A Powerful Mindset Makes You Unstoppable: How to Train Your Mind & Unlock Your Full Potential

Steve Magness (00:00:24):

Often you think like, oh, these people have bulletproof mind. It's not true. This is why Simone Biles got the twisties. It's still pressure.

 

Mel Robbins (00:00:34):

You'll also hear the riveting story of how Steve turned whistleblower on a doping scandal at Nike's elite training camp.

 

Steve Magness (00:00:43):

I had the FBI show up as I was backing out of the garage, knock on the car window and show me some badges like I'm in the movie. We've got to give our brain that information that reminds us like, Hey, I've been here before. You are capable of this and more. If we want to train discomfort or train toughness, we've got to do the very small things that make us realize that the discomfort is just a signal. I think the most powerful thing you can do to develop mental resilience is...

Mel Robbins (00:01:18):

I'm thrilled that you're here. So I want to read to you from your bestselling book, do Hard Things, win the Inside Game, how to move from surviving to Thriving and Free Yourself up to Perform. And I'm reading this passage that really caught my attention on page 28. We all get stuck. We don't reach our capabilities, we get in our own way. We feel trapped like we can't take the action that deep down we know we should. This book is about freeing yourself up from whatever is preventing you from going on the journey to realizing your potential. It's allowing yourself to be courageous. For me, the journey started with realizing that everything I'd been taught about success was wrong. Steve, could you speak to the person who has made the time to be with us right now who is so excited to learn how to win the inside game from you? Can you tell them what they might experience in their life that could be different based on everything that you're about to share with us today?

 

Steve Magness (00:02:27):

The lesson that really astonished me and working with elite performers, first athletes and then across the board is that all of us get in our own way and all of us are capable of more, but we let fear, anxiety, self-doubt, that voice in our head tell us, Hey, let's avoid this thing. Let's stop doing this thing. And what I promise you today is I might not be able to fix all of your problems, but I'm going to give you the tools to lighten the load, to be able to navigate that inner voice, to be able to switch stress from seeing it always is a threat, but as something that can challenge you and propel you forward and how to work with your brain and body instead of fighting against it endlessly.

 

Mel Robbins (00:03:26):

Coach, I believe you. I'm ready. I'm so glad that you're here. The book is called Win the Inside Game. What does winning the Inside game mean exactly, and why is it so important to know how to do this?

 

Steve Magness (00:03:39):

I think let's start with the opposite, which is the external,

 

Mel Robbins (00:03:42):

Okay.

 

Steve Magness (00:03:43):

And I think the external is this is when we tie our identity to our achievements. In fact, there was a meta-analysis, a study of studies including 70,000 people that shows that when we prioritize and emphasize the external

 

(00:03:59):

More than the internal it is, and I quote universally detrimental to our wellbeing. So the inside game is opposite of that. It's having clarity in who you are, why you're pursuing something. It's understanding that you get to define what success means. It means that instead of just fitting in, you find deep, genuine connection and belonging to those who you're going on this journey with. And when we find that, when we go towards that, what happens is instead of insecurity driving the ship, we feel secure enough to take risks, to take on challenges, to see again what we're capable of and do the things that we want to pursue.

 

Mel Robbins (00:04:47):

I think I just got something out of that. So I think we make the mistake of looking at people that achieve things on the outside and believe that it's those achievements that are what make them good risk takers and make them able to go after these things that we in our hearts wish we would do for ourselves. But what you're actually saying is based on all of your experience coaching elite athletes, Olympians studying this mindset toughness and being a coach for it in highly competitive settings, you're saying based on that and all the research, it's actually the opposite. It's those people that have learned how to win this inside game and who are secure in themselves, who are actually able to take more risks. Is that right?

 

Steve Magness (00:05:33):

Absolutely. I'll give you a story.

 

Mel Robbins (00:05:35):

Okay, give me a story.

 

Steve Magness (00:05:36):

So Sarah Hall is one of America's top marathoners, okay? She's one of the best in the world and she reached that level and later in her career than normally in her late thirties, early forties is when she had her breakthrough. And I got to work with Sarah for a number of years and what I learned from her is the race, her ultimate breakthrough where she set the American record in the half marathon, so fastest half marathon in American history for a woman. And leading up into that race, she had this, I'm going to set this record, I'm paying attention to the outcome. I'm going with the external thing. And about a month or two before the race, she said, you know what? This is getting in the way.

 

(00:06:19):

I need to leave this behind. And to quote her, she said, it is stealing my peace. And instead what I'm going to focus on is I'm going to focus on the feeling. And she defined the feeling as I want to get in that race, be surrounded by a bunch of other women, not be threatened by them, but realize that we're all bringing out the best in each of us. And if I put myself in that spot and I enjoy that, great things are going to happen. And to me, that's what it is. You're seeing one of the best in the world telling you that the way that you set the record isn't to obsess over the record, but to let go just enough and focus on that internal feeling and sensation and that security knowing that you can take that risk and if you fail, it's not going to be the end of the world because you got to feel that experience. You got to go through that journey.

 

Mel Robbins (00:07:16):

You know what I hear in that story that is so helpful and I think we can all relate to that, whether we're like, okay, I got to get into that nursing school or I've got to meet the person by the time I turned 30 or I got to be making this kind of money. Like that external thing when she made the switch, what I heard was actually the switch from pressure and performance to a sense of faith that if you put yourself in the right environment and you tap into the energy of what it's going to feel like to trust yourself there in that experience, that the rest of it takes care of itself. And a lot of that pressure that I would imagine can cause you to choke and get up into your head and kind of do things that you don't realize impact how you perform. But your ability to relax in and have faith in just being in the experience is what helps you win.

 

Steve Magness (00:08:17):

I mean, that's the essence of what we call flow in sports psychology, which is that feeling of everything clicks.

 

(00:08:25):

You cannot pressure your way into flow. If you feel exceedingly amounts of pressure, you can't get in that state. So ironically, sometimes we try too hard in that trying that wanting the thing is what is preventing us from actually getting that goal because we're trying to force it. I had a really good track coach who was a mentor, who was the track coach of Carl Lewis, and he told me one day, he said, Steve, most people have the wrong concept of effort. They think effort means digging down, trying harder and forcing yourself. And he said, no, no effort is like Carl. And what he meant by that is if you watch Carl Lewis Sprint or Usain Bolt, they are going all out, but their cheeks are bouncing up and down. Sometimes they're smiling a little bit, they're relaxed doing it because real effort is quiet. It's how do we get the most out of ourselves while being calm and relaxed doing it? And it's that kind of paradox where we think we want to try and dig, but whenever we do that, it backfires

 

Mel Robbins (00:09:37):

Completely. It also all of that pressure for a lot of people also results in procrastinating and getting so obsessed with how it's going to turn out that you don't actually even do the damn thing. I think that's a very interesting thing for us to talk about because ultimately you create mental toughness in the athletes that you are coaching and in the companies that you go into and work with. How do you define mental toughness and what do you think some of the common misconceptions around mental toughnesses?

 

Steve Magness (00:10:12):

So you mentioned that I have two under two,

 

Mel Robbins (00:10:16):

What's 200? Oh two kids under two? Two kids

 

Steve Magness (00:10:17):

Under two. So my almost 2-year-old has hit the stage where she's so in tantrums, and my wife is also an elementary school teacher, so she's an expert on kids throwing tantrums. And if we look at why do kids throw tantrums? Here's what occurs. 2-year-old maybe sees something that she wants Mom and dad say, no, no, no. She doesn't quite grasp the concept of no, she wants it. She sees it, she gets frustrated or angry or mad. And because those emotions and feelings are overwhelming and kind of foreign for a 2-year-old,

 

(00:10:53):

She goes into freakout mode, which eventually runs it course, and then she shuts down. Toughness is navigating that freakout. We experienced the same thing as adults, except it has more layers. So we feel discomfort or stress or anxiety or fatigue or whatever it is, that emotion in that feeling. And then we bring in the layer of our voice tends to go with it. So our voice starts to get negative and spiral and talk. Think about, oh, I can't do this. If I don't win this race or finish this or get this job, I'm going to be embarrassed. We just spiral out of control. And what happens is your brain gets the message, it says, Hey, we've got overwhelming emotions. We've got a negative voice that is spiraling. How do we escape this situation? And our brain doesn't go, how do we get the best result out of this situation? It says, how do we get out of this right now? The quickest moment possible, if I'm running a race, the quickest thing is just slow down or stop. If I'm trying to finish my dissertation or nursing exam or what happened, the quickest thing is procrastinate. Like leave this. Don't come back to it because that'll alleviate it in the moment.

 

(00:12:09):

And what real toughness to me is navigating how do we understand our inner world in those emotions so that they don't overwhelm us? How do we stop that spiral or that rock rolling down the hill and gaining momentum? How do we stop it early enough so that we can do something about it? And I think the misconceptions around toughness is that our kind of old school model tells us only one path, which is that grit it out, fight the thing, and often don't pay attention to your emotions or feelings. Ignore them. Well, sometimes that works generally on easy stuff, on hard things where it actually matters, it backfires because if I try and avoid the thing, if I try and resist the thing, we have a saying, what we resist persists. How do we learn to listen to our body better? How do we change our self-talk? How do we change our focus to get us out of these spirals and navigate these situations?

 

Mel Robbins (00:13:10):

I think I get it, but just so I make sure that the person who's here with us understands how mental toughness is an important thing in their day-to-day life. How does having mental toughness help you navigate a job search or a breakup or we use the example of your wife's a teacher and you've had a really, really tough week with the kids at school. How does mental toughness help you in just your day-to-day life?

 

Steve Magness (00:13:40):

Yeah, we'll start with the teacher one. I see this all the time.

 

Mel Robbins (00:13:42):

Okay.

 

Steve Magness (00:13:44):

Teachers have one of the hardest jobs and it's sometimes a thinkless job, but they do amazing job. So I love supporting my teachers out there. Here's what happens. Teaching is hard. You get home, you're overwhelmed. And the tendency is to be like, okay, I'm so overwhelmed and I'm just shutting down and I can't do anything else. Mental toughness is realizing that you're still going to have to show up the next day and because you care about your job and the kids show up and teach them to the best of your ability, how do you get over or get through that overwhelm and get yourself back in that position? So for a teacher, it could be something as simple as what is my get home shut down and reset routine that allows me to kind of deal with that stress, take it off and say, okay, just for a couple hours, I'm going to get myself in a place where I rejuvenate and then can get a good night's sleep and then tackle the job again tomorrow with, I think you said job search.

Mel Robbins (00:15:36):

How do you do that with, let's say since you coach such elite athletes, you've got an athlete, and this is kind of part of your story too, which we're going to get into that just misses the Olympic team or just misses the world record intellectually. Coach, I get it. I got to have a little bit of space for the rejection and the pain of coming just so close. But then there's that mental toughness skill that is your expertise. What are some of the things that you would say to an athlete that you're coaching in those moments that feel similar to a job? Rejection? Same psychological thing.

 

Steve Magness (00:16:20):

Same thing.

 

Mel Robbins (00:16:21):

Yeah.

 

Steve Magness (00:16:22):

Here I take them through a process as first, you can't deny that it hurts. You have to accept and sit with it and live with it and realize that this thing you cared about, you fell shortened. And that sucks. There's no getting around it, there's no faking. It just sucks. So that's number one. Number two is you've got to get your brain and body out of what I'd call stress and protect mode, where you're feeling all of these stress hormones, which pushes your brain to be like, protect myself, avoid the thing shut down, which is our acute response to failure. And you've got to get it into how do I almost get into a learning and growing mode. And the best way to do this is simply socializing with friends.

 

Mel Robbins (00:17:08):

Really?

 

Steve Magness (00:17:09):

When we're around other people, there's research that shows that when you're socializing with other people, you produce a hormone called oxytocin.

 

Mel Robbins (00:17:18):

Okay.

 

Steve Magness (00:17:19):

It's like a bonding hormone, and it's what's actually produced when women have babies to help them bond with the child. Same thing occurs for us in adults, and what research tells us is it counteracts the kind of negative stress hormones that make us feel like worthless or alone or whatever have you after stress. So the best thing you can do is with athletes, I always tell them said after the game, if you lose, guess what? Go have pizza with your friends. Go eat. And what that does is it shifts you out of that mindset. And then the last part of this process is you got to build yourself up. You got to give yourself evidence that you are worthy. And here I like to do it in two different ways is one, I like to have people have what I call an evidence journal, which is write down things where you went through something tough and came out on the other side.

 

Mel Robbins (00:18:19):

Coach, I'm picking up on the fact that your evidence journal is also part of the training. It's sort of like the reps in a gym. So can you just tick off a couple examples of some of the little things that people start to write down as evidence that they've survived other setbacks that the person listening might be able to relate to.

 

Steve Magness (00:18:37):

So some of the things I like to do is look at how consistent were you when you were preparing for this?

 

(00:18:46):

Did you get your five days a week of training and people can look back and say, I did it. I did the training plan. I showed up. Did you prioritize yourself? Did the day before the job interview, did you get the sleep in that you wanted to prepare for the thing you were looking for? How do I give myself the evidence that I gave myself the best shot that I could? And the other thing that I like to do is look through past experiences and moments where it's like, Hey, I came through this thing. And the reason is pretty simple is our brain often has a negativity bias

 

(00:19:23):

Where we just latch onto and remember the times that it didn't go well. Why? Because they sting. We remember the things that sting more. We forget all the times where it's like, Hey, we showed up for practice when it was raining. We showed up for the job even when we were tired the night before and we still got it done. Those things just go out the window. So we've got to give our brain that information that reminds us like, Hey, I've been here before. I've gone through some tough things. You are capable of this and more.

 

Mel Robbins (00:19:53):

I think that's really important. I can say one of the things that I have to chronically work on is making sure that my relentless drive to do better, to be more efficient, to have more fun in the way that we're working to make a bigger impact doesn't negate all of the amazing things that are actually going well. Can you give me an example of working with one of your athletes where their attitude or negativity was really starting to impact their performance?

 

Steve Magness (00:20:27):

This is very common, even at the elite level because often you think like, oh, these people have bulletproof minds.

 

Mel Robbins (00:20:34):

Yes,

 

Steve Magness (00:20:35):

It's not true.

 

Mel Robbins (00:20:36):

What do you mean it's not true? How do you get to the Olympics, Steve and not have a bulletproof mind?

 

Steve Magness (00:20:41):

Here's what I learned. I used to think that. I used to think, oh, there's something different about them. But you realize is the same problems that I'll literally talk about with a high school kid navigating the SAT and basketball team tryouts are the same thing that I'll talk about with someone who's made the Olympic team and trying to show up to the Olympics.

 

Mel Robbins (00:21:04):

You're kidding me?

 

Steve Magness (00:21:05):

No, it's It's a human

 

Mel Robbins (00:21:06):

Problem. What do you mean by it's a human problem? So the kid who's trying to make the basketball team and do well on the SATs and the person who's just made the Olympic team achieved a dream and now is getting ready to compete in the Olympics, they're both facing the same psychological problem.

 

Steve Magness (00:21:24):

Our human stress response, which makes us see the negative, to think that we're not good enough to think that we're going to be overwhelmed and freak out on the starting line and not be able to show up how we want to show up.

 

Mel Robbins (00:21:39):

What you're basically talking about is self-doubt and choking.

 

Steve Magness (00:21:44):

Yeah. This is why choking happens to the best of the best. This is why Simone Biles got the twisties because it's not anything to do with her being weak or anything. She's the total opposite of that. Amazing. But our biology is wired the same. And although the arena might be different, our brain doesn't know the difference between what feels like a lot of pressure when we're at the high school gymnasium versus the Olympic stadium where we see hundreds of thousands of people. It's still pressure and we still feel it the same way. It's not like it's proportional to the amount of people who are viewing us.

 

Mel Robbins (00:22:29):

This makes so much sense, coach. It's so cool what you do for a living because it does make sense to me that if you're going in for an interview for a job that you're really interested in, of course you're going to feel pressure because you want to do well. That's human nature. If you're going in for an interview for high school to talk to the coach hoping that the coach is going to want to recruit you for their team, it's an interview that you care about, it's the exact same psychological setup. It's just that the place and the space is different, but you're feeling the same thing. It's about the scale of it based on your experience. And that I think is why mental toughness is everything. What do you do in those moments when it matters or when your emotions rise up? Because what you're also saying is it's not just a mental game, it's also a physical one.

 

(00:23:27):

And in fact, there's something that you write about in your book that I wanted to just read to you because we're on the topic of mental toughness. So you write about this very interesting thing in your book, win the Inside Game, and this is on page 1 23. In the 1960s, scientists noted an interesting phenomenon when animals were pitted against one another in a lab from to chicks to fish. When they were competing for resources, the contest results shifted the animal's subsequent behavior, the winner became more aggressive, attacking whatever opponent stepped into the cage. Next, the losers hesitated. They retreated and defended hoping to avoid conflict. The behaviors translated into consistent outcomes. The winners kept winning at an alarming rate and the losers kept a streak of their own. See, what was interesting about reading this is that you basically are starting to make the case, Steve, that it's not just your thoughts, but with the emotions and then the way that your thoughts start to spiral.

Steve Magness (00:24:58):

Some of the most fascinating research I've come across, and it's called the Winner and loser effect. And what happens is we change our stress response based on the outcome of the event or even more so our expectation of the event. What I mean by that is after you win, you tend to get a bump in testosterone. And this has been found in both men and women. You get a bump in testosterone and that increase in testosterone makes you think, Hey, I'm going to be more confident going into this next thing. I can take on this challenge. And what tends to happen is next time you step into the arena, your brain goes, Hey, remember last time we got that bump in testosterone? Let's do that again. So we're more likely to approach whatever it is we're taking with more challenge, more testosterone, and we have what psychologists call a challenge response. If on the flip side is if you lose, and then especially if you stew in that loss, you think it is overwhelming, this is the end of the world. My life is over, I'm never going to be able to do this thing again. You have more cortisol and what your brain learns is it says, Hey, this place really sucks. So next time we face something similar, before you even step into the arena, your brain defaults to producing more cortisol to try and convince you to avoid the situation you're getting in.

 

Mel Robbins (00:26:26):

Okay, so hold on. Lemme just unpack this because I think this is so important. So in real life, not that athletics is not real life. If you've just been broken up with, and then you're about to put yourself back out there, this is an example where cortisol might spike and you might feel the uhoh. If you've been laid off and you're now starting to go for interviews, it might be an uhoh, right? If you didn't get into your dream school and now you're reapplying again, your body is wired because of the sting of that to actually feel that hesitation and protection. Am I getting this right?

 

Steve Magness (00:27:06):

Absolutely. Spot on.

 

Mel Robbins (00:27:07):

And what do you want to say to those of us, to the person listening who is either feeling this way now or who has somebody in their life who now has this hesitation or feels defeated or is starting to really lose their edge? What do you want us to know, coach, about these moments in our life and what to do about it?

 

Steve Magness (00:27:32):

Two things. One is we can influence this to a large degree based on our expectations. So what research tells us is if we set the expectations, which are based on, essentially our brain goes, what are the demands that we're facing and what are we capable of?

 

Mel Robbins (00:27:58):

Okay, what are the demands that we're facing and what are we capable of?

 

Steve Magness (00:28:01):

So if you're sitting there and you're saying, I got broken up with, I'm putting myself back in the arena. I'm going on the date, the demands are I'm going to have to talk to someone who I don't know very well and open up and put myself out there. Now your capabilities, because last time it didn't go very well, your brain goes like, I don't know if you're capable of this. I don't know. So what do you have to do in that situation? You have two options. You can say, okay, I'm going to set the expectations and sometimes lower them a little bit. Say, Hey, this is my first date. I'm not trying to set the world on fire. I'm just going to put myself out there and go talk to 'em. Lower those expectations.

 

Mel Robbins (00:28:40):

Okay, so that's step. So one thing you can do is lower. I don't have to get this job.

 

Steve Magness (00:28:44):

I don't have to.

 

Mel Robbins (00:28:45):

Okay, gotcha. I can just go And the fact that I'm getting out there, that's a win.

 

Steve Magness (00:28:50):

Yes.

 

Mel Robbins (00:28:50):

Okay. So lower expectations, step one.

 

Steve Magness (00:28:52):

And the second part is improving that your capability side,

 

(00:28:59):

Which is in athletics, what do we do? We train you, practice, you practice in life, you can do the same thing, right? If you are struggling and afraid of going on that first date, go call up a friend and say, Hey, we're going to practice some conversations together. I'm going to talk about myself. We're going to role play this. And it sounds a little silly, but what it does is your brain goes, okay, I've been here before. If you keep being afraid of that job interview, then you want to go do some mock job interviews. And the good thing is this is when you control the environment and you're doing it with or family or someone who doesn't entice that fear around you, then your brain doesn't automatically default and you can train that.

 

Mel Robbins (00:29:49):

I love that. So I think I would even say, I bet there's something else, coach that you do with the people that you coach is it's actually very helpful to know that it is a hardwired response and a sign that your brain is working as it should, that if I'm about to try something that I'm nervous about or the stakes are high or that I really sucked at or got screwed over or hurt by that it's normal to have your cortisol spike and it's normal to feel that hesitation, but I got options. So the hesitation now doesn't scare me because I should expect to be nervous. And then you just taught me just lower your expectations. I don't have to kill this thing. I just have to, I'm just going to put myself out there. And then the second thing is kind of obvious, but we avoid it if we're stressed out, which is just practice.

Steve Magness (00:31:27):

I think I've had a diversity of experiences that you outlined, which has made me realize that my early on view of toughness, which was only through sport, was kind of wrong. Meaning I grew up in the no pain, no gain, just push. And that's what I thought. And the other thing that really I think was an aha moment, which was during my, I think my first book is I got to interview a guy named Matt Billingsley, who is a world-class drummer who is now the drummer for Taylor Swift. And it was one of my first big interviews where I'm like, this is awesome, let's go. And I'm like, just tell me about what it's like to be on stage with a hundred thousand screaming people and you doing your thing. And he starts walking me through how he's preparing. And as I'm listening to this, all I'm thinking in my mind is like, this is how I would mentally prepare for a race.

 

Mel Robbins (00:32:34):

What was he saying?

 

Steve Magness (00:32:35):

Well, the thing that struck me is he said, I don't really drum much before the concert said I already know how to drum. What I'm doing is first I'm getting my body loose. I'm going through all these stretching and things to get my body feeling good, and then I'm getting my mind, which is just rehearsing the beginning of a couple of different songs so that I can get in that groove in the state of performance that I need to get in. And he walked me through all that and I said, this is the same kind of stuff that I do for race. And what it made me realize is that performance is performance.

 

Mel Robbins (00:33:16):

So performance is, performance means the thing that you have to do is the thing that you have to do, whether it's an interview or a date or a presentation or work or stepping onto a track and running in the state championship, that's the thing you have to do. But the thing that comes before it, what is that coach?

 

Steve Magness (00:33:40):

It's setting up your environment. Well,

 

Mel Robbins (00:33:43):

Okay,

 

Steve Magness (00:33:43):

So what that means is you prime yourself to perform. This is why athletes put on their special race day shoes they put on their jersey. Matt had the drumsticks that he used for concert times. He's got everything lined up where this is what it's going to be. I put myself in the environment that's going to invite the action that I want to take. It's setting your mindset. What am I trying to do? Am I seeing this as an opportunity to take on or is this thing that is causing this overwhelming anxiety or feeling like a threat? And I think what I realized, it's not just from Matt's story, but also others, is it's the same stuff. As I said, my wife's a teacher early in her career, she was a world class runner. She represented the US at a half marathon world championships,

 

Mel Robbins (00:34:37):

No big deal. You two are going to have really fast

 

Steve Magness (00:34:42):

Kids that don't put the pressure on our 2-year-old now, sorry. But what I realized is that again, when she got into teaching, she takes the same mindset. She's like, I want to be great at this. And what you realize is like, okay, what does that take consistently showing up, putting in the training, being prepared for the next day, and priming yourself. Okay, how am I going to get into the mindset where I am enthusiastic and energetic? Because kindergartners, guess what? You got to keep their attention. And you can't do that by just walking in the door and being like, okay, I'm here. Let's talk about art colors and ABCs or what have you. You've got to think about the tactics that you're going to use.

 

Mel Robbins (00:35:30):

You know what I love about what you're saying coach, is that I think we get so obsessed about the performance or the thing that we have to do at work or the thing that we have to do at school or the way that it's going to turn out or the result that we don't take the time to think about the environment or the steps leading up to the thing that actually allow you to step on the field of life and do the thing.

 

Steve Magness (00:35:56):

Who do you want to be? Who want to show up as that's it?

 

Mel Robbins (00:36:00):

Is that what you asked the people you coach? Who do you want to be?

 

Steve Magness (00:36:02):

Absolutely. Because here's the thing, and this is something else that people often don't get is if you look at some of the elite performers is that who they are on game day when they step out on the field is a little bit different than who they are at home.

 

Mel Robbins (00:36:21):

How so?

 

Steve Magness (00:36:22):

So I'll give the example of Aaron Judge, the baseball player for the Yankees is he puts it like this is on the field. I want to be 99, which is his number 99, and I'm paraphrasing is aggressive. He plays hard, he wants to win. When I take that jersey off, I'm no longer 99, I'm Aaron. Aaron gets along with his family. He doesn't need to be hyper competitive at everything. He can let things go. Again, I'm paraphrasing there, but you see that all the time with athletes because what happens is we all have different states we can get into

 

Mel Robbins (00:37:05):

Even just that invitation coach, who do you want to be? It's a way that you can snap yourself into a moment of intentionality to basically who do I want to be in the interview? Who do I want to be today at work? Who do I want to be when I show up at that parent-teacher conference? And by asking yourself that, I would imagine that's sort of part of the mental toughness because you're queuing your mind to start to think about these things.

 

Steve Magness (00:37:32):

You're spot on. Who do you want to be in this situation? And I think too often we don't put the thought and care to align ourselves with that action.

Steve Magness (00:38:26):

At that time, I think in the history of the us, only five high schoolers had broken the four minute barrier. So it was something that basically never happened. And I came to shy and I still can picture it to this day, there's four laps around the track. Every lap needs to be under a minute. So you're literally watching the clock and you're seeing it and you're like, I'm still under. I'm still under, I'm still under. And going into that last a hundred meters, I can see that clock and realizing, oh no, I'm going to be right at it or just shy. And then I remember crossing that line, there's like 30 seconds before the results come out. I'm staring at the results board, and then I see myself four minutes and one second, and it's just devastating because you see this thing that is your goal.

 

(00:39:18):

It was literally written on the wall of my high school bedroom where this is the thing that I'm going to do that is going to define myself. I didn't care about anything else in high school, nothing. Parents couldn't get me to care about anything except running, and I fell short. And for a while I think that got to me. I couldn't do it. I put everything into it and found out that I wasn't good enough. Everything I learned about performance came as a result of being like, okay, let's analyze this. Let's figure out how do we get on the other side of feeling this ultimate failure in making it into something worthwhile and good. And that's where my search for understanding the mental side of sport came from. If I didn't let go and pull the other way just enough, I wasn't going to be able to fulfill my potential because every race was going to feel like life or death, and it did.

 

(00:40:20):

We all have our four minute miles. We all have those things where we create that story in our head where it's like, oh, this is what I care about deeply. This is what I'm obsessed with. And we can't because we care about it. We think that if we just let go a little bit, that that means, oh, that means I'm weak. That means I'm not all in. That means that I'm not actually striving for that. But what it actually means is it allows that inner game to flourish because our brain goes like, okay, yeah, yeah, the four minute mile matters. Getting that job, selling this many books, whatever, it matters. Let's be real, but I can't be the only thing. We've got to have something else pulling in the other direction.

 

Mel Robbins (00:41:09):

I absolutely love this. You also say that the inner game is not about checking boxes, that it's the process of chasing goals. And why does tying the achievement or landing that job or getting into that medical school or being married by this date or having that car that you drive, why does those things on the outside actually end up screwing you over?

 

Steve Magness (00:41:42):

What happens is when we tie our identity to that external pursuit, it makes us fragile instead of resilient because our brain goes, if I don't get this goal, then it literally is life or death. I am not worth anything. We don't perform best in that situation. We need to take the little bit of the pressure off. We need to have that robustness where you realize that I am secure in who I am in win or lose. It might sting, but I'm still who I am. I'm still surrounded by those who love and support me. They're still going to be here. And that's where we perform best at because we get to take those risks instead of feeling like, oh gosh, here it is. I'm going to fall short again, brain freaks out.

 

Mel Robbins (00:42:34):

There's super fascinating research in your book that I think is really important to read right now because I was really surprised by this. And it goes to this point because again, I think it's super counterintuitive to think, okay, the world's top, top, top, top, top performers, whether it's in business who you're coaching or it is the world's. Like most elite athletes, they're maniacally focused. They're 1000% disciplined. It's hustle, hustle, hustle. They're focused on the Super Bowl, they're focused on this thing. The research actually shows the opposite, and I'm reading from Win the Inside Game, page 90. This is research that you write about from Michigan State University. I was blown away with this that they looked at over 100 years of Nobel Prize winning scientists. And it turned out that what these Nobel Prize winning scientists did in their downtime away from the lab may have proved vital.

 

(00:43:40):

The distinguished scientists check this out, were 22 times more likely to perform, sing or act 12 times more likely to pursue creative writing and about seven times more likely to participate in crafts like sculpting, painting or glassblowing. Whereas their less accomplished peers were more likely to be entirely focused on their scientific research. And so this research basically as you write in your book, is that going all in and attaching who you are to one achievement or to the fact that you're the chief resident or you're married to so-and-so or you drive this singular focus actually hinders us.

 

Steve Magness (00:44:28):

It does. And it runs counter to just about everything we're told completely. Just go all in. Be obsessed. Only care about this thing. And the research, as you said on Nobel winning scientists shows it's different. There's research on entrepreneurs that the ones who are more likely to actually succeed don't quit their day job. Early on. There's research on athletes that show that they generally, those who make it to the top of the top are more diversified in both their sports early on and then their later interests. Because what it does is it makes us resilient because if we fail at the one thing and that's all that matters, it comes back to that our brain and the alarm, we produce a ton of cortisol. Your brain says, I'm losing. My identity is at stake, like shut down. If we have other things in our life that we care about, they give us something else to think about, give us other pursuit to kind of do interesting things on. Then even though the loss stings, you still have that resilience in your life.