Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, your guide to the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. This week on the show, I'm joined by Steve Magnus, a world renowned performance coach and author, to discuss the research backed best practices for setting healthy goals for our pursuits, performing under pressure, and dealing with failure. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and their Camel for Conservation Initiative. And I'm excited here
today because we've got an absolute banger for you. We are wrapping up our kind of prepping for the New Year series. I hate to say new Year Knew You because that's kind of cliche stupid, but it's kind of the only packaged phrase that I know of that kind of explains what we've been trying to do here the last few weeks, kind of getting ourselves ready for this next twelve month window, resetting things, recentering ourselves and making
sure that we're moving forward in the right way. And our episode today I think is a perfect way to wrap it up, because it, in my mind is a terrific kind of callback to where this all started. At the very end of twenty twenty four, Tony and I did an episode in which we kind of reflected back on the last year and thought through, you know, what were the good things, what were the bad things, What brought us joy, what brought us fulfillment, what led to success?
And however you define that, and then how can that inform us to plan this next year ahead? And what we kind of stumbled on, I guess, and it's something we have talked over the years, talked about over the years, but one of the things we stumbled on was the fact that, you know, when we layer all these different expectations and outcome focused goals and how we compare to
other people. When we started caring about that kind of stuff, it led to, you know, poor hunting success, not a lot of excitement and fun and a lot of stress. And so how do we still try to become better deer hunters? How do we still try to fill tags and have success, but do it in a way that you know, brings us that enjoyment, fun and satisfaction that we're looking for that got us into this in the first place, and it's something that I know is not
unique just to us. I've heard from countless numbers of you guys who are experiencing the same things. I've got a handwritten letter right here from someone who has been experiencing this very same thing. So I want to continue to find ways to address it and help us all so we can kind of work through this stuff and get the very most positive aspects out of our hunting
journeys and leave this baggage behind. Because when we when we obsess too much about filling a tag or killing the mature buck, or having a big buck to show our friends on Instagram, whatever it is, when we add this self induced pressure and we fall for this kind of comparison culture, when we do that stuff, it's it's not it's not why we do this in the first place. It takes away from what is an incredible pursuit and experience. And so the question then is what's the alternative, what
is the better way? How can we do all this that is going to leave us in a better, happier and more successful place. And the answers or at least some of the answers I think can be found with our guest today on the podcast. Our guest is Steve Magnus. He is a former track and field coach and now a world renowned expert on peak performance. He has been a performance coach for Olympic athletes, professional athletes, business leaders, military service member. He's the author of a number of
different books which I've enjoyed. I've read a bunch of his books, including The Passion, Paradox, Peak Performance, Do Hard Things, and most recently, his brand new book that's coming out here in a week or two is called Win the Inside Game. And this book, you know, I think it it was almost as if he wrote this book just for us. Like the things he discussed are so perfectly parallel to what Tony and I have been kind of riffing on here in recent weeks. It's it's uncanny how
spot on it is. We discuss how to set goals that are healthy, we discuss how to handle high pressure moments.
We discuss how to you know, specialize in an area that you care about and continue to grow and get better and achieve you know, new things, but do it in a do it in a healthy way, doing in a way that that's not going to get you over stressed out, that's not going to make you feel worse about it, that's not going to make killing a deer a relief instead of something that you're just really excited about. And the experience itself is really great too. So we
discuss all that we discussed. Like I mentioned performing under pressure, we talk about choking, how to you know, not choke, how to deal with failure when it does come, and much much more. This is a chat that's filled with insights that are backed up by research and science. Steve has a tremendous wealth of experience personally and has also then dug through the literature and talked through the experts
on all these things. So this is something that you know is applicable to world class athletes, top of the world, business leaders, and even US deer hunters. So I am very excited for our chat today. So I think we just get right to it. Here's my conversation with Steve Magnus. All right here with me on the line now is Steve Magnus. Welcome to the show.
Steve, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited for this me too.
You know, like I mentioned just a second ago off air, I've been reading your work for a lot of years now. You and Brad have I think, spoken to so many different things I've dealt with. Whether it's been you know, physical fitness and sport related things, whether it's been kind of the mental side of peak performance. I've always been someone who has, you know, been pushing and striving. I'm very achievement oriented. I'm what some people I think call
these days an insecure overachiever. Has been like the trendy buzzword these days that I've heard them like, oh yeah, that sounds like me. But You've got this new book that is coming out right around the same time that this podcast will be airing, called Win the Inside Game. And as I read it, it felt like you were
writing to an audience of one just me. It was as if you had somehow infiltrated my mind over the last year or so and read all of my thoughts, saw what I've gone through over the last year or two, and thought, I need to write a book for Mark. Here I go, and you did it so so I want to I want to paint a picture for you of a hypothetical scenario a person a stand in will say, and I'm curious if this sounds familiar at all, if you've heard of anyone going through this. Let's imagine someone
we'll call him Bill. And Bill grew up as a young kid, you know, following his dad and grandfather and friends out into the outdoors hunting and fishing. And he would, you know, get an absolute thrill joining the men out there at the cabin, maybe hearing the stories, spending time outside. You know, it was it was always an adventure. It was a surprise. There was camaraderie. It was terrific. He
fell in love with it. As he though got older, he then found himself wanting to get better at these things. So he started reading the articles, reading the books. He continued down that road. He started having some success. Now he's watching the YouTube videos telling him exactly how to get better at this and this training regimen and this
particular protocol. Now he's listening to all the podcasts, drilling into how the best in the world are doing this and how he can have that same kind of success. Now he's obsessing over going out there into the field and being as successful as a hunter as he possibly can, pushing himself three hundred and sixty five days a year
to be the best he possibly can be. He's following all of his favorite professional hunters or outdoorsmen on Instagram and YouTube and seeing all their successes, and when he does have success, he's posting it there and feeling better and better with every single new like he sees popping up,
kind of validating his success. But as this trend continues and he gets deeper and deeper and deeper into it, he starts finding himself out there, going into the field to go for a hunt, and not necessarily feeling that pure joy and excitement, but instead stressing about am I going to get a deer? Or not worried about? Am I working hard enough? Am I doing the right things? Am I putting in enough time? Is somebody better than I?
Do?
Other people think I'm a lousy hunter. When he or she sees his friends or the people he follows on social media having success, he's maybe not excited for them. He's feeling bad about himself. Does any of this sound familiar? Familiar?
You might as well be talking. You could be talking about running, you could be talking about writing, You could be talking about any any sort of pursuit, and I'd be nodding my head along to say, this is the path that a lot of a lot of people, And I would say a lot of people inclined to strive go down. It's the same path that I went down on a hunting but in my chosen sport of running. And I think it's the same path that people go down.
When you look at even business success is that it follows this pattern of like we we get captured, we fall in love with something. It is a magical, joyful exploration of the thing that pushes us from interest to passion. As we get passionate, we kind of cement and narrow around the thing. We're getting better, We're getting better. But at some point, the thing that has driven us, that has gotten to this point, almost starts to get in
the way. Where the success, the striving, the achievement, the working harder than everybody, the watching all the videos, following all the things like starts to be the thing that creates the pressure, the anxiety and takes away the thing that initially drew us to it, which is that joy, that camaraderie, that exploration, And all of a sudden we find ourselves in a place where we used to want to do the thing, and now it almost feels like we have this burden of have to and that is
the battle of I would say most high performers everywhere.
Is this new or was this as true? Was this as true fifty years ago? Or is this a phenomena of the twenty first century? And in the the many different strange coinciding things we have going on with media and culture and whatnot.
We've always had this to a degree, but what I would say is the twenty first century has like put it on steroids. We've exacerbated so much because think about it now, that comparison that how do I measure up against people is you know, one hundredfold. It used to be you know, I don't know how it works in hunting, but you could, you know, at the highest levels you could kind of compare each other. You go to competitions, you have whatever, you have some comparison point. But nowadays
it doesn't even take you know, any of that. You literally go on in scram or TikTok or YouTube or what have you, and you can find a thousand different comparison points. So our comparison has kind of gone from local to global and at an earlier stage, and that has made this again ten times worse and harder. The story I tell in the book is of my own journey, which is, you know, back in the day, I'll put it this way. Back in the day, I was very good.
I was a very good runner, and I kind of fell in love with the sport because it was fun and enjoyable and I was pretty good at But my pretty good at it was comparison comparing against like, you know, the kids in my class at school, right, which is you know, thirty kids, maybe in the whole school one hundred kids. Right. But now, if I think about it, it wouldn't be that. It would be, oh, I ran this mild time. Let me go look online and compare that to all the other twelve year olds in the world.
And guess what. Instead of feeling energized that I'm pretty good at this thing, I would compare to everyone and be like, oh my gosh, I am minute slower than everybody. I am slower than In my case, I would have been slower than many, you know, girls of the comparable age. Why would I do this sport? I'm not good at it? And that would again that would take away some of
the things that we do. So I guess long story short is, I think, especially on the comparison piece, it is so much bigger and harder now because we can we can compare to anybody that instead of motivating us, that puts us into this like why try protective anxiety pressure mode that so many of us feel.
Yeah, so yeah, I feel like you have done a lot of work that's been adjacent to this over the years. You've explored a lot of kind of tangential topics. But why did it feel like now was the time to tackle this various specific thing head on? Why this book right now?
I think we always write the books that we need and similar to your journey, like my journey was from like you know, go all in, really successful, try and get better to now you know, I just turned forty a couple of weeks ago, is thank you, and I have two young kids and you start to see the world through a different lens and you start say, okay, like I better rethink this because maybe I'm going to go down this path I have, like this fork in the road, I can go down this path that is
chasing externalized feel that pressure, lose that joy, or I could go down this other path, and I've tried to go down that path towards joy exploration. But the other part of it that I kept seeing is I spend a lot of my time coaching, and at first that was just in running, but now I help out high performers with all lenses. And the problem I increasingly saw
is that all of these people had incredible potential. Talent was through the roof, the work, ethic was through the roof, but if you look at the objective measures, they weren't getting where they were capable of getting. And at the heart of it almost always came down to what we're talking about right here, is they wanted it so bad? Did all of a sudden that want, that desire often
cut from the external, was getting in the way. And from athletes I was seeing I was working with or talking to you, or like researching about is I kept seeing that like they all hit this moment where they had to essentially say, Okay, I got to change something up.
I got to free myself up by almost doing the opposite and letting go a little bit, and all of a sudden, like their enjoyment would come back, and more importantly, somehow the performance would increase and improve because like that that pressure, that anxiety, that all that stuff like just got alleviated just a little bit.
Well, it seems like there's there's like two different curves
that you might see happen. There might be like a bell curve where you see someone who's slowly improving, slowly improving, and they're going down this path and then they're seeing significant improvements and at some point stuff starts to plateau and level out a little bit when these types of challenges start hitting and then I think for a lot of people, you might then start dropping down the other side when the anxiety, the pressure, the stress, all of it takes the fun out of it for you and
you lose the motivation to do it, or you you know, crash and burn in one of so many different ways, and you see your not only your performance, but your interest in the pursuit at all crash. But I think then there's probably other people that somehow navigate this differently and crash and through that plateau and then continue to evolve, grow,
perform and enjoy that thing. In reading your book, you put words to many things that I have been figuring out and maybe didn't have this specific language that you put down here for it. But many of the things that I've been gravitating towards and recognizing as having truth
and validated to it. And one of those things that you call out in here is the importance of kind of our motivations being either external or internal, and the importance of that you reference to study towards the beginning of your book called a meta analysis of the Dark Side of the American Dream, and I'll just quote this a little bit here from it. You said they found that when individuals extrinsic aspirations dominated their intrigues intrinsic ones,
it was universally detrimental to their well being. It's not that we need to have solely intrinsic motives, it's the balance that matters. When we tip too far to the external, we languish instead of thrive. When winning is all that matter. It might work in the short term, but over the long haul we increasingly play out of a place of
fear and perform worse. Can you expand on that for us what you mean by, you know, extrinsic aspirations versus internal and kind of why that maybe is a keystone understanding for this whole thing.
Yeah, absolutely, So extrinsic are the achievements that accolades the rewards, the tangible things that you get out of achieving the goal. It's the bonuses you get at work, right, The intrinsic is different. So it's that that piece of joy, the exploration, the almost play that we experience. The way I like to conceptualize this delineation between the two is, remember when you started the thing, you told you know, Bill's story about going on the hunt, you know, being outdoors with
you know, family, and just the sheer excitement of that adventure. Yeah, that is the intrinsic. You're not going on that hunt to say, okay, okay, how many you know, how many buck can we kill? Right? How good can we be in this? Oh? You're on that because you're part of this, where you belong. You feel that joy. You say, like,
this is an adventure, let's go. And as we age and as we get into adults, we often lose a little bit of that and as we get better at things, we kind of forget that that interest in it, ner joy that got us interested in the thing and turned it into passion. And the first point and That's what the whole thing is about. Is it's not that we shouldn't you know, care about winning or shouldn't care about the end result to achievements. We're humans, we're going to
we're competitors, we're strivers, we're pushers. You and I are to care about the outcome. And that's totally fine. But the problem comes when we mess up that balance too much. If the outcome is all that matters, if winning or losing is self defining, then we are kind of screwed because what research tells us is that when winning is all that matters, or the outcome, we're too much towards that extrinsic we activate our motivation styles we have. Essentially
you can sum it up into two styles. We either approach the thing or avoid the thing, meaning in sports term, we play to win or we play not to loose. And what research tells us is that heavily on the extrinsic side, we start shifting from that approach to the avoidance, and the bigger the achievements or accolades matter to us, the more we go to avoidance. Now, why would that be? For simple reason, because we've told our brain that like
hitting this. You know, this outcome is so important that our brain goes like, well, if it's that important, then I'm going to protect you from the downside, which means we start avoiding the thing a little bit. And you
can see this in different aspects of your life. Right, it's the athlete who maybe comes up with all the excuses for why they're not going to performed, right you say like, oh, I I haven't backed off for this race, right, I'm a little tired going in, so if I don't perform, Or it's it's the student who says, you know what, you know, I could have studied more, but I'm not
going to. And then afterwards you do that because you could have said, well I got a C or B, but if I would have studied, I got it, I would have gotten in A. That's the avoidance speaking, that's that protective you know, mindset. On the flip side, if our motivations are more tilted a little bit more towards the intrinsic we approach the thing. Why because we're in that exploration mode because if we win or lose, Yeah,
it might sting. If we don't you know, get our outcome we want want, it might sting a little bit, but it's not self defining because that intrinsic is pushing us to understand that, like, part of the reason we're doing this is the journey itself to experience the experience to go on the hunt and be out there for hours and hours and see, you know, with our friends and see what it's all about. Yeah, and that's where
it all comes. You know, I'm simplifying here, but modern world has pushed us too much out of balance with thats ex forensic dominates and we forgot about the thing that got us interested in in the pursuit in the first place.
Yeah, So much of it seems to be tied to expectations and like the expectations that we bring to the pursuit. And one of the ways that you described this is discussing and maybe one of the ways to break out of this is to have a or to shift from an outcome orientation to a process orientation. Can you expand on that a little bit as as how I know it's similar to this, you know, shifting from avoidance to to the other alternative, But can you talk a little
bit about that. And it's been something that I have you know, been really working on myself because in our world you can't get very tied to, you know, the specific goal of man this year, I'm going to hunt in and harvest this specific mature buck, where like, this is my goal to have this caliber of success, and you will work your tail off all year for it, and it almost becomes to feel like a life or death issue for you, when in fact, you then because
of that, have stressed, have worried, have made it almost a military mission to get there, and then even if you do get there, you hardly enjoyed the process at all because you were so focused on the obsession with the goal and beating yourself up all on the way
because it's not going the way it's supposed to. And then God forbid, if you don't achieve that outcome, then you are kicking yourself and beating yourself up for how horrible you are and how you didn't do enough, or how you made the wrong decisions or you know, nine thousand other possible things. Can you speak to that shift from outcome orientation to process orientation and a why is that healthier? And be how?
Yeah?
Absolutely so think of it like this, what's the purpose of goals? You can simplify it into this is there to motivate and to tell us what's important.
Yeah.
Right. If we are totally outcome focused or outcome orientated with their goals, what happens is at first they might be a little motivational. You might say, Okay, I want to achieve this, I want to run this fast, I want to achieve this, get this many you know bucks, whatever it is. Okay, at first, that might be a little motivational. But what happens over time is it and you described it right there, is it shifts from motivating you forward to it becomes this like signal where it's
like still hadn't got it? Not you you're not maybe you're not close, maybe you're not going to get there, And that little thought in the back of your minds like starts to build that anxiety, that pressure, that worry, and instead of motivating us forward, it motivates us to kind of like go into that protective mode. If we look out, what does an outcome orientation do to our focus? It largely blinds us from everything else, so we only see
the outcome. And what we know from both sport and life and even some research on hunting is that shows us is that when we become blinded to everything else but this, you know, achieving X, Y and z, it makes us where we miss opportunities, right, We miss opportunities to go down a different path, maybe to try something different, to try a different process orientation towards maybe achieving that outcome,
and we get in our own way. If we look at process orientation, what does that mean is it means
a couple of different things. It means taking us away from that outcome and saying, Okay, what are the steps or the journey that I want to go on that puts me in the best position to do this, So that maybe that's something as simple as you know, well I need to train you know, X number of days to get this done, or I need to The process is like to give myself a shot here literally I'm figuratively in this case, you know, is to like, you know, go hunting at this time with this people with this
you know process behind it, meaning like these are the steps that I get there. And that shift is subtle, but it's important because it takes you away from it through a zero sum lens of like did I win or lose? Did I achieve or not? And it makes you reflect on did I do the process to give myself the best opportunity? And if we can reflect in that way, it takes it away from that threat mode.
It takes us into this kind of like learning, growth and understanding mode, because whether you got the thing or not, what matters is did you execute your process. This is why in sports, like every football coach in the world says focus on the process. Why because simply they know that the win or loss is sometimes out of your control and like dependent on factors that might be a little bit of luck. Right, you can't control how many years show up right in the situation.
Control the weather, I can't control what other people do. I can't control so much.
You can't control so much. So well, you know, you could have a horrible process and still succeed. But what that means is next time you're going to go still do that horrible process and probably not have any success because you haven't learned and grown from the thing. If instead you focus on the process, what are the steps that I need? That's what matters. And the other part that I'll say as well is that when we look at process orientation, it is often shifting from achieving the
outcome to what is the experience that I want? So what do I want this to feel? Like? What is the point of like the journey that I'm going on, Like, what's the point of the hunt? Is it just to achieve this outcome? Or am I going you know, to explore my potential? Maybe? And this am I going to test a new way of you know, tracking, taking downs,
like using new equipment. Whatever it is, Like, that's the experience and if you can focus on that a little bit better again, it allows us to come out of it with a new way to judge kind of you know, our success or failure versus the kind of black or white zero some way.
Yeah, And you know, it's it's a little bit tricky to do this sometimes because I think we're surrounded by an alternative framework for how we should set our goals, right, I mean, in most any other place, how is success judged? In basketball? Well, how many rings does Lebron have versus Michael Jordan? Or what was the marathon time or what was your minute time? As a hunter, where you know, we are taught to you know, did you did you kill a deer? Did you do you kill a mature deer,
how many dear did you kill? How much meats in the freezer? Whatever your goal might be. And one of the things I've tried to do is, as I've learned more and more but this process orientation is better, I've tried to try to almost zoom out and try to maybe understand, like what does success look like beyond that, almost like what are the values that are important to me? Or as you said, what are the experiences that are
important to me? And then work backwards from that and so understand, Okay, so high level, what are the things that have really mattered to me? Or what brought me the most joy? Well it was it was actually all the times with my family and friends and those stories and that camaraderie and those shared experiences. Okay, that's the thing,
you know. Maybe actually those best memories, those those stories that stick with me, the experiences that I've never forgotten, Well that was because I tried something new, where I was in a landscape that was spectacular and awe inspiring. Or maybe it was because I was teaching somebody something, I was sharing my love of this with someone who
is new. So I've tried to identifying these different, bigger picture things that then allow me to say, Okay, well I identified that, you know, being inspired, being an awe, inspiring landscapes, trying new things, all of that has brought me a loud joy and satisfaction and fulfillment. Okay, how do I know solve for that? Then with my future goals, how do I have these experience related goals or process
related goals that aren't did I kill a deer? But are more so, Hey, go and explore a new landscape and try this thing with a friend or family member that you care about. So this is me rambling on what I really want to get to though, is I'm curious how do you do this? What is your goal setting protocol or how do you execute a process orientation as you're trying to achieve things in writing or running or whatever it is. I'm curious to get a framework for that.
But first off, I love that from you. I think that's spot on, and I think it gets on something that is really important in before giving you my process, I'll just highlighted is that by doing that, what you've done is you've gone from narrow to broad because like the outcome, achievement narrows us right and it blinds us often, and you wouldn't if you just wanted to achieve, you'd keep going back to the places where you know you
could get the end result. Because going to new place, the new and onspiring places is risky because you don't know it as well. You might not be able, you might come away with nothing. But by reframing it, you give yourself a chance to and in the end result is you might have a better experience and like it rejuvenates those intrinsic motivators. So for my process, whether it's running or writing, is very similar. Is look, I start with what is the point? How am I defining success
around this? And to me, I could say, with writing it, you could say, well I need to sell this many books that I can you know, achieve this list or what have you. But that will drive you nuts. Yeah, it'll drive you nuts. It'll make it a miserable process. So I start with why am I writing this book? And who am I writing this book for?
Did you write Mark? Did you write Mark Kenyon? Down as that you know?
That was it? That was the one person?
Mark?
This is for you, this is it. But now in reality it's the things that we talked about like this book is for why, It's because something I've struggled with and I've seen other people struggle with, and I think modernity has made it ten times worse. So let's put it out there. Why. Because I want to help people like you and I, who are strivers pushers to be able to stay in the things that we enjoy and love for a longer period of time. So that is
front and center in my mind. Okay, if that's why I'm writing it, then I work back from that and say, okay, what sort of this is allow me to do that best? And in the writing world, what does that mean? It means I want to go broad with exploring these ideas in a variety of places, because if I just go narrow and I talk about running or writing, the two things that I know best, it might reach runners and writers. But I know, again, my end goal is to help
as many people as I can. I know, people from hunters to business executives to entrepreneurs based the same thing. So I need to go broad in my research, broad in my interviews, broad in my interests, and that puts me down this path of Okay, go broad, explore the topic and then as I narrow towards the writing process. Then it goes, Okay, from those broad stories, what do I think are a going to be most impactful for people?
And then b give them enough evidence to convince them that this Steve guy is actually giving them stuff that works, just making that up and that shapes the kind of narrative flow or the evidence behind the book, and then you just kind of go from there. But it's it's a simple process from like broad exploration to to narrow how do I how do I turn this into a book? And and it's all shaped by that that not how
many books can I sell? But at the end of the day, I look back and I say, Okay, given everything I've written, do I think this is going to help a lot of people? And hopefully I can answer yes. And guess what If I answer yes, then that motivates me to do things like your podcast or other podcasts or other shows, or write articles that hopefully go wide enough to to pique someone's interest and say, hey, I'm
gonna I'm gonna go check out that book. When the inside game and a byproduct is yeah, hopefully I sell enough books to you know, feed my family. But it's not the it's not the result. And because of that, I don't feel that anxiety stress of oh I need to sell this many books. No, I'm going to have a great conversation with Mark who gets it, because like, this is an important topic and hopefully it will help people who are listening to it.
Yeah. So it's funny. In my hunting life, I'm not as good at this, but I am better at this in my outside the rest of my career side of life, like writing. So I'm an author as well, and I end up being in that world. For ninety seven percent of us, you don't write a book to get rich, right, It's it's not a slam dunk financial proposition for the
vast majority of us. That said, when I have looked at whether or not I'm going to write a book, I've looked at it as not am I going to write this book to make X number of dollars or sell X number of copies, but rather will the process that I will go through writing that book bring me fulfillment and joy and meaning right, And that for me has checked a million boxes because I know I'm working
on as you describe. I know that the process of writing a book is going to mean that I'm going to spend in my case, my kind of books means I'm going to spend a lot of time reading and researching topics about wildlife and conservation, the history of our natural resources and wildlife and public lands. I'm going to learn about something I'm fascinated by. I'm going to have to talk to experts in these fields to learn more, again, connecting with like minded folks that inspire me and they
can teach me. I know that I'm going to have to go in the field to study and experience these things on my own. I know that to promote this book, when it's all said and done, I'm going to have to go out there and speak with this community and share my experiences with the community and hopefully inspire and
educate this audience. So all of those things, all the process that leads to writing a book, the actual steps I have to take on a day to day basis, will bring me joy fulfillment and meaning that right there there's my success, regardless of whether or not I sell one copy. So that makes it a very easy win for me when I know it, and even if this thing doesn't make a dime, all of that is a huge win. It's much harder for me to somehow translate that to the hunting side of my world or to
running or something like that. And I'm not sure why that is.
I think it's pretty simple. Did you come do you see yourself as a writer first?
I don't know. I don't know. That's a good question, but probably not.
So same with me. Yeah, I came to writing kind of secondarily of like it's an avenue to share these things. Yes, yes, so I think there it's like it's not quite as intertwined, so it's easier to do that. And hunting, you know,
early and often is part of who you are. It's like intertwined with you, same with me on running, so it's a little harder to do that, even though I bet if we zoomed out and said, like, think of the same things, right, maybe it's not interviewing people, but it's going on hunts with different people or for me, like experiencing different races in different places with different groups and training with different people. That that process is the same that joy I get from it is probably the
same same as you. But because we're like intertwined a little bit more with with the thing or the pursuit. I think that's where it becomes, you know, more difficult, and and that's where I think, you know, we have to almost be more aware of that poll because it's easier in those things that we're intertwined with to kind of forget this other world that we we kind of take for granted in something that yeah, we care about, but maybe it wasn't always front and center and who we are.
Yeah. So when when within the book, as you were discussing some alternatives to this mindset, one of the approaches you discussed was a mastery approach. And I think you were discussing this kind of an educational framework, but I but I found this idea of a mastery of being something that would be really relevant to my world and
what we do. Is that something you could speak about a little bit what that mastery approaches or what that or how we might be able to apply something like that to a pursuit of any kind.
Yeah. Absolutely, So the best way to think a mastery is to think of a craftsman, right, could be any sort of craft, but the old school craftsman who is spending their time like creating the thing and what we know by thinking about like creating or crafting. The thing is like, is what is important not of it is they want to master that subject. Their goal isn't, hey, I'm going to create the perfect widget or whatever and to sell it. It's this is my craft, like I'm
going to be a craftsman. Let's explore it. And when it comes to the educational standpoint, there's some great research that shows essentially this is if your goal is to you know, get a A on the test or score a certain you know, score on the SAT or whatever have you as standardized tests, is that might motivate you a little bit. But coming back to what we tied it talked about earlier, with the outcome orientation, it brings
a lot of fear and anxiety with it. If your goal, on the other hand, is to understand the subject, meaning just like you talked about when you're saying I'm gonna write and I'm gonna have to go understand a lot about outdoor conservation, that means I'm gonna have to read a lot of new things and talk to a lot of new people. That is mastery because your goal isn't you know, I'm gonna go get a PhD. And conservation so that I can, you know, become the world expert
and get paid this much to do so. No, it's the understanding that is driving the thing. So when we look at mastery, whether it's our I almost frame it as like an understand and exploration. And when we frame that and look at it, it tends to motivate us more internally and like tends to build more resilience over the long haul. So again it's hard in our own domains,
but I always come back to that. And in my own world of running, I've had to shift my viewpoint more away from the outcome to what is the what is the point of running now? And I think when I go on runs and I challenge myself with hard workouts, I'm like, I'm just going on exploration to see how how do I navigate this pain and fatigue, because like, who cares if I'm running five minute miles or six minute miles or whatever have you. The experience if I'm
working hard is the same. And if I can work on how am I going to get better at navigating of dealing with those like inner doubts of that voice in my head that's telling me like hey man, stop, Like this is painful, stop doing it. Like mastery is about not the end result of the how fast I ran, but it's like how did I do at like navigating and exploring my limits on that hard race or hard run. And I think we can apply that to basically anything.
Yeah, kind of continuing down this path. One of the natural things that I think happens, and we've danced around this a little bit, but one of the natural things that happens when you fall in love with a thing and you get good at it is that there is a there's a very natural tendency to start specializing in that thing. When you find your thing, you tend to want to specialize and get better and better at that.
And at first, maybe it happens by just happenstance that you're in love with this thing so much that you just can't stop thinking about it. But then also at some point there tends to be maybe a sense of obligation that comes about, because like, hey, if you want to be the best basketball player you possibly can be, you don't you can't have time to go and play bass, but you can't do baseball anymore because that should be when you're doing club ball. That's when you should be doing,
you know, work in the gym. You if you want to be the best possible white tailed deer hunter you possibly can be. You know, I've had there are people in my world who say this, Hey, you shouldn't be You shouldn't go fishing, you shouldn't go hiking, you shouldn't go camping, you shouldn't do other things. If you want to be as good as you should be at this every day of the year, you should be doing something to become a better deer hunter. And when that happens,
which has happened to me and many other people. You talk about in your book about this risk of going narrow and cementing is the word that you use, which
I thought was really interesting. Can you can you discuss a little bit more and again we've we've talked about this a little bit, but can you speak to it a little bit more with that particular vocabulary or what that means, what that looks like, and and why you know why that tends to lead us more and more towards these negative things we've mentioned.
Yeah, So here's how I look at it. When you cement yourself thing meaning you are the you know, white tailed deer Hunter. What we've done is narrowed ourselves so much and told our brain, and our brain internalizes it as this is all that matters. This defines who I am, whether I achieve my goals or not, you know, reflects on me as a person because this is my entire world. And what do you think happens when we tell our brain like this is our entire world? It goes into
like do or die mode? And we might sure, you know, we might think like, oh, do or die? When my back is against to all, that's when I perform the best. Well, I'm sad to say that even if you look at research on world class athletes, the vast, vast majority of people do not. We default towards fear, running away, avoidance, fleeing. We do not go towards taking on the challenge. And what research overwhelmingly shows is that, yeah, at some point we have to specialize a little bit, but if we
go too far towards that cementation, it often backfires. This is why I love the research on There was a study a couple of years ago that looked at Nobel Prize winning scientists. So you think, like these guys are geniuses, like they're in the lab all the time, probably to
get their breakthrough that won them a freaking Nobel. Yeah, but if you look at the research, Nobel prize winning scientists were more likely to have a regular hobby or other pursuit than those scientists who were still really good but a rung or two below. And if you look at psychology, what it tells us from sport to scientists
to i'd guess hunting, but basically everything is. What it does is when we have some diversity to ourself, meaning there's other hobbies, other interests, is it makes it a little bit more resilient because if we don't achieve the thing, we still have something to fall back on. And I want to tell you a story real quick on something that's not in the book because I forgot about it
until the book was done. But when I was a young runner, Okay, I was four oh one miler in high school and then I hit this spot where I just didn't improve and it drove me nuts and I was like so narrow and so all in on running. And I met with this sports psychologist in college who was world class, okay, and he's telling me this story and he says, hey, Steve, do you know such and such runner And I'm like, yeah, they were one of the best in the world. Okay, olympian, one of the best,
fighting for medals, fighting for Olympic gold. And he said, yeah, you know, she went through a really hard spot and transitioning from college to pro as well. And I said, okay. He goes, do you know you know what helped her make that jump finally to like this, competing for Olympic medals? No idea. He looks me dead in the eye and says, knitting. And I'm like, knitting, are you kidding me? You know,
twenty year old Steve. He said, Look, she used to go do all her workouts, lift the weights, go all in, and then come home and she was worried about lifting the weights, doing the workout, what the next race was. And she just all day when she was sitting on the couch or watching TV or on the computer, like her mind wouldn't let go of it. And that created such overwhelming anxiety where she never got out of like the stress mode into the recover repair mode, which was
where we adapt and grow. And for whatever reason, taking up knitting and joining a group of knitting friends gave her that space where body and mind were on something else. Of course, twenty year old Steve didn't listen to that because he was like, what are you talking about. I'll just keep going all in and do Yeah, it didn't work. I should have I should have taken up knitting or another hobby. But the point is that's what the research
literally says. Now, it doesn't have to be knitting, right, It could be in your case, as you mentioned, like fishing, you know, another type of hunting. Maybe maybe you take up you know, bow hunting in addition to you know whatever. And what that does is it diversifies your sense of self a little bit. And there's research on this tying it to hormones. So briefly, I'll I'll give you some some sciences. What if we lose and it's literally all
in on this thing. What happens is our body goes through a stress hormone release where it just jacks up our cortisol, which is not good for us. Okay, it puts us in this like panic, stressed anxiety state. If we lose and we have other things that other pursuits in our life that matter, we we don't get that big cortisol release. It's small, and instead we often get a testosterone release, which often people think test austin is
tied to aggression, but it's actually tied to status. And we get that testosterone release because our brain realizes, like, yeah, it sucks to lose at this thing. Guess what I'm going to go fishing tomorrow instead.
Yeah, I'm more than just this thing, bingo.
And that's it makes us resilient and able to perform in the main thing better than if we're just, you know, solely focused solely on in Yeah.
So if you were too right the Steve Magnus rules for pursuing excellence in your pursuit, whatever it is, And if you had to throw out a handful of these guiding principles, what would the first handful of those be that come top of mind? If if I want to be great at my thing, but I want to avoid these traps. So you're discussing what should be on my list of top commandments, Well.
I think a lot of things we mentioned. Diversifying your interests, your pursuits, your meaning. Okay, it will help, I think understanding accepting that like winning, outcomes matter, but you better have some sort of process or mastery approach underlying it, I think other things that really matter that are often not talked about enough are things like surrounding yourself or creating an environment that allows you to potentially fulfill that
potential to strive for that. So everything from our friends, our colleagues, our hunting buddies, our training partners, to the environment we train in all impact us so much, so much, and if we neglect those things, we're going to be in a bad state. So I think environment as well. I think the other things that come to mind are
being able to zoom out and have perspective. So the reason I think this is really important is because, and I'm talking to folks like you and I right now, is generally the striving or chasing comes naturally and going in the other direction does not.
True.
And when it comes to performance, a general rule of thumb I have is the thing that makes us great will eventually be the thing that gets in our way. So we need to go the other direction, meaning we need to have things that zoom us out and give us perspective. Maybe someone else listening to this podcast is really good at zooming out and taking perspective and saying, Okay,
it's not life or death. If I, you know, I get this hunt in great, then you might need to go the direction and figure out how to stoke that caring a little bit more right and feeling a little bit maybe more consequences. That's totally fine, But I think understanding that the thing that makes you great is going to get your way and how to set your life up so you have skills on the opposite side is
really really important. And then, uh yeah, other than that, I mean, I'm sure I could come up with a lot more, but we'll start with there.
Yeah, that's perfect, And I want to I guess there's something related to this which I found really interesting that that takes up a massive amount of mind space within the hunting community, which is performance under pressure and performance in the clutch, right, And I think the argument you make in this book is that all of these things we just discussed leads to poorer performance in high pressure situations, It leads to choking, it leads to all of these
things happening. And so you explored this idea of performance under pressure kind of a unique roundabout way compared to many other folks I've seen do this. But I also know you've explored this in some of your other work. I think you guys talked about some in peak performance, but you know, when it comes to hunting, it's a very clear, obvious, you know, high pressure moment. There is literally a shot that needs to be taken, like a free throw in a basketball game or a putt in golf.
In this case, you are literally taking a shot, but in the most serious situation that you could ever imagine, in that your trigger pull or pulling through on the bow. You are making a lifeboard decision, life or death decision actually, and the implications of whether or not you do this
as well as you possibly can. Either leads to a quick, ethical, precise kill of an animal that you do as best as you possibly can so it is done the right way, or it could lead to all sorts of horrible outcomes which no hunter wants to have happened, a miss and or wounding an animal that you don't recover, which is the absolute worst case scenario. So this is something that weighs on hunters tremendously. There's a ton of time and energy spent on making sure we can perform in those
moments and not choke. What does the research show, first and foremost about why people choke.
All right, So here's what it gets at is the combination of psychology and biology, which essentially says all of those things that you talked about lead to that feeling and experience of pressure that we all know. Right, it's when we see the deer the buck and it's like that our heart jumps right and all of a sudden, what felt smooth is now kind of jittery and and hard and spastic.
Almost. Yeah.
So what happens here is there's two key concepts that I think are important here. Is our brain is predictive, meaning in the scenario, it's sitting there before it even happens. It's like, what are we going to do if we see a deer? What are we going to do if we're standing on the free throw line or standing you know, about to shoot a penalty kick, and soccer, it's predicting. What it's trying to do is make sure that you survive. It's not trying to make sure that you win or
achieve the thing. It's that you survive. So what that means is it has all these different paths and colloquially we know them like fight or flight, but the reality is we have, you know, a dozen different paths, and with each path comes a different cognitive ability meaning focus. And then also like biology in terms of like hormones. So earlier I talked about cortisol stress hormones. Generally, we get more cortisol when we're in a situation that feels
like a threat. When we're in a situation what feels like a challenge, we get less cordisol. We get more testosterone and more adrenaline, so it feels like we're a little bit more excited with a tinge of anxiety instead of anxiety with not a lot of excitement. Which way we go depends on our brain's predictions. Now, what does that come down to a couple of different things is can we meet the demands of the task before us? Meaning have you put in the training, have you been
in the situation? Does your brain? Can your brain say, hey, if we do act y and Z, we're likely going to get you know why result If we haven't, then it's going to tend to default towards threat mode. Okay, because why would it put yourself in that position?
All that it's making an accurate prediction of the fact that you are not prepared for this moment.
Right, and you got to think, like the way it's thinking of is not I'm going to make you screw up the shot. The way to think of it is your brand's all essentially going, I'm going to create so much anxiety that you don't even want to take the shot, and so they you just escape, you know the other part of it. So the last part of it is it's also when it comes to that threat or challenge, it's it comes back to like how important is this thing? And self defining is this thing? Which we've talked about
a lot. But if it literally feels like if I make this shot, I'm the man, or I lose it, everybody's going to know I'm a failure, then you're more likely just to fault towards that threat mode because again, your brain's going to go like, well why take the shot, Like I don't want everyone to think I'm a failure, Like this is not the juice is not worth the squeeze. Yeah, So that combination determines like where our brain kind of
sends us. So what does that mean when we look at like choking and underperformance and that is a we want to give it the best evidence that we can that we are prepared. That means an accurate appraisal of what we're capable of, what we've trained to do, and then also an accurate appraisal of the demands of the task.
So not fooling us again, I know nothing about hunting, so sorry if I get this wrong, but not fooling us that you know, we normally make a shot at you know, fifty meters and this one's one hundred and fifty meters and being like, ah, we got it, you know, no problem right, No, Oh, you need to know what your capabilities are, both personally and with the equipment you have, and the accurate appraisal is more likely to put us in the challenge than bsing ourselves thro'ugh, this like fake
macho stuff. So all of that sets the stage. Now. The good thing is this is there are tools and tips that allow us to kind of nudge towards that threat or sorry, nudge towards that challenge response. One of the ways, and I'm sure you guys are familiar with this, is that if you set yourself up with a routine, what does that do? Your brain goes, oh, okay, we've been here before.
Like this.
These are the same steps that I'm doing right to get us There other tools that work well as well as like all of your psychology and cognition are all intertwined. So, for instance, with our focus, what happens when we're really stressed. Instead of you know, being able to like just focus on the things that we need to, our brain often jumps around. It's thinking like, well, what about I just felt a little breeze, what about the wind here?
Oh?
What was this sound over here? Maybe I should be focusing on this instead of that Our brain jumps around with stress because it's just like looking for stuff. Right. We can control that two degree based on how and what we focus on. So for instance, there's research and there's actually I looked it up, there's someone hunting and shooting on this. In addition to sport, interesting is generally for successful shots or successful kicks of the penalty kick.
You can tell, because athletes are individual shooting will have what they call a quiet eye moment, meaning right before their shot, there's this calmness and focus of the eye where it just kind of locks on to where it needs to be locked on and it's not darting around, you know, doing its secade thing where it's it's very So.
This isn't like a metaphorical quiet eye or like, oh I felt like I was quiet. This is literally a physiological They're they're measuring the eye.
They are literally measuring. They have glasses on that are staring at your pupil and measuring the movements of the eye. And it will literally in those who are successful, it will be a longer period of time where there's this quiet eye moment. Versus those who are not, it's generally a shorter period.
Wow.
And the good thing is like, this is to a degree trained, how do we get there? That routine matters, But it's also in practice when you are like shooting or like working on that penalty kick, like understanding what are the things that I'm supposed to be focused on. For instance, I don't know the hunting research well, but in soccer, when you take a penalty kick, if you are darting between where you want to shoot it, the ball and the goalkeeper, you are less likely to make
the shot. If you know that, you know what my process is. I'm gonna look at the goalie to see where he is, and then I'm gonna, you know, focus on a spot and then kick it there. You're more likely to do it because you've you've essentially said these are the things that are important here. Same with in
kicking field goals. They found that if athletes feel like they're choking, one of the best things they can do is like look at kind of just beyond where you want to kick it, and just like focus on that thing and just like all your attention there because it will like quiet the rest of your brain because your brain's getting the idea that this is what matters.
Yeah, And so simplifying the process almost like dumbing it down almost to a few simple focus points.
That's it. That's what you're doing, because again, what is your vision doing. It's telling your brain what do I need to pay attention to in this moment When your brain is saying like, oh, this is stress mode, I'm going to look around and try and find everything that I can. The same works if you look at we could go a million different ways. But the same goes with your breathing.
Right.
Why do we say hey, slow, you're breathing down, Because what you're doing there taking deep, longer breaths is you're telling your brain to send the message that we're not anxious, we're calm, right, and when we take deep breasts, our brain goes, oh, forget the stress mode, like activate, like the quiet, restorative mode. The same goes with our self talk, right if it's jumping all over the place and on
like the negative stuff. What works for self talk when you're in those moments literally latching onto a mantra or a couple key things and just repeating those and saying like, this is what matters, this is what I'm focused on.
And you know, I've heard a lot of these things, like the reframing idea, the idea of like talking yourself through the fact that oh this anxiety and excitement and these nerves and my heartbeat going one thousand miles an hour, that's not nerves. That's not being nervous. That is me being excited for this moment because there's a wonderful opportunity ahead of me. I've heard people say this and it all sounds great, But I wondered to myself, min, does
that actually work in real life? Is there research behind something like that? Has that been to some degree quantified?
Yeah? So the reframing works, but it tends to work on what i'd call moderately challenging things and not super challenging. Okay, so reframing works when it's like I can handle this. I'm feeling a little pressure in anxiety, but I can handle this. If it is literally if you are on the free thrower line and whether you make it or not, win's the NBA Championship. Reframing's not going to work because your brain's not dumb. It's not going to be like, yeah,
this is excitement. No, this is a bit of anxiety. So in those sits situations, like what happens is instead of trying to reframe it, you accept it. You say, yeah, this is some ex anxiety I should be feeling this way. That matters. I'm not going to get rid of it. It's part of It's just part of it. So what are the things that I should be focused on then this moment that still allows me to perform? And that's where it comes back to, like, literally, what is your
vision on, what is your thought process on? What are your routines that you're going through the Other thing that really matters here that we often neglect is also like who's around us? If in those moments, if we're with teammates who like we really feel connected to, or if you're on a hunt with people who truly support you, that will allow you to perform in those clutch situations a lot better than if it's you alone or if like you're surrounded behind people who you know don't support
you win or lose. So it's also like the environment around us that will impact our ability to perform in these situations under pressure.
Yeah, I liked something you wrote. You said that clutch is a state, not a trait. I think that rings really true. And I think a state of mind is something you can cultivate. It's not something you're born with, it's not something you just get. It's something that you steward, that you foster. And that seems like something that any one of us can develop, right versus just like, ah, yeah, you know Steve's clutch, Mark's not.
So this is brilliant. And I talked to some your spot on. I talked to some people high up in the NBA who studied this, because you always hear these things like you know, Michael Jordan, he's clutch or whoever is clutch and whoever's not, And they studied us with all the data and the analytics, and they found that basically no one is consistently clutch, meaning no one has the clutch gene and just like generally comes through when it matters in the research, acts up. Which is why
I said clutch is a state, not a trade. Is sometimes you can get in that state and sometimes you don't. But I think what it tells us is that, like we all are capable of like cultivating those things right and those ingredients that are more likely to push us there. It just takes practice and experience, and it takes experience as well not not messing up and internalizing that like we messed up, because that's going to get in our way of getting in that that state in the future.
Yeah. So the unfortunate but simple truth of the matter is that no matter what we're pursuing, whether it's hunting or a run or shooting a free throw in the NBA finals, we are sometimes going to fail, right, And that is something that I think ties back to a lot that we discussed at the beginning, like decoupling your
identity from your outcomes. So in this case, you know how I think I guess where I want to kind of wrap this up is around this idea of failure when you don't achieve your goals, when you miss the buck or you missed the free throw. You wrote about this in the book about four different components you specifically
called out for bouncing back from failure. I thought we're something that would be very relevant to someone in a hunting scenario when you either just for whatever reason, don't achieve your hunting goal, or you straight up missed the shot, whatever it is. Can you can you speak about those four key components that being I don't know if you have those right in front of you reading for you, just in case you don't. One is shift out of
protect and defend. One's keeping it informational not personal. One is reframing, which we just discussed, and one is revising. So could you speak to anyone all four of those or any one of them or any other thoughts you have on just dealing with failure in such a way that it doesn't destroy you and your future success.
Yeah, absolutely so. I think this is really important. We often give platitudes to failure, say hey, we've got to, you know, learn from it, But what really matters is how we internalize and how we handle it.
Yeah, and.
A couple of strategies that you mentioned there that I think are really important is generally, when we lose at something, it sends our body into this kind of protection stress mode. And the longer we stay in that, the more we ruminate, we catastrophize, and our brain uses that information for its future predictions as like, no, this sucks, and Steve's gonna if he's in this spot again, he's going to fail again.
Yeah, vicious cycles it creates.
It's the vicious cycle. So what we have to do step one is get out of that stressed mode. So the easiest way to do this, and we've kind of danced around it, is in the research backs is up is do things with friends that are fun and interesting because it literally like the antidote to failure and stress is socializing with friends because it shifts our hormones. So when we socialize with friends, we get more oxytocin, which guess what, that decreases cortisol and increases, you know, the
good things that allow us to perform again. So socializing with friends, being around others, and sometimes even trying to make sense of the thing with those who are supportive.
So there was this wonderful study on rugby professional rugby players that showed that after a game, after a tough loss, when they went over what went wrong with people who supported them versus strangers when they were a strain, Like all the stress hormones go through the roof and they perform wor it's you know, a week down the line at their next game. When they did it with friends or teammates who supported them or coaches who support them,
you got the opposite. Good stress hormones put them in a recovery state, performed well later. It's the same with us. So what's your process in dealing with with failure? Hang out with friends, have some way to make sense of it. That's what I mean by like informational and not personal is have some process, just like a you know, athlete reviews the film, to do it in a non threatening way where it's like, Okay, how do I learn from this and grow from this? And then the last one
we talked about reframing. But I think the revising is really important and it gets at what we've talked all about a lot is when it comes to failure or even success, the story we tell about it is what our brain will use in the future. So how And the nice thing is we are in charge of the stories we tell. So how are you going to tell
this story? Are you going to tell it with learning and growth and like understanding, or are you gonna tell this like super negative cautionary story of like, oh, I'm never going to go back to that place again, because like how you internalize it will impact your behavior in the future.
And when you say tell your story, I mean you're you're not telling about You're not saying how you tell the story to your friends. You're saying how you tell the story to yourself self? Right? This is like some some self compassion here a little bit maybe, right.
Yeah, exactly, there's self compassion on it. And we've all been tho, Like, here's how I like to think of it is, we've all had those experience where internally it just gnaws at us. And the way we tell the story is like this annoyance, this gnawing feeling, and often that puts us in like this negative state. Right, we don't have great memories about it, right, yeah, and that puts us in that avoidance. So when I say tell your story, is like, internally, how are you going to do that?
Right?
When you're practicing. When you go back out and practice, or you go out on your next hunt and your mind goes back to the last one where you came up a little bit short. How are you telling yourself that? Is it one where you learn, grow, develop or maybe even you know, laugh at the outcome? Sucked, But like
the journey and the Camaradi camaraderie at a big positive effect. Right, that's fine too, But it can't be this big negative thing weighing us down, because that's going to put you in a state of like fear and threat when you come in similar situations in the future.
Yeah. Yeah, there's so much to unpack here and so much relevance to our world that I'm very glad that this this conversation came together. Steve, I can't recommend the book enough to folks. If you haven't yet, definitely need to pick up a copy of When the Inside Game and when this podcast drops. Initially it's going to be just before the book releases, So folks can pre order the book where anywhere I'd assume is there a place you prefer them to?
Nope, anywhere books are sold, Get it wherever you want.
All right, and then can you give us a rundown of any other content you want folks to know about the books they might be interested in picking up an addition to this one, you guys have a great newsletter, anything else you want people to know about.
Yeah, I think the best place to find us is at our newsletter. It's the Growth Equation Newsletter. You can find the links at my website, Steve Magnus dot com. I mean, I'm on social media YouTube, Twitter, or x, Instagram, all of them at Steve Magnus. That's pretty interesting. And yeah,
I just appreciate the conversation. And I love having these conversations with high performers like yourself, and especially in those domains that that aren't my niche, because I think it's so cool to see that regardless of our pursuit, performances, performance and the ideas translate across.
Yeah, they absolutely do. Steve, thank you so much for the time. I really enjoyed this and I'm excited to continue to, you know, put these ideas into action and continue to see what but you guys share list in the future. All right, thank you all for being here. I hope you enjoyed that one as much as I did. Definitely recommend you go and check out Steve's books. They are first class and I found them really helpful. And with that, I'll let you guys get to your rest
of your days. I appreciate you, and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.