The Exchanges

Q What questions should we be asking ourselves to better understand if the story we're telling ourselves is empowering or limiting us?

A Again, it's, there's this level of awareness, and I have tried in my career to raise the curtain so that people understand That there's something going on that, you know, maybe was purely automatic, and maybe the voice you got, you never really intentionally acquired, but suddenly you have this critic inside yourself, or this storyteller that we all have. And you have to stop and reflect. Is this, I have rules of storytelling. They're not really rules, they're guidelines. And the first thing is, the rule has to be true. Is this aligned with reality? So the first awareness, am I making stuff up here that just is convenient for the moment to maybe make me feel better? Or is this aligned with really objective reality? That's the first kind of principle of really good storytelling. Another one is, is this story that I'm telling myself, is it aligned with the best part of me, with who I really want to be in life, my values, my sense of purpose? Does this story take me where I want to go in life? Does it help me feel more optimistic and hopeful about my future? Or does it in fact give me a sense that, you know, I, I'm not that capable. The world is tough. I probably can't make it. Why am I doing this? This is stupid. And so, I really want people to have this kind of automatic sensor before you allow these stories to take form. That you intentionally, purposefully orchestrate them so …

AI assessment note: “is it aligned with the best part of me, with who I really want to be”

Q in that moment and help somebody, or is it worth that? Or can you actually do anything when somebody is sort of blaming circumstance or, I'm thinking also my kids, right? They, they come home and, you know, they're like, I did the best I could, and they kind of shrug their shoulders sometimes and, uh, you know, absolve themselves of responsibility. And how can I act in those moments?

A So the, the issue is how do you get through to this inner core of a person To their inner voice is control central, because your kids can just shut you out. They hear you, but they don't really, it doesn't register. And sometimes they hear their peers much more powerfully than they're going to hear you, particularly after they reach a certain point where they're starting to strive for independence. They, you know, they kind of lock out a lot of adult messaging, but what kids don't want to be Is preached to. They don't want to be preached to. The great wisdom seekers, uh, in, in our history, when they were trying to, let's say in the American Indian tradition, they would tell stories. They tell stories that actually don't bring defensiveness. What defensiveness does, it means I'm locking you out. I don't, you're threatening me with your bloody preaching. And so the more parents can say, I'll just give you a quick little anecdote here about my life that I learned. And you give them a mindset, say, you know, I, I had, I was not a good student. I actually hated school. And, ah, one day I had a teacher who took me aside and said, listen, I don't know what your issue is, but you seem to be, you know, angry every time you come in the classroom. And you don't want anyone to call on you. There's no joy here, and I would just like you to think about this. I've had lots of students like t…

AI assessment note: “what kids don't want to be Is preached to. They tell stories”

Q worked with 17 people who were the best in the world at what they did unequivocally, and you've worked with tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of other people who would be considered sort of in the top one percent of their particular domain or field, whether it's in business or athletics. What would you say you know about the highest performers that other people seem to miss?

A When we come into the world, We just fight to try to get a sense of, you know, just, hey, I'm not a complete idiot. You know, you're, you're trying to just find some confidence. You're always put in situations where they be emotional, social, classroom situations in math or science, or you're not a good communicator, good writer, and you're always pushed. You try to get into sport. You're not that good at it. You can't find the right thing. The thing that's amazing to me Is it, you know, these folks who become such extraordinary examples of genius, most of them had no clue. No clue that this is where they're going to end up. And they tended to end up in a situation where they had the opportunity to flourish. Were something that they, a light went on inside them. Maybe they, they had no idea that they would be, you know, a genius in math. They ended up with a teacher, a physics teacher that they fell in love with, and all of a sudden, they started realizing, I got some talents in this area of science, and I love it. And all of a sudden now, they're on a whole interesting career path. Everybody has strengths, but it has to be discovered, and it has to be aligned with what your interests are. What we've found is that you tend to like doing what you're good at. Not always, but, um, you know, some people say I'm really good at that, but I hate it. It doesn't happen that often. If it…

AI assessment note: “these folks who become such extraordinary examples of genius, most of them had no clue.”

Q That's a powerful message. When we recognize our stories need editing, now what? How do we, how do we change them?

A That is another great question, Shane. Um, so I wrote a book and it was called, uh, The Power of Story. And the subtitle was, Your Story Becomes Your Destiny. And every book I've written, I've written 19 books, and each one of them represents another insight that I never had before. If it's new to me, maybe it would be new to other people as well. Maybe I'm just a slow learner. I began to realize that the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we tell others either enable us to fulfill and to have a great life or actually take us in tragic directions. And I've seen this over and over again. And, uh, more important again than what happens to us in life is the story we craft around what happens to us. And if we realize that our story is faulty, that we're making stuff up that's literally not helping us, really do not, the, the story elements do not fit what I would say the, the principles, the guidelines of good storytelling, then you've got to edit that story, just as you suggested. And I, again, this will probably surprise Many of the folks who are listening, but we tried everything, and we had a lot of very smart people. We had some of the smartest people. I mean, our faculty was one of the most brilliant faculties I think we'll ever, ever assemble, and we tried visualization. We tried very interesting ways of kind of changing the way people actually process thinking and th…

AI assessment note: “what we finally concluded was that your hand Your hand writing probably had the greatest impact”

Q are the things that we can do as parents listening to change that for the positive with our kids when they come home with a test that they, uh, you know, maybe they failed or they're struggling with something or, um, how can we change the story that we're telling them? So it becomes a different story that they're growing up with and a different story they're inheriting from us.

A A lot of people are not even that aware of this inner voice until someone makes them more aware of it, and a lot of the athletes that we worked with thought that whatever is going on between their ears is just like you're pushing air around. There's nothing really happening. You can think something, but it doesn't really Doesn't seem to have any consequence. So it's just kind of like nonsense. It's like babble between the ears that is just of no consequence. But we have come to an understanding that everyone has an inner voice, a private voice. Everyone has a public voice, unless they have a speech issue, and it almost looks as if it's coded in the genes, because one generation passes on that inner voice to the next. Your public voice with your children become their inner voice, and if you talk to them in certain ways that are very destructive, demeaning, critical, sarcastic, even though Your, your response is, hey, I'm not, I'm not trying to be anything but a good parent that's going to help them face a tough world. I don't want to develop wusses. I'm not going to be all kindness and love and all that garbage. I'm going to be a, I'm going to be like a drill sergeant, because life is tough, and their parents before them, they say kids today have it way too easy. And you have to remember, I'm the guy that wrote a lot of the books on mental toughness, so I'm not for the wussifica…

AI assessment note: “So the verse, the first issue is I want you to tune in”

Q And the other thing I wanted to come back to that you mentioned, uh, quite a few times is mental toughness. How do we increase our mental toughness?

A Well, again, I, I didn't have it wired up right. I was just getting started trying to figure it out, and I did develop a construct that, based on all the players, I interviewed athletes from 21 different sports and asked them to describe What they feel like when they're playing at their absolute best. Something that sometimes referred to zoning. When what they could do and what they were doing were one and the same. It's an exhilarating feeling, and everyone has been there. And, uh, I just, I asked them for the descriptors that they would use, and I was blown away because they all used, it looked like they all copied from each other. They, they were Very calm, physically relaxed, emotionally confident, lots of positive energy. Um, there was a whole constellation, there were 12 of them that surfaced, and I used that as, I refer to it as their ideal performance state, and whether it was a linesman in football or a gymnast, uh, it was like levels of intensity might change, but the feeling that they had when they're performing from inside was similar across all sports. So that led me to understand that there is a, there's an internal chemistry that's bubbling up that actually drives those feelings and emotions. There's a physiology that's allowing, there's a very delicate balance in the neurophysiology and in the physiology of the whole body, this mind-body connection. And so the q…

AI assessment note: “I did develop a construct that, based on all the players, I interviewed athletes”

Q You work with a lot of world-class performers. Is there a difference between the story they're telling themselves and the story that the rest of us tell ourselves?

A What's so interesting is that when they started, often they just, they had a love affair with whatever sport They were involved in. They never had any dreams or were. They just, you know, they just thought, these are people who have become number one in the world. I've had 17 people that have become number one in the world. And when they look back, they're so astonished, because they never dreamed this was ever going to happen. They dreamed of being maybe a great tennis player, golfer, speed skater, but they never dreamed they would have this kind of Accumulated success over so many years. Um, but as they get more success, the possibilities begin to open up in their minds about what they can and can't do. And all I can tell you is that the sense of joy in the pursuit, and to be able to have parents who enable it, not force you, but actually give you the opportunity to explore this in your own way, and then be surrounded by great coaches who, I had a great coach in the early part of my Athletic career in basketball, and he saw something in me that I never saw in myself. Coach Guy Gibbs in basketball, and he came into my life at a very important time. I was kind of struggling with confidence, and somehow this guy that I really felt was an extraordinary human being, and that's the way we look at most of our coaches. I mean, coaches have a special place in our lives. He really just…

AI assessment note: “they're so astonished, because they never dreamed this was ever going to happen.”