How To Create Battle-Tested Confidence - Dr Nate Zinsser

1. 0:00 – 1:30

   Intro

   1. NZDr. Nate Zinsser0:00

      The great accomplishments in human history were all preceded by a certain degree of delusion. Roger Bannister said that in order to run a sub-four-minute mile, you have to be humble enough to do the work, and then you have to be arrogant enough to think that you can actually do it. I think Sir Roger was dead on.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:22

      What's your job at West Point? What do you do?

   3. NZDr. Nate Zinsser0:25

      I direct a program of training and instruction in the intangible mental skills that are important for human performance. The skills that allow one to be confident even though there are setbacks and difficulties in life. The attention skills that allow one to stay focused on what's important, even though there are a heck of a lot of distractions around us every day. And the skills that help us stay composed and energized despite living in a world of stress and demands. I have a staff of three trainers. I work with a lot of cadets individually, in small groups. I give talks to various athletic teams and various groups of cadets within the organizational structure of West Point. We've been doing this work here for over 30 years, and it has had expansive effects throughout the United States Army. And there are a lot of these sim- same skills being taught, um, all over the, uh, North American continent, uh, South Korea bases, German bases. Um,

2. 1:30 – 9:00

   Why Army Cadets Need Confidence Training

   1. NZDr. Nate Zinsser1:30

      it's important work.

   2. CWChris Williamson1:32

      Why do Army cadets need that training?

   3. NZDr. Nate Zinsser1:35

      Because they are engaged in preparation for what could be the ultimately stressful situation. Combat, where lives are at stake, where property could be destroyed, um, where casualties are possible. So as important as it is for emerging officers in the U.S. Army to be physically fit, technically very sound, tactically very sound, it's also important for them to be mentally tough. And we have paid lip service traditionally to the importance of these intangible factors, confidence, focus, composure, et- et cetera. But 30 years ago, West Point decided that this stuff is too important just to leave up to chance. Let's formalize a way of exposing our cadets to these important principles, and let's formalize a training curriculum that will really help them get good at it, rather than just leave it up to chance and hope that they get it, you know, through osmosis or something else.

   4. CWChris Williamson2:49

      How does confidence impact performance then?

   5. NZDr. Nate Zinsser2:52

      Confidence, at least the way I des- define it, as a sense of certainty that allows you to be more or less natural and unconscious in your execution, doing something complicated without having to pause and think your way at each step. That certainty makes it easier for your eyes and your senses to take in all the important sensory variables and stimuli that are in a situation. It helps your automatic recall from your training and experience on what to do with those stimuli coming in. And then it helps your nervous system deliver the right instructions to your hands, to your feet, to your mouth to communicate. So it really facilitates in the, um, most accurate and quickest and most effective behavior in a stressful situation.

   6. CWChris Williamson3:51

      It seems a lot like getting out of your own way is a big part of confidence.

   7. NZDr. Nate Zinsser3:54

      Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. You have to get out of the learned tendencies that you've accumulated over your life to worry about what could happen, to question your own ability of w- about whether you can indeed execute. You have to get out of your own way. You have to get out of those thoughts because all of those produce hesitation. Hesitation could cause your worst fears to come true.

   8. CWChris Williamson4:22

      Is there a case that less cognitive tasks, things that are more physical, are they simpler for you to prescribe a, a confidence protocol for? What you're saying is we try to not have too many discursive thoughts. We try to not overthink the thing that we're doing. But if the task that we're doing is fundamentally based on thinking, say some sort of logic puzzle, maybe it's something to do with like coding perhaps, versus something which is a more physical trait, is there a, a tension or a difference there between those two sorts of pursuits?

   9. NZDr. Nate Zinsser4:54

      A little bit of a difference, but much more a common denominator. Your, your training in, um, calculus or physics that you go through in order to be able to solve a problem is not all that different from the training you go through to develop a good cross-court backhand or, you know, a good, uh, a good boxing combination. The instructions to hit the forehand, to hit the boxing combinations are coded into your, um, into your brain and nervous system. The memory of the thermodynamic principles and the calculus principles are similarly encoded into your nervous system. The tennis player has to trust her backhand. The boxer has to trust his combinations. The engineering student or the medical student has to trust the accumulated knowledge so that that knowledge can express itself on an exam, in an interview, when you're dealing with a patient.... just the same way that the tennis player has to trust the backhand. So there's really so much overlap and consistency, uh, across the spectrum of human performance than there are spec- you know, specifics or differences between, as you say, a physical task and a more cognitive task.

   10. CWChris Williamson6:21

       Is there a relationship between competence and confidence?

   11. NZDr. Nate Zinsser6:25

       Oh, absolutely. Okay. Um, I'm the first person to describe human performance as a function of both competence, the skill that you have, and confidence, your degree of certainty about that skill. You can have tremendous actual competence, you know? Consider the situation of a athlete who can do things in practice, but does not seem to be able to do them in the actual match. "Okay. Yeah. I hit that penalty kick nine times out of 10. Oh, and here's the opportunity for me to do it when the crowd is loud, it's on television." And they don't hit it as well. Okay. Well, they have the competence, but they might have an episode of self-doubt or worry or ten- that produces muscular tension which leads to a missed opportunity. So, it's a matter of matching up your confidence, your certainty about yourself, with the actual level of skill that you have. It doesn't matter that you can hit it nine times out of 10 in practice if you have the self-doubt that reduces that to five times out of 10 in an actual match. So it's a matter of matching your belief in yourself with your degree of competence as you train and practice.

   12. CWChris Williamson7:50

       Presumably, though, we would want to actually be further ahead of our competence. We would want to believe that we can over-perform.

   13. NZDr. Nate Zinsser7:57

       Absolutely. Um, I'm telling people, "I don't care how much practice you have had or haven't had. You better be completely certain that when you step onto that pitch to play, when you step onto that wrestling mat, when you step into that interview, or step into that room to take the exam, you believe that you are enough." So I love the way you put it. You want your confidence to just be a little bit ahead of where you might actually be. And this is a, this is an understanding that has enabled a lot of athletes and a lot of performers to sort of turn the corner and find that next level, you know? "Oh, I've got to practice. I've got to get better. I've got to get better. I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough." No, wait a minute. Stop. I worked really hard. I'm not perfect, but I don't need to be perfect in order to be excellent. And that's what I'm striving for. I can be excellent in this moment. Daggone it, I am enough.

   14. CWChris Williamson8:59

       You

3. 9:00 – 18:49

   Eli Manning’s Competitive Mentality

   1. CWChris Williamson9:00

      talk about a story from Eli Manning. Can you take us through that?

   2. NZDr. Nate Zinsser9:04

      Um, (laughs) which story would you like about Eli Manning, Chris? I've got a dozen.

   3. CWChris Williamson9:09

      Whichever one you think is best.

   4. NZDr. Nate Zinsser9:10

      Okay. Um, here's a wonderful story. This is the Super Bowl, which i- in the United States is the single biggest sporting event of the entire year. More people are tuned into that than unfortunately will watch the Wimbledon Championships or, um, the European Cup, or, you know, even the World Cup. So, here is Eli Manning in a critical moment toward the end of the game. His team is behind on the scoreboard. They must score a touchdown. They've only four minutes to play. They are not favored to win this game. Eli Manning steps back from his own goal line and launches a 40-yard perfect rainbow of a pass to a tightly covered receiver, drops it right into the guy's hands even though there are two defenders marking him very closely. That play moves the ball to midfield. That play sets up the- Eli's team's winning touchdown, and they go on to win the Super Bowl. The very next day, Eli is doing a nationally syndicated radio interview where the sportscaster asks him about that particular play. And he says, "Do you ever consider the ramifications of failure at a moment like that?" And Eli, being the very polite guy that he is, gave a very polite answer. Now, consider that question. "Do you ever consider the ramifications of failure at a moment like that?" Which means, A, do you think about failing, and B, do you think about all the bad things that might happen should you fail? Eli's answer was very simple. Based upon all the work that he had done to construct the right kind of competitive mentality, and he said, um, "No, that's exactly what you don't do." And I could... You know, I was listening to this on the radio and I could sort of hear the, the, the sportscaster who asked the question kind of take a gasping breath back because he had just been shot down. Eli went on to explain, "In a moment like that, you think about all the times you have been successful in leading a comeback." And he could rattle off four or five games from that particular season in his memory in which he had indeed produced a comeback and a win. He says, "You think about these, you recall these moments, and you forget about the times when you didn't do it. You misremember those moments, but you hang onto the memories of previous successes. That produces the feeling which allows you, which helps you execute." That is one of my favorite Eli Manning stories.

   5. CWChris Williamson11:59

      Well, the bizarre thing is that Eli has this opportunity, and so does everybody else, when you're talking about envisioning what might come next in your chosen pursuit-

   6. NZDr. Nate Zinsser12:08

      Yes.

   7. CWChris Williamson12:08

      ... you have the opportunity to think about something-... the fact that we have a negativity bias and we tend to lean toward thinking about how things might go ca-catastrophically wrong and how I'm gonna look totally stupid or I'm gonna flub my lines, you know, th- there is a choice. You can choose to think one of any number of things, an infinity of things. You're choosing to think something that is actively making the chances of your performance worsening increase. Whereas you could have thought of something that would make it better. And, you know, I-I- it's when you put it like that, when you frame it as, this is an opportunity cost that you are giving yourself to make your performance actively worse because of the thought patterns that you've inculcated and that you're choosing kind of to continue to, um, pursue, it does make you feel a little bit stupid forever having a negative thought.

   8. NZDr. Nate Zinsser12:59

      (laughs) Well, Eli Manning and a lot of other people have spent considerable time to truly understand how the things that they choose to think about influences their emotional state. And that, in turn, influences the level of muscular tension in the body.

   9. CWChris Williamson13:21

      What's the science? There must be a science of, of confidence. How does it biologically, neurologically change us?

   10. NZDr. Nate Zinsser13:27

       Well, indeed, a-as I mentioned before, every behavior that we have is produced through a series of neural circuits firing in a, in a particular pattern. Repetition of the proper, uh, actions and skills physically refines, develops, optimizes those neural circuits. At the same, by the same token, mentally rehearsing a proper action, mentally r-remembering, bringing back into consciousness the memory of a proper action similarly optimizes those neural circuits. We can literally change the configuration of parts of our brain and parts of our spinal cord and parts of our peripheral nervous system simply by envisioning. Now, it, it cuts two ways as you've indicated. If we linger on the memory of a poor performance, of a mistake, of a behavior pattern that has not worked for us, if we bring it back into consciousness, what we're actually doing is re-firing the neural pathways that produced said behavior. Oops. So it's very important, and I love the way you phrased it, it's a choice. We have to choose to think about how well we have done certain things in the past, and we have to choose to think about how well we would love to execute in a given future situation. And the degree to which we make that constructive choice literally optimizes our nervous system. How about that?

   11. CWChris Williamson15:22

       Do the world champions and high performers that you work with have the same level of insecurity and self-doubt that normal people do?

   12. NZDr. Nate Zinsser15:30

       In some cases, absolutely. Let's remember that these world champions and, um, oly- you know, Olympic-level athletes, they are human beings just like the rest of us. They've got dreams, hopes, fears, doubts, worries just like the rest of us. Um, in many, many cases, they have been genetically gifted with remarkable capabilities; height, uh, a high degree of fast twitch muscle, um, wingspan in the arms. Okay, so they are ordinary people with a few extraordinary gifts, but they gotta optimize those extraordinary gifts by dealing with their fears, doubts, worries just like the rest of us. So, one of the glaring misconceptions is that, you know, the confident people that you might see displayed, um, by the media are just naturally that way and they've always been that way and there's something genetically special about their confidence that us mere mortals can only hope to achieve. No. The reality of the matter is when you see a very confident athlete, it's not just the result of some, uh, genetic predetermined tendency in that individual. It's the result of a lot of careful introspection and the making of that proper choice we've been talking about over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. So the good news, everybody, is that you can develop confidence in anything you want. Don't think that you're locked into having a certain amount of it. It is a skill. It is a quality that you develop, and you can develop it in any particular aspect of your life that you choose to.

   13. CWChris Williamson17:24

       Greg McKeown, guy that wrote Essentialism, he has this story where h-he always uses this example, and it, it really hit it home to me. He said the best performers in the world that he's worked with, CEOs and business execs and stuff, said, "Do you think that they became successful and then decided to be disciplined? Or do you think that they decided to be disciplined and then they became successful?" And it's kind of the same as ... I- i- it is a, it does feel quite circular, thinking about confidence and competence and performance, and you think, "Okay, well, my confidence is led off the back of how good I think I can be and then how well I manage to make that happen on game day, and then that feeds back into my performance." But presumably, if you can shortcut that and focus on confidence in isolation, that means that you just constantly feed potential and performance all the time.

   14. NZDr. Nate Zinsser18:16

       E- exactly right. Um-The common misconception is that I have to be very successful before I can be confident. Um, I would prefer, as you put it, to short-circuit that. Let's front-load the confidence which leads to more automaticity in performance and practice, which is going to lead to actual gains in our competence, which we can then feel better about. So you're kind of kickstarting, catalyzing that whole performance-versus-mentality, uh, connection.

4. 18:49 – 23:26

   How to Start Building Confidence

   1. CWChris Williamson18:49

      Where do we begin? We're talking to somebody who hasn't done any specific work on confidence. Where do we start people off?

   2. NZDr. Nate Zinsser18:56

      Um, I start people off with a very specific memory exercise. Let's get control of how we think about ourselves, because those thoughts are going to influence our emotional state, which are going to influence our body as we've been discussing. So, I gotta establish that first. Once we establish an awareness of that thought-emotion, physical-state-performance connection, w- let's get busy being very selective about the right kinds of thoughts. And I like to start with looking back at your memories. I like to start with looking at the memories that you've had of, indeed, progress and success. What are your top 10 moments on the football pitch, on the tennis court, in the operating room, in the boardroom, in the lecture hall presenting? Let's go back, and let's look at some of the things that you have done that create a sense of optimism and energy, and let's articulate that. Let's put that on a big poster in your office. You need that. Those s- uh, sort of substantial seminal memories are what I think of as, you know, deposits that create a- a- a- a mental bank account, psychological money. It's- it's- it's the metaphorical equivalent of going down to the bank, plunking down 10 checks and saying, "I wanna establish an account here. Here's my money." And then we follow that exercise with a daily reflection on what we've accomplished, what we've done over the course of the day. And that daily ref- reflection produces more deposits into that mental bank account. And I urge clients to think back on their day at the end of the day before bed, and identify an episode or two of quality effort. Where did they do something that maybe they weren't s- all that fired up about doing it, but they knew they had to do it, and they did it? You slogged through that email list. You- you- you gave it yet another set on the squat rack or the bench press. Identify an episode of quality effort, and then identify an episode of a small success. What did you get right? Even if it's a relatively tiny thing, document that. That's a deposit in your bank account. And then take it one step further, and look for some indication in your life over the last day or two of progress. What does it- what does it seem like you're getting better at in a more general sense? Based on your effort, based on your successes, document that little bit of pr- of progress. Yes, I'm getting better at identifying the core situation when my team meets. Whatever it happens to be, that is a f- maybe a five-minute daily recollection, but it's bringing those valuable memories into consciousness that creates more of the certainty about yourself which leads to a more relaxed feel, which meads to- leads to muscular relaxation, better blood flow, a wide-open visual field. And that, of course, is gonna improve your odds of performing well. Those are exercises that I like to begin with.

   3. CWChris Williamson22:24

      Effort, success, progress.

   4. NZDr. Nate Zinsser22:27

      ESP. Easy way to remember it.

   5. CWChris Williamson22:30

      Cool.

   6. NZDr. Nate Zinsser22:30

      Your daily ESP.

   7. CWChris Williamson22:31

      How long are you looking for someone to write out? A couple of sentences? A full paragraph? Just one- o- one little memory? How does that work?

   8. NZDr. Nate Zinsser22:40

      Oh, um, it could- it could be three or four words. I- it's not necessarily a paragraph.

   9. CWChris Williamson22:45

      Mm-hmm.

   10. NZDr. Nate Zinsser22:46

       But it's the consistency with which you do that. Are you willing to look for the best in yourself day by day over a period of six months or a year? Are you- are you going to record that in a journal or in a phone app or something like that? Are you going to be consistent looking for the best in yourself, actually deliberately building that mental bank account day after day after day to the point where you don't even have to write it down anymore, because it's what you think about automatically? It becomes a mental habit just as the physical habit of tying your shoes became something that you automatically did without having to tell yourself how to do it.

5. 23:26 – 27:27

   How to Deal with Negative Self-talk

   1. NZDr. Nate Zinsser23:27

   2. CWChris Williamson23:27

      So that's how we can improve our confidence on the positive side. How do people deal with negative self-talk?

   3. NZDr. Nate Zinsser23:33

      Okay. Negative self-talk, unfortunately, is part of human life. There is indeed something of a negativity bias built into us as human beings, because let's face it, for the vast majority of human existence on the planet, our lives were rather uncertain. We did not necessarily know (laughs) where the food supply was going to come from a month down the line. Uh, our existence was somewhat fragile and unpredictable. So, we developed, as a survival mechanism, this tendency to kind of worry about stuff because it energized us to be careful. Okay. Now, a lot of that negativity bias is unnecessary, but we still have it, and it's very important for everyone who wants to become a more confident individual to be honest about where indeed does that negative voice kick in.Does it kick in when I enter the office of my boss? Does it kick in when I enter, um, the weight room? Does it kick in on, you know, game day morning? Wh- when and where does it kick in? Let's get, let's get some awareness about that. Once we have that awareness, now let's be very good at talking back to that voice. Again, this is a choice that you make. This voice kicks in, "Uh-oh, I don't know if I've done enough practice." You have to acknowledge that. You have to acknowledge that right now your confidence is under attack. It's kinda like you're in the boxing match and here comes a punch. You better acknowledge it. And your second step, after you've acknowledged it, is to stop it. Everybody has the ability to shut that voice off. Maybe you need to visualize a stop sign. Maybe you need to visualize a red traffic light. Maybe, and this is a somewhat humorous example, you need to visualize a toilet being flushed. We all know what goes down the tubes there. But that's a representation of stopping it, getting rid of it. And then third, really important, you gotta get in the last word. You've got to talk back to that voice. You've got to say, "No. I have done this practice, and this practice, and this practice," and this is where your journaled mental bank account comes in really handy. You can draw from it e- in those moments and the same way you get the last word in during an argument with your obnoxious older or younger sibling, you get the word in against that voice of negativity, and fear, and doubt. And that momentarily silences it, gives you an opportunity to be present with what you're doing. Now, you may have to repeat that process, acknowledge it, stop it, replace it, two minutes down the road. You may have to do it over and over again, and that's fine. As long as you are acknowledging it, stopping it, and replacing it, getting in that last word, you are in the game. You're winning that mental battle. You are accomplishing what I refer to in the book as a first victory. Victory over your mind. That gives you an opportunity, and please remember, all your competitors, all your opponents, they've got just as much negative self-talk as you have. If you're just a little bit better at acknowledging it, stopping it, replacing it, then those competitors or those opponents, wow, you just created an advantage for yourself. So look at it that way, gang. That'll be really helpful.

   4. CWChris Williamson27:14

      I love that. I've been thinking about this. Uh, I woke up in the middle of the night a couple of days ago and had this title for an idea that I've been considering for a while, so I'm gonna give it to you 'cause if- I feel like this might be your sort of thing. So, hedonic

6. 27:27 – 35:16

   Getting Rid of Imposter Adaptation

   1. CWChris Williamson27:27

      adaptation is when your consistent desire for material wealth continues to move as you acquire n- new and nicer and better things, right? That's hedonic adaptation. Um, I think that there's an equivalent called imposter adaptation. So, the imposter syndrome, which is when you do not feel like you are worthy of any successes that you are having in life and that you don't feel like you're supposed to be here, "I don't have the expertise that has put me into the position that I'm in," right? Over time, you can continue to disprove your own imposter syndrome. You are put into a situation, you defeat the situation, you come out victorious, you've done really, really well, and yet your imposter syndrome continues to exist. You continue to beat it in reality, and yet mentally, it is always there, "I'm still not supposed to be here. I'm still not supposed to be here." The way that I see it, if you continue to defeat your imposter syndrome in the real world and your imposter syndrome persists-

   2. NZDr. Nate Zinsser28:24

      (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson28:25

      ... after a while, you have to admit to yourself that this has got nothing to do with your competence and everything to do with the addiction to being an imposter. So this is the imposter adaptation that I came up with.

   4. NZDr. Nate Zinsser28:37

      That is brilliant, and that is absolutely the case. Um, I have not used that particular terminology, but I have observed the same thing over, and over, and over. Um, an ice hockey player, you know? "Oh, wow."

   5. CWChris Williamson28:53

      Mm-hmm.

   6. NZDr. Nate Zinsser28:53

      "Now I am playing junior professional hockey in North America. Uh, I gotta get used to this new level of play. I'm not really comfortable. I get kinda comfortable and on the basis of my success at that level, now I get to play at the North American university level." Oh, once again that doubt, that imposter rears, uh, his ugly head and you have the same experience at this new level. You have to defeat it there. And then after your university experience, you're invited to a, to a professional, um, National Hockey League situation, organization. "Oh, do I belong here?" And I've even seen it persist once a fellow has made it through uni- juniors, made it through university, made it onto a na- a National Hockey League roster, become the starter on that roster, once again, there's an adjustment. And then once he, even once he's a starter, "Oh, I'm going to play in the Montreal Forum, a legendary arena. Oh, I'm going to play against, um, one of the future Hall of Famers in the league. Oh, now I'm going to play in the playoffs at the end of the season." Each of those steps in the career reinvigorate the tendency to feel like an imposter, like you don't belong, and so you've got to constantly keep working at it at each level, at each level, at each level. In some ways, it never really goes away, and this is what-You know, again, I come back to this. Don't think, ladies and gentlemen, that confidence is this all-encompassing thing. Don't think that once you've got it, you'll have it forever. There is no atomic bomb you can drop on it to destroy it, to destroy that enemy. It's a constant, ongoing war of attrition, to use a military analogy. So yeah, that imposter can continue to lurk inside you. And I love the way you put it. You got to realize that it's not your competence that's holding you back. It's your own sense of self. So let's work on that. Let's really work on being selective and careful with what we remember. Let's really work on being selective and careful in, in how we think about ourselves and our skill level in the present. Let's be very selective and careful about the pictures we create for the possible futures that we want, and let's make the right choices at each of those levels.

   7. CWChris Williamson31:36

      Is there a degree of delusion that's appropriate for people in this case to try and ... Well, I don't know whether delusion's the right word. You're selectively choosing particular things that create a-

   8. NZDr. Nate Zinsser31:49

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson31:49

      ... engender a certain frame of mind moving forward. "I forget the failures, I focus on the successes. I forget the failures, I f- I focus on the successes." Um, in your mind, is there ever a concern of taking that too far? Is there such a thing as overconfidence?

   10. NZDr. Nate Zinsser32:05

       I think there might be. But my experience, 30-plus years of doing this work, 29 years here at West Point, is that there is a far greater tendency to be under-confident, to not believe in the actual level of skill and capability that you w- do indeed have. (sighs) I can only count on the fingers of one hand the cases that I've encountered where somebody was just ridiculously inaccurate in the matchup between their actual skill level and their belief in their skill level. You know, to the point where they were, as you would put it, over-confident. Um, that only becomes a problem when your level of confidence, your belief in yourself prevents you from doing the requisite training and practicing. You gotta have, you gotta be a workhorse, for sure. But you wanna match that with a racehorse, as, uh, I like to use the analogy. Um, to a certain extent, getting back to your point about delusion, I think there is a certain degree of functional delusion that is very powerful. Again, we use our imagination to think about how we want to be. Well, we're not there yet. So isn't that by definition a little bit delusional? And I don't think it's any stretch to state that everyone's personal breakthroughs, the great accomplishments in human history, were all preceded by a certain degree of delusion. You know? Roger Bannister said that in order to run a sub-four-minute mile, you have to be humble enough to do the work, and then you have to be arrogant enough to think that you can actually do it. I think Sir Roger was dead-on. That degree of arrogance, "I can do this." Well, that's a form of delusion. Even all of us, when we were young kids, trying to ride a bicycle for the first time without the training wheels. Okay. We couldn't do it. We had never done it before. But we yet entertained a certain concept, a certain idea, a certain vision that we could indeed do it. And without that preexisting vision, we never would have gotten back on the bike after having run off the road, fallen, scraped our knees the first couple times that we tried it. So yes, there is a degree of functional delusion, which I think is very important for human performance.

   11. CWChris Williamson35:04

       I think you're right as well that most people undershoot their confidence as opposed to overshooting it. The vast, vast, vast majority of people that I know, uh, they, they're in need of more, not less.

   12. NZDr. Nate Zinsser35:15

       Indeed.

7. 35:16 – 45:10

   Principles Learned from Tony Gwynn

   1. NZDr. Nate Zinsser35:16

   2. CWChris Williamson35:16

      Uh, Tony Gwynn, how did he-

   3. NZDr. Nate Zinsser35:18

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson35:18

      ... work on his performance?

   5. NZDr. Nate Zinsser35:20

      Well, Tony Gwynn is a Hall of Fame baseball player who, during his years, was probably the best hitter, uh, in baseball. And he had a habit of looking very carefully at the film of his performance in the batter's box at the plate. But he did something very interesting with it that I have used as an example for what we all could do. He took that video footage, and he divided it into three categories, into three files. In one file went all the video clips of him hitting the ball well. Success. In a second file, he put the video clips of him making a good decision in the batter's box. A good decision whether to swing at the right pitch or whether to hold off and not swing at a bad pitch. And then there was a third file of his poor decisions. When he swung at the bad pitch, whether he hit it or not. And once he had broken down and edited his performance into these three files-He basically just threw away the file of him making bad decisions. He did not need to look at that. He did not need to remind himself of those mistakes. As he put it, "The last thing I want to do is watch myself looking like a fool, swinging at somebody's curveball." So those memories are selectively discarded. And the memories of him making the good decisions, hung onto. Memories of him making good contact with the ball, hung onto. That's a way of selectively using your experience to build that mental bank account.

   6. CWChris Williamson37:12

      Is there not some lessons to be gleaned from mistakes?

   7. NZDr. Nate Zinsser37:16

      Certainly. You'll learn the lesson, but that's a relatively quick thing. Once you've learned the lesson, then you can indeed throw away the memory.

   8. CWChris Williamson37:25

      Stop replaying it in your mind.

   9. NZDr. Nate Zinsser37:27

      Stop replaying it. Yes. I am sure Tony Gwynn, and boy do I encourage everybody that I counsel, let's look at your performance. Let's look at the good, let's look at the bad, let's look at the beautiful, let's look at the ugly, and let's make sure, what is there to be learned? What is there to be learned from your high moments in this game and, or, or this match? What is to be learned from your low moments? And then let's translate those lessons into positive affirmations and go forward. At that point, the memory of the mistakes serve you no purpose. You need not dwell on them, you need not repeat them. Don't get seduced into thinking that by replaying those mistakes, you are somehow going to be magically fired up to become a better performer. That is a comforting illusion, but it does not work in the real world.

   10. CWChris Williamson38:20

       What about people who want to be more present during their performances?

   11. NZDr. Nate Zinsser38:26

       Well, isn't that what we all want to be? We want to be fully immersed in our activity. We want to be fully immersed in the environment where we are so that we are indeed taking in all the important stimuli and input and responding to it naturally, automatically, and with greatest effectiveness. To get to that level of presence, the first thing we gotta do is cut out the discursive negative and analytical chatter and allow ourselves to become fascinated by what's in front of us. Can I actually become fascinated with the scalpel that I'm using to, or the tool I'm using to cut away that tumor from the spinal cord? Instead of telling myself, "Now be really careful, you want to avoid this part, you want to avoid that part. You better be doing that." Just, no. Let's just pay attention to what we need to be doing. And that is the careful placement of the tool on the right spot in the patient's anatomy. If we're playing tennis, what do we want to pay attention to? The flight of the ball. The flight of the ball. Let's determine ahead of time before we get into that arena, what is the most important thing for us to let our senses become fascinated by? The movement of the ball, the flow of words as you're giving the lecture, the body language in the audience that you're speaking with. Let's become fascinated with that. And let's allow our performance simply to flow in that awareness rather than keeping a running commentary such as we might hear as we, as we watch a soccer, you know, a football match on television. "Well, he's doing this here and he's bringing this across. And that was a nice, uh, leading pass." And, "Oh, look. What an excellent defensive marking. And they're really making their, um, you know, their case here, you know, for s- c- to control this part of the pitch." We don't need to talk to ourselves like that. That interferes with our fuse, our smooth execution. That interferes with our ability to be present in the moment.

   12. CWChris Williamson40:36

       How do we shortcut that discursive thought and that inner monologue?

   13. NZDr. Nate Zinsser40:41

       Through practice. If you want to be able to do this in a match, in a presentation, well then you better practice being that way. You better rehearse the state of mind that you want to have in a match during part of your training period. S- maybe when you're working on a very simple skill, you can be somewhat analytical about your mechanics. But certainly, once we get into a practice drill or a training drill that is more or less similar in terms of its attentional demands to what we're actually going to be dealing with in the match, we want to practice that same degree of decide what's important and allow your senses to flow onto it. And let's see how good we can be with that. And a significant part of our practice should be cultivating that game day mindset that we want to have. That's the only way you're going to get it on game day, is if you practice it. 'Cause, you know, let's face it. We all settle back to the level of our training when the chips are down and the pressure's on. We do not magically arise to m-, you know, new levels of competence. You know, we see that in some movies where the poor underdog hero is getting pummeled, and then through some miraculous, you know, memory, he or she now sprouts wings and emerges victorious at the end, and the violins play and everybody's happy. Um, okay. That's a nice fairy tale, ladies and gentlemen, but that's not the way we want to prepare in this world. Okay? Let's practice the state of mind that we want to have in the performance,... because that what, that which we practice is what we are going to default to at any point in a pressure-filled stressful moment during the performance.

   14. CWChris Williamson42:48

       I suppose the brutal thing to do with confidence is that if you have lowering confidence, that causes further worsening performances, which then feeds back into your confidence. And then the reverse is true as well, which is why you often see, so my, my housemate is the physio for Newcastle Falcons rugby team, Premiership-

   15. NZDr. Nate Zinsser43:05

       Okay.

   16. CWChris Williamson43:05

       ... Premiership, uh, rugby team, and we go for walks and I don't follow the team too closely, but whenever he's talking about his players that he looks after, he'll always say, "This guy's on an absolute tear at the moment. And this guy, everything that he touches is amazing. His body's feeling good, he's rested, his kilometers and his chronic load is going up per week and he's managing it fine and he's nailing it." And then it's the guys who are struggling that are consistently, s- uh, "Oh, such and such had another bad game this week and such and such had another good game this week." So there is this vicious, I think you call it the sewer cycle and the success cycle.

   17. NZDr. Nate Zinsser43:42

       Absolutely. Um, we are all, in a way, victims of how we choose to think about our experience 'cause our thoughts about that experience, again, create a mood state, that mood state influences our body, and our body then tends to reproduce the behavior that we were initially thinking about and worried about.

   18. CWChris Williamson44:02

       Yeah.

   19. NZDr. Nate Zinsser44:03

       And again, it comes down to choice. How are you going to think about yourself? The misconception is that, well, we have to think about ourselves based upon our experience. Well, only a little. I would tell you to think about yourself based upon that sub-component of your experience that makes you feel better about yourself. Even the rugby player who's experiencing a stretch of ha- bad games would not have gotten to that premier level of play had he not a whole laundry list, as we put it in the States, of powerful experiences. There are indeed matches in his past where he tackled beautifully, moved the ball beautifully, ran with the ball beautifully, kicked the ball beautifully. It's up to him to dredge through his memories and get those shining nuggets of gold right in front of his mind, and that is what will change him.

8. 45:10 – 51:32

   Proactive Confidence for Future Events

   1. NZDr. Nate Zinsser45:11

   2. CWChris Williamson45:11

      What about challenges that are coming up in the future? A lot of the time, let's say that we've got a, a cup final that we know is a couple of months off or it's a speech that we've been booked to give in three months' time or something. How can people prepare themselves? They haven't got the opportunity to perform and then reflect on the performance because it's going to be one big thing.

   3. NZDr. Nate Zinsser45:32

      Mm-hmm. It's going to be one big thing. And the choice that you have as you look toward that one big thing is whether you are looking at it with a sense of eagerness and excitement, or whether you are looking at it with a sense of, I'll use the word uncertainty or dare I say dread. "Oh, this is a big game." Um, I've had this conversation with a lot of athletes who are headed for the US Olympic Trials. "Oh, that's really big, Doc." "Yeah. It's really big. Mm-hmm. And why the heck do you think you've been invited to that big thing? Because young lady, young man, you are by definition big. Otherwise, you would not have been invited." So, you have to put yourself in your own mind and heart as equal to the arena that you have been invited to perform in. You have to be proactive in your game. Or like, you know, you can't treat the Olympic Trials just like you treat every other track meet or, or tennis tournament. It's the big one. Okay, well, if it's the big one and you're in it, I guess that means you're big. So as th- it's the way you look forward to those things that matters. I ho- I hope that's clear enough.

   4. CWChris Williamson47:02

      Most of the people that I know that I think have good confidence are excitable. You know, they're curious, they're genuinely enthusiastic about what it is that's to come. And in the times when I see myself in the best states are when I am genuinely excited about the opportunity to do something and there's a bit of trepidation in there. But if, if excitement is pretty high, I think that usually ends up counteracting any of the dreads and the worry and the concern that you have.

   5. NZDr. Nate Zinsser47:31

      Very, very much so. Um, excitement, you know, you think about that in terms of just your body's energy level and your body's sort of arousal. "Oh, ex- excited. My, my heart's pounding. My, uh, f- feet and hands are a little bit twitchy. Um, I can feel sort of jumpy. Okay. I'm excited." Some people would look at those same physical changes, "My heart's beating fast, I'm a little bit jumpy," as, "Oh my gosh, I'm nervous."

   6. CWChris Williamson48:05

      Fear, yeah.

   7. NZDr. Nate Zinsser48:07

      Yeah. "Oh my gosh, I'm nervous." As opposed to, "Whoa, I'm excited." It's the same physiology, the same biology, but it's your interpretation thereof that can make the difference as to whether you feel positive, eager, or doubtful and worried. Um-

   8. CWChris Williamson48:29

      Isn't it, isn't it insane that the story that we tell ourselves, the framing that we put around a situation literally changes the, our interpretation of what the same stimulus-... is. You know-

   9. NZDr. Nate Zinsser48:44

      In- indeed.

   10. CWChris Williamson48:45

       ... th- this, a good, a good example of you go into the gym, you finish a workout, you're sweaty and gasping for air and lying on the floor, and that's the reason that you go in, right? That, that feeling is satisfaction. That's the purpose for you going into the gym. But if that happens spontaneously as you were sat in the car at a set of traffic lights-

   11. NZDr. Nate Zinsser49:01

       (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson49:01

       ... you would think that something terrible was happening to you. And yet, it is exactly the same sensation. You know, one of them would be you ringing people saying, "Come and get me. I need to go to the hospital." The other one is you high-fiving your friends in 30 seconds time saying, "What a good workout." So, it is almost all about framing, almost exclusively.

   13. NZDr. Nate Zinsser49:20

       Almost exclusively. Um, we all have had the experience of the butterflies in the stomach and the heart pounding fast as we are about to enter a competitive or performance situation. And it doesn't matter if that situation is one of your choosing, "I choose to play a sport," or it's a requirement. "I have to take that statistics midterm in order to proceed through my engineering, uh, course sequence at university. I have to be in this performance situation," or, "I choose to be in this performance situation." And in, right as we enter those moments, our bodies are designed to undergo a sh- a biochemical shift to produce more energy so that we can be good in the presence of those demands so that we can indeed perform well. There is an enabling biochemical shift, the side effects of which are your stomach flips up and down and your heart beats f- louder and faster and your palms sweat a little bit and you get a little bit twitchy. Now, isn't it nice that your body produces this energy surge before you're about to do something that matters? Let's make sure that we interpret it, that we frame it constructively. "Oh, wow, my body is turning on. It's giving me more energy. That means I'm gonna be better in this test. That means I'm gonna be better in this match," as opposed to, "Oh, wow, my stomach's flipping up and down. My heart is pounding. What the heck is the matter with me?" Well, there's nothing the matter with you. This is the way the animal's designed to operate. This is a legacy, again, from our thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years of developmental evolution. It's a survival mechanism. It's great that our body does this. Let's look forward to that arousal. Let's look forward to the pounding heart and the butterflies, because it tells us that our body is doing what is helpful for us so that we can be good at something that is important to us. What a nice thing that your body does for you. Let's look forward to it and appreciate

9. 51:32 – 1:00:08

   What Nate Learned from Lady Gaga

   1. NZDr. Nate Zinsser51:32

      it.

   2. CWChris Williamson51:33

      What'd you learn from Lady Gaga?

   3. NZDr. Nate Zinsser51:36

      I learned from Lady Gaga, basically, the power of that kind of delusion that we were speaking about earlier. You know, before she was an international star, she reports that she would walk down the street feeling as if she was a star, I mean, acting as if she was a star, singing out loud. And she really feels that it was that period of, let's call it constructive delusion, that enabled her to feel good when it came time to record under pressure, under a deadline, to perform under the spotlight. And she advises us all, "Okay, you should go ahead and be delusional about yourself. Go ahead and lie to yourself about where you are and how you are, and then fight hard to make that lie the truth." I think that is a wonderful statement. Go ahead and dream big, in a way, lying to yourself, but then, get down to business and fight like hell. Don't just dream it. Dream it, for sure, but then do the things, do the work, study your instrument, study your craft, fight like hell to make that lie, that delusion, the actuality, the truth. Great lesson.

   4. CWChris Williamson52:59

      What's your thoughts on people that use, uh, personas and have different identities? I think Beyoncé had a queen b- sh- I'm, I'm gonna get this wrong, Queen Bee or something. I know that, is it Kobe Bryant that's got Mamba, Mamba Mentality?

   5. NZDr. Nate Zinsser53:14

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson53:14

      What's your thoughts on, uh, players and performers that almost step into another person?

   7. NZDr. Nate Zinsser53:21

      I think they're just finding a way to express the full extent of their talent. When Kobe Bryant became the Black Mamba, you know, that was his, in a way, acknowledgement of his natural talent and all, all the work that he put in. So it's a w- it, it, I see it as a way as, of affirming oneself. And I've had many athletes under my, uh, tutelage and supervision over the years kind of develop their own competitive game day personality, you know? The Bounty Hunter, that's what I turn into on game day, okay? Um, I morph from being, and, and they have to do this here at West Point, they morph from being a polite, respectful, modest, in a way, very self-conscious individual, because here at West Point, every cadet is constantly under observation. Uniform, body language, verbal behavior, how you salute, speak to different peoples at different levels of the chain of command. So, you have to have that aspect of your personality. But you get to take that uniform off when you step into your locker room.... and now you're putting on the football pads for our football team. Now you're putting on the wrestling singlet. Now you're tightening the chin strap, tightening the shoes, and in so doing, you are becoming the bounty hunter, the relentless ass-kicker, the national champion at 149 pounds or whatever it is. So I absolutely support and delight that. Um, yeah, adma- acknowledge yourself as you want to be.

   8. CWChris Williamson55:15

      Is there a issue with integrating that self back into the normal person? Are there any lessons that are potentially lost when you do partition off the performing self and the normal self? Is there a, a, a degree of integration and lesson learning that can move between the two that those people perhaps are missing out on?

   9. NZDr. Nate Zinsser55:37

      Well, if you continue to maintain your competitive game day persona, after the game is over and you bring that back to your family, you bring that back to, um, your, quote unquote, "normal life," well, sure, that's a mistake. So just as you have a ritual to bring yourself to your personal equivalent of Black Mamba or the bounty hunter, you also have a ritual that brings you back from that. You taking off the competitive uniform. You're putting on the civilian clothes. Now-

   10. CWChris Williamson56:18

       So is ri- is ritual a big part of this, as far as you can see?

   11. NZDr. Nate Zinsser56:23

       I ... I use the term routine because you are in control of a routine. A ritual tends to be in control of you. Um, so there is dif- definitely a routine to enter the arena. There's s- subroutines to stay within your desired persona during the performance, and then there is a routine to let go of that persona and reenter the, quote unquote, "normal world." So yeah, you get to manage both those situations, the entering, the maintaining, and then the reentry back so that you can be the polite, modest, enjoyable person to be around 'cause let's face it, if you're gonna be in that Black Mamba, boy, hm, you can be, (laughs) you can be very competitive but you won't have too many friends, uh, in that personality. Um ... The wonderful television series Ted Lasso, there's a character, I'm forgetting his name. He was the former captain of The Hounds, who kind of maintained that surly personality in the broadcast booth which got him in trouble, and then, uh, outside, basically encouraging his young niece to be a little bit obnoxious with his language. I'm sorry I'm not remembering the character's name, but he was one of my favorite characters. And he eventually learned that, "Hey, what helped me on the soccer pitch, that kind of determination and ferocity, maybe I don't want to have that in other aspects of my life."

   12. CWChris Williamson58:07

       Are there any pursuits or any daily practices that you think we've missed off that people should try and add into their routines?

   13. NZDr. Nate Zinsser58:17

       I think we've covered a lot of the important points. Um, what I would just stress is that you're gonna have to make these choices about how you think about yourself during the good moments in your life and during the not so good moments in my o- in your life. Um, one of the concluding stories in my book comes from a man who retired as a four-star general in the United States Army, and he told a story of basically the worst day of his life. When he was in Iraq and a suicide bomber detonated the explosive vest in a mess hall where he was seated and a number of the soldiers under his command died and he very, very nearly was killed himself, that was the worst day of his life. But he had to continue to execute missions despite that very bad setback, that disaster, that tragedy. So as he put it, "Faith takes practice." You have to do this even in your worst moments. Perhaps that is a not particularly pleasant thought, um, to conclude with, but I don't want anybody to feel that this is all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. Constructive thinking to help one become certain takes place during the good times, takes place during the bad times, and it's probably more important that you have that constructive thinking process during setbacks, even during, as the general put it, the worst day of your life. But you always have the choice to do that, and if you make the right choice, that worst day of your life probably won't repeat itself.

10. 1:00:08 – 1:00:47

    Where to Find Dr Zinsser

    1. CWChris Williamson1:00:08

       Dr. Nate Zinsser, ladies and gentlemen. The Confident Mind: A Battle-Tested Guide to Unshakable Performance will be linked in the show notes below. If people want to keep up to date with you, the stuff that you do, where should they go?

    2. NZDr. Nate Zinsser1:00:19

       Um, natezinsser.com is my personal website. I'd love to be in contact with tons of your listeners.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:00:26

       My pleasure. Today's been awesome, Nate. We made it. What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.

Episode duration: 1:00:48