As we often say, people have a tendency to drastically overestimate what they can do in a day and drastically underestimate what they can do in a year, particularly these days when so much of our world is oriented towards instant gratification. So today we're talking about the art of sustainable success and how to play the long game. We discuss how to overcome the difficulties of setting (and sticking to) big goals, strategies for staying disciplined and trusting your plan, ideas about how to bu...
Apr 10, 2025•35 min
Today we're breaking down confidence. We discuss what it is (earned self-belief) and what it isn't (bravado, arrogance, positive thinking, or the absence of doubt and insecurity); how to build and maintain it; the cons (and some surprising pros!) of delusional confidence; how to keep from tipping over into complacency or arrogance; and practical steps to get your mojo back after a slump. Join The Growth Equation Academy today. 40% off for a limited time! https://the-growtheq-academy.mn.co/ If yo...
Apr 03, 2025•40 min
Today, we talk about how to navigate life and athletic performance amidst stress. We discuss the impact of mental and emotional stress on physical performance, and share personal anecdotes and scientific insights on the interplay between cognitive stress and physical endurance, including effects on the immune system and cortisol levels. We've also got some practical advice on adjusting training intensity, work tasks, and daily routines during high-stress periods, and break down how to set realis...
Mar 27, 2025•34 min
March Madness is back! In honor of its return, we put together a special edition FAREWELL bracket with sixteen of the world's best performers, across sports and entertainment. Following a random seeding, we broke down each matchup until we had our lone champion. So give it a listen and find out who took home the title of World's Top Performer. And then please let us know what we got right, and what we got very, very wrong. Email us at clay.growtheq@gmail.com or leave us a voicemail at ( 646) 893...
Mar 20, 2025•45 min
"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." The French philosopher Blaise Pascal said this in 1654. A study published in 2014 found this to be true: many subjects chose to administer an electric shock to themselves rather than sit alone with their thoughts. It's a universal difficulty being with the discomfort that sometimes bubbles up out of our own brains, be it boredom or anxiety. But it's often on the other side of this difficulty that we find our m...
Mar 13, 2025•54 min
A couple of recent events—Elon Musk parading onstage with a chainsaw at the Conservative Political Action Conference and bragging about DOGE's 120-hour work weeks, and Timothée Chalamet saying he wanted to be one of "the greats" in an acceptance speech at the SAG Awards—ignited a conversation on the Growth Equation text thread about what role work should play in our lives. In a society that sometimes overly valorizes busyness or performative productivity, and also sometimes overly critiques the ...
Mar 06, 2025•1 hr 15 min
Today we're sharing our all-time favorite quotes we've collected over the years. These are words about everything from performance to spirituality to decency that we keep coming back to when we need inspiration, a thought-provoking prompt, or a tidy bit of wisdom. Message us at clay.growtheq@gmail.com with a few you liked from today's episode, or some favorites of your own. Join The Growth Equation Academy today. 40% off for a limited time! https://the-growtheq-academy.mn.co/ Now offering up to ...
Feb 27, 2025•33 min
From years of experience working with NBA players, CEOs, para jumpers, and Olympians, performance psychologist Alex Auerbach has learned about the most effective strategies for giving some of the world's most elite performers a mental edge. Today, he walks us through how to use those tools in our own life: how to manage pressure, performance anxiety, and impostor syndrome; how to think through setting goals (including the difference between outcome, performance, and process goals—and which you s...
Feb 20, 2025•55 min
Two topics for you today. On the back of the Super Bowl, Brad shares a message of resilience inspired by Eagles' quarterback Jalen Hurts. Then, a discussion, inspired in part by Hartmut Rosa's book "The Uncontrollability of the World," about the role of technology in helping us achieve peak performance and live a meaningful life. How can we use devices in such a way that they aid our objective performance without becoming so obsessed with control that we lose touch with our subjective experience...
Feb 13, 2025•35 min
When we think of "choking," we usually think of a field goal kicker missing a clutch kick, or someone freezing up during an important speech. In those moments, the mind is overcome with fear, doubt, and anxiety, and the body, sensing danger, shuts down, overriding ability and preparation. In his newest book Win the Inside Game , Steve Magness makes the case that many of the aspects of modern living make us feel similarly threatened and frozen. It can underlie why we feel burnt out at work, stuck...
Feb 06, 2025•49 min
On today's episode, Steve breaks down his five foundational rules for building a training practice that he's used to coach world-class athletes to success. These five core principles provide a useful template for athletes of all experience levels, whether you're hoping to train in running, sport, or beyond (including outside the realm of physical exercise). We cover how to think about building a foundation, maintaining a broad base while sharpening specific skills, individualizing and customizin...
Jan 30, 2025•31 min
Last week we heard the ways in which our fractured attention was keeping us from connecting and negatively impacting our society. So this week we're turning to some solutions by discussing ways to improve our attentional health in an increasingly distracting digital world. We struggle with this as much as anyone else, so we're going through the strategies, practices, and tips we've found most helpful in helping us reclaim our attention back from our devices. Join The Growth Equation Academy toda...
Jan 23, 2025•37 min
Americans are spending more time alone than we have in a long, long time. That wouldn't be such a big deal if we weren't also reporting feelings of increased anxiety and unhappiness. This is why journalist Derek Thompson, in his recent cover story for The Atlantic , titled "The Anti-Social Century" (link below), writes, “Self-imposed solitude might just be the most important social fact of the 21st century in America." Today, Brad and Clay talk to Derek about how we got here, the consequences it...
Jan 16, 2025•53 min
Badwater 135 is a 135-mile race across Death Valley, where temperatures reach 125 degrees, runners cover an elevation gain of more than 20,000 feet, and where one of the primary injury concerns is organ failure. Today's guest, Kelaine Conochan, has completed it twice. Her most recent Badwater finish came this past July with Clay acting as one of the four members of her crew. She has also completed three 100-milers, nine 50-milers, and more than 20 marathons, with multiple Boston-qualifying finis...
Jan 09, 2025•52 min
Happy New Year! To celebrate, we've put together a special edition of The Coach Up, looking and highlighting 25 of our favorite learnings from a year of FAREWELL. Plus: five questions to ask yourself to get closer to where you want to be in 2025. Join The Growth Equation Academy today. 40% off for a limited time! https://the-growtheq-academy.mn.co/ If you are enjoying FAREWELL, do us a huge favor: text your favorite episode to three people so they can enjoy it, too. Thanks! iTunes and Apple Podc...
Jan 02, 2025•25 min
We use the last episode of the 2024 calendar to reflect on the year, discussing the tools or mental frameworks we found most useful, the biggest lessons learned, our favorite performances, and the most impactful books we read. Thanks for helping to give us a great year! If you like the podcast, please consider giving us the gift of recommending to a friend (or three!). Join The Growth Equation Academy today. 40% off for a limited time! https://the-growtheq-academy.mn.co/ If you are enjoying FARE...
Dec 26, 2024•38 min
Oxford's 2024 word of the year is "brain rot" (which appears, to us at least, to be two words). What does it mean? "The deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content)." It is a common symptom of living in an age where so much of our consumption takes place in the frenzied, distracted, and noisy digital world. So today, in an effort to carry healthier consumption habits into the new year, w...
Dec 19, 2024•45 min
On today's episode, we discuss the role of intense workouts ("Going to see God" as Steve calls it): the physical and psychological benefits and how you should use them. Then we answer a listener voicemail about the surprising science of beating procrastination: why you might be framing the problem wrong in your head (hint: it's not about being lazy or having bad time management), tips for getting started when you really feel like you can't, and when it's actually okay to keep pushing things off....
Dec 12, 2024•32 min
We all have bad days, when we can't get motivated, perform in the way we were hoping to, or adhere to the schedule we had planned. Contrary to popular belief, these are not roadblocks on the path to excellence. In fact, figuring out how to show up on days when you don't feel your best — and not allowing a bad day to spiral and become a bad week — is one of the keys to being a true pro. Today, we talk through physiological and psychological strategies for doing just that. 01:13 Understanding...
Dec 05, 2024•47 min
The holiday season brings with it many traditions, two of which we're covering in today's episode: Navigating contentious conversations or disagreements with family members and incessant reminders to practice gratitude. Both of those can be difficult, so today we talk through strategies for knowing when to engage in disagreement and when to walk away, the surprising phrase that might help change someone's mind, and ways to practice and think about gratitude that are actually useful. Plus: a quic...
Nov 28, 2024•44 min
In conjunction with this week's Growth Equation newsletter, we're diving deep into the deteriorating state of public health in America. As the wellness industry continues to boom, our country's collective health continues to decline. Something is wrong. Today, we try to diagnose how we got here and where we might go next. Topics discussed include how to combat misinformation; why health grifting has gotten so bad; the increasingly problematic ways in which "studies" and "research" are used; what...
Nov 21, 2024•55 min
Today's episode draws on conversations with an Olympic gold medalist, an ultrarunner, and a Buddhist author to discuss a potential way to think about achievement that might help you focus on the process rather than the outcome—particularly if you're someone who is forever chasing the next thing. Join The Growth Equation Academy today. 40% off for a limited time! https://the-growtheq-academy.mn.co/ If you are enjoying FAREWELL, do us a huge favor: text your favorite episode to three people so the...
Nov 18, 2024•16 min
Two skills that will be helpful to anyone trying to master a craft or achieve excellence (or, frankly, make it through life): the capacity to be with difficulty, and an ability to show up consistently even when nothing is on the line. Luckily, today's guest has more than fifty years of practice with both. Stephen Batchelor is a Buddhist thinker, teacher, and author, who has written numerous books on how Buddhist wisdom can be applied in everyday life. Today, he discusses his path to Buddhism—inc...
Nov 14, 2024•48 min
On this episode of The Coach Up, you'll learn how the Pareto Principle can be used to help you get clarity on what's most essential in your life — from work to exercise to diet to relationships — in order to keep you feeling and performing your best. This will be particularly helpful if you're feeling stuck in your life or struggling to make a change or get started on a new habit or practice, or if you're feeling overwhelmed, like you have too much to do and need to figure out how to pare back. ...
Nov 11, 2024•11 min
Today, Clay asks Steve to answer all of your most pressing marathon questions: what to know before signing up; what he thinks the Boston Marathon should do about qualifying standards, how to think about setting a reasonable and achievable goal; breaking down the physiological and psychological importance of building an aerobic base; how to think about building out a plan; how to incorporate speed work; how to find your marathon pace; what novices can learn and use from an elite runner's training...
Nov 07, 2024•59 min
In his 1990 book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience , psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi laid out the ideas that would give birth to the idea of the "flow state." In the years since, the flow state has long been sought after by all manner of people—athletes, artists, performers—who are hoping to increase their productivity and happiness by losing themselves in an activity or getting "in the zone." Today, you'll learn the eight factors that Csikszentmihalyi found most reliably led to op...
Nov 04, 2024•15 min
We are, each of us, getting older every moment. (Scary, we know!) So how should we think about adjusting our training as we age, particularly if we're still hoping to perform at a high level? That's the question we address today. Steve, Clay, and Brad talk about how to constructively use life's constraints, how to think about approaching progressive overload as one gets older, and why the wisdom that comes with experience—including a better understanding of one's fatigue—can help offset physical...
Oct 31, 2024•41 min
Steve Magness is back on The Coach Up to discuss the nuances of doing "intense" or "all-out" workouts. Since the explosion of High Intensity Interval Training, there has been much discussion about how to use maximally difficult efforts in training plans. But a lot of that discussion misunderstands the complexities of fatigue and how it's best deployed as a stimulus. Steve explains how to know if you're working too hard, what the risks are, and how to think about stressing your body in such a way...
Oct 28, 2024•14 min
Knowing when to quit, and when to push on, is as much an art as a science. Where is the line between normal fatigue or difficulty, and harmful discomfort? It's a question we all have to navigate in many different endeavors: work, creative pursuits, relationships, long-term projects, physical goals, and more. Quit too soon and you'll constantly fall short of your biggest ambitions—but sometimes hanging on can do as much as harm as good. Today, inspired by a recent story from The New Yorker (link ...
Oct 23, 2024•45 min
On this week's Coach Up, a lesson from the book "Everyday Zen" by Charlotte Joko Beck about expanding the upper reaches of your comfort zone. Join The Growth Equation Academy today. 40% off for a limited time! https://the-growtheq-academy.mn.co/ If you are enjoying FAREWELL, do us a huge favor: text your favorite episode to three people so they can enjoy it, too. Thanks! iTunes and Apple Podcasts Spotify Android PocketCasts Got a question, feedback, or ideas for the show? Email clay.growtheq@gma...
Oct 21, 2024•8 min
