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#012_The Passion Paradox · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Great to have you back on the show. Welcome to
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the studio.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: I fondly recalled last time doing this cramped in a
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: tiny hotel room down in like Marina del Rey, near
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: the airport, so I appreciate you coming up here to
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: do it again.
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: Well, thanks for having us a lot nicer.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a little bit more comfortable, hopefully, and super
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: excited about your book.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Congratulations, fantastic. It's a great read.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: I found it to be super enlightening and instructive and
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: helpful and look forward to deconstructing.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: It with you guys here today.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: Let's do it.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man, So first of all, it feels like you
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: just wrote a book five minutes ago and now you
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: have another book coming out.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: So what is that about? Before we even get into
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: what the book is, like, crazy.
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: Agent, it's not good. Yeah. So the short answer is
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: that we really like to write, and we were in
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: these ideas. The longer answer is, the first book that
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: we wrote, Peak Performance, had a pretty long runway from
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: when we submitted the manuscript to when it was published,
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: and we had planned to spend this time together to
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: refine the manuscript, and it turned out that that manuscript
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: didn't need as much refining as we thought. So we
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: had weeks on our hands in person. Steve lives in Houston.
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: I'm in northern California, and we just started writing another book.
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: So this book was more or less done before peak
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: performance came.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's crazy, that's amazing. So your process in
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: terms of writing, I mean, how much time do you
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: actually spend in person because you have lives on separate.
• 2:09
  Speaker 5: Coasts basically, yeah, not a lot. Actually not a lot.
• 2:13
  Speaker 5: So we probably for this book probably only spent maybe
• 2:18
  Speaker 5: three long weekends together or something like that, right.
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: Three or three long weekends in a week. Though, when
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: we really come up with the.
• 2:24
  Speaker 5: Idea, and that's where it, like our process, that's where
• 2:28
  Speaker 5: the kind of magic happens, is like the idea generation phase.
• 2:33
  Speaker 5: That's where we need to be together where we're just
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: throwing ideas back and forth and like kind of coming
• 2:39
  Speaker 5: up with the outline of like, hey, what does this
• 2:41
  Speaker 5: look like once it comes to the writing process, like
• 2:44
  Speaker 5: we just had this refined, you know, a process where
• 2:48
  Speaker 5: you know, Brad takes a little bit, I take a
• 2:50
  Speaker 5: little bit, we share it back and forth and it's
• 2:53
  Speaker 5: just super in and sync.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: So do you have another book that you've basically completed
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: that will be coming.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Out nine months now.
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: Our agent might right, I'm going to plead the fifth, right,
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: And we.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Should say because there's a lot of new listeners since
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: the last time you guys were on. Steve elite track
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: and field running coach, lives in Houston, Brad lives in Oakland.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Writer journalist with a background in consulting, and a whole
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: story that we went into in detail the last time you.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Guys were here.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: But it is a ying and a yang thing, like
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Steve brings this kind of firsthand athlete coach science perspective,
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: and Brad brings kind of the journalistic approach to these things,
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: these ideas that you're exploring, and it seems like a
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: nice synergistic way to kind of broach these topics.
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's worked out well. I mean it's worked
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: out well. If first and foremost we judge by the
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: fact that this has been super fun and we get
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: paid to do stuff that we love and we like
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: working together. So yeah, it's cool, fortunate, all right.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: So passion, the passion, the passion paradox, right, I think
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: this is very much of the moment we're in a
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: culture where we talk a lot about chasing our passion,
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: finding our bliss, living our bliss, living our most authentic selves,
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: our best selves. And there's a lot of terminology that
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: gets thrown in there, from motivation to inspiration to obsession,
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: and passion, of course is sort of a catchphrase for
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: all of that. But I'm not sure we really understand
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: our terminology. So maybe the best place to begin this
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: is to define all of our terms.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what does passion mean? Essentially? What I'm asking, like,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: how do you think about passion?
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: It depends, So that was more or less the starting
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: point for this book was asking that question, what does
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: it mean to be passionate? And the word passion itself
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: comes from the Latin root pisco, and the definition of
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: piscio is to suffer, So passion first and foremost meant suffering.
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: The word was created in a religious connotation with the
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: crucification of Jesus, and it was the suffering of Christ
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: on the cross, with.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Pisco the passion of the Christ exactly.
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: And then over time the word slowly morphed to this
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: broader sense of desire, but it was still tied up
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: in suffering for about the first fourteen hundred years of
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: its usage. Only more recently was passion something that one
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: would want to strive for or that would be linked
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: to a good life.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: It's a weird.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Twist, like what caused that change in the way that
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: we perceived that word?
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Do we know?
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: Or yeah, I'm not sure exactly we know.
• 5:52
  Speaker 5: We actually talked to a couple experts who were experts
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: at etymology and word linguistics, and it seemed like, actually
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: around like Shakespeare, it starts to begin this change because
• 6:04
  Speaker 5: he used it in the context of like love, which
• 6:08
  Speaker 5: was the first kind of what i'd call positive somewhat
• 6:12
  Speaker 5: usage of it, but even there it had this like
• 6:14
  Speaker 5: negative connotation towards it. And it wasn't until like the
• 6:18
  Speaker 5: turn of the twentieth century where you start seeing it
• 6:21
  Speaker 5: in the modern usage of it else like hey, you
• 6:25
  Speaker 5: need to find your passion or passion is something that
• 6:27
  Speaker 5: is good, that is something that we should search for.
• 6:30
  Speaker 5: And it really wasn't until you know, probably nineteen sixties
• 6:34
  Speaker 5: nineteen seventies where we see this whole kind of cultural
• 6:38
  Speaker 5: change of like find your passion.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so interesting, but I think there's something to
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: that that Shakespearean perspective because it seems to make sense
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: that that that kind of pain element can be built
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: into this idea of what it means to feel strongly, right,
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: because because pain and suffering are really not a very
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: distant cousin to these strong emotions around love and how we.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Think about passion today.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Right, they're just a shred, They're just a little tweaked
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: to one side.
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're exactly that.
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: They're close cousins, maybe even brother and sister, two sides
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: of the same coin. That is really interesting too, in
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: the research of the book, learning not just about how the.
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: Word is used and how we perceive.
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: People following their passion or people suffering, but also the
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: neurology of someone that is very passionate versus somebody that
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: is an addict or suffering from mental illness or some dysfunction.
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: What's happening in the brain is very similar, if not
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: the same.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: Well, I have personal interest in that, so let's explore that,
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Like what is the difference, because again, those are two
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: things that are very close to each other. Like, and
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: I've asked myself this question, like am I just passionate
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: about doing this? Or I have an unhealthy sort of
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: obsessive relationship with this pursuit and I'm telling myself that
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: I'm passionate about it, and sometimes it's not clear.
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, and that's where actually the origins of
• 8:13
  Speaker 5: this whole thing started, or the whole our exploration of
• 8:16
  Speaker 5: it is we'd seen in ourselves some of these like
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: obsessive tendencies. I mean, we were writing a book before
• 8:22
  Speaker 5: our first book came out. Yeah, right, we have these
• 8:24
  Speaker 5: obsessive tendencies, and we were sitting there just talking about like, hey,
• 8:28
  Speaker 5: is this a good thing or is this a bad thing?
• 8:31
  Speaker 5: Or is this something we should pull back on or
• 8:33
  Speaker 5: push forward on? And that's kind of where we had
• 8:36
  Speaker 5: this debate of like, hey, wait a minute, is passion
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: good bad?
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: What is it?
• 8:41
  Speaker 5: How does obsession tie into it? And those were at
• 8:44
  Speaker 5: the root of what we were exploring. And if you
• 8:47
  Speaker 5: look at some of the biology of it, right, we
• 8:50
  Speaker 5: looked at the biology of addiction and of desire and
• 8:55
  Speaker 5: hormonally and then neurologically, so both on a hormone level
• 8:59
  Speaker 5: and on brain level, like they're very very closely related.
• 9:04
  Speaker 5: It's it's almost impossible to sit there and be like,
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: oh no, this person's like their brain shows they're they're
• 9:10
  Speaker 5: actually in love versus addicted.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: The The only thing that I would add to that,
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: and maybe this gets back to your original question, is
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: I would say that passion isn't good or bad.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: It just is.
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: And it can very much be both of those things.
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: It can be both of those things for the same
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: person over the course of their life. Sometimes it can
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: be both of those things on the same day.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Both of those things being what what are the good
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, we can we can, we can place a
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: value judgment on it. I mean, it just is, right,
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: So whether it's bad or good, maybe we don't know
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: in the immediate moment, and we only know in retrospect
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: years later. But I think a good litmus test is
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: the impact that it's having on other areas of your life.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Like if it's setting in motion a domino effect of
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: damage and you know, like like scorched earth relationships and
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: you know, failing to live up to other responsibilities.
• 10:05
  Speaker 6: Then we could probably qualify it as obsessive or addictive
• 10:10
  Speaker 6: and thus negative as opposed to a sustainable passion, you know,
• 10:15
  Speaker 6: flame that's burning in a healthy way, which is kind
• 10:18
  Speaker 6: of what you know you discuss in the later chapters
• 10:21
  Speaker 6: of the book.
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: Totally, And I think that you just nailed the distinction.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: So the definition or a working definition of addiction, at
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: least one that I use is the relentless pursuit of
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: something despite negative consequences. You could say that passion is
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: the relentless pursuit of something with positive consequences or at
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: least with neutral consequences.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or despite the.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Pursuing it despite the lack of like public acknowledge, like
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: you would do it anyway, whether you're making money at
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: it or whether you're being sort of lauded for it.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: If you're passionate enough about it, it should propel you nonetheless.
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: Exactly one.
• 11:01
  Speaker 5: And if you look at like some of the research
• 11:03
  Speaker 5: that's been done around us, they actually like distinguish it
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: between what they call it harmonious passion and obsessive passion.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: And how you distinguish that is exactly that.
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: Is it something that you're doing because you enjoy the
• 11:18
  Speaker 5: activity that you would do regardless, or is it something
• 11:20
  Speaker 5: that's being driven by some like external pursuit or some
• 11:24
  Speaker 5: sort of fear that you wouldn't You wouldn't actually do
• 11:27
  Speaker 5: that activity if it was just up to.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: You, Right, So all you have to do for the
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: sort of most extreme example of the negative in what
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: you just describe.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Just look to any villain in a Marvel movie. Yeah,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: they're basically totally you know, the.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: Ultimate manifestation of obsessive passion gone awry, right, And perhaps
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: that started with a laudable idea, but it became perverted
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: and just the continuous doubling down on it until it
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: becomes you know, this dark.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and a force of nature.
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: When you say it that extreme, it's a little bit
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: more black and white. What fascinates us is that I
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: think that a lot of people start out with harmonious passion.
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: They love the thing itself, but then they start to
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: see some good results, and our human species evolve to
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: want to see good results social standing rewards, like that's
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: a big part of evolution. So it's the slippery slope
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: to starting off doing an activity because you love it,
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: but then without perhaps even noticing doing the activity not
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: because you love the thing, but you love the external
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: validation in the recognition that the thing brings you, and
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: that can become dangerous. Now, the flip side is also
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: true that very few people just do the thing because
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: they love the thing, like we're not robots. It feels
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: good to be recognized, but at what point are you
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: chasing the recognition more of in the activity itself. And
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: that's where lots of people, both in regular life as
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: well as world class performers really struggle.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: So with success, success begets obligation, right, because then what
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: you're doing becomes institutionalized, So all you have to do
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: is look at you know, whether.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: It's Tiger Woods or Michael Phelps.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Like any super successful athlete, it starts with passion as
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: a kid in a healthy way, doing this thing that
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: you love, and then the success turns this into you know,
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: essentially an industry in which there's a lot of people
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: relying upon the perpetuation of that success. The love for
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: the thing itself begins to wane and it becomes about
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: money and career and legacy, and then you know, then
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: the crisis happens that either breaks that person or helps
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: to rebuild them and allows them to come back stronger.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Totally, right.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's kind of like you see that archetype
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: getting played out and played out and played out. And
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: you know, in my personal experience with this podcast, like
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: this began as like a tiny, little thing, and now
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: it's like a.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Thing, right, it's not like the biggest thing in the world,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Like it's a thing.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: There's people that help me and they're here and we're
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: here to be here.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: There's lights, we're filming this like this is not how
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: it started.
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: And you don't think we feel the same way on
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: the other side of the mic, right, Like one or
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: two young guys that wrote a book because we like writing,
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: and suddenly people are buying our book and.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: You want to have us and talk to you. What
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: does that mean and what we know what we're doing?
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: Right, And now you have an agent and your agent says, well,
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: what's the next book? You know?
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: And then and then it's the nature.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: Of the thing itself inevitably changes, right, And what does
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: that say about passion or what passion means or the
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: quality of passion that is underlying everything that you're doing
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: and why you're doing it.
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 14:43
  Speaker 5: And I think the other thing that it's really important
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: or interesting is it's also your relationship to that activity,
• 14:49
  Speaker 5: like your identity being tied to it as you have
• 14:52
  Speaker 5: success like we found, you know, talking to a bunch
• 14:55
  Speaker 5: of different people. It's it's that moment where you go
• 14:58
  Speaker 5: from oh, I really enjoy this, I'm really passionate. Then
• 15:01
  Speaker 5: it almost transforms to like this is who I am.
• 15:05
  Speaker 5: You know, I'm Steve the Runner because I was good
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: at running, right, or you know your ritual the podcast
• 15:12
  Speaker 5: because this has blown up and it's people know you
• 15:15
  Speaker 5: by that. But then you yourself started identifying yourself only
• 15:19
  Speaker 5: in this regard, And I think what we found is
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: that that kind of spirals this passion thing towards the negative,
• 15:26
  Speaker 5: almost obsessive connotation, because then it becomes like, oh, if
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: you know, Brad and I are known as writers and
• 15:34
  Speaker 5: we write this poor book, now it's just not like
• 15:37
  Speaker 5: oh we failed at writing.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: We're not good at writing.
• 15:39
  Speaker 5: It's no, Brad and I failed, right, right, So it's
• 15:43
  Speaker 5: like that you are yes, exactly.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Well, once you become associated with a certain thing and
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: you're successful in that regard, then your identity becomes calcified
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: around it, and then you feel this pressure to live
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: up to it. So if this book is super successful,
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: maybe you have the ability to say, well, I'm never
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: going to write another book again, I don't feel like
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: it or whatever. But then you would inevitably find yourself
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: butting up against that sense of sort of dissonance with
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: this identity that you work so.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Hard to create. Right, it's a weird thing.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: So I'd like to think that if it got to
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: that point, and the reason that it's like Nope, never
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: writing another book is because didn't want to write. I'd
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: like to think I'd have the guts, we'd have the
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: guts to do it. I think that we still like
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: to write, but that other stuff is still there. So
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: in the book there's this section on harmonious and obsessive
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: passion and how the two can take different forms at
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: different times of someone's life. And personally, I just shoot
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: for fifty one percent of my passion to be harmonious,
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: and as long as the majority is coming from I
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: like the act itself, then I'm fine getting excited by
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: other things. Because when I was researching book in writing
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: it with Steve, I got into this phase where I
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: started like just getting stuck in my head and like
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: judging myself. Am I just doing this because I want
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: to sell books? Am I just doing this because I
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: want people to take me seriously? Or do I actually
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: like writing? And Steve's been real helpful at this. Just
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: the two can coexist. So long is the fuel for
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: the activity is the predominant one, you should be in
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: a pretty healthy relationship with the thing.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah that's uh.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: So, how do you gauge that fifty one percent? Like,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: how do you know that you're.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? Like for me, I I
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: you have to be really honest with yourself. But then
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: sometimes I don't even trust my own barometer. Like I
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: may say, well, I'm doing this because I love it,
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: but then like what part of my psyche am I
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: shrouding and not really being completely open with.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what I'm saying?
• 17:55
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, And I think that's why, you know,
• 17:58
  Speaker 5: Brad mentioned the conversation we have, but we talk about
• 18:01
  Speaker 5: this all the time, and I think that's part of
• 18:03
  Speaker 5: the outlet, is talking to somebody from the outside who
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: knows you really well but can see those like changes
• 18:11
  Speaker 5: in your behaviors and changes of like your attitude towards
• 18:14
  Speaker 5: doing things right, and like that's where it's been really helpful,
• 18:17
  Speaker 5: and not only our writing relationship, but our friendship of
• 18:21
  Speaker 5: friendship of like calling each other out.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: It's important, right.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: Well, I think the central sort of the central question
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: that you're asking in this book and I would imagine
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: was a motivating factor and bringing expression of these ideas
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: is we're in this cultural moment right now, as I
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: kind of alluded to at the beginning, where we're encouraged
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: to there's a there's a kind of war of ideas
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: where on the one hand, it's like, follow your passion,
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: you know you only live once, you know life is short,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: you're a millennius, go travel the world.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Who cares? And then the responsible.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Voice on the other shoulder saying passion is overrated, Like
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: we're in a we're in a cult of hot takes, right,
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: So what's the hot take? Well, like the hot take
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: now is to say, like passion is bullshit, right, you know,
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: don't listen to your passion. Maybe you shouldn't follow your passion.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: You should follow through on the thing that you're good
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: at or the thing that could perhaps provide you with,
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: you know, a solid career path.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: For the next twenty or thirty years.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: And reconciling these two ideas kind of bashing up up
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: against each other, seems to be the tension or the
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: friction that's kind of birth the ideas that come through
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: on the book.
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah one, and that's that's the title, right, the passion paradox,
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: people want black or white. They don't like it depends.
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: It depends is not such a great answer. But with passion,
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: like I think Steve thinks, the answer really is it depends.
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: And that's why we wrote the book is to figure out, well,
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: it depends on what, Like what is a good passion,
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: what is a bad passion? It can absolutely be reckless
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: to pursue something that you have no business pursuing financially
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: for your relationship, but it can also be reckless to
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: stay in the same old rout that you've been in.
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: In the book, we try to tease out, well, well,
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: how do you work with these questions in a way
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: that feels right for you and that also is setting
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: you up to have a healthy relationship with the thing.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. In other words, as a subtitle for this book could.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Be like, how to follow your passion in a very respectful,
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: responsible way that your parents would approve of.
• 20:24
  Speaker 5: I mean, maybe I don't know about that, yeah.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: But I'm kidding, you know, but it is like responsible
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: being being a responsible passionate person.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what I mean? And stuff comes out.
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: So one one clear example of I guess maybe is
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: like responsible passionate person. So there's this notion that if
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: you're passionate about something, you should drop what you're doing
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: and like pursue like your heart's desire. There have been
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: books written about this, like you should follow your must,
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: And what the research shows is actually the complete opposite,
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: that the best way to cultivate a passion is to
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: do so very incrementally and gradually over time. So if
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: one's passion was becoming a professional podcaster, the answer is
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: not to quit your job and start podcasting, to start
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: podcasting as a hobby.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: I can assure you that that is a.
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: And, and you gradually work up to a spot where
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: then maybe you gain the confidence based on evidence that
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: you can go all in. And the reason that this
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: works is because you can take more risks when you
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: have the safe thing supporting you, which is a very
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: different narrative. I mean, I didn't hear that narrative growing up.
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: I heard either take the safe path, or if you
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: take the safe path, you're going to be bored all
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: your life. Follow your passion, you know, don't worry about it,
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: have no regrets. And those two things don't have to
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: be in opposition to each other.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it doesn't have to be a binary thing.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: Go ahead.
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 21:49
  Speaker 5: And I think one other thing, one other nuanced thing
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: that Brad pointed out. There is a lot of times
• 21:53
  Speaker 5: we hear find your passion, and that implies that there
• 21:56
  Speaker 5: is something out there that you're going to be past.
• 22:00
  Speaker 5: But I think what we found and what we're trying
• 22:03
  Speaker 5: to get out is it's not about finding it. It's
• 22:04
  Speaker 5: about cultivating it. Right. It's not that Hey, the moment
• 22:09
  Speaker 5: I start writing, like I'm going to be deeply in
• 22:11
  Speaker 5: love with writing. You know, if you asked me ten
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: years ago if I was going to write a book
• 22:15
  Speaker 5: like that, like Nope, no way, Like I hate writing,
• 22:19
  Speaker 5: don't want to do it in school, anything like that.
• 22:21
  Speaker 5: But now I love it, enjoy it. And part of
• 22:24
  Speaker 5: that was like a process of like writing blogs and
• 22:27
  Speaker 5: articles and like coming to enjoy that. And what the
• 22:30
  Speaker 5: research clearly shows is it's not like a soulmate where
• 22:34
  Speaker 5: there's one passion out there that you can find. Is
• 22:37
  Speaker 5: that you can can cultivate this in different things that
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: you're interested in. So what we really suggest is almost
• 22:44
  Speaker 5: become like serial dabblers and like look at different things
• 22:48
  Speaker 5: you're interested in and try them out and if they
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: have that fuel to become a passion, like you'll be
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: You'll become aware of it, and you'll cultivate it.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: I like that.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: I think that's really important too, because it's one thing
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: to say, to have this discussion should you follow your
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: passion or not, passion being something that didn't even exist
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: in the lexicon a couple of hundred years ago, right,
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: But I think the more common thing is that people
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: don't even know what their passion is. It's like, oh,
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: how convenient you have a passion. You're trying to figure
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: out whether you should pursue it, Like I don't even know,
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: like I've just been doing I met my job and
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: what you know, Like I'm so disconnected that I don't
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: even know what I would do if I could do it,
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: And that I think goes to the heart of what.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Ails so many people.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: And so the idea that like relieving the pressure valve,
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: like don't feel bad if you don't have a passion, right,
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: Actually most people don't like and try stuff that you
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: think is cool and like don't judge yourself over.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: And I gotta give credit to Steve.
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: Steve is so good about this passion is such a
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: charged word that, like you said, you feel bad.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: I don't have a passion, but just follows.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: You have this idea that people are just jumping out
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: of bed in the morning, like right up and just can't.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Wait to get to work or whatever.
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: But it's more about interest, Like the seed for passion
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: is interest, and everyone has interests, and it's about following
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: your interests. And I can almost assure you that if
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: you have an interest in your first thought is how
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: can I monetize this, you probably will not monetize it.
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: But if your first thought is I really love doing
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: this thing, I'm going to spend more time doing it,
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: and I'm going to invest in my own growth doing
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: this thing, whether it's writing, running, owning a business, in
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: a relationship, you name it. Then over time it will
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: become very clear if that's something that makes sense for
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: you to monetize and give more of your time to.
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: I mean what I always say is is think about
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: the things that you enjoyed most as a young person
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: that kind of fell by the wayside as you got older.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: And some of those are silly, but some of those
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: are very primal and may still be relevant. And it's
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: not about monetization or quitting your job or you know,
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: monopolizing your time. But if you can recapture one of
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: those in and breathe a little life into it as
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: an adult and just fan that flame and do it
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: simply because you enjoy doing it, that's the win in
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: and of itself.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: And should that lead you on a.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Path that tweaks your trajectory going forward professionally, then that's gravy.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: But it's not necessarily about that.
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's you nailed. It's a two phase process.
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: So there's that which is doing it not thinking about success,
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: and that's you're most likely, like I said, to have success, success, monetization,
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: that should all be a byproduct, that shouldn't be the
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: end goal. So that's the first part of the book
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: is outlining, well how do you do that? What's the
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: process for cultivating your passion? How do you know when
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: to pull back? How do you know when to push forward?
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: Then the second part is oh, wow, like I've got
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: some success, then it's everyone just as will follow your passion. Well,
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: then it's that slippery slope to craving and need more
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: success and need more followers and more money and more recognition.
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: So then once you have this sass, well, then how
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: do you nurture and nourish your passion so it stays harmonious?
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: So like the way that society looks at this as
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: ass backwards, right, it's find your passion doesn't work like that,
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: and then it's like, oh, when you have passion, just
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: like follow it with reckless a band and you're crushing
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: Like Nope, that's a slippery slope to craving and suffering
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: and anxiety and depression and burnout in all sorts of
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: bad things.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: Right, And that's something you experienced in your personal life.
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, you know it's it's I don't know how
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: much of it would necessarily be related to the passion itself,
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: but I'll step back for a second. So I'm in
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: recovery for obsessive compulsive disorder, which is a really a
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: misunderstood thing. I always thought growing up, obsessive compulsive disorder
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: was like someone that needed to be super clean or
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: super organized, just washing your hands, right, And Steve, who's
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: spent time at my family's house and with me, can
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: tell you, like, I'm neither super clean nor super organized,
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: But obsessive compulsive disorder is actually characterized by any kind
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: of recurring, intrusive thought that is accompanied by a devastating feeling.
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: And these thoughts can hit you ten thousand times a day,
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: just NonStop, and then the compulsion is anything to make
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: that thought go away. So in the hand washing example,
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: someone might constantly be thinking that they're dirty, they're going
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: to get sick, and how do you make that go away?
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: You wash your hands, and then the thought comes back
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: and you wash your hands again. That's only one type
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: of OCD. The type that I suffered from and occasionally
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: still do is related to self harm. So I have
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: these awful thoughts that I should harm myself, and it's
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: one thing to have a crazy thought, but they're accompanied
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: by urges and feelings to really do it. And my
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: compulsion was then reassuring myself, so in my mind trying
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: to problem solve and be like, oh, well, I would
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: never do that. I have no reason to be feeling
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: this way. I should be happy. But the circuits in
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: the brain just go totally haywire and you get caught
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: in this vicious cycle. And that hit me about two
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: months after Peak Performance came out. I don't think that
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: it had any relation to the fact that the book
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: was successful. I do think that I'm a very dopamine
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: driven person. I'm very excitable. Good conversation excites me, doing
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: well excites me.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: Writing.
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: I exist in excitement and excitement is fueled by this
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: neurochemical dopamine. And a lot of research on OCD shows
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: that OCD is just like the dopamine circuits going totally haywire.
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: So my psychiatrist can't say, like I can't say, no,
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: one will really know. Maybe as predisposed, and this would
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: have happened regardless. But a story that I tell myself
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: is that when that book came out, there was so
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: much dopamine going on because I was just excited. I
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: was having conversations like this, things were great that eventually
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: the brain just short circuited and it was like from
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: that to just the worst experience in my life.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: MM.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you described it as it's called.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: Pure oh yeah, pure oh?
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: What does that mean?
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: So pureh is a way that clinicians and patients people
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: that suffer can categorize it from other OCD. So the
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: pure O stands for pure obsessional. So I didn't have
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: any visible compulsions, I see. It wasn't like I was
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: walking my hands. My compulsion was again trying to problem
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: solve and reassure myself.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: And there's nothing like a book release to set in motion,
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: you know, a cascade of dopamine activating activities like refreshing
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: your Amazon ranking and all that kind of craziness that
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: goes along with it.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: So it's not a surprise that that was.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: Sort of yeah.
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: The one thing I will say in case, in case
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: there are listeners that are either confused or maybe suffering themselves,
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: is that I always thought that OCD or anxiety was
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: just like what I used to experience is anxiety at
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: like one hundred degrees. It's a totally different animal. Like
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: there was no slippery slope from like excitement of the
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: book I can't stop thinking to OCD. It was like,
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's terrifying. It felt like my brain was
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: just completely taken over. There was a week when I
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: thought maybe I developed schizophrenia. I mean, it was literally
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: losing your mind and having just enough insight to know
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: that you lost your mind. Fucking terrifying. So thankful that
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: I have health insurance and that I was able to
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: get help, that I have a supportive family, and now
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: I'm here having this conversation about it, like it's this
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: crazy thing. But when I was in it, I didn't
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: know what was going to happen.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: It was really scary.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the irony of being the guy who who co
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: wrote the peak performance book, you know about like how
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: you mentally approach yeah, performing at your best too. Then
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: have this, you know, succumb to this kind of episode.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: But then I don't know how.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Much time passed after the acute phase of it, but
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: you decide to share this and you write about this
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: for outside.
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so that happened about August that came out in
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: Mark I think, so about eight months after the onsets
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: after and what precipitated that was actually a singular event.
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: I was in Virginia with my brother on what was
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: supposed to be a fun vacation to run the Virginia
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: like the Charlottesville half marathon or not Charlottesviel, excuse me,
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: the Richmond half marathon.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: And I was just having.
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: A miserable time of with OCD that weekend, and I
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: was supposed to be there with my brother having a
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: good time, and like all I could think about was
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: driving the car off the road, and it just fucking sucks.
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: And I remember being at a coffee shop and pulling
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: up my email and I had like four emails from
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: twenty to thirty year old guys that are in the
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: spirit of you're only thirty one, you wrote this kick
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: ass book, You've got it all figured out, how do
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: you do it? And I'm sitting there with that stuff
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: going on in my mind and it it just broke me.
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: And the cognitive dissonance and the distress that that caused
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: was almost as bad as the OCD itself. And at
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: that moment, I'm like, I just can't live like this.
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: So I either need to stop writing because I'm a
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: total imposter. I'm a fraud, or I need to come
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: out and own this. And the things that I write
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: about are pretty personal always, so there was no like,
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: there was no if ans are butt in for a while,
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: I'm like, maybe I just won't write, like maybe this
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: isn't for me, And again, thank goodness, a supportive therapist
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: is like, no, like that's the worst thing you could do.
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: That's giving into the OCD, like fucking own it. So yeah,
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: I decided to write about it, you know, not it
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: had the byproduct of helping a lot of people. But
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: if I'm being totally honest, did I want to help
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: other people? Sure, But when I wrote that, it was
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: really more for myself to just eliminate that total feeling
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: of being a fraud.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the dissonance and the catharsist with that. But it
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: had to be hard to hit publish on that. But
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: I would imagine that's got to be of everything you've written.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: I mean that seemed to really connect with people in
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: a profound and also a viral way.
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know that's like the unintended byproduct thing.
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: That story blew up and people were offering me book
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: deals about that issue, and I'm like, WHOA, Like, let's
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: all pause, Like, I'm no person to be an expert.
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: I just shared my experience. I think it goes to
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: show that there are a lot of people, especially in
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: the industry that I'm in, that Steve's in, that you're
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: in this like self help genre, that just act like
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: they have all their stuff together. Few people probably do
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: with anyone. I mean, that's why we connected, right, You've
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: been so authentic. And I'll say this because it's really true.
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: One of my core values is authenticity. And I was
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: deciding whether or not to write the story. I know
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: I've shared this with you in an email and I said,
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: what would Rich do? Rich would probably do it, and mean,
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: that's kind of what you did in your own way.
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: And then I did it and nothing really changed. Like
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: I shared, it didn't make the OCD go away. Steve
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: super helpful there as a friend. Steve's been through some
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: hard things in his life. He won me that when
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: the story gets published, you're gonna feel like you've like
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: conquered it. You declared victory, like, don't get trapped by that,
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: Like it doesn't make the underlying thing go away. And
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: I felt good for a day and then the next
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: day like you suck, like you shouldn't have written this,
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: Like life's awful, but there is which was good, So
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: like I kind of knew it was coming, and I'm like, okay,
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: Like this thing doesn't just go away. And it took
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: like a year of going to therapy once a week
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: for the thing to go away.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: But then there is something about owning it and then
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: sharing it publicly that that that is a pressure release, right.
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: I don't have to deal with those emails anymore. Yeah,
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: Now it's like you you seem to have all your
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: stuff together, and yet it also seems like you completely
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: fall apart.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: So like, yell, well, yeah, that that whole projection of
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: like how can I be like you? You're living this
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: idealized life is you know, it's it's weird when you're
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: on the receiving end of that. I can't stand the
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: word self help. I struggle with the word authenticity because
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: it's been so co.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Opted, et cetera.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: But these are all important ideas, right, Like, I don't
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: consider myself a self help person really, Like, I'm just
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: trying to have interesting conversations with people. I'm as flawed
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: and as human as anybody. And it's as frightening as
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: it as it may be. Sharing our frailties and our
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: and our flaws, I think is what connects us more
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: deeply with our fellow humans in this shared experiment that
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: we're having.
• 35:30
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's incredibly important just to like get
• 35:34
  Speaker 5: the message out there that like, no one has it
• 35:36
  Speaker 5: figured out. Yeah, you know, we're all kind of muddy.
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: I got news for you, No one does.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: It doesn't matter how much of an expert you know.
• 35:44
  Speaker 5: I've you know, worked with some world class athletes who
• 35:48
  Speaker 5: are just you know, going into a meet, are just jittery,
• 35:53
  Speaker 5: anxious mess right because they don't have it figured.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Out either, where everyone's looking at them like, oh, they're
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: the ones that they have the answer exactly, and you
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: you have a very I mean, we talked about this
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: last time, but it's in the new book, and I
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: think it is relevant to what we're talking about today.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Have had your own journey with all of this as
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: somebody who came out of the gate, you know, as
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: this incredible runner, almost broke for minutes for the mile,
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: ran four oh one, and then this becomes the quote
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: unquote like identity that like follows you around for a
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: very long period of time to the point where you
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: just want to get as far away from it as possible.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: So talk a little bit about like how that evolution
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: has brought you to this.
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's kind of the heart of this book. Rights.
• 36:43
  Speaker 5: It's that fact that I loved running, absolutely loved it.
• 36:48
  Speaker 5: I mean I would do it even if I didn't
• 36:50
  Speaker 5: race anything like that. But then you get success, right,
• 36:55
  Speaker 5: and then you get known for this, and then you know,
• 36:57
  Speaker 5: at eighteen, I'm running on you know, a professional meet
• 37:02
  Speaker 5: on NBC Live and like cameras on me and all
• 37:05
  Speaker 5: this stuff, and then your identity becomes wrapped around it,
• 37:09
  Speaker 5: right where for a while I struggled and still struggle
• 37:15
  Speaker 5: on you know, am I Steve the failed runner because
• 37:19
  Speaker 5: I never went under for or never met my expectations.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: But you're the only one who attaches that word to that,
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: right exactly.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Anyone else is like that dude ran four a one
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: or that's the guy who ran for a one.
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 37:34
  Speaker 5: But in your head at that moment, like you, you
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: blow it up into this big thing of people must
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: see me this way, and you know, for a long time,
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: like I'd show up for, you know, a weekend five
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: k local race, and I would hate it if someone
• 37:53
  Speaker 5: recognized me out there because I'd be like, well, I'm
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: just gonna go run, you know, fifteen sixteen minutes or
• 37:59
  Speaker 5: something not up to like my power of what I
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: thought was good enough, and I would despise being out
• 38:05
  Speaker 5: there and doing things. And like, for years I didn't
• 38:08
  Speaker 5: race because of that. For years I kind of regretted
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: or it didn't have a good relationship with running, which
• 38:17
  Speaker 5: is something that again I grew up loving and was
• 38:20
  Speaker 5: a passion and all that stuff.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: So how did you get to the other side of it?
• 38:26
  Speaker 5: You know, I think I think it's a it's a
• 38:29
  Speaker 5: couple fold things. This first, you know, where I really
• 38:33
  Speaker 5: realized it is after I held the Texas state record
• 38:37
  Speaker 5: for high school in the mile and someone broke that
• 38:40
  Speaker 5: a couple of years ago. I remember like being there
• 38:43
  Speaker 5: watching it and then being like, no one cares, Like
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: it doesn't matter. Like it's just like me in my
• 38:50
  Speaker 5: head of like, hey this matters, like you're a state
• 38:53
  Speaker 5: record holder, right, blah blah blah, no one cares.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Wasn't like Steve Magnus no longer.
• 39:01
  Speaker 5: Exactly, but in your head, you blow it up to
• 39:04
  Speaker 5: this big thing. So I think that's that was like
• 39:06
  Speaker 5: the in Catharsis of it. But it was really you know,
• 39:10
  Speaker 5: changing my relationship and getting back to like why I
• 39:14
  Speaker 5: did this activity in the first place. And really on
• 39:17
  Speaker 5: a from a coaching standpoint, that played a large role
• 39:20
  Speaker 5: because I was working with you know, college kids who
• 39:23
  Speaker 5: are eighteen to twenty two who are enjoying this sport.
• 39:26
  Speaker 5: Not many of them are going to go pro or
• 39:28
  Speaker 5: go to the Olympics or whatever have you, And it's
• 39:31
  Speaker 5: really saying what am I trying to help these kids
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: with like what should their relationship with this sport that
• 39:38
  Speaker 5: they enjoyed doing right? And like doing that with other
• 39:42
  Speaker 5: people really brought it home. I'm like, okay, Like I'm
• 39:45
  Speaker 5: trying to cultivate this in them. What do I want
• 39:48
  Speaker 5: to cultivate in myself with that?
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: In a more meta level, it's almost like there's this
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: surface level dimension where we're all playing this game where
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: you win, you lose, you have success, you have recognition,
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: and that stuff feels good when you're in that game,
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: But underneath it, there's like this more like ultimate dimension,
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: which is really about like love, right, and do you
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: love the thing that you're doing? Are you connected to
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: other people? Are you helping them? And it can be
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: hard to exist in both those games at once. So
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: there's nothing wrong with playing the surface level game, and
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: like we talked about getting excited when you do well,
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: but if you get completely stuck in that surface level game,
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: that's when you can start to feel hollow and empty
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: and the passion goes away.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not a healthy game to play. It's not
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: sustainable and it's not going to make you happy. And
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: I know that as somebody who's played that game. You know,
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: it's very it's very alluring to get caught up in
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: a lot of that kind of statistical data around how
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: well you're doing with everything that's available on the internet
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: now when you put content out into the world and
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: I'm constantly having to like remind myself or bring myself
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: back to the why behind what I'm doing, and I'm
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: as flawed as the next person and driven by ego
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: and all that kind of stuff, and I'll get like,
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: why is it you know what I mean, And I'm like,
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: I have to It's a practice, rights, just like meditation
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: is a practice. Okay, why am I doing this? What's
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: important about this? It is about connection, It is about love.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: I started this because I love having these conversations. I
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: want to create a deeper connection with human beings and
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: everything else around that is just ephemera.
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: Yes, and that that we say that in the book
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: over and over that passion is a practice, I think
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: that's another one of these flaws, right, So just find
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: your passion bullshit, Just follow your passion bullshit and be
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: passionate or like passion is like lightning striking and then
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: you're passionate, like no way. It is an ongoing practice
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: of cultivating, nourishing, and then coming back to what matters.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And and it also involves doing a bunch of
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: stuff you don't want to do just because it's your
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: passion doesn't mean like you're stoked about every single aspect
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: of what's entailed in pursuing it.
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent.
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: I think it's I think it goes back to we
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: have these like false ideas of like what it looks like,
• 42:14
  Speaker 5: and I think it's it's almost like the same thing
• 42:17
  Speaker 5: you mentioned there with this comparison, Right, we think this
• 42:20
  Speaker 5: is reality over here, but it's not right. We think
• 42:23
  Speaker 5: passion means that like I'm going to enjoy this every
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: single time that I do this. But a lot of
• 42:29
  Speaker 5: passion is in that grind, and a lot of making
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: something go from like interest to passion is actually in
• 42:36
  Speaker 5: the grind of doing mm hmm.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: I mean that's something that that everybody from Gary Vee
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: to David Goggins talks about, Like Goggins talks about having
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: to be you have to be obsessed, you know, and
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: you have to do you have to get in the
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: muck and you know, callous the mind and all that
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: kind of stuff, And it's unbelievably inspirational. As much as
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: he hates that word and would not use it, it is.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: But it's also not necessarily a recipe for most people,
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: because most people are not going to wake up at
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: one point thirty in the morning.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: To go to the gym and do the things that
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: David does.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: He can set this example that helps us, you know,
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: push through our own personal boundaries in maybe an incremental way,
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: but how do we find a sustainable, propelling fuel in
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: passion that will allow us to flourish over the long
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: run versus you know, the unhealthy you know, grind until
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: you die.
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: And I think one of the things that is almost
• 43:35
  Speaker 5: another nuanced part of this is it's it's not necessarily
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: bad to almost like go all in for a little bit,
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: right right, Yeah, But it's like having the awareness to know,
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: like all right, like to get this done, like I'm
• 43:47
  Speaker 5: gonna have to go this obsessive go all in, but
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: then I've got to come out of it unless I
• 43:52
  Speaker 5: want to be down this path of like I'm gonna
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: be obsessive and I'm going to burn out, just go all.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: The way into burning out.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And that goes to self awareness, which is a
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: big point of your book. I mean, you talk about
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: the illusion of balance. We've talked about this before, Brad,
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: You've written about this extensively. This is a you know,
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: a subject matter that's super important to me too, this
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: illusion of balance. People saying you should eat a balance
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: die and live a balance life. I don't adhere to that.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: I think that, like you said, it's okay to go
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: all in, but you have to have the self awareness
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: to then pull yourself back out. Like I talked about
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: this with Michael Gervai and he said, instead of thinking
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: about balance, just thinking think about presence, like can you
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: be present in what you're doing? And I think you
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: guys have sort of gotten it the same idea, but
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: you're using self awareness.
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think so. What we mean by self awareness
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: is the ability to see the inertia of what you're
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: doing and not to let that inertia drive you, but
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: to make sure that you're driving the ship. And again
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: it's nuanced, and it can be hard to tease out
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: which of those two things it is and that inertia.
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: Part of that is from the external results that we
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: talked about, but part of that is also just because
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: you really like the thing and it's this constant practice
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: of looking back and saying, well, what am I What
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: am I giving up as a result to go all in,
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: what am I sacrificing? And is it? Is it worth it?
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: And just asking those questions is helpful. But what we
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: found and what's in the book is there are some
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: there are some concrete ways to do this that have
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: been verified by science, then we've personally experienced. So one
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: of my favorite is to disconnect and spend time in
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: nature experience AWE. And I know in my own life
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: there is nothing like a day hike or a backpacking
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: trip that helps me figure out like, okay, like what
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: matters to me? Like when I come back from that,
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: what am I excited about? And I can tell you
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: it's not checking my Amazon sales rank. It's like spending
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: quality time with people that I love and writing, like
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: two activity that are completely unrelated to any external measures.
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: Another way to do this that we discuss in the
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: book is to reflect immortality. So a really I don't
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: I don't want to use the word good, but a
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: powerful practice that we recommend is once a year, read
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: a memoir of someone that's in the dying process and
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: coming out of a book like that, for a lot
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: of people, it gets really clear how you how you
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: ought to be spending your time and whether you want
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: to call that. It's almost like self awareness is the
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: skill of it lets you be present for the things
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: that matter.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: The thing is, if you're obsessed, you're not going to
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: allow yourself to go on that day long hike because
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: you're too obsessed.
• 46:41
  Speaker 5: That's the rub, right, and that's why it's that's why
• 46:44
  Speaker 5: we frame this is it's like these skill sets that
• 46:47
  Speaker 5: you need to develop because like, you know, I've been
• 46:51
  Speaker 5: there before, Like I've been totally one hundred percent obsessed
• 46:55
  Speaker 5: all in forget about everything else, right, and anybody can
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: go there. But like what we're trying to get across is, hey,
• 47:04
  Speaker 5: like if you can develop these skill sets of self awareness,
• 47:08
  Speaker 5: of creating a perspective, of giving yourself these other things
• 47:12
  Speaker 5: to do, then you're going to be in a better position.
• 47:15
  Speaker 5: Once that inertia keeps rolling and you start to go
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: down that path, you can take a you know, divert
• 47:21
  Speaker 5: and take a different path.
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: I think what happens is somebody is super passionate about
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: the business that they're starting or their athletic pursuits, and
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: they may have heard stories about how people can become
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: too obsessed and too passionate, but they think it doesn't
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: apply to that, that they're going to be different, right,
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: And so whether it's the woman at Theahnos, you know,
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: or you know what happened at at and Ron exactly. Yeah,
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: the other example that you use in the book, we
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: see passion unleashed in an out of control way, in
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: the same way that like, it's very similar to what
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: Ryan talks.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: About an ego of the enemy, you know, an ego's enemy.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: Where when these things are unchecked, things that we think
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: are are positive forces that are propelling us to succeed
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: ultimately become our achilles heel that destroy us.
• 48:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think, you know, I think that's the
• 48:25
  Speaker 5: important point to make is no one starts out thinking
• 48:29
  Speaker 5: like I'm gonna be obsessive and this is gonna be bad,
• 48:32
  Speaker 5: right right. Everyone starts out I'm like, I enjoy this,
• 48:35
  Speaker 5: this is passionate about it.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: But some people will say I'm gonna outwork everybody.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's not how I'm gonna make it.
• 48:41
  Speaker 5: That is true, and it but it comes out of
• 48:43
  Speaker 5: a place of I'm gonna outwork people because this is
• 48:46
  Speaker 5: going to be good for me, right. No one thinks
• 48:49
  Speaker 5: that I'm going to do this to burn out, right, And.
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: I think that.
• 48:53
  Speaker 5: I think that's why it's incredibly important to like a
• 48:57
  Speaker 5: cultivate these skills, but also like how people around you
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: to give you that check right, to put you almost
• 49:06
  Speaker 5: back in place when you're headed down these directions.
• 49:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's you know that sometimes you do need to
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: outwork everybody. Like again, this book is it's a deep
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: dive into nuance, like trying really hard works until it
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: gets in your way, and then the practice is, well,
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: how do identify when it's getting in your way?
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: Well that goes back to the self awareness piece.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah right, Yeah, so that seems to be almost the
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: most important aspect of all of this, because if you
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: lack self awareness or you're just disconnected from yourself, then
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: you're not going.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: To be able to.
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: Really navigate the treacherous waters of figuring this stuff out.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you don't have self awareness, you probably
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: are going to have difficulty figuring out what you're passionate
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: about to begin with. Yeah, the most important thing you
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: can do is invest in that personal journey to be
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: integrated enough so that you can trust your instincts and
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: and you know, have a kind of reliable constitution for
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: making these judgment goals totally.
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: But self awareness is a part of this passion of practice.
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: We think the word self awareness, I know myself better
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: than anyone knows me.
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: It's not true.
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: No, there's only some really neat research that ninety five
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: percent of people are not self aware. Is judged by
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: a complete stranger, can better assess their personality against validated
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: skills than they could only only only about it.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: I'm not surprised. I really that's so amazing.
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: Only about five percent of people can can do better.
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: And what's really interesting the criteria They ninety five percent
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: of people are the ones that think that they're the
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: most self aware. So it's like this delusional effect that
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: lots of us, lots lots of us have. I don't
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: know the exact criteria. It's in the book. In the
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: they're validated psychological measures of I think it's personality like
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: various personality traits. And let's say that you were to
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: go do some interaction and a stranger where to watch you,
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: and then the stranger rates how you would fit into
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: these quadrants, and then you rate it. The stranger does
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: better with a trained psychologist eye on you. And that's
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: what we've come to coin like the inertia. You don't
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: see clearly when you're in the midst of all this inertia.
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: So community is huge and people that you trust, because
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: it's one thing to ask someone and not really listen.
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: It's another thing to ask someone, have them tell you,
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: wait a minute, go this way, and trust them enough
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: to do it. And then there are things that you
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: can do as a part of this practice of passion
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: to develop the ability to see.
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: Yourself more clearly.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: That's fascinating.
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: One of the simplest and very tactical things that we
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: recommend in the book is pretend that you're giving advice
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: to a friend and it sounds.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: Like giving advice to yourself, and.
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: Then give advice to yourself. And this comes up for
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: me all the time in a very particular way, and
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: that is around my own exercise habit. So I tend
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: to never want to miss workouts, and that will often
• 52:05
  Speaker 4: mean training when I have an injury and I probably shouldn't,
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: and I will without Failure's two guys that go to
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: the gym with Scott and Justin I'll be walking in
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: the gym and I'll be like, if Scott's biceps tendon
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: was hurting him and he asked me if he should
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: bench press, what would I say? And the answer is always, dude,
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: take a week off, like you're fine. And I have
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: to ask myself that question like six times on the
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: way to the gym, and then maybe I won't bench press.
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: But if I don't ask that question, I'm going to
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: the bench press. And that's just a very concrete example.
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: But I think that that little twist, if you really
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: imagine someone that could be in a similar situation than
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: yourself or as yourself, and then ask that question, that
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: can be helpful.
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's almost more complicated than simple self awareness, because
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: you can have the self awareness to know that it's
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: not a good idea for you to bench press, but
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: then you're going to do it anyway.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: You're still going to do it.
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: So there's self awareness, and then there's the action taken
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: upon that self awareness.
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 53:03
  Speaker 5: We're we're almost working against our inbuilt cognitive biases, right,
• 53:07
  Speaker 5: I mean, we're we're.
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: Unbelievably like rudimentary creatures in so many ways, Like when
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: you look at the judicial system and how unreliable witness
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: testimony is. Like all these things that we think we're
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: good at, we're absolutely horrible.
• 53:20
  Speaker 5: At exactly, and we have inbuilt bias to tell a
• 53:23
  Speaker 5: story that is good for us. Of course, no one
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: wants to sit around and be like, oh, I'm a liar, cheat, etcetera, etcetera,
• 53:30
  Speaker 5: like oh, I'm not strong enough to do this right.
• 53:33
  Speaker 5: We have an incentive to tell ourselves a good story
• 53:36
  Speaker 5: in our head. So it's almost like we need these
• 53:39
  Speaker 5: checks and balances to make.
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: Sure that we get out of our own way and
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: to react to a good story, like, oh, find your passion,
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: like just wait for lightning to strike and then you'll
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: be happy. Okay, that sounds good. I'm gonna wait for
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: lightning to strike and when you follow it, like, pursue it.
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: My mom she sent me this book well before we
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: were writing this, and I love my mom to death,
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: and she's a very what's the word I'm looking for,
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: just very emotive in a nurturing way, and she had
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: this book of like passion quotes, and of course I
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: pulled it out when I started on this project, and
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: it's like, pursue your passion with reckless abandon like act
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: as if you couldn't fail. The world is watching, and
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: I'm like, oh my gosh, but like.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: You're you're gonna have a panic attack just reading that, right.
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: Right, this is the kind of but this is the
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: kind of stuff that that what's out there because it
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: sounds really nice and then people end up trapped.
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so funny, man.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: I think it's uh, it's it's really it's really hard.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: And I think we've moved away from that kind of
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: community integration that you know, for thousands and thousands of years,
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: this is how humans lived, and now.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: We're so fractured.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: We're lucky if we have one or two good friends
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: who knows us well enough to call us on our
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: bullshit because they see as consistent enough. But I think
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: with that progressive isolation, that level of self awareness becomes
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: even more for you know, more deeply jeopardized. It becomes
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: more difficult to like really under see whether you're you're
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: operating in an objective way.
• 55:19
  Speaker 5: And it's even worse than today's modern society, right, because
• 55:23
  Speaker 5: we're going to project an image on Instagram or exactly
• 55:27
  Speaker 5: or whereever it is, right, So we're we're almost in
• 55:30
  Speaker 5: like the habit and business of projecting how we want
• 55:34
  Speaker 5: to be. So not only do we have to deal
• 55:36
  Speaker 5: with our own delusions, but now we're creating.
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: Them and there's an expectation. Yeah, exactly.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: And then yeah, just like the writing, like, how do
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: I live.
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: Up to this, you know, image that I've crafted for myself. Yeah,
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: it's tough, it's not good, right.
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it doesn't feel good. Yeah, And that's again, that's
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: that's part of the practice of passion is to be
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: vulnerab bull and to build community and to have people
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: that you trust, and that all leads to harmonious passion
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: versus the obsessive passion. Is this I've got it all
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: together on bulletproof, I can't fail. And then what happens,
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: as Steve said, there's this identity fusion. And then when
• 56:18
  Speaker 4: you do fail, well, it's not just the thing failed
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: that you failed, and then suddenly lying becomes more of
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: a temptation acting unethical. There's some research that we profile
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: in the book that athletes who use steroids are so
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: much more likely, So I'll step back there.
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: There's this model.
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: Developed by a psychologist named Robert valorand and it's a
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: survey that lets you answer questions and it will tell
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: you you're obsessive or harmonious and where in the spectrum you fall,
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: because it's not black or white. There's a direct correlation
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: with people that fall in the obsessive side in steroids
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: in sport and unethical behavior in business. And it makes
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: total sense because again, if the thing that you're passionate
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: about is the result, and your identity is tied to
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: that result, and the result doesn't happen, you're going to
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: do anything to get the result, because if Steve so
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: often says, it's no longer an attack on your business,
• 57:16
  Speaker 4: it's an attack on you.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And when we're talking about it, it sounds so clear,
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: but it's when you're in it and you're doing the thing,
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: it's this really slippery slope and sometimes without self awareness,
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: it can happen and you don't know what's happening, that
• 57:31
  Speaker 4: you're going from harmonious to obsessive.
• 57:33
  Speaker 5: Well, you see this on the day to day too, right,
• 57:36
  Speaker 5: how many times have you gotten in it in an
• 57:38
  Speaker 5: argument with a friend or your spouse or your boyfriend
• 57:41
  Speaker 5: or girlfriend, And like you go into that defensive mode
• 57:44
  Speaker 5: where it's like oh, they're attacking me, and it's not
• 57:47
  Speaker 5: about the argument anymore. It's about like you winning this,
• 57:51
  Speaker 5: so that like your ego can or in your sense
• 57:55
  Speaker 5: of self can.
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: That's like that's like every you know, political argument or
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: or kind of the diet wars that you see, Like Brad, We've.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: Talked about this too.
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: It's become like so tribal and polarized, Like I just
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: don't even want to be part of that whatsoever, really, right,
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: because it's you know, people so self identify with their
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: tribe that any any kind of cogent, objective discussion is
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: impossible because it is so personalized. So an attack against
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: this idea or argument or perspective becomes an attack on
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: who you are as a human being, and that, of
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: course is going to make you defensive, exactly.
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: And that pushes us more into our own tribe.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, exactly.
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And then on social media, you signal to that
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: tribe to make sure that.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: They know that you're a member in good standing of that.
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: So like those arguments are about making sure that you're
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: affirming your membership in that group much more so than
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: they are about changing the minds of somebody who's outside
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: of that group totally.
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: One one one practice in coming back to the example
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: in particular of passion that because again, this stuff can
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: make sense intellectually, but then it's hard to actually act on.
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: One practice that we recommend in the book that we
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: heard from just about everyone that we interview that has
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: had a long career and stayed harmoniously passionate is this
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: notion very swiftly returning to the work itself. So if
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: you have a huge success as a writer, celebrate the
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: success because there's something to say about celebration and joy
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: that's important. But then don't take too long before you
• 59:40
  Speaker 4: get back to writing. And the same thing after a failure,
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: like it's okay to be sad and to grieve a defeat,
• 59:45
  Speaker 4: but then get back to the thing itself, because in
• 59:49
  Speaker 4: the case of a victory, getting back to the thing
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: is humbling, and in the case of a defeat, getting
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: back to the thing is like, why really I like
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: this thing? You know, I'm doing it because of the activity,
• 59:59
  Speaker 4: not because of the result. And it literally it prevents
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 4: your brain from grooving in those neural pathways that are
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: associated with validation, bestseller, Olympic medal, it's nope, running like
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 4: back to the activity, this is what I like. And
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: in the case of defeat, same thing. You're short circuiting
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: the brain's process to really hardwire all these negative emotions
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: or I'm a failure, and then that just builds more
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: pressure for the next time.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: It's again, Nope, back to the act, right.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: So you're reinforcing process as being the endgame as opposed
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: to the results of that process being the determining factor
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: and how you feel about what you do.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because the results are they're so transient. If you think,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: like we spend our life in the process. The amount
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: of time that you look at the New York Times
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: thing and see your book as a bestseller is one second. Yeah,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: but then you can spend yours thinking about it or
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: being bummed out that you missed it in like you're friend,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: like your vasa not really present for your life, and
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: there's some thing about getting back to the thing that
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: doesn't let that that delusional and not even delusionable, but
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: that being elsewhere worrying about success or failure take root
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: in your brain.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And let's just be honest, that's very hard because listen,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: if you're going to open up the New York Times
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: and you're gonna see that your book is listed on
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: that special list that they make in that newspaper once
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: in a while. Uh, that is intoxicating, right, And that's
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: something that's going to get you excited. And also it's
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: going to lie to you. It's going to tell you
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: that this is what's going to change your life. This
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: is what's going to make you feel okay, this is
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: what's made, this is why it's all worth it, et cetera,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: all of that, which is an illusion of course that
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: you don't realize until you experience it really and understand you.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: Don't feel any different about your life.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: And what is that? What is that sound?
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: As you describe that where we started early, like it's
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: like addiction, right, Like that's the pacio, that's the suffering.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: So you know you said, is passion good or bad?
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 4: And then like it depends, well, that kind of passion
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: might feel good, just like your next hit feels good,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: but ultimately that leads to suffering because it's constantly craving
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: and once it goes away, you're miserable.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: Whereas the but if.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: You love writing, then you're like, this is awesome. This
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: just means I get to do this.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: More yes, but then get back to the work. Don't
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 4: sit there talking about how you're a New York Times
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: bestselling author. Be proud of yourself, don't minimize the success.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: But then, like ask in the chair, start writing. If
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: you're an Olympic medallist, you got to get paid, like
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: go do the media spots. But on the track. I
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 4: guess in this case it's feet on the track, start running.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: And same thing in business. Really successful executives are the
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 4: executives that do the work, not the executives that talk
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 4: about the work. Not the executives that you know go
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: on TV about the work. They're the ones that do
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: the work.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: And all the science that you guys reviewed right in
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: this book, what were some of the more surprising findings
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: that you came across as it relates to passion.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: I got one. It was sair sore.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: There's a neuropsychiatrist named Mark Lewis, and his work around
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 4: what happens when you're in the throes of an obsessive
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 4: passion shows that it's very similar to individuals suffering from
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: eating disorders. Who because when someone is suffering from an
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: eating disorder, when they look in the mirror, they don't
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: necessarily see someone that is too thin and sick, they
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: see someone that is too big. And it's the same
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: brain activity when someone is in the throes of an
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: obsessive passion. So their company may be failing, they may
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: be ruining their marriage, they may be lying to the Feds,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: but they don't they don't see any of that. They
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 4: just see like, we're on this mission, got to succeed.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: It's just like the person with an eating disorder has
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: got to lose more weight, and that's that's that's that
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: linkage again, that's passion. Right in the case of the
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: the not the person with the eating disorder. You can
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: say an eating disorder is passion about losing weight.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to the very passionate about destroying your life. Yeah,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: you can be very pass about being a victim.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: All those things are true.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: So when the idea came together, we started like, these
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: are interesting concepts to explore, but then the science really
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 4: drilled it home that, like passion suffering, it's one coin
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 4: and it's often about where you direct it. Another example
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: that's similar is if you think about the act of
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 4: training for the Olympics to swim, you were a swimmer
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: six to eight hours a day in the pool. Maybe
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 4: I don't know, maybe there's some land work. So you
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 4: are staring in a line in water to the exclusion
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: of everything in your life for six to eight hours
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: a day, and when you're not in the pool, you're
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 4: probably thinking about your workout. That sounds a lot like OCD.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 4: Like the obsession is the Olympics and training, and the
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: compulsion is you swim, but it's pointed in a positive direction.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 4: And I think Olympic athletes are awesome and super inspirational.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: But what we want to do is we want to
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: point out, like this stuff just isn't so simple.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: Similar it is insanity, right right. So we're very you know,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: in the way that we're selective about which animals we
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: love and which animals we eat. We're selective about which
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: obsessions we socially approve of and which we decide our
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: addictions that we need to malign.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: And it's the gift in the purse.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 4: I'll say one last thing about because the OCD part
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: in particular, the closest thing and it's still a world away,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: but the closest thing I can describe to my brain
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: when it's in the storm of OCD is my brain
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: when I'm writing, because it's just like I'm locked into
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: the book, Like it feels somewhat similar. I could be
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: at the dinner table, but I'm thinking about the book.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: I could be at the gym, but I'm thinking about
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: the book. It's just I'm obsessed with it and that
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 4: is a great gift and I really like writing. But
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 4: it's that same brain chemistry that if it's pointed in
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 4: another direction, you know, can go awry. So there's this
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: notion of there's there's at least I think that there's
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: two ways to go about it. There's realizing that your
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: temperament is as such in pointing that in positive directions,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: and at the same time there's working on self awareness
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 4: and skills to be able to turn that off when
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: you want to, and to be able to choose to.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 5: And I think, you know, that's the kind of a
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 5: greater thing that we noticed in this book, is it's
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 5: all this stuff is on a spectrum, right, It's not
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 5: good or bad. If you look at Olympic athletes, like
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 5: when they're done with Olympics and on their break, let's
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 5: say they exhibit the exact same symptoms as an attic
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 5: getting taken off drugs, right, depression, anxiety, all those things happen.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 5: And the same thing you know talking with Brad a
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 5: little bit, is actually growing up Like I had OCD.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 5: I just didn't know I had it, So I had
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 5: all these compulsions so I'd have to touch door knobs
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 5: or else I thought I was gonna like something bad
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 5: was going to happen, turn my alarm on and off
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 5: seven times before I went to bed, or else I
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 5: thought I'd wake up dead.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: Stuff like that.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: And those are all in retrospect looking back, oriented around
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: running performance.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 5: Not originally but a ritualistically all ritualists, right, but like
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 5: as I grew up, or as I grew into running,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 5: like I just directed all of those like rituals and
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 5: obsessions towards running. So running, the training for running itself
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 5: became obsessive, compulsive. It was like I have to go
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 5: out for this run or else, like I'm gonna have
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 5: these horrible anxiety, etc. That's overwhelming someone. I'm going to
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 5: go out for this run. So I think when we
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 5: look at that, and if I look at other athletes
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 5: that I've helped out, like if you look at them,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 5: a lot of them are on that spectrum. Of having
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 5: some sort of obsession and compulsion to have to do it.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 5: I mean you almost have to have some degree if
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 5: you're going to go out and run I don't know,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 5: one hundred and twenty miles a week, right.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I've manifested certain aspects of that. I
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: mean I relate to that a lot, like I would
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: have to be the first person to arrive for a
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: morning workout, like I like little you know, just things
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: that are meaningless. But to me, it's like, oh, I
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: wasn't the first one here, and then I had a
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: certain way I had to wash my bathing suit, Like
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: after I was done, that had to be done in
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: a certain way.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: It was completely OCD and.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: Insane, right, But you trick yourself into thinking that these
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: are related to ultimately your performance later on.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 5: Exactly. It's that like inner mind game where you're like, no,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 5: I have to do this because this this is going
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 5: to help me perform, or this is good, this is
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 5: why I'm good at this. And if I don't do
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 5: this ritual, if I don't follow this, then I'm not
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 5: gonna be good at it.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: And if somebody sorry, go ahead.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 5: But I was just gonna say in that sense, it's
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 5: almost like accepted right because it's like, oh.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: This is he's driven.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: He's driven, and we.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 5: Tied it up into like, oh, that person's just really
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 5: passionate about running. He's just super driven and super intrinsically driven.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 5: Like I don't have if you were asked to coach,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 5: or if you were asked to ask my coach at
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 5: that time, like I don't have to worry about him.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 5: He's going to do his workout, he's going to get
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 5: everything done, and it's all in this positive light. But
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 5: if we frame those same behaviors in a different context,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 5: we'd like be like, oh, that's negative. That person needs
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 5: this help and that's this person needs to go to
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 5: do this.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: So, as somebody who lived through that and who now coaches,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: how do you counsel your athletes when you start to
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: see ndisha of this kind of OCD behavior.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good question. You know.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 5: One of the things that I try and do is
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 5: starting with that awareness and understanding of what they're doing
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 5: and if this behavior is like almost if they're in
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 5: control of it or not, Because I think the biggest
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 5: thing I saw with myself is that over time it's
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 5: almost like these OCD behaviors took control right where if
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 5: you didn't do them, then like extreme anxiety, et cetera,
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 5: et cetera, And.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: That's the definite, real quick, that's the definitely clinical OCD.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 4: The definition is like you totally lose control and it's
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: just NonStop twenty four seven. So I think it's important
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: to say like these these to me, these are still
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 4: on spectrums because I've always been super ritualistic, but then
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 4: like for sixteen hours a day, like when I was
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 4: in the thick of it, if I was sitting here,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 4: I'd look at that glass and be like, oh, I
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 4: could just like jab that into my neck, and then
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 4: massive anxiety. So it's it's I just want to be
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: clear because I I've become really cautious about like using
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 4: those terms. But I do think that it's still the
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: same spectrum because it's the same thing. It's just that
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 4: this isn't a way or maybe it's two hours a
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 4: day and then pathologically it's just non stop.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 3: Okay, sorry, Steve, I just want to put that out way.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's and I think it's all on this extremes, right,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 5: It's like growing up, like even outside of the running context,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 5: like I had a different OCD classified behaviors, right, But
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 5: I wasn't going to sit there and wash Like I
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 5: didn't have it so bad that I was going to
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 5: wash dishes for two hours.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: Right, or wash my walk around circle for time?
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 5: They do, see exactly, And that's I think that's where
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 5: it's really important to see this spectrum. And I think
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 5: that's what's really important about human nature is I don't
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 5: know about other you know, uh, mental health issues, but
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 5: I imagine they're all along.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: These different spectrums.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 5: And then just in the athletic world, you know, people
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 5: who maybe are mildly on this spectrum have channeled it
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 5: into this thing, right, So we've accepted it as.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: Like, yeah, we reinforce it, right, we celebrate it.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 5: Yeah, actually exactly, And a lot of sports they do,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 5: and a lot of coaches actually do. They'll reinforce this like,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 5: oh that worked last time, Like keep doing this ritualistic
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 5: behavior and then it spirals and conspiral a lot of it.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 4: But if you can control it in the outcome is positive,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 4: then I think it's a good thing. Like David Goggins,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 4: you just head on your show, he is a super
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 4: disciplined creature of routine at least it sounds like it,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 4: and he seems to be loving it and enjoying life
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 4: and inspiring people, so maybe that's not a pribroblem. And
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 4: again it's like this, well, it's the gift in the curse.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 4: It depends on where it's pointed. Maybe it even depends
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: on at what point in your life you're at. Right,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 4: if you're doing certain behaviors when you've got two little
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 4: kids at home, maybe that is harmful. Whereas you don't
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 4: have too little kids, it's great. So it's these kind
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 4: of nuanced things right.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: And Steve as a coach, though, when you do see
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: athletes starting to demonstrate this kind of stuff, like what
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: is the what is the path to getting them to
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: snap out of it or or developing some greater self
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: awareness around what's actually going I.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 5: Think it depends on actually how severe the issue is, Right,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 5: if it's just little things here and there, like you
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 5: make them aware of it and you say like hey,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 5: like let's you know, if it's not a big deal,
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 5: let's try this race over here in this safe environment
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 5: without doing this.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: Without tying your shoes six times in a row.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 4: And that's exposure therapy. Like when I went through therapy.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: That's basically it like you expose yourself to the thing
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 4: that you're scared of without reassuring.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: You're in a low risk environment and not at not
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: at the big.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 3: Me No, not at the risk.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 5: And I think that's that's the thing is you're trying
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 5: to get. You know, I call it like you're going
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 5: to feel this almost like anxiety from it because it's
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 5: like you're ritual. But what I want them to get
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 5: used to is just to sit with it, right And
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 5: if you can have the ability to like just sit
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 5: with that and understand and see it like come and
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 5: like go and nothing happens and you race fine and
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 5: all that good stuff, then you can get out of that.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 5: But you know, on the same side, like I've had
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 5: athletes who have exhibited behaviors that further along in the
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 5: spectrum there, and I think that's where it's almost where
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 5: you need bring professionals in, right, because if it starts
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 5: infiltrating other aspects of their life, or starts infiltrating or
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 5: interfering with you know, making it where running and racing
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 5: is no longer something that is enjoyed but instead something
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 5: that like, okay, I have to go through this, and
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 5: do this, and do this, and do this, just to
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 5: get on the starting and then I don't really enjoy
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 5: doing this, but it's the only thing I've done in
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 5: My identity is wrapped around it, around it, so I'm
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 5: going to continue doing that.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an example of passion turning malignant, like it's
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: it almost becomes this cancerous growth as opposed to.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: This, you know, beautiful sustaining force exactly.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: And one of the things we talk about when we
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: talk about passion is how to find it, how to
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: find your passion, then how to chase it, how to
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: chase your passion, how to live your passion. But what
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: we don't talk about is when it's time to let
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: go of your passion and move on with your life, right,
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: And that's that might be my favorite chapter in your
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: book by just bringing this up and using examples of
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: other people like who have come to this place of
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: deciding like, Hey, I know that my identity was wrapped
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: up in this, but it's time to do something different.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: So can you guys talk a little bit about that.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna let Steve take this first,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 4: because I think Steve directly experienced it with himself running.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah, sure, I'm I mean I think it's it's almost
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 5: like you have to come to peace with it, right,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 5: You have to come to terms in peace with whatever
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 5: you're doing and having like the awareness that this isn't
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 5: just this isn't the only thing I am, This isn't
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 5: the only only person I am. It goes back to
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 5: that identity piece, right, and you have to come to
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 5: terms with that before moving on to the next thing.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 5: And I think it's really hard, you know, on an
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 5: athletic level, especially because if you look at athletes, when
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 5: are they done in their twenties maybe if they're lucky,
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 5: their thirties, right, and they've spent their entire lives like
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 5: building towards this thing and wrapping yourself around this one thing.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 5: And then you get to the point where most people
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 5: are building their careers and you have to like end yours,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 5: and then all of a sudden, you're like the twenty
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 5: two year old out of college figuring out, Okay, what's next?
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 5: What's the meaning?
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: Gunn at? Like, where am I going to get?
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: With the snap of a fingers, it's over overnight, and
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: so many athletes find themselves thinking for the very first
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: time about what might come next because their training, their
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: whole life around the pursuit of excellence in their sport
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: is so all consuming there almost isn't any room for
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: entertaining what's going to come after.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's in sport in itself, like is very
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 5: good at giving you like this end goal and this
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 5: purpose and this definitive thing to shoot for. Well, life
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 5: is kind of nebulous to degree, right, we have to
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 5: make those decisions ourselves when we're in sport, Like, those
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 5: decisions are kind of.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 3: Made for us. So it's kind of like the military exactly.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 5: So I think it takes a lot of work, and
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 5: I think in the sporting front, like you need more
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 5: work on on preparing people to make that transition, and
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 5: you know they have the skill set needed, but no
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 5: one tells you how to like find something or how
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 5: to you know, direct your purpose and drive to something
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 5: new and different.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it's it's a huge problem, you know.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: I think that that the n C two A or
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: every college, every you know, sporting federation should have something
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: set up to help athletes transition out of their sports,
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: to make it a more graceful entry way into the workforce.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: I've seen.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: I experienced this myself, like I wasn't even that good
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: and I had, like, you know, a.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: Major existential crisis.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: It's like a morning, it's like a funeral when you
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: finally say, I'm going to put this away and I'm
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: going to do something else. And you know what makes
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: it worse is you know that you have this ability
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: to dedicate yourself to work incredibly hard, to you know,
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: to endure suffering, like all of these characteristics that you
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: think would translate into.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: The workforce and be valued.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: But if you're disconnected from what it is that you
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: might be interested in or good at because you'd never
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: really thought about it, then it's hard to figure out,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: you know, how to you know, find the round hole
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: for the round peg, and you end up like there's
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: a lot of people that struggle with drugs and alcohol
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: and all these kinds of problems because they don't know
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: what to do and there's nobody there. Everyone just has
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: been They've been on the cover of magazines for like
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: a decade, and then suddenly they're a civilian and they're like, okay,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: go be an accountant.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 5: I don't know, you know, we talked about cultivating your
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 5: passion via dabbling and interest. Well, in college, if you're
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 5: an athlete, you know this as well, Like you don't
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 5: give time to dabble in any other interests, right, It's
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 5: go to class and like you know, go to practice
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 5: and compete and all that stuff. You know, athletes at
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 5: the college level, like they don't get to do the
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 5: internships or these other things. A lot of times you're
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 5: abroad or exactly to find things that like, hey, this
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 5: might be worthwhile pursuing. So I think, like, you know,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 5: we could talk about the pros all day, but I
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 5: think the college level, from transitioning from a you know,
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 5: twenty one twenty two year old kid then to the
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 5: workplace is it's almost heartbreaking, right because you have all
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 5: these kids too. You know, the administration, the college athletics,
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 5: athletic directors say he go represent us, like, go get
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 5: on the magazines, go get on the TV, go get
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 5: this publicity. And then you know most of you aren't
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 5: going to make it professional, but you're going to have
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 5: to figure out something and then you're going to be like, oh, yeah,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 5: I have this degree in something that I took just
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 5: so that I could stay eligible.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: And have this degree. But like I don't really need
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 3: or know what I can do.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And what also happens is that, at least speaking personally,
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: there's a almost a sense of shame because you're you
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: know what it's like to feel so plugged into something
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: and passionate and driven and directed and then suddenly that
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: gets taken away. You can't do that anymore. But the
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: bar is set so high in terms of what's going
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: to get you excited about getting out of bed in
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: the morning, and the chance is that you're going to find.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: A job that's going to give you that are pretty low, right.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 5: Well, just think just think of you know, compare.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: The adrenaline, the dopamine of.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 5: All that of racing, like you know, a PAC twelve
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 5: championship or in a championship, versus going and saying, hey,
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 5: like I'm the lowest level like accountant at this company. Right,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 5: there is no you don't get that hit.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, play it out in a sport where you
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: know you can't really pursue a living, but perhaps you're
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: the best in the world at it.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: Like you get you get an Olympic, Yeah, you get
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: an Olympic gold.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: Medal, and fencing you're the best fencer in the whole world.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: But then I mean, I guess you could go like
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: be in the movies, like sort of teach people how
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: to sword fight in movie. I don't know, but you're
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: not going to be able to be a professional fencer
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: and support yourself, So you're gonna have to join the workforce.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: Like how are you gonna do that? And do it
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: gracefully and do it in a way where you feel
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: good about the new path that you're going to be
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: blazing for yourself.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, that is a very tall order.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: And if you're doing that alone, which you probably are,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: because there's nobody there saying, hey, we know this is
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: going to be really rough, like let me help you.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: It's a disaster waiting to happen.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 4: So I think that there is no easy answer. As
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 4: Steve said, it's really hard. I think something that hopefully
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 4: this book, in this conversation leads to more conversation, is
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 4: just around transition out of sport, particularly at collegiate levels,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 4: and how awful it is and like the human suffering
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 4: that results from this particularly and I'm going to go
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 4: off topic a little, but like these kids aren't paid either,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 4: so like it's really pretty much a hyst unless you're
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 4: the half of perception that makes it as a pro.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 4: So that just pisses me off. But anyways, I think
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 4: that there needs to be more help along the way
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 4: in cultivating some other interest and also helping people to
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 4: see that what you do develop is a collegiate athlete
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 4: is the ability to go all in on something, and
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 4: that is a function can be applied in different areas.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 4: So coming out of school, you might not have the
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 4: skills to go work in finance or consulting or writing,
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 4: but you certainly have the work ethic. And I'd almost
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 4: argue that the discipline and the work ethic can be
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 4: harder to cultivate than the skill. So imagine if there
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 4: were these transition out of sport programs where you had
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 4: someone to work with you to identify certain areas at
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 4: which you could put use that drive and that would
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 4: be successful. And there are pilot programs that work with
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 4: athletes to do just that, and that it's really geared
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 4: around entrepreneurship because it's the same kind of attitude, like
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 4: you're representing yourself and like you're going all in. But
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 4: those programs are pilots, and I think that they need
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 4: to be the norm or at least something like that,
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 4: and rather than be like you are a runner, now
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 4: go get a job, it's you are a driven person
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 4: that knows how to channel that drive. You can apply
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 4: that to anything. Let's find something that you like.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's important to I think what you
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: said is really important. The piece about recognizing the how
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: do I want to say this? The self control, like
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: the idea that an athlete is self directed, but that
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: dictates that in the workforce, they need to feel a
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: sense of ownership and direction over the path that they're taking.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: Like the athlete know, I know what to do for
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: myself to get this performance out of myself, and I'm
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: responsible for putting in the work and then I'm responsible
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: for the result. Is very different from being the lowest
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: rung on a team where you're completely disempowered.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, which is the exact opposite of what
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: that athlete journey is all. There's not saying that.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 4: No, you're saying it. Well, there's there's a really there's
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 4: a neat company. It's called valor Perform and it's a
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 4: small startup. The woman that founded it, she's awesome. Her
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 4: name is Sarah Milby. She played soccer at Wisconsin I
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 4: think maybe not Wisconson, but she played college soccer. And
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 4: the whole business is built on We're going to take
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 4: former pro in high level collegiate athletes and have them
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 4: work in this this valor perform where then they're helping businesses.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 4: I'm coaching on performance. So this company is like a
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 4: year and a half old, so it'll be really interesting
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 4: to follow. But a huge part of the mission is
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 4: to only recruit former athletes and then design an organization
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 4: that is not a big bureaucracy but that lets people
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 4: have autonomy and control and push.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 3: And it's an experiment.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 4: I don't know how it will turn out, but I
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 4: think the ideas like that are are really good and
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 4: useful because I'm around elite athletes all the time, not
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 4: as often as Steve, but like you don't have to
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 4: be a coach to know, like, these people are really
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 4: driven and if you point them at something, they'll be
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 4: great and they can enjoy it because they love doing
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 4: the work. The problem just is that like you abandon
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 4: them on this islands and you don't point them at anything,
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 4: and then what ends up happening is they get a
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 4: job in a big bureaucracy and to both of your
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 4: point like that can't compare, right.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: I would also encourage any athlete who's listening to this
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: collegiate athlete or otherwise to take a tip from what
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: you guys said earlier, which is this is not like
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: finding your passion isn't like the love of your life
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: kind of thing. Like you can have multiple passions. And
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: just because you're all in on your sport, and it
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: doesn't even have to be sports, it could be whatever.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: It just because you're all in on one thing doesn't
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: mean that you've crowded out all the space to be
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: interested in something else. So try to cultivate a side
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: hustled passion yeah, at the same time, so that you
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: are planning those seeds for what your future like might become.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: So a great example of that is there's Olympic swimmer
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: named Tyler Clary who's like now getting into stock car racing,
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: like race car driving, which is something he was kind
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: of doing. I'm sure I don't know enough about it,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: but I'm sure he's been doing it for a very
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: long time, probably loved doing it as a kid. But
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: he's developed some skill and some relationships and some acumen
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: in that world when he was still competing and racing
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: and swimming, and now he's stepping out and like he's
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: ready to like for this new chapter. Right, It's almost
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: like you're paving the way for that along the way.
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: So try to bear that in mind while you're still
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: pursuing that you know, ultimate like super passion.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 5: And I think that gets that almost misnowher that like,
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 5: in order to be great at something, you have to
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 5: be one hundred all that, which I don't think hold's true.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 5: It's well, you're doing that swimming, let's say, okay, be
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 5: all in that practice, but then you have all this
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 5: other time of the day which you can utilize some
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 5: portion of it to pursue other things that are interesting
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 5: that won't take away from swimming. And I think it's
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 5: almost like this ego thing where we think, like, oh,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 5: if I'm going to be the best writer in the world,
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 5: then I only need to write, yeah, and it has
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 5: to be like this and this is all I know.
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 2: If that was true, though, then the best athletes would
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: all be like people that live in the woods around
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: where there's no people around them, and the best writers
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: would be people who have no relationships with it, you
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: know what I mean.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: It doesn't work that way, right.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 4: In Steve's point with the swimming example, thinking about swimming
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 4: is not the same thing as swimming. Yeah, like when
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 4: you're in class, when you're hanging out with like thinking
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 4: about swimming. No, that like if anything that you're just
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 4: gonna get.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: In when you're when you're you know, twenty one, twenty two. Yeah,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: you can live in a dorm room and swim like
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: six hours a day and whatever free time you have,
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: you can play video games and you could do that
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: for a while. But you can't be a professional swimmer
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: at age thirty and still be doing that exactly, you
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: know what I mean. And this is something I talked
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: with Carrie well Schenning's about, Like, how do you Olympics
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: after Olympics, after Olympics after Olympics. Okay, now you're married
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: and now you have kids. It's easy to look at
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: that and say, well, that's distracting me from being the
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: greatest volleyball player of all time. But to mature into
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: a place where you recognize and value the fact that
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 2: that's actually making you a better athlete, because it's making
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: you a more grounded well rounded person is a maturation
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: process that is counterintuitive but absolutely true.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 4: You just said that so better than I would have
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 4: said it, And I was thinking the exact same thing,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 4: which is like, over time is you age too. I
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 4: think that there's a you gain some wisdom and you know,
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 4: you say a maturation process. That's exactly what it is.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 4: For so also to call time out when we're giving
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 4: advice to these collegiate kids, it's really hard. I often
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 4: catch myself thinking about the book, the book really is
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 4: writing when I'm not writing the book. So it's an Again,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 4: it's a practice. So it's not like, oh, you now
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 4: just like turn off the switch doesn't work like that.
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 4: You have to constantly be practicing coming back the maturation process.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 4: I now have a kid. He's ten months old. Nothing
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 4: has been better for my ability to be present than
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 4: THEO because like, he's just there. It's awesome. It wasn't
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 4: like that in the first three months. But now that
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 4: he's doing stuff and he's he's like a little dude.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 4: But it's hard to put into words and it sounds
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 4: so cliche, but I've noticed that it's not that the
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 4: other stuff seems less important and almost feels more important
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 4: but also much easier to turn off and step away from,
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 4: if that makes sense. And maybe it's just another passion, right,
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 4: and like parenting and having that relationship. But I do
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 4: think that as you add more to your life, it
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 4: actually is all additive. It doesn't necessarily take away from
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 4: the thing you're doing.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you have to get more clear on what
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: it is you're doing and how you're doing it because
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: you don't have as much luxury when it comes to time.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 4: Oh well yeah, And the advice to these college kids
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 4: like go have a child, like but no, it's like
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 4: it's like a living It's like a little living zen Master. Right,
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 4: It's like you're writing and he cracks the whip and
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 4: it's like, okay. I mean I've been on the phone
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 4: with Steve I don't know many times and it's like, oh,
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 4: THEO just pooped in the bath, like gotta go. Yeah,
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 4: this ingenious idea will have to wait.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: All right, you guys, well we gotta we gotta wrap
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: this up.
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: But I want to I want to do that by
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: exploring your personal definition of passion for yourself. Right, So,
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: so Steve, if I'm to say, like explain to me
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: or can you articulate to me your relationship with passion
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: and what that looks like.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 3: So I see it.
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 5: I think it's important to understand that it's not black
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 5: and white. Okay, So I see it as for the
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 5: majority of time, I want to have a healthy, harmonious
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 5: relationship with passion. But I also want the ability or
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 5: the ability to go deep and to go all in
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 5: on things. But where I see my relationship right now
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 5: is I have the awareness to understand when I'm doing
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 5: that and to pull back out of that when I
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 5: need to. I like that.
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: But what is it that you're passionate about? Can you?
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: Can you put a pin on that?
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 3: Can I put it?
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 5: So I'm I guess now, like this might be a
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 5: little liche and maybe not super clear, but I like
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 5: pursuing interesting ideas. So whether it's in coaching and looking
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 5: at how to help athletes get faster, whether it's in
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 5: writing and you know, getting these ideas on passion or
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 5: in peak performance out there, it's exploring interesting ideas that
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 5: are intriguing enough to me to say, hey, I want
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 5: to understand this at like a deep level so that
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 5: hopefully I can convey that information to others. To help
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 5: them understand these things, you know, maybe even better than
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 5: I do.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: I like that answer. I thought you were going to say.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, the obvious answer is I'm passionate about running,
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 2: I'm passionate about writing. I'm passionate about helping young athletes
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: achieve their potential. But you really brought in the aperture
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 2: on it.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, I think that's maybe that that maturation
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 5: you talked about. You know, if you asked me three
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 5: four years ago, I would have given you that answer.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 5: But as I've like branched out and have all these
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 5: different interests in different places, I think that's the common
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 5: theme tying them together. Whether it's on like a personal
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 5: one to one basis of working with an athlete, or
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 5: whether it's on a basis of you know, one book
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 5: to you know, thousands of people, it's all kind of
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 5: similar of getting these ideas and trying to help people
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 5: change and develop and grow.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 4: That's a tough fact to follow. Yeah, the questions with passion,
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 4: what does that mean to me?
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, you guys wrote this book about passion,
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 2: So how do you how do you think and apply
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: passion in your own life? So, like, how do you
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 2: define that and is it I guess you know. A
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 2: question on top of that is is it important to
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: define it for yourself and be clear about what you're
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: passionate about and what that means.
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 4: So I think that the way that I well, I
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 4: think the questions and it's hot. Does one define passion?
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 4: And then how important is it to constantly be clear?
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 4: A working definition that just jotted this down that that
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 4: I have is it's really caring about something knowing that
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 4: that thing might eventually break your heart m hm, because
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 4: you have to move on from it or the tides change,
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 4: and being okay with it and doing it anyways.
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 2: However, let me just interrupt you there, Yes, in the
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: athletic context, but.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 4: If you're no, I'd say in any context.
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you're a guitar player or someboding, you
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: something that you could do your whole life.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but parently okay, So I'm thinking parenting, like eventually
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 4: my kid's gonna move out, hopefully like that might be heartbreaking.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 4: And even guitar, I'd imagine there's a point like where
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 4: the skills start to fade with age. Maybe not, and
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 4: maybe that's a good example, but you're gonna have letdowns,
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 4: Like the more that you care about something, the higher
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 4: the highs and the lower of the lows. In still
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 4: pursuing that those things anyways, in doing it though with
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 4: the self awareness to as Steve said, know one to
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 4: choose when like I need to pivot here. And then
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 4: also having community underneath you, because the community helps keep
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 4: you grounded during those highs and helps support you during
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 4: those lows. And I think that the community and the
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 4: bonds that come out of a passion is almost as
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 4: powerful as the passion itself because it's in those relationships,
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 4: Like that's what gives life meaning.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 3: It's part of the reason we write books together.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: It's a lot of.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 4: Fun and it's a beautiful relationships formed.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 2: And for the person who's out there who is struggling
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: to identify their passion, and we talked about this a
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: little bit earlier, but like, what are some steps that
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: you can recommend for that person to begin the journey
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 2: or the process of trying to connect with something meaningful
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: that could blossom into how we think about passion.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 3: I would just keep it really simple.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 5: Go dabble in things, so put yourself inside your comfort zone,
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 5: on outside your comfort zone, look at different things that
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 5: you know, you might think like, hey, this is kind
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 5: of interesting, as you pointed out earlier, like go to
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 5: your childhood, like what were the things that like you
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 5: would do when there was nothing else to do, when
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 5: you're just like Okay, I'm gonna go do this for
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 5: a couple hours, right, finding different things that we're interesting
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 5: or are interesting to you. Those are all potential passions, right,
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 5: There is no one like this is the one. All
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 5: of those things are potentially passions. And the only way
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 5: you understand if they can like have that fan flame
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 5: to turn into like that burning passion that we all
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 5: know and think about, is if you try them and
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 5: try them a lot and see if it cultivates into.
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: That if it has staying power, right exactly.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 2: I think we all have a lot of self judgment
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: around these things, like well, that's silly or stupid, I
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: should and do that, you know, but I think so
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 2: I think it's important to remove that veil of judgment over.
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: Yourself, like, hey, maybe you should, you know, maybe.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 2: It would be cool for you to be a puppeteer,
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 2: like I don't you know, whatever it is, like if
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 2: that's your thing, man, right, sure.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 4: Totally and I'm so glad that you do. The puppeteer example.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 4: I think of my uncle Bob. He is a financial advisor,
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 4: a stockbroker for sixty years, you know, black suit, red tie,
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 4: and now he makes beaded jewelry, and like that's his thing. Fine,
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 4: Like you don't need you don't need to. You don't
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 4: need to like decide that you're going to be in
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 4: a rock band, like make beaded jewelry. Again, you know,
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 4: don't be reckless, be financially responsible. But yeah, like there's
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 4: no there's no definition of success that you should shoot for.
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 4: And if anything, if you are shooting for some definition
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 4: of success, as we've discussed, like you're probably setting yourself
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 4: up for pain and suffering.
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 2: So conversely, the next question is, if you are somebody
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: who's blazing a path of passion, what are the warning
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: signs to alert you that perhaps your passion has become
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: a little.
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 4: Bit unhealthy when the pursuit of results starts to become
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 4: the dominating factor and not when it's a factor, because again,
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 4: unless you've done like extensive spiritual training and dissolved your ego,
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 4: like it's always going to be a factor. But when
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 4: it starts becoming the dominating factor when it's hard to
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 4: get back to doing the work, or when the work
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 4: itself no longer feels good, when the work feels like
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 4: a chore because you're chasing the thing. I think that
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 4: that's one prime example. And then another prime example is
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 4: when you notice the temptation to cut corners or to cheat.
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 4: That is a sign that, like, you no longer have
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 4: self control. And if you're listening and you're there, don't
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 4: judge yourself.
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 3: That's great. You have self awareness.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 4: You're there, like course correct, you know, read the book,
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 4: get a therapist, talk to a friend, because recognizing that
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 4: is actually great because you've recognized it. It's when you
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 4: don't recognize it that you get into trouble.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: Right, Do you have anything to add to that, Steve?
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 3: Those were great? I don't think I can top them.
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 2: In the in the writing of the book, was there
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 2: anything that you came across in the research or the
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 2: interviews of all the people that you spoke with that
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 2: was it odds with your thesis going in.
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 3: I don't even have a thesis going into that.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 4: You had to realize, like, weird thing and maybe it's good.
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 4: Maybe it's bad, maybe it's both, and presumably there's a
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 4: way to live with it.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 5: Well, yeah, and I think I think one of the
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 5: things that was interesting about this book is going back
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 5: to the beginning. Like the way this came about was
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 5: Brad and I sitting in a coffee shop, right saying, hey,
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 5: this first book is done. Like we don't have anything
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 5: to do on this for a month, and like we're
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 5: here together for a week, like.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 3: What are we gonna do?
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 5: We just started these conversations and talking about it, so
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 5: it's not like we went in with any grand thesis
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 5: or grand idea. It started as, hey, this is interesting.
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 4: And then yeah, and then even the writing on the page,
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 4: so like in our relationship, like I'd say, Steve is
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 4: primary scientist, I'm primary writing.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 3: And then we switch.
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 4: So Steve's like off doing science and this is before
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 4: peak performance went out, and I'm going to the same
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 4: coffee shop every single day and like writing stories as
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 4: if I'm writing this book. And then I'm like Steve,
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 4: I've written a bunch and Steve's like, dude, I have
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 4: this enormous outline of science. And then we got together
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 4: and like we traded and suddenly like there's a book
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 4: square it up, But we didn't really, You're right, we
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 4: did not set.
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 3: Out to write a book on passion.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 4: We just were doing what felt like. We had this
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 4: time and space, we were doing what felt natural, and
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 4: then it became a book.
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 5: And I think the other part is we were doing
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 5: it's very meta, yeah, because it's like, you followed this
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 5: threat of passion to write this book about passion and
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 5: you did it in the right way because your intention was.
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 4: And it's helped and and again back to like the
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 4: no one has their shit figured out. It has helped me.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 4: I know, it's not like I no longer care about success.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 4: I care a lot about success. It's helped me be
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 4: aware when I'm caring too much about that, and it's
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 4: given me the writing of the book is giving me
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 4: some practices to rein that in right.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and also call each other on right yeah. Now
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 5: that we know this stuff, it's like you're like.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: Hey, you're manifesting symptoms of this.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, or just or the opposite, Like I mean, this
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 4: might be the the OCD tendency in me? Is I
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 4: get so in my head I'm calling Stephen like, dude,
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 4: am I tweeting too much, Like is my passion obsessive?
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 4: Like am I getting too excited about doing this ritual podcast?
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 3: He's like, dude, that chill the fuck out. Fine, Like you're.
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 4: Too right, So like, yeah, we're not saying don't enjoy things,
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 4: like enjoy things, celebrate them, but just like you know,
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 4: fifty one percent harmonious and enjoy the success too, because
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 4: like it's fleeting, but it's fun when you have it right.
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: And it's a morphous trying to kind of figure out
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: how to think about these ideas that all bump into
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 2: each other, like, you know, the idea of balance, like
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: what is balance? Is balance overrated? I mean that's a
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 2: conversation you know we had years ago, right, right, And
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: these are like how does that relate to passion?
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: And what is the value of passion? And what trump's
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: the other? Right?
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 2: And the thing is it's all this murky soup, right,
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 2: and it is a spectrum. And that's not a gratifying
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: answer in in you know, a culture in which we
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 2: want the very clear cut life hack and you know,
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 2: the simple thing that we can like hang our hat on.
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we're you know, our publisher and agent probably aren't
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 5: happy with us for not having that thing simple hook.
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: That's one idea, but like that's what.
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 5: We're trying to deal with reality, right, And all these
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 5: conversations that we've had that Brad and I have had,
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 5: like they're just things we're wrestling with. And that's why
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 5: this is such an interesting thing. Is passion is this
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 5: big blob of amorphous stuff that mixes together and there's
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 5: no correct like hack to figure it out. It's just
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 5: what we realized in this is that there's a lot
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 5: of different ways to do it, but just kind of
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 5: be aware of what you're getting into. Uh huh.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 3: You know, if you want to go all in, great,
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 3: do it, but like be aware that you're doing it right.
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: This is what's this is, this is the this is
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: what's entailed in this journey. Yeah, and if you stay in.
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 2: It too long then you know this and this might happen.
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 2: But if you have the self awareness to understand, like, hey,
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: this is good, you know, this is this is how
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 2: you excel. Like you have to go all in on
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 2: something that you're passionate about. That's how greatness is created
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 2: across every discipline.
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: But you know, you need to know when to pull
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: out as well. And recalibrate. Yeah, fair enough.
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: And I want to know, Steve, in the researching of
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 2: this book and the writing of this book, how has
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 2: this impacted your coaching downstream? Like I asked you specifically
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: about one thing earlier, but like in general, has this
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: informed like your coaching philosophy or how you interact with
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 2: your athletes?
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 3: One hundred percent it has. I mean it's made me.
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 5: You know. Actually I was reading a book by Percy Saridee,
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 5: who was a great.
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 3: Coach in the nineteen.
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 5: Sixties, and his book was all in there he talked
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 5: all about how intrinsic motivation mattered. But more than anything,
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 5: he said, I'm training and coaching you to be a
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 5: better person, and if you're a better person, then you
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 5: will run faster. And I think with this passion thing,
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 5: it's very similar as I'm trying to now my perspective
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 5: has changed, is like the performance will take care of itself, right,
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 5: as if we do these workouts and do all this stuff,
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 5: like we're going to get better. But the greater good
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 5: on this is how do we make you have a
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 5: better relationship with like this activity that you're putting so
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 5: much effort into. So I see my almost goal now,
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 5: as like how do I cultivate this like ability for
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 5: them to have a healthy or a good relationship with
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 5: with running and with themselves.
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 4: Exactly, Parents, if you're listening, send your kids to Steve.
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 2: I was going to say, would well, Also, like coaches
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 2: need to you should you should be coaching coaches about
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 2: how to be better coaches for for you know, people's
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 2: lives as opposed to performance. Like the workout is easy,
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 2: that's the easiest part, right, It's all the messy psychology
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: of like dealing with young people in their formative years.
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 5: It's funny as a coach, you get trained in the
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 5: workouts and the physiology, but you get no or little
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 5: training in the psychology.
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 3: But that's what matters the most.
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 5: And you know, the funny thing is if you look
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 5: at coaches like we probably have at the high school
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 5: and college level, you see your coach more.
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 3: Often than you see anybody else.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 5: Right, So the ability to impact a kid, it's much
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 5: greater for me than some you know, math or science professor.
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 3: Or anybody else.
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 5: And that responsibility like that's pretty big. Yeah, And same
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 5: when you look at you know, Brad brought up parents,
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 5: but like parents have a huge impact on all this stuff.
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 5: I've seen so many kids come to the collegiate level
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 5: who have an unhealthy relationship with the sport because, you know,
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 5: mom and.
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 4: Dad, like they're a kid. It can't be their fault
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 4: at that age.
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah, mom and dad put this pressure in, these expectations
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 5: and you know this is how this works, and you
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 5: better do this, and it just creates this unhealthy relationship
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 5: which then I have to unravel.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how do you unravel that?
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 3: That? That's the mystery.
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 5: That might be a hour long coodcast there.
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's so important, you know, and I think
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 2: it is true. There's there's no barrier to entry essentially
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 2: to anybody saying they're a coach. I mean, obviously there's
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 2: certifications and things, you know, all.
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: That kind of stuff.
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 2: But the fact that the psychological aspect of it, which
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: is the graviman of what you're doing, is something that
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 2: that is not trained at all is insane.
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 3: Oh it's it's crazy.
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's it's completely backwards, and it's something that
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 5: should be.
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 4: And slightly more removed than Steve looking in. There's also
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 4: this perverse incentive, especially in college, where what is good
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 4: for the kid might but it's good for the kid
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 4: over twenty years, might not be good for the kid's
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 4: performance over four years. So it's like chasing quarterly profits
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 4: instead of long term growth, right, And it's really easy
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 4: for a college coach. We talked about this in our
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 4: first book, to Burn the Crap out of a Kid.
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 4: Kid runs great in college and the kid first prome
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 4: there's nothing left in his or her legs and they're done.
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 5: Or it's you know, not even a pro meat. It's
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 5: like you burn them for four years and then they
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 5: have a horrible relationship with the sport and never want
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 5: to do it again. I want to do it, Yeah,
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 5: and then you have this resentment and this whole other
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 5: psychology that is there.
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: We got a lot of problems with those.
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 4: Solve read your book though, in practice it is a
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 4: positive it's a positive book, but I think, yeah, it
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 4: addresses something that there's a lot of delusion around and says, hey,
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 4: like it's not so simple, and yet, as Steve said,
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 4: there are these practices that can help you navigate the path.
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very helpful, it's very instructive, it's easy to
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 2: read and uh, and it's laced with all of these
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 2: real life examples to illustrate the points that you're making,
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 2: and I found it to be very impactful. You guys
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 2: did a great job with this book, so I'm super
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 2: excited that it's finally going to get out there.
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: You have, you also have amazing blurbs.
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: From really cool people like did Daniel Pink give you
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 2: a blurb?
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 4: And proud of because like she embodies this stuff.
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 2: Of course, man, the perseverance and the passion over the
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 2: long haul, right, you know what I mean?
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: Awesome?
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 2: So, are you guys going to be doing any live
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: events coming up if people want to come out and
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 2: see you speak or you know, get a book signed
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 2: or anything like that.
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we've got a whole bunch of stuff in Northern California.
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 4: So the Thursday of launch week, which is Thursday the
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 4: twenty first, we're doing a big event at a cafe
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 4: called Firebrand where we'll be talking about the book and
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 4: signing books, and then Friday and Saturday will be at
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 4: the Oakland Marathon.
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 2: Awesome, cool man, Well, congrats and come back when you
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 2: write another book in another nine months.
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's gonna say what I mean. No, you know,
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 4: we're working on Ted if you're listening. Ted's our agent
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 4: where you know, he thinks like a book should happen
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 4: every five years, nonsense, like we're going to die. So
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 4: he he has moved us from every nine months to
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 4: every two to three years.
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: Three years.
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it depends on what kind of book. Yeah,
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 2: you know, but there's a lot of research that goes
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 2: into these books too, so i'd imagine that was pretty
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 2: time consuming.
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, we go all in for a little
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 5: bit right before we come back out, so we get
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 5: it that all right?
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: All right? Well, The Passion Paradox a guide to going all.
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 2: In, finding success and discovering the benefits of an unbalanced life.
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 2: That's my favorite part, the benefits of an unbalanced life,
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 2: because I agree with that wholeheartedly. And guys did a
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 2: good job. Thank you so much. Everybody, go out and
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 2: check out the book. It's an easy read, sure too.
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 2: How many pages is it? Just like yeah, it's like
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 2: dred and sixty something like that about it. So all right, man,
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 2: We'll much love to you guys, and best of luck
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 2: with everything coming up. If people want to connect with
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 2: you online at b Stolberg and Steve, you are Steve
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 2: Magnus correct, keep it on Twitter and Instagram and all alike. Alright, man, peace,
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 2: Thank you rich plants.
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 3: Mm hmmmm