The Mindset Secrets Of Elite Athletes - Lauren Johnson | Modern Wisdom Podcast 325

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   Negative thoughts aren't the…

   1. LJLauren Johnson0:00

      Negative thoughts aren't the problem, believing them is. And sometimes we have to be our biggest fan, and we have to feed ourselves with the things that we need to hear to continue going. What is that phrase that you need to hear when you need it most? Think of it from, what would you want your mentor to tell you? What would you want your best friend to tell you? And then make sure that you become your own mentor and your own best friend in those moments when it matters most. (wind blowing)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:23

      What's it like working with the New York Yankees?

   3. LJLauren Johnson0:27

      Um, well, it, it, so I don't know, I don't know if you knew this. Um, I actually broke off from the Yankees-

   4. CWChris Williamson0:33

      Wow, no I did not.

   5. LJLauren Johnson0:34

      ... in February.

   6. CWChris Williamson0:35

      I did not. What are you doing now?

   7. LJLauren Johnson0:36

      Yeah. So I have my own consulting company now that I do, uh, I work with all sort, sorts of athletes and companies and executives and CEOs. Um, but I would love to tell you about my time there, because it was very formative. Those four years I was with the Yankees was extremely formative into the position that I am in now. And working with the Yankees is pretty incredible for a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest reasons is the standards that they hold themselves to. And they hold themselves to an extremely high standard. And not in a way that's unrealistic, but in the way that if you think you can do this, we think you can go further. And if you, essentially success to the Yankees is if you win a World Series. So a couple years ago when we got close, you know, they were, people were like, "What a great season." And if you had said that to anyone in our organization, they would've told you, "No, it was a crap season." A good season is winning the World Series. So I think that because you're surrounded by the, that level of expectation, and by such brilliant minds in baseball and in all these other areas and realms that we, and resources we pull from, that, um, because you're in that environment, you have no other choice but to level up yourself.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:57

      How common is that degree of excellence chasing in baseball at large?

   9. LJLauren Johnson2:05

      It, I would say it's pretty common in terms of, you know, levels of excellence. And I can't speak for really many any other clubs because I've not worked with them, but I can say that the level of expectation feels different at the Yankees, and I'll tell you why. Because of the name, there's a lot that comes with it. And so you have a lot of eyeballs on you. And like, come on, you either love or you hate the Yankees. There's really no in between. And so because of that, including your own fans, some days they love you when you're performing well, and when you're not, they hate you. So it's learning not to ride the roller coaster of the outside noise, and being able to define what excellence means, not only towards the mission but also for your own kind of internal scoreboard.

   10. CWChris Williamson3:04

       I imagine that produces some very unique challenges as a mindset and mental toughness expert.

   11. LJLauren Johnson3:12

       Very.

   12. CWChris Williamson3:14

       Yeah.

   13. LJLauren Johnson3:14

       Very cha- lots of challenges, especially, especially deriving from constantly needing to perform. Um, that, it's not easy, especially with as long of a season as baseball is.

   14. CWChris Williamson3:27

       What about baseball as a sport? Obviously I'm from the UK, but there'll be a lot of American people listening to whom they're gonna cringe at my lack of knowledge about it.

   15. LJLauren Johnson3:35

       (laughs)

   16. CWChris Williamson3:35

       What, what would you say are some of the, the unique challenges that baseball as a game presents?

   17. LJLauren Johnson3:42

       There's a lot of pausing. And so like for instance, uh, soccer. I played soccer growing up my whole life. Um, it's constant, right?

   18. CWChris Williamson3:53

       Continuous game.

   19. LJLauren Johnson3:53

       It's, you know, yeah. You lose the ball, you get on defense. You win the ball, you're on attack. Like you're, it's non-stop. In baseball, there's a lot more downtime in between. Really similar to golf, where you strike out or you don't locate your pitch or, you know, in golf you, (laughs) you just completely screw up your tee shot and you land in the water. You now have time between your next shot, between your next opportunity. And those, we have to maximize the opportunities we have, and so a lot of times the pressure can in- increase and it can rise, especially for, you know, give a, an example of a player that's in a slump. You know, he's 0 for and he is, he needs to get a hit. And so every, every time he's at the plate, just the pressure of having to perform increases tremendously. And so being able to manage the pressure that is required, especially when you're not performing well, can be difficult. And it's really managing those in between moments so that we can maximize the time we do have.

   20. CWChris Williamson5:01

       That's cool. The fact that it's discreet and iterative as a game, that you, you progress through it step by step by step as opposed to this continuous flow that you get in other sports. I imagine there must be some players who are unbelievably talented athletes and probably could have tried their hand at a, a number of different sports and made it through into baseball, but found that their mentality was built to be that of someone playing a continuous game. Or perhaps somebody that played football, but has the mentality of somebody that would've preferred to have played an iterative game like cricket or golf or-

   21. LJLauren Johnson5:38

       Mm-hmm.

   22. CWChris Williamson5:39

       ... whatever. Um, and I guess you never really know. You don't ever get to split test your own life. So you can't go back to being 10 years old and decide to pick up a golf club instead of picking up a pair of football boots, right?

   23. LJLauren Johnson5:49

       (laughs)

   24. CWChris Williamson5:49

       Um, given the fact that you've worked with some of the most elite athletes in the, uh, NLB? MB-

   25. LJLauren Johnson5:57

       MLB, yep.

   26. CWChris Williamson5:57

       Yep, yep. Got it. Um, what are the differences between the good ones and the elite ones?

   27. LJLauren Johnson6:05

       ... it's a great question 'cause there's a couple things. But if I had to sum it up, I would say, the elite ones are willing to do the things that the average ones aren't. They are willing to pay that extra attention to detail. They're willing to remain disciplined when their circumstances aren't. They're willing to bounce back from adversity, and they're able to bounce back from adversity faster, because they're willing to look at what you can gain from it. And I think one of the biggest predictors of success, especially in a game like baseball, is the ability to see the opportunity in the struggle, because it's a game full of struggles. It's a game full of ups and downs. It's a game full of failures. And if you're able to see the opportunity in that, the ability to bounce back is much quicker. And I think, I always explain it like, if you think of just like a, a high and low, right? You even draw it out, and you draw kind of like a really high peak and then a really low peak. That is really consistent with maybe somebody that's a little bit more novice in baseball, or maybe they're, they haven't made it to the major league level. And then, you go to a very elite level. It's not that those highs and lows have been eliminated. That's not gonna be eliminated. You're just going to have highs, you're gonna have lows no matter what level you're at. It's just the in-between shrinks. So instead of this really high peak, we have a peak, but then it, it goes down, and it goes up and it goes down much faster than the average. And so I think that has to do, the, that in between has to do a lot with your ability to manage, uh, and build a relationship with discomfort.

   28. CWChris Williamson8:01

       Mm. That is interesting. Yeah, I think James Clear in Atomic Habits, he interviewed someone, was it the head of the Chinese weightlifting team? And he says, "What's the difference between the best in the world and everybody else?" And the coach said, "It's the one that can deal with the boredom of daily training the best."

   29. LJLauren Johnson8:19

       Mm-hmm.

   30. CWChris Williamson8:19

       They just turn up and they grind. And Mat Fraser, CrossFit Games champion five times over, he talks about this. He says, people think that he's pumped every time to go in. He's like, "If I'm doing a monostructural workout, if I've got 45 minutes of threshold rowing intervals, no one's excited for that."
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   When you start thinking…

   1. LJLauren Johnson15:00

      won't stick out that long. You'll, you'll beat half the competition by just continuing to show up. And, you know, I think one of the things that we can do, because I mean, it ... The cool thing is, like, goals are awesome. Like, big fan, obviously, like, big believer in setting goals. Um, big believer in, uh, going through, like, you know, w- what we need to do to create those goals and get there. Big believer in developing your why. There's one aspect that gets overlooked, which is one of the most important aspects of goal setting, which is instead of just focusing on what you want to have happen, which is the fun part and we all love to do, is focusing on what you're gonna do when things go wrong.

   2. CWChris Williamson15:44

      When you start thinking about what obstacles would stop you, limit you from continuing on your journey. And so in psychology, we call this mental contrasting. And so, you'll start out and you'll visualize what you want to have happen. You know, connect to those feelings of accomplishment. You know, c- not, not worry about the how, just the what. Like, what do you want it to look like? What, you know, what kind of car are you driving? Like, what, what home are you in? Really kind of coming up with that, that image. And then the other side of that is, what could get in the way of you making progress to that goal? What are some things that might stop you? And when we start to consider those things, I will tell you that it starts separating the people that are interested and the people that are committed. Because those are that are committed are going to look at that, and then the second half of that is creating some contingency plan around it. "All right, if this happens, then this is what I'm gonna do instead, or this is how I'm gonna respond to it. If this happens, this is how it's gonna happen." And so with a lot of my clients, especially are dealing with issues with consistency towards a goal, is what can take you off the tracks? What has ... And you can, you can think about past mistakes. What has taken you off before? You know, for a lot of people that want to get healthy, okay, what has stopped you before from continuing that journey? And then let's work through what we're gonna do if and when that does happen. Because what we do is we're creating a connection in our brain between a situation we may face, and then an action or a behavior we want to follow. Yeah.

   3. LJLauren Johnson17:18

      And our brain loves this. And so if you're in a situation where you're, you have a goal and you're going after it and you want to develop consistency, don't just think about what you want to have happen, also think about what would get in the way of it happening.

   4. CWChris Williamson17:31

      And how you'll deal with it.

   5. LJLauren Johnson17:32

      And how you're gonna deal with it.

   6. CWChris Williamson17:35

      I love that. I've been thinking a lot recently about think like an athlete. It's the title of a blog post that I think David Perell wrote a couple of years ago. I haven't got it out of my head. And you, as someone who's worked with elite athletes, so you are my sounding board for this little mental model that I've come up with. Um, what I've come to believe is that almost no other industry in the world, apart from athletes, athletics, almost no others take their preparation for their chosen pursuit as wholesale, as globally as athletes do.

   7. So, with an athlete, their nutrition's dialed in, their sleep's dialed in. The way that they spend their time socially, the bonding that they have with the team, they're watching game tape of what's coming up. They're doing their conditioning, they're doing their stretching, they're doing skill drills, they're doing their endurance. They're recovering right, they're foam rolling, they're hydrating. Everything that they do, their entire life is permeated, it's infused with this desire to facilitate the best performance that they can have when they step out onto the field.

   8. LJLauren Johnson18:44

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson18:44

      And I don't think that there's any other industry that does this. Maybe chess champions and stuff like that. I'm not sure how far they're pushing their performance. But even if you think about the absolute best of the best of the best, on the public speaking circuit, or in the YouTube world, right? The degrees of freedom that you have for people not knowing where your performance is at comparative to previous performances, and also comparative to your competitors, are so murky in the way that they're measured. There isn't a ... If, if there's a 300 kilo bar on the floor and you need to pick it up, we know if you've picked it up or not. You know if you've picked it up or not. You know what you can pick up, and how close it was to what you were doing during the on-ramp, building up towards peaking, ready for the meet, and so on and so forth. But you don't have that equivalent in almost anything else. There's no objective metrics. There's no tight parameters for success and failure. You don't know what's, uh, what has contributed to the performance that's come out of you. And what I've been thinking a lot recently is, we're talking about commitment, right? But there's only a very small subset of people who want to make that one thing, that they want to become perhaps one of the best in the world, or the best in their country, or the best in their region at, is athletics. Only a small subset ...

   10. LJLauren Johnson20:00

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson20:00

       ... of people are actually doing it within a sporting pursuit, right? So how can we take the principles that athletes use to maximize their performance, and how can we apply them to all of the things that we don't believe that is applicable to? Because I've tried to do it. Since I was thinking about it, I, I turned pro last year with the podcast, and that meant that I started to read things that I knew that would facilitate me. I focused on my sleep because I knew if I better slept, then I can talk with more clarity. I got a speech coach, and I got a theater and acting coach so that I would have more vocal dynamic range, and my diction would be more precise. And I thought, "Right, okay, well if I want to do this, I need to train. Because if I train well, then my mind's moving quickly." And I'm (laughs) , I'm not even close to, like, a Sunday league footballer in terms of the level of preparation that I do for the thing that I have classed as my calling. So first off, what are your thoughts around "Think Like an Athlete" and kind of this sort of cognitive athlete world that I'm talking about here? And then let's go through some of the things that people can do. They want to become better at what it is that there is, is their chosen pursuit. And let's run through some, some of those strategies.

   12. LJLauren Johnson21:13

       Yeah. Um, when I'm speaking with corporate clients, a lot of them come to me because of my work with the Yankees. And one of the first parallels I draw is what makes an elite major league baseball player, mentally, is the same thing that makes an elite executive, an elite CEO, an elite parent, an elite significant other, an elite friend. There are so many parallels. The thing that changes is the language. So instead of talking baseball (laughs) , you know, I'm talking CEO (laughs) . And so the language changes, but many of the principles are very similar, if not the same.

   13. CWChris Williamson22:08

       Cool. What are-

   14. LJLauren Johnson22:09

       And-

   15. CWChris Williamson22:09

       What is, what is some of the biggest ones of that?

   16. LJLauren Johnson22:12

       Well, one of the ones that you kept talk- ... The, the word that kept coming to my mind as you're, as you were saying what you were saying is purpose. That what, uh, athletes have done is everything that they do has a purpose. And I'm gonna quote my good friend Justin Sua here when he says, "Do things on purpose with purpose." And so one of the things that every l- ... So every elite individual that I've worked with has, is a routine that starts their day. And there's, you know, the principle that things in motion tend to stay in motion. And so how are you getting in motion in the morning? And i- ... Maybe your day doesn't start in the morning, maybe it starts at night, you know, everybody's, uh, schedules are different. But how you start your day sets the tone for the rest of it. And so I know that when I don't do my routine, I feel like I have, like, 10 to 15 tabs open and they're not in order (laughs) .

   17. CWChris Williamson23:07

       (laughs)

   18. LJLauren Johnson23:07

       And then I'm having to use the rest of my day to organize them. Where now, when I, I have an evening routine, that actually sets up my morning routine. And I decide what my morning routine's gonna look like at the end of the day. And so one of the ways that we can do this, 'cause a lot of times we wake up in the morning and w- then we decide what we're gonna do. And so one of the ways that we can do this is the night before, you know, I, I have two categories. I have a category of scheduled. So these are, you know, appointments, uh, with clients. This is doctor's appointments. This is all the things that I've scheduled for that day. And then I have my high important tasks, and these are the tasks that I, like, these are the things that I want to get done that day, and I list them in order of priority. And then I, then I write a timestamp next to them. And so I can organize my day based on those two things. The next morning, I know exactly where I'm supposed to be at 6:30 AM. I know exactly where I'm supposed to be at 8:00. I know exactly where, what task I'm supposed to be working on at 2:00 PM. And so what it does is it takes the guessing out of it. The same way we plan our contingency plans with our brain and say, "Oh, if this happens, then I'm gonna do this," we are scheduling and creating a plan that our brain no longer has to decide, it simply has to execute. And what we know is that we only have so many dec- ... We have decision-making power-... and it depletes throughout the day the more decisions we make. And so again, okay, if we do this at the very end of our day the night before, we wake up and we've already made 90% of the day's decisions in terms of what we're going to be working on. And we can spend the rest of that energy working on those things and making decisions within them. And so that's one thing that we can all do, is adopting an evening and a morning routine.

   19. CWChris Williamson24:54

       Splitting off planning and execution is, uh, is s- such a hack. It's such an easy hack. And let's draw it back across to a sports analogy. The players might try and-

   20. LJLauren Johnson25:05

       (thuds)

   21. CWChris Williamson25:05

       ... change the plays during the game, but the actual fundamental way that they do the plays isn't. They're not coming up with new pitches on the fly. It's-

   22. LJLauren Johnson25:15

       Right.

   23. CWChris Williamson25:16

       ... "I've practiced this one a million times before. I've thrown this a million times, and the catcher's caught it a million times. And we know where the field is, and we kn-..." I don't know anything about baseball. Um, but-

   24. LJLauren Johnson25:24

       It's all right. (laughs)

   25. CWChris Williamson25:25

       (laughs) Can I, am I pulling it off that I might know something about baseball?

   26. LJLauren Johnson25:27

       Yeah. You're doing good. You're doing good. (laughs)

   27. CWChris Williamson25:28

       Fantastic. Perfect. Um, uh, yeah, they, they separate out planning and execution. I had Steven Kotler-

   28. LJLauren Johnson25:35

       Right.

   29. CWChris Williamson25:35

       ... on the show from the Flow Research, uh, Collective a couple of months ago, and he has this saying, and God, it absolutely nailed me. He says, um, one of his friends was very disciplined and he asked him, "How is it that you're able to continue doing these hard things every day?" And he said, "I don't know what you're talking about, man. I'm just working for the boss." And what he meant was when he writes down the things that he's supposed to do the night before, he's in manager mode, and then when he goes and does them the next day, he's in employee mode. And he just referred to himself. He was like, "No, I don't know what you're talking about, man. I just, I just work for the boss. The boss wrote it down and I've, I've got to do it. It's on the piece of paper. You know, it's, it's on my to-do list. I'm just working for the boss."

   30. LJLauren Johnson26:18

       I love it. I love that analogy. But you're right. You know, in, in baseball, you know, our guys are not coming up with new routines at the plate every time. Our gu-
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   That's awesome. That's so…

   1. LJLauren Johnson30:00

      you. That's, that's, that's real." But I said, "You have an opportunity to res- to respond differently." And so we went through this exercise of controlling what we can control, and I asked him, I was like, "You need to own your three feet around you. Anything within your three-foot world, you have to totally own when you're out there." So I was like, "What are those things?" We completely went over those things, and then we talked about, "All right, what is the thing that you need to hear when things aren't going well?" And we addressed what that was.... and essentially, he goes out, he ends up closing a game, and he strikes out three out of the four hitters that he faced, and they won the game. And he came back to me and I was like, "How'd you do?" And he's like, "I just owned my three-foot world, and I let the rest take care of itself." And so for him, reminding himself in those times, the first batter he faced, he or, uh, he, they got a hit. And so imagine feeling the way you're feeling, the first one in, that's when you feel it. I'm like, "It's your response. It's your response." And when he was able, he goes, "I was able to feed myself with what I needed to hear." And Jon Gordon talks about this, and one of the things I'll say is that he says, he talks about this, uh, Dr. James Gills, and he was a tri, I think, extreme triathlete? I'm gonna get this ... I, I, I always botch this story. I should really work (laughs) on this story myself. Uh, but essentially, he runs like a, a, an extreme triathlon, and then like 48 hours runs another one. And he was the oldest person to do this. He was like in his late 50s. And he asked him, he said, "How do you do it?" And he goes, "I, I learned to talk to myself instead of listen to myself, because when I talk to myself, I can feed myself all the things that I need to hear to keep going. And when I listen to myself, I listen to all, I hear all the negative, I hear all the things that, the reasons why I can't, and the reasons why I'm limited." And so for both Dr. James Gills and my player, elite individuals, no matter what sport or not, or non-sport you're in, negative thoughts aren't the problem, believing them is. And sometimes we have to be our biggest fan, and we have to feed ourselves with the things that we need to hear to continue going. And so I don't know what that is for you or for anybody listening to this, but what is that phrase that you need to hear when you need it most? Think of it from, who would you, what would you want your mentor to tell you? What would you want your best friend to tell you? And then make sure that you become your own mentor and your own best friend in those moments when it matters most.

   2. CWChris Williamson32:29

      That's awesome. That's so good. I love the third-party perspective as well, stepping back and trying to develop that metacognizance a little bit. Okay, where am I? What's happening? We've planned for this. This is what's, this is why I'm here. This is one of the reasons I'm here. This is a feature, it's not a bug. I'm playing baseball. The point of the (laughs) baseball-

   3. LJLauren Johnson32:46

      (laughs) .

   4. CWChris Williamson32:46

      ... is for the batter to hit the ball. It's going (laughs) to happen inevitably. How do we respond? I suppose as well, coming at it from the James Clear habit-setting example, the more that you drill per responses to failure, the more likely that response to failure is to occur again, so breaking that cycle gets even more important.

   5. LJLauren Johnson33:06

      Oh, yeah. Huge. And that's one of the, one of the biggest things that we teach is, you know, I think mental toughness oftentimes is accepting our reality and choosing our response. There's a lot of things that happen that, I mean, when things are good, mental toughness is easy. (laughs) We're like, "Yeah, I got motivation. Yeah, I wanna show up. Oh, success is fun." But it's oftentimes when things aren't going well, and so it's often our response to those things, because they're inevitable. And when people say, "Oh, well, can I ... How do I eliminate distraction?" Well, there's only a certain amount you can eliminate, and the others, we're gonna have to learn a response when we become distracted. And, uh, we can try and eliminate failure to our best ability, but there's going to be some failure. So, how do we increase, improve our relationship with it so that we can improve our response? So, I think that a lot of it has to do with that and what you're saying, is choosing that better response and that better habitual setting, so that when that happens, our bounce-back becomes quicker.

   6. CWChris Williamson34:03

      What about pain and discomfort? How do athletes deal with that? It's probably fairly common, I'm going to imagine, and baseball looks like a pretty brutal sport for rotator cuffs and knees and faces sometimes.

   7. LJLauren Johnson34:16

      Yeah. Uh, we actually had, this is actually a pretty funny story but kind of lends back to that, uh, perspective piece. We had this, uh, it was one of my first years with the Yankees. This player who's really, really good, like, really talented and loved the game. The, uh, poor guy just always got injured. And not like little injuries, like, just didn't have good luck. And he had just gotten back from this horrible ankle injury, and he's at the plate, and he takes one off the shin. Like, a 90-mile-an-hour fastball, like, right off the lower shin. And I had just finished showing him this video (laughs) um, from Jocko Willink, uh, who I just love, and it was called Good.

   8. CWChris Williamson34:58

      Good. (laughs)

   9. LJLauren Johnson34:58

      And he talks a b- Yeah, so you know what I'm talking about.

   10. CWChris Williamson35:00

       (laughs) He's sick. Yeah.

   11. LJLauren Johnson35:01

       So, I just finished showing him this video about, like, you know, changing our perspective and reframing the things that, like, you know, if you don't make the team, all right, more time to train. If you don't get the playing time you think, okay, more time to p- to earn it. And (laughs) so he gets hit, and he turns around and looks at me, and he just goes, "Good!"

   12. CWChris Williamson35:20

       (laughs)

   13. LJLauren Johnson35:21

       And (laughs) we all just lost it. We were laughing so hard. We were just like, "Oh, my gosh. Poor guy. Oh." It broke our hearts at the same time. But, uh, I think that there's a part of it, you know, when it comes to pain and when it comes to injuries, um, th- the first thing that has to shift is, kind of, uh, is our goals. Our goals change a little bit, so our goals become more therapy focused. Our goals become, you know, more daily focused. And so, uh, we shift there so that we can have kind of, we can create that light at the end of the tunnel, especially when it feels like that light just got shut off with an injury. So, we start to create those moments or these little milestones where we can work towards, 'cause that's one of the things, like, an athlete without a goal is f- is lost. So, we c- we try and recreate that to define success that's more within their control, not success, obviously, out in the field or stat-wise, because that's been taken away. Um, when it comes to discomfort, I think a lot of people in my field feel this way, but our brain is wired for comfort. It's wired to try and keep us safe.But the problem is that as we have evolved and, or the human race has evolved, uh, one of the things that hasn't is that protective me- mechanism in our brain. And sometimes it jumps in to protect us when we don't need protecting. And that's when it tells us, like, "This is scary. Maybe you shouldn't try it." You know, "You, you, there's no guarantee of success, like, why do it?" "Oh, you failed? Ah, that's all right. At least you tried. We're done." Um, there's all these different things that kind of come into play in terms of protection, and now a lot of that looks like instead of looking like life or death like it was originally designed for, now we're looking at it like, uh, threats socially, threats in our job. And so one of the things that we talk about is that discomfort isn't always bad and comfort isn't always good. Comfort can lead to complacency, and discomfort is the only way that we can improve in terms of growth. And so I like to call discomfort as kind of, like, the, um, the growth zone when we're in it. And there is a, a study done by Yerkes & Dodson, a Harvard psychologist, where it was called the, the optimal zone of anxiety. And it was kind of this U-shaped bell curve, and right when we are, uh, when we're on the left side of the bell curve, that's the comfort zone, right? We got the maps memorized. We know which streets to turn down, which ones not to. And then when we get towards the top, that is the optimal zone for learning, because we are just slightly outside of our comfort zone. We are just slightly ... We have our toes just, like, right on the line of our current ability, and that is where growth happens. Now, it doesn't mean go all the way on the other side, 'cause then that leads to panic, and that leads to, you know, some ... setting ourselves up for failure. But it's just right outside of that comfort zone. And so the way that we grow is by existing there, and studies show that we don't need to exist there all the time. But if we exist there, you know, about, you know, 20 per- 20 to 30% of the time, that's where growth happens right there. And so for our guys, we're constantly trying to put them in positions of discomfort, both mentally and physically. Um, and so it's not always, you know, pushing them to the edge in terms of, uh, weight training, even though there's certainly a place for that. Sometimes it's working on, you know, meditation and, or working on focus, or working on, you know, being consistent. And in those ways, we're challenging our ability to do that because there's so many things that are getting in the way. And so when we do this, we develop a relationship with discomfort. And instead of running from it, we, we rewire our brain to lean into it, because we know that what we want is on the other side of it.

   14. CWChris Williamson39:18

       Leaning into discomfort as if you invited it through the door is a term from Ben Bergeron's Chasing Excellence, and he's coached CrossFit games champions and stuff. I absolutely love thinking about that, that the discomfort really is a feature, not a bug.

   15. LJLauren Johnson39:31

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson39:31

       This is why you're here. That's the little mantra that ... my, my favorite mantra for going through discomfort is, this is why you're here. You're here for the discomfort. You weren't here for the warm-up. You weren't here for set one or set two or set three. You're here for set four, five and six. That's why you're in the gym. That's why you're doing the podcast. That's why you are here for the conversation which pushes the limits of your cognitive ability, that, uh, where you're forced to bring everything. You're getting examples from when you were nine years old in a desperate attempt to try and make this conversation work. That's why you're here. And when it comes to reframing, Sam Harris has this example where he talks about imagine the level of fear that you would be in if you just spontaneously felt like you did at the end of a workout whilst sat in your car. You would shit yourself. You would think-

   17. LJLauren Johnson40:25

       (laughs)

   18. CWChris Williamson40:25

       ... "What the actual (laughs) fuck is happening to me? I'm sweating. I'm so hot. I'm out of breath. I feel anxious." Okay. And yet, that's the outcome that people chase in the gym around the world every single day. So what does that tell us? It tells us that the effect, the outcome, the sensation that we have doesn't actually matter anywhere near as much as our interpretation of what that means.

   19. LJLauren Johnson40:53

       It's so true, and it reminds me of this analogy of a butterfly. I heard this from a friend of mine, and this guy is sitting on his porch, and he sees a butterfly in a cocoon. And he sees it trying to, you know, get out of the cocoon, and it's, it's about halfway open and it's struggling. And he's like, "Wow, what a cool opportunity to watch this." So he's sitting there and he's watching it, and the butterfly just stops. And he's like, he felt l- almost like it gave up. And he felt so bad that he ran inside and he grabbed the sci- the scissors, and he snipped it open, and the butterfly fell out. And he was so excited to, like, watch it, you know, fly away and grow and see the beautiful wings. But he goes, "I noticed something that was different. The body was really swollen and the wings were all shriveled up." And, you know, like, "Oh, that's all right. You know, I'm sure it has all its growth, you know, things to do." And so he's, like, watching it, and the outcome was is that this butterfly never grew. And what he didn't realize was it was the struggle getting out of the cocoon that actually forced that fluid from its body into its wings to fully develop. And so it's oftentimes our struggles that form our strengths. It's these moments of discomfort, it's the moments of struggle, it's the moments when you feel like giving up and maybe quitting is your best option. Those are the moments that form our greatest strengths. And Tony Gonzalez, Hall of Famer, said this. He goes, "I was, I was n- leading the league in dropped passes." And he says, "Dropping the football is actually the thing that taught me to catch it."... and he said, "I'm so thankful for that now, because that's exactly what made me the player that I am today," or I was then. I guess he's retired now, but... (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson42:47

       What about not being outcome focused? Especially in sport, the scoreboard at the end of the day is the thing which matters most, and a lot of the time we have externalized, quantified objective metrics of success, followers, revenue, growth, year on year sales, whatever it might be, my kids scores and, on their homework, all this sort of stuff. How can people be less outcome focused?

   21. LJLauren Johnson43:14

       So the, the one thing I like to always point out is that not all good results are the result of good things. So you could do everything right and still get a bad result. You could also do everything wrong and get a good result. And so the results are not always the result of bad things, or good things I should say. And results alone don't make you better. Doing the right things do. And so when I look at a resu- Results are great, but again, because of th- they're not all from the right thing, we redefine success to be the things that are right. So for my athletes, for instance, I had a, I had a player that was, um, in a wh- really tough slump, and he came to me and he's just like, "I just need a hit." And he was really struggling. I was like, "I understand. I, I totally understand that." And I said, "And so how is that mentality working for you right now?" And he of course was like, "I get your point." And I said, "Okay. So let's, let's look at this and let's restructure it." I said, "Because the, when the ball leaves your bat, there is nothing you can do." You may hit, you may swing at the right pitch. You may, uh, you know, hit it square. You may do everything right and it just happens to go to an outfielder and, or he makes an incredible diving catch. You know, that's just, that's just a possibility. So what I care about more is redefining success to be within our control. And so that's how I had him redefine it. So if success can't be a hit, if success can't be anything past you hitting the ball, what would success be defined as? And so we broke it down to three

4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Stoicism. So you should…

   1. LJLauren Johnson45:00

      things. We redefined success as number one, it was, um, it was timing, so his timing at the ball. So number one, timing, number two, pitch selection, so meaning he's swinging at the right pitches. And number three, having an external focus. He goes, "When I'm focused externally on like where I wanna hit it," so it maybe he's focusing on the batter's eye, he's like, "I'm much more... I'm much better at actually recognizing the pitch I need to, I need to swing at." And so that's how we redefined success. We redefined it within his control. And so for him, that was the most important piece, um, because when he was able to do that now it didn't matter what happened when the ball left the bat, it only mattered what he did up until then. And then what you end up finding is that when you focus on the things that you can control and doing the right things, those results end up taking care of themselves. But oftentimes when we need a result, we're willing to abandon ship to get it. And the problem with that is you might get lucky every once in a while, but that's not a sustainable way to sustain success.

   2. CWChris Williamson46:07

      Stoicism. So you should have just, should have just got Marcus Aurelius and he could have been-

   3. LJLauren Johnson46:11

      (laughs)

   4. CWChris Williamson46:11

      ... the coach. He, when you left-

   5. LJLauren Johnson46:12

      Easily.

   6. CWChris Williamson46:13

      When you left-

   7. LJLauren Johnson46:14

      (laughs)

   8. CWChris Williamson46:14

      ... to go do it, look, "Right, gentlemen, sit down. I'm gonna teach you about the dichotomy of control for a second." "Yep, yeah, yeah. No, it's fine."

   9. LJLauren Johnson46:20

      (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson46:20

       Um, what about taking things less seriously? This is something that I see a lot people make a big deal out of, the new presentation for work, uh, you know, they, they care about it and they're concerned. This is slightly different to the outcome, right? This is taking... it's losing joy in the process of even focusing on the process.

   11. LJLauren Johnson46:41

       Right. And I, I think that a, a lot of times... So yes, I agree that there, there's probably... It's one of those things where strengths can become weaknesses if not managed properly. So a strength of being really detail-oriented, really, um, on top of things can be a huge strength until it's not managed properly and then it can lead to burnout, right? So I think that, uh, taking things less seriously is certainly a strategy to go, all right, like let's look at the big picture here. And oftentimes I think we can use zooming in and zooming out as a good, as a good tool for that. You know, if, if y- if you're overwhelmed by the big picture, zoom into what you need to do right now, this very, very moment. And then if you're so overwhelmed by what you're in right now, zoom out to look at the big picture. So we can kind of use those different perspectives. But my mind actually goes to something else. It goes to this idea of, uh, Formula One. And in Formula One they all do something very consistently and they pit stop. And the question is, why do they pit stop? Now of course there are many times that they pit stop because of mechanical issues, but more often than not that's not the reason why. More often than not, it's a proactive approach for a long-term performance to make sure that they, they come in at the right time so that they're not only coming in if something blows up, they're not waiting until they crash to actually take a pit stop, because that would obviously limit their ability to perform. And so the question becomes, okay, what is their signal to pit stop? You know, for some of them it's a... their fuel reaches a certain level, for some of them it's tire pressure. And then they have their refuel and they change their tires and then they're able to go out and perform like they were for a longer period of time. And so my question to a lot of people is, what is your signal to pit stop? What is your signal when the boundary of something that is a strength turns into a weakness?... what tells you, "All right, I need to pit stop and refuel." Maybe it's reframing, maybe it's, um, taking, (laughs) going on a walk. You know, maybe it's connecting with somebody that really empowers you or gives you energy. Whatever that is, the question is, number one, w- what do you need to, like, what is your signal to pit stop? For some people it's gonna feel like overwhelm. It's gonna feel like, you know, maybe taking yourself too seriously. And then what do you need to do to refuel so you can go out there and perform your best? And so that's kind of where I go with that, because I think that for some people it's gonna be checking in with themselves and going like, "All right, let's look at the big picture." Like, "Let's not take ourselves so seriously." (laughs) And that's one strategy I think that we can use when we do pit stop.

   12. CWChris Williamson49:26

       One of the common threads that Youssef, one of the guys that's often on this show, mentioned is a lot of the strategies that multiple different people, multiple different groups are really proselytizing about at the moment, what they boil down to is a state change. So ice bath, sauna, meditation. So you've got heat changing, you've got volume of brain changing, listening to good, empowering music, that's the same but on the other side, more energy. Going for a walk, so we're changing visually what we're seeing, with locomotion, so that we're moving in that kind of a way. Have you seen these acupressure mats? They're like a, a, you know, a little mat with a-

   13. LJLauren Johnson50:03

       Yes.

   14. CWChris Williamson50:03

       ... a pillow and they're kind of spiky and they hurt a little bit, but they're also satisfying-

   15. LJLauren Johnson50:08

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CWChris Williamson50:08

       ... a little bit. What's that doing? That's a state change.

   17. LJLauren Johnson50:09

       Mm-hmm.

   18. CWChris Williamson50:09

       It's forcing your body to feel something else. And one of my favorite strategies, actually, we, we have a series called Life Hacks, and I haven't put this in, but this will be in on a future one, which is when you're finding yourself far too much in your own head, a lot of people that listen to this show, and perhaps yourself, are very cerebral, you know, we're front brain thinkers. We want to wrangle the world with our own cognitive capacity, and a lot of the time that can cause us to ruminate and, and just get foggy up here. One of the things that I've found really helps me is to take something that is dextrously interesting, so a, a little pebble that's a unique shape, or to run my hand across a, a leaf, or the steering wheel of the car if I'm sat in the car, and focus every single bit of my attention on the, the little perforations in the leather on the wheel, or the stitching that's on the inside, or the way that the rock feels and the temperature, and really just try... And it pulls you out of that, and again, it's another state change. And I think that the perspective that you're talking about, do we give it the 30,000-foot view and realize, "This isn't too big of a deal. It's going to be okay because we're playing the long game." Or, if that's too much and you think, "Oh my god, this project's so overwhelming, I can't believe I'm not gonna get it done." Then, okay, what's the next action? What's the next physical action? Open the email. Open the email-

   19. LJLauren Johnson51:25

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CWChris Williamson51:25

       ... and press, "Hi Lauren," or wha- whoever it is. You know, do that. And, um, all of those state changes I think just give us a little bit of perspective.

   21. LJLauren Johnson51:34

       A- absolutely, and are so important for tho- for those moments that you're talking about. I, I could not agree more. And I think the cool thing is a lot of people will ask, "Well, which one do I do?" And I can't answer that for you. I... Try 'em. Pick one. Pick one and try it. See what works best for you. I know for me, one of the state changes that works really well for me is going on a walk. You know, going on a walk, and I just walk right around my block, I grab my dog, and I leave my phone at home, and I just, uh, the only thing I'm paying attention to is the things around me and kind of taking that meditative walk.

   22. CWChris Williamson52:05

       What about dealing with criticism?

   23. LJLauren Johnson52:08

       Mm. Dealing with the critics. Uh, man, this is such a part of, like, my athletes' lives, uh, on a daily basis. Um, even, even if within their own family, not just, not just, uh, fans of, of theirs. But I think that criticism one is, is a part of... If, if you're gonna do anything great, you have to know that you're gonna have critics. It's going to be a part of it. And I think one of the things that's important, and I struggled with this myself at the very beginning of just, like, you know, my, my own journey in my field, was before I consider the meaning, I need to consider the source. I oftentimes would attach meanings to sources I would never ask advice from. And there is this great analogy I heard from, uh, Jamie Kearnly, who is the founder of IT Cosmetics, and she said, you know, everybody... You, you can't, we can't change what people say to us, right? We can't change perspectives of other people necessarily. We can't control those things, I should say. Um, but we can control the volume of the mic in our lives. And so there are some people that, you know, they have lots of opinions, but I, I don't, they don't carry a lot of weight in my life and so their, their mic's pretty much been muted in my head. And then there's people that, you know, maybe it's harsh criticism, but it's valuable criticism that I think I need to hear, and I'll turn that one up louder. And then there's people that, man, they fill me up and they are the people, like, that's the track I want running in my head, and that volume is way up. And so I think that there's two sides to criticism, is one is we asking the value of it. Um, is this a valuable source or is this an invaluable source? And then stripping away the emotion of it, because I think that when emotions get involved in criticism, it can really cloud the value of it. So I know for myself, you know, the first time I was told that my presentation sucked, um, (laughs) it was hard to hear. You know, emotionally it was, uh, hard to detach. But I have a rule for myself is before I respond to anything that is kind of, you know, emotionally charged like that, is I give myself 24 hours to really consider the meaning after I've stepped away emotionally and created space. And so, um, I like to create space in those moments, because it's often my initial reaction that is not the, either the correct one or it's clouded with emotion that I'm not able to see the message clearly.

   24. CWChris Williamson54:52

       So, your solution to-

   25. LJLauren Johnson54:53

       ... think about-

   26. CWChris Williamson54:53

       ... to the emotional response of the criticism is just to give yourself a beat?

   27. LJLauren Johnson54:58

       Space. Yep. Is to create space there. Um, and then I can accurately, after I've created space, I'm able to actually look at it, um, you know, non-judgmentally and go, "Okay, what part of this is true?" And I think the other, the other part, especially for creators out there or people that are constantly putting out content is, um, you know, you're gonna have people that just, like, hate your stuff, (laughs) that are gonna, like... You know, they're, you got those trolls and people that will say things, um. And, and that obviously hurts, but th- I think the more important thing is to find the consistency, is that if there are consistent things that people are saying, there may be some truth to that. Um, so I try to look at, like, what my audience says to me. And, like, "Okay, so maybe I wasn't as clear in this point." And trying not to take it like an emotional, like, hit, but more... 'Cause sometimes the tone doesn't come across in text, um, but trying to find the consistencies there. But I would say that there's, you know, like I said, there's a couple things, which is, one, is grading the value, and then, two, if there is value and you're feeling emotionally charged, just to create some space-

   28. CWChris Williamson56:00

       Matt Fraser-

   29. LJLauren Johnson56:01

       ... before the response.

   30. CWChris Williamson56:01

       Matt Fraser tweeted something a couple of months ago where he said, "Don't take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from."
5. 1:00:00 – 1:07:52

   Who are some of…

   1. LJLauren Johnson1:00:00

      I like to go back to, is, "Okay, let's go back to that foundation, the thing that is holding everything together." And so we go back to the basics and the fundamentals of what made you great in the first place, because a lot of times, like I s-, like I was telling you, is that the longer... Like, when we're focused on the gap between where we are and where we want to be, nothing but perfection will do, because any- anything less than perfection means that gap is widening. It's getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger. And what do you think then happens? Anxiety, stress, frustration just continues to also grow in size w- with this. And so, one of the things, like I said, I like to go back to is the fundamentals and focusing on progress from the fundamental level. So, one of the things that actually the military does is when they're working on, um, cleaning their guns, they actually have this strategy.... where they start off, like, ridiculously, like, comically slow when they're put, piecing their, their gun back together. So this is, for instance, if they're in a situation where somebody's in the middle of cleaning it and then they need to use it. And so how do you get it back as quickly as possible? And so they do it like meticulously slow, like, like, like, "Okay, now I gotta put this part here (laughs) and I've gotta..." Like as slow as possible. It's like hilarious. And then the reason why they do that is they train it at the slowest level, and they start with accuracy, then they add speed. And so their main goal is accuracy at every level of speed. And so they start at the slowest speed, and then they slowly go upward from there. And so that's one of the things, that's one strategy and one of the things that we can do, is by taking the fundamentals and focusing so much on our accuracy and then adding the speed of the game as we go. And every time we kind of master that level of speed, then we can add a little bit more. And every time we master a level, it's a confidence builder, so when w- we can prove to ourselves that we can do that. And so anyway, it's, it's pretty comical at the very beginning of it, but, uh, but that's one of the, one of the tools that we can use and one of the tools that we have used and strategies we've pulled from the military.

   2. CWChris Williamson1:02:23

      Who are some of the toughest people that you've studied?

   3. LJLauren Johnson1:02:27

      Oof, this is a really ... You know what? I think some of the toughest people are ... They're the ones that, number one, number one, they, they just don't say yes to anything. Which is totally, to me, it's a challenge. Um, I had this athlete, for instance. He came in, um ... Though that I should say this. They're the toughest and most enjoyable, long term, and I'll tell you why. I had this athlete come in, and I had this kinda, you know, form that he was filled out. And every player fills it out, and then it's kinda like our way to introduce ourselves, you know, to meet them, and then, uh, kinda get a little bit of a background on them. (laughs) And I ... H- he stops me just before I start going into this intake form, and he goes, "Um, I just have to tell you. I filled that out, um, as courtesy." (laughs) I was like, "Oh, okay." I was like, "All right, so y- you just did this, like, the ... Are any of these true on here?" And he goes, "I don't know." And I asked him, "Do you wanna go over this?" And he's like, "No." So right there, I literally shredded it. I tore it in half, and I threw it away. And I said, "Well, these next 30 minutes are yours. What do you want me to know about you? Or what do you wanna talk about? What can I help you with?" And he started asking me questions. (laughs) And so it was like the roles reversed, and I was like, "All right, let's, let's chat." But what he was doing was ... He is not a yes-man, which is fine. We don't want all yes people. But he wanted to make sure that what he was implementing worked, and he wanted to know more about it. And so he, he had had really bad experiences with mental conditioning somewhere else, and so to no fault of his own, he was pretty skeptical. So anyway, I think, uh, you know, long term, what ended up happening was instead of forcing him on these topics, I just would ask him, like, "Hey, do you even ... Do you wanna talk about this?" And he'd say no, and I'd be like, "Great. What do you wanna talk about?" Sometimes we ended up talking about like the football game that just happened (laughs) or, you know, it's like w- whatever else it was. And we developed this level of trust to the point where he actually ... It's a funny ... He hates Jocko, which I can't believe, 'cause I love Jocko, but he can't stand his content for whatever reason. And it got to the point where he trusted me enough where he asked me to send him a Jocko book. He goes, "All right, I wanna see what this is all about." And sent him the book, and he fell in love with him. So he's now a Jocko fan.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:05:00

      Biggest fan.

   5. LJLauren Johnson1:05:00

      Yes. But some of the toughest individuals, the ones that push back at the beginning, to me, it all mat- Like relationship is the first thing that matters, is that a lot of times it's not because they just outright hate this stuff, but because the relationship to it isn't there. And so some of the toughest people I've worked with have also been the most enjoyable, because they also force you to really know your shit. It's not just about like, "Oh, I'm the expert, and here, I know about mental performance." But they question everything. And by questioning things, it actually forces you to understand your argument even further. And so for me, I think the toughest athletes to work with are the, the best or, like, end up being some of the best clients, because they make me a better practitioner in the process at the same time. And I think that it creates, uh, you know, new solutions in that way that maybe otherwise we may have not have come up with or thought of.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:05:57

      What would you ask Jocko if you had the opportunity?

   7. LJLauren Johnson1:06:01

      Ooh. Huh. I think I'd wanna ask him this question, because it's one of my favorite questions to ask. If you were in a leadership role, and you do ev- you did everything you knew to do, and you still failed, why would that be? What would be the reason for failure? And the reason why I ask that is because I would love to hear how he works through, like, that question in terms of what would be his, the thing that he falls on? What would be the thing that he struggles at? What would be the thing that is maybe his vice? And how would he work through having to face that? Because I think he's one of, an incredible model of leadership, and I would wanna know what is that area that even, even you think could be a struggle or that you're continuing to develop?

   8. CWChris Williamson1:07:09

      That's a good question. If I get him on, I'm gonna steal that one.

   9. LJLauren Johnson1:07:13

      Beautiful. Love it. (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson1:07:15

       Lauren Johnson, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for coming on. If people wanna check out more of your stuff, where should they go?

   11. LJLauren Johnson1:07:21

       Um, they can go to my website at laurenjohnsonandco.com. I have a newsletter you can subscribe to, and all my social media handles are on there.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:07:30

       Perfect. Catch you next time.

   13. LJLauren Johnson1:07:32

       All right. Thank you.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:07:33

       Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few months. And don't forget to subscribe. It makes me very happy indeed. Peace.

Episode duration: 1:07:52