping them with a performance technique that they may have heard something about, maybe not at all, but one that started to change the trajectories of other golf careers as well.

I heard you say. So instead of competing against some of the best in the world, I had and was in a good position to be able to serve them. That is an incredible mindset shift for you, Andy.

It was, and it was always my dream as a golfer to play on the PGA Tour. That for me, growing up was the pinnacle of where you want to be as a golfer. And today, you know, I'm on the PGA Tour full time, but I'm just not teeing it up every week. I'm in the opportunity, as you said, to help serve and help others be the best that they can be. And it's humbling, it's exciting. And, you know, I often say I couldn't write a better job description for what I get to do every day.

You know, and we kind of started out our conversation today just talking about what it means to be a coach and. And what it means to, you know, you have this inner drive to help and to serve other people. But there does have to be a piece of you that allows you to step back. You have your time, you've had your moment in the spotlight. And that isn't the only spotlight for your entire life. There's a lot of other opportunities that we have as human beings to help our gifts really be able to grow and to show and to serve one another. So now that you're on the PGA Tour full time, that's a really cool thing to say. And you're out there doing it in such a way that is truly elevating the sport. Player after player. Right. And it starts with you. It starts with you really learning and designing, recognizing that there's a level that you're not hitting. And I need to know why. And you can't keep that nugget of wisdom to yourself.

Yeah.

And ever since I've met you, you haven't been able to keep it to yourself, because it does. It reaches every single human being.

You're right. And there was certainly a time, Shelly, especially when I started to see the benefits and experience them for myself. And I went from literally just narrowly keeping my card every year to the year after I learned how to breathe better. I. I finished 10th on the order of merit on what was then the Canadian Tour. It was. It was a huge shift. And, like, I've never heard someone put it in perspective for me of saying, like, I'm helping elevate the game. I literally had to just kind of pause and think about that for a minute. But for a really long time, I kept it to myself. I knew how big of a competitive advantage it was that I didn't want others to know what I was doing, even something as simple as breathing. And I had a lot of my closest friends and the guys that I was traveling with and staying with and competing against week to weekly. Andy, what did you do during the off season?

Don't tell him. Don't tell him. It's breathing.

And Shelley, for a long time, I didn't. And then finally, when. When I felt like I had enough of a head start, I started letting a few others in. And it was a similar reaction kind of across the board. It's like breathing. Like, I do this every minute of every day. Like, what's the big deal? And when I had a chance to show them, they started to see it, too. So thinking back, even just sharing it, I wasn't coaching by any means at that point, but maybe that was kind of the launch of what I'm doing now.

Can I share a secret with you that has really changed and elevated my life over the last six months?

Please.

Getting back into the gym. Yeah. There's a right way to do it, and if you do it the right way, if you learn from the pros. I'm a former fitness professional, so for me to get back into the gym is not like starting over from square one. I mean, it's what you're talking about. It's like I'm used to acting at that pro level, and I'm not there right now, or I know that I could be better. There has to be a framework. There has to be a system. Somebody has figured this out, right? Like, you know that there's a secret. You know, that somebody's got this figured out, and we need to tap into that. And that's why I so deeply wanted to have you on our show, Andy, is because you have such that servant heart to be able to share, and you have that freedom and that ease of communication to be able to connect with so many different people. And I love that about you. So can you tell me a little bit more about just you as a human being? And one of the questions that we always ask our guests is the understanding that you were brought on because you're hardcore. And to be hardcore, that really means that you have devoted yourself to something throughout your lifetime, and it can be anything. So will you tell us in your own words, Andy, what makes Andy Matthews so hardcore?

I mean, for. For me, gosh, there's so much perspective that comes with that question. What others may. May see me as doing hardcore isn't necessarily what I would say as me being hardcore. Because golf, it's what I do. It's what I'm most comfortable doing. Even though I said I couldn't write a better job description for what I get to do every day, my spot where I am most comfortable is on the golf course, whether that's playing with buddies or going out on Sunday afternoon with my family or competing. And I'm fortunate to be able to still compete at a pretty high level. There is no place I am more comfortable than on the golf course. For me, that's just it. Some may say my ability to play competitively, and I've teed it up on some of the biggest stages in the world to be able to do it. I think personally, it's a passion for a game, but it's a game that comes with so many life lessons. I love playing golf with other individuals, and now that I'm in my role, you can learn so much about an individual so quickly when you're on the golf course with them.

So quickly. I'm laughing because I can immediately think of one of the last times that I played golf, and definitely there was Someone in our foursome that threw his club from the tea.

Yeah. It's so like, how do you handle success? How do you handle adversity? Do you play by the rules? Like those are all the things that are revealed and in some ways expected through kind of the honor of the game of golf. To be able to have those moments and kind of recurring and get that glimpse into individuals, I mean, I might say that's pretty hardcore.

It is pretty hardcore. And I love that you said it was the honor, the honor and the privilege of playing the game.

Yeah. And so much of golf is about playing by the rules and calling your own penalties. And you know, I think maybe in today's age that's a little bit of a lost art.

I have a 15 year old that I'm.

Well, you have a head start. So maybe we'll have another call because we've got our 20 month old now.

Oh my goodness. Which means that you're half asleep talking to me.

Fortunately, Grace knows how to sleep and she knows that mom and dad needs their sleep too.

I want to talk a little bit about the phrasing that you just used when we're talking about what's involved with golf and this idea of integrity and the importance and the understanding of you have to call your own shots, you have to keep your own score. The. You know, you've only got two or three other people around you and they're watching what you do and they're watching what you put on your scorecard. Can you talk to me a little bit about integrity and what you've seen over the years from. Because you've played at every level, I'm sure you've seen it everywhere.

Yeah, certainly. And going back to when I started playing, I was five years old. It's what I did Sunday afternoons after church with my mom and dad, we'd go out to the golf course and I'd have an opportunity to hit it around. And my dad from a very early age was like, Andy, what did you have on that? What did you have on that hole? And we would have a conversation until I got the number right.

One, one, one. Andy. It wasn't always one.

And so I like, that's what I, I mean, that's what I do love about, about the game. And you know, you're playing by the rules and it's just for those of us that have been in competitive golf when it really does matter, when trophies are on the line, when college golf scholarships are on the line, or you look at the professional game today, Multi million dollar first place checks are on the line. Like, you absolutely have to play by the rules. Regardless.

There is no room for cheating the higher and higher and higher you go. And I know the stories around Lance Armstrong and what happened with him with the Tour de France and all of the different hormones that have entered into professional sports. The higher you go, like you said, the stakes get elevated and there's no room for cheating. And yet, when we look at the rookie route and where we're starting to climb, the temptation to cheat is legit.

Yeah, I think you're exactly right. Where with the stakes being higher, the opportunity to cut some corners also becomes that much bigger. And you just, you have to be able to stay within yourself. And like you said, the higher you go, the harder and faster you're gonna fall if you're not.

I grew up working construction for my father. And before my father owned the company, it was my grandfather and his brothers that started it. One of the lessons that my father told me was that when his dad was teaching him how to do certain things on a roof, if the two pieces of wood wouldn't fit all the way together, if there was a little hole still there, grandfather would say, you could just add a little sawdust to fill it in. And then the older that my father got and the more experience that he became in construction, he learned that, you know, no, you should not be filling it with sawdust just to fill the hole. You should actually recut the piece of wood so that it gives you a nice solid joint. Like you said, we all kind of do it at different phases in our life. And for you to be out on a course and for your dad to be challenging you at such a young age and to be teaching you those values of integrity and honesty, that's so important and that's so wonderful. And I love that both you and I have that in common.

Yeah, for sure.

So let's talk about being at ease, because being hardcore is one thing. Being hardcore means that you can totally rock it out in one area of your life. And that is awesome. And we want you to have the edge. I love that Andy has this incredible edge about him. I mean, since I've met him, all I've ever done is talk about the edge that Andy has. Because you present as such, this incredibly well put together man. Right. I mean, you're very pleasant and, you know, very white collar. I mean, you are just. You're the golfer to a tee, quite literally.

I own it.

And yet when you talk about. When you talk about Being highly competitive. Right. What does that look like? Because in other sports, like basketball, for instance, I'll never forget when someone did a slam dunk and then went over and kissed their biceps. Like, that's the type of attitude that you just don't see, see on the golf course. And so I love, I love the gentlemanness about, you know, you and the sport that you represent. But the idea of being hardcore means that you've been able to keep your edge. And the idea of being at ease, allowing yourself to be at ease, is that you haven't gone over the edge, so you haven't necessarily cheated and lost everything. How would you go over the edge in golf? I'll let you finish my sentence.

Oh, man. Over the edge in golf, you know, I think could be as simple as trying too hard. Right. It's often a game that, in a way, you need to allow itself to come to you. Yes. You need to put in all the hard work. You need to work on the right things and make sure you're setting yourself up to be able to do that. But when it comes down to it, like, you have to go out there and trust the work that you've put in and just go play the game for what it's presented and not try and, you know, I often say, play golf, swing. When you're out there trying to play the game of golf, you're thinking about the right, the wrong things. You're thinking about how can you force the issue in certain situations. And so for me, I think that's. That's where a lot of golfers start to get ahead of themselves. Right. They're thinking about the what ifs and the what if I don'ts, or I made that mistake back on the third hole and now I've got to make up for it. And it's not necessarily the best strategy, because when we're doing that and when I start to put my coach glasses back on, we're allowing our body to get stressed. It's going to get stressed. But there's things that we do that can help kind of propel it deeper or further into that stress response where you do kind of hit that point of no return.

And it's not just in the game of golf. I mean, in life, if we think of those of us that are just in the boardroom, you know, once a week, if you are constantly walking back into that meeting thinking about, oh, gosh, last week when I was here, this happened, and I hope it doesn't happen again, you're not going to be coming forward with your best foot, period. And so that's where the framework has to exist. You have to have some type of mental clarity. Like you said, your coach, glasses have to go on. How are you going to coach yourself in this moment to be able to really go in and shine? And that is the idea of how can we be at ease, how can we keep one foot in the game doing what we're doing so that we can be the best at it, but at the same time, be able to lean back, be able to have a little bit of a relaxed motion to say, hey, man, it's going to be all right.

Yeah, you're right. It's about that perspective and being able to. To have that perspective when everything around you is. Is telling you otherwise. It's just. It's something so innate to who we are, right, Of. Of wanting to press, of wanting to go, and when we're not there. We talk a lot about in golf, about getting in the zone or in flow, and any athlete can relate to that. Anyone who's presented or written or when, you know, time just kind of stands still and you're doing your thing. Like, what did you do to get there? Or what was the environment that allowed you to get there? You weren't stressed, and conversely, you probably weren't on the other end of the spectrum where you're kind of lethargic and behind the power curve. You were just in this perfect state of balance that allowed you to have the appropriate response or the appropriate actions to the actual environment that you were in. And that aligned perfectly with what you were trying to do.

And you don't have to wait until you're a seasoned professional to be able to have that. You just need to have, like, a grasp of the knowledge. So when I was in the army, I was actually working as one of the instructors on a qualification course. And so we had nine millimeter pistols and we had M16s out there, two different ranges. And I qualify in a nine mil, but a lot of the soldiers qualify in M16s. And so I popped over to the M16 range, and it was pretty late in the day. So at this point, with this iteration, if you had not qualified yet, that meant that you are on your third term out there trying to hit these targets, which meant that you probably, like, something was wrong, something was off either. Like, at this point, you kind of can't blame it on a weapon malfunction. It's usually user error when it comes to the third iteration or longer. One young man in Particular was just really all over the place. I mean, he would send a round downrange, and you would just see the dirt pop up in front of the target. You would see the mound get hit behind the target, but off to the side. And he had had probably three or four different people coming over and helping him and trying to instruct him, and he just wasn't getting it. His scores were so incredibly low. And I am a. I used to be an NRA certified rifle coach, and I just have this love of shooting. And I was the coach for the Bronco rifle team over at Western Michigan University for a few years. And to see somebody struggling at something that they could be good at fairly quickly, if they make a couple of adjustments, that's an opportunity. That's a huge opportunity. And I kind of feel like you did in that moment with yourself where you're just like, I can't let this go. I have to share this knowledge. And so at the next break, of course, he failed that iteration. I said, hey, you know, listen, do you want to give me five minutes of your time before you go into this next one, or do you want me just leave you alone? Because a lot of times, right, if somebody's failing. Tell me, Andy, if somebody's failing, are they open to receiving communication about how they're doing?

They're absolutely. They have tunnel vision. They can't see the big picture, and.

They'Re thinking, oh, I've already had four people help me with this, and what are you gonna tell me that's different from them? So I leaned down with this guy. We're both in prone, and I just shared a couple of, you know, quick tips with him. I looked at where his fingers were. I looked at, you know, the biomechanics of shooting and the weight transfer. Is it going from the palm into the elbow? Is he using too much of his bicep? Right, all of that. And he had a really, really good, solid stance. And so I knew as a coach, I put my coach glasses on, and I'm like, listen, you know, you're in a really good place to shoot what's going through your head? And so he told me a little bit about what was going through his head, and I was. I gave him the confidence that his position was perfect. And then when he went out onto that next iteration, would you know that he scored Sharpshooter. And he came up, and he was like, right. Huge smile, and he's like, oh, my gosh, what did you tell him? And I looked at him, and I Go.

I don't know.

What did you do that got you to be able to go from unqualified to sharpshooter? And he was like, ma', am, that was so awesome. He said, you told me that everything that I was doing was right. He said, it was my brain, it was my mind, it was what I was thinking of. He said, that first one popped up and it was a 50 and I missed it. And they couldn't believe it because 50 meters is the closest target. He said, I thought to myself, what kind of idiot misses the 50? He didn't say idiot, but, you know, I'll keep it G rated here. I had encouraged him during the five minutes we had together to just relax and have confidence and find a little bit of fun of being out in the shooting range. And so when he said to himself, what kind of idiot misses the 50? He said, all of a sudden he was transported into being like Bugs Bunny. And all he could think about was these cartoons popping up left and right. And in his brain he went, what kind of idiot hits misses the 50? Pow. What kind of idiot misses the 50? And from then on, he nailed the majority of the targets out there. And all it took was a little bit of breathing, a little bit of relaxation, and a little bit of confidence that he knew what he was doing. Andy, tell me more about Neuro Peak Pro. Tell me more about that magic reset button that you are living proof of having discovered and being able to teach other people.

Yeah, I mean, that story that you just shared, Shelly, is exactly why every single one of us in some time of stress, have been told to take a deep breath. We all know that breathing is associated with helping relieve stress. The problem is we're either not doing it, we're holding our breath, or if we are trying to be intentional about our breathing, we're doing it wrong. That big chest filled breath that we often see from so many people, athletes, performers, otherwise when they're stressed, it's wrong. And it actually starts to take the body further into that stress response. Because that one big, dramatic deep breath is so far out of sequence from all the others. Even though all the others were really fast, they were probably fairly consistent. So the heart and our cardiovascular system, nervous system, all the way up to the brain had somewhat of a consistent signal.

So why do we do that? Is that because Aunt Bertha taught us, take a deep breath, calm down.

Yeah, it certainly is. We've heard it a thousand times. But then again, you also see everybody just get really tall and it's this big dramatic Shrinking exhale. And it's not the way that we're supposed to do it. And with the story you shared about the shooter, you know, there's things that you have to do well, like skills to your profession are super important, and you know how to do them. And when you're in that sweet spot, you can do them without thinking about it. But when the pressure starts to show up, if we're not maintaining this awareness of our environment, of how our body's reacting, that can be what gets in the way of us performing at our best at a task we know we've practiced, and we should be able to do really well. So at Neuro Peak Pro, we help individuals learn how to breathe better and help them perform better under pressure. The initial course that I coach is a learn to breathe better course. It doesn't matter if you're a golfer, a quarterback, a student, a surgeon, a teacher. Like, the foundational elements of better breathing are all the same. It comes back to your posture. We talked a little bit about that earlier. It's about using the right muscles, making sure our belly's getting bigger when we inhale and not our chest. And then if we can start to pace it well, and pace it in a way that aligns with our individual body, we can start to allow our body to relax, settle in, and perform the way that we want to. And that's what we do at Neuro Peak Pro.

So this is an actual course that I can take to teach myself a little bit more about better breathing. So let me tell you about an incident that happened just last week, and you tell me if something like Neuro peak would be helpful. I thought that I just had a business meeting, and I jumped on zoom. And as soon as that meeting went live, Andy, the woman on the other side of the screen, was in the middle of a panic attack, and she could barely breathe. And she knew it was a panic attack because she'd had them before, and she was just kind of trying to squeak out some words to share with me. And I'm immediately thinking, you know, is there somebody in her house? Is there somebody that can help her? So once I learned that her boyfriend was on his way and she was gonna have somebody physically there, right, I started to relax and think, okay, well, I don't need to call 911, but it is my responsibility in this moment to get her from here until help arrives safely. I feel like Neuro Peak could have helped me in that moment, because I'll be honest with you, I'm in the Background like Googling how to help somebody through a panic attack. And a lot of it did have some breathing stuff in it. And I did end up actually getting her to count to 10 with me.

Yeah, that 10 count is one that I use with so many clients. And if we get down into a little bit of detail on that ten count, we have a four second inhale, a one second transition, a four second exhale, and a one second transition. Those ten seconds, thinking about your breathing and kind of counting it, whether you're just simply counting the cadence, you're visualizing a pacer that's getting bigger and smaller, or maybe even just like a wave pattern, whatever fits your mind's eye, counting just that 4, 1, 41 cadence brings the focus back to your breath. And that's what so many individuals do when they're feeling the stress because it's an anchor. It helps them get back on a foundation of something that they can control when the environment feels completely out of control.

And you already taught me something because I definitely was just slowly counting to 10.

So, yeah, in that situation, you could very easily go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then exhale, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and then into the next breath, 1. Just bringing a little bit more structure in intention. It's like, if I tell you, Shelly, don't think about a pink elephant, what do you think about? But if I ask you to be intentional about a cadence and pairing that cadence with your breathing, and knowing that positive chain reaction that happens from our breath to our heart to our nervous system and ultimately our brain, you can start to have some control over situations that often feel uncontrollable.

And that's so easy. I mean, that is just as easy as telling someone to count to 10. But now you've added that. You called it the mind's eye element to it. And that's so, so smart. All right, Andy, So we talked a little bit about just being at ease and what it means to be at ease. Tell me about you yourself. What does Andy Matthews do to be at ease?

Golf's the easy answer. We kind of touched on that.

But golf's the hardcore answer. You can't.

I know. Can't. So I'll say the most recent time I was at ease. And it was just last month. I celebrated a birthday and my wife and I took our first trip without our little one for a few days. And we went and found some sun and some beach. And what's that again? I am 21 again. I celebrated a multi decade anniversary of my 21st birthday and I read a book, a paper book, cover to cover. It was actually titled Slowing down to the Speed of Joy. And ton of great nuggets out of the book. But just reading the book, it could have been anything that I was reading. But Shelly, it helped me realize how fast I had been going. And when I literally had a chance to let my foot off the gas and even tap the brake for a little bit, like, it became glaringly obvious how hard I had been pushing. And so through dinner, conversations and just some reflection after that time, I started to think back, like, when was the last time I actually had an opportunity to do that? Being fully honest, I had a hard time picking out when that was absolutely.

I mean, you're an entrepreneur, you're a golf pro. How can you possibly have any space in your life to be able to kick back and relax? The pressure is on.

Yeah, the pressure is on. And when you look at all the different responsibilities that we have, everybody has their own unique ones and their own priorities and their own values that help dictate those. It just. It was a very good reminder, like I said, to create more time for that because I loved how I. I love the hardcore grind, but I loved, if not more, the ability to unplug and reset for a little bit. And actually, you know, I practice what I preach. I have a breathing practice. I'm not going to ask a client to do something that I don't do on a daily basis. And so I think maybe some of the characteristics that you described me as earlier is a result of that. I've just. Amidst the chaos, I've found ways to build some margin into what I do every day. And that even though I'm busting my butt, if one more thing gets thrown on my plate, I can handle it. It's not going to be the thing that puts me over the edge. And so I think that, for me, has been a really important aspect of practicing what I preach and not asking my clients to do anything that I haven't done or not willing to do.

And people see this. People see when there's too much on our plates. They might not tell us. They might not feel like it's a place for them to interject themselves, but they see it working with so many young business owners and entrepreneurs and just young professionals, like I do in the corporate world. How many times are you running into a meeting because you're late? How many times are you flustered and you can't find your notes? How many times are you supposed to be somewhere at a certain time and you're like scraping through your papers, trying to make sure that you brought the 20 things that you were supposed to bring. And you know what? An example that I always use is that when you're in the military and you're in this super important meeting and whoever the top dog is, let's just say the general, when the general walks in the room, the general never looks like that. Never. I don't care if you're in an explosion. I don't like the general. He or she always has this incredible air of confidence and composure about them. And that's what we should be emulating if we really want to lead the people around us. Yes, you want to lead yourselves, but really, right. We live to serve and we serve other people. And if we want to lead those around us, that means in every way, shape and form. Leadership is a state of mind. It's not a job title. And when you have an opportunity to gather with other human beings, they're watching you and they're responding to the energy that you put out in the room. And you can actually control the energy that you're putting out into the room. And you're telling us about this incredible tool that we could be using to be able to control that energy in the room.

And you do it.

I love this.

And you do it all the time. It goes with you everywhere you go, regardless of what's going on.

And it becomes a part of your identity, your true identity. There's so much crappy talk out there right now about be your true self and your true identity. What does that even mean? I don't know. But to know that there is no anxiety around you just being present to me, that has to be a true identity. Well, Andy, thank you so much for joining us on today's show.

Thank you.

I have learned an incredible amount about you as a person and I do want to give you the opportunity to share a little bit more about Neuro Peak Pro and for our listeners that want to follow up with you, because I know that they're dying to get on that tour.

Thank you, Shelly. It's been. It's been awesome. This has been such a cool conversation. If an individual that's listening is curious about what we do at Neuro Peak Pro, you can go to neuropeekpro.com or even more simply learn to breathe better dot com. You'll see there that intro course that I mentioned, that like I said, whether you're an athlete or whatever line of work that you're in, if you're just curious about how some basic fundamentals of learning how to breathe better can start to change the trajectory of what you do every day, I'd love the opportunity to work with you. So head to learn to breathe better dot com.

Excellent. Thanks so much, Andy.

Thanks, Shelley.

That was my interview with Andy Matthews and what really hit me about our conversation was this idea that breathing, something we do 20,000 times a day could be the missing competitive advantage we've all been overlooking. In my experience with high pressure leaders, we're always looking for this complex solution. Sometimes the breakthrough is hiding in plain sight. More and more I'm learning through my work across military, corporate, even entrepreneurial environments that the leaders who seem unshakable under pressure, they've figured out how to work with their nervous system instead of against it. And this is what being hardcore and at ease looks like in practice. Instead of feeling like you're always fighting yourself when pressure hits, you'll be able to use something as simple as Andy's 4141 breathing technique to stay sharp and clear headed. I've been using this technique myself and it is like accessing a reset button that I didn't know existed. Speaking of which, I've actually been using Andy's breathing app. Those five minutes, they are just exercise prompts that walk you through. There's even an audible voice that guides you when to inhale and exhale. So just last week at my son's baseball game, an older woman stood up and shouted at him, yes, he caught the ball and he hesitated to throw it. She stood up and she yelled, what the? Fill in the blank with a word that starts with an F. It took everything that I had not to confront her. Instead, I didn't know what to do. So I thought, I just need to breathe right now. And I pulled out my phone and I turned on the app and I was able to spend five minutes calming myself down so that I could enjoy watching my son play the rest of his game. Now, of course, don't worry, I had a speech. I had a pretty good speech prepared in case she, you know, did that again. But I didn't need it. So the app works and you can check it out at Learn to Breathe better dot com. If you're tired of feeling like you're always fighting yourself under pressure, I'm here for that conversation. Screenshot this and tag us at othersoverself with hardcoreandatease this week. It's important that we sit with this question. If you could control your stress response with something as fundamental as breathing, what would you tackle differently? Think about the last time that you flew off the handle, and you probably did need to. How would you have done that differently? That's all for now. I'm Shelly Rude, and you can count on me returning next Tuesday with an episode on your ambition as an asset versus liability. Until then, stay hardcore, be at ease and trust the process.