Because that's it. No struggle, no swag, and that's it. Everybody wants swag, but are you willing to struggle for it? Yeah, but that's how you get it. You get it out of the struggle. People don't understand this. The struggle is when our latent ability to express itself. So things are going smooth and it's nothing happening, we're in a comfort zone.
Then we're not really going to learn.
As much as we will learn if we keep pushing that envelope in a compassionate way.
Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome George Mumford to the show. George is a globally recognized speaker, teacher, and coach. Since nineteen eighty nine, he's been honing his gentle but groundbreaking mindfulness techniques with people from locker rooms to boardrooms. Michael Jordan credits George with transforming his on court leadership, helping the Bulls to six NBA championships. George has also worked with Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, and countless
other NBA players, olympians, executives and artists. He's the author of The Mindful Athlete and most recently unlocked. In this episode, I talked to George Mumford about peak performance. How does one consistently perform at a high level, whether it be work, sports, art, or any other craft. George believes that everyone has the potential to excel. To unwock greatness, he believes he must cultivate mental toughness and love and we're to stay in
the flow state. In this episode, George talks about his experience coaching the Chicago Bulls, how he helped the team thrive on and off the court. We also touch on the topics of mindfulness, resilience, forgiveness, and joy. It was very joyful chatting with George Mumford, and I know you will find it joyful as well.
So without further ado, I bring you George Mumford.
George Mumford, Welcome to the Psychology Podcast.
Thank you.
That was my like, that was like my Chicago Bulls intro. Right there, do Do Do Do Do Doo?
A good one, dude.
So, yeah, welcome to the Psychology Podcast.
I'm happy to be here.
Yeah, well, thank you, thank you. A lot of people have been telling me very enthusiastically about how awesome you are, and after reading your books, I must say, I agree, I agree. Congratulations on your new one.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Is it true that you got a master's in counseling psychology.
Yes, that is correct.
Tell me a little bit about that.
You know how you got into that and uh, you know how you got interest in that because you you left the career as a financial analyst, right.
Yes, I left your career as a financial analyst. So when I got in the recovery, when I got cleaned, it's like I came out of the detox a different person.
Everything was different.
And so I got in well, I was actually reading before that, but I got into this. I was intellectually stimulated and I had I actually got into this program. It was a it was a cutting edge program. It was about stress management, and so taught me about changing my lifestyle, specifically learning how to use meditation and you know, just really taking personal responsibility for myself and being a part of my of my of whatever it is, my recovery,
my whatever. Took me to the physician's office. Then instead of just going there and giving the physician, the physician or the doctor all the power, it was me being a partner and being more involved in it. And taking responsibility for, you know, my experience and sharing my experience with the clinician so that we could really access, you know, really address what was happening. So when I got in this program, they had a syllabus books to read like pain as Motivator and you know M Scott Packt.
It was a ton of books.
So I read all the books on the phyllabus and then I went every book that I read. They had all the books, and I kept reading books. So I averaged over a book a week for the last thirty nine coming up thirty eight and eight years and eleven months, and I don't know, maybe twenty one days, not done counting or anything, but I averaged over a book a week. And so I was doing all this stuff, you know, I was reading all these books and doing all this.
Work psychology, philosophy, religion.
I was doing all of this reading and research and studying. And my friend John came over one day and he said, man, you're doing all that work, and he threw an application at me. It was Cambridge College. He said, you might as well tricker, like, you might as well get credit for your work. So I fill out the application and I signed up for counseling psychology, because I wanted to understand how people get motivated to do things they couldn't
do before. In my case, how why is it that I was able to to embrace my anxiety, not my anxiety, but my addiction and going to recovery. I was able to do what I wasn't able to do before. So
I was very interested in motivation. And also I was working as I was training as a therapist as a clinician, I started thinking about, especially working with people and with substances they have to get for gap they know how to tell you exactly what you want and then not do it, And so I wanted to learn more about this idea of people who don't have integrity, which means people who don't walk their talk. How do I know what to believe in? Do I believe what they say
or do I believe what they do? And so I got very fascinated in learning how to communicate or be able to read people in the sense of, you know, being able to communicate with them. And that's when I discovered that ninety three percent of communication is non verbal. It's tonality and body language. So thats what got me in It was my curiosity, and so that's what got me into it. And then of course I went to
school for and then I was still working. And then when I quit my job, I contemplated going and getting my PhD. But I realized that to do what I wanted to do, there was no degree for it, so I just started studying on my own.
I love that.
Yeah, you kind of carved your own pathway which combined it, or shall we say, integrated lots of your prior life as well. You were a student athlete right University of Massachusetts.
Yeah, I played.
I played sports until you know, in high school and then in college. My freshman year I didn't play in the sports. And my sophomore year that's when I asked go out for the basketball team. That's when I got injured. In My career was pretty much over after that injury.
Did you play on the court with Julie Serving?
Yes, yes, yes, real roommates, But I met him my freshman year.
Were you better than him at that point?
No, not even in the same category.
You know, you know, uh, there's some people who were basketball players, you know, you know, he's a legend. Then there's some people who were has beens and then there's people that were never was, never.
Was he never was.
I had all potential, but I didn't get to express it. Right.
We used to play a lot of pick up together, and of course the plan was we were roommates. Was me to play for the team, And so I went out for the team and didn't make it. But I still was very involved with the team in the sense of being his roommate. And when recruits came on campus, I would n't attain them and stuff like that. So I still stayed involved. I just wasn't on the court
like right, So that's the thing. So, yeah, we used to play pick up together and and you know, the only time I didn't play with him was when he was playing for the team because I wasn't on the team. But you know, we used to bondstorm sometime, go to Connecticut other places, myself, him and a couple of folks that we hung with, players that we hung with. We would play but so yeah, so I would play with him and against them when I was so I want a freshman.
That's so cool.
Yeah.
So then you know, you had some injuries and that's what led to this addiction to pain medication and drugs. As you were just talking about.
Well, I was injury prone even before I got to U masked, and so I was on dob On and other sorts of drugs they didn't have they didn't have sports medicine in those days. And so there was something about my consciousness being altered where I was able to, you know, basically I was able to, you know, get out of my inhibitions. You know, there was something about expanding consciousness, and you can do that, it's through medication
and so yeah. So but I was pretty much controlled, and even up until the last until I went into the detox, I was. I was a functional on substance abuser. In other words, I still worked and I did things, but it had an impact on a lot of stuff and it prevented me from doing a lot of things. But I was functional until I wasn't.
Yeah, you know this job, I mean, what a perfect job for you. You know what you did as a mindfulness athletic coach.
What would it be called? Sports psychologist?
Thank you for asking, because there was really no title, no title, There was no title. I mean the closest I came to what really expressed what I did was I was talking to my friend Bill Kennedy, we did executive coaching together and he said, you're ontological coach and I said, yeah, that sounds about right, but nobody would know what that meant. And plus it's not it doesn't have any snaps. You know on ontological coach the study
of being. Oh, okay, actually you're doing You're teaching people to access the potential and talk about the idea of being guilty of not expressing yourself fully or not actually developing your potential, but somehow finding ways of hiding out or escaping from your freedom. You know these books written Escape from Freedom by Eric.
Frohman, their books, yeah books.
So for me it was yeah, so I kind of lost trained what we were talking about.
I don't even remember.
Yeah, how did you? How did you? What are you called? What are you called?
What am I called? Yes? What's my handle?
So I back in twenty nineteen, I was doing something with the Milk and Global Conference and they called me the performance whisperer, So I think that's probably more appropriate. But for my when my book The Mindful of Athletes Secrets Pure Performance came out eight years ago, and I was doing a lot of like what I'm doing now for Unlocked, going around talking to people and talking about my book, and what I realized was was that people were really.
Interested in performance.
And my definition of performance is obviously, you know, like the Denver Nuggets and the joker who is not a joke, you know, he you know, you perform well.
You whatever you're doing, you do it at a high level, and you do.
It consistently the high level or you would say elite performance or whatever. And so when I started talking to people, people wanted a great like Joseph Campbell talked about in The Power Myth, people want a sense of feeling fully alive. People want to show up, so meaning, you know, Richter Franco talked about meaning you can you can find meaning in three different ways, at least three ways, and first way is to you know, to create something or do a good deed. And then the second way was to
encounter someone or to experience something. Of course he's talked about love there. And the third way was taking a stance when you are confronted with unavoidable suffering that you choose how to relate to it. So in this space between stemas and response, you choose to relate to what's happening to you as you know there's a lesson there, and you bring grace and dignity to it.
And you you choose how you want to relate to it.
You that's that's your expression of freedom is when you know it's unavoidable suffering and you're willing to say yes to it, embrace it, and to learn from it, and to make it a turn a road block into stepping stone.
So I do all of that.
So some people, in some domains, a personal organizational development consultant would work in a business domain or executive coach or something like that, and in the sports arena it was sports psychology consultant. And you know, in other places it's just teacher, just a teacher or a facilitator or a guide, however you want to frame it. So I would say teachers probably closer to what I do. I teach people about being themselves. That's kind of what I do.
What I do is I help people find themselves no matter where they are. And in my book, I talk about it being you know, being unlocked, embrace your greatness, firing the flow to discover success. And so my commitment is to help anybody, at any time, in any place unlocked.
Yes, it seems like your definition of greatness is one where you are being as uniquely you as possible. It doesn't sound like it's a very competitive form of greatness.
Well, when you're competing at the high level, that's because you, as Bruce Lee called it, he talked about martial arches, honestly expressing yourself. And so to the degree that you have an intention and you're able to bring that intention into manifestation in a way where you feel good and you feel like you've you've met your commitment and maybe then some but you feel you know, you really felt like you fully express yourself. That is that's a powerful thing.
And once again we go back to the existentialists, which I get a lot of my stuff from. In this in this sense is sore and turkey God. And he said, I forget how he said it, but something like a general form of despair or an you know, a devastating form.
Of despair is not being yourself.
And so there's something when I say that, Well, most of us don't know who we are, or we have an idea, but we're we're not things. We're not set points, we're events, We're always evolving, and changing. And so the idea is to be yourself, is to fully be able to express yourself or might I say having a fully integratedself.
And this is I'm going back to Eric from now when he talks about this idea of spontaneity of one's own will, and you can only be spontaneous when you have a fully integratedself.
You have to wait till then.
Well here to say.
Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you said that, because nothing is permanent. Okay, So this moments of time when you happen to be in alignment and you get into flow, you know, when you're great your.
Greatness can I could be spontaneous and you.
Get in the flow.
So let me remind us that the old digital clock non digital clock is right twice a day, So even by accident, you're going to have a moment of being unlocked. But the challenge is can you recognize it. And to the degree that we can recognize it and learn from it, we can replicate it or have that experience more often. But we have to be willing to use our self awareness, our ability to observe uncritically or some people will call it mindfulness, but it's really this idea of letting whatever
speak to us express itself in its own language. And there's something about when we're not pushing it away opponent towards us, or spacing out or interpreting what it means before we get the full measure of the communication. Once
we can just be still and know. As they say, there's something about that when we can just wash weight with the alert and be relaxed at the same time as a wisdom and creativity that comes out of that silence, that ability to just when we see clearly, then the action is clear.
M Does that make sense?
Well, yes, it does.
I like the I like the idea that of effortless effort, which encapsulates what you're talking about. I'm going to read a quote from the great George Mumford. When we are unlocked and in touch with the power within us, in touch with our true selves, we move an effortless synchronicity with the greater whole life moves in us and through us, which is what is going on all the time anyway, although we're not in touch with it, mindful of it,
because our thinking process gets in the way. I think that quote encapsulates a lot, a lot.
I just quoted you.
But yeah, yeah, that's a pretty I like that.
That's good. That's good. That's some good ship right there.
Yeah, that's you know, that's how I say it, That's how I do it.
But that's the thing when you're in flow, and I live and flow a lot, and it's not bragg or whatever.
I'm just challenging myself.
I'm comfortable being uncomfortable, and I'm the best.
Way to learn something is to teach it.
So I'm interested in helping people unlocked, and so that means I have to model that and I have to understand how to do that and to keep moving out of my comfort zone and expanding my potentiality or my capacity however you want to look at it. There's something that happens when we're challenged, and sometimes for us, some of us, is when we're in extreme difficulty excuse me, a life or death or an earth sense of urgency, that latent abilities having to have the opportunity to express themselves.
And so it's only through adversity, you know, like if everything happened and I didn't have any struggles, or I didn't have to deal with Southern's abuse of chronic pain, or just get to a point where I want to understand. I want to pursue excellence and wisdom with grace and ease. The grace and ees wasn't always there, but now it's there, and that's when you're on lock. Realize that less there's more,
and you don't have to do anything. And once again we talked about at the beginning of this, I was looking for my folder, my holder for my phone. I put together the phone in a home so I called it a folder instead of holder for the phone.
It just gotta it kind of happened.
But but when I when I was looking for it and I couldn't find it, and I unlocked once I let it go. There's something about unlocked and when you let go and you don't try to make something happen, you're allow it to happen the effortless effort. It is just that I just formed the intention okay, I need to find my you know, the phone holder, and then being okay with not being able to find it and saying, okay, let's just move let's move on. And then as soon as I turned my head to move on, oh here
it is right here. And so we do that all the time. There's times when what's happening is we're locked up because we're wanting to do something so badly or using too much effort or too much you know, you know, it's like we make it like a sense of urgency when it's coud be e it could be easy lead them or we can slow most slowly, smooth, smooth as fast.
So we have to understand that just by taking the extra time to really understand and get a clear picture of what's going on, then the action is going to be clear because we don't see something, then the action happens. They co arise, so you see what I'm saying, And that's when it's the Effortless effort is when you're able to be open and just let things speak to you and when you form the intention, you make an intention and then you allow it to happen. Yes, you allow it.
You're not trying to make it happen. But if you don't have the ability to be uncomfortable with have that cognitive dissonance, as we're talking in psychology, to be comfortable with the cognitive dissonance, to be comfortable with delaying gratification, when we're able to just be there and just allow things. Then there's the effortless effort happens. But we train ourselves for that. It's not like it's happening and we didn't practice it. No, we got to practice. We got to
keep developing and acquiring more skills, knowledge and experience. And then then when we do that, at least my experience is when you do that, then you get to a place where you start to see things and even though you don't know what you're doing, you do it makes any sense, like all the new stuff like you go in and eat. Each checkout kind of has a different way of being. And I find when I don't try to figure out well I'll put it. This has been
my whole life thing. I'm one of those guys that directions is a problem sometimes, especially when I try to find my find a place. But if I don't try to find a place, I find it. Now It's like, so how somehow I get out.
Of my own way.
I'm unlocked because I'm not doing what I eventually do or saying okay, seeing it from a now point of view out of fear, like oh, I don't want to get lost, whether rather than just saying it's okay, if I get lost, I'll find my way. It's not a problem when I can stay open and just allow it to happen. And then I learned from my mistakes. So
you learn from the mistakes and then okay, what's the lesson? Okay, but a lot of this stuff, as you might imagine, you can't really this is what Joseph Kimmel talked about.
You know, you can't name it. Some of this stuff.
You can't name it because it's it's nonlinear, it's beyond human resource. But Joseph Camel will call it. But there's these instincts, there's these this information we have access to that you really can't. Like quantum physics, you can't really for a minute, it's a wave. In the next minute, it's a particle, but the consciousness and the intention has everything to do with collapsing it into a particle rather than being a wave of possibility. If that makes any sense.
Yo, you're spouting some quantum physics over here.
Yes, well I read about that as well. It's like, but it makes sense.
It makes sense to how this idea, this idea that everything that ever happened or will happen already exists. Yeah, so that do you have to be that's got to be the quantum field otherwise, you know, it says the wave of possibilities there, but how do you bring it into manifestation?
How do you how do you collapse the wave?
The notion of that and potential is very interesting because we don't all have the same potentialities, but we don't know what they are until we really put in the work to see you know as well.
Yes, well we all have our own conditioning.
We all have our raison dantra or something that resonates with us that we could do that no one else can do. So we're unique in that sense. But unfortunately everything we do, all of the schooling and instruction I got, is one size fits all. It's very rare that you have somebody that says, Okay, George, based on your conditioning, this is what we're going to do.
Yeah.
How did you get involved in like the the nineteen ninety eight was it Chicago Bulls team?
Were you?
Were you part of that?
Yeah? It working with them in nineteen ninety three ninety three.
Okay, so how did you get that job?
Well, that's a that's a great question. How I got it? Really? I was so just fast forwarding.
So at some point I left my role as a financial analyst and then I ended up working I got a grant with you Mathe Medical Center to teach mindfulness based stress reduction to inmates and substance abuse units. And also you set up a satellite clinic on the other side of railroad tracks.
And you know, it was in Worcester, not where the clinic was.
But where we're at the other side of railroad tracks where they didn't have a lot of resources. So I was involved there working at the clinic and it was it was called the stress Reduction Clinic in those days, but now they called the Center for Mindfulness or what's called when it you know, as it evolved and John used to John and Hockey actually they used to do go to Omeke Institute which is in Ryne Back, New York, and do like a mindful the base stress reduction course
for clinicians. And at the same time, Phil Jackson used to run this workshop called the Basketball and the whole intention of the workshop was to raise money for one of his teammates when he played for the Knicks, Eddie Mass.
He had had a heart attack.
And so he was raising money for his family, so they were there together, so they got to know each other, and in nineteen ninety three had to fill one in the bus won the third championship in a row. Phil approached John about getting somebody to help him help the
guys deal with the stress of success. So they so when John talked to him about me and my relationship with doctor Jay and being around the pro game before and coming from the same kind of neighborhoods a lot of his players came from, it made sense that I would go in the training camp and that was my intention, was to go in and help him deal with the stress of success. But by the time I got there, they were in full blown crisis because Michael Jordan had retired.
So that was the beginning of our relationship, my relationship with filling and bringing contemplative style mindfulness, if you will, a spiritual way of being that had to do with dealing with the whole person, not just seeing a basketball player likes to shut up and dribble, but seeing them basketball player as a whole person, and that you want that person to thrive not only on the court.
But I was but off the court.
Wow, well didn't he retire? It was ninety six. You said you've been there since ninety three.
I was then ninety three and then ninety eight is when they broke up everybody.
It broke up the team, right, right?
But when did When was his first retirement? Wasn't it like ninety six? Oh maybe it was ninety three?
Huh yeah?
No, no, no, no, no, he won They won championship ninety one, ninety two, ninety three, the ninety four, ninety five. Then Michael came back in March of ninety five. So then ninety six we won seventy two games out of
eighty two. Then ninety seven and ninety eight we won another three championships, and then Phil took a year off, and then when he signed up with the Lakers, he brought me along, and so then we won championships in two thousand, two thousand one, in two thousand and two, two thousand, I believe, two thousand.
I want to say nine and ten.
So how many fucking championships have you won? I think that's the record for the NBA.
No, no, no, it's not the record. NOI has Bhil has eleven as a coach and two is a player. I have eight. I have eight.
I guess Phil does have the record. Yeah, well hold on, man, you have the record for being a mindfulness coach. Yeah, you have the mindfulness sports coach record.
Yeah, I have. I have uh five with the Lakers and the Bulls.
Do you have rings? Do they give you rings?
Uh? Yes, they do give you rings sometimes.
Because Michael Lewis. Did you know Michael Lewis paying a chance the orthropedic surgeon for the Bulls at that time, he was on my podcast. He showed me his rings.
Yeah, I probably know of him, but I was mostly with the coaches and with you know, not the surgeons, but the day to day people, you know, like the sports medicine guys like Chip Schaeffer and and the trainers and the coaches and some of the.
Grover Tim Grover Grover.
Yes, yeah, yeah, he was on my podcast.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, that's awesome.
Okay, So you were like over there consoling Scottie Pippen when Jordan was retired. Did you help Pippen with mindfulness during that time?
Yeah? I was, I was, I was there, Yeah, I was there.
And did you literally do you talk to Pippin?
Yeah, talk to everybody at the whole team. Yeah, when he did wouldn't go out on the court with the y. So the last dance, they interviewed me for the last dance, but I wasn't on it, but they interviewed me for about an hour. But it was really there was a lot of transformation going on that didn't get captured in that and the way it was expressed.
But yeah, I was there for the for the.
Well, tell me to tell us, this is your time to tell us about the I'll interview right now. What's what was the transformation?
The transformation was learning how to how to respond to adversity in a way that a road block becomes a stepping stone, stepping stones and that sort of thing, but also how to how to unlock so that you're able to express yourself more, not only individually but collectively. But it's coming from the premise that we have this massive piece. We have this tremendous potential, unlimited potential inside of each one of us that can be accessed, that can be developed,
but only you can develop it. It's an inside job, and to the degree that you develop it, that will be expressed in your ability to express yourself fully and creatively individually.
I have unlimited potential. I have unlimited potential.
Really, you do. You have a massive piece. You have a divine spar I do in nature, Christ consciousness. We all have it.
That's the gift of our human birth that we have this potentiality. But if you don't develop it, you don't own it, if you don't embrace it, like I talk about my book, then you won't be able to find the flow and you won't discover success on a high level consistently.
Yeah.
Look, my whole childhood was the bulls, you know during that time period. That's so cool that you you had a front row seat to all that. I remember a particular game that Jordan in the playoffs. He shot three straight three pointers, three pointers in a row, and he looked over it like Barkley, I think, or Matt Johnson, and he just goes like this, like he's in that.
And I show that as an ample that was against you.
Were you there?
You were there of the game?
No, I wasn't there. That was before.
That was the free before. But the thing was, the interesting thing was once he did this, couldn't make it anymore.
You're right, You're right. I never thought about that.
Yeah, well, this is what I study when you're in flow, when you're in the zone, you can't. You got to block everybody out. You gotta just keep making place. But once you start saying, I don't you stop thinking about what are you doing? The thinking gets in the way. It stops to flow.
Yes, I need to my lesson I teach you.
Yeah, And I've seen I've seen guys. I won't mention names, but i've seen. It's one guy I think he was playing. Was he playing for the San Antonio Spurs, But he's he's a North Carolina grad.
I just say that, I want to point him out. I think that's the same guy.
And he was making a lot of threes, and they kept interviewing him about it, and they talked him right out of it.
M hm.
You'll see it. It's a very delicate space. When you find the flow, you don't have time to focus on other stuff. You need to you need to stay locked in. I give you an example. So from nineteen ninety six to two thousand and two, in that seven year period, Phil Jackson's teams won six six NBA championships in seven years, and the only year he didn't win was the year he took off and I didn't realize it until I was years later when I started looking at it and I started thinking.
About, Okay, so I have to come up with this.
People want your experience, what you've done, and who you work with and that sort of thing. And when I looked at it, I said, wow, I never thought about it that way because it was always once you win a championship, you celebrate for a little bit, but then you have to let go and move to the next next play the next season, and you do it like that and you stay in a moment you don't remember and you're not keeping score.
Really does it make sense? And so that's why you make three in the row. You don't worry about it. You just keep making. You just keep just make the next play. No, it makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, it's like this idea of being in the zone.
It just it does seem to all roads lead to, like mindfulness or just being as fully present as possible in the moment.
Yeah, so let me share a little secret with you.
Uh oh no, no, let's do it.
The only time you have is now I know, okay, and we say that, but we don't really act like we know what that means to know and not the act is not to know. Okay, So in a moment and I'll get I'll share another secret with you right now.
There's nothing wrong, am I am?
I just find the way I am right now.
That's wrong right now, right now.
The only way is not not right is your mind gets in it. And so I was thinking about the past of the future, or what you don't have or what you're not able to do.
I love that, love that our mutual friend Sharon souls are good love that too.
Yes, yes, and that's it.
And so the only time you have is now, and center saying I'll share this because it came this is it came out of I don't know where it came from, but I got interviewed.
I think it was.
I think it was the Tim Ferris and Lewis House, the two podcasts I did, and they asked me something like what the three things I know or the things important? And in both cases I said, the only time we have is now. The only person you can truly be is yourself, and all you need is love.
M We could talk about this a long time because I think there's a lot of nuance here. It sounds like you're interpreting that kind of mental toughness, whatever we want to call that, that that they had. You're interpreting that as a form of love, is what I'm hearing.
Yes, yes, well you have.
That's why you have to love the game where you have to You have to be in love to be able, because when you're in love, you label what you love, and you love what you labor for.
It's love of the work, it's love of the the the process.
It's love of life. Really love love. What did Jesus teach?
He taught two things, at least my interpretation of Jesus, if we want to use them, love everything and forgive everything and continue forgiveness. So another way of saying, like in basketball, you know you just watch it. If the ball sticks, then it's a problem. The defense can deal on it. But if there's a player, movement, ball movement, life is movement is flowing. So you got to keep
it moving so you can't get stuck on stuff. You got to be able to say, okay, this is it, let it go and keep it going, move to the next thing, learn what you got to learn, and then make the next play.
Otherwise what will happen? You see it all the time.
Somebody doesn't get up, they get a controversial call against them and they're fighting and there they're still down the court even though their body is up the court, and so they're not playing their man, they're not present. They've taken themselves out of the game. So you have to be able to have short a memory, just let it go mentally, note what you need to make, and then you got to make the next play. You got to reset, reboot, reknew, begin again. To do that daily life, not just athletes,
but us as individuals. Moment the moment, that's how we unlocked be You got to be able to let go to grow. You got to be able to get comfortable being uncomfortable.
You got to be willing.
And when you say love, we're talking about openness. This embracing saying yes to everything.
No matter what.
Thank you for clarification on how you come at it and your perception of it.
Like for me, I've been pursuing excellence and wisdom for a long time, but I had mama mentality as well, and I was doing it without grace and ease.
And I would tell you.
I would tell you that because I know Kobe and we were really close that mama. Mentality went from like with me being you know, like just moving through and just pushing yourself and not being compassionate to yourself or because you're just seeing you know, you're just being tough but you still care about the others, to getting to the point where you realize that you can do it with grace and needs and you don't have to hate
and you don't have to push yourself. You can push yourself a certain them ount and say, Okay, I'm gonna be more compassionate with myself, and then you'll be able to go further slowest smooth, smooth is fast. So by doing it and with grace and these it becomes effortless. Yeah, sure, you see what I'm saying, But there's this ability and
then the process of doing it. Yeah, you're gonna cross over the line, but once you're mindful of the crossing over the line and how you feel, how it affects you, then the next time you do it, you pull back and then you bring more compassion, more love into it. But that is that's the process of transformation. You understand what I'm saying, So you do things, and when you do things, it's gonna be rough. It's gonna be, you know.
But then at some point when you after you've done many, many repetitions, you start to realize the slowest, smooth and smoothest fast and slow motion gets you there quicker, or if you allow it to happen, it happens quicker. And I had this conversation with Kobe. The mama mentality, Okay, he's going out there, he shoots it. A shot is like he's trying to score thirty five points on one. So all I said to him was the best way to score is not to try to score. That's just
brace and ease. And then you have sixteen points in the first quarter. Now, if he's forcing it, he may get eight points, but he's probably making a lot of turnovers enforcing things. But if he left the game come to him it, there's an efficiency, there's a flow that he gets into that allows him to do more because he's limiting himself by saying, Okay, I want to score thirty two points a game, so that means I got the eight points he's quarter doesn't work like that.
And that's to word, it's non linear. Not linear. When I mean nonlinear, that means one plus one's he equals six.
That's the right brain, if you're if you're left, if you're right here like me and the left brain, there's one plus one equals two.
And so you just try to do it.
But there's a rigidity and there's a locked in this about that versus being able to read and see the whole picture and just trust it in the moment. If you're paying attention, you'll see the opportunity and you'll you'll be way better off because it'll be effortless and you'll be more fit and effective.
So let me ask you a question. How does that apply to other means of life? So like, how can you apply the mama mentality to like helping a relationship that's on the rocks or something like that.
Yeah, don't quit, don't stop and keep and keep looking for a solution, keep making mistakes and correcting them and getting the feedback and continuing, don't quit on it, just saying Okay, it can be done, and so I'm going to commit to doing it.
I'm full in. I'm all in. Yeah.
My friend christ to Striker, who I want to introduce you to someday. She's amazing. She's working on this book about that idea of having she says with heart, But heart is putting your all into an athletic. She's an athlete. I definitely see where you're coming from, and I definitely see your perspective.
Yeah, and once again, I'm not expecting you to believe what I'm saying. I'm just sharing my experience, strength and hope. I'm not saying anything that's not out of my direct experience place versa.
I don't expect you to agree with me either, No.
Exactly, but I'm just saying that. That's what I'm saying is, yeah, we can disagree and whatever. And all I'm saying is like, if you tell me something, I'm not going to say, yeah, I don't believe that the problem is gonna say, well, I don't know about that, but I'm going to investigate, explore curiosity is true, And that's what I'm saying. But yeah, I don't want I don't want somebody to say yes, because I want you to have a direct experience of it.
Once you have a direct experience of it, then you'll see for yourself. You won't have to take my word.
But I'm just pointing, can you tell us a little bit about how this might relate to the idea of being breathed that you talk about in your new book, Harrigal's id notion of being breathed.
What I mean by being breathed is so this idea, we have this idea that we have to breathe consciously. It's like the ego wants to say it's doing everything, but when we go to sleep at night, we seem to be okay breathing. So when you're being breathed, you notice that even though you're breathing it, if you just be still, you'll notice that the breath have its own rhythm and you're being breathed. It means that it's like
it's like the effortless effort. It's like you do something and then the muscle memory and then it becomes a way of being where it just happens without you having to make it happen. So we have the idea that we have to make ourselves breathe, and by doing that, we actually disrupt the natural process of inhalation and exhalation, the breathing process. But if we can step back and observe it, we can see that the breath happens, you know, just like just like on some level, and John Cavage
then used to do this. If you hold your mouth in your nose and you don't breathe, when you take it off, you'll breathe, or if you breathe all the way out, then you'll breathe in automatically. And if you breathe all the way in, then you're going to exhale automatically. But I'm talking about letting the beach breath cycle. You'll have a sense of it where it's just happening without your having to make it happen. But we have to let go, and we have to you willing to let
it happen. That's the vulnerability that Brene Brown talks about. Vulnerability is power.
Yes, what I love about your approach is you're in the sports world, but you're very being oriented. Yes, and you say I really like this. You say, be a champion before you win a championship, So that is still very being oriented.
You're saying be.
That's what it's about being because we're being so I say, to be a mindful athlete, to be unlocked as an athlete, you got to be unlocked as a person because your person and your athletics and your athlete are not distinguishable. I mean they're They're both affecting each other. So we're being. So when I say being, that means just not doing so much, but just being so. If I want love, I have to be love. If I want people at the bepiece, and if I want clarity, have to be Claire.
So that's what I'm talking about, and so we're being, but we get stuck into doing so. I was thinking about this playing the guitar. It's one thing if I'm playing the guitar because I'm emulating somebody else. It's another thing when I'm playing guitar because it's coming from inside of me. The music inside of me is expressing itself and it's leading me to play a certain way or to do certain things. And we can do more of
that when we can just notice that. There's a way that we can have more access to creativity, which is just being spontaneous or just letting the muse take you wherever it's gonna take.
You and you just go with it instead of saying stop.
Maybe the best way to talk about this is let's just say we're doing improv improvisation. That's what I'm talking about. Being spontaneous and being with life. So an improv if you, if you, Scott, offer me something, then I have to take it, and then from what you give, then I create off of that. Then we're flowing totally. But if you take something and I say no to it, it breaks the whole flow.
It does, it does.
So life is like an improvisation yes and can we just see it and say yes and yes?
And do you know, uh, Kelly Leonard? Do you know Kelly Leonard at the second City improv? I don't know her to him him, but him, I got him and his wife and Anne Lebera. I need to introduce to these two. They're they're they're leading the whole yes and movement. You'd love them.
Yes, that's why I talk about I do it at home with George every week, and I begin the whole session with creating the possibility of saying yes to whatever comes up, embracing whatever comes up, and at the same time generating hope.
So that's the way to go is to say yes.
And of course Vitor Frankel, one of his latest books that was released was say Yes to Life. Yeah Yeah, So once again, it's out of the suffering that we find peace, and that we find secut we can seek to understand because there's an urgency there. And that's why I came up. I was working with this volleyball team once year and I was trying to impart to them that they have to get comfortable being uncomfortable, and they
just weren't really feeling it. And finally in my uh, well, it was more aspiration, but I would say desperation, aspirations, whatever it was. I said, no struggle, no swag. Oh yeah, I said, I got swagged. I struggle. You got to struggle. This is the struggle moment here. These are struggle opportunities. And they start laughing. They loved it because I said, no struggle, no swag, and that's it. Everybody wants swag, but are you willing to struggle for it? Yeah, but
that's how you get it. You get it out of the struggle. People don't understand. It's the struggles when our latent ability to express itself, so things are going smooth and there's nothing happening. We're in that comfort zone, then we're not really going to learn as much as we will learn if we keep pushing that envelope in a compassionate way.
You say, the idea is not to go to heaven, it's to grow to heaven.
Growth. It takes a lot of struggle, often right.
Yes and no, yes, and yes and no. It depends on the situation, and it depends on your mindset and everything else. But here's the thing.
If you see struggle as swag, then it won't be a problem. You'll be saying, Okay, more of this, this is great. I'm learning, I'm growing, I'm evolving. I learned from my mistakes, so it's okay for me to make mistakes, whereas somebody's trying not to make mistakes. By not making mistakes, you're not growing, you're not evolving. You're safe. Like I like to say, just chemera causes a sarcophagus or coffin. It's nice and you know safe and in there. But you're a stiff.
That's not life. There's no movement.
What do you think of people these days treating all on the TikTok, treating all sorts of minor things as they're calling it traumas. I feel like this generation kind of views everything as a trauma.
Now.
I think words get co opted, they do, and then people make a mean what they wanted to mean. And that's why you can't go by the meaning of the world. You got to go by what the person means by
that meaning of the word. And so because you know, I can tell you what my work was with young folks and people in general, and there's times and I be working with coaches and whatever, and the student athlete or the athletes were working with swears that they're working hard, and compared to my experience, compared to my definition of work man, there would.
No hard work.
Keep them bit them in the butt. Yeah, so that's the interpretation of it. But that's where they are. But you know, at the same time, there's some things they did, like when I when I was taught how to swim, I was thrown in twelve feet of water and I was on my own.
Now they would call that child abuse now, but back in the day, that's what that's what they did.
So everybody has their own level of pain or understanding, and so for them it might be traumatic because maybe they don't have the foundation that you or I had when.
We were growing up.
So we have to listen to them and understand what they what do they mean by trauma? They say it but what do they mean? So you gotta have they got to give you an example of what that if they could give you on a scamp or not that they have to, if they could give you an example of what that means and what they felt and what they were seeing, you might discover that, you know, you could.
There's this old adage that you know this.
You see this singing, you know, in the grass or on the street, and you think it's a snake and you walk up on it and you realize it's just a rope.
But you interpreted it, you saw it a certain way.
So I could say, well, I'm going to have trauma if I'm seeing a snake when it's this rope. But does it mean that trauma is not real? Yeah, it's real, but it's based on a faulty a faulty perception.
M there's a part in your book that I will kind of end here today on this that I thought was really profound. You were working with this student athlete who said he wants to be like Kobe. He just kept saying, make me like Kobe, and you said, you know you're like, okay, well well how about you try being yourself? And man, I thought that that dialogue was really powerful. Can you kind of talk about that moment a little bit.
Yes.
I always speak from my own experience when I first started playing the guitar and all my friends that my brother and friends that play instruments. When you start playing something, you emulate the best or you try to play like so and So's playing, and then at some point you got to make your own music.
That makes sense what I'm saying. So, but it's challenging.
And you know, if you look at Tiger, you look at the Williams sisters, and there's probably the other folks that has some point.
That's why they have rituals. You know.
Joseph Cambral talked about when the young man gets to be a certain age, he's got to go off in the woods and he's got to go through his vision question or whatever.
But we have to go from.
Dependency, the independency to interdependency. Does that make any sense? So there's an evolution that we have to go through and we have to figure it out on our own. But we start off emulating each other and having role models. But I would say, because I feel like I've been involved in the lineage, if I call it that when I room with Doctor J and I've seen his evolution.
Then I work with with Michael, then I worked with Kobe, and so I know that the Doctor J. You know his game.
They used to call him Mini Hawk because Tonnie Hawkins had an impact because he had big hands, he played a certain way and and so I think, you know, we stand on this on the shoulders of giants elgim Bele. I probably assume that Julia learn from him as well. Well, all those all of those forwards that that was similar to him, you know, a long reachs, big hands and whatnot.
That.
Yeah, so I think that we start off emulating and we have to understand how other people did it, but then we have to make it our own. And that's what I mean, like, yeah, that's great, you could be like him, but you have to be like him based on who you are, your authentic expression, because authenticity of being real is really important.
And that's because if we know we're not real, it's like fake it. Do you make it? You ain't gonna make it because you know you're fake. But if you act as if, now that's something else, that's the being thing. If you want to if you want to be a champion, you gotta act like one. You've gotta think film behave like a champion, and behave your way into it.
Yeah, there's a lot of wisdom there. You know, the commercial be like Mike, Maybe it should have been a different tagline like be like Mike in your own style or something.
Yeah.
Well, the thing is God, that's interesting because I think what commercials do when they say be like Mike, they're saying be successful, be as good as Mike.
But you have to do it in your own way.
But people want to emulate or they want to see professional, they want to see what it feels like to be competing at an elite level now now, and then there's the trans there's a trans How do you express that spirit of what he's doing, not exactly what he's doing, the spirit of what he's doing.
How do you express that in your own way?
And so you can look at you know, I can look at Michael and say that, Okay, here's somebody who got cut from his high school basketball team. Now he did grow, but he but by the time I saw him with the Bulls, he was playing as if he was trying to make the team.
M HM.
So you can see you can take failure and they can end up being the launching pad for you to go to greatness.
Yeah, that's what that's that's what's possible for us.
But it's the mindset, and it's saying, Okay, I'm never going to get cut again, and at the same time, or I make a shot in the NCAA Championship game and I go from Mike Jordan to Michael Jordan.
So it's how you interpret your experience.
And what I'm saying is we have this, we have that be like Mike's potential, but not exactly like him, but maybe in our own domain. And it might just be that we're the greatest husband or we're the greatest person working doing what we're doing, but we're bringing that mentality of always trying to get better, always looking to.
Express ourselves more and to push that envelope.
I'm going to leave here with by quoting the great George Mumford. He says, recover your true self, the masterpiece within, and bring it forth out into the world, share it. That is how I live and I invite you to live that way too. Thank you, George Mumford for being my podcast and having this lively discussion with me.
You're welcome, Scott. I appreciate being here and I love your questions.
Oh, thank you, thank you. I'm a curious George. I'm a curious George.
Yeah. I used to read.
He just graduated from from Brown with a pac in history, so maybe there's something about that.
Curious George.
Congratulations to him.
That's awesome. Thank you, George. I have a good one.
Yeah.
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