The 10 Principles That Fuel Performance

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the A-Game podcast where I help you bring your best to be your best. I’m your host Steven Griffith and today’s episode is all about how to be at your A-Game in all areas of life: in your business, relationships, your career, your health and fitness, any place you want to excel. In today’s ultra-competitive, always-connected world, the pressure to perform at our peak has never been greater. We’re facing tremendous levels of stress, anxiety, and unprecedented challenges like never before. Today I’m here to help you close that performance gap between where you are and where you want to be.

In this episode, I will cover the 10 A-Game principles to help you consistently perform at your best. These insights will not only guide you toward reaching your goals but will also help you create a more meaningful, confident, and relevant life. By the end of this episode, you will have gained valuable insights and actionable tools to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be. You’ll leave with a clear road map to enhance your performance in all areas of life. Let’s get into it.

Okay, here are the 10 A-Game principles for you to be at your best:
Number one: The ability to be present.
Two: Consistently being confident.
Three: Having an optimistic mindset.
Four: Knowing your why and your purpose.
Number five: Willingness to be uncomfortable.
Six: Ability to receive feedback.
Seven: Regularly analyzing your performance.
Eight: Focusing on progress, not perfection.
Nine: Being self-compassionate.
Ten: Knowing how to manage and perform with time.

And at the end of this episode, I will give you a bonus that will connect all these principles together to next-level your performance. Let’s get started.

Principle number one: The ability to be present. In my world, number one is number one. It is literally the foundation of all the other principles. And in this world of 24/7 connectivity, where our technology and our world is actually trying to steal our attention and our time and our focus, your ability to be present, if you’re an athlete, an executive, a student, is in direct relationship to your performance. A quote that I’ve been saying for many, many years is this: the more present you are, the higher you perform. And so this principle number one is all about the concept of mindfulness. What is mindfulness? Being present and aware in the moment right now with a sense of curiosity and with no judgment. And it’s really just being where your feet are. We’re in this world of multitasking and distractions of Instagram and social media that we’re training our brain not to be present. And what’s happening is for most people, with the high levels of stress and anxiety and just wanting to get all these things done, they’re usually, we’re usually in the past thinking about what went wrong, how we could have done things differently, or in the future worrying about the future. And what we need to do is actually be here in the moment now.

So the key to being present, to being mindful, when we learn to stop multitasking and texting and talking on our phone in our cars, we have more cognitive ability. We have our mind present, we have emotion regulation, and we increase our performance. And ultimately, in the practice of mindfulness, we start training ourselves to respond versus unconsciously reacting. And one of the best tools to train your mind and your body to be present is through meditation. Uh, in my last book, The Time Cleanse, and we’ll have a link to this in the show notes, I talk about meditation and how it impacts our brain. It creates a stronger neural connection to the different areas of our mind. We become happier, more focused, we’re more resilient. And so the simple practice of a couple of minutes of meditation daily can change how we focus. We create a state of mindfulness that over practice, over time in practicing it, becomes a state, a way of being. Mindfulness and meditation is very simple. It’s a simple focusing on your breath with your eyes open or closed and just allowing yourself to be present with what is. And if we get distracted by a thought or emotion, we just come back to our breath. Like I said, in the show notes, I’m going to have a guided meditation available for you, but meditation is the key.

So the solution to being present in the moment: it’s number one, stop multitasking. Also, start shutting off all the dings, the rings, and the beings on your phone and your computers. These constant distractions are training our brain not to be present, right? And so also start meditating and taking breaks daily just to check in to see where you’re at. Be where your feet are.

Principle number two: Consistently being confident. You know, from all the clients that I work with, from, you know, junior athletes to professional athletes, executives, entrepreneurs, this is really the number one thing people want is to be consistently more confident. You know, what is confidence? Confidence is the ability, knowing that you have the belief and the ability to do things, to take on new challenges. And it’s also having the knowledge and the belief that you can figure things out even if you don’t know how to do it. And so confidence really is the key for your best performance. So what I ask my clients when I start working with them or teams is, where does confidence come from? So I want you to think about that for a second. Where does confidence come from for you? Here’s the answers that I hear all the time: preparation, practice, previous success. Those are all super important and we do want to practice, we do want to have success. But ultimately, the missing key for most people, and this is a game changer, is what you say in the moment. I’m going to say that again. It’s what you’re telling yourself when you’re in that board meeting, when you’re in the free-throw line, when, you know, you’re in that school play, when you’re taking a test. What are you telling yourself? Are you saying, I’m not sure, I can’t do this, it’s too hard, I always screw up? Or, I got this, I can do this, let’s go for it, I believe in myself? That internal dialogue is the absolute most important skill that you can develop. And you know, ultimately, you know, having that in your tool, your A-Game toolbox is what you need. So the solution is monitor that inner dialogue and develop those positive internal phrases to feed yourself in those moments. To develop your craft, you got to practice, you got to prepare. Ultimately though, you’ve got to have that positive internal dialogue that feeds you and drives your motivation and your confidence.

Principle number three: Having an optimistic mindset. What is an optimistic mindset? It’s very, very simple. It’s a mindset that is looking for the best outcome and still is realistic. It’s not just everything through rose-colored glasses, it’s looking for the best potential outcome. You know, our brain, interestingly enough, our caveman brain has got a bit of a default setting to look for things that are wrong, look for the potential roadblocks or blind spots, and that’s okay, but we don’t want most of our time focused on what could go wrong or what has gone wrong in the past. And so we really want to be focused on this mindset of being optimistic. So there’s a three-step process that’s very simple and is very, very effective, and I’m going to take you through these three steps to reframe how you look at things in an optimistic way.
Number one: Focus, focus, focus on what you can control. This is so important. So many people are listening to the news and social media and things you cannot control. It will eat up your time, it’ll eat up your energy. So number one, and I always suggest you take a pen and paper, write this down, is write down what can I control? What can I control? If you’re in sales, you can control what you say on a sales call, who you call. You can’t control if they’re picking up the phone. You can’t control what they’re going to say or do. You can control your energy. If you’re an athlete, you can’t control what pitch is being thrown at you if you’re playing baseball or what the ump’s going to do. You can control your mindset, you can control your skills. So that’s number one.
Number two: Focusing on what is good. I’m going to say this again, what is good? Ah, wow, I feel I got good energy today. I made some good sales calls and a couple swings at those pitches, you know, whatever it is. You know, I delivered my lines on stage correctly. You know, I’ve got food and shelter and water. I mean, it’s really breaking it down to focusing on what’s going good in my life or more particular, in your performance, whatever you’re doing, if it’s in your relationship, your business, athletics, writing that down, putting your energy on that.
Okay, now here’s the truth to this. Sometimes we get caught in a spot and man, nothing seems like it’s good. We’ve all been there. I’ve been there. I’ve been there for days, weeks, and truthfully even months where I was just focusing on what was going wrong and why I wasn’t at the place I wanted to be. So when we get in that place, there’s a next step and it’s real simple: what could be good if I do X? What is X? Um, you know, what, you’re not in the best physical shape that you want to be in, and so, you know, things could be good if I lost 20 pounds. Things could be good if, you know, I made that next sales call. Things could be good if I had that difficult conversation and realigned my relationship. This turns our brain into an optimistic place, a hopeful place, and it’s one of the simplest things we can do to reframe everything. Because when we change the way we look at things, what we look at changes. That was a quote from one of my early mentors, Wayne Dyer. Uh, it’s it’s really a powerful quote. So we’ve got to reframe things in a way where we’re looking at things optimistically and hopefully. And so the solution is number one is just make a decision you’re going to be optimistic. If you’re one of those people that you seem to look at the negativity in things, all change starts with the decision. So we want to reframe that and go through those steps.

Principle number four: Knowing your why/your purpose. What is your why? Why is the purpose or cause, the driving motivation for action, to being relevant to yourself in the world? What does that mean? It’s it’s really the hard drive of your brain, right? And the why creates the motivation. It’s why you’re doing what you’re doing. And understanding that is the key to your motivation, but more importantly, it’s key to being relevant. What is relevance? My one of my mentors, Tom Knolles, uh, Maharishi Tom Knolles, uh, a Vedic meditation guru who I’ve studied under for many, many years, you know, he told me this five or 10 years ago, he said, Stephen, the whole key is this: it’s not to chase happiness, it’s not to chase success, it’s to connect to your relevance. How can you be relevant? And he went on to explain to me that relevance is really simple: connecting to your gifts and talents for the need of the time. So connecting to what you are brilliant at, what your gifts and talents are, to what we need in the time. And as we focus on relevance, we will have happiness, we will have success. So having that why, understanding why we’re doing what we’re doing, creates this deep motivational center. It connects to ultimately what your purpose is. So the why really is the um, your purpose identified. It’s what your purpose is underneath it. And without it, we let the outside world dictate our actions. But when we have our why, we live an inside-out life and we’re no longer affected by the news or our friends or social media. We know our purpose and gives meaning to everything we do. Also directs and guides our time, directs and guides our time. And we want to be clear on this so we use our time effectively. Helps our motivation and ultimately becomes our GPS to focus on where we need to go. If you don’t have your why, you’re letting the outside world dictate where you’re spending your time, money, and energy.

So the why is an exercise that I wrote about in my book, The Time Cleanse. There’s a step-by-step process in there. Uh, when I’m with people and when working with individuals and they have a goal, remember in the opening I said taking you from where you are to you want to be? Part of that is understanding what your why is. And that why is very simple. So if you have a goal, and I’ll give you an example of an executive I had recently, and his goal was to lose 20 pounds, right? High-level executive, stressed out like many of us are. And uh, you know, I asked him, so, you know, why do you want to lose this weight? And his response was, you know, I just want to feel better, right? A reasonable response, but it’s not the real response. And so the exercise is every time you give yourself, or in this case, someone gives an answer, you ask, why is that important? So I continued to ask why it was important. He said, you know, I can have more time with my family so I can uh have more energy. And then I kept going deeper and I was, why is that important? Then here it came. You know, when he grew up, his father had passed away very early on and he had missed out on many, many years, and he didn’t want that to happen to his family and his kids. He wanted to be there. And you could see the light turn on for him as soon as he saw that. Now we’ve got a deep motivational center. Now we’ve got movement. Um, recently, uh, the last couple years, I’ve been working with, um, you know, a group of NFL players the last couple seasons that are going into the combine. And in that time, you know, my job is to help them get their mindset right for the combine, for all the tests, but also their interviews. And so one of the exercises I always do with the players is the why exercise of why are you playing football? And you can see the first, once again, surface answers, take care of my family, but then you get, you can see them connecting deeply what football means to them. And that’s important in those interviews cuz that’s one of the the biggest job interviews you’re going to have, they’re going to have in their career. And so connecting to that why is a driving force for your optimism, your hope, and where you’re putting your time and energy.

So what’s the solution? Identify your why and then post it so you can see it daily to keep that high level of motivation going. So the solution is, first of all, get to your why, your little goals and your big goals. If you know your why, that’s going to drive your motivation. And then once you’ve identified it, taking you through the process, then you want to post it. I like old school Post-it notes. Put it places where you’re going to see to be reminded why you’re doing what you’re doing. And it’s really important in the difficult times, that why will have you do the things you don’t want to do when you don’t want to do them.

Principle number five: Willingness to be uncomfortable. This, out of many of these principles – I keep saying they’re my favorite, they’re all my favorite – this one is an absolute must. You know, we have a society today that is really designed to make things as easy as possible, super comfortable. We’ve got Starbucks in every corner for your coffee. We’ve got a phone that can pretty much do anything. And we’re in this world that continues to create comfort and comfort, and that’s awesome. The flip side of it, it also makes us soft. It also stops us from growing. We need to get better at doing hard things. You know, when I work with young athletes and their families, one of the things that I’m always discussing is this concept of resilience, getting their kids more resilient. And that means having, you know, some failures or what I would call perceived failures, right? Having them push themselves, not always being protected. You know, the the old metaphor of the caterpillar, right? Uh, you know, trying to become that butterfly. It’s in that sac, it’s pushing, it’s struggling. Um, it’s it’s moving its body to get the fluid into the wings so it can fly. You poke that sac, that thing dies. So we have to start creating more and more resilience in what we do. And so doing things that are uncomfortable, what does it do? It expands our potential. It sees who we really are, not who we’ve been programmed to be by maybe our family or society, but who we really are. It shows us what we’re capable of. It creates that grit. See, consciously doing things that are hard prepares us for when life just comes at us and wasn’t in our control. Now we’ve got the skill set to take on those big challenges because we’re all going to have them. I’ve had them, you’ve had them, more are coming, as well as the good stuff.

So you know, when we’re looking at this, we’ve got to continue to expand. Now I want to go back to a Vedic principle that is important here. And the Vedic principle in life is that we have three conditions or operators. And number one is is, um, in these three is the destruction operator. Number two is the maintenance operator. Number three is what we call the creation operator. And the principle in the Vedic is that in our life, in these different areas, we’re in one of these three places. And so the goal is when we want to expand, we want to expand, we’ve got to do difficult things. And so that’s where we get into the creation operator. We’re creating new neural connections, we’re creating new possibilities. And when we’re in that regular life, we’re in the maintenance. And if we stop pushing ourselves, we start falling into the destruction operator. And the destruction operator is when we pay the price of not moving forward, when we’re not looking at how our business is changing, how our relationships are changing, what we need to do athletically or physically. We get in that status quo of maintenance, but maintenance doesn’t stay maintenance. It starts going into destruction. So the goal from the Vedic philosophy is to continue to work from maintenance to creation, maintenance and creation. And you know, there’s percentages of it, right? We’re not 100% in any of these, but we want to have the majority of our energy in that maintenance to creation so we continue to expand and keep being relevant.

So solution. So the solution for me is is really simple. I’ve got an ice bath at home and every time I look at that ice bath, I have to have this conversation with me, with myself, is to get in there cuz that first 30 seconds, I don’t care how, I’ve been doing this for a long time, it is uncomfortable. I’ve got to get my mind going and going, you can do it, jump into it. Doesn’t have to be an ice bath, could be. It could be a cold shower, it could be fasting for a day, it could be having a difficult conversation with a loved one, be talking to strangers, a hard workout. Do something daily. This is how I like to look at it: have the majority of your life comfortable and then with your own volition, pick something difficult and it will keep expanding you into the creation mode.

Principle number six: The hidden jewel of the 10 principles, ability to receive feedback. Now this is a personal one for me. You know, I played sports from 8 to about 24. Uh, started with baseball and then it was baseball, basketball, football, and then in college, I became an amateur boxer. Football was really my college sport. And when I started coaching these A-Game principles to junior athletes and professional athletes, something really became evident for me: nobody ever taught me how to receive feedback. Hey, think about it. You’re in sports, you’re learning, and no one ever shared actually how to receive feedback. It’s the fastest way to get better. And then as I started coaching juniors to professional athletes, in all my interviews with thousands of athletes, nobody has raised their hand when I said, has anyone taught you how to receive feedback? So today, this is the jewel, the hidden jewel. We’re going to talk about how to receive feedback.

So number one, it’s not just about receiving feedback, it’s receiving it and then having the ability to implement it, right? We want to get that feedback so we can actually get better. And to be in your A-Game, you have to, you know, get that information. So we’ve got to seek it. We got to seek it from trusted sources, and we also got to seek it from ourselves, being honest about how we’re performing, right? Being honest about it. When you’re getting feedback, number one is we don’t want to defend ourselves or our actions. Two, we don’t want to explain ourselves. And three, we don’t want to rationalize when we’re getting it. Now there may be an opportunity to talk to your coach or to yourself about what’s going on, but we want to actually receive it so we can implement it. Now, a little side note to this: not all feedback is true. You heard it here, not all feedback is true. Now, if you’re getting that feedback on a regular basis, you may want to pay attention to it. Lastly on this principle, you’ve got to learn how to regulate your emotions and your mind to actually receive it. You know, when I was an athlete, making a mistake, I never thought was normal and I would beat myself up, right? And then my coach or a teammate would come over and try to give me the information, and my head was so filled with negative personal criticism, I couldn’t even hear it. And so my ability to implement those changes was difficult. Failing is normal. There’s an old saying, fail forward. It’s normal. Once we normalize that this is going on, we can receive it, we can receive it.

So what’s the solution? Number one, get in the regular practice of regulating your emotions: breath work, abilities to ground yourself, stabilizing your nervous system, reframing the experiences. And then when you do that, um, allow the information to come in. Don’t defend it, as we talked about. Just take it in and then decide, does this ring true for me? Do I want to do something about it? But this principle, once you start implementing it, is a game changer because it’s going to compress time and you’re going to accelerate your results.

Principle number seven: Regularly analyzing your performance. Now this dovetails perfectly with principle six, receiving feedback and implementing it. You’ve got to know what’s working and what’s not working in your life. Once again, if you’re in business, if you’re a mom or dad at home, you know, if you’re an athlete, you’ve got to know how you’re doing. And one of the things that I do with everyone that I work with, athletes, not athletes, is what we call an A-Game performance evaluation. And what I will have an athlete do or an executive is have them tell me about a performance, an event, a situation where they were at their A-Game, their best. And we go through different categories: what was your mindset? What was your inner dialogue? What was your emotion, your energy, your body language? Then we look at a time when they had a low performance, same thing, and we noticed the differences. And you know, one of the NFL players I work with, Ka’imi Fairbairn, um, Texans kicker, uh, I did this when I first started working with him, and I’ve been working with him for four seasons. And for football fans, you know, recently, actually last night, um, he became the Houston Texans all-time leading scorer, uh, won the game as well with a 59-yard field goal with no time on the clock. And then the first two games of the season, he kicked six 50-plus field goals, uh, an NFL record as well. But I remember when we first met, he hired me four or five years ago, and my initial assessment, we went through this A-Game analysis, and this is what he said afterwards. He goes, my whole career, I’ve never sat down and really looked at this. This is so powerful for me to focus on what I need to do to get in my A-Game. And here’s the second part that’s super, super important: is understanding where the differences are. If you start having negative internal dialogue, your emotion starts changing, your body language starts shifting, then we can shift back. So it’s not only knowing what it is to prepare yourself, it’s also to reset, and if you’re starting to shift, to come back, to come back.

So regularly looking at your performance. And you know, a real simple thing to do is what I call an after-performance evaluation, is at the end of your workday, end of your practice, uh, end of a day parenting or coaching kids, whatever it is, is real simple three questions: What specifically went well with my effort and my result? Number two: What specifically were any challenges with my effort or results or any areas I want to get better? And then three: What tools do I have mentally, physically to get better the next time we go out? Now, uh, I’m going to be doing several follow-up podcasts, um, specific performance tools. Today is really the 10 principles, so we’re going to dive deep here in these next episodes on the tools to actually take these concepts to the next level.

Principle number eight: Focusing on progress, not perfection. Uh, this is an area that is one of those, we, it appears to be like a smaller principle. Uh, there’s an old saying, you know, small hinges swing big doors, and this is one of them. You know, if we get caught up in only focusing on being perfect, we’re missing all these micro-changes and it affects our performance. So taking the attitude that, you know, whatever I’m doing, I want to put in my attention on, am I progressing? Am I getting better even in the smallest, right? Two more minutes on the treadmill, 30 more seconds on meditation, one more positive rep, one extra sales call, right? Being patient 10 more seconds, it doesn’t matter. We really, really want to focus on how I am making progress. And which leads us to the principle of like the 1% better. Many of you I’m sure have heard, you know, the principle of 1% better, and it’s just putting your attention, can I get 1% better? What does that mean in 30 days? Well, you could do the math, 30% better. And so the part of this that’s also very important is what’s happening in the brain, right? It’s giving hope, it’s giving optimism, it’s giving motivation. And when I see the athletes and executives and entrepreneurs take this on, they look back and in short periods of time, there’s big results.

Now the opposite of this is, you know, beating yourself up on perfection. Well, here’s what happens when we’re hypercritical, and we’re going to get deeper into this soon in self-compassion, it’s a cortisol event, right? Negative stress hormones come in, it affects our energy, our focus, our motivation. So there’s also a chemical reaction taking place when we’re always looking at that perfection. Also, it’s not fun. Nothing’s ever good enough. It’s just not good enough. So we want to have fun in the process. And so having this philosophy, especially for young people, is really important. You know, one other philosophy that’s in the Japanese culture, it’s called the Kaizen method, I want to share with you. It’s very similar to this 1% better. It’s small changes, right? Small changes for big results. You know, in Toyota’s company years ago, they had this Kaizen method, and it’s one of the reasons why, you know, early in the Japanese manufacturing of Toyota cars, they exploded in sales because everyone was focused on what are the small things going to make our product better. So solution for this, really simple: focus on what went well, be grateful for what went well, and continue to look at that 1%. Can I get 1% better? Your motivation is going to be stronger, you’re going to get better results, and you’re going to be happier.

Principle number nine: Self-compassion. Now each one of these principles have a special place in my heart. Um, this one is way up there. What is self-compassion? Uh, I call it self-compassion or your positive inner coach. It’s real simple. It’s being there for yourself in the face of setback, adversity, and perceived failures, um, like a good friend would be, being in your corner versus being hypercritical. Now I’m going to jump right into why this is so important. We know from all the research that the more self-compassionate you are, the higher you perform. I ask many of my clients when I start working with them, you know, how do you treat a friend when they have a problem? And the majority of them will say kind, soft language, comfort, loving. And then I asked them, well, how do you treat yourself? And pretty much 99% of the time, we treat ourselves much worse than a good friend, much worse than a good friend. And so this concept of self-compassion, being there in your corner, for me in the last 5 years has been the number one biggest change I’ve seen for myself and my executive entrepreneurs, NFL professional athletes, and young athletes. The biggest tool for change, the biggest tool for change.

So why do people resist being there for themselves? Well, there’s a couple reasons. Number one, a lot of people think, you know, being self-compassionate will reduce their edge, will make them soft, be self-indulgent. It’s completely the opposite. As I’ve already said, we know from research self-compassion increases performance. We take bigger risks in our life, we go for it in a bigger way, and we recover faster when things don’t go our way. And the opposite of being self-compassionate is hypercritical. I grew up as an athlete hypercritical and nothing was ever good enough. Even when it was good, it wasn’t good enough, back to that progress versus perfection, right? And so if we’re not compassionate, we’re not there like a good friend, here’s what can happen, right? As we continue to go for it, and we know that if we fail or we don’t live up to our expectations, we’re going to beat ourselves up. And if you’re like me in any way, I really knew how to beat myself up. We’re going to stop going for it. And it may just start a little bit, I’m just going to go 95% or I’m just going to get going at 80%. Why? We want to play it safe. We want to have perceived wins. We don’t want to get uncomfortable. Why? Cuz then we’re not going to beat ourselves up. But if we know we’re going to beat ourselves up, we stop trying. So this is one of the keys to this, is that we want to be able to be there for ourselves and to support ourselves like a good friend. And when we do this, we start expanding our uncomfortableness and we have greater potential.

Now I was introduced to this concept about five years ago through the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion. Uh, Kristin Neff and Chris Germer are the two um founders of that, and uh, that’s that’s where I learned this, uh, went through their teaching program, I’ve added some things to it. So let me take you through the three steps plus the bonus step that I’ve added to the research on how to be self-compassionate, how to be there for yourself. Oh, by the way, uh, we know from research as well, the more compassionate we are for ourselves, the more we have for others. We got a bonus there. All right, number one in the process of being compassionate is the concept of mindfulness, right? First of all, understanding that you’re having a difficult time and with that, not overidentifying with that perceived failure or setback and also not dissociating. So we just want to just be with it in a friendly way. Okay, I’ve got a challenge right now, things are challenging. That’s number one.
Number two, and this was a big one for me. This is of the three that I’m going to share with you, probably the most impactful. And it’s what we call common humanity. And as a coach, I felt for many years that no matter what problem happened, I should solve it. I should have the ability. And when I was struggling or I couldn’t get through some things or it was taking longer, I would just beat myself up because I thought, well, I’m a coach, I should know everything. What I forgot is I’m also a human being, just like you, you’re a human being. And whatever struggle you’re going through, whatever setback you’re going through, it’s a human experience. Other people are going through it. And when we do that, see, when we’re not looking at this thing about common humanity, we go outside of the tribe, we isolate. And that’s where shame, I’m going to say that again, that’s where shame starts to rise. But when we come back into the tribe and understand, man, just having a human experience, I’m normal, our nervous system calms. The other thing that I’ll add to the self-compassion is we know it activates the parasympathetic nervous system, it calms our nervous system down, so that’s also a benefit.
And step three is self-kindness in actions and in words. So self-kindness is how we’re actually talking to ourselves in that moment. What are the words? Is it, you suck, you’re not good enough, this always happens? Or, you can do this, I’m here for you. And so some of the common phrases that you can use for this are phrases like, may I be at ease? May I be safe? May I be at peace? May I be loved? May I connect to my goodness? May I have the courage to push through in difficult times? Now you might be saying to yourself, why is he saying ‘may I’? Well, the ‘may I’ is like an invitation to the brain, right? Like an invitation to the brain. It allows the potential to receive it versus the, you know, a strict affirmation. And so we don’t need to be restricted to it, but this is a really positive way to do this.
Now I’ve added one step um to the three steps that I learned, and here’s why. I call it the performance step, and it’s really simple. You go through the mindfulness step, the common humanity, and the self-kindness. And then step four is and. After you’ve calmed your nervous system down, this is the same thing with, how do we receive feedback? Once it’s calmed down, right? Now we want to look at the learnings, the teachings, the understandings, the strategies that we just learned from that setback or that perceived failure. And then we want to get back into whatever it is, if it’s athletics, if it’s our business, get back in there with the new teachings and learnings. Cuz I mean, that’s how we’re going to get better, right? We’ve got to try things, we’ve got to expand things, got to expand.

I’ve taught self-compassion to NFL players. I have a client who is a softball player, she uh is at a Division I school, and one of the greatest successes she’s had, and she’s been all-conference, great player, is I remember after a session she told me, you know, I struck out a few times. And before she finished that, and she goes, and here’s the thing, I didn’t beat myself up. And the fourth time I was up to plate, I got a triple. And you could see the the light in her eyes that she didn’t give up on herself, right? That in a difficult time, she was like, okay, I can do this, just get back at it, right? And she was successful. That was a huge win for me to see a young person, right, have the skills to self-soothe, to be there for themselves. Because right, what, sports is a metaphor for a lot of things in life, right? And the more we can be there for ourselves in those difficult times, the more, first of all, we’re going to be an exemplar, an example for our kids, our colleagues, our friends, to keep going, to be the best we can, to be relevant, and to stay on that track. Cuz we’re human. And this world of social media and Instagram where everything seems perfect, it’s even more pressure and it brings even more of this, something’s wrong with me, when we see these distorted views of life. It’s not how it is. Life is not Instagram.

So the solution, really simple: use the steps. Be aware when there’s a setback, uh, there’s a perceived failure, things didn’t go your way, go through the steps. Like I said, we’re going to do a deeper episode on this. We’re going to link an article I wrote in the show notes on self-compassion and the steps you can go deeper.

Principle number 10: Knowing how to perform with time. Now a lot of people will talk about this as managing time. When I wrote my book, The Time Cleanse, by McGraw Hill, this is one of the key principles that I wrote about to change the paradigm about time. Olympic athletes don’t go to the Olympics to try to manage things, they want to perform. And it’s the same thing with time. It’s the number one excuse people have for not doing, being, and having is, I don’t have enough time. It’s also, in my opinion, the most important relationship you have. I’m going to say that again. The most important relationship you have is the relationship you have with time. You see, time allows you to do what matters. Without time, you can’t do what matters, can’t, you can’t do the things that matter: spend time with your family, your hobby, your work, the things that allow you to be relevant. The first question I have is, what is your relationship with time? Do you feel like time’s on your side, you got plenty of it? Or do you think you’re, or do you feel that you’re fighting time, there’s never enough? Just think about that for a second. Well, here’s my experience interviewing thousands and thousands of people: the majority of people feel like they have an adversarial or negative relationship with time. And it’s a mindset shift. I know this may seem crazy to you. Um, if you want to go deeper, get into The Time Cleanse book, I lay it out, but I’m going lay it out right now for you. It’s this: there is plenty of time. And when you start understanding the principles of time, which I’m going to share with you, and start removing some of the toxic things in your life and you start recovering time, there’s an abundance of it.

I mean, I want you to think about it. If you woke up in the morning and you felt like there was no food, right? There was no food anywhere. And all day long, you kept saying, there’s no food, there’s no food. What’s going to happen? You’re going to feel hungry, you’re going to be focusing on food. It’s the same thing with time. And so we want to shift our mindset that there is enough time. And that all goes down to what you are telling yourself in the moment, in the moment. Now it’s not just that, it’s also the concept of timefulness that I wrote about in the book. And timefulness is being present, aware, and intentional with your time and being really clear where am I using my time? And the number one question that I wrote about in the book and I asked myself and thousands of clients, it’s really simple. We want to look at in any habit, behavior, or time activity, it’s this simple question: Is this contributing or contaminating to my success? And I’ll add to that, of me being relevant. And when you do an inventory, when you do an inventory of looking at where your activities are and seeing, is this contaminating or contributing, and start eliminating that, you start recovering your time and there is plenty of it. Uh, in the thousands of people that I’ve done the time cleanse with, uh, the lowest average is a minimum of an hour a day. Most people get 10 to 20 hours back. They don’t believe it until they go through the process, and this has been replicated thousands of times. And here’s the real truth of it: the difference of one hour in the average person’s life and the A-Game life of people, it can be the difference of a life well-lived and one of stress and struggle. An hour to spend with your kids, of exercise, of music, of sleep, of engaging in moments that matter can be the difference of everything. You know, one of the phrases and the quotes that came out of writing the book is this: Time is for one thing and one thing only, to create memories that matter in a legacy you’re proud of. Take the time to really focus in on what is your relationship with time. Own it. Understand that every decision that you make determines your time. You’re in charge of it, no one else is. And protect it.

So what’s the solution? It’s real simple. Number one, make sure that you have a positive, supportive relationship with time. Time is here for you, not against you. That you’re living a timeful life: present, aware, and intentional. You remove the toxins and lastly, schedule your time for the things that matter most.

Now I’ve got a bonus question for you. You’ve got the 10 principles. Here’s the bonus question that’s going to tie everything together. This is the number one question that I use with myself, my clients, and it’s this. Here’s the question: Who do I need to be to have what I want? You’ve gone through and you’ve listened to all these principles, and they’re great principles, but ultimately as you review this, I want you to start thinking, okay, these are great principles, but who do I need to be? Who do I need to be? Not do. See, the beingness allows the doingness. I need to be more present, more optimistic, okay? And then the activities of that follow that. So the action items for today’s episode is really look at these 10 principles, answer the question, who do I need to be, and then look at what area of your life, it’s your relationship, your fitness, your business, your finances, and pick one or two of these and use the principles, use the principles and see your A-Game emerge.

Well, now it’s time for our section, Ask Me Anything with my producer Mike Smith. And uh, we have questions from uh my clients, the internet, from viewers, from clients, from me. Yes, even from the master interviewer I am, going to ask you anything. All right, so get ready. Buckle yourself in. Yeah. And here’s number one. Yeah, I hope you have an answer for it. What is the best way to start implementing the principles that we just heard you espouse and in terms of how we budget our time, how we look at ourselves? Tell me what is the best way to start implementing these principles.

Well, there there’s a lot of principles and I don’t want any of the viewers um to be overwhelmed by it. But ultimately, you know, looking through the principles and, you know, just ask yourself, what’s calling me to put attention to? What are the areas in my life? Is it my relationships, my wellness, my business? And what principles did I hear today that could quickly be implemented to make a change? Really go in on your intuition, but pick one or two. Don’t try to do all 10. Don’t do all 10. Pick one or two a week and then review daily how it’s going.

You know, I think it’s easy these days for people to get into a rut, let’s say, and it can help you to lose motivation and get off track. So what’s a good way to get back on track for these people who just feel like they’re stuck?

Yeah, well, we have an epidemic of people getting stuck. I’ve been stuck. I mean, the amount of pressure and tension and anxiety that’s in our society today, uh, it’s pretty much a normal occurrence. So one of the key things is first understanding, gosh, I’m stuck, I’m not myself. There’s another, there’s another gear, there’s an A-Game I can get to. And one of the things I like to start with is going to my why. Why am I doing what I’m doing? That will cut through so many of the distractive thoughts and emotions and get back into that motivational center. And then also, you know, with the Time Cleanse philosophy, looking at what are the most toxic things that are stealing my time and energy and get rid of them. It’s it’s pretty much that simple. It’s ultimately you just got to start identifying and then taking action.

You know, one of the things I’ve been using lately, uh, under your advisement, has been meditation. The thing I get hung up on, and some of the uh some of your clients and viewers have written in to this effect, how long should I uh meditate? Yeah. And uh, how often? Yeah, how often and how long?

Yeah, good good question. So first of all, let me just review on the meditation part. You know, in the show notes, we’ve got guided meditation, you know, and also uh a PDF on how to do it. Uh, it’s very simple, just following your breath. And uh, you can, you know, check that out to find how to do that. But ultimately, here’s one of the keys for meditation: is we’re stopping the rollercoaster. We’re just stopping it to be with ourselves, right? To evaluate what’s going on, what’s working, what’s not. The actual stopping and personal reflection is just as important as the actual process of meditation where we’re creating deep new neural connections that make the brain more efficient and it reduces stress and anxiety. And so time-wise, it is as little as two or three minutes. If you’ve only got two or three minutes, just drop in. Now, if you want to do homework and bonus, twice a day. So I’m more of a proponent of more frequency than adding times, but just do it when you can. Close your eyes, do it in your parked car, do it in between meetings. There’s so much throwaway time. You don’t have to be on top of a mountain with candles and incense and mantras in the background. You can meditate anywhere. Just start.

Now this is a hard one for me and that is analyzing my own performance on a daily basis. How do I do that? What what is the best way to analyze my daily performance?

Well, analyzing your performance is the fastest way to compress time and get better, no matter what, if it’s sales, business development, being a better parent, father, um, wife, whatever it is. But we want to just simply take a step back and go, okay, what went well today? What specifically went well? And here’s the important part: in my results and effort. If we’re only measuring results, we can have a big problem. Sometimes we’ve got to get the effort before the results. So we look at specifically in results and effort, right? Second question, what were any challenges with my results and effort or where do I want to get better? And third, going into the toolbox for the next time, going, okay, what am I going to implement tomorrow? By doing that, if you’re an athlete after practice, if you’re a business owner evaluating your performance of your business, you are going to compress time faster than you’ve ever seen.

I’ve got, this is an important question and it’s from one of your younger subscribers uh to the channel. I have a hard time quieting my mind when I’m getting feedback from my boss. How can I shift my mindset?

Yeah, well, number one, uh, welcome to everyone else. Um, I don’t know many people that just naturally can get, you know, feedback. And unfortunately, and with my work, I hope to change this, is that a lot of people don’t give feedback in the best way, right? They’re just doing the best they can. They have the right intention most of the time. The thing is, and we’re going to go deeper into these next episodes, but just taking a couple deep breaths, grounding yourself, right? Grounding yourself where you’re at, couple deep diaphragmatic breaths, calm yourself, and then just be open to receiving it. Remember, this is important: not all feedback is true or 100% true. So we just want to be able to receive it. And then in that, not defend, not over-talk. And if there’s time for feedback and dialogue, then we do it. But we just receive and then evaluate it.

How do we know if that uh if that evaluation from somebody else on the outside is accurate? Well, how do we, how do we analyze that?

Right. So first of all, we want to be in that calm state so we can think clearly, right? And then perhaps getting feedback from outside sources other than that source. Now, I always tell people, if you’ve heard feedback more than once on a similar topic, that’s when you want to start paying attention. And if you’ve heard it three times, pretty much, you probably should start changing some behaviors or actions.

So critical inner dialogue is a big one these days. Number of people have written into this uh to this effect. It’s it’s hard not to be critical of yourself when something goes wrong. Um, so how do I stop, or how does anybody stop that critical hamster on the treadmill kind of auto-start criticizing yourself?

Yeah, one of the, one of the number one things that I do with um with my clients on a regular basis, I mean, because we’ve been, we’ve been programmed to be critical, to stay competitive, to stay on the edge of things, be on our toes. The critical thinking is not all bad, and I want to, want to say it’s not all bad. We just don’t want to start there. And we want to shift critical thinking to evaluative thinking, right? We want to evaluate, not make personal assessments and judgments, right? A lot of times we start, have the critical thinking is, I suck, I’m not good enough, what’s wrong, it always, versus, okay, what happened here? So shifting from critical to more evaluating what happened, right? And then bringing in the self-compassion. So a lot of times when I’m working with people with self-compassion, they have such a high critical thinking brain, it’s hard to get on the shift. So I said, let’s just start with evaluating, you know, what went well, what were the challenges, and then sliding the self-compassion in kind of covertly, and then we start with compassion. But sometimes we’ve got to just start with just reframing some things before we can even get to the self-compassion.

You know, in your book, The Time Cleanse, uh, there’s a very important passage that I took to heart when I read it, which was uh, life is not about spending time, it’s about investing time. Yes. And I think most people are looking at, and you pointed this out in today’s episode, which is that you’re fighting time. Yeah. That time is an enemy somehow that you have to conquer or battle all the time. So how do we get over that? How how do I get past the feeling that there’s never enough time and that I’m constantly at the mercy of this adversary called time?

Well, the number one thing I’m going to say, Mike, and a lot of people don’t want to hear this, I’ve had executive CEOs get super angry with me because I’m basically taking their, their blanket and their nook away, an excuse of I don’t have enough time, is start being accountable. See, the presupposition to that is that you’re not in charge of time or you don’t have control of it. The reality is we have control of every second of our time. Now it may appear like we, oh, I’ve got to pick up my kid. That’s a choice. I’ve got to go to work. That’s a choice. I gotta go. That’s a choice. When we start understanding that time comes from us, it always has, and we’re 100% responsible in owning it, that’s when things start changing. But as long as we want to go, if my schedule allows… I love this phrase, I’ve done it before. If time allows… When I heard that, I go, well, who is time? We are time. So I say this with some lightness, I know it’s a stressful topic for many people, but we’ve just got to understand time comes from us, it always has. And when we decide I’m 100% responsible, literally everything changes.

You say that we we have all the time we need. What do you mean by that? Because I don’t think most people think, I think most people think I don’t have any time.

Well, I can tell you after thousands of time cleanse processes with companies, individuals, is that when I put my proposition out, which I am right now, pretty much no one believes me. I I can just tell you this, no one believes me. And then they start going through each category: technology use, people, places, things, habits and behaviors, and they start analyzing. There is so much wasted time. There’s especially around technology, Netflix, Amazon. When we start looking at that, when you get really clear, right, we’ve got things on our iPhones that track that. Um, there’s an abundance of it. Now when we keep buying into the story and we’re stressed and we’re under pressure, it seems like a foreign concept. But when you slow things down, look at what’s toxic, evaluate it, change your accountability, life is so much easier.

You know, you work with a lot of, let’s call them student athletes and their parents. What is that dynamic all about when you’ve got, when you’re working with both the young person uh who’s seeking to be an achiever in their sport and then you’ve got the parents too? I’m going to guess that sometimes there’s a either a disconnect between the parent and the athlete or vice versa. What what are you finding when you work with that kind of dynamic?

Yeah, so first I’m going to say is that um, between, we start with the parents. I I’ve worked with many different parents, you know, parents that are still married, divorced parents, you know, all that. And uh, the majority, if not all parents, want the best for their kids first and themselves. So we start there, right? And that for me is to get them all on the same page, understanding how to regulate negative emotions, cultivate positive emotions, um understand how to implement self-compassion, mindfulness, these performance tools, right? So we want to give everybody the tools, right? And when we look at giving and receiving feedback, teaching parents how to do that. And really the issue with, you know, families when I come in is just don’t have the tools. They just don’t have the tools. Parents may be using ineffective coaching strategies that they were subjected to. I can tell you this, I look back at a long career and there’s only one or two coaches that I would say, wow, they really got it. That’s out of dozens, okay? So a lot of it is just old strategies and social media influencing what should be. Everyone should be perfect, everyone should be a star, this instant world. And the last part of this is that we’re not developing resilience for kids. We’re, in many ways, not allowing the natural resistance to happen, right? We want to let them fail forward, we want to support them, but we also want to have them experience setback so they can overcome it and develop the most important tool in all the toolbox that comes out of these principles, and that’s grit: the ability to face adversity over and over and over, because that’s life. We’re going to have adversity, so let’s teach him young.

How do you deal with the parent, what are they called these days, the helicopter parents? The uh, I remember when my son was in Little League, there was always one father who’s yelling at the umpire, yelling at the other team, yelling at the kid to get a hit, right? Uh, how do you deal with it?

Oh, it’s really easy: give them the tools. Parents that are yelling or helicoptering, it’s based on anxiety and fear. So we look at the behavior, but what’s underneath it? I’m afraid my kid’s not going to be competitive, I’m afraid they’re not going to be enough. It’s, it’s once again, parents’ right intention, right intention, don’t have the tools. So we give them the tools, tools to regulate their emotions. I had a uh a mother and father that had a high school player uh playing uh baseball, and the mom said to me, you know, I’m super stressed out, but you know, my son, you know, I hide it. And I said, Mom, not a chance. The less your kid has the ability to talk, so I talk about like ages, the more they just, they just take it in. I said, I’m not saying you know, you’re ringing your eyes out with tears and, but energy, your communication is an exchange of energy, and they feel it. So giving her tools to calm her nervous system down.

Um, one of my favorites, and it kind of dovetails back to some of this self-criticism stuff we were talking about a moment ago, is self-compassion. Uh, what is the relationship of self-compassion to performance and how does it compare and fit with these other principles you talked about?

Well, I think out of all the principles, self-compassion is the one that’s most heartfelt and has the most energetic um impact on the total beingness, right? Without self-compassion, um, we are just getting beat up, right? So not that you can’t perform well being hypercritical, you can. You just won’t be a fulfilled human being and you won’t be happy, my experience. So self-compassion is like the encompassing greatest tool of them all is that, hey, when I’m going for it, when things are challenging, I’m going to be there for myself. I got myself no matter what I do, no matter what happens, I’m going to be in my corner. And Mike, as an adult male, until five or six years ago, I didn’t really get that. Sure, I was there to a point, but when I started researching, when I started doing the training of self-compassion, I started working with the highest level athletes with self-compassion, all the way down to juniors, I saw the impact, I saw the changes. And when I recently, you know, filmed my online program for student athletes, you know, on the breaks we always check in, hey, you know, what’s your aha? What did you learn? And um, the best thing that could have happened came out of the 10 or so participants we had, all male, female, every range of athletic ability. Every one of them said this one statement: I didn’t realize what I was going through, everyone else was. That’s the common humanity, right? And when we don’t realize that, we leave the tribe and shame rises. And you know, when that happens, it’s a, it’s a chemical event on the body, it’s not a mental event. Our body becomes stressed with those feelings and thoughts about not being good enough. And ultimately, self-compassion gives young people hope and tools and normalizes their experience. So many people are isolated thinking something’s wrong with them. There’s nothing wrong with them. And we’ve got to get these tools and message into the hands of the kids, the coaches, the educators, and the parents.

You talk about treating yourself the way you would treat a friend or a relative and and you point out how that can be disconnected, where you’re more critical and have less compassion for yourself than you would for somebody else.

Anything. It’s common, yeah. It’s the common, the common experience. And then when I ask, this is really funny, I’m going to, it’s funny when you talk about it, it’s funny, it’s not funny when you’re experiencing it. So I’ll ask people, so why do you do that? Here’s my number one answer: Well, I have a higher standard than others. I go, oh, so you hold people at a lower standard? And then they go, well no, that’s not what I’m saying. I go, well, that’s kind of what you’re saying. When you’re talking to a fellow athlete, you’re saying, oh, I’ve got higher standards than you must have for yourself. It’s just a trick in the brain. It’s just a trick. Ultimately, we just haven’t been trained to do that.

Uh, just a couple more questions. Can you talk more about, and this is uh one of the subscribers uh wrote in on this, can you talk more about the importance of a great relationship with time? You covered it a little bit earlier uh when you talked about investing rather than spending time, but what is the importance of this relationship with time?

Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s really um, I’m glad you’re asking me that question and people are thinking about it because it’s the core. When we feel like we have enough time, we’re present. We are in a place where we’re fully connected to our beingness, right? When we have time pressure, our performance goes down. We know that from the research. So we first saying, hey, it’s almost like self-compassion. It’s like, time is my friend. It’s here for me to be the best version of myself. It’s not trying to fight me. So when we just change the mental aspect, and back to, you know, we have too much pressure, internal pressure, our performance goes down. We want some pressure to motivate, to get out there. And so you’ve got to control time. And when you have these principles, and you use these principles, you can control it. People don’t think they can control it. You can. That’s important.

All right, last question. And uh, this one was a little bit uh off-road, but to you, what is the uh what’s the best part of being a performance coach? What what is it you get from it? What is it they get from it? What is it you get from it?

I think uh, first of all, great question. So for me, it’s seeing people heal. This may sound very strange, right? Heal. See, we’ve become who we become many times by the trauma, the upsets, and the failures, which then start to lock in our belief system, especially for young people where they have perceived failures and they started making decisions about themselves which turn into beliefs. And to see with these tools people identifying these limiting beliefs, shifting them, and creating new possibilities and seeing the joy and the happiness and the healing. Now for me, the benefit is just that, to see somebody that was stuck or stopped and to truly see them expand into who they were meant to be, not who they were programmed to be. And then watching them pay that forward into their community, their family, their sons, their daughters, their brothers, sisters, colleagues, seeing that being paid forward.

Today we’ve covered the 10 A-Game principles designed to take your performance to the next level. In future episodes, we’ll explore each principle in depth. So be sure to like, comment, and subscribe. Until next time, always bring your A-Game.