Texas Rangers' Josh Jung: “Win or Lose, It Can’t Wreck You”

0:00I'm recording this on a Monday, and Monday is our grocery store day in our family. I usually pick my kids up from school and we go over to Whole Foods, get all our groceries for the week. Although here very shortly, we're going to go over there to get our Thanksgiving turkey because they've got a bunch of great options. Turkeys start at$1.49 a pound if you have Prime with organic birds at$2.99 a pound. And they only carry no antibiotic ever turkeys that will bring quality to your table at a great price. Whole Foods has great everyday prices on all your Thanksgiving essentials, whether you celebrate with a massive family or just a few close friends.

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1:19Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down. Be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

2:10Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. You know how your phone has the memory thing where it just like, on this day, here's what you did. on this day in 2017, I took my now eight-year-old, who was very much not an eight-year-old then. He was a tiny, tiny baby. I'm looking at this photo now. We went to opening day of Major League Baseball. The Texas Rangers were playing, and I had just given a talk to the Rangers at their spring training in Surprise, Arizona. That was a cool experience. The Rangers had been one of the first teams that had read my books and it sort of made its way through the farm team up to the clubhouse.

2:57And they'd asked me to come out and do a talk. And then they invited us to the game. And it was really cool. I am still dealing with the fact that my now eight-year-old thinks that it's very normal to watch games from the owner's booth. We've got to go to lots of different games for different teams and different leagues over the years because my books and now stoicism has sort of made its way through professional sports, which certainly was not what I was thinking when I went to write books about an obscure school of ancient philosophy, but it has been a cool and nice perk. And it's been also weird to kind of watch different generations of players and maybe generations plural sounds is a bit of an exaggeration, but not much.

3:43It's weird now that many of the players, if not most of the players that were reading my books when they first came out are now retired, right? 10 years, the obstacle is away. 10 years is an eternity in sports. And the athletes that I keep hearing from get younger and younger and younger. That brings us to today's guest, Josh Jung. He is the third baseman for the Texas Rangers. He reached out on Instagram, or maybe I saw an article. We sort of went back and forth and said, hey, I'm going to be in town. Can I come check out the bookstore? And so he came out one Saturday. It was very nice. He gave a bunch of baseball cards to my kids, and he signed one of them, Memento Mori, which was pretty cool.

4:32We walked through, we talked books, We shot the shit for a while. And I said, you know what? When does your spring training start? Would you want to come out and do the podcast? And he said, yes. He squeezed it in. It was very nice. In this episode, Josh talks about how journaling changes how he shows up on and off the field, what it feels like to be ranked and competed against all these other players, the ruthlessness of the sport, the power of ambition and motivation without being controlled by it. I think this is a great interview. Josh is, as I said, the third baseman for the Texas Rangers.

5:06He played at Texas Tech. He was drafted in the first round. He is the real deal. I really like this interview. That's why we split it up into two parts because it went a little long. And in this interview, you've got a guy who, you know, really took the obstacle is the way to heart. And I think that comes through in this interview. And I can't wait for you to hear it. Enjoy.

5:33Well, what's interesting to me about baseball is just how many games. It's a game of failure, not just because you have four or five at-bats or whatever, but it's a game of failure because it's the longest season of any of the sports. So you're going to lose a lot of games, even in a good season. Just 500 in basketball versus 500 in baseball. I mean, there's about twice as many games. So a 500 team in both sports, one's going to lose twice as many. Football, you're only playing 17 games. So like a great season, you might only lose like two games, right? I was going to think how many games did Lou Gehrig lose?

6:09That Yankees team in the 30s was unbelievable. Stupid. This is why AI is not actually. Lou Gehrig retired from baseball in 1939. So there's no information on how many games he lost after that. Well, yeah, obviously.

6:28uh yeah those yankee teams they probably won like seven or eight world titles probably four or five in a row hey claire can you look up how many games luke garrick's lost in his career but yeah so you play 2100 consecutive games okay so if you're 500 they're obviously better than 500 because they're the yankees in but like that would be a thousand games that you lost lost can you imagine losing a thousand baseball games. And out of those thousand, he probably performed pretty well. The ones that he lost. Right. But he still lost. It's like dealing with the double, the double emotions, right? Like, because you invest in your career, but at the same time, you want to win games.

7:05Sure. Yeah. I mean, we know sports are team games, but like what a team game brings up, like in a movie, you could act the hell out of your role and the star could suck or the marketing department could drop the ball on the promotion of the film, or the studio could not put any money behind it. And so one individual has only so much influence over the outcome. Basketball is probably the team sport where one individual really can, probably has the most influence. Yeah, one person can take over a game. But you even see that, like, that's a bad habit to pick up. Kobe Bryant won a lot of games and then also tanked a lot of games because he couldn't really be on a team very well.

7:52But yeah, the acceptance and then just the statistical reality of not more often than not, but often you're going to get a shit result. Can you handle that? Right. Because baseball, we kind of say it, it's nine individuals that you're trying to get to play together. Yeah. Especially in a lineup. Like it's not individual. So if one guy doesn't do their job, next thing you know, the lineup can just get out of whack because they're being able to pitch to a certain part of the lineup a certain way. Now you're, there's a hole that they can exploit. Right. Yeah. And then that hole gets exploited. The whole thing just falls apart.

8:30Yes. No matter how good the lineup is on paper. Yeah. So it's very interesting to see how that's just navigated and if you don't fix or come into the game and do your routines etc it's like on your bad day the team could be going great we could be up eight runs but you don't do your job it's kind of a big bill belichuk's all the time right do your job you don't do your job we could end up losing that game somehow yeah because like if if there's not a credible threat of a run game in football the quarterback's not going to be able to throw well because they're just going to blitz every time. If the quarterback's not throwing well, then it screws up the run game.

9:10Like it's supposed to be this evenly balanced thing or else the opponent knows this is where we direct all of our energy. And then even if it's only slightly out of balance, right, they know, hey, in the first quarter, it's going to be fine. The second quarter is going to be fine. But the running backs can get tired by the third or the fourth quarter because they're having to run over and over and over again because the quarterback's out of commission, right? And like, so it's just, and that's really what like great athletes do is they go, okay, this guy is statistically 10 % worse when he goes left than right.

9:47So how do we make him or her go left more often than right? And over the course of however many minutes, that will lead to a one and a half point statistical differential and that's how we win the game like it's all stats it boils down to just these little thing and you're just running it over and over and over and over again and then that creates just enough of a gap to separate a win from a loss yeah i think you see that a lot in basketball yes it's like the defense they're just pounding the rock and it might not still be working but eventually it'll break no at the spurs they have this poster that that's like Like the story of the teams that pound the rock thing.

10:29That's cool. Which is that like, it's not one singular blow that, you know, opens up the thing. It's thousands and thousands and thousands of them. The consistency of. Well, yeah. And like on a book, like it's not one word or one sentence or one page where someone's like, that's why that book is good. That's why that sells. And I can't also go, the reason this worked was because on April 3rd, I crushed it. eventually by the time it comes out all the days and time and hours and work has been blurred together because you did stuff and then you undid it and redid it and edited and moved it and changed it so there's the distinctions between all the different inputs get blended together into this finished product to the point where like when i sit in this room and record an audiobook some of it i'm like did i write this where did like you're you don't even recognize passages is because it's the cumulative result of this process that's kind of not even you at any point.

11:30And to me, that pounding the rock thing is the idea. It's like you show up every day. There might be some pivotal moment where it feels like it was this blow that did it, but that blow by itself would not have had any significance were it not for 20 years prior to that. Right. That's what's so fascinating just about sports in general or really anything in life. It's like the more consistent you are at doing something, the more you're pushing the needle. Yeah. To, for me, what I say is like being the person you want to be or being the player you want to be. And I think with that comes like investing in others, especially in the game of individuals, like investing in my teammates.

12:13for one it helps take the the ego part out of it because you have to release that and think about other people yeah you're not so wound up in your own struggles or performance and as the book talks about like good or bad because it's so easy to focus on just good or when you're going bad so easy to focus on bad i think it was don mattingly played first base for the Yankees his quote was like anytime I struggled I would invest in other people and then it was able to clear my conscience because I was trying to help them do their thing that I forgot that I was even well you're by definition getting out of your head and off your problems because you're focusing on someone else yeah like in basketball if your shots aren't falling you can just play really good defense you know baseball it's a you're a little more passive because like you You can't like will the ball to come to you.

13:09And in basketball, you can chase it down, right? You can go get rebounds or block shots or whatever. But yeah, the idea of like when you're kind of stuck in your own shit to focus on someone else, this is why like in sobriety, they talk a lot about being of service because the more you're just ruminating on your own life and how, you know, stuck you are, it becomes a real wicked cycle. But if you're just like, oh, I'm going to help other people, I'm going to go to, you realize other people have it worse than you. You also realize that if they're not too far gone, if there's something they can do, if their problems are solvable or fixable or they can make progress, well, then like the same is true for you also.

13:49If you watch someone who's in a slump get out of a slump because you helped them, of course, you could get yourself out of a slump too. Yeah. It's all perspective, right? At the end of the day, it's all how you perceive things and you can control that. I think in one of your podcasts, I wrote it down in my notes. When I listen to your podcast, I'll be driving in the car. That's mainly when I do it. So I'll like throw a sentence down in my notes and then I'll go back to it and be like, oh, which podcast was that? So I could try to go back and like, but one of them was like the discipline of perception because your perception is something you control, especially on all events.

14:24So that's why I like reading this book. The Intergave of Tess. I know I keep going back to it. No, no, that's why I gave it to you. Yeah, it's fresh in my mind because I was reading it yesterday, I said at the airport, but it's like you have the discipline to control everything you think and how you respond to it. And I think that's what you talk about with Marcus a lot. It's like he has the ability to respond to everything.

14:54We just took our kids to an outdoor performance, The Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that, but I do control how I respond, right? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence. My wife introduced me to Dr.

15:31Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for good inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It over the holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr. Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being.

16:12And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events. Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns.

16:55There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in. We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course, because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour.

17:32And of course, this is stoicism, too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you, discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours.

18:00What Marcus is doing in meditation, this isn't like him. I don't, what I make up is this isn't him being like, here, let me just tell, because he's writing to himself. So Marcus isn't going like, here's some general observations about the world that I find to be true. It wasn't a book of philosophical truths. It was more a person working against his assumptions or his issues and trying to sift through them to get to the truth. So when he's saying, you know, like the end of book five is one of my favorite passages. He says, I was once a fortunate man, but at some point fortune abandoned me. But true good fortune is what you make for yourself.

18:44good fortune, he says, is good character, good intentions, and good actions. I think he was first thinking the first part. And then he was like, okay, but what if you thought about it this way? Right? Like, this isn't an abstract thing. He's like, why is my life so shit right now? What is all this stuff that's happening? And then he goes, wait, actually, I'm not unfortunate. I have the ability to make my own luck by choosing to be good and to think good thoughts and to do good things. And so he doesn't just magically have the right perspective. It's in the journal he is working to get to the right perspective.

19:22And not once, but over and over and over again in different situations when his natural instinct is to not be at that philosophical truth. yeah it's so powerful right like i say i'm very immature in this process like i just started journaling so is he it's oh and like i have just started journaling and it's like when i'm writing it's like am i writing in case somebody picks this up yeah like am i trying to be impressive yeah and it's like well i don't need to yeah but then you're writing and for me my mind goes all over the dang place but like it's like his perspective shifted yes in that moment and he was reminding himself, no, no, this is how you should view it.

20:08And then for me too, it's like, there is no finish line with any of this because new situations are going to pop up. New things are going to pop up. It could be 50 years from now. And I haven't been tested with this trial or tribulation since I was 20 or whatever. And it's like finding and understanding that, which is why meditations is so cool because he's truly just going through. yeah he and you're you're only there for maybe a moment and then it helps you and then you got to come back to it like i i just had this thing happen where someone was like it's just a real asshole like it didn't harm harm me so much it harmed this other person and my wife was like you know you would have been like so upset about this like uh not that long ago she's like this is she was like you should take this as a sign of progress that you didn't blow this whole thing up and i so So I was proud in that moment.

21:00But then as time has passed, the more I've thought about it, I'm not like where I would have been originally, but I'm I'm bothered by it more than I let on in that moment. OK, I got to where I needed to go. And actually, while I was at the airport, like afterwards, I sort of wrote a couple of daily stoic emails. Like so people and sometimes people think I'm like writing the stuff like from some place of expertise. I'm writing it because I'm working my way through. I am angry about this. I want to hold this person accountable, but I need to remember, you know, these are the things I need to remember.

21:33So the byproduct, the output of that is like the emails. But now I'm like, okay, the first wave of it passed and I got through that. But now there's like the second and the third waves where, you know, now emails are going back and forth and I'm like, I'm finding myself getting worked up about it again. And I'm like, okay, I have to remember those things. And then here's some other things. I know it intellectually, but then actually feeling it in the moment and not letting it become a distraction, not letting it blow up a relationship with this person, not letting it spiral into this multi-person back and forth thing, and not letting it be anything more than it was, which is like a person did a shitty thing that had a consequence for a person that I wish hadn't happened, but it did happen.

22:23And that's about all the emotion I can have about it because no amount of getting upset is going to make it unhappen. And then I also understand at some level, this is who they are and they're not changing, not anytime soon. And so I don't also have the ability to use this to get through it. It is what it is. And then the sort of working through that, not just once, but often enough until everything settles back down and it recedes into the past and then some other shit happens. That's the process. It's crazy because there's the theory. Yeah. There's like you said, there's the theory of it, but then the action part of it is the hardest part.

23:10Yeah. Because there's definitely times where you're like, oh, it shouldn't be this way. I'm the only one that has to deal with this. And it's like, no, so many people are going through the same stuff, maybe in just different circumstances. Yes. But it's kind of the same thing. So it's cool to hear you say like the emails, it's like stuff that I'm reminding myself of or stuff I'm going through. And this is helping me get through it. But it's also there could be 10 ,000 people going through the exact same thing. And it just like, everyone's like, oh, and it's like, just like a little reminder, just like how Marcus did it there.

23:39It's like a little reminder to myself. Oh, no, perspective shift. Yeah. Or, you know, whatever it is in that moment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel very like what Daily Stoic is, is a way for me to work through shit that's going in my own life for which the byproduct is like professional output, but I'm, I'm doing it as much as I'm talking about it. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm sure you experience that too. When you do like oftentimes the people that are very good at things or very elite at something, it tends to come with a deficiency in other areas and they can be complicated to deal with. Definitely.

24:17You know what I mean? Yeah. Because it's almost like, they're so good at this, that has taken precedent in their life, right? And they just don't have the awareness to, that's when people say they're well-rounded. It's like, no, you probably do something really well and it just outweighs the other stuff and you're not aware enough to actually understand. Yeah. If you were well-rounded, you wouldn't be a professional baseball player. At all. Yeah. There's no way. Yeah. Like I had to be good at something or better at something than somebody else. Yeah. To get into that position at some point along the road.

24:47Yeah. And like maybe in you see it physically manifest, like you're like, oh, this person's way taller than a normal person or this person's jacked more than a regular person. That's the physical manifestation of it. But also you think of the utter disproportionate focus on a seemingly trivial thing to be able to master it. That came at the neglect of a bunch of other stuff. Almost always. Now, you can round that out later. Once you get comfortable and secure, somewhat secure in the profession, you can be like, oh, hey, actually, I can't afford to be so selfish or so myopically focused because it creates an imbalance that actually affects the performance.

25:30But the other problem is sometimes people are so good at it that other people start to compensate for those deficiencies for them. And then you get more and more unbalanced and less aware of how unbalanced you are. Because you just take it for granted that like, like there's a quote from Kissinger where he says, you know, early on in your career, you're worried about boring people. And then as you become successful and important and powerful, they worry about boring you. Right. And so there's just like an inherent entitlement that comes from like people going, hey, am I boring you? Like instead of you feeling like you have to carry, and it's something as simple as conversations at a dinner party or whatever.

26:14Instead of feeling like you have to carry your weight, people are like concerned that they're not doing enough for you. And that fucks with you. Yeah, especially like sometimes to be able to find that contentment in the game or where you're at, your career could be over and you didn't even find that contentment. Yeah. So that's the mental, I think the mental battle of this game is finding that contentment mentally. Yeah. Physically, you might have to do a couple of different things to get where you want to be, but mentally finding that contentment to where like, no, just be me. Yeah. That's what got me here in the first place.

26:49Don't try to be somebody I'm not. Yeah. Like, I'm not going to go up there and be Aaron Judge and his 63 homers. That would be awesome. If it happened next year, that would just be insane. But if I go and try to do that, circling back to what we talked to the beginning, if I go and try, it'll probably be worse. Yeah. If I go and try to force things to happen a certain way, or I start trying mentally, I start trying to make things happen. It's not going to happen. What is interesting that even at that level, in the way that how many people who had the exact same child that is you exact same talent sex and drive at you at some point i had to go it's just not going to happen for me like because they were one percent short here or didn't get this break here or had this injury here and they had to just accept like hey i'm not gonna not gonna make it uh or this is the ceiling for me that everyone has to make that level of acceptance at some point in what they do someone has to go hey i'm not aaron judge even though millions of people would trade places with that person immediately yes and even talking like i've interviewed a bunch of different billionaires over the years that they're like no no i'm i'm number 80 on the list of the richest people you know like because i'm in real estate as opposed to tech it doesn't matter how good i am the multiples of my kind of business i'm never gonna get to that level i remember i was talking to a football coach and he was like i would open it the sports issue every you know, every year and be like, if I'm not like the highest paid coach, then like somebody fucked up, you know?

28:23And he's like, at some point I had to accept like, no, no, no, like I'm getting paid millions of dollars to do this thing. That's great. I should just be happy with that. But that the problem is very few people get to an elite level practicing any form of acceptance. and inevitably we all do have to practice the acceptance and you that's like a muscle you don't have it's so hard because your whole life you're dreaming and aspiring to be x y and z yes but at some point it's just like no i'm really good because i do these things well so on a daily basis do these things well yeah don't try and do too much and that's where you go back to the flow if you're able to turn your brain off or turn self one off, you'll probably outperform what you think you can because you're not so wrapped up in, oh, I got to hit 300 or I got to hit 40 home runs or you just let it be.

29:20Well, we can see it clearly in sports. If people can see this analogy, it might help them. It's like, okay, centers get paid about X in football, right? Funding backs get this. And they know this well enough that this is what a franchise tag is, right that's where they go like hey you're gonna get this is the band of salaries for you so because you couldn't come to an agreement with your team this is what we're gonna pay you imagine this is what they do in arbitration in baseball it's like you think you're this super special unique individual who's worth an unlimited amount but actually statistically there is a number that you're worth right and there's so there's games within games that you're playing right just like Like the average, you know, your career length is going to be this on the inside, the outside.

30:06And I've had to accept that like as an author, it's like, okay, I can't compare it. Like, I think you left with Atomic Habits last time, right? It's like, okay, so he wrote a book about habits, which sold 20 million copies. James and I were at a conference where he was thinking about not doing a traditionally published book. And I was like, no, no, you should definitely. And in that conversation, I was the established, successful author who had written multiple books, had bestsellers. And I'm like, no, no, I think you should try it. You know, it might work out. And then he sells on one book, like, twice as many as all of my books combined have sold.

30:45But I remember I was talking to someone and he was like, yeah, that's the biggest category. Habits is the biggest category that you could possibly have a hit in. And so you have to accept that you're playing a different game, that everything has its own band, right? And if you're like, well, he has more than me, so he's better than me. And all of a sudden, the thing that you were proud of two seconds ago, you're miserable about. and so realizing yeah you have this band this kind of narrow band and in fact the band is so narrow that it's like you and your unique talents and unique circumstances and you can only measure yourself against yourself but just the acceptance of hey like you felt called to perform classical music you can't wonder why you're not selling out stadiums like that's that's not a thing there's not 70 000 people in every city who want to go listen to the fucking cello right and the sooner you accept that, the more excited you can be and the more surreal it'll feel that there's a thousand people in this beautiful old theater listening to you play the cello and you're getting paid an obscene amount considering, and you should be happy with that.

31:55And the sooner you can kind of go like, oh yeah, in my, given what I brought here and what I do, this is amazing. The sooner you can get there better you'll feel it's going back to you talking about the billionaires like being stuck yeah like oh i'm number 80 you see that in baseball too of course you're like oh that's where your ego takes over you're like oh i'm better than him but he's perceived to be higher on this thing than me and it's like you control zero percent of what goes into this list yeah your stats could be better you could be xyz but they view him better like you you can't control It's because he's from Pittsburgh.

32:32And so Pittsburgh is going to overpay him. And it's because he went to this college in this run in their thing. So it was a media thing. So then he has bigger endorsement. There's all these things that have nothing. You can't just will that into existence. And you have to accept that you got all these things. And then it's all like the hilarity of being on the Forbes list or being in the league and comparing yourself to what another player has and being jealous is like, meanwhile, every game, there's tens of thousands of people in the stands who would kill for one pitch as a professional baseball player or who would kill just to have gone to high school with you.

33:16Do you know what I mean? Like just to have the connection of like, I know that person and he signed a jersey for me, but you're too busy looking at what you don't have. Seneca talks about how there's the poverty of having too little, but most poverty is wanting more. It's wanting more than you have, and thus you make yourself feel poor instead of incredibly fortunate. Yeah, it's so powerful because you can be in any situation, which is, that's the power perspective, right? Yeah. Being able to take yourself away.

34:00i know we do a good job like it's just as the rangers like trying to give back to the community and seeing that like i had a charity event the beginning of january for the miracle league which is kids that don't have the opportunity to play baseball at all but it's like just doing that one event it puts everything back into perspective yeah they're like i'm here and i'm able to do this this is the one percent of the one percent of baseball players like go enjoy what you do yeah comparison is the death i think of athletes because for one you're never going to be in the other person's situation and i always say like comparing swings right like aaron judge is six seven two whatever 280 just chiseled out of his mind like i'm six two two fifteen that doesn't compare his environment.

34:48He's in New York. I'm in Texas. There's so many different variables. I love watching Mike Trout hit, but it's like, my body's not Mike Trout's body. Comparison is terrible. Well, the shitty thing with comparison and envy is it thinks it can pick and choose. It's like, oh, you want to be him? Okay. Also, you're adopted. Who knows? In 13 years, he could find out that he has a congenital heart defect or whatever, right? You don't get to pick the things that you want and feel insecure about, you'd have to trade for the whole package. And almost certainly you wouldn't trade for the whole package. Now that it sucks to be him, but he didn't get amazingly lucky in a bunch of wonderful ways that he's very fortunate in.

35:29You don't get to say, well, I get all the things that I have and I get to say, but I also want these five other things and I've been screwed over because I don't get them. That's not how it works. You know, you got to make a whole trade. And in that case, you probably wouldn't. Right. For me, I believe in baseball, people get opportunities. Some will get more opportunities than others. But if you're so wrapped up comparing yourself to other people, you might miss the door that was open for you. Sure. Because you're so worried about kind of what other people are doing. And I'm sure that in all walks of life, that can be said to be true.

36:07Just kind of notice it in baseball, because that's my career, right? But it's like, why do you compare yourself when that really doesn't matter at all? But it's almost innate. Like it just happens. Well, you can see why it's good from an evolutionary standpoint to never be satisfied, to always want more. Look, if Elon Musk was easily satisfied, he would have stopped when he made, you know,$20 million on his first company. And then he would have stopped when he made$200 million on the second company. and that would have made it impossible to start Tesla and SpaceX. And that would have been bad for humanity.

36:45That's also why he can't stop now. And look, I think on a sort of historical basis, we know inevitably that insatiability leads to ruin, that you overreach. And so there's like some real reason to stop. But I think just on a general level, just knowing like, hey, the force makes sense. that's a good thing that's propelled the human species forward it's probably on a net basis shitty for the individual who can never be like that was a good run i got eight years and professionals especially like what it does is it obscures what you thought was on the far end of the possibilities at the beginning like i remember going if i could write one book that would be, that's what a writer gets to do one time.

37:37That's what makes you the thing. And then it was like, immediately you'd sign the book deal and you're like, well, now I hope it's a huge, the number has to be high. And then the sales have to be high. And then, well, can I follow it up? And then can I follow? And then eventually it becomes, can I do it forever? Can I do it the most? And so your inability to go like, I am playing with house money and I'm way ahead of the curve and it's all gravy from here, that's what deprives you of the ability to enjoy the thing while you're doing it. Yeah. I think that's what, if you're able to get to that place where you're able to surrender all of that, that's when you're legit playing free.

38:17Yeah. And that's where self one won't get in the way. Yeah. Because ultimately when you put expectations on things or you say, one thing I took away, I mean, I took so much stuff away from you and McConaughey's talk it was unbelievable but it was like if you try to do better then you're not focusing on on the moment yeah right now like if i go three for three with three home runs like the next day i can't outdo that that was like picture perfect i can't outperform that and then like season to season it's like okay i had a great rookie year it's like oh i gotta outdo that no just be you yeah and perform your game play your game when you try to outdo things and you put those expectations, you're probably going to fall when it comes to like setting the standard kind of too high.

39:06But that's where I kind of talk about having unrealistic expectations, but realistic review of like what you're doing. Like I got to shoot for the stars, but at the end of the day, when I sit down, it's like, okay, this is, this is what I'm trying to do. Did I achieve that or not? And it's like, okay, I'll do it tomorrow. Most of it probably traces back to childhood. Like if you have a parent whose approval and affection is dependent on how you perform, that's a very hard thing to unlearn. And I think a lot of people that become like early on, that's adaptive because you are, the other kids are like, yeah, baseball is fun, but also my Game Boy is fun.

39:49So like, It's a toss-up for me, but if you become the kid where you're like, no, no, no, I want to do this so my dad notices me, or I want to do this because when I'm on the field, it's the only part of my life that doesn't suck because I come from a shitty place, that feeling is going to be a competitive edge when you're playing against regular kids that are just like, oh, it's nice to be outside. And then when you're locked in competition with two people who both want to be baseball players, but for one, they've transformed it into a matter of life and death. And the other's like, well, if I don't do this, business is cool too.

40:29That person's going to win. The problem is that mindset is very hard to turn off. Right. And it feasts on itself. Right. And as a leader, figuring out what makes your teammates click will help the team go forward. Sure. Because if, like you said, someone comes from, let's say, a worse background than me, and I know that, like, there's some sympathy with that. But also, like, you know what makes them tick. Yeah. So you know kind of, like, when to push and when to pull back. Right. And other guys, same thing. like everyone goes out there and plays for something yeah or at least they should be playing for something but finding out what that something is yeah helps you as a leader be able to inspire them especially in the times of struggle yeah i think that is what makes a true leader especially in a baseball clubhouse knowing the other 30 guys that are in there and what makes them tick and being able to get their full potential out of them especially when it means the most, right?

41:33Which is when we're competing. Yeah. And then knowing, oh, hey, this is what I'm motivated by. And some of that's healthy and I want to keep that. And then here's the part of is that's not healthy that I got to sort of cut out and replace with something that's a little bit more sustainable or a little less corrosive, like a less corrosive form of fuel. Because like anger is usually bad fuel. Proving people wrong is usually bad fuel. Like getting your self-worth from accomplishments, usually bad fuel. Like how do you kind of replace that with slightly more sustainable forms of energy? Yeah. And I mean, those things can be temporary.

42:11Yeah. Like temporarily it could help you be successful. Yeah. But in the longterm, it's going to be detrimental to your performance because you're always playing with that chip. Yeah. And it's like, at some point that chip is going to weigh you down. Well, yeah, I think you see this in like the guys that are like about anger or, you know, like it becomes later in their career. they're just like manufacturing shit to be angry about, you know? Yeah. It seems like a miserable way to do it. They're only happy if they're complaining about something, something like that. And everyone has their edge and that's great.

42:42But like you said, there are some negative things that could be temporarily good. But if that's what you focus on all the time, like you could just create separations between people, which could divide a clubhouse essentially. And then it's like okay now what when when you're winning we say in baseball winning cures everything yeah like you don't realize the the crap that's going on in the clubhouse but as soon as you start losing and everything comes to light kind of all at once you're like oh gosh we got some stuff to work on yeah but it's like if we don't correct that stuff or if we don't acknowledge that stuff early it could be very detrimental just to the club in general yeah which is is it's so fascinating navigating a clubhouse yeah for one like i'm probably one of the fifth youngest guys right so like seeing all of these very successful ball players in baseball you try to get to 10 years of service time like that's the pinnacle that's like max pension that's what everyone tries to get to so seeing all of these guys i think we had like five or six guys last year which is incredible but seeing all these guys at that place where it's like that's where i want to get to eventually yeah what makes them successful seeing all of that see this is my brain just goes crazy it's like does watching them help me get there or just seeing how they do things and me kind of creating my own path is that going to help me even more yeah baseball it seems like it has a big age range of players unlike some because you can it's not that it's not physically taxing as it is but you can play it long i think you know like longer yes exactly it's not like chewing you up the same way that's like maybe the more contact sports are right i mean yeah your body i would say the travels are just a little worse because you are flying every couple days yeah and you're changing time zones and all that kind of stuff yeah but yeah from a physical perspective those guys in football they beat each other up yeah i know our turf like turf fields can kind of get to you a little bit more more so yeah because if basketball running on the hardwood can't be good for your body especially how big those guys are sure um but i'd say that's where the length of our schedule kind of comes into play.

44:44Right. Because like I said, like in spring training, you're going to feel phenomenal. Yeah. And then in August, you're like, oh my gosh, I've been hit by a bus. How do I get my body ready today? Yeah. But yeah, it's a very interesting dynamic to see how guys have navigated it. And was it successful? Was it not successful? Have they had to change what they did? It's so interesting. And it's always interesting too, because when someone reaches their 10 years, like we have like a little party essentially, and they always ask them, the million dollar question. What do you know now you wish you knew then?

45:17And it's just funny to hear. What do people tend to say the most? To enjoy it, to have a lot of fun. And it's like the cliche, like, okay, I'm getting out of here quick type of answer. But it's like truly, especially with me, if I went back 10 years from now and told myself, hey, if you do X, Y, and Z, you'll get to the same spot as if you continue to believe that you have to take a thousand swings or whatever. And like, that was my edge at that point. But as we continually grow and learn and adapt, and there might be days where I need a thousand swings, but it is interesting to see how every single person is just so vastly different, or they say the same thing in their own way and it seems different but it's actually the same so it's crazy to see guys and their thought processes and understand that like we're all essentially trying to do the same thing yeah some guys are motivated by more stuff like we talked about whether it's anger whether it's i want to be you know in the hall of fame or just something they're all motivated by something finding that motivation helps me a better leader but then hearing them say it in their own i get their own definition of what success is that's what's truly crazy about the whole journey and trying to understand people and their thought processes because as i'm going through this journey and like understanding my own process it's like holy cow bro turn your brain off but other guys it's just fascinating how they've gotten to that point doing the things they do Every athlete I've talked to has said some version of like, because you get there because you're competitive, you're driven, you sweat every fucking thing.

47:01But then later they're like, I wish I'd enjoyed it more. And I've tried to be like, yeah, it shouldn't be miserable while I'm doing it. It should be hard because it's hard and it's tough to do. And probably not doing it will hopefully at some point be a relief, you know, but while I'm doing it, it shouldn't suck. because then the only reason I'm doing it is to get some kind of reward on the other side or I'm only doing it for some endpoint. It's financial security. Okay, well, I'm already there. So why am I still doing it? There's almost no logic in which, unless you're trying to pay off somebody's medical bills, you should continue doing it even though you fucking hate it every day and it's torture.

47:47yeah that's not that's not the right way to do it at all because that's the the miserable we call them salty salty vet right it's like dude you don't have to be here yeah you get to be here yeah and you get the opportunity and someday you will be sad that you are not here right so why are you making it shitty now yeah and that's what's hard too right like when you're sucking embracing that suck and still finding a joy through the suck. Yeah, because you know that thing that's like, show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser. You know, like, it shouldn't be fun to lose. And you shouldn't be like, win or lose.

48:27I'm good with either. That's like, that's probably a sign it's time for you to go or you don't have any competitive drive. Yeah. But can it not wreck you when it doesn't work out? That's where you're trying to get, I think. 1000%. Can you turn the page, learn from the mistakes, and then wake up the next day and be like, okay, I'm gonna go kick your ass. And if I don't, I'm not going to get hung up on it. I'm just going to come back tomorrow and try to kick your ass again. Basically. Do you want to go in the bookstore? Yeah, let's do it. All right.

49:10really helped the show. We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode.

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