The Daily Stoic - Coach Bob Bowman on Balancing Stillness and Excellence | You Have To Earn That Trust

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

Pre-orders are available for Ryan Holiday’s new book Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave - check it out at https://dailystoic.com/preorderRyan reads today’s daily meditation and talks to Bob Bowman, who is best known as the coach of 23-time Olympic gold medalist American swimmer Michael Phelps, about how athletes can maintain stillness while still performing at a high level of excellence, the importance of preparation and how to lean on your training, finding the balance between the pursuit of excellence and internal peace, and more.Bob Bowman is an American swimming coach who is the current head coach of the Arizona State Sun Devils swimming and diving teams of Arizona State University. From 2005 to 2008, Bowman served as the head coach for the Michigan Wolverines swimming and diving team of the University of Michigan men's swimming & diving team. From 2008 to 2015, he worked as the CEO and head coach for North Baltimore Aquatic Club.Check out Bob Bowman’s book: The Golden Rules: Finding World-Class Excellence in Your Life and Work Athletic Greens is a custom formulation of 75 vitamins, minerals, and other whole-food sourced ingredients that make it easier for you to maintain nutrition in just a single scoop. It tastes great and gets you the nutrients you need, whether you're working on the go, fueling an active lifestyle, or just maintaining your good health. Visit athleticgreens.com/stoic to get a FREE year supply of Liquid Vitamin D + 5 FREE Travel Packs with subscription. Talkspace is an online and mobile therapy company. Talkspace lets you send and receive unlimited messages with your dedicated therapist in the Talkspace platform 24/7. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com or download the app. Make sure to use the code STOIC to get $100 off of your first month and show your support for the show.KiwiCo believes in the power of kids and that small lessons today can mean big, world-changing ideas tomorrow. KiwiCo is a subscription service that delivers everything your kids will need to make, create and play. Get 30% off your first month plus FREE shipping on ANY crate line with code STOIC at kiwico.com.LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business this fall. It’s the largest marketplace for job seekers in the world, and it has great search features so that you can find candidates with any hard or soft skills that you need. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit linkedin.com/STOIC to post a job for free. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic podcasts early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast where each weekday we bring you a Meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace in wisdom in their actual lives. But first we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

Hi I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. You have to earn that trust. You hear people talking about how you have to trust yourself about going with your gut, about listening to your body. The stoics might ask, have you really earned that trust? It is true that Aristos, one of the early stoics, I profiled in lives of the stoics, was a big

believer in the idea that the philosopher simply knows. They don't need precepts or reminders or laws, he said. They just know. But the metaphor he used of a javelin thrower is important. An athlete trains for years to gain their intuition. It's thousands of hours of practice. Their faith in themselves and their instincts is rooted in evidence and experience

Not hope. You realize why Marcus Aurelius journaled every day why Santa Corrota's letters why the Scipionic Circle met regularly was a form of training. They were trying to turn these teachings into muscle memory They were trying to build the deep familiarity with wisdom and virtue so that in difficult situations their instincts would be based on something worth trusting. And you can get to a place where your gut is worth listening to, but it doesn't come easy. It's certainly not natural. You have to train, you have to put in the work,

you have to earn that trust. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. It's, uh, it's getting real for me. You know, there's a big distinction, uh, I once heard Cheryl Stray talk about between writing and publishing. Writing is what I get to do, sort sort of alone with my no cards, with the blank screen, with the books that I read. Writing is the part I love because that's

when I'm heads down creating, making something new. And it feels like eternity ago that I first started talking about the book that I was starting. Recorded this podcast all throughout the pandemic well before the pandemic. But basically in December, January, I started really of 2019, I'm really started researching and thinking about the next book that I was going to write. I worked on it for about six or so months of just thinking and researching and accumulating and doing my note cards. And then the rubber really met the road. That's why I started writing in June 16th, 2020, the depths of the pandemic.

I know that it was on that day exactly because one, that's what my journal says. But two, I love starting books on my birthday. I actually started Trustman Line on June 16th, 2011. That's when I basically started becoming a writer. So 10 years ago, exactly almost. And now to be not just to hold this thing in my hands, but to be able to tell you the first time

for one of the first times here on the podcast that you can buy it. My newest book, Courage is Calling is now available for pre-hers. It's called Courage is Calling Fortune Favours the Brave. And it's actually the first book in a four-book series, in the way that obstacle and ego and stillness became a trilogy. This is actually a much more intentional trilogy. I'm doing four books on the four stoic virtues, the cardinal virtues, courage, temperance, justice, wisdom. It just happened that I started with courage

because that's the first one in the list of virtues, but as it happens, it is also the most urgent of the virtues. None of the virtues are possible without courage, but I think we've seen in the last 18 months the power of courage, you know, in the frontline doctors and nurses, even the essential workers, even the people who had to show up every day at a grocery store before there were vaccines before we knew how you could get the virus exactly, before we knew how dangerous exactly it was. All the people who showed up and did their duty and did their jobs, you know, that's what courage is about. And you know, there's really this distinction between moral and physical courage, but as I argue in the book courage, it really comes down to, can you put

your ass on the line? Can you risk yourself for something else? Whether it's risking embarrassment, whether it's risking criticism, whether it's risking a sure thing, like a safer, softer life, or if it's, you know, the risks inherent in running into a burning building or charging out to a field of battle. That's what the new book is about. I'm so excited to tell you about it. It comes out September 28th, but it's available for pre-order now. I have a bunch of amazing bonuses.

You can sign up at dailystilic.com slash pre-order. You can get signed copies for me as part of the preorder. And the thing I'm most excited about is you can get a signed page from the manuscript itself. As I write a book, I have to print out the pages as I'm writing. You can see my handwritten notes on them. These are the pages of the book that I made

in various states of completion. And so this is the only place to ever be able to get those. I actually got the idea from Stephen Pressfield. He gave me a type written manuscript page from Gates of Fire, actually, the last page of the book. And it's now one of my prized possessions.

So if you wanna find out how you can get that, you can pick up courage is calling anywhere books are sold to do the pre-order stuff, just go to dailystoak.com slash pre-order and you can get all those bonuses you can buy it from my indie bookstore you can buy it from Amazon you can buy it from Barnes & No you can buy it from Books & Million you can buy it on Audible you can buy it on iBooks you can buy it on Indiebound you can buy it your favorite local bookstore it doesn't matter all the stuff qualifies all the instructions are there dailystoak.com

slash preorder, courage is calling, fortune favors the brave. Can't wait for you to see this new book. I'm also very excited about today's episode of the podcast with the one and only Bob Bowman, arguably the greatest coach in the history of swimming coached the greatest swimmer in the history of swimming, the one and only Michael Phelps.

I first got introduced or connected with Bob because Michael Phelps kept mentioning he goes the enemy or the daily stoke. I was like, wow, this is crazy and I reached out to some other people and traced it back and it was Bob who'd passed it along. Then I saw we followed each other on social media and we got to connect. And we sort of gone back and forth every now and then. And I said, you know what, I'm going to interview them for the podcast.

As you know, I love swimming and it's a big part of my life. So we talk about elite performance here. We talk about overtraining. We talk about temperance in that sense, which, as you know, will be the next book in the series. We talk about trusting the process. We talked about doing the work and we talked about the very special practice that is swimming. Bob has a great book you should check out called The Golden Rules, 10 Steps to World Class Excellence in Your Life and Work. That's published by St. Martin

Express. You can get that in the show notes. Here is my very fun interview with Bob Bowman. Enjoy. You know, it's funny. I saw a meme in the middle of the election that said something like, somehow, somehow it turns out that a lot of swimming every four years is exactly the right amount of swimming for me. It's weird how swimming is this huge sport, but only in this one period to the vast majority of people, though obviously it's your entire life. Right. Yeah. That's the way that most people think about it.

Yeah. But, but what's so funny is, like, if you think about it for two seconds, they're obviously only, it's not like they had day jobs for the last four years. This feat of greatness, you're watching someone in the pool for three minutes or whatever, was because for the last four years, they were training their ass off for this very moment. No doubt. Yeah. Well, I'm glad we got to talk.

There's something I wanted to ask you because as I was writing still, this is the key. I came across this old sports illustrated article I'm trying to let me grab the date here the sports illustrated article is from July 14th 1983 Wow, and it's about Vladimir Adam here, Sound the Coff, am I saying that right? Yes, Sound the Coff, yeah. And his coach, whose name I'm pulling, I don't see, but his coach is Gorbanov for something like this, right?

And here's this passage, I found it when I was writing the book and I wanted to include it, but I gotta be honest, I didn't quite know exactly what it meant or how I could use it, but I figured you as a swimming whisperer will know exactly what it is and be I could use it, but I figured you as a swimming whisperer will know exactly what it is and be able to explain it to me. So here's the two paragraphs, or actually just one paragraph. Gorbanov had watched Sound the Cove train. He took him aside an hour before the 1,500 meter race. He'd let the 16-year-old into a darkened room and lulled him into a sweet semi-hypnotic dream of blue skies above and a gentle ocean below

Suddenly far away sound the cove heard his name. He blinked and sat up. It was the public address announcer the other seven swimmers We're on the blocks ready for the gun go now said Gorbanoff swim very quiet Hmm, what does that mean? I? Go now said Gorbinoff, swim very quiet. Mm, what does that mean? I think that's a relaxation technique, right? So he's putting him in a state, right? And that's similar to what, you know, when Michael was very young, we had him go through a progressive relaxation technique.

Very similar. You try to put yourself in a place where you're relaxed, you're, you know, sort of in touch with all of your body in terms of sensations and how it's feeling. And then that's sort of an ideal state for you to visualize your races or to try to come up with your mental game plan. And I feel like he was state priming him isn't that what I think that's a good term for. But what do you think swim very quiet means? It means don't get out there and try to overdo it right when you swim quiet you want

to swim efficiently that I tell my guys to swim pretty same thing right make sure it's pretty you know just keep your strokes looking good. Don't try to muscle it because I think particularly in 1500 meters, which is what Vladimir was swimming, you don't want to use all your energy too early. You have to use it up over the course of, you know, 15 minutes. Is that sort of like golf where the harder you try at at the worst you are? 100%. Exactly. Yeah. You know, a big part of swimming is, you know, we talk about relaxation at top speed, right? And that's what you're trying to do.

You're trying to swim at your top speed, but you're trying to do it in a relaxed flowing way, not a, you know, overmuscled kind of, you know, forced way. Yeah, it's funny because when I was writing stillness, I think a lot of people took that to mean, you know, meditative or, you know, sort of detaching or disconnecting like stepping away, which, which that is an important part you have to have that. For sure. Really, I am fascinated with stillness in the midst of activity, you know, you're on the free throw line or you're going up, you've got two seconds on the clock before, you've got to make the throw, or in this case, the race of your life.

How do you have stillness while you're charging forward? I think that's what is called like flow state, right? You're in a place where time slows down, even though you're in the midst of lots of time pressure and chaos. The Olympic Games is a perfect example. I think you get yourself in a state where everything slows down. You feel like you're part of everything that's happening instead of just being there amongst the chaos.

And you're able to get your best performance because you're not in this sort of frenetic state, you're in a calm state. It's almost counterintuitive because everything about it is not calm, right? But that's what the great ones do. They learn how to do that. Right. Your calm when everyone else would be losing their mind. Exactly. Yeah, the next paragraph is why I'd found it because I was looking for things about the word stillness, but the writer says, at 16 without knowing it,

sound the cough had grasped the paradox, out of stillness comes swiftness and out of patience comes energy. He had crossbred the two seeds that grew on opposite sides of the wall. Oh, I love that. That's beautiful. That's what I thought who wrote that article? That was amazing. Yeah, it was like it's one of those things like a lot of zen things where you're like that's beautiful and I'm also not sure I have any idea what it is. Yeah, exactly. I think I know what it means. It means it's just what we just talked about. It's like an inner, you have to have an inner quiet

and an inner calm in the midst of this outer, you know, Kakathani. Yeah, I'm trying, let me see, let me click here, see who wrote this. It was, man, it's very weird. It's not saying the auth, maybe it's at the bottom. But yeah, I think the idea of how do you get to, because it's funny, you know, you'll ask the athlete after they'll be like, what were you thinking during the race?

Or, you know, and the answer is like nothing. They went to a place where of no mind. For sure. And that's exactly what Michael would tell you. And he's been asked so many times. Well, what were you thinking about those? Like, nothing. I was just doing what he was trained to do. And that's really, the big, that's why we spend all of these years and years of training is to make the physiological aspect of the race automatic. You don't have time to make conscious decisions

in a race that lasts 49 seconds. Right. You have to just kind of go and free yourself up to do what you've been trained to do. And I think the key component of that is shutting out all the outside noise, being able to just sort of, I say, turn on the machine, right? Turn off your brain, turn on the machine and let it run. Because I got to get in the way of it. I got to imagine in any one of these races, let's say there's seven, eight, however many swimmers are there, all of them are physically capable of winning the race.

Yes. Most of them, I wouldn't say all of them, but three or four for sure. They're all in the ballpark. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And so is it really, is it really as simple as getting in the right, like the difference between Michael Phelps and number two or whoever in number two is, who is in the right mental headspace when they went in the water, or is it, is it that not right?

It's a combination because the top three or four guys are probably in the right mindset too. So I think that gets down to just your total package of preparation. Right. What made Michael Invencible was an astonishing preparation for a period of years, physically, mentally, emotionally, getting ready to step up and compete in Beijing or a lot of races that he's swimming. But I think that's the difference is who's going to put the whole package together? Everybody has talent at that level. That's not a question. Everybody is doing the big things in training. It really comes down to the details. Who's

gone through every detail and checked every box? And the one who does the most of those is the one who wins? Yeah, and I was, I think it was Ladecki where it was showing something where it was like her like 20 best races are like the one through 20 spots in an 800 meters, right? Yeah. And so you're thinking about, well, what's the difference between the one and the 20 performance? Some of its age, some of its probably the conditions that day, which is doing, but it, it's like, clearly, it's the same person, right,

in all 20 spots. So it must be some microscopic variable, probably a mental variable, a place that they're able to go in the pool on that day, that's the difference between your fastest time and your fourth fastest time. I completely agree, yeah, for sure. And the environment, a lot has to,

they take the energy from it, the good energy from the environment, lifts people like Ladecki and Phelps, they get better when the pressure is higher. That's what separates them from number 234. Is a lot of these people they are going to perform lower when the pressure goes up and those guys for some reason are able to give their best in those circumstances.

Is that the role of the coach too? Because I mean of all the sports, the swimming coach has sort of the least input once the race has started. Right. Compared to most of the major races. I mean, even a track coach can at least like, the person could hear you, right? You can yell at them from the side of the track if you're running 1,500 meters.

Whereas in swimming, it's sort of like, it's like they're in a spaceship. Once they take off, you don't have any contact. Yeah. So what does the coach do to get them in a position to get the best out of themselves? Set up situations and training where they can do that and be successful at it.

And a lot of that means challenging them beyond what they think they can do, actually seeing if they can do it, if they fail, learning that you can come back and do some things differently and succeed the next time. You know, at the meets, my job is over when we get to a big meet, right? Yeah. Everybody's like, what do you say before the race? There's like, I try not to say anything.

I don't want to get in. We've talked about the strategy of the race for six months before. Right. In the last three or four weeks, we're just fine-tuning things and maybe a little reminder here or there, but there's no real coaching that can happen at these competitions. It's only sort of, you know, just letting things happen that we've prepared for for this very long, arduous time leading into it. And so the coach's main job is in practice every day.

And that's what I love. That's why I do this. It's that kind of day to day. And I hate to use the word grind, because it's every, that's what everybody says. But that sort of really intense, consistent preparation and putting them in situations where they have to rise to the occasion and know they can do it.

That's how they build their confidence. That's how they build their mindset. The more they do of that, the better they are when they get to the big event of just letting everything go and doing what they're trained to do. Yeah, I read something about John Wooden as the team would leave the locker room to go out on game day. He would say something like, well, I've done my job. Yeah, exactly.

And that's sort of the idea of like, now it's up to you. And you have all the tools you need. You have the plan you have. It's now on you to execute those things. Exactly. I can illustrate that with a very specific example from Michael leading into Beijing. Obviously, there was a lot of hype about it, a lot of expectations and just 12 years of preparation

on our part to get ready for it. And one week before the start of the meet, we always do something that's very fast in practice and it's kind of the last thing we're going to do. After that, you're just kind of keeping him happy and resting up and doing those kind of things. But one week before Beijing, I asked Michael to do three 100 butterflies from a pushoff not diving in.

And they had a little bit of easy in between, but each one had to get faster. And on the last one, he went 51.6, which is, it's kind of hard to describe to anyone. It would be, that's, you know, no one has ever done anything close to that in practice. For somebody ever went 52 in practice, I would be shocked. Probably three people have been 53 from LaPusch in practice and Michael's 51. So he got out of the pool, came over and I was like, well, that's it. I'm on vacation. My job is done. You're here. You just you know, continue on and you're ready, you know, and and it's the same sentiment. It's actually a great feeling when you kind of know that

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Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. Well, although I read that you had said something else to Michael in Beijing, something like, maybe I'm messing this up, but something like that, you'd read an article that someone had said, maybe it would be better if nobody ever reached more than eight gold medals. And you sort of dropped that at him on, you dropped that on him at breakfast.

So your work wasn't quite done. Not quite done, but that was because it was such a herculean task, right? Yeah. And you're talking about Michael who I know better than anybody, right? And he knows me better than anybody. And that was for the 100 butterfly, which I knew was going to be the closest race. It was going to be so tight. And we had already gotten through the 400 free relay, which was like a miracle. And he was swimming well and everything else. And when I read that, I hesitated because I thought, you know,

we never really want to think about the other people, like hardly ever. But Michael is, at that point, is so experienced and so seasoned. And I knew he was going to swim his race regardless of what happened. And I just wanted to give him every ounce of energy he could have. And I just dropped it on him. And when he said that, when I said that, he just physically, like we were sitting at breakfast and when I said that, he just got taller. He just said, he's like, he said what? And I said, it said it'd be better for swimming if you didn't win eight and he's the guy to do it.

And he didn't say another word, I was like, hmm, but I could tell that just that little piece of motivation was going to add to whatever he was going to put into that race. I would hesitate to do that most of the time, but at that point, this was the only chance we're going to get at this. And I was going for it. Well, it's kind of a, when I was reading that, I thought, it's a little bit of a double-edged shorter. It's like you're playing with expert level materials there, right? Because... Yeah, that is the last half of a half a percent that I would use.

And it's the only time I've ever really used it. That's interesting. Yeah, because generally you do want to be heads down on what you control, on what you're focused on, on being your best, like that we're going to shove it in other people's faces, or I'm going to prove them wrong. It's like, you know, Jordan obviously operated on that fuel as I was talking about instillness, but it's also pretty corrosive fuel, right? Because then you have to go look for more targets after you knock each one down.

Exactly. Right. And Michael was very much motivated by some things like that. And that's why I used that because I knew that it wouldn't have a negative effect. It would only fire him up. And I've tried to stay away from that most of the time because, like you said, it's kind of a negative motivation. And a lot of times it just come back fire on you, but at that point that seemed to be the right thing to do. And you know what was crazy? When you watch that 100 fly race right before it, before Michael steps on the blocks, he puts one leg up on the block and stands sideways and just kind of stands

there until they call him to the block. Well, Kavik was in the next lane and he got on the opposite side of the block and did the same thing. So he was looking right face to face at Michael before this race. And I was like, wow, this is sort of intense when I was just watching it. So they swam the race, you know, Michael won by a hundredth kind of crazy environment. But when I saw him after the race, I was like, what did you think when Kavik was staring you down like that before the race? And Michael

goes, was he looking at me? He had no idea. He was in another world, right? He was like, he was like, I was just getting ready to swim. I didn't know what he was doing. And it was right in front of him. So I thought that was a telltale sign that that's what it means to be in your zone, right? Well, and maybe if you asked the other guy, he would have been like, oh, I was very intensely staring at it. So it's like, he was obsessed with the competitor,

whereas the person he was competing against was not even aware of his existence at that point. Exactly. Yeah, right. The lion doesn't sweat the flies kind of a thing. Yeah, exactly. Well, the other thing I was fascinated to get your opinion about as a coach

is the other sort of, well, there's a handful of big storylines from the Olympic. But Simone manuals thing about overtraining because if the coach is setting the practice, this seems like also a really fine balance in your profession is that you want to push the person to get in their absolute peak conditioning. But if you push just 1% over, the whole thing can come tumbling down. Exactly. And sometimes it's very hard to tell because these athletes, they want to go, they want to go pedal to the metal all the time, right? They know what it takes to get where they want to go. And they don't want to back off, they don't want to take a day off, they don't

certainly don't want to take a week off and they will sort of push through things in the early stages of a, you know, where a physiological overload in a way that kind of mask it, right? Right. Because they're still swimming well, but you don't know that they're sucking it up to do it, right? You know, they're just gritting and doing, getting, use it just on grit, not on just the energy that they're normally used for training. So that's how you can kind of go over an edge. Then one day they come in, they can't do anything. So it's very tricky and you kind of have to really know athletes when you're pushing

them at the edge like that. And Simone has been with her coach for a while. He's an excellent coach, Greg Mean at Stanford. And he handled it, I think, as well as it could be handled. But you just sort of find yourself in a situation where you're past the line, and it's very hard to get back behind it. Yeah, I went through that a couple years ago. It's actually right before I started writing stillness. I, I, I found that like my mind wasn't connecting right exactly with

what I wanted to do. I wasn't as motivated and like I could start things. I couldn't finish them. And I was like, am I being lazy? Am I, am I not interested in the material or something wrong? And I kept getting sick, like I kept getting like, flus and I had young kids, so it was like, you know, it's from daycare, whatever. And finally, after I'd gotten, you know, like what felt like my fourth cold in like, you know, three weeks, I ended up going to urgent care or something.

And they're like, no, you don't have anything, just a regular cold. And I said, for whatever reason, my wife had texted me and I said, you know, can you give me a mono test too? And I came back, I had mono. And it was like, and they were like, we have no idea when you could, you could have had it for four weeks already, right?

And so it was like, I had no idea when I picked it up, but my, I was gutting, I could send something was wrong, but I thought my instinct was to gut it out. And, you know, basically that whole period was worthless. And the irony is, I was reluctant to take time off because I didn't want to fall behind, but I ended up falling behind anyway, because all the work I did in that period was garbage. And then I had to take a huge amount of time off to recover from the virus that I got. Exactly, yeah.

That's what an overtraining syndrome is. It's, you know, and I look back in my younger days where you kind of weren't experienced enough to know it. And I, you know, would have kids and they would just go through a kind of a down period and their meats and their practices. And I would just assume, well, they're just go through a kind of a down period and their meets and their practices. And I would just assume, well, they're just tired or they're not motivated or whatever it is.

And then they'd have a monotest, they say, oh yeah, you have monot. Yeah. So over now, but you know what I mean, it'd be like, oh great. Well, you know, so then you start to try to fine tune your ability to detect stuff like that, you know, it's, yeah, we learn. No, usually the hard way. Yeah, exactly. He's that way.

Well, and you sense something's wrong, but you, and I've talked about this with baseball players before where, you know, in a sport where, like writing, I guess, would be similar to baseball in this, where you inevitably have slumps, right? So, you know, swimming, like, you know, obviously, it could be reflected in your times,

but it's not as visible as like, you know, they're just not connecting with the ball, right? Yeah. And so, so that, you sort of, to get good, to get to where you got, you actually had to be good at ignoring poor performance, right? Because like, you know, you flip a coin enough times, there's going to be 10 or 15 times in a row where just by sheer probability, you get some, you know,

you get a freak answer. So you get good at ignoring it, just as all athletes get good at pushing through pain or resistance. But then you good at pushing through pain or resistance, but then you're actually pushing through and damaging your future performance because you're ignoring all the warning signs. Exactly. That's right.

So what do you look for in a swimmer that might be dealing with something like over training syndrome? Like how do you, I imagine you've gotten better at noticing the warning signs? I think the most important things for me are to watch their body language before they're in the water. I coach a remarkable woman, Alison Schmidt, who just won her, I guess, 11th and 12th medals in Tokyo.

And she's trained with me since she was 16. She's 31 right now, right? So I know her pretty well. But she got in the situation just like we're talking about, where she was doing great. She went to this international swim league bubble, right, thing for six weeks, did very well, came home, couldn't do anything. And we tried a few kind of stopgap things. And finally, I just

decided that until she came in to practice and her eyes were bright and clear, we just really weren't going to do anything. She'd do 1,500 easy and that would be... So I think what I just tried to look and I got to where I have a big window in the front of my office that looks out on the pool and all the kids have to walk past it to go to the locker rooms. Yeah, so if I'm sitting on my desk, I'm looking out there and I can kind of know by the way they're walking past the window what kind of state they're in. Whether they're kind of walking dead, you know, so tired they don't want to do it. Or whether they're feeling good and they're happy and they're joking with their friends, you know, however that works. So those are the things that I start with now.

And I've done it enough and I know the kids well enough now that I can get a good read on where they are. Just kind of look in their eyes And they came in when Michael was swimming I Can look in his eyes when he walked in the door of the pool and know how practice was gonna go And that really helped because sometimes I would adjust what I had planned before we did it Sometimes I wouldn't I would say well, we're just gonna suck it up and do it But I think those are the things you kind of have to we're just going to suck it up and do it. But I think those are the things you kind of have to

start with. And then you're looking for some markers in training what they can do, what they can't do, what their strokes look like, those sort of things. And we started doing blood work, regular blood work. So that really helps as well. Obviously, you can tell if there's a nutritional thing or you know, you get the stress hormones, cortisol levels, all those kind of things. Was was that part of the break that Michael took was was it really sort of burn out from the sport? Like just you can't commit to something for so long with so few interruptions at that high of a level without coming to to sort of hate it or resent it or need some distance from it to come back to it with that kind of enthusiasm and passion that you're talking about? Absolutely. And if I would have done that whole thing much differently, obviously, we learned

the hard way. Michael was in a very unusual spot after he won the ankle medals because, you know, that's an amazing achievement, but he, I, and most other people that know anything about the sport know that that's not happening again in 2012. So then for him, it's like, well, what are my goals? Do it again. That was, and we just kind of, I couldn't put my head around what some goals were, either. So we just kind of kept doing what we were doing. And it was like, why are we doing this?

So I think if I could, if I, number one, I would have mandated he take a year off or six months or some incredible amount of time off. And then we would just kind of start from scratch and pick a couple of events and try to just decide what we're gonna do instead of just trying to keep it going on a somewhat normal kind of pattern for us, even though we took three months off.

It just didn't make sense and I didn't handle it well at all and I didn't contribute to making it better until much later. And then after a couple of years, we figured out what needed to happen and got into a decent rhythm. When a way that that requires, clearly, you're not Michael Phelps or Katie Ledeckier or Simone Manuel without an incredible amount of self-discipline. Or Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan or whomever But it's almost as if the highest level of self-discipline is how do you discipline your self-discipline?

Right like how do you say just because this is the direction trajectory? We're going doesn't mean we're gonna continue. We're actually gonna stop. We're gonna scale back We're gonna pivot slightly. We're do this intentionally, as opposed to just, you know, letting the momentum and the expectations of everyone else determine what and how we do things. Exactly. And after we did get to that point, it just took two years. Right. And by the time we did that, that affected his London performances for sure,

although I thought he did a credible job based on kind of how he had prepared. But what I decided, I'll tell you how I got to that, how we got out of it was, I was at a breaking point too. Like, you know, Michael was doing things like not coming to practice for two weeks. Right? Yeah. He never missed a practice in 12 years, right? Yeah. It was like, okay. And that was sort of our hallmark, right? We're here, we're invested, we're doing all this stuff, nobody else is doing, and that's

what makes us great. So instead of kind of, you know, understanding what he was going through, I just doubled down on the, you know, you're throwing your career away, you're letting everybody, you know, I did everything you could do that was stupid in that part. And finally, our agent, Peter Carlisle, who's such a tremendous resource for both of us, I was talking with him about it. I was frustrated. Michael wasn't coming to practice And he wasn't going to be able to do this and this meat was coming up and we needed to do this Well, we didn't do it so it was might as well just not even go and all this kind of stuff and he said two things

Is like I'm going to give you a book at cartolley the power of now and he sent it to me and I Now, any Senate to me. And I would suggest that in this circumstance, how about we just let everything go, except for when Michael comes in to practice, you give him the best practice you can give him on that day and leave it at that, be present, right? Yeah.

Focus on the present, not what didn't happen, not what's gonna happen. And when I started doing that, the practices weren't too bad. Andy kept coming back. So that's kinda how we got out of it. But it just, and of course I read the power now, I've probably read it seven or eight times now.

And that really changed my outlook on how to deal with a lot of things, not only just in swimming, but in my life. And I just think that was a very powerful learning thing for both of us. And Michael's read that book a couple times now. We both sort of rely on it. Well, that strikes me as a very sort of Phil Jackson approach of like this sort of jujitsu Zen approach to, don't try to force it, you're not gonna get this from a top-down way.

How do you strip things down to their essence? Think about what this specific person needs in this specific instance, and that usually letting go and being present gets you there better than force or as they say, willful will. Exactly. And, you know, I think when I started coaching, just because of the coaches that coached me and kind of the environment of sports when I was, you know, the 80s, what I was kind of really doing it,

I got into it and it's the classic example of when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Yes. And you get very good results with that quickly, right? But what you find is over time, you just, oh, you just create so many more problems than you solve by doing that.

And you kind of hope that you'll get the result at the end of the season and everybody's kind of bought in again to do it again and then you kind of double down on the, I can be, make you do this, right? And, but that's just no way to have sustained success. It's not a really way to teach people what to do. And I feel like as a coach, that is my biggest growth area is that I've gotten away from that kind of,

what the coach says goes and you do this to, here's what we're going to do, here's our plan, buy into it, I'll push you for sure, and I'll let you know if you're not kind of doing what you said you wanted to do, but I just feel like the whole mindset of what we do is different now and that's a very good thing. Yeah, that was what was, I think, most striking to me and I think most missed about what Simone Biles did during the Olympics was, it wasn't even a coach, it was, she noticed it in herself that she wasn't where she needed to be and she had the discipline and I would, I would say the courage and the confidence to be like, no, this isn't right. I'm going to adjust in the following way when, when there must have been, I mean, you just think of the financial pressure, the cultural pressure, the team

may pressure, the coach pressure, all of that pressure she was able to somehow have the self-awareness and the sense of self to make a decision that clearly must have violated all every core of like the athlete's commitment to the game as well. Exactly. It was an amazing thing to just witness and see how it took place over the period of those games. And I was very impressed with her and just her self-awareness, I guess, is the word, right? You know yourself, you know what you're capable of. Obviously, we know she's capable of doing amazing things, but just to be able to do that in that environment was really impressive. And to me what's actually most impressive is like,

if she had just said like, I'm not feeling it, because I think we've all done this, any person that also has some like leveraging that a career knows this, it's why celebrities throw like tantrums and storm off. You're like, I'm not feeling it, I'm out, right? Which is often rooted in actually a kind of self-awareness, but you don't have the self-control or the discipline

to explain yourself to, like she could have just said, she could have just flown home, right? Like for sure. And it would have been also a controversy, but there would have been like no consequence. She could have just left. What I found so impressive is that she stayed and she competed. So it wasn't even like an all-or-nothing thing. I mean, she still won a bronze medal.

So you're like, she was able to have not just like the vague sense of awareness that some of us have, or like, something's not right. I don't want to force it. She was able to dial in specifically to what she could and couldn't do, can part mentalize it enough to do the thing that she could do at such a high level that she was the third best in the entire world, you know, in that brief moment, even despite all the controversy, distraction, attention, and focus.

Exactly, yeah. So the power of now, have there been some other books that have been influential for you as a coach? Yeah, all of yours. I've read all of them, and that's just, not because I'm on here, that's the truth. I love that. I've, the Daily Stoic, you know, I gave it to Michael. Oh wow. Yeah, I give it, that's probably the. I love that. I'm the daily stoic. I gave it to Michael.

Oh wow. He reads it. That's probably the one I give out as a gift most often. And I'm on my way. Next time you're giving it away. Yeah, tell me, I'll send the leather ones for you. Oh, that would be awesome. That would be beautiful.

I think I'm on my third time through it. Oh wow. I read it every day regardless. When I went to the Olympics, I took it with me. So every day, the first thing I do in the morning is read that day's passage. So it has a long, big impact on me. And I like it because it's small enough that it doesn't take a lot of time to read, but it can have a big impact. And then I try to have a cup of coffee and just sort of reflect on it before I start my day. So that's the first thing I do every day

What other books have worked for you like what other books? Yeah, you pass to athletes Power of now is a big one a new earth, right? You know say kind of thing To athletes I try to Keep it, you know, I like stillness is the key. I was the one I've given out the most. Oh wow. Because I think it's easily accessible to them and I think it teaches them a lot about how to beat. I think in their worlds today,

there's just so much noise, right? Sure. So much iPhone and constant stimulation and to be able to get yourself out of that, I think is one of the most important skills they can learn. I read a daily book that you might like called A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy. He of a Wornpiece and all his famous books, but he collected like what he thought were his favorite quotes or ideas, Sometimes they're Bible

passages, sometimes they're passages from the Stoics. It's not it's it's it's a little less like put together. It's not like quote story, quote story or something. But I like to flip through that every day. And it's part of my morning routine. I think. Oh, that's a cool one. And what's the name? It's called a calendar of wisdom. A calendar of wisdom. I will definitely get it. Do you see that as part? I think people sometimes think that, and I know obviously just this proven

because we've talked about it so much, but I have been amazed at just what a big focus, sort of personal development, reading, philosophy even has been in athletics, not just with coaches coaches but with athletes, and actually what a bond it is between athletes and coaches. Like I did this book Letters to a Young Athlete with Chris Bosh, and he was talking about like almost all his favorite books were given to him by a coach at one point or another

because they addressed like a very specific issue or part of his game or personality that he was working on. Yeah. No, I try to use that more and more now, particularly with college athletes, I think it's a great thing. And I was trying to go some, oh, I did all the Mickey Singer books you ever read this? No, I never all the Mickey Singer books. You ever read those? The Surrender? You never even heard of them.

Oh, well, the Surrender experiment, the untethered soul. Oh, I love that one, yeah. You know, that's like, it was Oprah's favorite book of whatever some year, but it's more Eckhart Tolly type stuff. It's based on some Buddhist, you know, he is, was Buddhist, but it's an amazing story, his personal life. And I've actually shared that with some athletes, because it just lets you think about your life in a lot of different ways.

One of the things that I kind of try to think about with myself when I'm trying to be philosophical is that you want to be an alignment, right? And I don't want to get too religious or anything else. But like if you're in alignment with the source, right? Sure. You're making the right decisions, you know, you're doing the making stoic decisions, right? You want to do the right thing first before everything else. Sure.

And a lot of times trying to get to that, I feel like just surrendering and letting it happen and letting it go. That's when your life starts to flow. When you try to resist a lot of things that happen to you in life, they persist, right? Whatever you resist persists. So I'm trying to teach my kids that, you know, the less resistance you put up to things, the easier you solve problems and the more flow you have in your life. And I think these books teach that. Well, that makes complete sense to me given the sport that you practice, right?

Swimming is all about reducing unnecessary resistance in the water. Of course. Of course. And so it's probably perfect that you would also be thinking about how do you reduce resistance everywhere. Yeah, exactly. There is something special about water. Like I find I, the pandemic has disrupted my swimming, so I've been running and walking

and biking more. But and the pool at my house, this is a very first world champagne problem. My house, it came with a pool and we bought it, and you can't, I mean, it's been saying to tear out a pool and put in a new pool, but it's only nine yards long. So I can't, like, I can't get to, like, there's something really special about whatever the distance, like a pool,

that there's a certain distance, I think, where like a pool becomes this magical, like repetitive flow state that you can get into. Nine yards is not it. And even like I swim, sometimes it Barton Springs, you're an Austin. That's a long one, right? It's an eighth of a mile and that's not actually right.

You know, like it's wonderful because you're only doing eight laps to a mile, but you're not getting into the same, like back and forthness that I actually love the most about swimming. Sure. Well, the pandemic enabled my swimming, because the only thing I could do was just, there was one pool available where I could go up and swim,

but oh, wow. I'm on board and I didn't swim for 30 years. Really? No, and I hurt my knee and needed to do something and we were training at this great JCC pool for while our pool was being fixed or the deck was being built. And so I got in and just swam 500.

I was like, wow, I forgot about that. And it's just what you were talking about. It's just a way to get in. And some days I'll get in and I will swim, you know, a mile without stopping, right? And I'll think, wow, how did that, can't be. And then some days it's a little bit more of a struggle, but I just can't want to keep, you know,

as a numbers guy, I have to hit my number right or I can't live with myself. But anyway, it's been a tremendous experience for me just for the experience of being in the water from a mood standpoint. Nothing is better. You know, I love it. There's to me a sign of a good swim is when I have lost count in my head of how many laps I've done. I actually like the Apple Watch, because it's all the same thing. Then I don't, I know I don't have to even think about it.

And then you check it and you're like, oh, I'm further along than I thought. That's fantastic. Exactly. You know, I actually, I see a therapist just because, I think it's a good thing to do. But she told me that your brain loves a cadence of any kind. So that's what swimming is, right? You get into a cadence. So it is like meditate because I told her,

I was like, you know, I cannot meditate. Sorry. I just didn't sit and not have thoughts. Yeah. But I can swim and not have thoughts. And she said, a lot of times your brain, when you get into that sort of physical cadence, it can free itself up and then you're basically meditating when you swim. Yes, I think so. And it is better than most meditation. I find, because it's like a sensory deprivation tank as well. Exactly.

Yeah. It's turning off everything else. For sure. Do you find, like, I know some swimmers, like, listen to music when they swim, like, I love listening to music when I run, but part of what I love about swimming is that I can't do that. 100%. You know, sometimes when I swim, I'll sing a song or something.

And most times not. But there are times where I'll just kind of start singing as long and just kind of do that the whole time. But that's the only music I want. I wouldn't want external. I don't think I would enjoy that. I think you're right about the cadence. So there's a quote from Nietzsche, where he says, like, only thoughts that were had while walking

have any worth. And my theory of parenting is that like 90% of all problems can be solved by a walk. Either you're leaving and going on a walk or you putting them in a stroller and taking them for a walk or you making them go outside and go for a walk. There's something I think very primal about the rhythm of traveling or crossing a distance or getting lost in the, I just got to like walk from here to here or I'm going to starve to death.

Kind of a thing. Right. You know, there's this quote that I saw and I'll have to look it up. I think it's Einstein, another one of these social media things, but Instagram that we shouldn't de-on all the time, but I am. But anyway, it says, I think 99 times and nothing happens. I swim in silence and the answer comes. I could believe that Einstein said that. He seems like someone who might swim. I know, sometimes when he was stuck with a math problem, he'd pick up his violin and play the violin.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Something. I think there's definitely, you know, that's where the stillness comes in, right? You have to put yourself in a place where these things can come to you. And if you're constantly distracted or moving around or, you know, just not quiet, I don't

think you can get those sometimes. Well, the, and again, I don't know them, but it strikes me from what I've understood of Michael's story that part of his evolution, this goes to what we're talking about over training, it's that you can become very singularly obsessed or unbalanced in the pursuit of a certain goal or excellence or whatever, and that what we're talking about whether it's playing the violin or it's, you know, you know, for you, it's swimming even though it's it's it's having something else than the thing you are singularly good at to balance you out. And it seems like

as he balanced himself out, it happened more towards the end of his career. But this is where that final great performance has come from. And then also his more sort of sustained happiness and mental health has come from his sort of evening out the obsessive parts of his personality. Without question and golf is his thing. I don't know if that makes, sometimes it doesn't even amount, but he plays a lot and I think it's really good for him. Being outside and walking around.

Why are they all golfers? I just think it's fun and they like being outside. It takes some time, you know, you get to hang out with your buddies when you do it. So I think it just gives him a, it's sort of a nice respite because, you know, like you, he has young kids three under the age of five. So there's a lot of stuff happening at home. So if you can get away and play, it's a good thing. That's like, those are all the reasons I don't like golf. I've never gotten into it. It's like, I don't like being outside for extended periods of time. And I don't like doing anything for like longer than like two hours, right? So the idea of like, oh, let's go do this activity for four hours. I'm like, I would,

I would rather do anything than that. You know, one of the things I learned, particularly from Michael, because you know, a lot has been made of his ADD, right? ADHD, excuse me, ADHD. And I never really noticed it in swimming. I think a lot largely because the physical demand sort of tampered down the excess energy. But what I did learn was kids or people who have ADHD, once they get focused on something, they are hyper focused on it.

Yes. And that's why I think he likes golf because once he's focused on it, he has hyper focused on it. And it's just something he can do for a long time. Well, I think when I think about swimming at the professional or the level that, you know, even your college athletes are at, I think people just don't understand. You mentioned the word grind. You know, it's

probably even more than like marathon run. It's probably the most punishing of the sports because as wonderful as it is to swim as a hobby, you know, you're not spending hours in the water staring at a tile line at the bottom, shearing nothing, seeing nothing, you're almost like in some form of solitary confinement. To me, it's like running on a treadmill without a TV or something of you to look at. I'm just like, I can do two miles of this, but I could go run 25 miles outside.

You had to rather do that. And the only thing to hear is my voice when they come up telling them what they're doing wrong, right? Maybe you can do this better. And they have no control. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Like so, it's like a designed punishment. The thing sucks. And when you're done, somebody's telling you actually know you're not done. You have to go do X, Y and Z. Exactly. It's character builder, right? That's what it is. Well, and then the other thing I think it's swimming that I actually, I would say, is a character building that I always think about every time I do it, is that the willpower required to jump

in the water, right? Is different than stepping onto the basketball court or stepping up to the tee or stepping into the batter's box. No other sport is as immediately unpleasant as it maybe, maybe like UFC fighting or something. Right, right, right. Like no other sport punches you in the face. Like at the outset, practice or competition like swimming. And it's also the, yeah, for me, the hardest part is, I jump in, I don't dive in most of the time, but like what are, you know, like getting in the water

is by far the hardest part of once you're in, it's all good, but that first couple of seconds is like rough, particularly when it's cold. Yeah, right, like when you're, like, let's say you're gonna go for a jog, you know, you start cold, but you, and you warm up, but the process of warming up doesn't suck, right? Exactly, it's just very gradual, right? Yeah, but when you jump in the pool, like you said,

like I rarely dive into, I love the Los Angeles Athletic Club when I'm in LA, and you jump in, and you go down, and then you come up, and then you have to push off the wall to swim, but you really don't enjoy swimming until like two laps in or three laps. So 10. Yeah. It takes a while to warm up in the water for sure. So it's actually, it's like, I read this. There's this great book called The Creative Habit by Twyla Thart, but she's a great choreographer. And she was saying like, for her, the workout is actually it's from waking up, getting dressed, walking down the stairs,

and getting in the cab. If she can do that, then the workout will happen, right? Because like, once she gets in the cab to go to the studio, she's never, she's never not, not, not followed through from there. But if she doesn't do the, the proceeding steps to start the process, obviously nothing else can happen. And I feel like really the willpower in swimming is the I'm willing to jump in the cold water at 6 a.m. and swim those couple crappy laps. That's the what separates the the amateurs from the professionals. Exactly. For sure.

Well, this is fascinating. Anything else you think people should know? I don't know. I think we covered a lot of ground. I think so too. And we finished faster than I expected, like your Michael Phelps practice session. So we should just take the win while we have it. It sounds good. This is so awesome. I know I was totally flattered to hear that you read the books. I've seen Michael mention a few times, which is always fascinating to me. I'm so glad we got to connect. Tell us about your book.

Let's end there. Oh, the Golden Rules. Yes, what are the Golden Rules? They're just over the years. So many people have asked about the process that we go through with Michael and all the other slimmers about goal setting and about time. You know, all the things that go into high performance. So I just wrote them all down and kind of, you know, gave them, I tried to couch it in terms of art swimming. It's not a swimming book.

Sure. And I think anybody can kind of learn from just the principles of time management goal setting, all of the things that go into the process of high performance and just put it in a little book. Well, what are some of the ones that you find yourself thinking of the most in the last difficult year or so? The most are kind of staying with it when you just can't like see a reason why. Like why are we doing that?

You know? And what I would just say is like, you know, one of the things I've tried to work on pretty hard for myself when I have a big problem or like we've had, right? The last year is like, what is the smallest thing that I can do right now that'll have a positive impact on this? Not to it's the biggest, right? Not some big change or something. What is the smallest thing I can do right now that'll lead me where I want to go or where we want to go as a program or help these athletes go where they want to go?

And that's been really helpful. And I think that's part of the book is like breaking things down into parts, right? Yeah. And that's how you, you know, well, what is it? How do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? Is that kind of thing? It's not that we're talking about is like trusting the process. Like you doubting that it's going to pay off. Yeah. But that's what everyone does and why everyone quits. Exactly. And what you find is, once you've gone through it a few times and you're kind of, you know, experienced at that, you know, going through it, is that the process is the best part, not the outcome. You'll find out that the journey to get to, and it's so like another Instagram thing for you, right? The journey is better than the outcome, but in so many ways that's true.

Because the things that you went through and that experience stay with you and guide you going forward. And while it's absolutely wonderful to have a breakthrough performance or to show that you could do something or get that medal around your neck, the next day you go back home and they're still bills to pay and problems that you have. And what you learned in the process of getting there actually help you

get into your next phase, whatever that is. Yeah, Lance Armstrong told me once he was like, I liked to practice. They paid me to compete. Yeah. And I thought that's an interesting, it's like, I like writing. And then they pay me to do books, right? Or they pay me what they're really paying me for is the promotion of the books, which is the part nobody wants to do. Right. And, and of course, you'd rather be writing. That's the fun part, but what, what allows you to keep doing it is your ability

to deliver it on stage or in front of people when the moment demands. Exactly. Yeah, that's the, that's the hardest part, especially because if the thing is really difficult and it's cut up into small enough pieces, it doesn't, it's not clear how the 300 or the 100 that you just asked the swimmer to do. It's not clear what that has to do

with the gold medal that they want to win in four years. Yeah, exactly. So, that's a big part of my job is drawing a line for them to that, right? Yes. So, I'll have to say, well, you're gonna have to finish in this time, and if we wanna finish in this time, then say it's 50 point, right?

You're gonna finish in 50 seconds in your 200 free or whatever it is. Well, between now and Paris in 2024, we need to see that a hundred times in practice. Right. Three. Right. You know, they do one and they think they're there. Oh, well, I just did it, so I'm going to go, you know, one, one, 45. No, there. Oh, well, I just did it, so I'm gonna go, you know, 145. No, once you've done it a hundred times, once you can get up in the middle of the night and do it, then you'll be ready. Because the key element about high performance

is, you know, I think a lot of people feel like at the critical moment, right? When your opportunity comes and here's your big moment that you'll somehow rise to the moment, right? When your opportunity comes, and here's your big moment, that you'll somehow rise to the occasion, right? And you'll perform better, which is kind of what I said, Michael and those guys do. But what really happens is you fall to your lowest technical level in practice.

That's where you compete at the big moment, is that your lowest level of your practicing. That's why practice has to be so good. Sure. That's what Michael did every day on a scale of one to ten. He averaged a solid eight every day. There weren't tens every day. There were eights, but there were never fours, maybe one four every six months. But pretty much every day there was a pretty high consistent level. And once you're in that mode, then when the pressure's on, that's kind of where you're going to be. You're not going to rise up and do, you know, eight level work when you're doing two every day in practice.

Right. Right. And it's not clear, like, the pages that I did this morning, you know, how I approach them, how I think about them, it's not clear how that can treat like that's such a minuscule part of the next book, which is itself part of a four book series, right? So it's like you you you have to cut it up into pieces to be able to do what you're doing, but you have to be able to take each thing as seriously as if the whole of it depended on that thing. Exactly. Yeah, that's right. And that's the essence of our job is that we take the two hours we get from two to four in the afternoon.

And that at some point is going to have a very significant impact on what you're going to do for two minutes and three years. It really will. It sounds ridiculous to think that, but there are enough of them that add up. It's a huge thing. Yeah, and I would also say for people who are not swimmers, knowing what that two to four is for you. So like, I could never do my best writing from two to four.

Like, we talked about sort of woo stuff. For me, energy really matters. like, I could never do my best writing from 2 to 4, right? Like, if we talked about sort of woo stuff for me, energy really matters. So what's the energy in the room at the time of day? You know, so for me, it's like, I gotta bang out my 2 to 4 actually from 830 to, you know, 10, 30 or 1130. That's a lot of window.

And you gotta know how clocking enough of those great windows gets you to where you can perform at Beijing or Tokyo or London or wherever it is. Even though again, it seems like they're totally disconnected and unrelated from each other. Exactly. Well, Bob, this is amazing. I'm so glad we connected and hopefully we can meet in person one day. I would love to.

Thanks. Keep writing those great books. I day. I would love to. Thanks. Keep writing those great books. I'll try. I'll try. Thanks. Appreciate it. Great. My newest book, Courage is Calling Fortune Favors the Brave is now available for pre-order. We've got a bunch of amazing bonuses.

You can get signed copies, of course. I'm so proud of this book. General Jim Mattis is called it a superb handbook for crafting a purposeful life. Matthew McConaughey called it an urgent call to arms to each and all of us. I do hope you check it out. It's my first in the four virtue series Courage Temperance Justice Wisdom. Courage is calling Fortune favors the Brave. If you want to pre-order it, I'd really appreciate your support. Go to dailysteoic.com slash pre-order.

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