SPECIAL RELEASE: Inner Excellence Interview with author Jim Murphy

[00:00:00] I wanted to seize the opportunity today to shed some light on an ongoing news story, a viral sensation in the world of professional sports, and highlight one of Renegade Psych's favorite interviews, a February 2024 interview with guest Jim Murphy, a mental coach who has worked with several notable professional athletes, and the author of the now bestselling book, Inner Excellence, who went viral last week.

[00:00:30] This weekend, when the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League played the Green Bay Packers in the first round of the playoffs, and media cameras caught Eagles star wide receiver A.J. Brown reading a book on the sidelines during the playoff game. A football player reading a book during a game that is not a playbook, but a good old cover with pages self-help book.

[00:00:57] The following Monday morning while traveling to a patient evaluation, I was listening to the Rich Eisen show, a sports talk show, and heard them talking about Jim's book, laughing at the sight of Brown reading on the sidelines during a win or go home playoff game. Images were caught by the media and created a frenzy around Jim's book, spurring Inner Excellence to number one on the Amazon bestsellers list by Tuesday.

[00:01:27] In all genres, in all genres, just ahead of Onyx Storm, which is a fantasy dragon novel. Sales of the book skyrocketed to 53 plus million percent on Tuesday following the Sunday game. With his previous highest rating on Amazon book sales close to 10,000.

[00:01:50] And prior to Brown reading Inner Excellence on the sidelines, Inner Excellence was ranked more than 500,000th on Amazon's bestsellers list. From 500,000th to first overnight, essentially. I was so stoked for Jim when I heard Rich Eisen drop not only his name, but the name of his book.

[00:02:14] And they did a prolonged segment with some laughs about an NFL player reading on the sidelines of a playoff game, which is just a funny visual to see one of the most athletic people in the world, a perennial pro bowler, a.k.a. an all-star in football, sitting calmly and quietly on the sidelines ingesting a paperback. At the time, there were seven and a half minutes left in the game with the Eagles up nine points.

[00:02:43] And A.J. Brown was having his worst statistical outing of the year with one catch for 10 yards. But Brown, who is reading a book that is predicated on engaging in the process without getting too caught up in the outcomes or not letting your inner voice or your mind judge your results as they happen so aggressively.

[00:03:08] Brown responded to questions about whether or not he was frustrated by saying after the game, I wasn't frustrated at all. I figured that's what y'all would probably think. Like, why do you think I'm always frustrated? Dang, I like to read. Brown states that he reads on the sideline often, but the cameras just happened to catch him at the right time. In an interview with Murphy by Philadelphia's NBC10, I believe completed yesterday,

[00:03:37] he states he was intrigued to see Brown reading his book after multiple drives this season, but also stoked it's getting the media attention it is now. So first and foremost, I want to encourage viewers and listeners to return to my exclusive interview with Jim from February of 2024 about this book. Back when it was 500,000th plus on the bestseller list, and he wasn't nationally recognized like he is now.

[00:04:05] I'll repost the interview in its entirety as the original version is broken up into multiple segments as episodes. It is also an audio interview before I started to do video interviews and adding graphics on YouTube. So I went through and added a bunch of relevant graphics, but you won't see myself or Jim in the flesh or on video during this interview.

[00:04:31] I also wanted to review a little bit more about Brown's season, A.J. Brown's season, some of the turmoil that has come with it and how Jim Murphy's book has helped to guide Brown through some of his tribulations and not allow his self-perception to be overly affected by the circumstances or the results, or put another way in terms of act terminology, the outcome of his efforts.

[00:04:58] Earlier this season, Fox Sports reported what they called was a family feud within the Eagles locker room after a rocky mid-season two-game stretch in which A.J. Brown only caught nine passes for around 110 yards. Both were wins, by the way. Eagles teammate, defensive end Brandon Graham, was quoted at the time as saying that they were friends before this, things have changed.

[00:05:26] And around the same time, Brown was critical of their team's offense, stating their offense wasn't playing up to standard after sputtering to a 22-16 win versus league punching bag the Carolina Panthers. Brown added his frustrations were obviously not about running the ball, as they have the league's top rusher in Saquon Barkley. We have to pass the ball.

[00:05:51] And he stated, getting on the same page with Jalen Hurts, the quarterback of the Eagles, was important. The media took the story and ran with it, emphasizing this possible rift between Brown and Hurts, who were longtime friends even before they were Eagles teammates, with Hurts reportedly being godfather to Brown's daughter. The following week, in a 27-13 blowout win against the cross-state rival Pittsburgh Steelers,

[00:06:19] Hurts threw a touchdown pass to Brown, and they proceeded to celebrate together, recreating a 1988 Roland with Kid and Play music video dance move, where they tap their feet together and dance around each other in unison. Kid and Play are a musical group notable for their choreographed hip-hop dance moves that gained additional notoriety for their four-movie series through the 1990s titled House Party.

[00:06:47] So, how did I connect with Jim Murphy? Well, I have John Middle to thank for that. We graduated from medical school together, but John never pursued residency because his business venture, Focus, a healthier alternative to coffee and sugary energy drinks, took off by the time we had graduated. While John and I were talking about Renegade Psych and discussing the basis of ACT or acceptance and commitment training or therapy,

[00:07:17] his mind spontaneously went to his previous interactions with Jim Murphy. And he said, You really got to interview this guy. You all would get along. You all talk about a lot of the same concepts. He connected me to Jim, and our conversation was riveting. It was memorable. In reading his book, so many of the therapeutic concepts I had learned through my exposure to Stephen Hayes and the ACT and relational frame theory community

[00:07:45] were mirrored in Jim's book and throughout our interview. But Jim had no exposure to ACT or its theoretical basis, relational frame theory. He took an entirely different path than I did through a failed venture to become a professional baseball player to an educational background in psychology and neurolinguistics. But we both arrived at close to the same destination

[00:08:10] in terms of emphasizing processes to those that we work with that lead to more meaningful and fulfilled value-based living. Some of the basic tenets laid out in his book include that self-centeredness is the greatest challenge we face in life and sports, and that selflessness is fearlessness, that you can develop the habits every day of thought and action

[00:08:38] around the person that you want to become and what's most important to you, and that you can create a healthy separation between your automatic thoughts reflecting on the past and trying to predict the future and your conscious decisions about what you actually do in life. I heard a lot of acceptance, diffusion, mindfulness, perspective-taking, values, and committed action talk in our conversation.

[00:09:08] But again, it's so cool to me that Jim got there through a very different path and really expanded on my perspective about ACT. So, I hope you enjoyed this hour-long conversation with Amazon's now number one best-selling author as of the time that I'm recording this. Unfortunately, it wasn't recorded on video, but I've added pictures and graphics to our previous conversation

[00:09:38] to make it a little bit easier to follow. I hope you enjoy. Feel free to reach out to renegadesyke at gmail.com, especially if you want me to do more sports-related interviews, since I can only rail against the healthcare industry so much without becoming too negative. And I really do enjoy talking with others on how any of us, professional athlete or not, can improve our lives and chase the characteristics of who we want to be and what we want to be about.

[00:10:08] Disclaimer. This podcast is for informational purposes only. The information provided in this podcast and related materials are meant only to educate. This information is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. While I am a medical doctor and many of my guests have extensive medical training and experience, nothing stated in this podcast nor materials related to this podcast, including recommended websites, texts, graphics, images, or any other materials, should be treated as a substitute for professional, medical, or psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment. All listeners should consult with a medical professional, licensed mental health provider, or other healthcare provider if seeking medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Or, put more simply,

[00:10:38] If you need help like this guy, call your own doctor. Somebody get this guy some help! I went to medical school with John Middle. Yeah, nice guy. He's the only guy in our entire medical school class who went through the entire four years, took every test, and then decided he was going to start a water energy company.

[00:11:06] So, then created Focus with a friend of his, and then that took off. They got Jack Harlow on board for a little while there, and I was just randomly talking to him one day about the way that I explain mental illness, this fact that we've got this unique human internal relationship between our mind or our subconscious, and then that conscious part of us that must have some residence in the frontal lobe.

[00:11:35] And just in talking to him about it, he was like, man, you really got to talk to this Jim Murphy guy. You all talk about some of the same things, and then when I'm reading your book, and I'm asking about your background in acceptance and commitment therapy because there's so many similar concepts. I'll have to check it out. Yeah, it's based on an underlying theory called relational frame theory that really hones in on language

[00:12:02] and how that subconscious part of us that tries to create order in our world orders things in this black and white way, in this yes or no. It does not appreciate the gray area, and that's kind of how our thoughts, again, the thoughts that we're not trying to have, those more negative, intrusive thoughts, the critic, as you call it in your book, that's why the thoughts are so extreme a lot of the time. It's not I might fail.

[00:12:30] It's oh my gosh, I'm going to fail if X, Y, or Z. And then that message gets sent to that conscious frontal lobe, the last stop in its information processing journey. And basically what makes us human is we have the ability to say, yes, let's go ahead with that behavior or no, I don't think that's a good idea or maybe I should gather more information before I engage in that. Are you familiar with therapeutic journaling? Not in an official sense.

[00:12:58] There's a professor at the University of Texas in Austin, Pennebaker is his name. And he did this study in the 80s on therapeutic journaling. And it's actually been referenced over 400 times or repeated and looked at other studies spun off of his original study. And it's pretty simple. You journal 15 minutes a day, four days in a row. You're going to journal about something that's been traumatic for you or something that's been weighing you down.

[00:13:27] You keep writing nonstop for 15 to 30 minutes. The basic idea is when you have an experience that's traumatic or painful or embarrassing or anything like that, it's just feelings and you don't know how to process it. But when you put it on paper into words, now you're translating those feelings into a language that you can understand. And that's been shown to really help people a lot. And so I've taken that therapeutic journaling and added some inter-excellence to it. In fact, I was doing an inter-excellence retreat

[00:13:56] with some Texas Longhorns in December. I was just starting to use that therapeutic journaling with the inter-excellence part of it. And then I looked up just to make sure I got the scientific part right. And I saw the professor was at UT still. And I was there in Austin. So I emailed him and I said, hey, I'm here with some of your Longhorns doing this. And he's like, oh, that's great. And he sent me a long email telling me about it. I saw it from Huberman, you know, Huberman's lab. Therapeutic journaling can really help. So much of this revolves around the way

[00:14:26] that we utilize language. We have a mind that really operates much more like an animal's brain focused on survival and any possible thing that could threaten our survival or any possible thing that we're not doing that could be pro-survival. It just hammers away at us, but it presents these things in such extreme fashion. And it's always focused on problems. You know, I always tell my patients, people think that their mind is different. Oh, everybody else has these rosy,

[00:14:55] beautiful pictures that are being displayed in their mind. And I'm like, no, if you want that, you have to insert that consciously. And it's not a fake it until you make it. It's that you have this very negatively focused or problem focused aspect of your brain. Nowadays, in the world that we live in, it's notifying us that if Jim Murphy doesn't like me, then I can't maybe put it into words, but I feel like I could maybe die from this.

[00:15:23] Like I have this intense feeling of anxiety, even though I consciously know that's not the case. A hundred thousand years ago, this part of our brain, it would have actually notified us of problems that would threaten our survival. You would have thought about food and water and shelter. And so the way I explain it is that our subconscious minds, one of its main roles is to protect us. And so it doesn't need to protect us from good memories and things that we like. It's just the painful ones. And it doesn't matter if it's physical or real danger or perceived danger.

[00:15:53] It puts it in the same filing cabinet. And it could be a real life-threatening danger, or it could be something that you're just embarrassed about. And you could feel the exact same threat in your body that would be life-threatening. And like what you're saying many years ago, it was mostly just the life-threatening ones that we were concerned about. And now there's all the social constructs and the comparison in social media and the fears of being judged and all that, that our subconscious puts in the same filing cabinet. And then it feels just as serious.

[00:16:24] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the therapeutic journaling, I think is very similar in concept to what's called diffusion in ACT or in RFT, where if you have a fused mind and conscious self, then everything that you feel, you're going to feel like it's an absolute truth. Like it is a definitive threat. Like it's something that you have to address right here and right now. And by putting it out on paper or by defusing it, I just had the thought that Jim Murphy

[00:16:53] is not going to like me. Then you immediately knock your mind down a notch and you allow yourself to consciously appraise that situation. I can't tell you how many concepts, while I'm reading your book, I'm like, this is literally almost word for word. Some of the same things that I say to my patients. Yeah, that's amazing. That sounds like there's so many similarities with ACT and RFT and what you're doing for sure. Yeah. I use that exercise of,

[00:17:22] imagine that you're sitting at your 80th birthday. And if we're talking about your values in your professional life, everybody that you've ever worked with is sitting there with you. And is it how much money you've made that is going to feel really powerful in that moment? Or is it the characteristics that people are going to say to describe you? And again, your life can go however you want it to go between now and then. What words stick out for you

[00:17:51] that you really want to hear other people describe you? And as you said, then you derive your values or what's important to you, what gives your life meaning. Only then do you use that to figure out what your goals are. The outcome is always secondary because it's in the outside world. Right. Very, very limited control over the outside world. Yeah, exactly. One of the big things that I do is help people understand their story in a more truthful way.

[00:18:20] Because what happens to people is they start telling themselves the story about who they are and it's not true. So I work mostly with professional athletes and professional athletes are humans. So they deal with the same thing all the rest of us do. They come to me and their story is untrue. And I help them see what's possible, the truth about what's possible in their lives. Today, we have Jim Murphy, the author of Inner Excellence. I just by complete chance happenstance

[00:18:49] stumbled across your work in talking to a friend of mine about some of the ideas of how our brains work and function and how I can relay that to patients to help provide really a better way out than a lot of these medications that I've been taught to prescribe that really don't have great effect or the effect that a lot of them have is to numb ourselves and numb our emotions, which is great for getting away

[00:19:18] from what's uncomfortable or discomforting, but it really limits the potential for chasing after what's important in life. So in having that conversation, I was introduced to Jim Murphy's ideas. And before I'd ever met you, I started reading your book and saw some of the same concepts. But then you told me that you have no background in ACT or RFT. So I'm curious to hear a little bit more

[00:19:45] about maybe some of the specific instruction that you received or that you read. Where did your ideas come from? Because they're very similar, but it's fascinating to me that you came from a completely different path. Yeah, sure. Thanks, Dr. Shore. Thanks for having me. So I always dreamed about being a professional athlete since I was a little kid. When I was in high school, my coach told me about sports psychology. And there's a book by Jim Lehrer, Dr. Lehrer, called Mental Toughness Training for Sports. And that's what really got me going on this idea

[00:20:15] that my mind can really help me achieve my goals and dreams. I was a teenager when I was introduced to that book and I carried that around with me for years. And then I got a degree in psychology from University of Washington, where I am at today. And then I got a master's in coaching science from the University of British Columbia. I also studied neurolinguistic programming, which is the study of the subconscious mind and human behavior. Those are three things that had a big impact on me, the desert and spent a couple of years there pursuing a life of solitude

[00:20:44] and got rid of over half my possessions and wanted to live a life of solitude to figure out what I can devote my life to. And so that's kind of really kicked off this inter-excellence journey. Can you tell me more about the neurolinguistics program? Yeah, so there was a psychologist, Virginia Satir, in probably 40, 50 years ago, was having this incredible success with clients. Like she could totally have these results in one or two days, where it was taking other counselors years. And so these two guys were like, how is she doing this? And so they flew out and studied her

[00:21:13] and they developed this neurolinguistic programming, NLP. It's not really well known in the scientific community, but Anthony Robbins is the one that popularized it. So he studied it, he learned it, and he wrote a book called Unlimited Power. It's all based on neurolinguistic programming, NLP. I learned a lot from that, just understanding how the subconscious mind works, how it's always working to protect you and things like that, how the mind works, how fear works. So you were a professional athlete.

[00:21:41] You played baseball for about five years and then had an injury and lost that sense of your identity. Tell me about what happened in the couple of years after that. Dr. Short, I would love to tell you that I played Major League Baseball for five years or 10 years and was an all-star because in my mind, it definitely, that was the plan. But I played five years in the minors and got injured and had to retire. So I was really devastated. That was a big part of what I do now and helped people with understanding who they are and what their heart, the deepest need of their heart is

[00:22:10] and what they really want in life and how to pursue that directly. How, what they think they want to win an Olympic gold medal or to be a world champion or to become a CEO or have a $10 million house in the water. What they think they want is they really want something beyond that. So that's what I kind of help people get that understanding. How did you come to the decision to move to Arizona, to leave the girlfriend, leave your possessions? I think God orchestrated the whole thing.

[00:22:39] One, I had a teammate in Tucson from pro baseball, Ricky Scruggs, who called me, was opening up a baseball academy. He said, can you come down for the weekend and help me launch this program? And I had been thinking a lot about what am I going to do with my life? Wanted to do something that I could really devote my life to and I didn't have anything at the moment. And so then I just said, hey, what if I moved down there indefinitely and helped you out part-time and that's what I did. Did Ricky play in the majors? He also was dreaming about that, but he didn't play in the majors.

[00:23:08] We both played in the minor leagues. I may be making this up in my mind, but I could swear I've run across that name before. Organizing and sorting and resorting old baseball cards like the nerd that I was with baseball cards back in the day. Ricky's hit a few home runs, so maybe you have heard of him. I probably have 15 to 20,000 baseball cards that my dad called me about five years ago and said, you got to get these cards out of my house or I'm going to throw them all away. And so I had to go get them all

[00:23:38] and none of them were in any books or anything. They were all just in piles. So I had one last time where I got to pick out the nice ones to show off and then just log all the other ones. It was very nostalgic to go through all of them and I might have to look through some of my minor league cards, see if maybe you're floating around in there somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. Let me know. So when you're in Arizona, what was that like? Where did you live? How isolated were you out there? I was in Northwest Tucson

[00:24:08] for most of the time. I only knew three people when I moved there. It was Ricky and his wife and another friend and it was pretty lonely. I remember New Year's Eve sitting in my house alone, writing in my journal and I hear a noise and I go outside and I see fireworks and that's when I knew it was December 31st and so it was a pretty lonely life and I got rid of my television which is this is before streaming and so I just thought the worst thing would be if I go to live in this relative solitude and then I waste it all watching TV so now I'm lonely and wasting my life. So yeah,

[00:24:38] it's not like I was in a teepee or something. I was in town, stayed in this house but I went to go find something that I could devote my life to. It turns out that it was inner excellence. I think God had planned it the whole way. You talk a lot about simplifying things. What was kind of your fear going into that about leaving everything behind versus the reality of the situation that you found yourself in maybe a year later? Yeah, I had no idea what to expect. My thought was I want like Henry David Thoreau was motivating me. My screensaver said

[00:25:07] those destined for greatness must first walk alone in the desert and so I was like, okay, I'm going to the desert. I didn't know what to expect there. I just knew that I always felt like I was destined for doing something great with my life and I thought that was to be a major league superstar in the NFL or NBA or major league baseball. I just always expected that's what was going to happen and so when I got injured and lost that, I completely lost myself. Jim Murphy, pro baseball player became Jim Murphy, nobody in my mind and so I was like, what's going on here?

[00:25:37] I just wanted to find something that I could devote my life to. Initially, it was going to be coaching pro baseball players. My first two athletes did really well in baseball and so I thought, oh, okay, that's going to be my career. I'm going to be a personal coach to pro baseball players and teach them how to have peace and confidence under pressure and then I decided to put together a manual after my first couple clients did so well on how to have peace and confidence under pressure for my next clients and then rather than that taking a few weeks, I spent five years full-time, 60 to 80 hours a week for five years straight

[00:26:06] and that became the book Gainer Excellence. That's awesome. I'm curious, was there any type of psychedelic experience in Arizona or anything that maybe modeled something like that that really shifted your perspective or mindset about what you were doing? There actually, there was something that dramatically changed my life. I went there in December of 2003 and then I was there two and a half years and then I went back to Vancouver, Canada and the next two and a half years were writing the book

[00:26:36] from there. That was a lonely time. Every day was the same, Friday night, the only difference was Sundays I'd go to church but I was trying to not socialize or date or anything but the biggest thing that dramatically changed my life was 2010. I think of my life before 2010 and after 2010 so what happened was I'm in the desert I'm putting together that manual on how to have peace and confidence under pressure and that turned into five years of full-time writing and research and through a series of little miracles I meet a New York City literary agent,

[00:27:04] I get a major publisher, I get some bookstores around the world including Barnes & Noble but I had spent my life savings by now I was $90,000 in debt I'm in Denver, Colorado and falling apart mentally and you know it's not a surprise when you think that we're created for relationship and when you isolate yourself especially for that long and like I said it's not like I was on a deserted island or in the desert in a tapew with no communication I was in Tucson but I was just

[00:27:34] focusing on myself and isolating myself so I wasn't going to social engagements or anything looking back it makes sense when you isolate yourself the greatest punishment in prison is isolation right and so I was falling apart I was thinking okay I'm $90,000 in debt I put all my eggs in one basket I've written this book I wanted to write the best book that ever had been written on performance and how to have peace and confidence under the most pressure I was asking sports psychologists how can a major league baseball player

[00:28:03] game 7 of the World Series bottom of the 9th full count bases loaded down by one how can that guy have peace and confidence in that situation and that just brought more questions than answers and so I called another sports psychologist and another and then I also asked how can an Olympic athlete train for 4 years for an event that may last less than a minute and have peace and confidence in that situation and that also brought more questions than answers and so that was the 5 years of full time writing and research and what I found through that is that the heart is the key to your life

[00:28:33] the heart is the key to performance under the most pressure and when I say heart I mean your spirit it's also the key to having the best possible life which to me is a life of deep contentment joy and confidence no matter what a life where you're filled with love, wisdom and courage or love, joy, peace patience, kindness goodness, faithfulness gentleness self-control those sort of things and so I'm in Denver, Colorado in 2010 the book had just come out I was yeah falling apart I was thinking okay yeah the book's in bookstores around the world

[00:29:03] but I've got no money to hire someone to market the book for me I don't know how to do marketing and I don't like promoting myself so this is not a good marketing plan and if no one hears about the book no one's going to buy the book if no one buys the book then Mars and Noble will pull it off the shelves and this could happen in a matter of weeks and then Jim Murphy's life is over because everyone will know I'm a failure and like you and I talked about before the show here our human nature is to have this mind that is so black and white these extreme thoughts and it was out of control I thought

[00:29:33] if no one buys the book then they'll pull it off the shelf then I'll be a failure and I wrote the book so I could be a personal coach to pro baseball players and teach them how to have peace and confidence under pressure but what pro baseball player is going to call a loser and say hey will you coach me that'd be dumb and so I thought if that all happens the books pull off the shelves and then I'm a failure then I'm going to have to get a regular job but in this market 2009-2010 there's a recession and in this economy nobody's hiring failures and so my mind was spinning

[00:30:02] out of control and it was saying you're going to die homeless on the street actually I called my friend that guy Ricky that invited me to come to Tucson with him and start that baseball academy I said what do I do and he said find a homeless person and help him and so I look around the corner and there's a homeless harpist I don't know if you see a lot of those in Kentucky but I'd never seen one before this guy playing a full-size harp in downtown Denver I listened to him play and I had maxed out most of my credit cards but somehow I had $100 I must have taken a cash advance

[00:30:31] to have that much money in my wallet and I took all that money and I gave it to the guy the harpist and then I left to go run on the treadmill to try and breathe and get through the day and I come back towards the end of the day and sitting in the Starbucks just waiting for the day to get over and that homeless harpist walks in walks past me stops in his tracks and says you're the guy that gave me that money and I said yes and he turns around and he leaves and he comes back and he brings me a card that he bought a box of chocolates and a bracelet and the card said thank you so much for caring for me

[00:31:00] love Zoe and Zoe was the focus of the book damn that's power that was my life was pre-Zoe and post-Zoe it was when my life really started to turn around yeah that's pretty incredible just to be able to step back and do that and then probably 999 times out of a thousand that person doesn't come back to you shortly after and I can only imagine how impactful that was especially after being isolated for so long

[00:31:30] I think being isolated in a remote area is one thing but being isolated when you're actually physically surrounded by people I think that can take you to a whole other kind of level of loneliness sometimes yeah like being in New York City or a big city you can really feel like everyone has all these great things going on in their lives just like when you go on Instagram and I'm missing out there's two things the disappointment and the feelings that you feel for whatever you're going through and then there's your judgment of it which doubles the negative feeling

[00:31:59] I can't believe I'm depressed this is terrible I shouldn't feel this way I should be happy and that makes it a lot worse yeah I love how you talk about trying to suspend judgment it's you know a concept that I'm very familiar with personally trying to make sure that I suspend my mind's judgment but I think our minds they want answers and a lot of times in life we don't have a concrete answer we don't have a certainty but our minds love to judge things as they happen

[00:32:28] Tom Brady tells a phenomenal story about judging circumstances as they occur I'll just give you the very paraphrased version it's about a wise farmer that has a huge farm and one day one of his horses runs away Tom Brady tells you this Tom Brady it was on nice all right it was on that series on ESPN this horse runs away from this farm and all the people working on the farm go to the farmer and they're like we're so sorry this happened this is horrible you lost a horse

[00:32:58] that's a lot of money and time and potential offspring and the wise farmer who naturally has a chin beard that he strokes as he says we'll see we'll see and then the next day the horse comes back and it brings with it eight wild horses doubling the size of his stable and similarly everybody working on the farm says oh my gosh this is so lucky this is such good fortune and the farmer being wise and knowing not to judge the circumstances immediately

[00:33:28] says we'll see we'll see the next day his son is riding and trying to break in one of the wild horses trying to tame it and he gets thrown off the horse and he breaks his leg and again everybody rushes to oh my gosh this is horrible farmer says we'll see we'll see the next day the national army comes in and they say we need every able-bodied young man to come fight in this war for the country the son who has a broken

[00:33:57] leg is not able to fight in the war and again everybody rushes to that judgment but the farmer throughout maintains suspending his judgment because he knows that the way that we judge things in the moment so often is drastically different from the way that we judge it a few hours or a few days or sometimes years later yeah that's a powerful story thanks Tom kind of the way human beings are is that most people spend most of their lives in judgment

[00:34:27] and so when I say judgment the way I define the term is to lay down a negative verdict about self circumstances or others and so if we're thinking about using judgment in a positive way I would use the word discernment and so when I use the word judgment it's laying down a negative verdict about myself or someone else or the circumstance so inter-excellence one of the primary components is to learn to be selfless and non-judgmental because selfless is fearless and judging the circumstance self or others creates this

[00:34:57] negative energy within us that some goes to the person or circumstance and some stays within us and creates more self-consciousness and instability within us every time we judge when you're judging a situation your vision limits your curiosity goes out the window and you lose sight of possibilities we want to live a creative life and not a reactive life right I mean in my own experience with doing this podcast I've had the idea for five years but I've only been working on it for a year and a half now because there was such fear of judgment

[00:35:27] and I don't think if I didn't intersect with act therapy I'm sitting down with patients as a first and second year training thinking I have no freaking clue what I'm doing or what I'm supposed to be talking about and that forced me down this path of finding a specific therapy and doing a lot of research on it on my own and that opened things up for me working with these concepts it requires work it didn't happen immediately but

[00:35:56] eventually I got to the point where it's not like I stopped judging I can't control what my mind is doing necessarily but I was able to consciously let go of the fear of judgment and honestly with reading your book it struck me so much reading about affluenza virus which if you worship your beauty then you will die a thousand deaths of ugliness very poorly paraphrased by me right there but and then I read the part if you worship your

[00:36:26] intellect you will always feel stupid you will always feel like your opinion is not respected or like you're an imposter and I'm like oh that one cut deep yeah David Foster Wallace he's brilliant yes absolutely letting go of that judgment and being curious about what I'm doing it has been an absolute joy to sit down with so many different people and to continue to learn about what I will

[00:36:55] be doing for the rest of my life and I think what comes with that is an openness if you can suspend your judgment in the moment almost automatically leads to a more open mind and the ability to consider a lot of different possibilities that otherwise you maybe would never have the fearlessness to go down those paths look at Tom's job pretty high pressure job right you have these 300 pound guys running full speed trying to hit you as hard as they can and

[00:37:25] so he's got to make a lot of quick decisions and he can't think negative obviously in those he's got to have a clear mind and an unburdened heart so there's a lot to get to that spot where you can be like that yeah so you know I realized as I was reading your book that as a kid you always think bottom of the night two outs faces loaded we're down one I need a hit and thinking back on my own experience I always delivered the hit you know I think

[00:37:54] there's something that happens to our consciousness when we go through puberty as our brain matures that opens up this door for more of that self criticism opens up this door for us to then imagine the possibility on the other side not of being the new type of goat but of being the old type of goat what do you make of that kind of shift and how kids they're able to harness this love for the game

[00:38:24] and just be fully present in it what do you make of that how would you recommend or how do you teach others to train your mind to find that childlike love and presentness within any game yeah so what happens as we get older when you're in say third grade you're playing football at recess because you love it but then you start to get into fourth fifth sixth grade and then you're traveling and then you're like okay this is a bigger deal they're driving me all this way or whatever and then maybe

[00:38:53] junior high you see your name in the newspaper like whoa and then you're playing a night game and got these fancy lights so it becomes a bigger and bigger deal and then you have parents who they they give you love when you perform well and take it away when you don't and this is the majority of parents especially in America what happens when Bobby hits a home run and has a great game and the parents aren't just sitting there going oh okay another game they're jumping up and down and they're like okay we're going McDonald's afterwards and we're celebrating right so they're really excited but what happens when Johnny's over fourth four strikeouts

[00:39:23] they're not jumping up and down and hey we're going McDonald's they're like it's okay Johnny you hang in there or worse but or worse definitely could be worse the most of them are you just hanging there both physiologically and subconsciously what's happening give love when I perform well take it away when I don't and so it provides a lot of pressure on the kid as we age that's what happens is we're starting to see oh this is a bigger deal and then parents are putting this pressure on the opposite of what they're trying to

[00:39:53] do is what most parents are doing and then there's the whole social comparison social media that in the last four or five years has greatly multiplied the anxiety because anxiety is a mind that has too many thoughts too many concerns and now it's 24-7 you've got all these concerns and people judging you and so the ability to be judged and to be relentless and continue to be out there even though you're constantly getting judged it's really hard thing to do so inner excellence the

[00:40:23] belief is that your heart is what's running your life it's not your mind it's your heart and soul the deepest part of you it's where your greatest fears are and your biggest dreams are in your heart we're much more than thinking machines if you want to help someone you got to get to their heart and we want to train the heart and so inner excellence is about heart transformation and getting that heart where what it loves most is most empowering and like you were saying earlier if what you love most is your looks so if you grew up and you're very good-looking you're going to have a hard time when you get older for most

[00:40:52] people because as you're getting older you're losing that attention and your identity is going to change or if you have a lot of money and or whatever your treasure is if it's unstable then you're going to be unstable whatever you love most the idea is to love what's immutable or unchangeable that's the most powerful my patience it's different but it's not you're coaching people to be excellent at a sport or at their craft but you also mentioned that totally intersects with the ability to be your best self

[00:41:22] how do you translate that onto the field that concept like specifically yeah it's I don't coach people in their sport I teach them how to be fully engaged heart mind and body in their life so it doesn't matter they could be a psychologist it could be a dentist stay-at-home dad or Olympic athlete it doesn't matter I do the same thing with everybody and it's really getting clear on who you are and what you want most and that flow of resonance when you're in the zone what does it take for you to get that and unconditional love is

[00:41:51] the underlying theme that it's the most powerful force in the universe and everyone knows what that is or I should say everyone knows what love is because and it has various forms but if you're a pro athlete then most pro athletes love their sport at least they did at one point not every pro athlete loves their sport but feeling something that makes you come alive that's the power that we want to harness and then understanding how do I get more of that and any parent that has kids so they have this real love for their kids taking that

[00:42:20] energy and applying it to your life and so that's what we do with inner excellence we help people understand what their heart deeply wants most and the thing that it wants most is to be fully known and fully loved and so understanding that unconditional love is the most powerful force in the universe and then how the mind works we have a subconscious mind that is always working to protect us and always looking for things that are in the past were painful or embarrassing or anything like that the way it works is that we go through our lives we have some sort of embarrassing or painful experience

[00:42:49] subconscious is going to lock it in it's going to put it in the same filing cabinet as a real physical threat and so you could feel just as scared trying to serve a volleyball in bounds as you could be taking fire in Afghanistan or in Gaza or anywhere which is crazy how could you feel just as scared or more scared in some sort of sporting event in a safe venue when there's people that are in wars and they could have more peace and confidence than you can I'm not

[00:43:19] saying they do but I'm saying that's definitely possible and I think there's definitely Navy SEALs and people like that that have had more peace and confidence in those pressure situations than some of us have had in playing volleyball or baseball or whatever rec league basketball at the free throw line for me but it sounds like you're talking about the way that we create rules and one of the big differences in the human brain is we

[00:43:47] do not have to have the same experience a second time in order to apply a rule from a previous experience if our mind is able to relate it to that first experience in a definable way or demonstrable way then we we can try to apply that same rule to a situation that may be way different whether it be if we are bitten by a dog at a young age and then we find

[00:44:16] ourselves at a much older age with a much smaller animal our mind has said this animal is a threat it's not just a dog there's an interesting experiment that sheds a little bit more light on this where they have two groups of adults walk into two separate but identical rooms that have a game in them and group one is given one rule that applies to the game and group two is not given any

[00:44:44] rules in that first room in the first game group one is able to complete the game faster and finish it then they go into a second room a few minutes later with a different game and they even tell them that the rules from the first game do not apply here but the first group is still trying to apply the rules of the first game so they are way slower in the second game than group two is but it is

[00:45:13] this idea you know if we're told at a young age especially repeatedly the old mantra that men don't cry we might not just find ourselves later in life not being able to cry even when it's a very appropriate situation we might find ourselves having applied that rule in a much more general way that men don't express emotion and then you end up living a very blasé life because you may not be aware of those rules like I

[00:45:42] said there's so much crossover and I think you've talked about trying to bring some of that subconscious baggage to light acknowledge it consciously and understand the story that you are living by and then start to poke holes in it and create a more realistic story I'm such a believer that when we do these things consciously it feeds back to our subconscious even though we don't consciously realize it

[00:46:12] so inter-excellence has three principles and one of them is every need is just a preference this might be helpful for listeners to apply to their lives so I lead inter-excellence retreats around the world one of the sessions I share the sign in the monastery that's assigned to guests and said if there's anything you need just let us know we'll show you how to get along without it I've thought about that a lot since I saw that and I've realized that most of my life I feel like I have needs like throughout the day and so what happens is we go I go

[00:46:42] about my day and I've got all these plans and then all these things happen that are different than my plans and a lot of it is unwanted unexpected and then it can throw you off so I want to live my day I want to have this inner calm this inner peace in my day unfazed by my results and circumstances so whether it's a flat tire missing a free throw like you said or anything like that I want to have this peace and confidence this equanimity that's not phased by what's going on in my outer world and what I see

[00:47:12] is that in my life I would think okay I need this or I need that I need this person to be a certain way I need the weather like I work with a lot of pro golfers and I need the weather to be a certain way I don't want it to be windy and I certainly don't want a gust to happen just before I swing and I don't want anyone to talk in the middle of my back swing and I don't want anyone to move I've got all these things I don't do this don't do that I need things to be a certain way that's where this principle comes from you don't need those things you think you do you don't those

[00:47:41] are just your preferences I've got to show you something because you talked about the weather that's a little bit blurry I apologize but I use this with patients all the time I don't like rain I wish it wasn't raining but my day would be better if it wasn't raining my day is ruined every day it's so it's like this why does it always rain when I want us to be sunny that hit me like a ton of bricks when I first saw it we find ourselves trying to control aspects of our life or our environment that

[00:48:09] we don't have control over it or we mentally commit that it is raining and then I can't do any of the things that I want to do and sometimes it stops raining but if we're locked into that mindset then we aren't able to get off the couch we aren't able to go and do what's important to us in life so I just I love that because the other side of it is it's raining yep I love that too and a lot of sports psychologists talk about acceptance you got to accept what you

[00:48:38] don't want and I don't talk really about acceptance I do have a principle like I said inter excellence has three principles and the first one is that everything is here to teach me and help me it's all working for my good this one applies to every situation especially the ones that are unwanted and unexpected if you don't want to be raining and so it's not just okay it's raining this is fine I can deal with it that's not how we do it it's tolerance yeah we're not tolerating something it's this rain is here to teach you and help you it's for your

[00:49:07] good whatever is coming in your circumstance this is here to teach you and help you it's for your good like if you're a golfer do you ever golf in the rain is it possible that the masters would be raining on Sunday and you're in the lead and you might want to get good at golfing in the rain or you know anything like that you don't know what you need all you know is what you want you think okay I need these things a certain way and I want this but no those are preferences and what you want you don't even know if that's the best thing for you when you realize that

[00:49:37] even winning today or having a great game today you don't even know if that's the best thing for you then things start to get a little different it's not that like we talked about that black and white yes and no it has to be a certain way no the best performers that people had that have lived extraordinary lives they understand that it's not this black and white thing good or bad like in putting it's very black and white for golfers either I made it or I missed either I win or I lose shooting a free throw good or bad that's not how we see it with

[00:50:07] inner excellence first of all we don't judge good or bad and we don't know what's best for us maybe that mistake that you made is going to make you into the player that you need to become and so our goal every day is to learn and grow and to get better today and when we understand that I don't know what's best for me today and that although I have very strict routines and boundaries around my habits of thought and action but when I can't do it not only is it okay that's how it's supposed to be today then we can start to develop this resonance around our

[00:50:36] lives without the neediness that can so easily plague us yeah I think about being down 30 in a basketball game being eight over through three holes playing golf you can be really down on yourself in those moments but the alternative is to recognize that this is another opportunity to keep fighting it's another opportunity to learn something being in a place that maybe you're not familiar being if you can

[00:51:04] remain open and inquisitive then even in the depths of despair in terms of your outcomes or in the worst game that you've ever played you can still learn and improve yourself if you carry that curiosity inquisitive mindset with you those have been honestly some of my favorite rounds of golf when I start out and it's just it's got awful I can't even hit the ball and I'm struggling to

[00:51:32] make a double bogey and then I get to the turn and I've hit four pars in a row and all of a sudden you birdie number 10 and you're right back into it but it's more I think rewarding to be able to fight back like that sometimes than even playing a clean round all the way through one of the things that I think that you encounter a lot is anxiety and one of the problems that causes anxiety and one of the root causes is self-centeredness and this is the thesis of inter-excellence is that

[00:52:01] self-centeredness our preoccupation with ourselves is the biggest challenge we face in performance and in life because it leads to fear and anxiety and with the anxiety it's this real everything revolving around you around yourself anxiety is a mind that has too many concerns what about this what about that constantly checking the environment and too many thoughts and so over analysis is one of the biggest challenges we face the top three are negative thinking or judgmental thinking and then self consciousness concern for self and if we can make a nod about self then that's

[00:52:31] huge because selfless is fearless and you can't get away from yourself you can't get away from your mind you can't ever be somebody else so there are major limits with comparing yourself to others it's really futile in a lot of senses and again it's not going to prevent our minds from automatically going there but i think it's up to our conscious selves to be able to rein that in and present the solution to your mind and your mind will

[00:53:00] take note of it even if it doesn't say oh i hear you jim oh i hear you ethan and i think there's evidence in that with i love to use the example of playing a video game and you have played level 12 a hundred times and you just cannot figure out how to beat level 12 and move on hopefully you don't throw the controller at the tv or break the game or anything but you end up going away from it you consciously

[00:53:28] disengage from it and then all of a sudden you come back to it a couple hours or a couple of days later and you start playing that same level and it's like there are new solutions that are available to you at the drop of a hat but you didn't consciously think about those the same thing i've heard musicians tell me in terms of being able to play a certain piece that they've never played before or in terms of our memory when we're sitting in a dinner party and talking

[00:53:57] about some public figure somebody oh i can't remember their name and later that night you're laying in bed and it's oh it's christopher walken that's right we have this kind of almost supernatural ability inherent in all of us that if we present problems to our minds our minds will come up with solutions to it i can share a story with you so i was playing chess with my uncle a few days ago i'm pretty much a beginner chess player but i

[00:54:27] enjoy it and i made this move where i was going to lose my queen so you lose your queen you're going to lose the game likely and so i was oh man i can't believe i did that shoot and so i kind of resigned like yeah i'm gonna lose and so i was like don't give up just make sure you think it all through and look at all the possibilities and then i was like yeah no okay gonna lose my queen as soon as i moved that move and then he's like jim you could have saved your queen right there and i was like oh my gosh how did i not see that and it wasn't a complex move it was

[00:54:56] pretty obvious so why did i not see that the reason i didn't see it is because i took it personal i took that mistake personal and here's what i mean now if you were playing chess and i was sitting right next to you watching you and you made that move do you think i would have been i can't believe that happened no there would have been no emotional response on my part watching you i would have been like huh wonder why i did that no look at that move over there but because of the emotional

[00:55:23] reaction it limited my possibilities and even though i spent probably four or five minutes reviewing don't quit my energy was not the same and that's what inner excellence is about having this energy of possibilities and understanding you don't know what's possible in your life and when you judge and overanalyze and are comparing you're severely limiting your possibilities and so we're constantly working to like you said refresh our minds and not make it

[00:55:51] about ourselves and allow resonance to occur a little more naturally and when you say resonance i think that flow state which again in golf or basketball it's that ability to just be there and reacting to what's happening not doing too much excess planning i mean there's a certain amount of executive functioning and planning that you have to engage in but then there's got to be again i always

[00:56:19] go back to that childlike ability to be 100 present in what you are doing being in that flow state those are the best rounds of golf that i've ever played and then when i start thinking hey you're two under through 14 when the mind goes to the outcome and i swear the whole act thing that hasn't made my life significantly better it's certainly made my golf game a lot better because i still think about the outcome but i know

[00:56:46] that consciously i need to work to get away from the outcome and just be so you've got to divvy out a hundred percent in golf between three different things physical ability or natural talent genetic ability mental or intellectual ability reading a green or staying in the right mindset and practice or preparation how do you divvy out that hundred percent are you talking about ability in all three areas or

[00:57:15] preparing for an event or how would you you have a hundred percent to divvy out what is the importance of each area to add up to a total of a hundred percent so you said there's preparation mental skills and physical skills yes the preparation throws me off a little bit because if we just start with the physical and the mental i would say that golf is probably say 80 percent physical 20 percent mental

[00:57:42] i was speaking to uh the former bruce jenner at uh live golf event recently so i wrote about bruce in my book inter excellence and how he had a set up a hurdle in his living room to prepare for the olympics and so every time he would go over that past that part of the living room he would go over the hurdle and it would visualize the olympics and so what an amazing idea i asked if that's what he did and jenner said yes and then told me 80 percent of your

[00:58:07] training going into the olympics is physical and 20 percent should be mental and then when you get there it's 80 percent mental and 20 percent physical and so i thought that's really powerful and i agree preparation is such a big important thing as well preparing physically and mentally in so many ways the difference i think a lot of people say golf is or sports is 90 percent mental and i don't

[00:58:34] see it that way even though i'm a mental skills coach the way i think you can look at it is if you take tiger woods and gave him an average golfer's mental game he's still going to be on the pga tour and he's still going to win he's just not going to be tiger woods but you give him the average golfer's physical game he's not on the pga tour you got to have that swing and that ability to hit the ball squarely and hit good shots to play at that level but i think what most people

[00:58:59] what they mean or the the real answer is that the difference between the best and the rest is largely mental and the difference between you at your best and you when you're not is largely mental 90 percent mental or something like that that's the key to understand the difference between the greatest and first and second place is very small and that part is mental yeah and that's very

[00:59:26] consistent as i ask people who are closer to the professional golfer including my cousin they say you don't understand how much physical and natural ability there is but yeah i agree with you i think when you get to that level there is a consistency with the amount of talent my cousin said do you mean for the pga tour golfer do you mean for the average golfer was his first question and you essentially said

[00:59:53] the same thing it's an interesting question i've gotten answers all over the board with those three but do you have any uh closing thoughts for us yeah so inter-excellence is very different than say sports psychology just because of the depth we're pursuing wholeheartedness and heart transformation because inter-excellence the belief is that your heart is the key to your life and so we want to train the heart to become a certain type of person the type of person that's not attached to what they want

[01:00:17] and can't control the type of person that loves most what's most empowering and so to do that we want to learn to master our ego the part of ourselves that's always comparing and always threatened and never satisfied and so inter-excellence is largely about self-mastery and surrender surrendering your minimal strength for the same strength that spins the earth and grows grass holds the stars in place so we can walk in love not fear so that's a little thing i'd like to leave with you doctor

[01:00:44] yeah absolutely and i just want to thank you for uh being here and for putting the work in i know how much work it has to be to write a book from start to finish from research uh developing the ideas to finalizing the edits and i'd also want to mention that the things that you talk about i could imagine that some people may see your background and think oh this is a book for professional athletes this

[01:01:14] is a book for those upper echelon performers in reality i think that inner excellence is for anybody i think that the concepts that you talk about in the specific instruction that you get helps anybody be the best version of themselves so i appreciate that and don't limit yourself to just the pros i think you got a lot to offer a lot of different people if you ever have any consideration

[01:01:40] to work with other populations i do help people that have major anxiety and natural trauma as well and i try and help whoever i can just to summarize some of my own closing thoughts after my discussion with jim this internal relationship with ourselves is something that follows us wherever we go at all

[01:02:04] times the fact that consciously three words that describe us i here and now don't necessarily apply to our minds our minds love to focus on the past the past us the painful memories things that happen to a small frail powerless child that still affect us as a grown adult our minds live in the future trying to predict

[01:02:32] every circumstance we may find ourselves in creating snap judgments of what's unfolding in front of us though with the amount of information that we're exposed to on a daily basis now there's no way our minds can be correct in everything that they do much like a google search engine they're spitting out possibilities we inherently desire order and judgment in our world yet if we create a false sense of those

[01:03:01] our world is bound to crumble as we'll eventually consciously realize what we're doing realize that we are fraudulently creating a story that isn't necessarily true we need to find ways to be comfortable living in each conscious moment of our lives letting our minds do their predictive thing in the background of our life but not getting too attached to the content of what they're saying

[01:03:27] we can utilize the intention of our minds to live a much more peaceful existence much like a demanding parent that means well but doesn't always say the right things i'm a firm believer that these are things we should be teaching to our children again it's something that we experience throughout our waking lives it's something that develops significantly with puberty and throughout adolescence

[01:03:56] leading to a lot of teenage and young adult angst and anxiety if we could better prepare our youths for this destined experience they will have maybe we could cut down on some of the rates of suicide and addiction whether it be to a drug alcohol or our phones and technologies maybe we can find a way as a society

[01:04:20] to have a better sense of inner peace and calm to be the most excellent versions of ourselves but start at a young age i implore you if you have children to teach them some of these concepts help them to understand what their inner dialogue is why it exists and how to navigate it as we traverse through the 21st century

[01:04:46] in this new age of massive and expedited expanse of technologies and information i don't just think that it's something that would be good for us i really think it's going to be a necessary component of society if we are to continue to move forward otherwise we may remain stuck in the superficial cycle of getting away

[01:05:10] from things that are uncomfortable and experiencing temporary bouts of happiness at the expense of meaningful and valued and fulfilled living thanks for listening and hopefully this series is a little bit more uplifting than some of the past series which tend to focus on the problems within the system somebody get this guy some help

[01:05:42] thanks again for watching and or listening if you're passionate about the subjects that i discuss on the channel do me a favor and like comment subscribe do whatever you can to make your voice heard that these are problems that must be addressed in our society if you have any questions comments or concerns i want to hear them

[01:06:08] feel free to reach out on social media or email us at renegadesike at gmail.com and if you'd like to be a guest of the show or you have a connection to somebody that you think would be a good guest let us know thanks again for listening