600: How to find meaning, build resilience, & embrace connection | Steve Magness
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In a world obsessed with doing more, achieving more, and being more, how do you know if you're on the right path? Steve Magnus is a leading voice in performance science and is here to help us answer that very question. A best-selling author, performance coach to Olympians, professional athletes, executives, and the U.S. military, Steve has spent his career helping high achievers unlock their full potential, not just on the track or in the boardroom, but in life.

In his latest and most personal book, Win the Inside Game, How to Move from Surviving to Thriving and Free Yourself Up to Perform, Steve flips the traditional success narrative on its head. He makes a bold but refreshing case. Excellence and fulfillment are not at odds. They actually fuel each other.

In today's show, we explore why tying your self-worth to achievements only leads to burnout, how obsession alone isn't enough to sustain greatness, and why the highest performers are often the ones who've learned to zoom out, surrender control, and diversify their sense of meaning. If you're ready to redefine what success is and feel more free and grounded while you're at it, this one's for you. Let's get to it.

So at the highest level, you argue that excellence and fulfillment are not mutually exclusive and that we should seek both. Tell us more. I think we have this idea in our head that in order to be great, in order to be excellent in something, we've got to almost sacrifice everything else. And I make the argument that I don't think that's the case. And in fact, I think they work off of each other, meaning that

The more fulfilled we are, the more secure we are in who we are and why we're pursuing something. I think that boosts our journey towards excellence. And I think in a world where we often kind of have this, you know, win at all costs, you know, maybe even cheat to get to the top kind of mentality.

we've got to balance it out. And in doing so, we become not only better people, but perform at a higher level. So in other words, if I'm following correctly, you can't just have just run on purpose and that's it.

And you also just can't pursue excellence for the sake of excellence, whether that's the classic, you know, climbing the corporate ladder and you get to the top and then realize you climbed the wrong ladder. And the flip side, pursuing your passion and, you know, drawing and realize, you know, two decades later, you're not very good and you're starving to death.

Yeah, that's what it is. And the way I like to, you know, bring this home and I talk about it in the book is talking about the founder of capitalism, Adam Smith, who everyone thinks like, OK, Adam Smith, capitalism, like it's all about we need to pursue for more money. Greed is good. All of those things. But if you read Smith's writing.

What he essentially says is we use excellence and fulfillment. He used essentially you need capitalism or pursuit. But at the same time, you need to balance that out with tranquility and contentment. And he sat there and warned us and said, hey, hey, I get it. Selling a bunch of widgets. It's going to feel like this is the thing. But.

But if you only go down that that pursuit and you don't think about the tranquility and contentment, you're going to be miserable. I'm paraphrasing him essentially. On the flip side, if you only pursue contentment and tranquility, your life probably isn't going to be that good because there's only so many of us who can could be like Zen monks and be OK in that that manner.

So to me, it's about marrying those two concepts where it's OK and it's actually good to want to pursue something and perform at a high level. But at the same time, if that's your only thing, if the accolade, the achievement, the external validation is all that is underneath it.

then you're going to reach that top or come close to it and you're going to be miserable or burn out along the way. And on the flip side, if you don't have that kind of underlying drive, which as humans, we've essentially evolved to have because think about it.

Millennia ago on the Savannah, if you didn't have this drive to get the next thing right to explore the next area, to find the next food, to figure the next thing out, you probably weren't going to survive. So it's deeply ingrained in us. So we have to satisfy that drive in some manner. And that's what it is. It's about balancing those two things that we often see as opposing forces, but I think are complementary.

So I think everything you said makes a lot of sense. And then the question becomes, okay, well, how do I approach this? What do I do? And you've got an excellent framework in the book. Be, do, and belong. Could you walk us through your framework? Absolutely. So I think what it is, is it's having the security to pursue the things that you want to pursue in the way that aligns with your values, identity, and actions. Yeah.

And the way I kind of look at it is first, you need clarity on who you are and what actually matters. So in a world, again, where we kind of get told what to pursue, what our interests should be, et cetera, is getting to the heart of like, well, who do you want to be? Who do you see yourself as? How do you wrap this story around in your head that you tell about yourself and that becomes our identity?

How do you intertwine that with how you view success or striving? And I think that's number one is if you don't have clarity on yourself, then essentially you're going to be fragile instead of resilient because you're always looking at almost Instagramifying yourself where it's like, what am I projecting versus like truly deep down who I am? And I think the do the second part is that clarity on your pursuits.

This intertwines a little bit with number one, with that do part. But why are you choosing to pursue what you do? How do you want to show up to do that thing? And I think here, again, the kind of straightforward answer sells on social media.

But in the real world, nuance really matters. So for instance, in our pursuits, we need to be able to care deeply about the thing. Meaning if I'm writing books, I better care about the process of writing. But if writing is the sole way I see myself and my identity and that is it, then again, I'm going to be fragile and not resilient.

So part of pursuing the thing is being able to see your whole self pursuing the thing.

And seeing how it fits into your life and not just kind of narrowing yourself into I am a writer, I am a runner, I am a whatever it is. But instead, seeing the complexity along the way, which, again, makes you more resilient. And then the third part is, I think, probably, I would say, arguably the most underestimated part, which is the who we surround ourselves in the environment that we put ourselves in.

I think, especially in America, we have this almost like heroic individualism where we say, oh, if I just have, I just say I have these values and this is who I am. I'm going to be able to withstand whatever comes at me. But the psychology research paints that entirely different picture, which is our environment plays a large role.

And who we are, why we're pursuing things, in which way we'll go. And the way I like to kind of put it is that our nervous systems evolved to co-regulate, meaning way back on the Savannah, again, to use that example, if you were by yourself, you came across a lion or tiger or something dangerous, you're kind of screwed.

Your stress system goes into survival mode. How do I escape this as best I can? If you were with other people, you shared the load. You realize that that stress like, yeah, this is a dangerous situation, but I feel more secure in myself because I've got others here to help me out.

And the same is true in our pursuits now. If you don't have that community, if you don't have that environment around you pushing you towards the things that help you pursue what you want to, you're going to be in trouble. So this feels like there's some inner work, some self-awareness required to go through this process. I'm assuming you went through this process.

in writing the book. Can you share a little bit about your own personal experience and how you arrived here? Absolutely. I mean, I think what we do is we write the books that we need. For me, I've always been like what I'd call a pusher.

Meaning I was really good at doing the work. If I wanted to, you know, be a good writer or runner, I could do the work. I could be obsessed about it. But the thing that makes you good is often the thing that gets in the way of allowing you to be great. So in my case, like I could be so obsessed about the thing. My world would narrow around it. My identity would narrow around it. And I think this is my superpower. This is great. But what would happen is like I would be fragile.

In running, it would feel like because my background is in running and athletics, it would feel like every race was like do or die, life or death. In writing early on, it was like, oh, my gosh, if if this book doesn't sell X number of copies, I'm doomed. My career is over. All of that goes through your head.

And what happens is no one, very few, I should say, very few people perform out of that place of just overwhelming fear and almost paranoia. You know, that's not where we perform best. That's not where we live best. So part of the process in writing this book was saying, OK, like, what's the inner work look like?

How do I see myself? How do I see my future? How do I see my career? How do I set up my environment to make sure that like, hey, I have this tendency towards obsession? How do I have things that pull in the other direction that say, hey, Steve, you got to be okay. You got to let go. You got to be able to diversify yourself.

yourself instead of seeing yourself narrowly. So all the things that I write about, you know, most of them are struggles that I've had or struggles that people I've worked with or coached have had because it's the human condition. So if I think

Of most people I know who are successful, whether they're elite athletes, entrepreneurs, people very successful in business, I do think there's some degree of obsessiveness, of excellence. There's work ethic. I'm sure luck was always a variable. So how do you think about if that's a necessary ingredient for quote unquote success with those being the measures, what do we need in the rest of our life to make sure it doesn't ruin us?

I think that's the key because, because here's what it is. So I spent a long time working with elite athletes. This is what I got my career started in. And what I quickly realized is when I was coaching Olympic level runners is my job essentially was they were already motivated. They already had that, that obsession. As you talked about, my job was essentially to make sure that obsession didn't lead them to do dumb things, right?

right, is to make sure that obsession didn't lead them to over-train because they were trained relentlessly, right? It's to make sure that obsession didn't lead them to putting their entire sense of self on the line when they showed up for a race because, again, we can't perform well out of overwhelming fear. And I think the same applies to the rest of us. And I'd argue that the research backs this up. So when you look at that,

And the rest of our life, if you're one of those who's like very driven, then A, you need to figure out how do you have other things in your life that give you meaning? So diversifying your sources of meaning, meaning do we have something else, some other hobby, some other pursuit, some other job, even some other things that give me some resiliency, you know, way back in the day.

And my running career, I ran really fast as a high schooler. I was number one in the nation. Really fast is an understatement. If you're number one in the nation in high school, I'm going to point that out. You were an exceptional elite athlete. If you were the number one miler in the nation, and I'll share the four minutes and a second.

You were better than very good. So I'll just pause there. So I won't downplay it. I was, yes, I was very good. Maybe a little beyond that. But I struggled after that. I struggled when I went to college. I had all these expectations, all these things where I thought, okay, Olympics, here we come. This is the path. And I struggled. And I remember, I think it was my sophomore year of college.

I got to meet with this world-class sports psychologist who worked with all these major league baseball players, like all these players that you would know. And I was just, you know, starstruck. He was telling me stories. He listened to my story and said, you know, Steve, do you know so-and-so? And I said, yeah, of course. And the name was like one of the best runners in the world. So I resonated with it.

And he was like, you know, she struggled too as she was going from like national class to Olympic level to try and be a medalist. And there were a couple of years where it just didn't come together. And it's like, you know, you want to know, you know what the difference maker was. And I'm sitting here listening to sports psychologists and saying, oh, my God, he's going to solve my problems. Here's the answer. And he looks me dead in the eye and he says, knitting.

And as a 19 year old or 20 year old, I was sitting there like knitting. What are you talking about, man? And he's like, here's the deal.

She had the drive. She had the obsession. But before every workout, she was worried about the workout. After every workout, she was thinking about the last workout and the next one to come. Her brain never shut off the running aspect of her life. And while some of that is good, if you're there 24-7, it's eventually going to drive you nuts.

And he said, I just wanted to get her a hobby. I convinced her to try all these hobbies and knitting stuck. So now for an hour or two after the workout, she came home and she knit. And then a couple of days a week, she joined her ladies knitting group and like conversed on something that wasn't about sport in that brief little moment.

allowed her to kind of take that pressure down just a little bit and diversify her interests just a little bit that allowed her to free herself up. Now, of course, as a 19-year-old, I did not take up knitting and I blew off the information, even though it was coming from someone who knew better. But it turns out that the research backs this up. If you look at Nobel Prize winning scientists compared to scientists who were rung or two below,

The Nobel Prize winning scientists tend to have more hobbies or outside interests than those around or two below who tend to be more singularly focused on the science. And I think that goes against our common, you know, ideal that is like, oh, everybody needs to be all in all the time. So the point is, you asked me, how do you set up your life? I think part of it is diversifying your life just enough that

So that there's other interests, there's other support groups, there's other things that allow you to step away just a little bit from the thing because that allows you to recharge. And when you practice or do the thing that you care about the most, then you're bringing your full energy and attention to it without all the baggage that comes if it's the only thing in your life. So it's the mental fatigue that catches up. Absolutely.

I can't help but think, so we just recently took our girls to the NCAA women's final in basketball. And what a tremendous game and just amazing experience for girls to see women at that stage. And so I can't help but think of Paige. Paige Buckets, an unbelievable story in terms of the adversity she faced with two very serious injuries coming back for her last year and winning. And she's very religious.

She really is a, I would say, devout Christian. And I think of spirituality, whatever that looks like. And I'm probably going to generalize, but there are many elite athletes who are devout. What's your take on that as a superpower, if you will, for athletes and letting go for their mental and emotional well-being, religion? I think it's spot on.

Because here's the deal is what it does. I mean, it does many things, but what it does in the context of sport and performing is it zooms you out. It allows you to take some of the load off because you realize that a this sport is important to you. You care about it, but there are much bigger things in the world.

It also allows you to kind of zoom out and say, okay, win or lose, whatever happens, I still have this thing in my life that grounds me that is more important than the game itself. And this is why you see athletes, whether win or lose, they often afterwards, what do they do? They thank God or talk about their faith as a way to either understand

you know, bring their ego down a little bit when they win or to bolster their sense of self and like put things in perspective when they lose. And there's research on this, both in a spirituality standpoint that shows that when we have a purpose that psychologists call self-transcending,

Meaning it's bigger than ourself. It's not just I want to win because I want the money or fame or what have you. But it transcends ourself, which often is where spirituality or religion comes into. It allows us to handle more discomfort and bounce back quicker from setbacks or losses.

And that's, again, if you're religious or spiritual, I think it's a wonderful way to kind of ground yourself and have a kind of side benefit of performance enhancement in pursuits that you care about. I wholeheartedly agree. I think it's fascinating, specifically this idea of spirituality for performance, because I think whether you're an athlete or you're an entrepreneur or whatever it is you're pursuing, I would argue that

having a spiritual practice, there's a performance, like there's a performance aspect. So even if you're not necessarily sold, like you could argue like for your children or what have you, like this is important. If you want your child or whoever you want to perform at a high level, I almost need to prescribe you spirituality. Yeah. I mean, so it sounds, it sounds like so strange talking about it in these, these ways, but,

But I think it makes sense. And here's the other thing. I'm going to take us all the way back to history here is if you look at and study and talk to historians, especially if you know those around looking at, you know, ancient Roman and Greek battles is what happened in wars. What did they all talk about before? What did their all their rituals and routines include?

Some sort of spirituality, again, different because Roman and Greek gods, some talk of fate. And there's all sorts of research from history that tells us like the one of the reasons is it was performance enhancing.

Meaning it's a PD. It's a performance enhancing drug spirituality. It is, but it's like you go in, if you're, if you go into war and you realize, okay, I have this, this fate, these signs from God, this whatever behind me, it allows you to have more courage, right? Then you would, if you sat there as a human and realize, oh my gosh, I'm about to run into battle with the sword and some,

crappy armor to, you know, face my demise. And whether we, you know, like to talk about it or in those domains or not, I think it's one of the benefits of it as well as like, we've got to accept that like, hey, if you have something bigger than yourself,

It's going to make you handle pain and discomfort a whole lot better than if you don't. I'll cite, you're probably around my age, you know, a favorite from the 80s, the Blues Brothers. We're on a mission from God. John Belushi.

And I'm going to give you one more on this. But if you look at if you look at that's great. You cite John Belushi. I'll tell you, if you look at the work of Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor. Yes. That's what you're meaning. Yeah, exactly. What does he talk about? What is his whole work? Meaning which often could come from a spiritual thing. But he essentially said, like, hey, when we when you looked at those who survived in the Holocaust, again, there's research on this is that like

We need something bigger to grasp onto. And if we have that, you know, he has all these famous quotes, but if we have that, like the difficult, the extremely difficult becomes a little bit more manageable, even in the most horrendous situations. Yes.

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And so coming back to elite athletes and your work there, what else can us normal, so to speak, learn from them? What do they do well? I think, you know, one of the things here is that we have this misconception that elite athletes have this like impervious ability or strength or resilience or toughness and don't feel fear or stress. And it's just not true.

It's just not. I remember several years ago sitting in front of some of the best marathoners in the world and asking them essentially, you know, during your marathons, which you're paid to do, this is your profession. You care a lot about it. Does the thought ever cross your mind to like you see the port-a-potty and think, oh, I'm going to go duck in that and hide and not come out?

And every hand goes up, right? Everyone's like, oh, yeah. I think about going in the port-a-potty and hiding. I think about, you know, seeing that pothole on the ground and stepping in it and like being like, oh, I'm injured. I can stop this race. And the point is this, is what we all experience fear and stress. I think what differs often is because elite athletes are

have a controlled environment where they essentially get exposure therapy to it. Where it's like, I'm going in this environment every week or every so often, every couple days because I have another game. That exposure allows you to have the opportunities to learn to navigate it. And if you look at the research, what generally happens is elite athletes figure out how to switch and

their experience or their assessment of stress away from seeing it as a threat, meaning something dangerous, something to fear, something that is like going to put me down and more so to see it as a challenge.

Meaning it is an opportunity. I'm going to put myself in the arena. I might succeed. I might not. But I'm going to learn something about myself and my skill, which is going to allow myself to come forward. So I think when we look at that, it's like in our everyday exposures for people is a I would say.

How do you find opportunities to almost get that exposure, that stress exposure, inoculation where you're getting in the arena saying, here's an opportunity to learn a little bit about myself and to adapt to stress? And then the other thing that I think elite athletes do really well, and it ties back to something that we talked about earlier, is they are masterful storytellers.

Meaning when failure hits, when they lose a game, they're able to tell a story that allows for that resilience and growth to happen. Meaning they don't internalize, I lost this game, so I must suck at basketball, right? Or, you know, in the example you gave earlier on page buckets there is I got injured. I'm never coming back.

Right. They internalize it is here is a setback. How am I going to learn from it? How am I going to come back stronger and grow from it? And I think that is one of the key separations or one of the key things that you can learn as an athlete that transcends into normal life. Well, what's interesting there, and I hear this from athletes and also entrepreneurs, is there's like two switches for some of them.

let's say there's an obstacle or there's diversity, there's loss. Some of them are so, their narrative, their internal dialogue is so negative. I'm bad, I'm terrible. And it causes them to work harder. Ultimately, they may end up being great or whatever it is, but they struggle with their happiness. And then the flip side is the more positive spin where they tell themselves a story about what they could have done better or let's look at the bigger picture, right?

And they also have a very successful outcome. But I think the people who have sort of the positive self-talk, if you will, are a little bit happier with the end result, whereas the folks who are a little bit negative in their self-talk, who are equally successful, maybe a little bit

less happy than the initial group. What's your take on those two different paths? Because both are successful. Yeah, you're spot on. I call it the kind of like Michael Jordan approach. What's your take on Michael? Incredibly successful, right? But if you look at and you talk to people in the NBA and coaches like I did, what did he do?

He internalized this almost like negative self-talk to a degree because like he thought everybody was like sliding him, even though he's the best in the world. Right. It's like, oh, my high school coach didn't select me. I remember talking to George Carl, the coach of this Seattle Supersonics one year. They faced him in the finals and.

And George Carl is like Michael Jordan, like made up all these things that I didn't actually say. Like I said, a couple of things that were like, you know, a little bit critical, but he made up all this stuff to create an internalization of like George Carl is the worst. His teammates me, blah, blah, blah. And it's that fuel of like almost like doubt and insecurity that he created to perform at his best. And again, I don't know, Jordan, it

incredibly successful. But what I would say is that that ties into a little bit of that entrepreneur, that athlete who looks at the slights and the negatives and might be able to make it at the highest level, but does through a little bit of like fear and insecurity,

Which most of us aren't Michael Jordan. And for most of us, I think it'll get in the way. And I would argue even with Jordan, after his career was done, it probably did get in the way because as a executive, like he was playing as athletes, you know, and essentially humiliating them, which probably didn't help them perform. Right. So the point is this. I think you're spot on on these two paths.

And the key distinction is people often kind of say, oh, well, they're super successful using this fear as this underlying driver is in security as this underlying driver. But going back to what I talked about earlier, it's kind of going down that Adam Smith path of like all striving with no balance of tranquility or contentment. And when we do so again for the vast majority of us, it will catch up.

Eventually, maybe it doesn't catch up in performance, but it leaves us never satisfied. It leaves us never able to enjoy the aspects that we had or that we've we've gained from our success.

And I think the flip side is, you know, to counter Jordan is we rarely talk about kind of the people who do it in a quiet, more like non verbose way. Maybe like a Tim Duncan who just shows up, who just showed up for years and is like, well, put in the work.

I'm not going to create this huge negative story. It's about my teammates. Sometimes I'm even going to step back for my teammates to thrive and equally as successful and probably again, don't know either guys, but probably maybe a little bit more content than the fear driven variety. Yes. After watching the Michael Jordan documentary, I got the impression he wasn't the happiest camper in retirement. Yeah.

But that's what it is. Because like, if you never have that, like thing, if you're always driven, driven by that fear, that insecurity, whatever it is, that negative voice in your head that is telling you, I'm not good enough. I got to still prove myself, et cetera, is what happens is like, it's really hard to turn it off. And if you, again, if you talk to people who know Jordan, what do they tell you? They said, you know,

The same way he competes on the basketball court is the same way he'll compete in cards with his family. And what we know from research, again, research I've studied this, is there's a very significant but important difference between what we'd call hyper-competitive and competitive.

I forget the phrase they use, but essentially a more constructive competitive, meaning you can still have the same drive, the competition, et cetera, but the hyper competitive cannot shut it off. And if we can't shut it off, eventually it consumes us.

And taking this outside of the world of sport, this is why when I talk to people like emergency room physicians or surgeons who have a really stressful job that is more stressful than playing a big game of basketball because lives are actually on the line. And I'd ask them, I'd say, how do you handle this? And many of these surgeons, they've got big egos. Don't get me wrong. You have to do it to believe you can save people's lives.

But many of them told me and said, you know, Steve, the most important time is from when I leave the hospital when my shift is over and I drive home and I step foot in that house, in my house to see my family and kids and stuff. Said on that drive home, I had to have some way to process and switch out of surgeon hero mode.

and into family dad mode different something. Because if I bring that with me, a life is going to be horrible and I'm not going to have a good, you know, I'm not going to be able to sustain my actual practice and surgery. And like my family is going to be miserable because that's not who I need to be. And I think the same thing applies to athletes. If we've got to be able to, yes, switch it on.

But we've also got to be able to turn that switch off or else we're going to end up burned out or miserable and not content.

So you mentioned coming home to a family and made me think you have a great chapter titled Find Connection and Belonging Without Fusing, which I thought was a very interesting concept. Can you walk us through that one? Absolutely. So the way I like to describe it is we all need belonging. It is a fundamental human need. Right. I talked about at the beginning is our nervous systems co-regulate.

We feel better when we're connected. That's why when we have a kind of loneliness epidemic, our mental health and physical health goes down with it. It matters. But the flip side of that is that often we search for genuine connection and belonging through what I call like the superficial ways to fill that void, meaning we fuse our identity, our individual self with the group self.

We become the diehard, you know, Yankees fan who lives and dies with the, you know, wins and losses of this baseball team that we have nothing to do. Or we subsume our individual identity into our group identity. You see this especially in politics.

where you become the political party you identify with, and then you go where that party goes. And what happens is this cheap version of belonging helps us in the short term, but makes us again, fragile, miserable, and takes our values wherever the group goes in the long term.

So I think what we have to understand is we have to realize that genuine connection and belonging is expansive instead of narrowing. Meaning if you look at the research around relationships and marriages, what they find, and again, there's a biblical background for this too, as it kind of describes it as well. But what they find is that like two becomes one in an expansive manner, right?

Meaning they call it self-expansion in the research, which is like you become a more diversified, more interested, like better person because you integrate like yourself with your partner in an expansive way instead of shutting down and narrowing yourself and saying, OK, I'm going to give up all these things that make me me and just kind of subsume into.

You need a strong sense of self. Otherwise, you lose yourself in the relationship or in the group sense. You lose yourself to groupthink. You're susceptible to tribalism. And I think this runs rampant in the age of people who are lonely and find themselves on, you know, Internet forums. That's it.

And, you know, the research that I love to pull out from this is like if you look at the research around gangs is what it shows is that the reason gangs often thrive is they thrive in areas where people feel, again, insecure, don't have financial security.

don't have hope or direction and gangs give them just a little bit of like this fake belonging that makes them say okay i'm going to forget about maybe all the morals ethics values that i thought i had and i'm just going to go with the group because it fills this void a little bit and i think the same applies when you look at we'll call it online gangs or tribalism is you kind of throw that away because you have this deep feeling of loneliness and you're like okay

Being on this internet forum fulfills that in a small way. It sounds strange, but again, the research backs us up. It fulfills this in a small way. So I'm going to ditch my individual values, ethics behind and just go where this group goes because like, this makes me feel a little bit less lonely. And this is why in our modern age, like,

The lowliness epidemic is so damaging, not only on an individual level, but also on a group level, because it makes us susceptible for this increased tribalism and stop seeing people for, you know, who they are. Yes. And, you know, it makes me think of kids and the outsized impact adults have, their peers have. How do you think about everything we've discussed today?

mindset, purpose, ability to deal with adversity, all the good stuff we just went over. How do you think about cultivating this with children? I think this is the million dollar question. And I've I've got two under two. So I'm the wrong person to ask on how to apply this exactly. But no, I you know, I spent a life I spent my early career coaching high school and then college kids.

And it was one of the most valuable things I could experience because what I got to see is like from the zoomed out perspective of like the impact that parenting had or different styles of parenting had on kind of these kids development at, at often some very crucial time periods, right? High school is crazy for kids. They're identifying their, their sense of self. They're trying to figure out who they are, but,

Here's what kind of a combination of my experience and research tells us is that if we want to develop some of these resilience or mindsets, we've got to A, be able to instill and more important than talk, show our kids like the values that matter. When I was a coach, I always get this, both in high school and college, I get these parents who'd come up and be like,

I tried to tell little Johnny and Susie X, Y, and Z. They just don't listen. And I'd always counter with, no, no, they're listening. And more important, they're observing. They might not internalize it right now, but I'm going to tell you as someone who did this for 10 years and watch is at some point those seeds are going to flourish and they're going to reflect on those and they're going to be like, okay, here's what it is. Here's how I'm following these things.

So you need to not only when you're talking about values and ethics, it's not only about talking about them, but your kids are watching you. So, for instance, in sport, if you're the if you're the parent who is losing their mind on the sideline.

And critiquing your kid nonstop in the car ride home, your kid internalizes. Yeah, mom and dad might say, hey, it's about fun, but it is not about fun. Right. It is about winning. And that is all that matters. And this is this is what it is. That's what you're internalizing. And then the second part of that is beyond your ethics and values and morals and what you're showing through actions.

The second part is, I think, for resilience in that mindset is you've got to be able to put kids in situations where they will fail, explore and try new things and mess up and sometimes mess up sort of big, but hopefully not too big, because that's what growth that's where growth occurs. And there's all sorts of research that shows that.

The decline in what we call unstructured play in kids. So meaning not an organized, you know, baseball game where all the parents are refs and like always there. But unstructured play more like recess with, you know, a teacher far away. But just make sure you don't die out there. Unstructured play is where kids learn how to.

Deal with emotions, right? To deal with that fire, anger or upsetness to negotiate, meaning, hey, we had a foul here. It's like being on the playground. Are we going to call it or are we not? We have a disagreement. How do we figure these things out and deal with adversity and losing? Get your butt kicked in front of people you care about.

or people, you know, friends you admire and figuring out how do I, how do I bounce back here? And I think in a culture of a two degree, a little bit of safety ism. We have to realize how do we create the environments where again, in a safe way, but our kids can explore, mess up, sometimes do stupid things and still be okay. Varied odds with the current club culture.

that youth sports are facing today, I would, yes. It absolutely is. And I think this is why if you look at some of the data on especially youth sports and resilience and well-being is like we've seen a pretty sharp decline. And I think part of the reason is because, well, we've gone all in on this like club culture, as you said, which doesn't develop some of the things. And in fact, if you look at the research on even those who make it

to the highest level. There's been a number of studies on this. Overwhelmingly, they show that A, you know, a little bit of, you know, delayed specialization actually helps. So not going all in on the club culture too early in most sports. And then B, most importantly, is there's a whole research around talent needs trauma.

And this is a lowercase T trauma, not an uppercase. But what they essentially mean is like those who made it at the highest level face some sort of adversity growing up. Meaning maybe they got cut from the team. Maybe they weren't the starter and had to figure it out. And if you face those early on, you're going to develop resilience. You're going to figure out how to cope with it. Because eventually, even the most talented athletes on the planet are talented individuals.

They're going to face a point. They're going to come face to face where like, I'm not good enough. I need to figure this out. If they experience that early, they develop more coping skills. If they experience it later, it becomes this huge, overwhelming threat to their identity. And like, I'm not good enough. Oh my God. Like, how do I handle this? And I don't have the resources. So for parents out there, like,

Give your like we want them to essentially fail and struggle at some point. And it's much bigger than sport. This is about life. This is that's what I love. It's not you're not training your child for the Olympics or to be an elite athlete. These are life lessons that will stay with you forever. Exactly. And again, my wife is an elementary school literacy specialist. So she spends her time, you know, teaching kids how to read.

And some of the lessons I've learned from her are the ones directly tied into sport. But if you look at it, for instance, the research that she showed me is like, even if we look at academics, if you always step in and help your kid solve the problem as a teacher or a parent, then the amount of learning that occurs is much lower than if you let them struggle with it. Even if they don't follow, they find the answer. If you let them struggle,

And then eventually help on the back end. They learn a whole lot more. And I think too often we focus on the outcome and say, okay, how do we get to solve the problem, win the game, get on the team, instead of realizing the whole freaking point is to develop the skills. And to develop the skills, we need to struggle a little bit and work it out for ourselves. And yes, we might need some help at some point, but that help can't come immediately or else we learn externalize opportunities

all of our problems. And that's not good for anybody. No, I think the struggle is, is key as is rewarding the effort, not the outcome. You're spot on. And I think we talk about that, but again, going back to talk and actions is, is,

In sport, if you say if you're the coach or you're the parent, you say, oh, the effort is great. But then after the game, all you talk about is the outcome instead of talking about little Johnny there who didn't score many points, but like hustled their butt off on defense.

Then if you only talk about the outcome, kids will internalize the outcome. So again, be, be aware of what you are rewarding and incentivizing and even talking about, because that is what like, that's what kids are going to pick up. And the same goes for academics. Same goes for everything. It transcends sport. It's everything that kids working on. So I'm curious. Look, the book is fantastic. I'll hold it up. When the inside game, I'm curious, like,

What was the greatest learning for you in writing this book? The greatest learning for me? Oh, gosh, that's a big question. You know, I think the most interesting one was this, is I got to talk to someone who has Parkinson's. And it was fascinating because he showed me all these videos and he said, yeah, I've got Parkinson's, like,

You know, I struggle to walk. But let me show you something is if I change the environment or even my mindset, like for a brief moment, I can like walk and function normally. And he showed me examples of like, again, walking.

Him like shooting free throws or going up for a layup in basketball because it used to be a basketball player and it was just simple things in the way he described it and the research is starting to back it up is like part of what occurs in Parkinson's is that over time your brain realizes that it needs to be protective and it's afraid of you falling.

So you start moving even more so in the very kind of like rigid way. And if you can convince your brain just for a brief moment that everything is OK, that you're not going to fall, it releases you for a moment. And one of the examples he gave is if he changed from walking on, for example, a sidewalk or a road.

to on a soft like grass path, he would be able to walk better because your brain goes, okay, if I'm fall, I'm in a little better shape on the soft ground versus the hard ground. And it was just these little things where I'm like, holy crap, right? Like,

Even in like extreme diseases and disorders, like our brain is kind of predicting, you know, how it should respond. And then environment around us matters, too. And again, he showed me examples, too. If he had someone around him who is there, he'd be able to walk and function better than if it was him alone. And I think that applies again to us. We might not see it as so distinctly.

But our environment around us can either support us to be able to take on challenges and thrive, or it can tell us the world is scary, dangerous, you know, protect.

And to a degree, you know, we get to influence which way we go. Yeah, I think we're we're we've underestimated mindset. I think we're just scratching the surface in realizing what's possible. Absolutely. 100% agree. And so we covered so much today before we part ways. Is there anything we didn't cover that you want to touch on before we wrap? You know, one thing I'd say is, you know, I talked a lot about belonging. One of my favorite studies that I came across is that and maybe this will drive it home is that, uh,

If you take individuals and you stack them in an fMRI machine and have something they're deathly afraid of, like a snake or a spider, and move it closer to their head where you're scanning their brain, the fear centers in their brain when they are alone in that machine go up crazily high. If you just run the same experiment with different people and have their significant other or spouse standing there just holding their hand,

Fear centers go up about half as much. And I think this is one of the again, we talked about belonging, but just to drive this home is like it is a fundamental need and it makes the difficult more manageable.

So if you're struggling in life, if you're saying, OK, how can I make myself perform better, live better, feel better? I think part of it is like, hey, get offline, go do something with a friend, go have coffee with your spouse or significant other, do real things in the real world with other people to remind your brain that you're not on this journey alone.

And it will enhance your performance and also improve your mental health and well-being as well. Powerful. And probably explains the mental health struggles of golfers and tennis players and swimmers and runners compared to athletes who play on teams. Exactly. That's probably it. Steve, thank you so much. Such a pleasure. Thanks so much. Enjoyed it.