How I Train Athletes To Follow Their Purpose

So the way that we help athletes get ready is to fundamentally commit to a purpose as opposed to having a performance based identity. So if your identity is wrapped in to how well you do something, which most of us have, that we live in a culture that is obsessed.

Unless you've ascended to nirvana where you're completely evolved.

Yeah, that's right. And so, and a step towards that is purpose. And so what you just described is doing some box breathing.

Cool.

That's a little bit of a downregulation to take some of the edge off, which is, it's a good tool. The second is like re anchor to purpose. What am I here for? And if you have a big purpose that is compelling, like you've got some children, right? Two children is that if one of them were in front of a bus oncoming and like it's real danger, I would imagine you do whatever it takes, you'd run into the street, you do whatever. So the purpose is very clear in that because you want to be a provider, you know, you want to create safety. Okay. So you do whatever it takes. The greats, the historical greats, their purpose is so big and real, just like saving or protecting your child, that they'll do whatever it takes. They go into rooms and it's not about them. It honestly is not about them. It's about sharing a message, it's about enrolling, connecting with other people to maybe support the purpose of which they are not. Their identity is not wrapped in it. And those are the people that I've loved studying and being around. Ones that are like honestly connected to a purpose that is bigger than them.

Yeah. One of the things in the book you mentioned, most of us have a distorted sense of significance, which is essentially what I just shared in different words. But where does that come from, this distortion? In other words, like when we're a kid, we take everything personally because the brain is still forming. The hemispheres are basically on drugs before seven. But what are we missing from a developmental standpoint as adults? What did we not get in order to have that maturation process where we don't feel that we're so significant and we care so much about what others think?

We're obsessed with performance. And so early on we are force rank stacked grades compared to other kids on the sport team or the music, whatever. And so it makes perfect sense that in an obsession, a cultural obsession with performance, that we would have a performance based identity. And so the performance based identity is problematic in a lot of ways. It could propel you to be anxious Enough compulsion, enough neurotic, enough to become very good at something. And so that's kind of the mix that most of us are, you know, experiencing. And it's not until we examine that that's the water that we're swimming in do we able to decouple what I do from who I am. And so what we're missing is an equally powerful track of what is your purpose. And if you ask most, When I ask most people, what is your purpose? It's kind of the eyes get big and go, man, I don't know. Like, that feels too big. Wait a minute. You're 50 years old. What do you mean? Yeah, I just don't know where to start. That's because we haven't introduced that at a young age on how to think about purpose. But we do introduce how to perform, how to get the right grade, how to get into the right school eventually, how to da, da, da, da. So we are on the track of performance, not on the track from an early age on purpose. And so I just think that that is one of the great inoculations to the fear of people's opinions, is to know your purpose, and when you do that, be about it as best you possibly can. And it's a hard thing to practice for somebody who hasn't developed that muscle over time. Oh, yeah, yeah.

So many people either comment or write in, and they literally say what you just said. I don't know my purpose. And it's all ages. It could be like 18 to 50 plus. There is no purpose 101 in school. Like, it doesn't exist. But what could we do? This is why we see kind of the deconstruction of traditional education right now. It's especially the unschooling movement, people doing homeschooling. Really, during the pandemic, that stuff went down where people started to actually take their kids out of school. And there's got to be a different way for this. Like, if you could wave a magic wand. And in some ways, you are, with the book, teaching people that it's not about performance. It's actually about being really clear of who you are and your purpose, Being able to just be comfortably Mike or be comfortably Josh and whatever you're doing and just do that to the best of your ability. Where do we even begin as a society to shift that narrative?

Oh, I think we've got to act locally, you know, and be about it first. So for your community to hear you say that and say, well, where do I start? It starts with being about it, what does that mean? It means you're the pebble in the pond and you create ripples across, you know, your relationships. And what does it mean to be about purpose? It's actually quite simple. But let me thin slice it before we get to the grandiose purpose. So a thin slice way to practice purpose is you would say like, what is my purpose for today? What is my purpose? Fill in the blank role. What is my purpose as a father today? And so you're just thin slicing it where it doesn't feel overwhelming and huge. And then you practice over time after you practice daily purpose. You would practice like, what's my purpose this month? What's my purpose this quarter? What's my purpose this year? And so over time, when you practice purpose thinking, eventually you're like. Because in the background you're like, what is my life purpose? What is it? You just get a little closer because you're practicing just like any other skill in sport or performance. You start in a calm, controlled, you know, exploratory environment and you start learning the skill there. And then you move up to something that is rugged eventually and maybe even into consequences. So you start stacking intensity on top of the skill to be able to get better at it. So you push the edges. And that's how I think we would start with purpose. And there's three ways to get more clear on just about anything. It begins with some awareness, right? So awareness training comes from mindfulness a la meditation. It comes with conversations with people of wisdom and journaling. Those are the three that I'm familiar with. At least those three. If you have that practice, you become more aware. And, and what we're talking about here is more aware of what is my life efforts about. And it sounds so dry and boring, but when you have it like you end up having this different level of fire about you. They're some of the most powerful people because you can't move them around. They're just, they walk into a. If, if Dr. King Jr. Was here, you know what we'd be talking about? Freedom, civil rights, equality. Because his purpose is so real and big, it's probably going to outsize out impact where we are with ours. And so because he's so committed, he's all in about it. So those are the ones that I think are really special.

It drove him to exhaust. He was hospitalized for exhaustion. He was so on purpose.

That's right.

I mean, that is like I actually heard once a man would crawl through broken glass naked for his purpose. I Agree. Nobody could take away my purpose. Like, if. If for some reason, yours is clear. Very clear.

Yours is clear.

Yeah. My purpose is to live life well and to share how I'm doing that with the world. And of course, I'm not perfect with it, but I think it's a amalgamation of, like, the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual self, like all the. And the financial self. The. The. The parts of the house we live in. So we live in one body. We have one opportunity. I don't want to waste it now. It's not. It's not an away from. It's definitely my come from is towards abundance. But in the past, what drove me is kind of what you talk about in the book. It was actually the scarcity of, like, I don't want to be like my dad. I don't want to be like my mom. I don't want to be like that. So my. My intention and my drive was like coming from anger, from woundedness, from hurtness. And now it's like, okay, it's been almost 10 years of podcasting. Like, that doesn't work anymore. What works now is actually me living abundance and living life well and sharing that with people. Now, was it crunchy? For sure. Lots of bloody times where I fell down. And actually we just released a podcast about how broke up in our relationship. Because people get to hear this, right? It's not this sexy path. You said it was dry. I think it's very sexy, and I think it's very hard at times. It's not dry because if I really go into myself and I figure out who Josh is, then everybody gets to know who Josh is. But if I'm lying or if I'm kind of fabricating who I am, people can smell that there's an inauthenticity that repels people on some level. And I think the more we can get clear with, like, not actually having fopo be real, not now. Am I 100% clear on that? Probably not. I probably deal with stages of that. As you wrote the book, did you find layers of that within yourself? The faux pau of Mike?

Oh, yeah. Just because I wrote about it doesn't mean that it's distinguished. You're not mirrored.

Yeah.

And so it's still in there. I think the high note is that I wrestle with it less than I did 10 years ago, and I wrestle with it less than I did last week. You know, so there's an arc to whatever it is that you work on. You become a bit more proficient with it, hopefully. And, yeah, So I. I worry a lot less than I ever did. And that's because purpose is a bit more clear for me. And I've got a. I've got a roundtable of people that have demonstrated time under tension, and they care about the wellness that I'm trying to create within me. And for that. And so there's. I feel like I'm connected in a way that I've given myself to, to be seen. And they've said, I see you, I got your back. And so when you have a mini tribe like that that will hold you accountable to the words that you say, the actions that you take, the way that you organize your life, there's an exponential kind of gift that comes out of that as well. So I'm not trying to please them. I'm trying to be true to me. And. And in return, they're trying to do the same thing. And so that's the one plus one is three.

Check out some of the videos on this screen that are perfectly curated based on the video you just saw. Make sure you follow me and I'll see you in the next video.