The Daily Stoic - MLB All-Star Ian Happ on the Power of Discipline

Episode Date: February 4, 2023

Ryan speaks with Ian Happ about how practicing Stoic principles helps him play better baseball, the mindset of a professional athlete, how he uses discipline to overcome self-doubt, and more.Ian Happ is a professional baseball player who plays for the Chicago Cubs. Ian made his MLB debut with the Cubs in 2017, and since then he has hit 108 home runs, driven in 308 RBIs, and accumulated a batting average of .249. In 2022, he was selected for the All-Star game for the first time, and he won a Gold Glove Award for his play in left field. In 2021, Ian invested in Jomboy Media, a digital media company that produces content focused on sports and pop culture, and on which he hosts The Compound. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow 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 Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes. Something to help you live up to those four Stoke virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down,

be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. Exciting news that we're building out a new podcast studio for the Daily Stoic, which should be done here very shortly. So we'll be doing more of these in person, which will be fun. I don't make the YouTube edition of the podcast.

I think a little bit more watchable. Hopefully get better clips out of it. And then there's always something special about the in-person conversations, which got sort of interrupted from COVID back in 2020. And then we got into doing Skype and Zoom. And hopefully now we can go back to doing it the other way, which I'm really excited to do. And today's guest, if I had known where he was,

just a few miles down the road for me, we would have done this as one of the first in-person episodes. My guest today is Golden Glove winner, Major League Baseball All-Star, just in all around a great athlete, E&HAP, a left-fielder for the Chicago Cubs. He's also the host of his own podcast, The Compound, part of John Boy Media. And we just really get into it in today's episode. We're talking about excellence, talking about self-improvement. and we're talking about how one gets better

at having what they call in baseball pitch discipline. Knowing what to swing at, what not to swing at, knowing what your strengths are, knowing what you should not be distracted by, and it's just a great conversation that I was excited to have, which I'm hoping we can have again very soon. So without further ado, here's my interview with Ian Hap, host of the Compound podcast, but just one hell of an athlete. And I think really a thinker about some of the things we talk about here at Daily Stuck. Enjoy. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wonderree'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. Well, cool, man. As I was saying, we should have done this in person, but it's actually not that bad. Just turn on your computer and go into it. Yeah, it's pretty easy. You know, I was thinking about your career because it's interesting.

Like obviously you're a superstar off-draft pick, you're great. You kind of have this dip and then you come out of the other side of it. I'm interested in how you sort of sit down and get better in the middle of your career, right? Most people, like sometimes they start off hot or they struggle early on or usually it's a decline, right?

We come out, we're really good. And then we're trying to get back to there. But you've had this, you've had this ability to sort of get better as you go. Well, what do you think that is for you? Yeah, I definitely had my ups and downs. I had a really good rookie year. And it was in the rookie of the year voting and felt like I was going to be able to play every day

in the big leagues and kind of establish myself in that way. And then I had a tough, tough for 2018, got sent down in 2019, just start the season. And so those were two, you know, two kind of big, big blows. And 2018, I had one coach tell me during the year, he said, Hey, you're going to look back on this and it's not going to be as bad as it feels right now. You know, I wish I would have taken that more to heart and kind of been able to keep some of that confidence. But then I did a bunch of stuff that off season

to try to change and get better and came into spring. Because what the team wanted me to do came into spring training and I stunk. I was horrible. And so they sent me down and I had to spend a few months in triple A that year, which is really tough and kind of clawing back from that. But then after that, once I got back to the big leagues and kind of made a conscious decision

to really have that confidence and believe in myself and say, hey, there's a reason why I was a good player in 2017 when I got to the big leagues. So 2020 was a great year. 2021 is still kind of figuring out, all right out some of the physical stuff is there, but making sure that that mental stuff was locked in and getting an opportunity to play. After the trade deadline in 2021, it was that reassurance that I was going to play every single day. I was going to be in there.

I let myself be a little bit more free and just go play baseball. That is the first time since college that I was able to have that experience of no matter what, I do that day, I'm gonna be out there playing and have a chance to do it again the next day. Yeah, I think obviously when someone is really good at a thing, to the point where there are one of a, a few hundred people in the world who can do that thing professionally.

You wouldn't seem like it would take a lot of effort to work but imagine it does to sort of consciously sit down and go like no there stuff I need to work on in my game or I have goals or a place that I want to get to. I want to get to, and I'm gonna put in that work instead of just expecting, either expecting the results or blaming the environment or the coaching or circumstances for why you're not where you want to be. Yeah, I think that's kind of the hardest thing. As a player, your whole life, you've been the best, right? You've been the best in high school and college college and there was never a worry if you weren't going to play. You know, you were always going to be in there because it was, you know, you were the best player on the team. And then even once you get drafted and you're in the minor leagues, there's some money invested in you.

Like, you're going to play every single day and then you get to the big leagues and the funnel gets really narrow. You know, you're trying to help the team win, but you also, you know, you want to be in every day big of year. That's what we train our whole lives for is to be one of the guys that is out there every single day. That's competing to be an all-star or to be one of the best players in the league. And so there's this big adjustment to, oh shit, like I haven't played for two days. Like, I've never had to do this in my entire career where I've come off the bench or I've gotten replaced

by somebody else and dealing with that. And instead of, you know, instead of wondering why or trying really hard to impress a coach or somebody that makes the decisions to say, you know what, I'm going to believe in myself and put in the same work. And, you know, at some point, they're not going to be able to keep me out of the lineup. And so that was, you know, a real change in my mentality. I was a young player. We had a really good team and a lot of really

good players. But I found myself caring more about what the guy that made the decisions thought and kind of getting away from my process and what made me a really good player and trying to do kind of the things that wouldn't get me put on the bench. And the end result of that is always like, you do the things that get you put on the bench. Yeah. Baseball is a weird game in that. First, you make this conscious decision to get better.

And yet, probably like writing self-consciousness is like a death sentence, right? Like if you get true in your own head about it, if you're too thirsty or you're too insecure or you're worried what other people are thinking or, you know, as you're saying, you're like, don't do this, don't do this. That's the thing that you end up doing.

So it's this, it must be a tricky tension to be like, here's what I know I need to get better on, here's what I need to work on, but also I need to not think about any of that and just be present and do what I know how to do. Yeah, it's a fine line between working on your weaknesses and not losing your strengths, you know, the strengths are what got you to that point, the strengths, the things that you're really good at in the game baseball or whatever you're doing, you know.

Yeah, those are the things that get you to to be elite and to be one of the 700, you know, players that gets to be in the big leagues, you're one of the 300 hitters that gets to be out there. So, you know, you have to, what I did was, I tried to address my weaknesses because I felt like those were the things that were, you know, being judged the harshest. Or, you know, I felt like the people that were making

the decisions, like, hey, I'm doing all this other stuff really great, but that doesn't seem to matter So I better address this weakness and in addressing the weakness Over the course of an offseason. I kind of lost the strength and and so I lost the things that I did really well And then became a not not a very productive player because I'm I'm still battling the weaknesses, but also not having that dominance of my strengths that had always carried me. And so it was kind of a learning experience to find, like, all right, how do I continue to be really, really good at what I do well? Well, also addressing, you know, in how do I address the weaknesses without losing kind of who I am as a baseball player?

And so that that was kind of a, you know, process that took me years to figure out. And you still, you never figure out, I had a really good conversation with a guy, Joey Vato, who's been in the big leagues for like his 16th year and he's a Hall of Famer. He will be a Hall of Famer. He's got, you know, he's done, he's done it all. He's won an MVP, he's been a six-time all-star. And he was talking about, as he got older, different years, always adjusting, because it's always a different swing or a different feel, or the pitchers are doing different things. And you just have to have that mindset of being okay with that, and okay, adjusting, and figuring out what is going to work at that time, and not latching on to the past,

or worrying about what people think. Yeah, it's like someone critic is gonna work at that time and not latching onto the past or worrying about what people think. Yeah, it's like someone criticizes you for X. So you rush over and you're like, well, I gotta address that. And then you leave Y unaddressed or Y open over here. And then they're like, but wait, now you're dropping over here, this can happen in business too.

You're like, you get these, you get reports. And it's like, oh, we're down in this or that. We've got to focus all our attention over here. Then you end up neglecting the other things that we're subsidizing the weaknesses over here. It can be this sort of herky, jerky thing where you're just rushing

from one emergency to the other. The cost of that is you're not being focused, you're not being deliberate and you're not like in the moment that you're supposed to be in. And whether it's a player or it's a company, you know, if you lose that core competency or you lose kind of what makes you you, you also lose the confidence of the understanding of who you are. Like I had when I was a young player and coming up

and pretty naive, like I had such a confidence or belief in who I was. And then you get all that criticism and you get, you're not doing this, but you're not doing this, like you're striking out too much. And you start to lose, well, shit, like I don't know who I am then. And then you also, you don't know exactly who you are

as a baseball player, so it took me, it took me a couple of years to really like, okay, I'm going to be, this is the version, I have this really, really, great understanding of what version I am of myself, who I am, what I do really well, what I don't do well. It's okay to not do some of those things well. We can't all do everything.

Even the best players in the world have holes or things they don't do great, but they find a way to manage those. And over the course of a season, I will do more things well that I'll do wrong. And kind of that belief and understanding is super powerful. Now, we're talking about it as like the individual, the athlete, the creative, the business owner, which is really interesting and important. The other way to think about it is like,

as a leader, you have to make sure you're not fucking with other people in that sense. I remember I went, I spoke at the spring training for the pirates like four or five years ago, and Clint Erdog was telling me that they have a rule, the pirates, which is a coach is not allowed to give feedback to a player unless they have a relationship or a history with that player, because if someone's, you know, doing this thing and some coach just comes over and starts fiddling around with what they're doing, you can mess someone up or mess something up because they're really focused on this thing they're working on and that's actually the

important thing that they need to be doing. And then here you are planting some thought in their head or giving them this distraction when you don't know the full context of what they're going through. And not only are you not helping them, you're actually breaking them and taking them away from what they should be doing. You're making them worse by giving them feedback. And I think as a leader, like micromanaging or meddling, you can end up getting in people's heads, like really easily. Yeah, and it's really,

I think it's one of the best things that I've always seen from my favorite coaches, or my best coaches are, you know, they build this relationship with you and you trust them. And they're your biggest fan, your biggest cheerleader, and they give you this confidence.

They give you this belief in one of the guys who was one of my first hitting coaches. He came up to me not too long ago. So I'm a couple of weeks ago. We hadn't been together for six years and the first thing he said to me was, you're gonna be the MVP this year. And it's like, that is the type of guy that,

you know, okay, if you wanna tell me that I need to stand looking sideways and that's how I'm going to hit homers, and I'll believe in you because you have this pure total belief in what I do. And it's really easy for a coach or just seeing somebody to give an opinion, but if you don't build that relationship, you're gonna lose that player a lot quicker, and they're never gonna trust you or believe in you, especially if things don't go right immediately. And so I have always thought, like, leadership

and being able to give advice is building that relationship, building that trust, and then being able to understand who that person is because as you go through a season with somebody, it's very rarely physical. It's almost always mental. What's going on at home? Is there something that is nagging that person?

Do they care so much about the playing time and that's not working out? Are they worried about their future and their career and how this impacts them and those things are the things, especially for elite players or elite, somebody that's doing something and it'll lead level and has the ability to. It's very rarely the physical and more often the mental part that gets in the way. Yeah, it's like you walk by and you're like, oh, hey, you got to tighten up your stance or you're dropping your swing. You're just fucking with something that you don't have the full picture on.

When you walk over and just give someone feedback, hey, I'd like you to do this. Hey, you got to do this. You don't know why they're doing it that way. You don't know whether they're sensitive to feedback or not sensitive, whether they're going to be a people ple- like you have no idea what you're going on. You have to have, I think, as a leader, you have to be able to step back, see the big picture, and you have to pick your battles.

You have to pick where you're gonna intervene and not intervene. You have to let some stuff happen. You have to let people come to you. You can't just go around stirring things up. It's a recipe for disaster. And so, and I think this is more, this might be more sports specific than business specific, but the building of confidence, you know, when you're going

out and competing or doing that thing, you know, sometimes it's a lot more impactful to just say, Hey, man, you're awesome. Like you're gonna, you're gonna get foreheads today. And then that guy, that move might clean up. That guy might end up like, you wanted him to put his hands up too, and just to all our, maybe he's just a little bit more confident. And so when he's a little bit more confident in the box,

and he's got a little bit more swag, or like, oh, that naturally got into a better spot, where when we get, especially as competitors and athletes, when we get a little nervous, so we're a little kind of protective, we start to get a little bit more back or a little bit more hunched and not as much on the hunt. And so some of those things get cleaned up just by giving you guys some confidence or

by telling them that they're great. And what I've, I guess the business parallel to that would be that sometimes it's more of understanding or giving someone a pat on the back instead of always rushing to give a critique. Well, it's like almost everyone. Actually, there's probably no person who isn't well served by a little extra confidence or the sense that someone believes in them or supports them. I was just reading Bill Russell's memoir and he was talking about how, as a young athlete, he had this coach and the coach never encouraged him. And he said something about it in

an interview. And many years later, the coach wrote him and he said, you know, how, you know, you know, I didn't, he said, I didn't encourage you because you were so talented, I knew that you didn't need it. And he was like, the hell I did, and of course everyone needs it. Everybody needs it. But there's nobody who doesn't need it. Yeah, and that's, I think that,

I don't know if you've watched the, the new tennis documentary, or it's on Netflix or like the F1 documentary, but you see these guys at the absolute elite of their sport and they're still questioning, they're still, I haven't watched the entire tennis documentary, but my brother was telling me that these guys, some of the best players in the world

and they lose early in a tournament, they're like considering retiring best players in the world and they're like, they lose early in a tournament. Like they're like considering retiring. They're like, this is, you know, this is so, it's just so stressful. It's so hard and I talked to, talked to a former player a couple of weeks ago and played 13 years in the big leagues. And he was like, yeah, and then you can decide if you want to go through the stress every year. And it's like, yeah, man, it is, like even, even though we're playing a game and it's great and we get paid and it's awesome, like it's a high level of stress and it's every single day and it wears you down. And that's not dissimilar to any type of business place or workplace or a sales job or anything. Like it can, it's every day,

you know, and it can really grant you down. And if you're going through a period of time where you're not succeeding or things aren't lining up in the way that you think, it can really, really wear you down. And it's not, it's not any different in business or in sports or business. And so that, that just little extra bit of confidence or, you know, someone, someone giving you a pat on the back telling you you're doing a good job can really go a long way. Well, I think it all starts in childhood because what we want is dad to be proud of us. That's why we do any of this stuff, right?

Is you want dad to be like, good job, right? And ideally, you want not to even have to earn it, right? Or you shouldn't have to earn it, right? Like it should be because, you know, as Mr. Rogers famously said, like you make the world special by being you. Like just you being you should be enough. And it never is, right?

Of course, but we carry with us, I think when we think about a coach or a media or even that random person on the street who's saying like, you suck, what we want is that person to like us. We want to feel like we deserve to be here. There's a lot of you suck out there, you know. There's a lot of, there's a lot of, you're fighting that a lot. And I think the inner, a lot of people, the inner voice in your head says you suck.

And I go and play golf and snap hook one, telling myself I suck. And the best in the world, the best that I've played with, they don't talk themselves that way. They talk themselves in a super positive way. It's always encouraging, It's always progressive. And maybe I'm not there yet, but it's going to happen.

And I read an interview of Max Humbert did about last week and he was talking about, he made a decision to just, I'm going to put the work in. And eventually, it's going to pay off. I don't know if it's going to pay off tomorrow, or it's going to pay off in a week or a month or a year. But this is going to be a culmination when I get there of everything that I'm doing today and tomorrow

and that is we've been, like I just interviewed Joey Vato yesterday and he said the same thing. He said he really believes in lag and that there is this, as you get into your process, you know, something that you did six months ago might have been the reason that you hit that home run. But if you truly believe that all the work you're putting in is the right thing to do and is going to lead to a positive and result, that that's a really powerful way to live

and think and that really struck me because that's, you know, how I've approached a lot of my work is that it might not be an immediate result tomorrow, but continuing to do the right things and really have that belief in yourself is how you get there. I think that's totally right. I was just writing about this a couple of weeks ago

that sort of all success in life, all things going well, even happiness itself is a lagging indicator of investments or work or process that happened so long ago you might not even remember it, right? Like when I sit down to write, there's no such thing as writer's block, that doesn't exist, but there is me not having done the work is me not having done the work yesterday, six months ago, six years ago, to set up the material or the insights that I'm gonna put on the page today. And obviously, showing up, you have to do the work right,

like, if you don't show up at the game or if I don't sit at my desk, I'm not gonna be able to do anything with the, the, you know, the, the prologue that I put together before, but everything, even like when, like me and my wife are getting along well, or the house is clean, you know, anything that's going well in my life, that's because I set up systems before, or I spent time before, you know. Everything you want in life is a lagging indicator of what you did long before that moment

when you're enjoying the fruits of it. Yeah, and I get, it's one of the reasons I get super emotional when I think about kind of where I'm at right now. Like, I got to go to my first law school I get in this year, I got to, I won my first gold glove. I, you know, I got in my high school hall of fame and Cape Cod hall of fame, like all this really cool stuff

this year. And every time I was joking with my fiance, because it's like, damn it, I can't give a speech without crying, but it's, it's a, I get so emotional because it is all of the time and effort that you've put in previously. And I think about that eight year old kid or the 10 year old kid that was in the basement,

like throwing racquet balls off the wall. And just like over and over and over and every single day and all of the stuff that that it's all part of it. You know, it's all part of getting to where you are today. And I just, I have such a strong belief that like the most successful people, you know, it's about hard work and work ethic and stuff. But like, it's that belief that like, it is lagging and that I'm going to put in so much work that there's no option but to be successful in the end.

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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. Does it ever keep you up at night though, like thinking that, hey, like I am coasting off, you know, what I did a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago, that I'm reaping, you know, what I sowed then. Do you ever think, but like, what about one year from now, five years from now, ten

years from now, am I doing what I need to do now in this moment so I can have the lagging indicator in the future? Yeah, you know, I think it's interesting because you continue to put so much work in. Like I, even the off season, like it's job, you know, here are the gym five days a week, you do, like I did 30 minutes this morning with my posture therapist, like over face job, you know, you're the gym five days a week, you do like, I did 30 minutes this morning with my posture therapist, like over face time, you know, we do, we work every day, do like, you put in all this work and you still, there's still always a little voice inside your head or, you know, the doubt that is like, did you do enough, like did you run, did you run enough today? Did you work hard enough?

Like, are you going to be ready when you get to spring training as your body ready? And being at peace with that, I've done a lot of work on that over the last couple of years is like you're plenty physical, like your body's in great shape. You're doing everything right every single day, but I think that at an elite level,

and that's kind of the best in the world, they always have that, is that enough? Do you need to do more? And it's just a little bit of fear. It's a little bit of fear that makes sure that you do all of that stuff. And it's definitely something that I've struggled with. But not for lack of work, but for just the insanity that is like having, like being at this level all the time, is like there is always that voice

and then it's a combination of like dealing with that, but also like putting the work in every day. Yeah, there's a great book about Bill Bradley, the basketball player, called a sense of where you are. And he has this, Bradley says this thing in the book, he says, you know, when you are not practicing somewhere, someone else is practicing. And when you meet that person, they will win, which is, I think, our point about lagging indicators, right? Like if you're not doing the work, eventually you're going to be a,

you know, one-on-one matchup with the person who is doing the work, and that person is going to pick your pocket or block your shot or whatever. That's, to be a champion, to be great, it's something you have to think about it that way. But that's also, as you said, a recipe, if taken too far, for total misery, for an inability to appreciate the present moment. And, you know, paradoxically, can get you so wrapped up or, you know, out of alignment that you can end up hurting yourself

or sucking the joy out of what you're doing or, you know, any number of negative results from that way of thinking. I also think there's a think there's the reverse set of thoughts that is like nobody ever come across can beat me. And I think like that is the attitude that you, if I'm sitting there in the gym thinking, there's somebody out there who's working hard at me,

there's a picture that's working harder than me. Like I have to work harder. Sure, but my reverse would be, when I get out on the field, there's no picture that has any chance to fucking beat me. And any young kid that's coming up and trying to play left field for the Chicago Cubs, good luck, because you're not taking my fucking job.

And so I think that, you know, that's a more powerful thought process. And the work that I put in every single day, maybe there's somebody who's running more sprints or running harder or sweating more, but I know that what I'm doing is right. Like I know that the way that I'm going about my work, the posture that I'm doing, the way I'm resetting my body, the way I'm squatting or jumping or it's going to keep me the healthiest, the longest on the field. And I know that everything that I'm doing is in preparation to play 162 games at the highest level. And I think like for me, that confidence and then also

that competitiveness is what makes me the best version of myself. Yeah, no, no, that doesn't make sense. It's like what you just expressed, like no one can beat me blah, blah, blah, blah. There's a version of that that's ego, right? And then there's a version of it that is you saying that to yourself while you are in the gym, right? Like if you're sitting on your couch,

not practicing, not training, you know, just assuming that your spot is your spot, you know, that's probably an attitude of complacency and decline. If you're saying that to yourself, as you follow your routine, as you listen to the, you know, the stand, as you listen to what your coach has set out for you as you're meeting the benchmarks you set for yourself, then what it is is it's based on evidence, it's confidence that's based on fact. And then that's, that's what allows you to not take it to, so it's not coming from that place of fundamental insecurity and imposter syndrome and whatever that's making you, you

know, fragile, it's actually making you firm and strong, that's making you fragile, it's actually making you firm and strong and clear about who you are and what you need to be doing. Yeah, I think that's 100%. I think early in my career, early in my career, I worked really hard, but I had that more of that sense of, someone's competing against people or someone's gonna come take my job

or, you know, is, is, am I good enough? Like, are they gonna give me a chance to play every day or are they gonna give me, like, oh, they're bringing this other guy and am I gonna have to, now I'm gonna have to compete with that guy. We're now, it's like, no, no, I know everything I'm doing is right and like, come try to take, I would love for you to come try to take my job. Yeah, yeah, I think, like, when I wrote my first book, it was like, I didn't know if I could do it. I'd never done it before. It would have been, if I sat there and

said, no one can beat me, I've got this like, I'm the best. That would have been preposterously unfounded because literally I'd never done it before. But now that I'm, I've written more books than I literally know the number, I was like 12 or 13, somewhere around there. Like, I know, not only do I know I can do it and that I can do it at a high level because I've seen the results.

But that also helps me like, when I hit that like dark night of the soul, when I have like a, my equivalent of a bad game or I'm not really feeling it. What I also have is a certain trust in the process where I go, if I show up every day, if I do what I need to do, if I don't quit, I know where this goes and where it goes is success in the end. Do you know what I mean?

I've got to imagine. Yeah, but I mean for you statistically, like you have games that go well and not well, but you know now having been through enough seasons, how that evens out over the course of 162 games, or even one strike out in the first inning, you know that by the ninth inning, like chances are you're gonna have had some good wax in there.

And yeah, baseball is a compounding game like that. Like it's weeks and months and like, if it's always compounding, you know, if O4-2 with two strikeouts turns into O4-4, O4-10, O4-20, like at some point in the course of 162, like you're going to go 0-20 or 2-20, like multiple times, even if you're great. Like you're going to, we're watching TV in the locker room this year, we're in Milwaukee waiting to play a game, trout, mic trout, best player of all time to ever do it. He's offered his last 13 with like 11 strikeouts.

It's like, okay, sorry guys, everybody look. Mike is over 13 with 11 strikeouts. If that's happening to him, we are all okay. We're all going to be fine. It happens. If you really trust your process, those valleys become shorter and you're at the O for 20 mark,

and instead of thinking, holy shit, I might never get a hit again. Like, this is the worst, most unpleasant feeling in the world and start to doubt or worry about playing time or everything. Like, if you're like, well, this just means that I'm really, really close to going five for 10. Or like, the pendulum is going to swing back and I'm going to get absolutely

and fuego in a minute. And that's the difference in perspective and like trusting that work and trusting that, you know, this doesn't last forever and it's going to come back and it's going to come back 10 fold. Like that was one of the things this year. I think let me be a lot more consistent was the O4 or the O48. It's like that just meant that something good was coming. And that reframing was really, really big for me. It's like I am statistically due for a yes or a hit here. Right? It can't be knows forever.

Yep, it's not possible. And I think it's same thing. And whether you're writing or in business, if you know that your process makes sense and works, like eventually, my work with a coffee company in Chicago and it's same name type of thing. If you're going out and trying to sell coffee to people, like, I know that we make good coffee.

I know that people really like it. I know that it tastes good. I know that our beans are sourced directly from farms in these countries, and our roasting process is fantastic. Like, I know that if we get enough people to try this coffee, retailers are going to want to put it on the shelves. And if you get a couple of those,

or it gets too hard with a grocer, it's like, okay, there's plenty of other places we can sell these things because I know, I know our quality is better than 95% of what's out there. And so like, just having, it's the same thing. Just, you have to have that constant belief and keep chugging away on it. So one of the things you mentioned earlier was like,

you don't want to get so obsessed with fixing your weaknesses that you abandoned your strengths. But it does seem like when you sort of went through that, you know, that dip, that actually one of the things you did was go, OK, here's what's not working. If I can just make some small statistical improvements there, if I get 10% better at this or 5% better at this, again, over the course of a long season,

that adds up in a huge way, right? I think sometimes people go sales are down, I've got to double the business. No, actually it's like, hey, if you increased traffic 10%, and you increased conversion 10%, and you increased the order value 10%. Those three small tweaks would actually be an enormous impact on the bottom line.

I've got to imagine you're like, if I get a little better at picking which pitches I swing at, if I get a little better at, you know, how I swing, and then I get a little better with what I do after the swing, but I don't know, all of a sudden, like I'm almost an entirely different athlete statistically. Yeah, and it wasn't, uh... I'll give you the example. Like, I really didn't handle high fastball as well. Left handed.

Yeah. And at that point in the game of baseball, the game was changing. Pictures were starting to throw these fastballs at the top of the zone. Their spin rate got a lot higher. Some guys were using sticky substance for it, but it was a different pitch that we hadn't seen before,

and a lot of guys' swings weren't built for it. Mine was definitely not built for it. And so, my strikeout rate was super high in 2018 and Joe, Matt and our managers, like going to the office, going, hey, man, how do I play more? It's like, well, you had to strike out less, okay? So my, and I always had a good eye, and I always walked a lot. So it wasn't that I wasn't walking.

It was that I was walking, and I was also striking out. It fell a lot of balls off, get really deep in counts. And so, how do I not strike out? Conflat in my swing and try to hit that high pitch that I know I'm going to see, and then I can make a lot of contact earlier in the abat. I can swing more. So in doing that, I lost my ability to hit off speed and hit stuff low in the zone that I dominated.

I didn't really hit the high pitch anyway because it's almost impossible. It's like not easy to hit, right? It's just, there's a reason why guys are doing it. It's really tough. And I made a lot of contact early in the pads so I didn't walk as much. So I lost my strength of hitting the ball. The lower one, off speed pitches.

I lost my strength of getting on base and walking. And maybe I'm striking it a little bit less, but it's not that productive. So my adjustment was long-term, was, oh shit, if I can just foul that pitch off, I don't need to hit it. I don't need to dominate it. But if I can just foul that pitch off and get to the next pitch, like, I'll try not to swing at it before two strikes, because I know I'm not going to have success on it. And then if I can just, when I get the two strikes, I have a slightly different swing or a version

of my swing that can just touch it and get me to the next pitch. Well, then I can still focus on dominating my strengths. I'll still walk, I will actually strike out less, but I'm still gonna do the damage and just wait for that guy to make a mistake that I can actually hit. And that was like the big aha, it's like like I don't have to crush this hitch because nobody does

But if I just don't swing and miss at it or like as don't swing and miss out as much Like now now we're on to something and so that was kind of the you know And then you get a little bit better at a little bit better at than you you hit a couple of them or you clip a couple of them Get out of this counting aort and you have this effect. But it was also a lot more freeing for me to say, I don't have to crush it, I just have to be able to fall it off and get to the next pitch. That was a more freeing version of myself than the guy that's trying to absolutely demolish a pitch that he has no business swinging in.

I love the discipline of that, because first off, it's like, okay, there's this problem. So let's lay out statistically from an analysis perspective, everything that's happening, right? And then instead of just lurching from this to that, going, hey, okay, so the problem is this pitch specifically

and making it go away entirely or turning that negative into a positive entirely might be too tall and order, might be essentially an impossible task. But if I can just do this thing that mitigates it, that prevents it from being like a death sentence in the sense that it's leading to strikeouts, then you're getting a different opportunity that does play to one of your strengths. Ego would be like, I gotta do this impossible thing. I gotta magically get better at this thing

that nobody is good at. But I think wisdom and confidence goes, yeah, here's how I just stop that or send it off in the other direction. And then it puts me in a position where I can do what I'm good at doing. Yeah, I think what we talked about with leadership, like that's the, you know, the best leaders are the ones that can, you know, if an employee or the company is having a problem, can look at it, you know, three-dimensional way and not panic into, well, to be better, you must do the

thing that you're bad at. It's, let's look at it as this whole picture. And, you know, is there a smaller or more incremental change that we can make to make the entire picture look better. It took me a couple years to figure that out and a lot of searching within myself and trying a lot of trial and error, but and cost me some time and money in the big leagues, but you have to get there one way or the other.

It's amazing how simple it is. I think people are often surprised at the highest levels. How simple, solving huge problems are. I was reading about Russell Wilson, who had this high expectations for a great season. It does not go well. A bunch of reasons why. But Sean Payton, who may end up as the coach of the Broncos,

was sort of like, what would they were asked, he was asked, what would you do? And he was like, well, look, I'd look at every play over the last season, he said, throws of more than 30 yards or offensive plays over more than 30 yards, where it worked, right? Like, what are the ones that are working? And he's like, because some of them are working.

And he's like, once we know what's working, we can do more of what's working and a lot less of what isn't working. And you're like, wait, that's the solution to a guy who has a $250 million guaranteed contract. That's what the Broncos are gonna trade a first round draft pick for and you're gonna get paid $10 million a year for.

And it's like, yeah, that's literally how tough problems are solved. Like, what's working? Let's do more of that. And what's not working. Let's try to do less of that. The, I read this really good article from, I think it was the Harvard Business School or Harvard Business Review. And it was about total wolf and the way that the Mercedes AMG F1 team goes about failures and successes. And he talked about when the team has a success, instead of just celebrating and saying nice job and moving on, they look at why they were successful.

They always want to know why they were successful. What went well? What was the reason for that? Because it's really easy when something sucks and you have a shit week to go, what happened? What happened? We need to fix that. We need to fix the problem. You don't always look at the successes.

He said, for them, we need to know why we were good. We need to keep doing more of the reason why we were good so that we don't lose it. And you know, same thing, we have to evaluate the issues, but now our fix is going to be to do more of what went well instead of focusing so much on what the problem was. And I thought that was a fascinating way to look at an organization, especially an organization like that, that is, you know, a thousand people working on a car for two guys to drive. I think about that as a human being.

I go like, when am I happiest? Like, when do I feel like this is what I want my life to be? And then, going to our point about lagging indicators, what were the decisions or choices that led up to that being the case? And how do I do more of that, and less of the other stuff, right? And again, it seems basic, but then you ask people,

you're like, you know, well, why did you do X? Well, they paid me more money, and it's like, but you were less happy when you got that thing. It's like, so it's also, it's like, what are you optimizing for? Who are you trying to be? What do you want your life to look like? I think we can so often get caught up in the minutia of something. We just go, what should I do this or that?

And what we're not thinking about is like, where does that get us closer or further away from where we really ought to be? I also think there's a lot of following or there's a lot of, you know, there's, here's what it looks like as making other people happy. Here's what people around me are doing. So I'm just going to do that thing instead of having the, you know, whatever it is, confidence or looking inside and saying, well, maybe that thing isn't actually going to make me happy, but what do I value?

And if I really know what I value and the things that make me happiest and the things that lead me to kind of peace and clarity of mind, like those are the things that I want to put at the forefront and I don't need to be chasing all this other stuff. I think that's a pretty powerful way to look at happiness and just life overall as well. Yeah, there was a philosopher named Rene Gerrard. He said, basically, we don't, because we don't know what we want, we just want what other people want. And then we wonder why when we get there, there doesn't actually do anything for us.

And you find you go, man, yeah, I was following in the footsteps or emulating someone who is miserable or, you know, I would never want to trade places with. Like you've got to figure out, yes, sort of where you want to end up, what's actually important to you, even going to this thing about strikes, like knowing, hey, the kind of hitter I am is this kind of hitter. So if I'm trying to solve this problem, but it becomes, it comes at the expense of me not being able to be the kind of hitter that I'm world class at, like the cure is worse than the disease.

Yeah, then I shouldn't even try in the first place. I should just stay doing this thing. And that, yeah, I think that's, um, that's, it's more than half the battle. You know, that is the battle is having an understanding of what, you know, before you even start down the path of the journey is, is having an understanding of, you know, the whole picture and, and what does make you that, that person or that, that, that, the version

of yourself that you believe the most in. And, and that starts with, with really looking inside first. Yes, Seneca, one of the stoics, he said, tranquility or peace or, or equanimity, he said, is a sense of the path that you're on. And he said, and it's the ability not to be distracted by the paths that crisscross yours. He said, especially from those who are hopelessly lost. And I think you, I mean, I'm sure you've talked to some of the most successful people in their given fields. I think that's a common, a very common thread that I've seen is that these people that are at the highest level doing the most successful

things. There's people talking about it as like a focus or a laser focus, but it's really an understanding of like what they're doing in the path. And still having the ability to learn and be, you know, capable of discovery or understanding, but also being able to go, I see that, but it's not for me or it's not what I want to do right now. And being able to stay on that path, you know, I have teammates or people that I've been around and it's like they're so laser focused and give so much effort to that one thing. We only get to do what we get to do for 10, 15 years. Nobody plays players anymore. Yeah, nobody plays 20 years anymore. If you make it to 10 is an absolute miracle. 15,

they should give you, you should have a plaque somewhere. Yeah. Statue. Like that's where the game is right now. And so for us to be able to be completely and totally laser focused on that path and what that is. And then at the end, you get to look up and go, all right, I did that, but I say all the time, you know, this is something that it didn't start when I got drafted, you know, something I've worked towards since I was eight years old, and it's one of, if not the most important thing I'll ever do because of all the time and effort that I've put into it. Isn't that just a sort of an extension of what you were talking about earlier, which is

sort of pitch discipline, like which pitches to swing at, and which to pass you by entirely, which ones to maybe tip off a little bit, but knowing like, hey, my pitches are these three, and pretty much everything else is for everyone else and to have both the skill to be able to hit your pitches. But I think also the discipline and the sense of self, it doesn't matter that the announcer is like, why is an Ian swinging at that? Or even if your manager is like, what the fuck? To be like, no, that's not me, man. Or that's not even the best version

of the pitches that I look for. And I'm gonna let that go by. Yeah, and being okay with that. And because it's over, it is over the course of a game or a week or a month or the season. And like, if you can be okay, there's times when you're going to get fooled or the there's a first pitch fastball and you're looking for a slider and you know that the slider is the

right thing to do and you take it and then he throws another one and you're out too and then he gets you on something nasty and you go, you know what, I'm going to stick to my plan. You got me, but I know if I do that over the course of 600 of bats this year, I'm going to be okay. And if I chase, if the guy throws me a first pitch fastball, and then I chase the next one, chase the next one over the quarter of 300 bats, it's going to be pretty ugly. So if I can just stay in that process and really have that total belief that you might have got me this time, but the next time it's, I'm going to come in and do the same thing and more times than that, I'm going to have success. That consistency breeds success and I really believe that.

But what about not being greedy? I had Stephen Rinella, the hunter on the podcast a while ago, and he had a rule that I think about often both hunting and in life. He says, never pass on something on the first day of the hunt that you would be happy to get on the last day of the hunt, right? Because you're like, oh, I'm waiting for something bigger, better, easier. But you've got something pretty damn good in front of you right now. Yeah, I like that a lot. I think that that I think especially in baseball, you know, whether it's a place that you're playing or, or, you know, guys that get to the big leagues and have a chance to play and and it's never enough or they're never, you know, never happy with

the position you're in. You know, there's a good chance that you could look back on that and say, shit, when I was, you know, when we had that team in 17, they made that playoff run, like that was pretty fucking good. And like, you know, I walked away from that or I didn't take it all in while I was there. And I think, you know, that's, you know, to me living in the moment and being like super appreciative

of what we get to do every day is part of that. And like, I really, over the last couple of years, for sure, with way to team in 21, I played with the guys for five, six years, got broken up a little bit. And I had a moment last year where I thought I might get traded and was able to really step back and go like, hey, this place has been pretty special to me. I'm an insider being like salty or miserable that that might happen. I'm going to really step back and go like, hey, this place has been pretty special to me. I'm an instead of being like salty or miserable that that might happen.

Like I'm going to really enjoy, you know, what could have been my last couple weeks or months and say, like this is pretty special place. So I'm lucky to have done it. And I think that that, you know, maybe it doesn't apply exactly to pitch selection day to day. Maybe sometimes it does because you could have hit the fastball down the middle on the first pitch. And you didn't. But I also think that if you, you does, because you could have hit the fastball down the middle on the first pitch and you didn't. But I also think that if you step back and second guess it, you're probably gonna be in a worse spot

kind of comes back to what we were talking about earlier, but that more in the general life sense of being appreciative of what's around you and what you get to do on a daily basis. When I was thinking of his advice when I was just renegotiating a contract for what will be my next two books. And I was like, okay, we could do the deal now

or we could wait until this thing comes out and this thing comes out and the sales are higher. And I was talking to my agent, I was like, let's say everything goes right. And we're in this ideal better situation, 18 months from now or 24 months from now. I was like, how much more are we talking about? And he's like 10%? And I was like, sign the papers.

You know what I mean? What I have is good. And it's not even taking risk off the table. It's like, if you would ask me a few years ago, if I'd ever be in this circumstance, I would have jumped on it in three seconds. I'm not going to get greedy here and I'm not going to cause drama and complications, intention in my life optimizing for money, which wasn't even the reason I got into this thing to begin with.

Yeah, the goalposts are always moving. As things get better and you have more success, the goalposts move, it's interesting for us. Some of that too is, the guys that came before us, pushed the marketplace forward. Yeah. No, and then, and there's some, there's some of it that is thinking about, you know, yourself and your happiness and what's going to, and there's guys that, that want security, and

that's awesome, and security, and taking care of yourself and your family is a big deal. There's guys that want to push the marketplace forward and want to bet on themselves and really think like you haven't seen the best of me yet or get some kind of offer put in front of them and it's almost disrespectful. And then there's a part of it that is, hey man, I'm going to go out and do my best to push this whole thing forward. So those guys that come behind me have a better place to start from and can use me as a leverage point to make the next deal. And so for us, there's all those things that come into it. But I will never fault someone for taking care of themselves

and their family. I want to make some happy. And I think that that's a security in what we do is a very powerful thing. No, it's the same way in my industry, which is like, first off, you should always get paid with your worth. Second of all, you don't know how long you get to do it. So you want to get to a place where you don't have to think

about that anymore. And that's usually by getting something guaranteed or something big up front. It's just sort of after that point, you know, are you optimizing for every single dollar, even though you don't actually care about that or need it, or are you optimizing for what's actually important to you in life, or what actually means something to you. And it can just be so easy. You're like, this is a contract, or this is an amount of money,

I want it to be more, right? Or I need it to go higher. And you're not really asking why. You're just thinking, well, it's because more is always better. But is it always better and, you know, you know, why do you feel that way? I was talking to a college coach the other day and he was telling me, he's like, my main thing every year was like, was I in the top 10 of the highest paid coaches?

He's like, that's how I judged whether I was successful, whether my agent was successful and he's like, what a terrible way to measure your career. You know what I mean? He's like, that's not what matters. I mean, obviously he wants to get as big a contract and as guaranteed a contract as possible. That's just basic self-interest. But like, how are you measuring your life, and what are you prioritizing for?

That's really what matters. If you're at 12 or at nine, is it really that big of a difference? But I recently had this kind of experience last year going through a contract negotiation with an equipment provider. And looking at, all right, there's a big number or for what is equipment in baseball.

There's a big number over here, but I don't really like that thing. Like I don't actually want to use that. And I might be actually uncomfortable using that. I don't need to sign that big contract, but I have this other thing over here that is much smaller, but I'm actually gonna like using that product

and like I'm gonna be comfortable, it's gonna feel good. I know that I've used it in the past and have liked it and making that decision to be more comfortable and to give up the dollars, it was kind of the first time, it definitely was the first time that I could work for an equipment deal that I had really done that. And it was like, it was a product of one,

like actually making more money to play baseball. And so that dollar amount didn't matter as much. But also like, you know, like this is the right thing to do. And the right thing is to leave some money on the table to go with the thing that I like. And like my brother and I have done a lot of stuff off the field together with different things, coffee company or equity investors and a bunch of different stuff and negotiating small field deals. And getting to that point of like, let's do the things

that we really want to do that we have an interest in and isn't always like a grab on making sure that because those things that you're the most interested and care the most about are the ones that you'll put the most time and energy into and will be the most fulfilling. When it's like, if you can't say no, right, how successful or rich or powerful are you, right? Like no one's putting a gun to your head, but if there's something in you that can't say,

I don't really wanna do that, and I don't actually need to do that, like to feed my family, and there's no like charitable cause that I was gonna give that, there's no one charitable cause that I was gonna give that. There's no one benefiting from this, except for the balance in my bank account that, you know, there's no one benefiting here but the bank, right?

And the IRS. And you still can't say no to that because there's some fundamental insecurity or scarcity mindset in you. Like, you're not really that successful, right? Like you're, you're, you might be on paper compared to most people, you know, in this extremely strong position,

but you're actually quite weak and vulnerable because in your mind, you don't see yourself that way. Yeah, and there's a lot, there's definitely a lot of freedom in the ability to be able to say no and to be happy with whatever it is, whether it's what you have or giving up some of that, like the freedom of that and is so much more powerful than the chasing of the alternative.

Yeah, or it's like, yeah, if you literally can't, even though you make a ton of money in what you do, you can't say no to overtime or to this business travel thing or whatever, because your nut is so high, right? Because you're spending like crazy, you're living beyond your means. That gets you to the same place, which is like, it might be very nice slavery, but you're a slave to your appetites, basically. They have forced you to stay in the harness longer than you would like to. And yeah, a lot of people are in that position.

And there's no one's fault, but they're all. Yeah. but they're out. Yeah, and I think it's, yeah, it's part of that, being able to either be okay with what you have or to think, if you know that your process is right, like if you know, like, hey, I know that I'm doing, of all of these things I'm doing, like I'm putting a lot of time and energy into this off the field thing or this pursuit or this pursuit.

And it's okay for me to give up on this other thing or to take a little bit less than this other thing for happiness. If you're insecure and you don't believe that the process you have is right or that you are doing the right things, I think that is where the insecurity comes in of you can't take less than every single dollar because there isn't that. That's the measure of yourself as opposed to being fulfilled with the rest of it. Yeah, I mean, it goes right to what we're saying about placenta. If you know the path you're on, you're not distracted by every off ramp.

You're not like, why could go over here? And I could go over here. You're like, this is the off season. The off season is for me. It's not for filling up with, you know, it's not for filling up by saying yes to literally every request that I get. Yep, I've done a lot of that.

The, there is definitely, there's definitely yes to a lot of things and then sometimes you look back and you have three weeks that are just slammed and you go, God, I shouldn't know. Maybe I shouldn't have said yes to every single thing. Maybe sometimes myself would have been nice. Yes, yes, you, you, and then hopefully you get a little better going forward. Sometimes the only way you can learn, man, I shouldn't have said yes to that,

is by saying yes a bunch of times and going, why, wait, why did I agree to this? Why am I here? And then I'm gonna do a little bit better next time. Yeah, it is always a learning process, that's for sure. Well, man, this was so awesome. And I really appreciate it. I'm a big fan and I'm glad we got to do. I'm glad you said yes to this interview so thank you. Yeah this was a blast thank you.

Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.