224: The Confident Mind by Dr. Nate Zinsser

Hey Mike, welcome back. How has your couple weeks been? It's been a busy couple weeks, but it's been good. Got through the Practical PKM Hybrid Cohort launch, did the live event. My wife went to Hawaii for, I think it was nine days total and we survived. So I am finally caught up and now leave for a conference next week as we record this.

So I'm looking forward to that one though. Craft and Commerce. This is the first year that it actually sold out, which is pretty awesome. So next year, get your ticket early. It's in Boise, right? This is the one that's in Boise. Yeah. And this is, who puts this one on? I forget. This is the kit, formerly convert kit. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to come to this with you one year. I just wasn't able to this year.

We have floor projects going on. As soon as the dumpsters come again, we're going to rip up the floors and redo the floors. So that's a fun task of the summer. Floys are important. They are. They are important. I just got done telling Mike about canyoneering. So if you want to hear about canyoneering in Utah, become a member and get the pro show because it was a pretty fun conversation about it. But that's what I've been doing the last...

Well, last week I went there and did that. Otherwise, it's just been enjoying the summer. And you know this, but my schedule dramatically changes over the summer. So I've been enjoying the summer and trying to get... trying to get projects done and planning new projects so that's what so what what year are the the students that you teach uh their college right so everything from first year to seniors to graduating seniors and i teach

pretty much all over the spectrum i teach less in the sophomore year so the second year for those of you who aren't familiar with the u.s higher education system but i teach first years every year i teach seniors every year and then it just depends on kind of the class schedule and how we balance things, whether it's junior or sophomore year, how much I teach in those two. Okay, so I have a question for you. My oldest is going into his senior year.

So he knows quite a few people who are seniors. In high school, a senior in high school, right? Yes, yes. And so they're graduating and they're having their graduation parties. And I get that he would want to go to those parties. But it is ridiculous the number of invitations we have gotten to graduation parties. It's almost like...

It rivals the number of Christmas cards, I feel. And every single one I get, I resent a little bit more. So I'm kind of wondering, like, how do you decide which ones to go to? Which ones you're just going to skip? See, I don't have to worry about that because graduation parties are much more common in high school.

They're not coming in college. We actually do mandatory events at the end of the year for the graduating seniors. So we have, I think, a baccalaureate, which is like a... a celebration for just those who graduate from science and engineering the school of science and engineering then we'll have graduation on top of that so i'll see the students again at graduation and then i usually

We'll take them out to breakfast or lunch or dinner or something like we'll go out to for some meal. Or if the students are more interested, like we'll go to like Topgolf or, you know, we'll go somewhere and just have like a fun, like little social thing.

checking those three boxes like they're usually they're usually done and they also see me a lot because we're a smaller school so they're kind of like not super you know like they don't really need to see me anymore they're they're pretty good what i will tell you though to answer a different slightly different question is i would probably say no to 95 of those things just because if you start saying yes to them

Then you got to say yes to all of them. And next thing you know, like every other weekend or every weekend you're at somebody's thing. And that just gets, uh, every weekend you're at multiple things. Yeah. Right. Like in, in, I mean, even even to the point of like sometimes students will invite me to weddings and stuff and I'll think really really hard about whether I go to those not because I don't appreciate the student and I don't appreciate the invite it's more a matter of I mean like

are you doing it out of courtesy or are you doing it because you really, really want me there? You know, it's like, you got your family there, you got friends there. I understand. Like, I appreciate you with the invite, but you know, a lot of times I don't, I don't worry about that too much. Okay. Yeah. So if you're going to say no.

I'm in your I'm on your side. Right. Like I lean no. And then we'll make the random exception of yes. But usually there's a really strong reason about why I made the random exception of yes to that. And the other the other thing that's weird to Mike is like in this. is different for you. No matter how many times I see students outside of the academic setting, it's weird.

They think it's weird. Like they're like, oh, you're like a normal human being. And I'm like, yes, I do all the things that normal human beings do. I try to tell you this all the time. And you don't understand that I just do normal things that human beings do. And oh, by the way, I teach. Like I prep your classes and I teach your classes and you know kind of thing. So but it's still it's always kind of weird. It's always slightly awkward Sure, so you gotta you gotta know it sounds like

Yep. I've got to find mine. I've had like, I don't know, 15 years to develop that. I haven't always been that clear and that concise about it. I've had 15 years to figure that out. All right. All right. Let's do some follow up. I'll start. So I had a couple different things. The first one was easy. I nailed this one. Take an actual lunch break. No phone and away from work.

It's summer, so I can easily take a lunch break. Gigantic green checkmark. I nailed this one, Mike. I feel really good about it. I'm feeling really good about this. The real question is whether it's going to stick, you know, don't, don't, don't rain on my parade, right? I'm doing great right now. Okay. Okay. Second one was figure out a better ending to my workday. Again, this has gotten better.

Uh, because I don't have a work day, uh, that much anymore. But one of the things that I've been, I've been thinking about with this one is, uh, like I'm, I'm not the kind of guy who, who's going to be like shutdown routine. Like I've thought about those. I've tried shutdown routines before. I think they're good.

It's just not for me. I'm not going to do that. I don't know why. I don't know if I don't have the discipline to do that or if I just don't care that much. It's like when the day's over, I'm out. I'm just going to take off and leave. I'm much more likely.

to then do a another like 30 minute session 15 minute 30 minute session later to like review the day and then plan for the next day i'm much more likely to do that than i am to do that at the end of the day usually by the end of the day i'm so spent so i think that's the one i want to like as i've reflected on this and as i've thought about this is like that's the one i want to implement is

re-engage after the kids go to bed for 15 20 30 minutes whatever it might be to like do that final reflection and then pop in for the next day and look at you know what the what the planning is okay the next one the next one is uh and i'm gonna say that we have a yellow on this one So that last one was yellow. This one I was going to say is a yellow. It's leaning towards whatever the combination of yellow and green would be. All right, folks.

Mike and I, well, I wrote it down that we're going to make a plan to run a half marathon together in Idaho. And out of the blue, I was not expecting this. This surprised me. Mike sends me a link. to a half marathon in idaho was it in october i think is when it was mike i think it was october it's the uh the city of trees half marathon um

So that is I would like to do that. I do have a giant question mark about whether I'm able to do that one yet with the soccer season. OK, so we got to figure that one out. I showed it to my wife and she said that maybe. the homecoming game and i've got a senior so i'm going to be at homecoming that would be a deal breaker for me but i looked at the route and it's uh it's right along the river in boise which i mentioned every time i'm there for craft and commerce i love running that trail

So that would be pretty cool. And I was also thinking like maybe Rachel and I could go a couple of days early and we could use the kit studios, record more life theme videos like we did last year. I could show you around. boise all the the cool coffee spots stuff like that like it would be fun

But I'll get back to you on that one. We could, Mike, we could not only do that, we could record an episode of Bookworm there. That's true. We could have our wives meet and we could do a four-person recording about something. That would be interesting. Yeah, I know. That would be incredibly frightening. And my wife would hate every second of that. But I could still, I mean, the thing I'm happy about and the reason why I'm going to say this is not a gigantic green.

but this is a green enough is because I got into Mike's head. I'm in his head right now, folks, and it feels really good to be in his head. So those are my three follow-up items. Might have been the most successful.

period of time that I've ever had with follow-up items. So I'm feeling really good today coming in on follow-up. Mike, what were your follow-ups? We should get you a follow-up medal or something. Yeah, a follow-up banner, right? We should do like the guys do on... uh upgrade we should have a follow-up banner you won the follow-up award this week yeah i definitely did not win the follow-up award one of my

one of my uh action items was to take more caffeine naps i did take a caffeine nap but it was on a sunday and if you remember i explicitly said on a day other than sunday yes you did so that is not done in my defense i was basically working and feeding humans for the last couple weeks yep so very uh i have a much greater appreciation for everything my wife does i'll just say that just the amount of like food and snack preparation

boggles my mind like i have no idea how kids eat them as much as they do and don't weigh 700 pounds it's true oh my gosh yeah and then the other one redo the shutdown routine and make it happy obviously this uh

kind of failed because busyness, but I still intend to do that one. The shutdown routine is something that I've always struggled with. However, I know that... at the end of the day like you were talking about i will i guarantee i will be too tired to actually do that effectively so that's not an option it's either

Make or break for the shutdown routine. And I really believe that it would be valuable. Yes. So I'm going to double down on, on that one. Okay. All right. Good. Good. Good. Are you ready to move into today's book? Let's do it. All right. So.

Today, folks, we're going to talk about The Confident Mind by Dr. Nate Zinsser. This book... I don't know how it popped onto my radar. I was just kind of looking at different things that I thought would be interesting to read for Bookworm. And the idea of confidence, the idea of looking at human performance, that's probably where it came from. I've been kind of really into human performance, both from the mental side and the athletic side and the learning side.

So somehow, probably in the work that I do, it came up. But he is... the director of West Point's influential performance psychology program. So he has a really big tie to the military. He also, as Mike and I, I'm sure we'll talk about quite a bit throughout this episode. He seems to have worked with every type of athlete that has ever existed. And then, oh, by the way, the military as well. Now, one of the things about this book...

Actually, let me give you the full title of it first. The Confident Mind, A Battle-Tested Guide to Unshakable Performance. So you can see how he ties it into performance. But one of the things about this book is it's almost as if work... life or like the average working person is an afterthought as opposed to being a central member of this book, right? Like, I mean...

He gives so many examples and ties into so many different like sports psychology type things or sports performance type things or Olympic athletes or military people. And then he goes, and oh, by the way, like the person giving their presentation at work, who's like not confident about it. And it's and it's he doesn't say, oh, by the way, but he basically may as well say, oh, by the way.

So for those of you who are, who haven't read this one and are considering reading it, just know that going into it, like going into it, you're not going to get a lot of examples for your normal average work a day type person. You're going to get more of those. elite athlete type examples or military specialist type examples. So I'll stop there. Mike, what are your initial thoughts on today's book?

Well, I think you're right that you're not going to get a lot of those everyday examples, but you will get a lot of advice that can be applied to everyday scenarios. So I was thinking about that too. What is the ideal balance between... Talking about the world champion athletes that you work with and the four-star generals that you've worked with.

me who's reading this book i think it's fine to err on the side of telling the uh the extreme stories with the very best in the field because i think anyone who is reading this book because they want to improve their performance is going to be aspiring to reach higher levels so That's just kind of inspiring to hear those stories. It makes you want to see what you're actually capable of. So that didn't really, really bug me. But also there.

there is something about this book and the whole tone of it which is sort of like inner excellence but not exactly and i don't really know exactly what it is. Maybe it's because a lot of the chapters are sort of like listicles and he's got all of these different frameworks, but this one I didn't like quite as much.

We're going to get into the style and rating, obviously, at the end. But my first initial thought as we're going into this book is this is sort of inner excellence 2.0. And this is either going to be... better or it's going to be worse yeah i i think um the inner excellence comparison is a great one um i i'm intrigued to see over time which one i reference more like not directly reference or like point people to but like internally like which one do i reference more which one do i remember more

um in terms of using it in my my day-to-day life i can't do that now it's too fresh right like the confident mind is too fresh uh compared to inner excellence but after they both stew a little bit um i'd love to to think about like which

did i actually pay attention to more i my gut says it's going to be the confident mind i don't know why but my gut says i'm going to refer back to the confident mind more than i'm going to refer to inner excellence but i don't i don't know if that'll that'll hold true

Interesting. Yeah, we'll see. The other thing I want to... kind of double click on with mike with what mike said is this book does have a lot of like step one step two step three part one step two part two part three like um it's very very i take a chapter and i break it into like a bunch of different parts or frameworks.

It didn't bother me while I was reading it, but at the same time, it's definitely there. That was the structure of the way he wrote this book. If you don't resonate with that, you want to pay attention to that. I thought the parts were good, and the way he broke things down made sense. But just pay attention to that as you're thinking about it. Sure. Yep. All right. So let's go to the introduction. So the introduction, the subtitle is What Confidence Is and Isn't.

defines confidence he just talks about competence and competence so confidence and competence You know, he says confidence is a skill. It's not all or nothing. It can wax and wane over time. It's not a guarantee even after you've had some success. And then mistakes and setbacks don't have to take away your confidence.

So he's got a lot of details just about like confidence in general. He starts it off with an example. And that's kind of what he does throughout all of these chapters is he either starts it off or he quickly gets into. kind of an example that's going to run through most of what he's talking about in that chapter. He'll refer back to those examples at different times. So the examples are a critical part of this one. And if I'm remembering correctly, this was a West Point cadet.

dealing with anxiety in this first chapter right like that was he that's what he was dealing with which makes sense he he works at west point so he he works with a lot of cadets and um to get in for those of you who don't know the the united states um kind of military academy system

There is West Point. There's the Air Force Academy. There's the Naval Academy. And you essentially... um have to get your senator to recommend you and then you have to be like in the top of your class right so a lot of the people that are going to the academies um they're

Some would say like they're the best of the best in certain ways, right? Like, and they've gotten the references and those type of things. You also have to have the mindset of you want to go be a soldier because they're definitely training you to go be a soldier. They're training you to go lead soldiers. So it's not for everybody, but for the people.

is, you're going to get the best of the best for the people who want to go into that academy. So understand that context. The last thing I'll say, Mike, before I turn it over to you is I think if you are reading this first introduction chapter...

this idea of first victories, he is going to use the idea of first victories throughout the remainder of the book. So pay attention to first victories. He is all about first victories. So keep that in mind, pay attention to it. And it's essentially like...

Winning the battle in your mind, winning the confidence battle in your mind before you even try to do anything else. And that's what he would say like the first victory is. Mike, correct me if you think you got something different out of that. But that's what I took away from it is like I got to win that first battle in my mind from a confidence.

And then I can go do whatever else I need to do. So I'll turn it to you, Mike. Yeah. The thing that stood out to me from this section is right at the very beginning, he talks about how having confidence can put you in an unfavorable. light because in our culture there is a a certain degree of of confidence that people like but then The people who have a high level of confidence, they just seem kind of... What's the word? Like arrogant? Cocky, yeah, something like that. And he...

calls out right at the beginning that you can be confident on the inside and polite on the outside. So I think that's a very effective way to kind of dispel that because I think anyone, at least in the Western society that we live in, um we'll read that beginning part and sort of identify like well i don't want to be you know that jerk yeah yeah so he kind of you know you don't have to be be that uh but yeah the the first victory that's something that he's going to talk

a lot about he shares some misconceptions about confidence here he also plants the seed for that human confidence is like a psychological bank account where every thought affects your your balance Actually, not chapter one, but chapters two, three, four. Yeah, so those are three different ways to build that.

bank account i think that's a really solid way to start the book i think the issues i have do start to surface here though with the story about the the west point cadets that he worked with because I'm starting to realize that my issue with a lot of the stories that he shares is this person is amazing.

and then follow that up with i worked with them so on the one hand i don't know what to do with that because those are probably the most effective stories the ones that you have direct experience with especially for a topic like this but there's also uh that the way that that is framed of well i worked with this person and this is you know what i did with them that does come off as like i

I don't really care. And I don't know what it is about the way that he did it versus the way that Jim Murphy did it that kind of rubbed me the wrong way a little bit. But also it has me thinking.

If I'm going to write a book, what's the best way to tell those stories? And I feel like the model is sort of like Ryan Holiday's, where you really research something and you really understand the... the topic and you can interject some personal experience there but it did get to be a little bit too much of like well this is you know what i worked with this person and this is what they said and every time somebody says this to me you know i shake my head because it really is this simple you know

Like that's, that's kind of how some of those stories are read. Yeah. I didn't, I didn't pick up on that as much, but I can see how that would come across like very, very much. So I can see how that would come across. All right. Are we ready to hit chapter one? Yep. All right. Chapter one, accepting what you cannot change. So...

He starts off with the intro basically talking about what confidence is and then gets into this idea of four pillars of human performance. So he kind of like... I don't want to say takes a step back, but he kind of like founds his discussion of confidence on these four pillars of human performance, which ties into essentially his graduate work. His graduate work was in human performance. So the four are the interplay of the mind and body.

controlling your thoughts, embracing imperfection, and then minimizing frustration. the clear takeaway for me in this was the sewer cycle and the success cycle, right? Like, I mean, these are the two, the two clear takeaways from this chapter for me. So the sewer cycle is I have this thought, right?

In the sewer cycle, it's terrible. I'm in trouble. Don't mess this up. And then it goes to unconscious emotions. So you're disappointed, you're frustrated, you're impatient. Then it goes to a physical state where now you're tense, constricted blood flow, tunnel vision. And then it goes to poor execution. import performance versus the success cycle.

which is basically when you have this conscious thought, okay, let's see how well I can do. This is my chance. I can do something great to then confidence, eagerness, trust, then to like a more joyful state, less stress, you know, more. He has more blood flow, less attention. And he backs all this stuff up with physiology data and neuroscience and stuff.

And then that performance on that would be the best possible performance. So he's got these two different diagrams. They are by no means the most exciting diagrams I've ever seen in my life, but they prove his point pretty well. So for me, coming out of this... This was the sewer cycle and the success cycle were like the two biggest things. It was like, we don't want to be in the sewer cycle, which is where most of us are. And if you work through Zinser's process.

and his processes that he's going to elaborate in the rest of the book, you'll be much more likely to be in the success cycle and you'll see more success overall. That's basically my big takeaway from chapter one.

um diagrams i do not like these at all but i agree with the the principle generally i think this is um this is pretty pretty accurate now actually i have a different version of this though that i think is kind of saying the same thing but is much more effective visually okay i'm not sure how to do this i'll try to create something that i can share with the uh the that put in the the show notes um but i'll try to just share uh something from good notes here for

for you i don't know if this is going to mess up the stream i hope no this is great this is not messing up the stream at all okay so he's got the let's see i want to make sure i get this right conscious thoughts unconscious emotions physical state execution All right. So I've heard it said this way, where the thoughts that you think, that's the one at the top there in that circle, right? That influences.

Your your emotions or how you feel and then your emotions or how you feel influences your actions That's the stick guy running at the bottom And then based on what you do, that affects the words that you say. And I call this the cycle of suck. Sewer cycle is probably a better way to say it. But the... positive version of this is not you know just replace the negative stuff with positive stuff i actually feel that it works in reverse so it does uh kind of start with the

the thoughts that you have when you recognize that those aren't the thoughts you should be thinking, then actually just start saying and confessing the things. That's a big point he makes throughout the rest of the book is the power of positive confession.

right so you say these things until you start to believe them and then when you believe them they create action that action then creates better emotions because you showed up and you did the thing and as you create this evidence um for you uh you're the type of person who follows through on this stuff then it changes the the thoughts that you have and it makes it makes it easier so so there is momentum that is built one way or the other with this um but i think they are different cycles there

And maybe he's right that it's the same both ways. And really, you just got to take control of the conscious thoughts that you have. Maybe it really is that simple.

kind of at the foundation level of the two circles that I've got is that it is better to act your way into a better way of feeling than feel your way into a better way of acting and i can't remember who i originally heard that from but when i heard that i was one of those things that i kind of noodled on for a while and it's like well what does that actually look like and then oh

this is how it makes sense and so when i draw this you know i usually draw it with the arrows going this way as the negative and then you can flip the cycle you know you can go the other way and that that sort of wheel or flywheel essentially is what it is because each rotation just kind of builds more momentum in that direction. I feel like that's a more effective model.

um so right away like in the beginning i'm kind of kind of disagreeing with his model but i agree completely with the points that he's making from this and i actually like the things that he's talking about throughout this book are really sort of emotional intelligence yeah topics

which is my jam so i definitely love the the topics that he's discussing and the the content like the light that he's shining on this sort of stuff even if i maybe would have explained it in a little bit different way yeah would you would you say it's like an internal emotional intelligence thing

Because you're trying to self-analyze your emotions as opposed to... When I think of emotional intelligence, I often think about it from an external standpoint. Am I emotionally intelligent in the social setting? which isn't always true, but it's like, um, I guess that's the way, like the big difference I think about is, is he and that, well, the one you, you showed is like an internal emotional intelligence. So I think emotional intelligence has.

a couple different facets one is interpersonal communication that's kind of what you're describing and then intrapersonal communication is really like the the communication you have with yourself and that's really what he's talking about in the confident mind and uh yeah i don't think necessarily one is is better than the uh than the other um and and you know

I'm glad that he's, again, shining a light on this sort of stuff. But he essentially built a very ugly version of the flywheel. Yeah, exactly. There's like four boxes that are... Kind of you know curved a little bit and then a giant arrow that goes back to the beginning So I just don't think that's a very appealing way to to display that visually but

It has nothing to do with the quality of the content. The other thing he says here, which is really important, is that the enemy gets a vote. And that maybe doesn't land. real well with a lot of people who don't have a military background. But the core concept here is that when you create your plans, you set your intentions, you're doing everything right, and then

life will life you and you've got to figure out how to adjust and repair. And you have to recognize that. I mean, this is the thing that stops so many people who are wanting to... do more of what matters and follow through on their intentions like i've been in the productivity space now for quite a while and i see this over and over and over again it's like we'll create all the systems we'll break down all the projects we'll

have all these different tasks. We'll plan out the next quarter and then something happens and it's like, oh, well, there goes everything. Just chuck it and start over. Recognizing at the beginning that there's going to be... some resistance i feel is important and if you take that into consideration then your plans don't have to get completely disrupted you don't have to just chuck it and start over and say well i guess that didn't work because

I encountered some resistance. Like that's part of the process. Yeah. Yeah. Um, as we were, as you were talking, I was reminded of, of one of the other things that he has in this chapter that I, I really connected with was this idea that, um,

Your autonomous, oh man, I can't say it. Autonomic. There you go. Woo, got it. Okay. Your autonomic nervous system, right? And the fact that you get... kind of amped up and you get nervous in the situations like he really reframes this in a sense it's that's not a terrible thing that's like a positive thing that's going to help you perform better I think This tends to work better in like athletic endeavors because you quickly move into using that.

that pent up energy for your activity. Whereas like a public speaking situation, I think it can be a little bit harder to rein that in and control that or, you know, something that's less like physically taxing. But at the same time, I really like this idea where he takes that nervousness, that reaction, that higher stress level and says, it's not a bad thing. That's actually your body adapting to perform well. And I just like the way you reframed that a lot.

Yeah, I like that too. I talked a little bit about that actually in the life theme live event that we did. I shared my journey and how I got to where I am today. And I shared several specific. decisions that were made where I chose to do something that was outside of my comfort zone and I experienced the the scenario that he's describing there where You've got the butterflies and you're nervous about doing the thing and you're scared to go do it. But what I found is that when I do that.

once you get through it and you get to the other side you find that it's actually very life-giving and it was essentially worth it yeah so you don't want the butterflies to go away you want to fall in love with the the butterflies is how he he put it but i also think um how the autonomic nervous system how it how the all the specifics of how it works it kind of doesn't doesn't matter like you can simplify this if it's uncomfortable do it

Yeah, for sure. All right, let's go to chapter two. Chapter two is building your bank account number one. And as Mike said earlier, chapter two, three, and four are going to be building your bank account number one.

number two and number three so we're going to focus in on this bank account idea for three chapters the first one is filtering your past for valuable deposits and in this one he's going to talk about using mental filters he's going to talk about what he calls the ESP, so effort, success, progress, to put these deposits in. He's going to describe creating a top 10 list. And then reflection, what he calls an immediate progress review. This chapter in my mind switches from like...

chapters one and chapter two being very like general, high level, let's lay like this big foundation. This becomes like very, very quickly example. um, an action plan, example, action plan, example, action plan. Like I worked with so-and-so we did the following things, even to the point where he would give like, these are the scripts that this person would use. Right. And like, and he's going to do this in the next like multiple chapters.

where it's very, I guess, practical is the best word I can use. Before we were laying a foundation and developing a framework, here we get very, very practical. And he works through these things. I don't know if we need to take the time or go through these in detail. We can talk about the ones that make the most sense for us. So I will say that the one that resonates the most with me out of this first...

this first bank chapter, would be the immediate progress review. And the immediate progress review is important in my mind because of the word immediate. Like if you wait till the end of the day, or at least if I wait till the end of the day, I forget a lot of things that I should remember. But if I have like a little notepad beside me or if I have just a note card beside me and I'm like writing down and just jotting down like daily notes, I'm so much more.

likely to get constructive things out of those where he is going to push me and he's going to extend me is like write down the things that impact confidence, impact my ability to perform, right? Which I don't typically do that. Like I typically just write down just kind of details and facts of the day, but like the immediate review.

I think from a confidence standpoint, I can see being incredibly, incredibly valuable. I agree. It definitely would be valuable. A lot of the tactics that he shares here would be valuable. And then after he shares a bunch of them, I start to resent the fact that he's telling me to do all these things. So that's probably just me and I should just get over, you know, the...

viewing these things as a packaged whole and rip out the pieces that you really think are going to benefit your current workflows and add those. You don't have to implement everything that he's talking about, obviously. But also, I don't know that that one in particular, like I agree with the concept. It's essentially the reason why I'm doing my weekly review using the plus minus next method and the shortcut that.

I mentioned before, I'll put a link to the video I did on that if people want to see that. But I capture those things in the moment because if I wait till the end of the week, it's not as effective.

uh the emotion that comes in the the moment is is valuable when when going through those sorts of things but also like i had zero uh zero inclination to actually try to uh apply that These are very tactical, so it's a little bit hard for me to tease out specific concepts from these that I want to apply.

Um, that's one of the things that the beefs, I guess I have with it selling rating wise is like a lot of it is very kind of prescriptive, but you can, you know, find that stuff. Like for example, I think the, uh, the general thing that. I take away from chapter two here, which is really the first part of building your bank account. That's going to get confusing, is that we have the power to control our mental filter.

So you can choose what you are going to think about. Maybe you can't choose which thoughts are going to pop into your head, but you can choose what to do with those thoughts. I probably should do a better job of focusing on the positive things there, but also thinking about what you want more of is the first step to getting more of it.

Yeah, being selective in your thinking and choosing to really, I guess the term would be meditate, like entertain the thoughts that are actually going to be useful, which are going to be the ones that are positive. so you'll you'll hear a lot of like positive psychology in the rest of this book and if that turns you off like probably don't want to listen to the the rest of this because that's that's who this guy is but also like it's effective and it works you can't you can't really deny that

So I'm kind of in the middle there where I don't really love like an extreme focus on that sort of stuff. But I also recognize the value and the importance of it and that I should probably do a little bit better job of it. So I go into a chapter like this where he's saying do exercise one, then do exercise two, then do exercise three. And I'm going into it thinking.

what if any of this am I actually going to do? And in this chapter, it's probably nothing. So I agree with you though, Mike. I kind of had the same situation where... I was like what do I do with this? I can't do all of these activities. Do I pick some and do them? Like, you know, do I do any of them? If you were completely devoted to becoming the best in the world at one particular thing, but that eliminates the vast majority of the people who would actually read this book.

I could not agree with you more. So this is a conflict that I'm going to have that you're going to see come out in style and rating. It's also a conflict that you're going to see me like, I don't have a lot of action items out of this book because I didn't know how to pick which ones.

were the most relevant to me. And like, I, if I could have figured that out, I would pick those as an action item, but I could not figure those out. So, um, yeah, you're going to see that happen. Let's, uh, are you good to move on to three? Yeah. Second. All right, so the second Building Your Bank Account chapter is chapter three. It's constructive thinking in the present. So what's...

I guess the crux of this one for me is this idea of positive self-talk, putting yourself in the present focus. So a lot of times he addresses this kind of really strongly that says, oh, next time I will whatever. And he said, no, don't say that. Like make the statement that says I am and make it in the present. Like so, you know, if you think about like a goal scorer, like in hockey or a forward.

Is that the right position, Mike, in soccer? Yeah, forward, striker. Striker, there you go. I knew I was wrong. So you think about a striker, right? Like striker, like I'm fast, I'm quick, I'm going to play that ball. proper timing, or I'm going to play that puck with proper timing, make my fast break, and I'm going to score. I'm not going to do that in the future. It's like, that's who I am. I'm fast. I make that break.

I beat that goalie, right? Like, and you say that in the present sense. So I wrote down like kind of the framework, like I... present tense verb, positive language, precise language, powerful language, right? And like you make this affirmation and then he would say, okay, now what do you do with that? You do these affirmations.

when you walk through a doorway you do these affirmations when you brush your teeth you do these affirmations at in a night book you write this down 12 times before you before you go to bed i don't doubt for a second that that works Like I really think that this is going to work. And there is no way in heck I'm doing this, right? Like I'm just not going to do it. Like I know me. I'm just really not going to do it. Now, I might do it.

before the big event. Okay. Like I'm getting ready to do a thing. You know, I'm going to do it before the big event. I'll say that Mike, I even did this and it was probably cause this was fresh in my brain. I was taking an assessment. Um, and I was like, man, this assessment is going to be pretty tricky. This is going to be hard. And I had this affirmation in my head that I said probably 10 or 15 times, maybe 20 times before I did it.

Did it work? I don't know. I have no idea if it worked or not because I don't have an A-B test to say I did the assessment without it. I did the assessment with it. It worked. All I can tell you is did I feel better internally? Yeah. Like I felt better internally because it's like I got rid of the negative thoughts in my head and they were all the positive thoughts.

This is, I think, what the crux of his shifting to the present is these positive affirmations. He'll describe other things like... um you know flip the script and like the now and then um these positive thoughts being deposits into your bank account and we want to keep that bank account full of deposits so he talks about positive thoughts being um

deposits and negative thoughts being withdrawals. And we want more deposits than we want withdrawals. And all of that makes sense. And then he wraps all of this just like he does every other time and a bunch of different examples with a bunch of different, you know, kind of kind of pieces together. So.

I'll turn it over to Mike now to see what his thoughts are on this one. Well, this is the one that really opened my eyes that this is really an emotional intelligence book. Okay. Because he talks about the self-fulfilling prophecy, which is something my dad talked a ton about growing up.

a belief or expectation, correct or incorrect, that you can bring about a desired or expected outcome. But really, I think it's just whatever you think about comes to pass. You know, again, there's a simpler version of this. He talks about how thinking about what you don't want to happen only reinforces your brain's familiarity with it. I remember my dad telling me a story when I was growing up about this concept. And when you're golfing, for example.

If you keep telling yourself, don't hit it in the water, don't hit it in the water. Your brain attaches to the water. It doesn't ascribe a positive or negative value to it. It just... is focused on the water so you are much more likely than to hit it in the water and he was he taught me you know focus on the the fairway you know pick the spot where you want the ball to go and it's not going to go there all the time depending on the skill that

and that you have the proficiency you're able to hit the ball with as a golfer but the focus significantly increases the

the chances of you getting that outcome that you're after. And that lesson really stuck with me. So I see a lot of that coming through in this particular chapter. I like the... the focus on the affirmations this is one of my action items you know he's got a bunch of other stuff ways to make deposits you kind of talked about this the notebooks nightcap the open doorway the macro affirmation statements and the audio

All that kind of stuff. But the one thing I got from this is affirmation statements, because I have some affirmation statements, which I forget specifically which book they were associated with. Maybe it was inner excellence. Now that I think about it. But I started adding those into a collapsible callout on my daily note template in Obsidian. So I open those and I read those out loud almost every day as part of my daily routine. And that's been really helpful.

So I have learned a lot about affirmations since I wrote those, though. That was kind of a crappy first draft. he talks about writing affirmations in the first person being present tense positive language precise language powerful language all that kind of stuff i want to go back and revisit my affirmations and see if i can't tune them up and i'm not going to use the

the five rules here as rules per se but i think there are some good suggestions here which can maybe help me write some better affirmations and then i don't know maybe i'll add a couple more to that uh that list i think there's four or five currently Awesome. All right, so let's move to chapter four. Chapter four is the last building your bank account chapter. Envisioning your ideal future.

So this chapter is all about this one. This chapter is all about picturing yourself doing the thing. achieving the thing that you want to achieve, basically adjusting your self-image, right? And he goes through quite a few different things in order to help you envision, right? So he's got...

This deja vu experience where essentially that you're trying to project it so much that it feels like deja vu when you're actually doing the thing. I can't remember if this is where he did the Michael Phelps. example or not but like i know michael phelps has done this do you remember mike i think he mentions it here but i can't remember the specifics i did not write down

any of the takeaways from the stories that he shared. I didn't write down any of the stories because I was like, there's just so many of them. I don't know which ones. I didn't write down any of them. But anyhow, he'll talk about part one, warming up your envisioning muscles. Part two, practice.

Practicing to improve. Part three, nailing a great performance. Is there another part? Yeah, there's the steps to envisioning. Okay, so if you have those, go ahead and list those off right now because I don't have those in front of me. Sure.

So envisioning, let me define that first, actually, is the deliberate production of an emotionally powerful, multisensory imaginative experience of a desired future event or events. All these definitions are way too complicated. I know. Anyways, steps to envisioning. Begin with a clear sense of your desired outcome, set the scene for your breakthrough, and list out a few key moments you expect to encounter in your breakthrough experience. And again, like...

This is powerful. I have a step in the life theme process, which is literally called create your ideal future. But I don't really like any of this. Really just get specific. You know, he talked about it last chapter of the focusing on the positive things, a self-fulfilling prophecy, you know. When you have this thing that you're thinking about, this scenario that you want to create, I guess if you're really trying to become the best in the world at a specific thing...

You probably do need to follow step-by-step processes in order to really dial that in. But the 80-20 here for almost every normal person is think about this.

just by thinking about it you will get a significant amount of of uh progress and maybe you know all the steps that he's listing here will take you the the final five percent help help you across the the finish line if you really want to win the gold medal or something like that but it reminds me of the the cortex episode which came out recently i'm not sure if you listen to cortex but they were i do reminiscing on 10 years of of the podcast

And, um, one of the things they were talking about was how surprised they were at the beginning of the show. They were talking a lot about ergonomics and battling RSI and they both started weight training and Mike only does it like once a week, but he said. that uh it's amazing how even just a little bit of weight training makes a huge difference in terms of that stuff and i feel like that's that could be applied here too

So what I think we're balancing here, Mike, as we talk about this, and this is by no means a knock, right? So hopefully this doesn't come across as overly negative. We're balancing the fact that there is... I write a book like this and I want people to have a practical application coming out of it. I want them to have these steps that they can follow in these roles. I also work with super high-end clientele that I need to...

Not justify why they're working with me, but like the more elaborate the routine, the better this whole process might go or like the more value they get out of me. And I think you're absolutely right in terms of like. Do we really need to be this complicated with most normal people?

no, I don't think we need to be this complicated with most normal people. But I don't think he's writing to most normal people. So therefore, I think the problem is you and I. I don't think the problem is his book. The problem is our expectations for this book. Like that's what I, that's what I think. Maybe, I mean, there's definitely a scenario. If you are Dr. Nate Zinsser and you are very specific, I want to work with coaching clients.

who are or have the potential to be the very best in the world at what they do and you're writing this book as your business card maybe this is the best way to do it But it kind of has the I think it has the potential to have the opposite effect. I think of the books that we have read that like one that comes to mind is. Simple Marketing for Smart People by Billy Broas. And there's a lot of good stuff in there. You get done with the book.

And it's so not a sales pitch that you're kind of like, I want more. I want to join your program that you very briefly mentioned, but I don't even know what it's called. You know, those are the types of things that I am.

Probably exponentially more likely to take the next step in the customer journey if It's not just in your face all the time and I'm thinking necessarily think he's trying to be in your face with it but it definitely comes across that way and and there's no distillation for if i'm not this person what do i do with this that's a danger with these types of books and

we've probably gotten pretty good at generalizing these because we've read hundreds of them at this point but for the average person that's hard to do And so I think that's something you got to be aware of with this one. Like there's some good stuff in here, but you really got to mine the nuggets. And for most people, even though what he is telling you is technically correct.

Do not try to do this because it will drive you crazy. Yeah, I think one of those nuggets out of this chapter is the flat tire drills. I don't know if you remember those or not, but it's like... having envisioning these ideas of the way things could mess up. Right. And then trying to account for those. And like that way, when you get into the situation and it messes up.

you're not shaken you're not like taken back like there's no kind of freak out situation which can happen uh really really easily i think that is an incredibly valuable thing right and i mean he gives you the details of how to how to walk through it Right. Like follow these simple guidelines and he lists out the guidelines. I'm not going to list them out here, but it's like it's really, really.

an important piece i think when you're when you're doing envisioning exercises because most of the time you'd think oh i'm only going to envision the positive things like the really good me winning the championship blah blah all that stuff well i don't envision that like halfway through the race you know i break my toe

Or like, you know, something like that. And that's like, am I going to keep running the race? Like, what am I going to do? Like, I'm experiencing this significant thing. So I do think you're right. Like, there's a lot of really good nuggets in here. And it's just mining for them and figuring out what they are. Yeah.

I agree. And I like the flat tire drill. I don't like the name personally, but that's just because I have that concept is solidified in my brain as a pre-mortem from some business book that I read at some point. flat tire jilt probably actually is a little bit more accessible to be honest all right let's let's go to chapter five chapter five is protecting your confidence every day no matter what

This chapter, he says it this way, devoted to the safeguards, the mental habits that will prevent both the external bad events, those inevitable errors, mistakes, and setbacks, and the internal negative thoughts, which everyone has. So he gives, again, a three-part... uh mental model uh or mental method for for dealing with this part one think of each and every mistake error and sent back as temporary so temporary would be the the keyword there part two think of every um

mistake or error as limited so limited is keyword there and then part three is think of your various setbacks and imperfect moments as non-representative of yourself. So he's trying to address these three things that would impact your confidence the most, right? Oh, there was this mistake or this setback. I'm going to have mistakes forever.

Like I'm going to, you know, be a consistent screw up, you know, like it's always going to happen to me kind of a thing. The second one would be like, oh, I made a mistake in this aspect of my life. I'm going to mess up everywhere. Like I'm never going to be any good at anything. And it's going to apply to every domain of my life. And then the last one was like.

putting basically putting the the mirror on yourself and saying like oh i made a mistake in this area i am a person who makes mistakes i'm a terrible you know whatever uh it might be so he's directly addressing these three things with the idea of um not undermining the confidence that you have even when things go wrong so this is in my mind the when things go wrong

Don't completely erode everything about your life chapter. Yeah, I agree with that. There's some great stuff in here. A lot of it, I don't like the way that it's positioned. He talks about the shooter's mentality, for example, the tendency to think that any mistake or setback is actually bringing you closer to success rather than keeping you away from it. That's true if you have skill or proficiency.

The tendency to think and then the second part of that is the tendency to think that once any success is achieved, it will continue and will make other successes possible. So there's value in that. But again, like the takeaway here for the normal person. is the negative thoughts will pop up like a game of whack-a-mole and you have to deal with it over and over. I think if I were to encapsulate, you know, one takeaway from this chapter, that is the gold nugget right there.

now how you actually do that i don't think you need all of the this the steps but step one is essentially recognizing the negative thoughts and then doing something about it. He defines it as always getting the last word. I'm not sure what I think of that. I think I like that approach.

because it kind of just implies that you have to answer each one of those things. And I feel like if you did that, if you just recognized every time you were talking negative to yourself about yourself and answered it with something positive, that would probably have a significant... positive effect in in your life uh yeah so you hit that shooter's mentality the only other one is the i like the acknowledge it silence it replace it

that he talks about um where i just think it's a good general practice um for looking at these negative things and saying okay that happened okay it's not a big deal and let's move on let's replace it with a with a positive thought are you ready to go to chapter six Yes, let's do it. So chapter six, my big note as we start chapter six is a lot here, right? Like I don't know what happened in chapter six, but I felt like he just went crazy.

Like he just, maybe it was me. Like maybe I just got a lot more out of chapter six than, than, um, than the other chapters. But okay. Chapter six is deciding to be different. Letting your bank account earn maximum interest. Um, he, I mean.

he goes through here and if I'm, if I'm remembering correctly, this was the Dion Sanders example, I think. Yeah, it is. And I love this chapter too, you know, deciding to be different. We have one of our Schmitt's family core values is determined to be different. So very much the same. Same mindset here. He does talk about several people who decided they were going to be different, but Deion Sanders was the one with like the five steps from one interview that he did a long time ago.

Yep. And I like how he makes a statement and then says the first victory takeaway. Makes a statement, first victory takeaway. For me, that resonated a lot with me. So I'll give you like I'll give a couple examples of these. So basically, Deion Sanders believes.

he's better than everybody else he plays against, right? So the one thing is I'm better than you. I believe that I'm better than you. And the first victory takeaway is approach every task with the conviction that you will absolutely succeed. And it's like, I just think these are really, really good.

I will outplay you on a specific play. First victory takeaway. The only moment that matters is this one. Live free of any resistance from your past. And the example that he gives here, which I thought was really, really good, is... You think about a football player, and a football player is going to have to do 60 plays a game. Well, they're not going to be perfect at all 60 plays. It's very, very unlikely. They're going to have a play where they're going to get beat.

They're going to, you know, drop the ball. They're going to do whatever it is. And if they let that stew in their brain, it's going to mess up the rest of the game or it has the potential to mess up the rest of the game. Right. Whereas if you just say like, okay, that stunk, I'm going to move on.

Okay, like next play, next play, next play. So you get this idea of next play. So he has, what do we have? Five of these, right? Then he rolls into limiting beliefs and he's got seven limiting beliefs. Then he rolls into like the first victory. like alternatives to those beliefs. And he's got seven of those as well. I don't think it makes sense for us to go through all of these, but Mike, maybe like just hitting the ones that you.

you find the most interesting um i mean i gave you some from my from my dion sanders thing but if you want to hit with some of the the limiting beliefs or the first uh first first victory alternatives i think that'd be a good way to move move through this one well So I agree in principle that limiting beliefs need to be overcome. I'm not a huge fan of the specific examples that he shares here.

I guess I could pick a couple. So the experts know what's best. And the winners have earned your reverence. I feel like that kind of contributes to the imposter syndrome. And there's always somebody else there who's more successful than you and done more than you. And so you should just listen to what they say.

but that's at the heart of my big beef with a lot of like these, not these, not this specific one, but systems books. Like getting things done, I think is a classic example of this. It's a very specific system. And I know so many people who have tried GTD and then given up on it and assumed that they were broken because it didn't click for them. No, like you don't need to have 43 folders. If you're a digital native, like you should figure out how to adapt this.

Apply the parts of it to your workflow that makes sense to you. Always be your own harshest critic. Another bad one. I don't know. Not a huge fan of these. I do think it's interesting the framing that he had with Deion Sanders, though. He said Deion Sanders is the only person to play in both the Super Bowl and the World Series. So... That is, on the surface, a very compelling reason to use Deion Sanders for those five rules. However, I think it probably doesn't matter.

that just might do sense kind of curious what you think about that well it's just such an extreme example right like he's the only person right like the only person i think we might be able to bucket him into like

an N of 1. Let's just be real about it. He's probably an N of 1. Can we get stuff out of his philosophy and his life and his career and stuff? Sure, we can. But I think... pushing too hard on that i don't know like that i like i shake on that he's probably a hall of fame football player i have no idea if he's actually in the hall of fame or not but like he had a very successful football career

he was okay at baseball he wasn't that great so the fact that he got to the world series in baseball sort of a fluke in my opinion and to just hold that up as like the world series plus the super bowl therefore deon sanders is the voice to listen to with this i mean he's the the poster child for the the person who just kind of rubs you the wrong way because they're they are so

confident and honestly with deon sanders i would say cocky i mean just look at the stuff that he was saying with the colorado football team and then they started getting their butts kicked like why yeah You do need to develop a confidence. And actually, I like him as a person. I feel like what he's doing and the way he's investing in the lives of the kids.

in the colorado football program and he's got like i think marshall falk is uh coaching with them and warren sap like they're really trying to make a positive difference in the the lives of these these kids that they're coaching so i have i have no no issues with the you know The intentions and the overall net effect, I think, is still positive. But you just listen to some of the interviews that he does and he shows up with the bling, you know, you're just like.

No, that doesn't resonate with me. He is definitely not your confident, not cocky example. I don't think he is by any means. Now, the confident piece, he's very confident, but he's definitely not your confident, not cocky. Okay, so I have a question for you. First victory, alternate belief, number five. Beliefs produce behavior, so confidence comes first. What is your thought on that? Do you agree with that?

Beliefs produce behavior. So confidence comes first. Yeah. Before action, right? Like, so you need to have confidence before you. Like necessarily demonstrate like that the beliefs will help produce that action. I don't know. I mean, I get what he's saying and I think there's an element of truth to it. I can also think of ways that I disagree with it. So the thing that comes to mind would be something like, did you ever read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield?

I have not. So that's kind of the classic book on overcoming the resistance. And his whole thing is... And that's the most famous version of it, but there's lots of people who wrote about that, lots of famous quotes about it. One quote that comes to mind is, I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it shows up every morning at 9 o'clock sharp.

And the takeaway from that is even if you don't feel it, you got to just do it. So I think for someone who is creative, maybe that's the exception. to what he's talking about there but that's the world that i live in i even got i even have a a small group in the library where it's a creative coaching group where we're trying to help people overcome the resistance right every day spin up their their side hustle uh sell a knowledge product online stuff like that so um i think if

i were to take that approach with those people they just would never do anything you know if i look back on past mike and you know wait until you feel confident before you write something i wouldn't have ever done anything And that paralyzed me for a long time, actually. That specific belief is like, well, I don't want to write something that's wrong. I have to get better before I can do the thing.

the way you get better is by doing the thing. And in some situations, yeah, you have to practice with your personal trainer and your personal coach until you develop the skill before you compete on the international stage. But for most people, like... no one's going to give you permission to do that no one's going to come alongside you and be like hey i'm going to help you do this you just gotta do it

Maybe that's why you picked that one. I don't know. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. All right. I'm ready to go to chapter seven. We're rounding the quarter here, folks. There are nine chapters in an epilogue, so we're doing well. The chapter seven is entering the arena with confidence. So we make a switch at this point to now we're going to start to think about using the confidence to actually perform. So I would say we kind of turn a corner here to go into.

more about human performance. So he starts this off with... Like transitioning doesn't just happen automatically that a lot of times we need like an effective, like what he calls a pregame routine. He describes this as three, having three key steps, doing an inventory or an assessment. And then.

analyzing the upcoming situation and then deciding that you have enough skill and that you can be successful he then takes that and he breaks each one of those down in a lot more words so step one would be you know he kind of these clever like phrases for them they say what's in your wallet right like so basically what do you have access to um take stock of the situation is who what where

um and then um the last one is decide you're enough and um i like this one i think the most is go from saver to spender or from workhorse to racehorse right like so i kind of like the way he phrases that one uh the most this third step I'm going to talk about that one. And then that might come in kind of on the other ones is if he wants to. But this idea of up until now, we've been thinking about how do we build up that bank account? How do we how do we.

put things in the confidence bank account and and help ourselves to become more confident and at some point we've got to use that At some point, we've got to use that confidence. We've got to turn it into action. And this is where I like this idea from saver to spender. So we take all those things that we've developed and we kind of push those forward and actually perform, actually do the thing that we said we're going to do.

He talks about different sub-tactics. So in the step three, when the sub-tactic would be statements only, that you're not allowed to ask questions anymore. You reach a point where you basically are only doing affirmations and you stop asking. questions, and then that way you stop kind of second guessing yourself, if you will. I'm prepared as I can be. I'm enough. Here we go. And let's get out there and do it.

I don't doubt for a second that this really works. I just don't know if I can see myself in a situation where I would use this all the time.

The closest thing to me would be I somehow became a keynote speaker that traveled around and spoke at a bunch of different... keynote events or spoke to different industry organizations right that's probably the closest way that i would do this where i would have like a pre-game routine to kind of pep myself up for doing these types of talks i'm not going to do this for a class that i teach

You know, like on a normal day. I mean, I teach like, you know, what would it be? It's at least 12 sessions of a class a week, if not more. Like I'm not going to do that 12 times a week. Like it's just it's the stakes aren't high enough for me. So it's like this is where it's like. There's a disconnect for me in this book in terms of like, I just don't know if the things that I'm doing are worthy of the steps he's outlining.

Or maybe I just don't need enough confidence in those areas to do them. So it's where the pregame routine kind of breaks down for me. So this is where I feel like... specifically that comment that you just just shared that's sort of the the sad tragedy with this book because not just because of what dr nate zinzer has mentioned so far here but

all the other things that i have read and all the experience i have in this arena i would say absolutely it is worth it for you to have a ritual which helps you go from workhorse to racehorse 12 times a week as you are preparing. And if I were to follow you around for a day, we might even be able to find that you have one. Already it's just it's just smaller and you haven't really thought about the specific pieces of it

And I think that's the valuable thing here. And so actually my other action item from this book comes from this chapter, which is I want to identify my own pregame ritual. But game day is different for everybody. And he just sort of talks very briefly about that and all the extreme examples of this is how this person crushed it in the PGA Championship or the Beijing Olympics.

That's hard to relate to. But I do think that there's a lot of value in identifying a short pre-ritual maybe it's you know 15 20 minutes before you go to your next class and this is the thing that i do and this is the value that it it gives me and it allows me to show up as my best most authentic self so that i can

deliver the most value to the students that are in the class. Like that's something that you want to do. You do want to perform at a high level, right? Hold on. Hold on. I got to stop you. I got to stop you. Mike, would you consider yourself a confident person? Not a cocky person. Would you consider yourself a confident person? On the outside, probably people would say yes. On the inside, not all the time. Those two don't always match up. But yeah, generally. Yeah, generally.

Okay, because I mean, I don't see you as a person who lacks confidence, right? So you're outside, like I would agree with you on your outside perspective. What is an area, and this is not meant to be a mic interview, this is, I'm getting to a point. So what is an area where you would say you are?

inherently less confident uh i mean basically anytime i show up to make anything online there is a bit of imposter syndrome so i think that that's how that shows up to me and i kind of have figured out over the years specific ways to to deal with that depending on the the venue yeah because because this is where like my head i'm hearing what you're saying and i'm like yes i agree with you like i think it would benefit when it comes to teaching a class

Like, I don't lack confidence. Like, I know because I've prepared. I'm going to go into that and it's going to be fine. Like, I know it's going to be fine. I know things are going to mess up. I know the students are going to ask questions and sometimes I'm not going to know the answer to them. Like, I know that everything is going to be okay. So it's like in this mind, in my... In my brain, and this is where I want you to correct me. This is where I'm thinking. In my brain...

It seems like a waste of time to do a pregame routine for a situation where I'm already confident. Now, like there will be other situations where I'm less confident. So let's say I have to give a presentation to a bunch of supervisors. Right. And it's like, OK, I like I'll.

I want to make sure all my ducks are in a row. I want to make sure that I'm going to say the right thing. I want to practice that presentation a couple different times. I think in that situation, I'm much more likely to have a pregame routine, and it would be much more valuable for me. But for something...

how do i say as routine but i don't mean it in in that way like like what my job is to teach classes i've done this hundreds if not thousands of times i i'm good like i i feel okay with that am i wrong like i'm asking you For me, like, am I wrong? Like, should I be doing a pregame routine? Well, again, you probably have one and you just haven't codified it yet. So for example, I've recorded thousands of podcast episodes at this point, but there is still a routine.

that is individual to the podcast so if it's my book the first part of the routine is finish the book and add the notes so that we have a shared understanding of what we are talking about. And for your episodes, books that you've picked, you've done the same, same thing. When I sit down to record.

I make sure that I fill up my water bottle which is off to the side here. I review my mind map briefly. I try to get up and move around because I know I'm going to be sitting for the next two hours while we record this thing. You know, that's a 10 minute thing, but it happens every time. And it allows me to show up and deliver the best version of the podcast that I can.

the first place that this showed up for me was when i started doing webinars way back in the day with asian efficiency because i would have all the slides done i knew the material

I knew what I was talking about. Like I could deliver the presentation, but I still got super nervous doing it live to hundreds of people. So I would force myself to about a... half an hour before i was supposed to go live shut down the slides leave my house walk around the neighborhood come back and then i was much more calm much more composed and was able to deliver a much better

webinar. So there's different versions of this for the different types of presentations and things that I do, but I recognize that there's like an ideal way to get me in the zone for that type of stuff.

and again you probably have that you probably subconsciously are like okay i'm going into this class in in a half an hour so you just sort of routinely just go do specific things and i don't know what they are but i think even you don't even have to have like a codified in my obsidian you know i have a note for these are the steps the checklist that i follow before i do the thing but just thinking about it a little bit i feel like it it just kind of

It creates this sense of a sense of calm, maybe from the routine, you know, because it's I've done this before and I don't have to be nervous about this. And I think that's where this breaks down for me is like I gather that his is much more. to build the mental confidence and in mine it would much more be to be prepared and comfortable not confident which

I'm not saying that's bad. It's just there's a difference there in terms of the way I think about it. But you got me my action item. I want to try to identify where I have these pregame routines and I don't realize it. I want to try to pay attention to that throughout the next couple of days.

Cool. So, yeah. All right. You ready to go to eight? Let's do it. All right. So chapter eight, playing a confident game from start to finish. Okay. In this section, he talks about mental techniques. So things like...

Is it a temporary one-time occurrence? Is it limited? We tie back into these. Is it non-representative of that's not me? We get into this idea that... There's research out there that supports this quiet mind, helps for high level of execution. Then he gets into probably what I think is his most important point in this chapter is this three-step CBA pre-shot routine. Cue your conviction.

breathe your body, attach your attention. So, you know, how am I going to cue like kind of what I need to do? Then how am I going to like kind of breathe through it? And he goes into this whole spiel about. kind of the the importance of breath work and then you know he comes into this idea of like fixing on you know this um this attention and staying focused as you're going through the thing. So that's a high level of kind of this.

actually performing throughout the entire game and staying focused throughout the entire game? I dislike CBA so much, but again... Why? What gets you? Go ahead. I don't know. Cue your conviction, breathe your body, and attach your ambition is what I wrote down, not attention. But maybe that's wrong. It's very convenient. It's very clever. It feels like this is a three-step process over that really could be condensed as just breathe.

I don't know. Again, what he's talking about is good. Stop thinking so much about what you're doing. Pay attention to what's going on around you. Get out of your mind and into your senses. I agree with that.

I think it's important to have a pre-shot routine, a consistent mental vehicle or path that channels your mind directly into the task at hand. I'm a basketball fan, so there's a very effective... example of this for me because the local team is the Milwaukee Bucks and they've been bad for a really long time until they drafted this kid named Giannis Antetokounmpo out of Greece.

who over the summer put on like 70 pounds of muscle one year and became one of the greatest players that ever played the game. The way that he plays is crazy. uh he's so athletic and he's just 100 miles an hour the entire time so you kind of feel like he's uh he doesn't have a real long window right but also he's done a lot

to conserve his energy. And I just think he has a really great mindset about a lot of different things. For example, one of the things that he does is he has this very specific free throw routine. and because he plays so aggressively so violently for so long he gets to the free throw line pretty frequently He gets banged up a lot, but he's figured out a way to maximize that time. He knows that he's got 10 seconds to shoot a free throw, but the timer doesn't start until the ball is in his hands.

And he also knows that he doesn't have to grab the ball the minute or the second that he walks up to the free throw line. So if you watch him every time he goes there, he goes through his motion and he like pretends he's shooting a free throw once, maybe twice. Then he looks at the ref. Then they give him the ball. Then he dribbles it a set number of times. Takes a great big breath in. Great big breath out. And in the playoffs, you know, because he's right at that 10 second.

limit every time the fans will start counting faster to try to get in his head to get him to miss he's not that great at free throws to begin with so whatever but he's maximized like every second of rest he can get whenever he goes to the the free throw line. So that's what I, the picture that's conjured up for me with the pre-shot routine. And I think you should, you should, you should think about the stuff that you're going to be doing as part of that. Maybe that's a better.

A better definition for what I was describing in the last chapter, where it's not really a whole big ritual because you're getting ready to do this big thing. But maybe walking into class for you is more of a pre-shot routine that you go through as opposed to a formal.

formal ritual um but again like cue your conviction breathe your body attach your ambition what the heck does that mean like i think about those things and even with the descriptions that he's added and i'm like i'm more confused and less likely to do this now Why don't you just tell me to take a step back, breathe, and then focus on what you're doing? Yeah, I would agree. I think it's a complicated explanation.

for that. I really do think it's a complicated explanation for that. Funnily enough, I think the biggest thing I got in this chapter is towards the end of the chapter, he... He describes a coach or a manager talking to one of the pitchers in baseball. And he says to the pitcher, there's 500...

a million people in China who don't care what happens in this ball game. And I'm like, man, like what a, what a way to like re reset somebody's like mental thinking or level set. It's like, listen, this thing that you were like completely stressing over.

super worried about yeah there's like millions and millions of people who could absolutely care less and i'm like man what a powerful statement like it because it just allows you to be allows you to be more free in in the moment allows you to be more confident in the fact that it's like, listen, I'm going to go hard. And if it goes well, great. If it goes poorly, great. Like it's going to be okay. Everything's going to be all right. Yeah. Agreed. Ready to go to chapter nine.

Yeah, let's go to chapter nine. Okay, chapter nine is ensuring the next first victory. And what Mike and I have done somehow, and I'm not sure how we've done this, is we've made it most of the way through this conversation without using the phrase first victory because...

Mike, if I had to guess, I would say First Victory is probably written 200 times in this book.

yeah so it's not original though he he takes it from stephen covey i think who said that things are created twice first in your mind so that's really the first victory is is in your mind And that's sort of the pattern for a lot of the stuff in the book is let's just rewrap things that other people have said in specific ways and add funny acronyms and lists to things, which, again, I have no experience as a... as a uh best in the world at anything

So maybe that's the effective way to do this. Yep. I mean, the book has good reviews and it's been read a bunch. So I guess maybe that is the way to do it. But okay. So chapter nine, ensuring the next first victory, reflect, plan and commit. Or what happened, so what, and now what? So...

It's the way he breaks this down. I mean, it's the simple three-step process that he's given a bunch of different times throughout this book. He ties it to the military, which makes sense, or what they call an action report, an AAR. So you're going to do the what just happened. So what? What does that mean? And then what does that mean in the future? Now what do we do in light of that in the future?

this is pretty straightforward in my mind like i didn't get any kind of major takeaways uh out of this chapter it was mainly thinking about like okay you know we give the speech, we turn in the report, we pitch the game, we do whatever we do, and then we do an activity that says, here's what happened, here's what that means. And here's what we're going to do moving forward. And through that process, we are going to enhance our confidence.

kind of think about things in a way that will boost our confidence. So really, I don't have a ton on this chapter. This chapter was pretty straightforward for me. Well, there's definitely something in here that I wanted to talk about. And that is... Well, first of all, I'll say that the AAR, again, I don't really like that definition, but the what, so what, now what, I think that's a pretty effective framing. I could see that being useful.

There is a section here on page 289 where he talks about continue doing, start doing and stop doing. I assume you've heard me talk about those things. I say that that sounded quite familiar from someone I know who does some things like a quarterly review or mine. Mine is not completely original either. But again, I like mine better.

And if I could find the specific place where I think Keith Cunningham first talked about that. He's the one who wrote the book The Road Less Stupid, which was kind of my introduction to this concept of thinking time. And yeah, that is a part of my personal retreat process is those three questions. But it's also a part of my wife and I's date night. It's part of every single retrospective I ever do now because there's really a lot of value that can come from asking those three specific.

questions and uh continue doing just sounds weird start doing stop doing keep doing that's what it should be it's a really minor nitpick um and the larger point i want to call out here is that i think almost every single chapter i have found something where it's like that is a really powerful idea that i love and i have maybe heard about it before maybe maybe not

Um, but there's, it's kind of shocking to me having talked through all this, how much overlap there is with a lot of the things that I, I talk about a lot of the things that I make. So I feel like if I were to meet Dr. Nate Zinzer in person. He'd probably be one of my favorite people. We would talk for hours if we ever met for coffee. But at this point, I kind of don't like a lot of the stuff that's in this book.

And it's kind of weird. I'm recognizing that inconsistency in myself. What's funny hearing you talk about it is what you've said, and I'm just going to reword it. You like what's in the book. You just don't like the way it's packaged, right? Yeah. the packaging like i don't think you you think the stuff in the book is bad no it's just the packaging you've figured out better ways to package it for you and you know that's okay right i think that's right that's completely fine

All right, I'm ready to move to the epilogue, which is the last and final little bit here. It's not very long at all.

So the bus driver, the general and you very, very quick here. The bus driver, he's riding a bus in New Orleans and the bus driver says something along the lines of just change your mind. If you're having a bad day, change your mind. Right. And he. latches onto that point and basically wants to give that to us to say, like, listen.

you can change your mind just go do it like go change your mind then he ties into the general this is where he talks about the four-star general and he points out that basically this winning the first victory is a continuous ongoing process that never changes you gotta just keep working at it you got to keep nourish nurturing it got to keep practicing it um every day all all the time and then he points to you and he says are you going to do it

Are you going to change your mind and are you going to work on this every day and practice this all the time? You can do it. Here's the charge. Attaboy. Go get them kind of thing. And that's my takeaway of the epilogue. Mike, what did you get from it? Best section in the whole book. Seriously. The story about the bus driver was great. And you know what's great about that story? It doesn't matter who the bus driver is.

I wish there were more stories like that. And it wasn't, you know, this is this hockey player who's on the verge of making it to the NHL, being one of the best that ever played the game, but he has this big roadblock. I can't relate to that.

And again, maybe I'm not the person he wrote the book for then, but if you write a book, you generally want to sell more of those books. To sell more of those books, it has to be a... applicable by more people so i kind of don't think he's writing it just for the people who really want to be the very best at what they do i love that story about the bus driver the story about the general

I didn't really care for that one as much because of what I just said, but also it's a fairly emotional story. So there is that emotional aspect to it, which I think makes it an effective story. The quote that he shares from Sun Tzu is great.

best this is the greatest uh this may be the greatest conclusion to a book i've ever read to be honest like he's he has this quote victorious warriors win first then go to war while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win and then wraps it all up by saying what kind of warrior are you going to be like this is great i kind of wish it hadn't taken 300 pages you know to get to this point but seriously this is this part's awesome

Yep. Okay. Wrapped it up well. That's the confident mind. So we made it through the confident mind. Now it's time to look at what action items did we take away. I'll start us off.

I only had one coming out of this book. My first action item was to try to identify where I've developed pregame routines that I don't know about. and figure out how those work. And I'm going to actually modify this based on what Mike said. I'm going to look at pregame or pre-shot. Because I like the way Mike refined that. Because I think I have more pre-shot routines than I'll have pre-game routines. So that's my only action item from this book. And I feel good about the fact that it...

I got one. Well, to be honest, there really are just routines. Yeah, it's fine to combine. It's true. Yes, correct. Correct. I could just drop the pregame or pre shot and just put routines. But OK, Mike, what do you got? What are yours? All right. So I got two of them here. my rituals and then revisiting my affirmations, which we talked about at length. So we don't need to revisit those. I feel like this is the kind of book where you could have, you know.

50 action items if you really tried to apply every single thing that he he talked about but uh just as a to interject here for people who didn't listen the whole episode just jump straight to the action items and selling rating uh don't do that Yeah, I told you before, I didn't know what to prioritize. As I was going through here, nothing jumped out at me from a major way. So I ended up having nothing until we recorded the episode. I didn't have any...

action items identified prior to this. Okay, so let's go style and rating now. My book, so here we go. Overall, Mike, I like this book.

I thought this was an interesting book on a subject of confidence. I thought the stories were interesting. And there were good examples. I think he provided good tangible examples for different things.

Probably my biggest issue with the book was I thought there were too many examples. I didn't think we needed that many examples. I didn't have the rub that I think you're going to talk about where... you didn't really like the way you contextualize a lot of things and you know like the way you have like better packages for things i didn't have that it was fine for me to to read his perspective on these things um i actually think i'm going to use quite a bit of what I captured out of this book.

um in areas where i where i lack confidence i'm going to think about it i'm going to go okay what would zinser say is a way to to address this and to kind of approach this i already used one thing and that was cool to see it be somewhat successful um as i I thought about that assessment and was working on that.

So overall, I mean, I thought this was a good book. I by no means think it was the best book I've ever read. I can't tell you that I'm going to recommend it to everybody or that I'm going to recommend it often. I think if I... mentoring or advising people who are struggling with confidence, and I think they're struggling with confidence, I might throw this book at them. But even then, it's hard because...

it's just so context specific. Like his examples are so context specific that I think it's hard for a lot of people to relate with. And I also think it's hard for them to relate with for 350 something pages or however long along the book. is like i mean it's just a long uh at times i thought it was drawn out um if i'm being being completely honest so this book's gonna get a four star out of me

because I think it's valuable, but I don't think it's the best book that I've ever read. And I think it's a little context specific. So I'm going to give it a four star and I'm excited to hear what you think of it, Mike. Well, first of all, WWZD, I think that's your new takeaway. What would Zinzer do? Wow. No, that's probably too strong. I am conflicted because I don't want to do 0.5 ratings. So I agree with everything that you said about this book just now.

I think it is a valuable read. I think it is a fairly entertaining read. There were a lot of honestly very nitpicky stuff that I blew out of proportion. for the sake of entertaining podcasting um i love the way you package that well it's true i mean if we're we're being honest like uh The stuff that I picked out is really not a big deal. And what he talks about does, I believe, have the potential to completely change your life. I think it's an important topic. I think it's an important message.

And I think a lot of the nitpicks go away if this is the first book that I've read on this sort of thing. I do still struggle with the fact that there's tons and tons of action items in here, and it is... it does come across as a bit of a system and i don't like that so go into it with your eyes open and pick and choose the pieces that you really want to uh want to apply but the the

Bigger nitpick I have with the overall style and rating of the book, I think, is just that when you're going through it and you're reading about all these individual action items, I want to hear what you think about this. The way I read them... It feels like if you don't do the beginning ones, the next ones aren't going to be as effective. He doesn't say that, but that's sort of the implied messaging that I got from reading this. Did you feel the same way? Yeah, I wouldn't.

I wouldn't have been able to think about these next two comments without having this conversation. It wouldn't have come to my mind. But I think what you just said is very true. You got to do the front end work in order for the back end work to make sense. But he doesn't ever come out and say that specifically. And then the other comment is about you saying that it's a system.

I actually think this book might have been more effective if he would have doubled down on the fact that I'm going to present to you a system. And here is my system. Here's the way it is outlined. Here's the global picture. And then we're going to talk about each aspect of the system.

I actually think that would have been a better book in a more... enjoyable book i mean i can like or not like the system but at least it's a unified presented system whereas here it felt a little bit disjointed so but yeah i agree with you that that it you do need to do the front end i think before you can get the benefits of the back end

Okay, so then you helped me sort through my dilemma here, and I'm going to rate it three stars. I was torn between three and four stars because I do think there's... If I had to guess, you were going to go three stars. Yeah, that's what I had to guess. I do think that for a very specific type of person, this is actually probably a five-star book. And most people who do just want to be quote-unquote more productive...

This is probably a four star book. My approach to productivity, I think, is different, changed and evolved over the years where it's not so much cranking the widgets and becoming the best at something. having the greatest impact and being able to follow through on the intentions that I set most effectively.

So I'm maybe not the right person for the battle tested guide to unshakable performance. Maybe I'm at the point in my life where the performance kind of doesn't matter. I like to think that it does. Just the arena is a little bit different. So I have a little bit of trouble generalizing this one.

But I think there's a lot of good stuff in here, and I think he's a good writer. I do still stand by my comment about the stories. I wish there were more stories like the bus driver one at the end sprinkled throughout instead of... all the famous people that he's uh he's worked with and um just because i feel like they're more approachable and i honestly think they are a better example of the type of of uh growth mindset that he's really

talking about in in this book it's like you can learn from anybody you know that's the implicit takeaway from that bus driver's story so i feel like having a few more of those would maybe make it a little bit more approachable and honestly a little bit more entertaining

more applicable for just about anyone i'm not sure who i would recommend this book to either i was struggling with you know if i were to to recommend something for someone who really wants to just level up and become better at something

Do I recommend this or inner excellence? And I think for the most part, I would recommend inner excellence over this one to just about anyone. Maybe you've got a specific person where you think like, oh, absolutely, confident mind makes more sense, but I'm having trouble.

uh, thinking of who that would be. Yeah. So I, I have people, um, that I'm in, I'm part of a workout group with that I think would resonate more with the confident mind. Um, thing but I think in general your statement is correct that like inner excellence is a more approachable um a book and I and I think that one will get recommended more widely than than this one Gotcha. All right, Mike. Let's go ahead and put The Confident Mind on the shelf. What is the next book for Bookworm?

The next book we're going to read is one that I came across and then realized that someone had recommended this. So thank you, Carol, for recommending The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. And we should also point out that there will be a link to the book recommendation form in the show notes for the episode. So if you have a book that you want us to cover.

Please fill out that form. Recommend it. We check that list when we pick our books. And we won't guarantee that we're going to do everything that's submitted there. I think I speak for both of us and we want to prioritize the ones that people recommend over just the ones that appear interesting to us. Occasionally we'll just grab one of those anyways because we want to talk about the books we want to talk about. But I'm always looking for new things to read.

um please fill out that form after the let them theory what are we reading gory Okay, so the next one is going to be one that Mike brought up. I don't know when, Mike. Probably around the time. Many moons ago. Yeah, probably the time we were doing the Bob Dotto stuff. It was back in there sometime. But it's called The Elements of Eloquence.

Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase, and it's by Mark Forsyth. So it's a book on writing, and it's a book on kind of the way you think about putting words together. So it's going to be a fun one. Awesome. Mike, do you have any gap books between now and our next recording? Not this time. Maybe I will have one by the time we record again because I will be in. Boise for craft and commerce and lots of airplanes. So we'll see. But as of now, no gap book.

I am not going to put a gap book on here. I am finishing A Praying Life. Freely admit to you, Mike, I didn't read it. I listened to it. for the sake of life not i know i know don't shake your head at me with that disappointed dad look um but uh I'm almost through a praying life or sorry, a praying church. This one's called a praying church. I'm almost through that one, but I'm not going to sign up for a gap book right now. Alrighty.

Okay, so that wraps up another one. You can go ahead and put The Confident Mind on the shelf. Pick up The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. That'll be our next read for Bookworm. Again, if you want to recommend a book, look at the show notes. to throw a book at us and we'll take a look at it and see how we think it fits into the show. If you're interested in more content, if you're interested in getting the show earlier, getting the bootleg feed,

feel free to go over to patreon.com slash bookwormfm. There you can sign up to become a pro member and there's some perks to it. You can get a wallpaper, you get access to... that bootleg feed, get access to the show earlier. than when we drop the traditional episode. There's also the live stream right now, which the live stream video stream goes up on YouTube from the moment we hit record. And we send out a post for that. If you have your notifications turned on, you can.

can see that as well. So if you're interested in supporting the show, it helps us just kind of with the backend processes of, you know, website and hosting the show and all of those things. So thank you for those who are pro members. And if you're interested in that, it's patreon.com slash book. Thank you all for another episode, and we look forward to Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins.