The Daily Stoic - Dr. Jonathan Fader on Peak Performance

Episode Date: March 20, 2021

Ryan speaks to psychologist Dr. Jonathan Fader about how difficult mental preparation and training can help lead to peak performance, the unseen value of time and developing a method for clear decision making, creating a routine to create and retain gains, and more. Dr. Jonathan Fader is a licensed clinical and performance psychologist best known for working with professional athletes in the MLB and NFL. He is part of The New York City Fire Department (FDNY) Mental Performance Initiative and a frequent contributor to the national conversation on performance. He is a co-author of the book, Coaching Athletes To Be Their Best: Motivational Interviewing in Sport as well as his debut book Life as Sport. This episode is brought to you by Beekeeper’s Naturals, the company that’s reinventing your medicine with clean, effective products that actually work. Beekeepers Naturals has great products like Propolis Spray and B.LXR. For a limited time Beekeepers Naturals is offering Daily Stoic listeners an exclusive deal, receive a free B.LXR sample pack for just $5 to cover shipping. Just go to beekeepersnaturals.com/STOIC to claim this deal.This episode is also brought to you by stamps.com, a secure Internet mailing solution to print postage using your computer. Stamps.com allows you to mail and ship anytime, anywhere right from your computer. There’s NO risk. Use the promo code, STOIC, to get a special offer that includes a 4-week trial PLUS free postage and a digital scale. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click on the Microphone at the TOP of the homepage and type in STOIC.This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business this fall. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit linkedin.com/STOIC to post a job for free. This episode is also brought to you by The School of Greatness podcast. Go listen to School of Greatness, it’s an amazing show and Lewis is an engaging host who really wants to help people. Subscribe to The School of Greatness on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or visit lewishowes.com/podcast.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Jonathan Fader:Homepage: https://jonathanfader.com/sport-psychology/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/drfader Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jonathan_fader See 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 podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four for stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We reflect. We prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school. And we have the time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals, and to prepare

for what the future will bring. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting.

Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking. Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently?

And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. actress, singer, entrepreneur, and a Virgo. Just the name of you. Now, I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovingly nicknamed me Kiki Keepa Bag Palmer.

And trust me, I keep a bag love. But if you ask me, I'm just getting started. And there's so much I still want to do. So I decided I want to be a podcast host. I'm proud to introduce you to the baby this is Kiki Palmer Podcast. I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest experts in the hot seat to ask

them the questions that have been burning in my mind. What will former child stars be if they weren't actors? What happened to sitcoms? It's only fans, only bad. I want to know. So I asked my mom about it. These are the questions that keep me up at night, but I'm taking these questions out of my head and I'm bringing them to you.

Because on Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, no topic is off limits. Follow Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, no topic is off limits. Follow Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, whatever you get your podcast. Hey, Brian Members, you can listen early and app-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. Today's guest is someone who has a daily impact on my life, because I see something, actually two things on my desk every day that are directly attributed to him.

And you may have even heard of him in my book Stillness is the key, or the few living figures, I guess, in that book. But Dr. Jonathan Fader is a renowned sports psychologist, just one of the absolute best in the world to work with the New York Mets, the New York Giants, Major League Baseball. He's the co-founder of the Union Square Practice, a mental health center, and sports strata of performance, coaching group, both located in New York City. He's worked with the New York City Fire Department, countless other groups, including some guests on this podcast as well.

I won't blow up their spot, but he is the dude in mental sports performance. And I talk about him in stillness as the key. When I'm talking about the importance of sort of plate discipline, which I have talked to him about a bunch of time, but he also talks about in his great book, Life as Sport. But Dr. Fader, we met a few times in New York City,

he was an early reader of my books, he spread them around in sports, which I really appreciated. But I came by, I visited his practice, and we got to know each other. And I was talking to him about something I was struggling with, which is I struggled to say no to things. You get so many opportunities, it's hard to say no. And he sent me this picture of Dr. Oliver Sachs and it's Dr. Sachs at his desk and his office

with a giant sign that says no behind him. And so now I have a picture of somebody in their office with a picture of a sign that says no, but it's a reminder to me of what I need to say no to, so I can say yes to the things that matter, which is my work, which is this podcast, which is my family, which is my health, not random inquiries from people I don't know to do things I don't wanna do. And I remember when we were talking about this a little bit more, Fader would also have me write

on a note card, like some questions to ask myself when I'm struggling with whether to say yes or no. He says, well, I care about this in five years. I care about this when I'm struggling with whether they say yes or no. He says, you know, well, I care about this in five years. I care about this when I'm older. What's the consequences of saying, though? And I at this note, Carnage taped to my monitor. So Jonathan Bader is not just a cool person with an interesting life that I wanted to have on the podcast to share his expertise, although that's

definitely one of the reasons to have him on. But he's someone who's had real tangible impact on my life. And that's why I was excited to talk to him. We talked here on my farm. The Wi-Fi was not good. It cut out a couple of times, so forgive me if there's any issues. But do check out this interview. You can go to JonathanFater.com to find out about coaching services. You can check out his book, Life is Sport, which is great and worth reading. And you want to read about him a little bit more. He's in the say no chapter of stillness is the key. Here's my interview with Dr. Jonathan Fader.

So how are you? How are you doing? Me, you know, I'm doing pretty well considering where the situa where you know where everybody's at and where the world's at. You know, I feel surprisingly a lot of hope. Oh, that's exciting. Yeah. It's better than the alternative. Well, you know, it's always better than the alternative. It's funny. You say that because that was my dad's go to. I remember when I was

we were traveling across country once. I was like maybe 10 and they made this announcement at 9 a.m We're gonna go visit my mom's family in Santa Cruz and you know, we we at 10 o'clock they made this announcement Oh, sorry, we're we're having our delay on the plane and that our delay turned into them changing the engines of the plane lay on the plane and that our delay turned into them changing the engines of the plane, which is seems like amazing they could just do that. And we left at 9 p.m. and everybody was losing their minds and just, you know, losing their cools and screaming at people and my dad just turned to me and said, look, this is infinitely better than the alternative.

Right. Of them having the engine problem while you're in the air. So, you know, a bit of a stoic moment on my pop side. I have a little part of me that pops out when I travel where like so, but let's say the plane was supposed to, and it's sort of become a philosophical lesson for me, but let's say the plane was supposed to take off at 10 and then, you know, a 950, hey, we're swapping out the engines. That expectation that I had of it taking it, you know, taking off at 10 has become so rooted in me, and I don't know if it's from anxiety or whatever, but I almost take it as a personal affront, you know, that, that, that, that, you know, how could this, how could this happen?

And, and there's, so there's like a part of me that what I, what I take from that is just how problematic expectations are, right? It's like you lock in your head that something's going to happen at a certain time and all of a sudden it doesn't happen. And now, you know, it's like a disaster. What you really need is that sort of parental voice to be like, look, it doesn't matter if we get there at 3 p.m. or 4 p.m. or 7 p.m. what matters is that we get there and that we get there in one piece, but you kind of need to be able to soothe yourself that

way. No question. I mean, I think they're problematic, but it also just shows you how subject they are to our intervention, right? That these are, these expectations are what we write. Yeah, to me it up. Yeah, I mean, look to me, it's amazing. I mean, I can get, I can travel distances. This is what I think about all the time when I travel. I can travel distances that were unknown to people, to travel hundreds of years ago,

and even a hundred or 50 years ago, most people wouldn't even travel a tenth of the distances that I could go and I think we forget that. And just to practice, I mean listen Ryan, I can't believe I can get Thai food. You know what I mean? Like I can just, I'm here in New York, I can, I can, I don't even have to interact with anyone, right? And I can get any type of food from anywhere in the world. And I mean, most parts of the country, most of the US, that's true, the level of access. So I think shifting your expectations around that just creates a different level of patience for sure.

We have the baseline shifts. We get so whatever it's at becomes the new normal and then we take sort of the shifting of that normal as a sort of a deprivation when if you could, like I find it interesting, like let's say the flight is delayed and they go it's gonna be either three hours or seven hours. You know, like if we can do this, there'll be three hours, there'll be more, there'll be seven hours. You're like, I hope it's three hours, I hope it's three hours.

And then you're like happy when it's only delayed three hours. And so you realize sort of too, how arbitrary it is that it's really just your sort of greed of needing to get to a place right now and not being willing to sort of roll with the punches or be flexible that creates, you know, it's like this pandemic, like, you see that too when people were like,

hey, it'll be two weeks, people like, I can do two weeks. And then it turned out it wasn't gonna be two weeks and then it was like two months. And then, you know, now it's, you know, we're well into almost a year now, but like the people who kept telling themselves, it would be over soon as opposed to just being like,

well, we'll get there when we get there. Those are the people that are having the hardest time with them. No doubt, no doubt. I mean, you know, it's interesting. I think about our, what we call anxiety, I just call it physiological arousal and worry, what we call our anxiety. It's one of those things for humans.

Our anxiety is kind of like those little foam animals that we got in our kids and you put in water and it just grew to enormous sizes. You know, it grows to the level of water that you give it. And you know, in these moments, I find that totally to be true, that those of us that can say, all right, I'm running a marathon. I'll just focus on this next mile. And I'll focus on my pace and those of us that are able to handle it and optimize our experience. I actually found, I find, you know,

your concept of sort of life is sport is so great because anyone who has experience with sports sees us. Like I saw this yesterday, I was, there's this thing I have to do with my email list every month. That's like a lot of, it's like a sort of a very monotonous

Repeditive task I have to do that I I can't outsource to anyone else because it requires a certain amount of access to stuff that I'm not Want to get anyways. I have to sort of do this thing like three or four hundred times It's like a pan and he asked my hand hurts at the end of it and I was like halfway through and there was a part of me that was like Why don't you just like do half of it now and then maybe you'll do half of it another time. And then there was the other part of me, the sort of distance runner part of me that was able to go like, you know this feeling, you just have to push through this part. You're already at the halfway point.

It's downhill from here. You just have to keep going. And I think that's been true even during the pandemic where like if you have some experience sort of regularly testing whatever your your limits are like whatever your I can put up with X and then having to go actually it's going to be three times X or it's going to be X plus 10. You I think have probably been able to bear the uncertainty and the difficulty and the we've been able to bear the uncertainty and the difficulty and the indefiniteness of the last 12 months, better than people who are used to either getting whatever

they want, whenever they want it, or quitting whenever they don't get what they want or something is too hard. No doubt. So in that moment though, what do you do? How do you make that shift, right, to live it as a sport? I just go like, oh, I just have to get a little bit further. So like when I run or swim, although I like the activities, like a normal person I want to not do them when they're hard, right?

Like, when I swim, although unfortunately, I haven't been able to swim much at all during the pandemic, other than like my little pool in the backyard. But like, let's say I'm going to do a mile. I break a mile up into seven sets of 10. So I'm only focusing on like 10, 10 laps, which is never that hard, right? You can cut out 10 laps pretty easily and, you know, in just about any form, however tired you are. So, so it's like, you know, I go, okay, so I did the first 10. Great.

Now I did the first 10. Great. Now I did the second 10. Wow, I just have to do the second half of the next 10, and now I'm a third of the way through. And then, you know, then I finish that, and then, you know, now I'm rounding halfway, and then once you're rounding half. So I'm always sort of giving myself, where I'm just, I'm managing to convince myself that I only have a little bit left each time. And so that's, that tends to be how I break up hard tasks, whether, you know, whether

it's writing a book, you know, I'm writing it a section at a time or right now I'm in the middle of editing a book. And this is the most painstaking part is you're going through these old chunks, but I'm going to do 50 pages. And then I'm going to do another 50 pages. I'm not going to be intimidated by the fact that it's 300 pages and that's going to take forever. Yeah, I mean, you know, see, see, I love talking about this stuff, but you know, the process of understanding

how we think and respond to stress, I think is so, it's so powerful to uncover it. And, you know, one of the times that, that, you know, when I think about life as sport, my main thinking around that is, well, what if I just approached everything like a sport, right? So what if I approach, you know, I'm having conflict with my boss, what if I just thought of what would I do if this was a sport? You know, I'm in a situation here where I'm writing, right? And what if this was athletics, how would I approach it? And when

you think about the way that we train and respond to physical activity and stress, we can learn a lot and think about how we apply that. And I had a conversation with you, actually, I don't even know if you remember this. We were talking about football, and I was, I remember I was trying to, you know, you're good enough to either talk to or share your book with lots of different teams. And there was a team I wanted to bring you to, and we couldn't make it work. And I just said, okay, give me, you know, I'm going to share the book with lots of different teams. And the team I wanted to bring you to, and we couldn't make it work. And I just said, okay, give me,

you know, I'm gonna share the book with everybody and give me one line about it. If you had to summarize, for example, obstacle, the way into one line, you remember this conversation? No, not at all. So we have this whole conversation about him. And I, you say, well, you know what I would say? If I just had to sum it up and one thing, I would say

that when we go to the gym, we expect resistance. And why shouldn't it be the same with the mental side of thing? Why shouldn't it be the same when we're writing? Why shouldn't it be the same when we're trying to get some project done? And I think that really links up with the life of sport concept really well because oftentimes we assume that there shouldn't be a level of mental training or mental preparation for things that are hard. We just expect that we should be able to do those things. But, you know, having a rough conversation, having an intense presentation, these are all real hard mental work and, you know, working on that life of sport outlook or something similar. Can really be incredibly helpful not only for in my mind, performing well, but also really being there through the process and witnessing this incredible opportunity we have to live

and love. Well, I love that answer. It sounds like maybe it's through your very generous filter because it does it immediately. But what I like to, the other thing I like about life is sport that I think pertains to what you're saying is this idea of like sports are not real, right? Like you know that at the end of the game,

you go back to your regular life. That's something I try to practice too, where it's like, okay, this tough conversation, it's really just like practice. This is a game, and I'm gonna go try to do my best at this conversation, but it's really like, it's just practice, or it's just a sort of artificial contest, and to be able to see it as both serious, but also as a sort of a contained thing that I'm trying to

I mean not win but I'm trying trying to do well. Also helps me sort of both dial down and also crank up the pressure in a way that you know maybe gets me out of whatever my immediate frame of references. gets me out of whatever my immediate frame of reference is. You mean you're touching on the heart of high performance. I mean that comment I think. So when you say, like, okay, listen, I sort of treated this game in the sense that like, oh, what if this was just practice? I mean, my experience has been in sports, in business, in firefighting that, you know, when you're talking to people, the people at the most elite levels have this way of making the important, unimportant, with respect

to the consequences or results. So in other words, playing with abandonment, right? Does not being worried about dying. That kind of, you know, this idea of a samurai laying it all out on the line. And that people get confused because they say, well, does that mean that these consequences are important? Look, I'm a doctor, like, you know, what I do, it's life or death here.

No, of course not. It's that some of these roles, especially in first responding, are the most holy, sacred activities. But the idea is that when you let go of what's the outcome that you actually are going to give more of yourself to that moment. And so, looking at how you focus and the kind of pressures you put on yourself, and being able to eliminate the ones that don't matter are a way to that blow, that being in the moment that is really at the center of high performance.

We've got a quick message from one of our sponsors, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Yeah, I think there's this sort of temptation when you do something that's important, whether it's sports and it's important to millions of people or writing and, you know, it's sort of seen as, you know, meaningful or important and, or, you know, firefighting or being a police officer or whatever giving a speech to Congress, you can, you can end up taking it so seriously and sort of building it up in your head that it almost becomes paralyzing. There's this Dwight Eisenhower's mentor was this guy named Fox Connor and his sort of lunch beforehand with a basketball player,

like a multi-champion basketball player, a great dude, and he had a game that afternoon, and we were just like sitting there having lunch beforehand. And I remember being struck at how relaxed he was and how integrated the game was into his life. And it was actually really humbling for me because it was like what he is doing is arguably he's much better paid for it, arguably much more, many more people care about it. I've probably physically much more demanding than anything I do. And although he is going to go give 100% of himself to the thing, he's not acting like he's about to go, you know, to open heart surgery. It's like integrated in his life

in a healthy balanced way. And I think oftentimes, yeah, the idea of like, it's just again, this is not that important, is a really important thing, because the ego can creep in and sort of be like, everything is riding on this, when in reality. Absolutely. And, you know, and I think, you And I think the response when I've had this discussion

with people in the military, with firefighters, or even with hedge fund traders is like, what is second here? I've got a billion dollars online, or this person's life on the line. And what has been really powerful is for them to realize for themselves that letting go of that allows them actually to make it more likely that they'll save lives.

You know, being able to let go of what happens with a particular trade allows you to have the ability to see the whole field. I think, you know, it's interesting. I was, one of the stories I was told to me about, about Barry Bonds, really incredibly powerful baseball player was that a friend who had played with him told me that Bonds had this way of if he struck out, would come back to the dugout, and said this way of, you know, if you struck out, you would come back to the dugout. And someone said to him, you know, like, why did you, what happened?

Why did you struck out? He just said, you know, I wasn't ready to hit. Right. And there was none of that, like, oh, man, you know, getting on themself. And obviously, I mean, we're talking about, you know, one of the best hitters and, you know, best power hitters. But it's

that sense also of like, I'm not going to spend time worrying about things that have to do. My life is just about focusing on what's going to, how I can get better. Lance Armstrong told me something that I think connects to that bonds anecdote. And I think probably explains a part of both of their personality traits that gets them into trouble. Lance told me that sort of coming out of cancer, which had been this, you know, obviously horrendous battle that he had to fight, he was like, I came to see winning as life and losing his death.

And so that's the other part is like if you take it so seriously, you lose all perspective as to what actually is important. And so you can get totally skewed in terms of what you're willing to do to win set game because your sense of the stakes are like sort of totally screwed up. You could argue this is sort of Trump's problem too. If you take every conflict, every disagreement, every, you know, you know, potential issue as life or death, you lose the ability to be strategic and you're solely emotional and reactive in addition to being, you know, miserable and ineffective.

No doubt, I mean, listen to that. I think, you know, we should fold that into our, into our multi-layered outline of Trump's problem. Sure. But absolutely. And it's also you lose one of the things about this, you know, that I see all over is, you know, I remember walking into, I walked into many football locker rooms and baseball all rooms. And I remember one time I walked into a locker room and it was an losing season and someone had just wrote on the board just win with some expletives all around it.

Sure. And you know, I think of that as kind of like a relapse. Like we're all problem drinkers. And when we get stressed out, we relapse into this. I just got to get good results. Sure. That's just not a productive way to be at our best. And that's sort of like our monkey mind

telling us it's time to get some food. And really we should be back on the trail of saying, okay, like, what are my, what are the behaviors, what are my actual actions that are going to contribute to the bottom line? How do I win? And what am I doing, what am I ignoring that I could be doing in this moment that will allow me to win? But it's so hard, right? Because winning is measurable and the other things are not. So it's like as a writer, you know, it's like you're like, I just, I just need something to like chart, you know, like I just needed to land. I just need like the hit of virality or I need the hit of sales or I need the hit of the book deal

or, you know, I need the, your stock trader and you're like, I just, I just need to like, I just need something to go way up. And then yeah, you as a performance coach comes in and says, look, you've got to think about fundamentals, you've got to think about process, you've got to think about systems, you've got to relax, you've got to focus on excellence. But that's so much harder to measure. And so it almost takes more discipline to not care about winning.

Oh my God, it takes tremendous this, I mean, there's, there's this T. S. L. A. quote that I love that, you know, he says, teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still. And I like that. And I think about that a lot. It's, you know, it requires, well, you know, someone wrote a book about this recently. That stillness of saying, this is what I mean about relapsing. It's that marshmallow, the famous marshmallow. You give a kid a marshmallow, the kids that are able to withstand the temptation of taking the marshmallow are the ones that have the temperament to do well in life because so much

of life is delaying gratification. You know, it's so much more gratifying to take a small win rather than delay. I remember actually, I don't know if you know this about me, but I drove a cab all through grad school. And I remember, you know, that basically, you know, I was sitting in a, you know, taxi lot and, you know, everybody, it was really interesting community. Everybody, everybody, every other driver basically, except for me was Ethiopian and it was a really interesting

cultural exposure, but one time I remember sitting in there and I would, I was trying to pick up every ride, right? And I remember that the, this guy drove up to me and he saw me running around, he's like, look, if you just sit here and you wait for the airport ride, you're not going to burn up a bunch of gas, you're going to have more energy to drive longer. And it was sort of a simple lesson. And I think about that, it's so hard to sit still and say, you know, what I really want to win right now, but what if I really use my mental energy

to Prepare to when I mean it brings up this other quote. I'm you know, I think about Abraham Lincoln I said, you know, if you give me a day to cut down a tree. I'll spend 23 hours sharpening the axe for me sharpening the axe is Thinking about the process like what what do I do that really impacts the bottom line here? And you know, I'm going to relapse all the time and think about, oh, you know, I got to finish this book, I got to finish this podcast, I got to, you know, I got to do this, I got to, you know, paint my house, whatever it is, finish this contract and rather

than say, okay, wait, it's hard, but I'm going to have a correction here and realign myself with what right now do I control and bring myself back to sitting still and saying, all right, I'm going to really think about where my energy is most going to impact things. Well, I'm so glad you brought that up because it is instillness and we talked about it a little bit on your podcast, but I was hoping maybe you could tell my audience the you don't walk off the island concept and the quote and what it means. Man, I mean, I've just had such as, you know, I've talked about,

you know, I've had so, so much, I've learned so much from my work in baseball and football. And I think, you know, sometimes people think of me as a sport and form and psychology, I am, I've learned so much from my work in baseball and football. And I think, sometimes people think of me as a sporting performance like college, I am. But I really think of myself as an anthropologist. I think like I go into these cultures. I'm so lucky that I get to go into these different cultures

and learn from them and take them to other places. So everything I've learned from baseball and football, I've had the opportunity to take to business and firefighting even and then repurpose that information and take firefighting back to sports. But in baseball, how do you get to be a sports psychologist? And people think I went to some fancy school and really what got me into that was being a sports psychologist and a clinical psychologist, but speaking Spanish. And so in the minor leagues of baseball,

so if you think about your favorite team and you go to see the Dodgers or the Red Sox or the Yankees or the Metz, you go to see these teams. And below that team, there are like 200 hustling people from the ages of 16 to 21 that are desperately dying to get to the big leagues many of them

I would say I don't know 30 to 50% depending on which team you're with are Latino folks from you know Spanish-speaking countries Typically Dominican Republic is one of the biggest countries and a lot of these folks come from really poor communities. What's happened in baseball is over the years, people have realized that it's not just hitting, getting hits that really is productive and leads to winning. It's also getting on base, which means taking walks, etc. Also stealing bases, but really getting on bases become, and you know, there was this

was popularized by Michael Lewis book and the movie, subsequent movie, Money Ball. And what was so interesting is there's a lot of trouble training people from different backgrounds about having more plate discipline, which means taking more pitches, not swinging at things that are on a great pitch. And we did a lot of training with players about this when I was with the Mads. And what was interesting is that for a lot of Dominican baseball players, especially the younger ones, it was hard to train this approach of saying, hey, we're going to lay back on these pitches. We're not going to hit it. We're not gonna hit it. We're not gonna swing.

And in Spanish, there was even a phrase, no salés de la isla, caminando, which translates to, you don't get off this island walking, obviously walking, meaning here, for some pitches. And so there was this way in which, when you're trained to just swing it, things, you're going to swing it everything. And you're not going to have the paint discipline

to sit back. I talk about this as being a lion hunting zebra. Like lions don't just go over the skinny as zebra that comes by. They sit back and they wait for the the fattest plumpest zebra to walk by. And I think in life, this is a thing that I see a lot of people from everyday life and a lot of high performers struggling with is investing time and energy in going after everything and not thinking about like, what do I really want to do and how am I preparing myself to have the discipline, to have the activities, to have the stillness, to be able to really think about what I want and expend only the energy that's gonna be useful in working towards that outcome.

Well, it's tricky, right? Because no one, you're, let's say you're in the Dominican Republic and your main thing to get into the league is about getting noticed, right? So no one's like, oh, you got to go see this kid. He gets on base a lot, you know, like that. So, so it's this kind of balance of like what got you there or what got you here won't keep you here. And you have to have the ability as you mature as you go up the ranks in life or sport or whatever, to be able to transition more towards disciplines.

It's almost like you need, I don't want to say ego, but you need some aggression and raw talent, but also ambition to sort of separate you from the herd. But then once you have that, then you need a little bit more, I don't know what it is. Well, I mean, what your point is, the fact that oftentimes we're reinforced for things in some environments that don't work in others. So this happens all the time in relationships where you get into a new relationship and you're like, wait, that worked before. Why isn't it working now?

So with a lot of those players swinging and hitting them, hitting everything that came down the plate was working. That's what got them reinforced and all of a sudden, hey, it doesn't work anymore. Sometimes I talk about this. There's sort of a hidden economy of action that a lot of times we don't really think, all right, what is being reinforced here? We just act how we've been reinforced. We do what worked for us in previous environments.

This is why we get into trouble in relationships because most of the time you get in a relationship and we just do what we did before. And what we did before is usually what we learned from our parents or the people who gave us love before. We don't think, wait a second. What's being reinforced here? What's going to work best for me? And what do I need to calm myself

down in the moment to be able to see that and act in a way that's going to get me reinforcement. And it's actually really hard to do that without coaching. It's really hard to do. The reason that coaching works in my mind is because most of us need someone to watch our six to give us a 360 degree view of what's happening for us to really be able to note these patterns and change them. We've learned through our parenting and through these early relationships. Okay, this is the way I'm supposed to be and without a model or coach or a mentor, it's really difficult to shift those behaviors. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

I would say also in sports, getting on bass is a pretty meaningful metric. You're getting stats, sort of whatever level you're playing at. You have some stats. So even though sort of intuitively, sort of hitting home runs a pretty basic characteristic and you're like, I got a swing of pitches to do that. You can also just get the sense of like, hey, is the team winning and, you know, but I think the rest of life's a little

bit bigger. Like I know, like, so plate discipline, how do you measure that in the regular life, whether you're an author or you're a salesman or, you know, you're, I don't know what you are, but it's harder to do, plate discipline is harder to quantify in normal life, but still I think super important. You know, what you're talking about makes me think of, I saw a talk a lot while back by this poker player, Liv Burie, she talked about that people use such imprecise language when they're talking about things.

I'm like, hey Ryan, you wanna come on my podcast? And you might say, you know what, Fader? Yeah, I think I can do that. Or is someone asked you like, hey Ryan, you gonna write another book? And you're like, yeah, I will. But her point, or yeah a fate or listen you know uh... can we go snow boring tomorrow

but her point was that people her her her theory was that world would be so much more effective if we actually use percent so that's a few and you want to come to dinner tonight and you'd say i am 32% right and well Well, that's so ridiculous probably an ineffective. It speaks to the problem you talked about which is that we're really in precise and how we measure things and what I So what I do with it the easiest way to talk about this actually is business

There you know if you go to a typical fund Right, and I work with a lot of these funds, people are saying the way that works is basically, as you know, someone will say, all right, they'll pitch a stock. They'll say, okay, should we invest in Amazon? And a bunch of analysts will say, well, here's the case against, and here's the case four. And the reason that people do that, is they're protecting their own ego, right? They're putting it on their own, yes or no? Exactly, they don't want it,

because if you say yes, you're going down with the yes or you say no. And so the best you'll get is lean yes, lean no a lot of the times, right? Because if you say yes and you load up on a particular thing and you go big and volume at a tanks, like, you know, your job's on the line, a lot of times your money's on the line. And so what PMs complain about a lot is conviction and people's ability to stay with what they

believe in. And so what I recommended to people actually is that they have some form of units of conviction, right? What I've recommended to people actually is that they have some form of units of conviction. So that you're able to say, okay, I'm a 10 on this, I'm a 7 on this. I actually recommend out of 100. And so what you begin to do then is you begin to look back, numbers lie, but they lie a lot less than these qualitative measures and imprecise measuring. So to be able, you can look back and you can say,

all right, this did well. And but I was actually at like a 42 on it. So that's really interesting. Let me think about what happened for me. Because what I noticed in business and in sports and life is we tell ourselves stories a lot of time. I've seen so many people, teams and funds celebrate a win that didn't have a good process and lament a loss

that had a great process. So being able to create some form of language and measurement even subjectively can give you like so much power. And similarly, I mean, you're much better at this than I am, but having some form of journaling about what's happening can even be helpful. It's qualitative, but it allows you, and it doesn't have to be a lot. It could just be like writing down your thought process as to why you're intending on doing something.

I think is effective. Well, no, I told the version of that story and you go as the enemy when the Patriots draft Tom Brady, obviously, and retrospect that's the greatest draft pick in the history of sports. But you know, way. Yeah, I heard he's still he's doing pretty good. Not so good. Not so good for the Patriots, but in any case, there's a reason they let him go to the sixth round. And it wasn't because they thought he, everyone else would allow him to go to the sixth round,

but they knew he was really the greatest quarterback of all time, right? They undervalued him. So they're sort of the win that they celebrate there is muted by their awareness of what they actually thought at the time. No doubt. And I think, and that process is a good one. The NFL process, compared to a lot of processes that you see in business, the combine and all that is an improved process. It's not perfect.

But if you compare the combine to what happens in business a lot of times, times It's not as good as that right here. You're getting objective data It's not I mean, it's still subjective and in sports. This is you know, there's always this stats versus feel the lemma in sports where there's this huge debate, you know as you know Where people are you know, you almost have to you know, it's funny You almost have to identify yourself in sports. Are you a field person or a stats person? To be trusted in some communities. It's like, if you're someone who's feel, meaning you value your intuition, you have to like camp in one side of the camp and it's

hard for people like me who really are more of a stats person, but appreciate intuition and feel. So I was going to ask you about this idea of saying no, because obviously I look at that thing. You hand me, you handed me many years ago that the Oliver Sacks picture, which hangs about my desk. But I'm thinking about this right now, like, okay, it's the middle of a pandemic. And I got invited to go to a thing tonight. Now, I would say it's, if we're talking numbers, it's probably 70% safe.

Like the protocols are pretty good. It's obviously not perfect. You really shouldn't be doing anything. I don't need to do it, but it'd be cool. It's not quite a bucket list thing, but like there's some people there that I've long wanted to meet that'd be cool. It's not quite a bucket list thing, but like there's some people there that I've long wanted to meet that will be there. And who knows, it could be good, good for me, in a lot of ways. I can also get COVID and bring it home to my family, and I would never forgive myself,

right? And so, so on the one hand, it feels like very obvious. Like just don't do it. Just do it later at it. You know, you don't need to do it. Even if it was amazing, you don't need whatever the amazing this is. And yet there is still a part of me that's like, should I go? I don't wanna say no. I'll feel bad if I say no.

You know, and like blah, blah, blah, blah. So I still struggle with it. Hey man, not blah, blah blah blah. So I still struggle with it. Hey man, not blah blah blah. This is the nectar of regards right here. I mean, this is like, the thing that you're posing here is something that I think we forget all the time. Like the commodity of time, there's so many trade things set about it.

But especially for those of us that love other people, which is many people listening, you know, the time is so valuable. And I don't think that we really spend enough energy determining how we're going to spend it. We let things just follow the brightest light. And that picture I gave you of Oliver Sack, so, you know, this picture of what Oliver Sack's the famous neurologist and writer picture I gave you of Oliver Sack, so you know this picture of what Oliver Sack's the famous neurologist and writer who I admire and love for his work on so many things, especially his work on gratitude, but you know what he had on his desk was the sign that just said no with a big exclamation point and I framed it and put it in my office and I gave one to a few good friends including you Ryan, which you know is to to remind myself to not even to say no, but just the act of saying, am I paying attention to it?

Right? Am I really thinking? And also, do I have a method? So I'll tell you, I don't have the answer to or a thought about it, which is I think if you're just saying to yourself I have a device I have a machine which I a factory which I slide this plate through or a metal detector Right, I have like TSA for saying no I'm not gonna detect all the things I should say no to but I'm damn sure I'm gonna detect the ones I definitely should say no to I think you already had it a pack. Most of us are just you know we're just kind of free-wheeling it and saying yes or no to things but so one of the things for example that I ask myself when I'm presented with something is you know how will I feel about this opportunity in a year? That's one I just say. Like if I think of myself in a year, will I remember or have FOMO in a year?

And if the answer is no to that, I generally don't do it. Right, so if I think that this is something that won't be memorable to me or something I'll look back and say, that was cool, I'm glad I did that. I probably won't, I won't do it. I also really think about, and I think it's important, I really think about the value of my time,

both really monetarily and also experientially. So just to know what our time is worth and to say, you know, on a financial level. But I think the first thing is to say on a value level, you know, will this be something that I miss? So I think the take home there is, A, am I thinking about this and B, have I begun to develop some kind of device or method to seek out, to really create

some kind of real process around whether I should do things or not? Yeah, the pandemic has been wonderful in the sense of like, I've always struggled with, you know, saying yes and no. And then the pandemic is sort of a force no on so many things. Like you're not even getting asked, you're just not doing them because nobody's doing them. And you're like, whoa, I'm way happier. I'm way more productive. This is way closer to what I want my life to be like. So then you get the sort of demonstrable like sort of view of like, oh, this is what it's actually like. You know what I mean? Like, let's say someone's quitting, thinking about quitting football, they don't actually know what life without football is like.

So there's this sort of unknownness to it that makes it a leap in the dark. It's like I actually clearly get more out of my life and my craft and my family by saying no. And then, you know, the things start creeping back in, whether it's because people are just tired of the pandemic or, you know, some people have just decided like, hey, I don't care about other people, or just like the reality of, hey, like, people do have to make living, and so life starts to creep back in, and now, you know, you realize that your your defenses were not nearly so strong, they were just not being tested. It's so great to have this natural device,

like this natural filter. A lot of what I'm saying is done by COVID. I think COVID, it's like, you know, you go on vacation and you have all these lofty goals. I don't know if you do this, but when I go on vacation, I relax and then I think about, oh, wow, man, these are the things I need to do to change for the better in my life and then I get back to real life and I try to retain on all of it, but I don't retain all of it. And I think that's like what's happening in COVID. My goal is to say, all right, this helped with my no filter.

What do I need to do to build into my life constructs to help retain those things so that when COVID is lifted, I'll stay because you know my belief is that you know life is sport, this idea you know my it's two parts one is that you know it's yes mastery is important. To me I have a great passion for helping people be their best and for finding hidden value in people's lives and for the psychology of passion for helping people be their best and for finding hidden value in people's lives and for the psychology of improvement and helping people improve and learning from some groups and taking that knowledge and bringing it to others.

I really enjoy that. I feel passionate about it. At the same time, I'm passionate about being awake and alive fully in my life, right? So yes, do I wanna bring it home for this podcast and share knowledge and talk to you and, you know, come up with something that's appealing and interesting and informative for everybody listening. Yeah, but also like, I'm talking to a good friend here and this is fun. And I do that people miss the opportunity to do both. That, you know,

you really can do both. And I think the one area that this is sorely missed is the connection between personal relationships and productivity. People quarantine those. They fire while they're off. It's like, okay, I'm going to go work really hard and then I'll be with my family rather than saying like these things are all interconnected and if I work really hard to be a great mom or partner, if I really work great, if I think of my being a dad as a sport, the same way that I think of being a business person as a sport or being an athlete, that those things are going to filter because the field of play extends beyond the market and extends beyond the football field. The field of play is one's whole life. And so if I feel really great about those connections

and those relationships, my experience is that people write better, people play better, people, you know, dunk better. And so to me, I think the grand learning in COVID is it's taking people back to that and on experiential level, they're realizing that and they're realizing that, wow, my work should be and this is the work I do with people at day to day is retaining those gains. So once please God, this pandemic curves that you will be able to retain that centered life more. Yeah, you know, you're used to word firewall, which I think is interesting.

That's another thing maybe to take from sports is that you look at these athletes and sometimes ago these people are so sheltered whether it's college athletics or professional athletics, but it's like that's inseparable from the insane performance that you see. Like if these guys were back to baseball where they had to get a job in the offseason or, you know, whether they're traveling from city to city in a train and, you know, you know, what these teams have realized is that when you create some of these firewalls and you create some of these sort of cushions and you sort of systematize certain things, performance increases. And I think what the pandemic did for me as a writer

is that it created something closer to what the ideal writer's life looks like. Like, if you were to say like, okay, I'm gonna make this person a great writer. You would not also sign them up to travel from city to city speaking, or have them be on social media. You know, there's all these things that are sort of lucrative or part of the lifestyle, but not actually sort of performance enhancers. And I think what the pandemic has done is sort of forced us to experiment.

And then it actually the discipline is going to be in keeping some of that firewall up. But without the benefit of, you know, like, I mean, even now this thing, like, I could go, I shouldn't go for sort of ethical, you know, sort of safety reasons or whatever. But I have the choice to go, right? And in six months, I'll have more of a choice to go because even that hesitation about whether it's safe or not will probably be gone because I'll be vaccinated or, you know, as you said, hopefully it'll have occurred by then.

But then, so then it'll actually be even harder to do because it's not a should you, sorry, it's not a can you, can't you, it's a should I and why shouldn't I kind of a thing. And so that firewall when it's up by choice is the hardest thing to enforce. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Yeah, I mean, you know, what you're talking about is what I mean about this hidden economy. You know, we're really great at getting dressed in the morning. I'm expert at that.

We have 100% track record. Yeah, I'm like most of the time, listen, I've been able to do that doing the hard work of creating a routine around what's going to make me great, or especially what's going to make me great at being a human, it requires a lot more effort. It requires reading books, it requires thinking, honestly, it requires coaching. I think that very few people can do this without a coach or a mentor, really, at their top level. They can get to 98%.

But there's a reason why every sports team has a mental performance coach, right? At the highest level of doing something, getting that extra, the last one or two percent is really difficult. And so this goes to that hard part. The hard part is that, you know, COVID, what it did, it's kind of like we all woke up in a gym, right? Like, it's hard not to get diesel. It's hard not to get jacked if you

like live in a gym. I mean, I could probably do it. But most people are going to get checked in a gym. We all woke up in this kind of life-free set gym. The question is, what do you do to retain your gains? And how can you create your life-created routine to be able to really be at your best. Everyone I know, including you, who's excellent, has a pretty dial routine. And what COVID did is it allowed everybody to say, like, I have no choice. I've got to make this routine. I mean, even if it's just about eating,

you got to have a routine, you can't survive COVID without figuring that stuff out. And so right now, it's like when you're coming back to normalization and things are normalizing, how are you going to attack your routine to make sure that those gains are retained? And then also, what can you learn from it that you're going to do in terms of your day-to-day

that are going to create new gains? Yeah, so for people who don't, they won't have heard the drop in the file, but we had some technical difficulties. I'm recording from my house today, which uses satellite internet and is not the fastest internet and it tests, tests me philosophically to not get very aggravated at an inanimate object, but it is quite frustrating to be living in 2020 and what is ostensibly the most powerful country in the world and They can't even bring broad band internet like 30 minutes from from the capital of Texas

But but you know it brings our conversation full circle right because this is sort of where we started about these plane delays Yes, I think there's two things one is you know for me Yes, I think there's two things. One is, you know, for me, really bringing life is sport to like bringing it home. Everyone who's ever listened to this has had technical difficulties. Like I think for me, where it's most stressful is like you're about to give a talk, right? Like you get up to give a talk, you know, you and I do a bunch of public speaking and you're about to give a talk to, you know, whatever, 500,000 people and, you know, and then the mic doesn't work. Maybe like, you know, you have one slide with a picture you want to

show for to tell a story and that can't come up. And I think that, you know, in those moments, you know, we have a choice about how we redirect our attention. I can't remember said of someone in the sports psychology world said that, you know, attention is the currency of performance. Where you put your attention and the act of realizing that's a muscle is so huge. And what I love about the internet failing is number one, you're proving that you're advertising, you know, life away from technology and the way that we were kind of talking about a little bit. But also, it's the idea that you have a choice in any moment. And you know, you know, you know, you know, you talk about stoicism, which is like, does loving stoicism and loving, you know, that there's this space between thought and action where you have a choice to use the frankle idea, does, you know, that that doesn't mean

that we don't lose our minds sometimes. Right? Like, my business is about helping people to find calm in treacherous performance terrain. But, you know, of course, there are times when I lose my cool. I mean, I think the idea here is about, you know, even if you can make a 1% change in how you respond to friction in your environment, you're winning. You're definitely winning because. No, that's right. I think I found it.

It's like I found a couple sort of things with it too. So it's like it. I remember I lived in New Orleans and I was writing my first book. And. And. You know, we lived in this sort of small apartment and we just shared internet with the person who lived above us like they had it. And it was good enough most of the time.

And I remember like, you know, then it would rain, it would go out or, you know, I'm here at my house, the farm and it's not that great. And it's like, okay, but what would it cost to have a spot where this isn't the problem? So part of the reason I got my office is is like, okay, whatever it costs to not be at the mercy of this thing most of the time is worth it, right? Like, sometimes I think people will have things that make them miserable, that make them unhappy. And a small amount of money, money that they have can make that thing go away. And yet they refuse to do it because of some other scripts or other inhibition. And then they act like the thing is being inflicted on them when really they're

inflicting it on themselves. Yep, there's no question about that. I mean, this is at the heart of to me what you know, you've brought to the world in terms of making stoicism accessible is this idea that you know, things are not as they are there as we are right that you know We choose in every single moment we choose our attitude which determines our experience and It's at the very heart of living a I think enjoyable life is to say that I can get better at that I can get better at Choosing I mean the joke I have with so many performers is,

you know, you don't go to the gym, do five curls and look at your bicep and say like, why isn't it grown? We acknowledge physically that you need reps and reps and reps in time before you see a market difference in physical performance with mental performance. What happens is we try something for a day or two. Like if I meditate, I use mindfulness technique,

I immerse myself in mindfulness techniques, or I keep a gratitude journal, I'm one of the million different things you can do to impact your mental wellness and acuity and mental flexibility and strength. Most of the time what people do is they do it for a day or two, and then they get exhausted and they stop. And that's not enough time. That's enough time to build. And so just

the idea that in any moment, not only can I shift, but I can get better at building that muscle of where I place my attention, I think is there's so much freedom in that. Well, and I think you attack it from different angles. So one, there's just the practice and the skill of it and that's part of it. Then the other part is the sort of systems like Tim Ferris has that question of like, what would it look like if this were easy? So what changes do you need to make in your life and your routine and your system, your structure and how you approach it that will make, you know, you less stressed, less vulnerable,

whatever. And then the third part, and you brought this up a couple of times, I think it's probably a good thing for us to kick around as we close up, is like, and then this is also what coaches, mentors, spouses, feedback groups, masterminds, et cetera, provide you, which is a little bit of external perspective where they can go, you know, Ryan, you could just, you know, for $200 a month, you can make this problem go away.

Or what if you hate X? Why don't you just stop doing X and see if you like that better, right? And sometimes you need that outside coaching to be like, hey, here's where your problem is. Just do X, Y, and Z. And now you don't need to become a guru or a sage that magically rises above it.

You can just excise the whole problem from your life all together. I listen, I mean, you're definitely, this isn't even the choir you're talking to. You're saying to like a Baptist church of 1,000 people because I almost at this point feel empathy for people that don't seek, I get it, right? I mean, it's really hard to be vulnerable and it's really hard. This is like the hard work, right? This is

like the ab workout, right? Everybody wants to go to the gym and do legs or arms, but this is like the real core workout is to say, I want to make myself open to another human's viewpoint, even if it makes me uncomfortable or to notice the things that I'm not doing well, even if it makes me feel less than or defensive, I'm going to open myself. And the thing about coaching is, you know, I definitely give people in the work I do coaching advice. I'm going to open myself. And the thing about coaching is, I definitely give people in the work I do coaching advice. I'll say, hey, let me teach you this mindfulness exercise. Let me let's talk about gratitude, how it can impact your life. Let's rehearse or model this.

Let me see a videotape of you doing it, and let's talk about it together. But fundamentally, the most powerful thing about coaching is really helping people to see themselves. I had a client who once called it a magic mirror. It's like holding up a certain kind of reflection to people and really asking the right questions and having this curiosity about people's experience. The higher the level of performer, the more

it's true that they are going to, through the right questions, stumble upon what they need to do. But having the ability to connect and to have that conversation is really so incredibly needed in those moments. It's hard for us to say to ourselves, this is what I'm pretending to not know about myself. And usually it requires another human to be able to learn those lessons about ourselves. Yeah, it's even I think you find a lot of times that the therapists and I just did a video

on stoses and therapy on our YouTube channel. You might like, but I got to check that out. Most of the time they're not telling you anything. They're just asking you questions, which forces you to give an answer that you already knew, but you were reluctant to verbalize, which then puts in place the change. It's so funny. You know, one of my one of the most strange, but hilarious experiences I have in coaching. And this is true if I'm coaching an NFL player or a hedge fund person or a firefighter. You know, when I do give advice, a lot of times Ryan, people will come back the next week and share with me the very advice I gave them. But present it in a way as though I never, I never told it to them. Or they're like, oh my God, I had this really great idea. I should read Ryan Holiday's book, The Opsicles the Way. That would, I think, really help me.

And I'm like, in my mind, I'm like, oh, I mean, I sent you the book, right? But, you know, I just let it go, obviously. But it speaks to your point that we really, it's hard for us. We really need to come to it on our own. And this is all, I mean, this is another conversation, but it's hard for us. We really need to come to it on our own. And this is all, I mean, this is another conversation, but it's about motivation. And that my belief is, you know,

that, you know, the Roosevelt quote, people need to know that you care before they care what you know. I mean, so much of this is about connection and receptivity and togetherness. More than it is about expert advice. Yeah, yeah. I think it's like deep down you already know and what you're by deciding to engage in the therapeutic process or the coach and the mentor, what they're really helping you do is unlock what's already inside you. The hitter already knows how to hit the ball. Something has just gotten in the way and you're helping them remove that thing. You're not magically turning them into an athlete.

I mean, it wouldn't even talk into you if they weren't a great athlete. No doubt. And that lock picking, man, that, you know, the lock picking though, is this process. It's like one of those Ocean's 11's movie. You know, you got to have every lock pick available to you.

And also, if you go a little bit too fast, it like activates in alarm. Right? And then you can strip the screws to add another metaphor. If you're trying too hard and you're going too fast, you bust out a drill instead of the right size screwdriver, and you not only strip it, it becomes impossible to ever face. More question.

And I think a lot of people who do our work come at it from that perspective. And that works for some people, but most people, they really, they're not gonna respond to the drill. No, and look, this goes to the important thing and in stoicism, which is like, it's not just the reading of the books either, it's also the rereading, and it's the discussion about them, and then it's the reading again, because as you change

and as what you're going through and your life changes, you unlock different things from the texts or from the thing that you already read. I mean, there's moments where I'll be thinking about something in some passage from a book I read 10 years ago will finally make sense to me because it comes filtering back in light of the new experience. Yeah, and but it just shows the mindset that like that you have and that I think has been

informed by Stoicism, it's just you're open to those to those you're open to a continual process of learning. I think that choice is, you know, the coaches that are the best that I've worked with in getting coaching myself or the ones that I've worked on teams with or the ones that help people to stay open. One of my favorite quotes about this, I think it's a by a guy named Gaston, I can't even remember now, but it's, you know, judge a man by his questions rather than his answers. Yes. And, you know, for me, you know, what's much more telling me is how, what kind of questions people ask me than the information that they give me.

I love it, man. Fader, you're the best. Let's do this again when your new book is out and we'll kick some more stuff around. I always love talking to you, man. Likewise, man, it's a continual learning and a lot of fun at the same time. Enjoy that farm internet man. Thanks for listening to another episode of The Daily Stoke. It's mind-blowing to me now that we are well over 30 million downloads at this show. It means so much to me to have all of you listen. If you want to help spread the word about

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