August 10, 2022 • 36 mins
Today's guest is Steve Magness, a performance expert, coach and author of the new book "Do Hard Things."
He's coached some of the top distance runners in the world, and literally wrote the book on the subject. But his newest book asks its readers to re-think how they perceive the prevailing model of toughness and its mentality of fear, false bravado, and hiding weakness.
Sports betting is famously an environment filled with false bravado and weakness hiding as strength. It is a pursuit loaded with mental pitfalls some never overcome. That's why Action Network hosts Chad Millman and Simon Hunter dig deep with Steve to learn the lessons in his book, and draw parallels between mentally coaching yourself to outcomes and the sometimes nauseating pursuit of sports betting success.
As Steve writes, “real toughness is experiencing discomfort or distress, leaning in, paying attention, and creating space to take thoughtful action. It’s navigating discomfort to make the best decision you can.” #Herd
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(01:26):
Welcome to the Favorites the Podcast from the Volume and
Podcast Network. I am Shad Mellman, Chief Content Officer of
the Action Network. I am joined as always by my bff,
my companion, my compadre professional better from the Fighting City
of Philadelphia, South Jersey's finest, Simon Hunter. How did I
(01:51):
not ask you about your vacation? I took a couple
of a couple of people, reached out to He said,
how did you not ask Chad about Italy? So real quick?
Well what was Italy? Brother? Simon? Let me tell you something.
I don't expect anybody to ask me questions about myself.
That is the burden I've placed on myself as a leader.
All I can do is show interest in the people
(02:16):
that I work with, care about them as deeply as
I can, and if I don't get it back, it's fine.
I don't take it personally, it doesn't matter. My job
is to make sure that everybody that I work with
is lifted up so I'm not offended by it. Chad
Millman is proud of himself. Italy was so shamefully, obnoxiously excellent.
(02:41):
I almost hesitate to talk about it in a public
forum because the rest of us are never going to
go there, so you're just you don't want to rather
than our faces. But I get it. I don't know
that you'll go there and do it the way that
I did it, you know, being the mogul that I am. Yeah,
probably not gonna sell a company worth two millions, so
I'm probably not gonna do it. Lucky you did. It
(03:02):
was truly extraordinary. I will say this that we got
very lucky. There were nine of us. It was me
and my wife and our two boys, and my sister
and her husband and their three kids. It's amazing to
go away. You're lucky if you can get to go away.
It was amazing to experience a lot of things in Italy.
The Colosseum, which I sent you in mitchell a picture
of it, was spectacular, it totally. My wife described it
(03:25):
yesterday to a friend like it was just a special,
wonderful trip. We're lucky to have done it. You'd recommend it, though,
someone ask you, what should I spend a bunch of
money go to Italy? You would say, yeah, alright, Simon.
One of the hardest things about coming back is mentally transitioning.
One of the hardest things about being a professional better.
(03:47):
Being a better generally generally is mentally fighting through the
mock You and I talked about this all last year.
We will be influenced by what we see, we will
be influenced by what here. Last year, it probably took
us four or five weeks to get into a zone
where we got out of the trash and just started
focusing on what we know is right and staying true
(04:10):
to that course no matter what, because we understand like
how we can be at our best. There is nobody,
nobody who is a better expert at understanding performance the
mental aspects of performance than our guest today. If you
listen to the show, you're probably a sports better. And
(04:32):
whether you do it recreationally or professionally, As I said,
it's no secret that sports betting can be one of
the toughest, most mentally exhausting activities around. Simon. We brought
in an expert who's exploring the science behind toughness and
by the way, this. This timing couldn't be better, because
(04:53):
we're getting into the point where we're all going to
have to start making hard decisions as better. Today's guest,
Steve Magnus, is a perform him, an expert and author
as well as the coach to some of the top
distant runners in the world, literally writing the book on
the subject the science running. But today he's got a
new book, folks. We'll be talking to him about that book,
(05:14):
Do Hard Things. It re examines how we perceive the
traditional model of toughness and it's mentality of fear, false
bravado hiding weaknesses. In the sports betting world, we see
plenty of this. Steve, You're going to have a captive
audience today, and as someone who is an avid peloton
(05:38):
or rower exerciser, I'm gonna have a lot of questions. Welcome. Oh,
thanks so much for having me. I'm so thrilled to
be here, especially after your Italy vacation. I'm now jealous
as well as thrilled to be here. But you know, listen,
you're you're a bestselling author. I'm sure you could find
a way to get there. You know that. I've been
(06:01):
to Italy once, but it was unfortunately to watch a
track meet that I had people competing at, and I
had like three hours to tour all of Rome. So
I may or may not have snuck into the Colosseum
instead of waiting on all those lines, but it in
those three hours, it was. It was a great place.
So the Colosseum is a good transition to what we're
(06:23):
talking about because it was sort of, you know, a
spectacle to perform in the Colosseum. I mean everything in
the Colosseum basically ended in death. It would be a
day of death. But the idea of sport, the idea
of being mentally tough. Do you are an expert on this?
(06:44):
So before we even get into how you become an
expert or what you tell people or how people fight
through it, give me a time recently when you haven't
been mentally tough and you had to fight your way
out of it. Oh man, that's a good question. Um,
so i'll give it. I'll give it in that actually
(07:05):
the exercise realm because at one point I was a
really good athlete, but as often happens with most of us,
as we get older and a job and family and
real life, our fitness starts to decline, and recently I've
been through about of like injuries and then just I'll
just say it. It's been like a hundred degrees in
(07:28):
my hometown of Houston, Texas, so it's miserable to be outside.
So I haven't been exercising as much. So you know what,
I was like, all right, I'm gonna get back on it.
I go out first day after coming back, not in
the best shape, but still have that mentality as if
I am. So I go out for a run as
(07:48):
if I am, you know, my younger in shape, fast self.
And it was miserable and I quit. I was like this,
this sucks. And for me as an athlete, that's like,
you know, it's it's an anathma to who I am.
But it just shows you that like that mental muscle
(08:10):
to handle difficult things, it is a skill that we
can develop and that will also decrease and go away
if we don't flex that muscle enough, even in those
who of us who have like a lifetime experience of it. God,
that's so interesting that you say that, because I'm not
(08:30):
saying it to sounds like a jerk. I will exercise
a lot. Went to Italy for two weeks, actually worked
out in the gym in the hotel, went running a
couple of times outside even though it was close to
a hundred degrees even at like eight in the morning.
But I came back and like mentally could not get
myself into it. In my workouts since I got back
(08:51):
had been terrible, like shorter, not as high performance, not
as hard, and like mentally cannot breakthrough I think of
it because I just wasn't performing it sort of the
same level and intervals and intensity as I was before.
How do you retrain yourself? How do you get your
(09:12):
mind to be exercising as a muscle like that? Yeah,
so a lot of it is being in that experience
and then um being able to like sit with it
experience and then navigate through it because you have to
look at it this way. Our brain is a protective machine.
So the reason it tells you, hey, don't go out
(09:34):
and exercise, don't do that, is because it's something that
is outside of your norm. It's the same experience when
maybe you know you're making a risky bet or like
thinking about it, your brain is sitting there like, don't
do this, don't take this risk. Why because it's it
wants to be safe and comfortable, so that anything that
stretches that, you know, that safety or comfort or pushes
(09:57):
us out of that zone are kind of security mind
comes about on and sounds that alarm and tells us
to like freak out, stop escape. The way that we
get used to it again is often not to like, hey,
I'm just gonna like ignore that push through it, but
to realize and recognize, Okay, why is this happening in
this moment. So for you coming back from Italy, it's
(10:20):
a great thing, all that good stuff. You just said,
your intensity, your intervals were a little bit worse, right, Well,
what does that send? That sends a message that, oh,
this isn't worth it anymore. We're not making progress, Like
we're not getting better. We are motivated when we think
we are getting better. When we don't have a shot,
(10:43):
or we feel like we're going the wrong way or
we're losing and our bets or whatever have you, that
motivation is gonna plumb in. So you have to kind
of figure out, Okay, how do I reframe things and
get myself back in the state where I see progress,
where maybe I'm not at my best self but I
can start where I am and say, Okay, you know,
maybe a month ago I was doing acts, but let's
(11:05):
forget about that and let's focus on where I am
now and figure out how to get that motivation back
by giving your yourself a path and route towards progress.
One more question before I left, Simon jump in. As
an athlete, what made you have the confidence to say,
wait a second, I feel like I can be an
(11:26):
expert in telling people how to be mentally stronger. So
I think that took a very long time, and I
think it was on it honestly from my own struggles
in the places where I didn't succeed. So briefly, i'll
give you an example is, as I said, I was
a really good athlete in high school. I ran a
(11:47):
mile in four minutes in one second, which was just
shy of that four minute barrier, and the fastest high
schooler in the nation at that point. So in my
mind I saw like, oh, I'm gonna like go to
the Olympics do all this crazy stuff. Well, I never
got better, So part of that push me towards evaluating
(12:09):
why that happened and why I couldn't get through this
this kind of moment or breakthrough that I so desperately
wanted and that pushed me down this search to be like, Okay, well,
a lot of that is the psychological game. It's that
mental muscle we're talking about. So a lot of it,
like where do you get that confidence from being able
to tell people how to get stronger, tougher, whatever? It
(12:31):
is a lot of it comes from my own failings
and my own struggle in that situation to figure out, Okay,
what would I do differently if I was, you know whatever,
eighteen year old Steve, How could I now handle this
situation to be able to get on the other side
of it instead of being stuck in that that that barrier.
(12:51):
I think you touched on a little bit like something
that I attribute a lot to sports, Like I learned
very young that losing is a part of life. Right
you don't play sports, You're not really losing a lot
in life, right, like, unless you're playing video games against
other people. But I do think it's good that one
of the best parts of sports is losing and learning
early on that if you want to win, you want
(13:13):
to do better, you literally just have to put the
work in. And I've carried that over to sports betting,
where my job is bouncing back from losing, like I'm
gonna lose and I'm gonna lose a lot of money,
and it's like one of these stressors where that's probably
the hardest part of my job. I tell people all
the time, you can build a model. Anyone in the
world can go online, find a model, build it. In
(13:36):
no world does that make you a sports better because
there's just so many other pillars that go into it,
and one of them is money management. And how do
you affect after loss? Is like I could tell you
every loss I've ever had, I can't tell you, but
every win. Right, it's just like human nature, right, we
remember survival instincts. Remember the loss is not so much
to wins. And I would just love to hear a
perspective a guy that you know, you've been around sports,
(13:57):
you get how everything is kind of a marathon, it's
not a sprit, and what is your view on sports,
but and how gods can use that in that field
where it's like you're gonna lose. That's just part of
life and part of sports betting. Yeah, So I'm so
glad you brought this up because I think it In
the US, often what happens is we learn how to
lose very poorly, which is we almost linger on it
(14:19):
and think that we should, you know, feel like it's
the end of the world, and like really experience that emotion.
You see this with like football coaches all the all
the time, where they're just like, you should despise losing,
and I get it, losing isn't fun. But if we
constantly ingrain that negative view of losing, what it does
is it puts us in a fear, in an avoidance state.
(14:42):
So if I sit there and I'm like, you know,
I make a bet and I lose a lot if
I linger in it, all I'm doing is training my
brain to say, this state really sucks, I should do
everything possible to avoid it, which isn't the place to
perform out. You want to perform out of what we'd
call a pro ng or like you know, being proactive
(15:03):
and playing to win versus playing not to lose. And
actually there's some fascinating research in the sports world that
shows that. For example, after a tough loss, there was
a study on professional rugby players, some of the toughest
guys ever that showed that you know, if a coach
just like kept berating them after a loss and said, hey,
this is where you messed up. This is how you
(15:24):
screwed up, Like, look at this game film and see
everything you did wrong. Right afterwards, what happened is they
experienced this this stress response, They experience a high level
of stress hormone cortisol. And then what happens is a
week later in their next game, those who went through
that tough loss and like had their coaches berating them,
(15:46):
they were stressed more before the next game and they
played worse. On the flip side, the players who said, hey,
that loss sucked, the coaches are like, that lost sucks,
here's what we can learn from it, but let's move on.
Before the next game that week later, they had an
increase in testosterone, a positive stress hormone, and they were
(16:09):
able to like have confidence and take on that game
and they played better. So often, like, how we handle
those losses impacts us, not just in that moment, but
in impacts how we're going to bounce back and be
ready to do the thing again. What do you do
if you're like Simon, if you're a better you're going
(16:30):
through a season, You're not going to have that that
that sort of external motivation or de motivator. It's all
got to be internal. What are the hard things that
you need to sort of steal yourself for when you're
the only machine that's powering it. It's like it's like
(16:51):
a marathon, right, Like you're not gonna have someone yelling
at you in the middle of a race. How do
you get through two miles? How do you get through
a seventeen week andfl season with internally having to get
through hard things? Yeah, it's it's incredibly difficult. And I
think one of the things, especially when it's you know,
I almost equate betting to like individual sports where you
(17:13):
don't have that support group around you, where it's just
kind of you alone in your head and you're trying
to navigate that and that makes it ten x you know,
more difficult. And one of the reasons is because what
happens is we essentially internalize everything. So it's not just
that oh, I lost this bet or I wasn't successful
(17:36):
betting on this game. Your brain almost internalizes it as
like I am a loser, like it is my character
that is like at fault here. We're in games, team games,
like you can blame it on someone else. You can
like you have this external that you can say, oh
is the coach, it was the ref, it was someone
else's in in betting. When it's just you making those bets,
(17:58):
you can't do that. So a couple of things that
really help getting through that is almost creating your own
like support and structure to make it where you realize that,
like betting is the thing that you do and it's
really important, but it is not your soul defining like
reason and and being on this world. There are other
(18:21):
aspects or other parts of your life that like you
can get meaning and value and whatever have you. Not
saying make it less important. I'm just saying, like, have
some diversity of sources of meaning to go to. And
then the other thing that I think is really important
is having a clarity, having clarity on like the purpose
(18:42):
and what betting brings to the table, because like success
and failure can pull us towards like you know, almost
being a little delusional on those external things, and we
need to have reminders of like, well, why do I
choose to do this? Why do I choose to go
through this? You know, sevent team game season that can
(19:03):
cause me to go a little bit crazy. Having those
reminders that like center you allows you to get through
that that that marathon without you know, having your motivation
completely go haywire. You mentioned something really interesting before that
if you're only doing something to improve performance, it can
(19:24):
be demotivating. And I think that gamblers can teach us
a lot about decision making, the way they approach bets,
the way they approach managing consequences and making decisions when
a lot of money is at stake, when risk, and
(19:45):
then how gamblers tend to sleep relatively well, win or
lose because they've gone through a process that allows them
to feel comfortable with the decision, and that process will
allow them to make the same decision the next time
if all those circumstances are lining up. What's interesting to
me is that, and I don't know how you translate
this to high performance athletes, but the best betters in
(20:08):
the world, signment is one of them. If they're winning
five point three times out of ten, they're superheroes, which
isn't very good like in the grand scheme of things
you want to perform at, but is that reality for anybody? Yeah,
(20:29):
what I would translate this to sport is actually you see,
the best athletes are almost like hyper real on embracing
the reality of the situation they they experience. So we
often think that athletes are like the best athletes are
like the ones who are like super overconfident and like
(20:49):
have all this bravado and all that stuff. But what
the research actually shows and what the experience of the
best athlete shows that they can like disting ish like
the task that they have at hand versus their ability
to handle that or their capabilities, and they match that
(21:11):
up in aligne that very you know, concretely, And I
think that's what you're getting at here, is that with
gamblers and betters, it's not hey, I need to think
that I need to you know, win every bet. It's
being realistic on the sense that if I win, you know,
five point three out of ten times, that's realistic and
(21:31):
that sets you up more for success and maybe not
having that like negative emotional arousal where you think like, oh,
I should win all the time or I should win
most of the time, because that negative stress and arousal
can get in the way of your decision making. The
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in West Virginia. Yeah, I talked on her all the
time about like I'm human as much as I want
to come on here and be like I'm living the dream,
like I try to to rub it on people's faces
on here, but I'm literally a guy in my early thirties,
(23:41):
no wife, for kids, tons of money, worked really hard
in the industry, and now it's like, you know, it's stressful,
but the stressful days are kind of behind me a
little bit, where like, yeah, I'm stressing about football, but
am I hungry? Am I like worried about health insurance
like all that stuff. No, So I think what you
said is good about perspect that where it's like I
(24:02):
hate sometimes doing this show chat. I'm not gonna lie
to you, Like there's sometimes where I'll lose big money
and I gotta come on this podcast and talk about
losing that big money and it's like literally like reopening
up a wound, right, like I've already done the surgery. Basically,
my rule is I can drink, I can smoke, do whatever.
Sunday night, Monday morning, it's a new week, right, I
dive into the new data, it's a new week for football.
(24:23):
But then I come on the show and say we
do it on Tuesday, and it's like I gotta relive
a horror. So I would say that was probably something
I did just to where as a normal better that's
that's not normal, Like you just you you would never
talk about again being killed on a Sunday and you
have to re talk about it on Tuesday, where it's
like that's part of the gig. So I would love
(24:44):
to hear perspective of the failure because to me, that's
just such an important thing in life for people like
you said, about I think that's an American thing, the
failure thing, where it's like I love failing, Like I
just I have all these memories of my life of
these risk I've taken and have I failed, And it
was like who cares? Like, like literally, I tell people
the time about talking to girls if she says no
(25:04):
to you, Like if you go up to ask her
buy a drink or even talk to her and she
says no, who cares. It's literally, you just took ten
seconds of your life. You already know the answer. It's
on you move to the next one. And that's just
my perspective of sports betting where it's like it hurts man,
like losing a lot of money on a stupid football game.
It really hurts. But just like you talked about these
sports athletes, I'm kind of bread for it, Like I
(25:25):
I think one of my things, I'm like, I'm best
that I've had something weird in my brain where it's
like I am unfazed by like I just know you
put the work in, the winning comes. And I feel
like you just talked about that with athletes, like they
have the same way of thinking. Yeah, no, you're probably
wired in the same way that elite athletes are um
and actually there's some fascinating work on neuroscience in the
(25:46):
brain that shows how this occurs, which essentially we have
think of it as we have this like sensitivity of
an alarm. And for some people it's like they fail
and it's like the alarm goes off and it's like
life or death. My my life is over. For other people,
it's like a blip where it's like, yeah, this sucks,
I'm experiencing this, but like that blip is gonna get
(26:08):
turned down and I'm guessing if like we could look
in your brain, that's how your brain is simon, Like
you have done that. And what's interesting is you just
got out there is okay. People hear that and they're like,
oh am I born with that or not. Well, the
research is again clear, is like yeah, some people are
better at it than others, but we all can train
to improve that that kind of alarm sensitivity. How do
(26:31):
you do that? Two main things is, and you just
describe this, you inoculate yourself. If you put yourself in
situations that like make that alarm kind of go off
where you're a little uncertain and then realize, okay, what's
the big deal? Like I went, I went and talked
to that girl, got rejected, Like is my what my
(26:52):
life over? No, I'm just moving on to the next thing.
The more you do things like that in your life, like,
the more that tells your brain that hey, I'm okay
with failure. And the other thing that is really important
here is also your mindset and approach, which we can
all control. And there was some wonderful research in the
world of Special Forces and Navy Navy Seals that found
(27:15):
that they tend to have a stress is enhancing or
like failure is positive mindset because they realize, oh, yeah,
this is gonna be really difficult. But this is also
where the growth comes from. If I fail, I often
learned something about myself that I don't learn when I succeeded,
(27:36):
so it can be this positive. And they found that
again most of the Navy Seals have this just subtle
mindset shift that other people often don't. So to me,
it it's pretty simple. It's like put yourself in the
right mindset and then allow yourself to explore and take
risks and bail And sometimes that means like starting with
(27:56):
really simple things before you jump to the big thing.
What's a simple thing? I mean it could be as
simple as you know. The example Simon said there is like,
you know, are you scared to talk to women at bars?
Will go force yourself to go talk to two or three?
Like make that decision? Or it could be something and
(28:18):
you're I guess the What I would say is anything
that puts you in a in a mindset where you're like, oh,
I should avoid doing this, go towards it, embrace it,
or on the flip side, anything that like feels like
a struggle to avoid, such as I don't know, um,
picking up your phone all the time while you're doing
(28:39):
stuff right because the phone calls you to pick it
up and you feel anxiety. If you say, oh, I'm
just gonna let that phone like sit there and buzz
and beep and what have you, that's another opportunity to
train that mental muscle, because your alarm is essentially saying, hey,
my phone is buzzing and beeping. I should pick it up,
Like this could be like life or death calling me.
(28:59):
And if you just like learn to sit with it
for a minute, you'll feel that sensation and that alarm dissipation,
and your brain will realize, oh I'm I'm in control.
I get to make the decision. So even the simplest
things like that are opportunities where you can train that
mental muscle. As my favorite Peloton instructor and a love
Well might say, change is inevitable, growth is optional. You know,
(29:26):
I think maybe you should write a book about that.
There you go, I'll give you the royalties on the
next book. But I think that is a very astute point.
Is we're all going to change in different areas, but
it's our It depends on like whether we're adapting in
a positive direction or not, and we're in charge of
like putting ourselves in position to do those things. Often
(29:48):
it's like do we want to avoid the difficult thing
and stay in that this comfort zone or do we
want to embrace it? And the other reasons. You know.
The other thing I'd be remiss if I didn't say,
because it ties into betting, is if you look at
gamblers investment bankers, which is you know, essentially gambling is
(30:09):
the psychology shows they are much better at being in
tune and dealing with their emotions instead of avoiding it
because they know when to listen and when to say
you know what I'm I'm I'm gonna block this out
and just move forward with my process and my decision.
So one of the things that's it's really interesting you
say that because another thing that I think gamblers do
(30:32):
very well, and I wonder if this is something that
you tell your athletes to do and if you talk
about um a sort of a regular part of the practice,
is how much introspection do you have to do about
previous performance. Yeah, so it's it's really important because I
(30:54):
get again, I think what happens here is when you
enter respect, what you're doing is two things. Is A
you're shifting to this like I'm gonna learn from the
failure mindset, and then be you're also making the success
or failure. You're translating it from an emotional thing to
(31:16):
essentially analytical thing where it's like, Okay, regardless of what happens,
I'm going to process this and figure this out. And
you see this difference between amateur and professional athletes all
the time. Amateur athletes often like will flip out when
you review an introspect. Professionals see it as part of
(31:37):
the job, and it's like, this is part of it.
I need to get better. It's why quarterbacks like Tom
Brady are obsessive of watching game teap They're introspecting, they're learning,
they're growing all that good stuff, and we can either
use that to our advantage or it can be this
thing that we we fear if we avoid it. So
I think going towards that is a is a very
(31:58):
important strategy. The people asking that all the time, they're like,
how do you not freak out? Or like, you know,
Reugh Free blows a game and I lose a bunch
of money, Like why don't you go on Twitter or
going the podcasts and freak out, And it's just I'm
just so used to her. It's like they're literally it's
just a waste of energy. You just described it. It's
like instead of freaking out and blaming, it's like, no,
I mean a mistake. Need to go back, look at myself,
(32:19):
Look what I did wrong, Look what I looked overlooked.
And I feel like that's when the healthiest things for
sports bettors, where it's like, mean Jack could come on
every Tuesday and talk about how bad the refs were,
Like we try not to because but sometimes we can't
help because we're just so mad but like that's one
of the things I've really learned where it's just like
it's just I think you talked about it. It's like
a waste of your mental energy. You're you're literally not
improving your life. You're just venting about something that's already happened.
(32:42):
So I do think that's just you just talked about
where it's like I I catch myself a lot trying
to do that, where it's like, don't focus so hard
on the past of things you can't control instead of
focus on the future of things you can control. Exactly.
And again, I you know, maybe to illustrate this point
for your listeners, again, I'm gonna turn to the research.
But they they there was this one study that compared
(33:05):
essentially Eastern expert meditators versus Joe blow American on the
street when experiencing something that's like really stressful, and the
typical American gets a triple dose of stress. They're freaking
out going into the stressful thing, they're freaking out during
the stressful thing, and then that that stress is lingering after.
(33:26):
Just like Simon said, you look at expert meditators, their
stress levels both in their body and brain only went
up once during the difficult thing when it's supposed to
go up. So I think that lesson applies to the
rest of us. Is if we're freaking out afterwards after
(33:47):
something stressful already occurred, like what good is that going
to do? It's just gonna cause us to kind of
linger and be in a state where we can't process
and deal with the thing and improve upon it. So
how do we learn to turn that off and get
back to kind of you know state Simon just talked about,
which is you know, process, deal with it, analyze what
(34:09):
I can do better, and then move on to the
next one. Do you think this kind of thinking leads
to good karma? I I do. I'm gonna give you
a science answer, not surprisingly to a karma question. Psychology
shows that emotions are contagious. So if we are putting
(34:31):
out negative emotions and energy into the world, that's going
to translate to those who are around, to the people
were leading. There's actually fascinating psychology on coaches, like when
we when coaches flip out and freak out during a
game because I don't know, ref blew the call, it
actually leads to players like feeling more stress and performing
(34:53):
worth so I think the same applies to everybody else,
is like, are we putting this like positive emotional experience
into the world. And if we do, like good karma
will come back on us. And if we're not, then
I think that will last and linger and the next
go round. We might be slightly biased in a negative state,
(35:15):
or slightly biased to be like betting out of fear
or worrying about losing, which isn't the attitude we want
to take towards performance. I think optimism wins, and I
feel a hundred more optimistic Steve after talking to you
on this podcast. I want everybody to go by do
(35:39):
hard things. I want everyone to listen and re listen
to this podcast. This is an amazing insight, and I
think it's super helpful for anybody who's about to enter
the slog of betting over four or five six months
in the NFL, which can be whether you bet five bucks,
fifty bucks, five hundred bucks, five thousand bucks. It's an
(36:00):
emotional roller coaster because so much of it feels out
of your control. So all of the mental exercises that
you just talked about today are going to be invaluable
for people. Thank you, Thanks so much. Really enjoyed this conversation.
The book is Too Hard Things. The author is Steve Agnus.
I am Chad Millman. He is Simon Hunter for Matt Mitchell.
(36:22):
This has been the favorite podcast from the Volume podcast network.
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(01:26):
Welcome to the Favorites the Podcast from the Volume and
Podcast Network. I am Shad Mellman, Chief Content Officer of
the Action Network. I am joined as always by my bff,
my companion, my compadre professional better from the Fighting City
of Philadelphia, South Jersey's finest, Simon Hunter. How did I
(01:51):
not ask you about your vacation? I took a couple
of a couple of people, reached out to He said,
how did you not ask Chad about Italy? So real quick?
Well what was Italy? Brother? Simon? Let me tell you something.
I don't expect anybody to ask me questions about myself.
That is the burden I've placed on myself as a leader.
All I can do is show interest in the people
(02:16):
that I work with, care about them as deeply as
I can, and if I don't get it back, it's fine.
I don't take it personally, it doesn't matter. My job
is to make sure that everybody that I work with
is lifted up so I'm not offended by it. Chad
Millman is proud of himself. Italy was so shamefully, obnoxiously excellent.
(02:41):
I almost hesitate to talk about it in a public
forum because the rest of us are never going to
go there, so you're just you don't want to rather
than our faces. But I get it. I don't know
that you'll go there and do it the way that
I did it, you know, being the mogul that I am. Yeah,
probably not gonna sell a company worth two millions, so
I'm probably not gonna do it. Lucky you did. It
(03:02):
was truly extraordinary. I will say this that we got
very lucky. There were nine of us. It was me
and my wife and our two boys, and my sister
and her husband and their three kids. It's amazing to
go away. You're lucky if you can get to go away.
It was amazing to experience a lot of things in Italy.
The Colosseum, which I sent you in mitchell a picture
of it, was spectacular, it totally. My wife described it
(03:25):
yesterday to a friend like it was just a special,
wonderful trip. We're lucky to have done it. You'd recommend it, though,
someone ask you, what should I spend a bunch of
money go to Italy? You would say, yeah, alright, Simon.
One of the hardest things about coming back is mentally transitioning.
One of the hardest things about being a professional better.
(03:47):
Being a better generally generally is mentally fighting through the
mock You and I talked about this all last year.
We will be influenced by what we see, we will
be influenced by what here. Last year, it probably took
us four or five weeks to get into a zone
where we got out of the trash and just started
focusing on what we know is right and staying true
(04:10):
to that course no matter what, because we understand like
how we can be at our best. There is nobody,
nobody who is a better expert at understanding performance the
mental aspects of performance than our guest today. If you
listen to the show, you're probably a sports better. And
(04:32):
whether you do it recreationally or professionally, As I said,
it's no secret that sports betting can be one of
the toughest, most mentally exhausting activities around. Simon. We brought
in an expert who's exploring the science behind toughness and
by the way, this. This timing couldn't be better, because
(04:53):
we're getting into the point where we're all going to
have to start making hard decisions as better. Today's guest,
Steve Magnus, is a perform him, an expert and author
as well as the coach to some of the top
distant runners in the world, literally writing the book on
the subject the science running. But today he's got a
new book, folks. We'll be talking to him about that book,
(05:14):
Do Hard Things. It re examines how we perceive the
traditional model of toughness and it's mentality of fear, false
bravado hiding weaknesses. In the sports betting world, we see
plenty of this. Steve, You're going to have a captive
audience today, and as someone who is an avid peloton
(05:38):
or rower exerciser, I'm gonna have a lot of questions. Welcome. Oh,
thanks so much for having me. I'm so thrilled to
be here, especially after your Italy vacation. I'm now jealous
as well as thrilled to be here. But you know, listen,
you're you're a bestselling author. I'm sure you could find
a way to get there. You know that. I've been
(06:01):
to Italy once, but it was unfortunately to watch a
track meet that I had people competing at, and I
had like three hours to tour all of Rome. So
I may or may not have snuck into the Colosseum
instead of waiting on all those lines, but it in
those three hours, it was. It was a great place.
So the Colosseum is a good transition to what we're
(06:23):
talking about because it was sort of, you know, a
spectacle to perform in the Colosseum. I mean everything in
the Colosseum basically ended in death. It would be a
day of death. But the idea of sport, the idea
of being mentally tough. Do you are an expert on this?
(06:44):
So before we even get into how you become an
expert or what you tell people or how people fight
through it, give me a time recently when you haven't
been mentally tough and you had to fight your way
out of it. Oh man, that's a good question. Um,
so i'll give it. I'll give it in that actually
(07:05):
the exercise realm because at one point I was a
really good athlete, but as often happens with most of us,
as we get older and a job and family and
real life, our fitness starts to decline, and recently I've
been through about of like injuries and then just I'll
just say it. It's been like a hundred degrees in
(07:28):
my hometown of Houston, Texas, so it's miserable to be outside.
So I haven't been exercising as much. So you know what,
I was like, all right, I'm gonna get back on it.
I go out first day after coming back, not in
the best shape, but still have that mentality as if
I am. So I go out for a run as
(07:48):
if I am, you know, my younger in shape, fast self.
And it was miserable and I quit. I was like this,
this sucks. And for me as an athlete, that's like,
you know, it's it's an anathma to who I am.
But it just shows you that like that mental muscle
(08:10):
to handle difficult things, it is a skill that we
can develop and that will also decrease and go away
if we don't flex that muscle enough, even in those
who of us who have like a lifetime experience of it. God,
that's so interesting that you say that, because I'm not
(08:30):
saying it to sounds like a jerk. I will exercise
a lot. Went to Italy for two weeks, actually worked
out in the gym in the hotel, went running a
couple of times outside even though it was close to
a hundred degrees even at like eight in the morning.
But I came back and like mentally could not get
myself into it. In my workouts since I got back
(08:51):
had been terrible, like shorter, not as high performance, not
as hard, and like mentally cannot breakthrough I think of
it because I just wasn't performing it sort of the
same level and intervals and intensity as I was before.
How do you retrain yourself? How do you get your
(09:12):
mind to be exercising as a muscle like that? Yeah,
so a lot of it is being in that experience
and then um being able to like sit with it
experience and then navigate through it because you have to
look at it this way. Our brain is a protective machine.
So the reason it tells you, hey, don't go out
(09:34):
and exercise, don't do that, is because it's something that
is outside of your norm. It's the same experience when
maybe you know you're making a risky bet or like
thinking about it, your brain is sitting there like, don't
do this, don't take this risk. Why because it's it
wants to be safe and comfortable, so that anything that
stretches that, you know, that safety or comfort or pushes
(09:57):
us out of that zone are kind of security mind
comes about on and sounds that alarm and tells us
to like freak out, stop escape. The way that we
get used to it again is often not to like, hey,
I'm just gonna like ignore that push through it, but
to realize and recognize, Okay, why is this happening in
this moment. So for you coming back from Italy, it's
(10:20):
a great thing, all that good stuff. You just said,
your intensity, your intervals were a little bit worse, right, Well,
what does that send? That sends a message that, oh,
this isn't worth it anymore. We're not making progress, Like
we're not getting better. We are motivated when we think
we are getting better. When we don't have a shot,
(10:43):
or we feel like we're going the wrong way or
we're losing and our bets or whatever have you, that
motivation is gonna plumb in. So you have to kind
of figure out, Okay, how do I reframe things and
get myself back in the state where I see progress,
where maybe I'm not at my best self but I
can start where I am and say, Okay, you know,
maybe a month ago I was doing acts, but let's
(11:05):
forget about that and let's focus on where I am
now and figure out how to get that motivation back
by giving your yourself a path and route towards progress.
One more question before I left, Simon jump in. As
an athlete, what made you have the confidence to say,
wait a second, I feel like I can be an
(11:26):
expert in telling people how to be mentally stronger. So
I think that took a very long time, and I
think it was on it honestly from my own struggles
in the places where I didn't succeed. So briefly, i'll
give you an example is, as I said, I was
a really good athlete in high school. I ran a
(11:47):
mile in four minutes in one second, which was just
shy of that four minute barrier, and the fastest high
schooler in the nation at that point. So in my
mind I saw like, oh, I'm gonna like go to
the Olympics do all this crazy stuff. Well, I never
got better, So part of that push me towards evaluating
(12:09):
why that happened and why I couldn't get through this
this kind of moment or breakthrough that I so desperately
wanted and that pushed me down this search to be like, Okay, well,
a lot of that is the psychological game. It's that
mental muscle we're talking about. So a lot of it,
like where do you get that confidence from being able
to tell people how to get stronger, tougher, whatever? It
(12:31):
is a lot of it comes from my own failings
and my own struggle in that situation to figure out, Okay,
what would I do differently if I was, you know whatever,
eighteen year old Steve, How could I now handle this
situation to be able to get on the other side
of it instead of being stuck in that that that barrier.
(12:51):
I think you touched on a little bit like something
that I attribute a lot to sports, Like I learned
very young that losing is a part of life. Right
you don't play sports, You're not really losing a lot
in life, right, like, unless you're playing video games against
other people. But I do think it's good that one
of the best parts of sports is losing and learning
early on that if you want to win, you want
(13:13):
to do better, you literally just have to put the
work in. And I've carried that over to sports betting,
where my job is bouncing back from losing, like I'm
gonna lose and I'm gonna lose a lot of money,
and it's like one of these stressors where that's probably
the hardest part of my job. I tell people all
the time, you can build a model. Anyone in the
world can go online, find a model, build it. In
(13:36):
no world does that make you a sports better because
there's just so many other pillars that go into it,
and one of them is money management. And how do
you affect after loss? Is like I could tell you
every loss I've ever had, I can't tell you, but
every win. Right, it's just like human nature, right, we
remember survival instincts. Remember the loss is not so much
to wins. And I would just love to hear a
perspective a guy that you know, you've been around sports,
(13:57):
you get how everything is kind of a marathon, it's
not a sprit, and what is your view on sports,
but and how gods can use that in that field
where it's like you're gonna lose. That's just part of
life and part of sports betting. Yeah, So I'm so
glad you brought this up because I think it In
the US, often what happens is we learn how to
lose very poorly, which is we almost linger on it
(14:19):
and think that we should, you know, feel like it's
the end of the world, and like really experience that emotion.
You see this with like football coaches all the all
the time, where they're just like, you should despise losing,
and I get it, losing isn't fun. But if we
constantly ingrain that negative view of losing, what it does
is it puts us in a fear, in an avoidance state.
(14:42):
So if I sit there and I'm like, you know,
I make a bet and I lose a lot if
I linger in it, all I'm doing is training my
brain to say, this state really sucks, I should do
everything possible to avoid it, which isn't the place to
perform out. You want to perform out of what we'd
call a pro ng or like you know, being proactive
(15:03):
and playing to win versus playing not to lose. And
actually there's some fascinating research in the sports world that
shows that. For example, after a tough loss, there was
a study on professional rugby players, some of the toughest
guys ever that showed that you know, if a coach
just like kept berating them after a loss and said, hey,
this is where you messed up. This is how you
(15:24):
screwed up, Like, look at this game film and see
everything you did wrong. Right afterwards, what happened is they
experienced this this stress response, They experience a high level
of stress hormone cortisol. And then what happens is a
week later in their next game, those who went through
that tough loss and like had their coaches berating them,
(15:46):
they were stressed more before the next game and they
played worse. On the flip side, the players who said, hey,
that loss sucked, the coaches are like, that lost sucks,
here's what we can learn from it, but let's move on.
Before the next game that week later, they had an
increase in testosterone, a positive stress hormone, and they were
(16:09):
able to like have confidence and take on that game
and they played better. So often, like, how we handle
those losses impacts us, not just in that moment, but
in impacts how we're going to bounce back and be
ready to do the thing again. What do you do
if you're like Simon, if you're a better you're going
(16:30):
through a season, You're not going to have that that
that sort of external motivation or de motivator. It's all
got to be internal. What are the hard things that
you need to sort of steal yourself for when you're
the only machine that's powering it. It's like it's like
(16:51):
a marathon, right, Like you're not gonna have someone yelling
at you in the middle of a race. How do
you get through two miles? How do you get through
a seventeen week andfl season with internally having to get
through hard things? Yeah, it's it's incredibly difficult. And I
think one of the things, especially when it's you know,
I almost equate betting to like individual sports where you
(17:13):
don't have that support group around you, where it's just
kind of you alone in your head and you're trying
to navigate that and that makes it ten x you know,
more difficult. And one of the reasons is because what
happens is we essentially internalize everything. So it's not just
that oh, I lost this bet or I wasn't successful
(17:36):
betting on this game. Your brain almost internalizes it as
like I am a loser, like it is my character
that is like at fault here. We're in games, team games,
like you can blame it on someone else. You can
like you have this external that you can say, oh
is the coach, it was the ref, it was someone
else's in in betting. When it's just you making those bets,
(17:58):
you can't do that. So a couple of things that
really help getting through that is almost creating your own
like support and structure to make it where you realize that,
like betting is the thing that you do and it's
really important, but it is not your soul defining like
reason and and being on this world. There are other
(18:21):
aspects or other parts of your life that like you
can get meaning and value and whatever have you. Not
saying make it less important. I'm just saying, like, have
some diversity of sources of meaning to go to. And
then the other thing that I think is really important
is having a clarity, having clarity on like the purpose
(18:42):
and what betting brings to the table, because like success
and failure can pull us towards like you know, almost
being a little delusional on those external things, and we
need to have reminders of like, well, why do I
choose to do this? Why do I choose to go
through this? You know, sevent team game season that can
(19:03):
cause me to go a little bit crazy. Having those
reminders that like center you allows you to get through
that that that marathon without you know, having your motivation
completely go haywire. You mentioned something really interesting before that
if you're only doing something to improve performance, it can
(19:24):
be demotivating. And I think that gamblers can teach us
a lot about decision making, the way they approach bets,
the way they approach managing consequences and making decisions when
a lot of money is at stake, when risk, and
(19:45):
then how gamblers tend to sleep relatively well, win or
lose because they've gone through a process that allows them
to feel comfortable with the decision, and that process will
allow them to make the same decision the next time
if all those circumstances are lining up. What's interesting to
me is that, and I don't know how you translate
this to high performance athletes, but the best betters in
(20:08):
the world, signment is one of them. If they're winning
five point three times out of ten, they're superheroes, which
isn't very good like in the grand scheme of things
you want to perform at, but is that reality for anybody? Yeah,
(20:29):
what I would translate this to sport is actually you see,
the best athletes are almost like hyper real on embracing
the reality of the situation they they experience. So we
often think that athletes are like the best athletes are
like the ones who are like super overconfident and like
(20:49):
have all this bravado and all that stuff. But what
the research actually shows and what the experience of the
best athlete shows that they can like disting ish like
the task that they have at hand versus their ability
to handle that or their capabilities, and they match that
(21:11):
up in aligne that very you know, concretely, And I
think that's what you're getting at here, is that with
gamblers and betters, it's not hey, I need to think
that I need to you know, win every bet. It's
being realistic on the sense that if I win, you know,
five point three out of ten times, that's realistic and
(21:31):
that sets you up more for success and maybe not
having that like negative emotional arousal where you think like, oh,
I should win all the time or I should win
most of the time, because that negative stress and arousal
can get in the way of your decision making. The
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refund issued as non withdraw able free bets that expire
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(23:18):
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eight nine, or visit one eight hundred gambler dot net
in West Virginia. Yeah, I talked on her all the
time about like I'm human as much as I want
to come on here and be like I'm living the dream,
like I try to to rub it on people's faces
on here, but I'm literally a guy in my early thirties,
(23:41):
no wife, for kids, tons of money, worked really hard
in the industry, and now it's like, you know, it's stressful,
but the stressful days are kind of behind me a
little bit, where like, yeah, I'm stressing about football, but
am I hungry? Am I like worried about health insurance
like all that stuff. No, So I think what you
said is good about perspect that where it's like I
(24:02):
hate sometimes doing this show chat. I'm not gonna lie
to you, Like there's sometimes where I'll lose big money
and I gotta come on this podcast and talk about
losing that big money and it's like literally like reopening
up a wound, right, like I've already done the surgery. Basically,
my rule is I can drink, I can smoke, do whatever.
Sunday night, Monday morning, it's a new week, right, I
dive into the new data, it's a new week for football.
(24:23):
But then I come on the show and say we
do it on Tuesday, and it's like I gotta relive
a horror. So I would say that was probably something
I did just to where as a normal better that's
that's not normal, Like you just you you would never
talk about again being killed on a Sunday and you
have to re talk about it on Tuesday, where it's
like that's part of the gig. So I would love
(24:44):
to hear perspective of the failure because to me, that's
just such an important thing in life for people like
you said, about I think that's an American thing, the
failure thing, where it's like I love failing, Like I
just I have all these memories of my life of
these risk I've taken and have I failed, And it
was like who cares? Like, like literally, I tell people
the time about talking to girls if she says no
(25:04):
to you, Like if you go up to ask her
buy a drink or even talk to her and she
says no, who cares. It's literally, you just took ten
seconds of your life. You already know the answer. It's
on you move to the next one. And that's just
my perspective of sports betting where it's like it hurts man,
like losing a lot of money on a stupid football game.
It really hurts. But just like you talked about these
sports athletes, I'm kind of bread for it, Like I
(25:25):
I think one of my things, I'm like, I'm best
that I've had something weird in my brain where it's
like I am unfazed by like I just know you
put the work in, the winning comes. And I feel
like you just talked about that with athletes, like they
have the same way of thinking. Yeah, no, you're probably
wired in the same way that elite athletes are um
and actually there's some fascinating work on neuroscience in the
(25:46):
brain that shows how this occurs, which essentially we have
think of it as we have this like sensitivity of
an alarm. And for some people it's like they fail
and it's like the alarm goes off and it's like
life or death. My my life is over. For other people,
it's like a blip where it's like, yeah, this sucks,
I'm experiencing this, but like that blip is gonna get
(26:08):
turned down and I'm guessing if like we could look
in your brain, that's how your brain is simon, Like
you have done that. And what's interesting is you just
got out there is okay. People hear that and they're like,
oh am I born with that or not. Well, the
research is again clear, is like yeah, some people are
better at it than others, but we all can train
to improve that that kind of alarm sensitivity. How do
(26:31):
you do that? Two main things is, and you just
describe this, you inoculate yourself. If you put yourself in
situations that like make that alarm kind of go off
where you're a little uncertain and then realize, okay, what's
the big deal? Like I went, I went and talked
to that girl, got rejected, Like is my what my
(26:52):
life over? No, I'm just moving on to the next thing.
The more you do things like that in your life, like,
the more that tells your brain that hey, I'm okay
with failure. And the other thing that is really important
here is also your mindset and approach, which we can
all control. And there was some wonderful research in the
world of Special Forces and Navy Navy Seals that found
(27:15):
that they tend to have a stress is enhancing or
like failure is positive mindset because they realize, oh, yeah,
this is gonna be really difficult. But this is also
where the growth comes from. If I fail, I often
learned something about myself that I don't learn when I succeeded,
(27:36):
so it can be this positive. And they found that
again most of the Navy Seals have this just subtle
mindset shift that other people often don't. So to me,
it it's pretty simple. It's like put yourself in the
right mindset and then allow yourself to explore and take
risks and bail And sometimes that means like starting with
(27:56):
really simple things before you jump to the big thing.
What's a simple thing? I mean it could be as
simple as you know. The example Simon said there is like,
you know, are you scared to talk to women at bars?
Will go force yourself to go talk to two or three?
Like make that decision? Or it could be something and
(28:18):
you're I guess the What I would say is anything
that puts you in a in a mindset where you're like, oh,
I should avoid doing this, go towards it, embrace it,
or on the flip side, anything that like feels like
a struggle to avoid, such as I don't know, um,
picking up your phone all the time while you're doing
(28:39):
stuff right because the phone calls you to pick it
up and you feel anxiety. If you say, oh, I'm
just gonna let that phone like sit there and buzz
and beep and what have you, that's another opportunity to
train that mental muscle, because your alarm is essentially saying, hey,
my phone is buzzing and beeping. I should pick it up,
Like this could be like life or death calling me.
(28:59):
And if you just like learn to sit with it
for a minute, you'll feel that sensation and that alarm dissipation,
and your brain will realize, oh I'm I'm in control.
I get to make the decision. So even the simplest
things like that are opportunities where you can train that
mental muscle. As my favorite Peloton instructor and a love
Well might say, change is inevitable, growth is optional. You know,
(29:26):
I think maybe you should write a book about that.
There you go, I'll give you the royalties on the
next book. But I think that is a very astute point.
Is we're all going to change in different areas, but
it's our It depends on like whether we're adapting in
a positive direction or not, and we're in charge of
like putting ourselves in position to do those things. Often
(29:48):
it's like do we want to avoid the difficult thing
and stay in that this comfort zone or do we
want to embrace it? And the other reasons. You know.
The other thing I'd be remiss if I didn't say,
because it ties into betting, is if you look at
gamblers investment bankers, which is you know, essentially gambling is
(30:09):
the psychology shows they are much better at being in
tune and dealing with their emotions instead of avoiding it
because they know when to listen and when to say
you know what I'm I'm I'm gonna block this out
and just move forward with my process and my decision.
So one of the things that's it's really interesting you
say that because another thing that I think gamblers do
(30:32):
very well, and I wonder if this is something that
you tell your athletes to do and if you talk
about um a sort of a regular part of the practice,
is how much introspection do you have to do about
previous performance. Yeah, so it's it's really important because I
(30:54):
get again, I think what happens here is when you
enter respect, what you're doing is two things. Is A
you're shifting to this like I'm gonna learn from the
failure mindset, and then be you're also making the success
or failure. You're translating it from an emotional thing to
(31:16):
essentially analytical thing where it's like, Okay, regardless of what happens,
I'm going to process this and figure this out. And
you see this difference between amateur and professional athletes all
the time. Amateur athletes often like will flip out when
you review an introspect. Professionals see it as part of
(31:37):
the job, and it's like, this is part of it.
I need to get better. It's why quarterbacks like Tom
Brady are obsessive of watching game teap They're introspecting, they're learning,
they're growing all that good stuff, and we can either
use that to our advantage or it can be this
thing that we we fear if we avoid it. So
I think going towards that is a is a very
(31:58):
important strategy. The people asking that all the time, they're like,
how do you not freak out? Or like, you know,
Reugh Free blows a game and I lose a bunch
of money, Like why don't you go on Twitter or
going the podcasts and freak out, And it's just I'm
just so used to her. It's like they're literally it's
just a waste of energy. You just described it. It's
like instead of freaking out and blaming, it's like, no,
I mean a mistake. Need to go back, look at myself,
(32:19):
Look what I did wrong, Look what I looked overlooked.
And I feel like that's when the healthiest things for
sports bettors, where it's like, mean Jack could come on
every Tuesday and talk about how bad the refs were,
Like we try not to because but sometimes we can't
help because we're just so mad but like that's one
of the things I've really learned where it's just like
it's just I think you talked about it. It's like
a waste of your mental energy. You're you're literally not
improving your life. You're just venting about something that's already happened.
(32:42):
So I do think that's just you just talked about
where it's like I I catch myself a lot trying
to do that, where it's like, don't focus so hard
on the past of things you can't control instead of
focus on the future of things you can control. Exactly.
And again, I you know, maybe to illustrate this point
for your listeners, again, I'm gonna turn to the research.
But they they there was this one study that compared
(33:05):
essentially Eastern expert meditators versus Joe blow American on the
street when experiencing something that's like really stressful, and the
typical American gets a triple dose of stress. They're freaking
out going into the stressful thing, they're freaking out during
the stressful thing, and then that that stress is lingering after.
(33:26):
Just like Simon said, you look at expert meditators, their
stress levels both in their body and brain only went
up once during the difficult thing when it's supposed to
go up. So I think that lesson applies to the
rest of us. Is if we're freaking out afterwards after
(33:47):
something stressful already occurred, like what good is that going
to do? It's just gonna cause us to kind of
linger and be in a state where we can't process
and deal with the thing and improve upon it. So
how do we learn to turn that off and get
back to kind of you know state Simon just talked about,
which is you know, process, deal with it, analyze what
(34:09):
I can do better, and then move on to the
next one. Do you think this kind of thinking leads
to good karma? I I do. I'm gonna give you
a science answer, not surprisingly to a karma question. Psychology
shows that emotions are contagious. So if we are putting
(34:31):
out negative emotions and energy into the world, that's going
to translate to those who are around, to the people
were leading. There's actually fascinating psychology on coaches, like when
we when coaches flip out and freak out during a
game because I don't know, ref blew the call, it
actually leads to players like feeling more stress and performing
(34:53):
worth so I think the same applies to everybody else,
is like, are we putting this like positive emotional experience
into the world. And if we do, like good karma
will come back on us. And if we're not, then
I think that will last and linger and the next
go round. We might be slightly biased in a negative state,
(35:15):
or slightly biased to be like betting out of fear
or worrying about losing, which isn't the attitude we want
to take towards performance. I think optimism wins, and I
feel a hundred more optimistic Steve after talking to you
on this podcast. I want everybody to go by do
(35:39):
hard things. I want everyone to listen and re listen
to this podcast. This is an amazing insight, and I
think it's super helpful for anybody who's about to enter
the slog of betting over four or five six months
in the NFL, which can be whether you bet five bucks,
fifty bucks, five hundred bucks, five thousand bucks. It's an
(36:00):
emotional roller coaster because so much of it feels out
of your control. So all of the mental exercises that
you just talked about today are going to be invaluable
for people. Thank you, Thanks so much. Really enjoyed this conversation.
The book is Too Hard Things. The author is Steve Agnus.
I am Chad Millman. He is Simon Hunter for Matt Mitchell.
(36:22):
This has been the favorite podcast from the Volume podcast network.
Downloaded from Spotify, Apple Podcast. Whenever you get your podcast
rate reviews, subscribe, leave us five stars, say whatever you
want feedback as a gift until next time. I love you.
Hosts And Creators
Chad Millman
Simon Hunter
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