The Unfiltered Truth About Peak Performance with Jim Murphy

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1:17This is The Ed Myron Show. Hi, welcome back to the show, everybody. So I was just telling this man off camera, he's written one of the best books I've read. And you all know I read a lot of books. I read a lot of books before this podcast started a decade ago, and I read a couple hundred a year, you know, deciding who's going to be on the show and just to grow myself. And I don't have a book I would put in front of this book that I've read the last few years. It's that good. He's a New York Times bestselling author, former baseball player. So I like that about him a lot. He's a faith-based person, which I enjoy as well.

1:51And his book just took off. If you watch any football last year, the Philadelphia Eagles, who won the Super Bowl, A.J. Brown starts reading this guy's book on the sidelines during a playoff game, and it caught fire. And thank God it did, because you should read this book. It's that good. He works with executives. He works with professional athletes. We both do some work, which is really unique work with PGA Tour players as well. And it's all about your mind. And this book and your heart, by the way, more your heart than your mind, according to him. But anyway, my guest today has written a book called Inner Excellence.

2:25Jim Murphy, really, really good to have you here, brother. Thank you for being here. Thanks so much for having me, Ed. Such an honor. I poured through this book. And it's not a quick read either. It's a great read, but you're not going to finish this book in a day, everybody. But I poured through it. Let me start out, Jim. I'm going to read something to you that you wrote in the beginning of the book. You said, this is the mindset of inner excellence. You said, I compete. Everyone, listen to this closely. I compete to raise the level of excellence in my life to learn and grow in order to raise it in others.

2:58I just want to start out with that as a concept because that says a lot in one very long sentence there. Talk about that a little bit. You know, and I think there's so many similarities that we talked about before we started here between why you're successful and what you're sharing with the world and what I'm sharing because you talk a lot about identity and how that really you understood when you're growing up that your identity was holding you back and you had to change that identity and and that's kind of what this the inter-excellence mindset is is who you are as a person is the most important thing that you bring to the world the most important thing that you bring to your family your kids who you're becoming is the most important thing it doesn't matter if you're a college baseball player like yourself at UOP or pro athlete or stay at home mother, mother or father.

3:49Um, so that means learning and growing is the number one thing about you. The most important thing every day that we do is to learn and grow. How do we do that in the book? You talk about, you call it the daring and the twilight. Then you have these three pillars of extraordinary performance. You guys, I don't say this a lot on the show. It's such a good book. It's so content rich that, uh, I don't even know that the interview is going to do all of it justice to say, but what are these three pillars of extraordinary performance. And I want to tie that into the heart in a second with you. Yeah.

4:19So you can think of it as the acronym BFF, like best friends forever, belief, freedom, and focus. So belief, what I define that as, as a subconscious comfort level with what you feel is possible in your life. And we all have beliefs about every single area of our life. And inter excellence is, is really about these three areas. Everything that I do with professional athletes or with anybody is to help them in these three areas to expand what they believe is possible to have more freedom to play like a kid and to have fun and especially joy and uh um to learn how to be fully engaged in the moment heart mind and body unattached to what you're trying to do did you do this because you struggled with it like the joy piece or like or did you write about it because this is stuff you're also great at well i think more so understanding that that human nature we're created for glory and I think lack of freedom is one of the biggest challenges that we all face professional athletes especially but all of us a lack of freedom because there's so much comparison and joy is like that fulfillment of freedom I think of joy as a deep sense of well-being freedom and gratitude this inner buoyancy independent of circumstance whereas happiness is a positive temporary feeling based on what's happening and so it's like professional athletes, they come to me because they want some surface level thing.

5:43They want to be, you know, they want to perform better. They want to make more money or whatever they want to become a world champion. And so it's like, they're coming to me for happiness. They want better results in circumstances. And I teach them how to have joy. I teach them how to like, like what you do is help them have an identity that's powerful and meaningful and understanding. Like, like I said, created for glory. There's two things there. I just want to reiterate. One was you said, independent of circumstance. That's the kicker for most people, their joy, their freedom, their peace is extremely conditional on what's going on at any given time and truly free people.

6:24It's non-conditional. It's non-circumstantial. And so everybody just evaluate that. And I think here's a piece that might help you do it. You have these things in the book about, you know, here's some pillars and then here's some stuff to drop. I couldn't believe this was the first thing because it's one of the things I've talked about a lot. You just talk about it far better than I do. But that is, there is a difference between your beliefs and your thoughts. And they're not the same thing. Yet most people think I am my thoughts. And I think this is one of the great breakthroughs of life. If you can begin to understand this right here is that you are not your thoughts all of the time.

7:03I want you to talk about that. Yeah, it's so important to understand. I think of it as you are not your mind, and you are going to have some terrible thoughts are going to come into your head sometimes. And here's what's crucial to understand. The most successful people in the world at anything have terrible thoughts sometimes, horrible thoughts. They could be about killing somebody or whatever. And it's so important to understand that you're going to have horrible thoughts come into your mind that just come from from uh the culture or come into your head from from somewhere outside of you and they have nothing to do with you and so we've got to understand that you are not your mind it's a part of you that you need to train and especially you are not your thoughts because what happens to most people is they fuse with their thoughts they think a bad thought or a negative thought and they've they're like yeah that's that's true I am that.

7:53And that's really crucial to understand. It's important to know where that comes from. I've always had the theory that a lot of our thoughts were probably installed in us when we were defenseless and younger. And we gathered maybe them from mom or dad or people that were around us. And so truly, these more than likely aren't your thoughts. They're your moms. They're your dads. They're a coach. They're a teacher. Do you agree with that? Yeah. And so now we're getting into beliefs. Because here in Spain, we have these valencia oranges and when you squeeze an orange what's going to come out it's always orange juice right it's never apple juice it's it's it's never pear juice it's always orange juice and so that's the same with us when we when we're squeezed when we're under pressure what's in our heart is going to come out and so what's in your heart your heart is what's running your life and what i define as your heart is your spirit or your will it's the deepest part of you like your soul and that's what we need to transform.

8:50We need to get to the neural level where when you're squeezed, what comes out is inner strength. And now, so now we're getting into beliefs and the subconscious work. And it's important to understand that beliefs are feelings. Not every feeling is a belief, but beliefs are feelings. So we want to make sure that we're getting into our heart, into our mind, these images and words and thoughts and feelings every day that are empowering. Help us do that. Give us an example or a technique or strategy that can help somebody begin to build the building blocks of doing that? Yeah. So one, one of the first things to do is to make sure that you're very aware of and intentional about the words that you use.

9:33And so people come to me as a performance coach, like a pro athlete and generally when they're underperforming and they might say, you know, you, you love golf, right? And so they might say, um, like, I'm really struggling with my putting for example yeah and it's it's really just not true when they tell me that and the reason is because what they're saying is a present tense thing i'm struggling with my putting putting struggling is an as the ing or ending that's a present tense word what they mean is last tournament this morning last week every tournament for the last 10 whatever i haven't putted like i wanted to and so but when you say it as present tense now we've got beliefs coming in that you're reinforcing a limiting belief.

10:17And so we've got to make sure we never reinforce limiting beliefs. We always say, the way we do that is an inter-excellence discipline, which is to speak the truth about the past to create possibilities in the future. So we always say anything that we don't want to continue as past tense. Meaning, so speaking the truth would be, hey, I need some help because last tournament I didn't putt well, as opposed to say I'm struggling with my putting. I'm just trying to help everyone have an application. Yeah, so it's not true to say I'm struggling with my putting unless you're in the middle of a putting stroke at this moment, right?

10:46It's literally not true. So when you say it as its present tense, what happens, remember, beliefs are the key thing. That's what's running your life is your beliefs. And so we want to make sure that we're continually expanding what we believe is possible. And every time we say something about the past that we don't want to continue as present tense, we're reinforcing what we do not want. And this is crucial because beliefs is what's running your life. Can you speak a new belief into existence if you truly don't believe it, meaning, like, this is just use putting, but it could be sales, it could be public speaking, it could be being a mom, do you buy into the idea that I can say I'm a great putter and I'm beginning to change my beliefs by simply speaking it, or is there more to it than that?

11:26There's two things here that's really crucial. One, let me think about your life and changing identity. Is that possible? And two, can you change beliefs? Is that possible? And both are absolutely true. Like, you're living proof that you can change your identity. like like yeah thank you and so you're you're growing up you had this very limiting i'm an imposter you know i'm i can't do this here we go again yeah that's who i am you know i'm a failure whatever those sort of beliefs that you had and then you change that and so your identity can change which is crucial um and we can get to more more of that later but the problem with imposter syndrome is that really a self-centered thing one of the main things it's a self-centered thing it's constantly thinking about me and I'm the one who can't do it.

12:08But when you're at your very best, there's no thoughts about self. Selfless is fearless. I love this. Okay. We're going to go there right here. Most people look at an athlete or a friend of theirs that brags a lot or is clearly narcissistic and they go, that's an egomaniac right there. Right. And then they look at themselves and they say, no, I'm humble. I have a ton of humility by struggle with my confidence and they think that's not ego. But you sort of stipulate in the book, it's very much still ego because you're thinking about you all the time. So ironically, a lot of people who are humble or have humility, that usually that sort of, there's an intersection there with, they're a little quiet, they struggle with their confidence.

12:53We all can kind of see that. Most people would say this person is absent of ego. You sort of say, it's sort of the same disease, it's just manifesting itself in different symptoms when you have these experiences. This is so profound right here because I've also said this in my own weird way. You just, again, say it better. So talk about that for a second. If you're really experiencing self-centeredness, that's ego. Yeah, exactly. So I define humility as an accurate view of self. So it's not over inflated and it's not under inflated. Because if we think that every person is created in God's image and has this infinite possibilities.

13:33The problem is we get in our own way. We start thinking, I can't do this. We start talking about the past as if it's present tense. And then we have these limiting beliefs. But like I said, when there's no concern, when you're at your very best, whether it's you, you know, you playing center field at Pacific or, or, or me playing baseball or football, it's when we're at our best, there's no thoughts of self, right? It's you're fully in the moment. and that's the self-centeredness that leads to fear. That's our biggest challenge. Self-centeredness leads to fear. That's in the book. I want to unpack it just a little bit more because you say all these brilliant things because this is your work.

14:10You own it. But someone hearing it for the first time, it would be very easy. They're driving in their car right now. They're taking their walk. They're on a treadmill. Okay, and it kind of goes by them. So just pull that out a little bit more. Talk about that a little bit. I left for the desert to go figure out what to do with my life and find something that I was ready to live and die for. And that's where Inner Excellence was born after five years of full-time writing and research. It was on how to have the most peace and confidence under the most pressure. Yes. And what I found in the desert is that self-centeredness is the biggest challenge that we face in performance and in life because it leads to fear.

14:44And I'll share with you how it works. So we need to think about ourselves in order to just to get through life. And we've got to feed ourselves and clothe ourselves and bathe and look both ways when we cross the street. So this is the challenge. Because when we constantly think about ourselves, we have a subconscious that reminds us, our subconscious is really there to protect us and to line up our results and circumstances with our beliefs. And so the protection is, it knows all your failures, it knows all your weaknesses. So when you start thinking about yourself, subconscious is like, oh yeah, what about this?

15:17What about that? You failed here, you failed there. Who are you to do this? And so we've got to be careful about thinking about ourselves. We don't want to think about ourselves too low because you're created for glory. We don't want to think about ourselves too high. Both of them are inaccurate. We just want to have an accurate view of ourselves so we can get out of the way and do something amazing. So imagine it's midnight. You're on the couch. You're scrolling through this new website, hitting the add to cart button, and you decide to check out, but you remember that your wallet or your credit card is in the other room and you don't want to get off the couch, that's okay, you don't need to because there's that big iconic purple shop button.

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17:33I watched this yesterday. We're recording this. You guys won't hear it for a while. Did you watch the PGA Tour yesterday? Did you see Fleetwood on the last hole? I didn't. Yeah, okay. Well, I just watched him. He's known as – Tommy Fleetwood is known as one of the nicest guys on the PGA Tour. And he had a significant lead yesterday. I think he was seven shots up on Keegan Bradley. Anyway, still has a one-shot lead, and he's in the middle of the fairway on 18. And he kind of fatted a wedge to the green. still if he two putts he's probably gonna win it he ends up three putting bradley birdies and fleetwood loses again and he's just had a hard time winning and afterwards he said first thing he said was i guess i'm too focused on myself i'm too focused on myself those were exact words bro so like you're a million percent right okay we're gonna get into we're gonna shift gears a little bit so when you're listening to him you would think okay so i gotta really work on my mind that's what I got to work on but you say actually not really what you got to work on is your heart and this is not normally what you would hear from a sports performance coach I think you would agree with me right it's usually uh visualization techniques mental rehearsals which there's some stuff in there as well but let's talk about the heart stuff for a minute and just extrapolate that for everybody?

18:58Yeah. So the way I think of it is we use the mind to train the heart. Okay. In other words, like when I said earlier, when you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out. When you squeeze a person, what's inside their heart is what's going to come out. It's not what's inside your mind. It's what's inside your heart. Your heart is where your deepest fears are and your greatest dreams are. If you want to help anyone, including yourself, your kids, the most important thing is to get to their heart. And so it can start by what are your greatest fears and greatest dreams what do you love the most and what do you fear the most because what you love and fear the most that's what's running your life that's the behind the scene program running yeah by the way this is just outstanding you guys ever hear an interview that's just so rapid fire point after point after point that's why his work is so good it's through listening to people that i think live greatly and by the way i'd put at least half of those people that I'm about to describe to you aren't affluent people.

19:54They just live greatly. They're heart centered people. They're living on their purpose. They're living their dream. I kind of feel like a great life is whatever your blueprint of your life is, you sort of live it. And it kind of looks like what you'd like it to look like to me. That's a great life. And one of the things as I got older, I think when I was young, my identity was more like, I'm a butt kicker. I'm a, I'm intense. I'm a competitor, I'm a whatever, you know, which served me at a certain age. As I got older, I realized how little I know in life. In fact, every day that goes by, I realize how little I know and how fortunate I am that I've got this far in my life thinking I knew so much more than I actually really did.

20:35I was like a delusionally confident person. But anyway, what I sort of adopted over time from listening to these people and exposure I've got to being on certain boards I've been fortunate to sit on is most of them sort of their internal identity is like that of a learner. And a lot of them even use that word. And over time, it's sort of like I'm fascinated and curious about experiences that I'm going to learn from. I find that that takes the pressure off of me. It's my most solid identity. And in the first thing you say in the book, here's 10 new empowering presuppositions, every circumstance and every person you encounter is here to teach you and help you.

21:22It's all working for your good. Guys, that's the game right there. I think it's the most important thing. Have you found that with the people you work with as well? And is there any hack or thought or saying or something you say to guide somebody in that direction to become that way? Well, that is the first principle of inner excellence. And so it's the number one thing that every client, everyone that reads inner excellence, I want them to understand and learn and commit to memory because it's a very, very dramatic statement. Everything and everyone I encounter is here to teach me and help me.

22:00It's all working for my good. And so as I said earlier, learning and growing, that's the number one goal. And if it's all working for your good in the long term, and often we're not going to know in the short term how this is good you know i mean what if you got cancer what if some horrible thing happens and because there is evil in the world but in the end it's all here there's there's learning for every single thing that happens in your life and so first is committing that to memory and then working on it every day because i just had a family member go through something so tragic i mean just about as bad as it could be for a mother.

22:36I'll just leave it at that. You can all probably figure out what that thing might be. And I was talking to her yesterday, and I'm preparing for this interview. And I said, maybe this is the worst time to put this philosophy in front of you, because it's the most extreme stress test of whether it's accurate or not. But what if this somehow is still working for your good? And when I first said it to her, she she didn't reject it summarily but she's like that's probably going to be a hard one for me to get to now and uh she called me back last night really late and i actually grabbed the call i for some reason was looking at my phone it was very late and she said you know i just i'm thinking about something i've sort of drifted from my faith the last many many years and i'm wondering if this is supposed to be the dramatic thing that calls me back to my faith.

23:31And I said, wow, the fact that you could find this blessing, this working for your good in something that nobody would blame you if you didn't. Yeah. You're so extraordinary. So I just want you guys to know, and even in the most extreme cases, that's, that's, it can be true. What about this intersection of, you kind of have faith, personal development. There's like this intersection you sort of describe that I think the circumstances the other day, you merge all this together. Talk about that intersection of the variables. I shared earlier that the heart is the number one part of your life. You know, the deepest part is where your greatest fears and greatest dreams are in training.

24:08It's the most important thing that you'll ever do. And so if we want to optimize human behavior, then it's really understanding how humans work and the great need and our deepest needs. And our deepest need as humans is for love and connection. Unconditional love is our greatest need. It's our greatest power and our greatest desire. And likewise, our greatest fear is rejection, to lose out on that love and connection. And so most people spend their entire lives largely unknowingly trying to get more love and connection and acceptance their whole life by making more money, being more successful, getting more status.

24:48And they're really just trying to get that love and connection love and acceptance and so if you understand that that's so important because then you can really pursue that do you think people confuse i did maybe do but i'm aware of it they conflate and confuse significance and recognition with love and connection because it feels very similar oh yeah yeah yeah yeah for sure and this is the big challenge with people that are talented. If you're very talented, what's going to happen? And especially if you combine talent with hard work, what's going to happen is you're going to get some success, right?

25:25And you're going to get that love, right? And so what are you going to, so then you, when you're talented and successful, you set higher goals, right? And then you don't succeed. Now you're not, you're going to have some sort of a failure and you're going to lose that love. You're not going to get the cheers and people are going to judge you. And so then what are talented and successful people do? Well, I got to get more of that love. I got to be more successful. So then they try harder. And then, you know, a worldwide pandemic could come in and shut everything down. Like there's so much out of your control.

25:57And so that's why it's so crucial to have a clear purpose for your life that goes beyond results and circumstances. Say that guys, you hear that you have to have a clear purpose for your life that goes beyond results and circumstances. And one of the reasons so many of us conflate or confuse significance or recognition with love and connection is when we were kids, we felt loved more by our parents if we brought home A's or we had a home run or we did good at a recital. And so we begin to conflate this and we chase these things our entire lives. And as somebody who's, you know, everybody, if I could save you some time, as somebody who's been rather fortunate at acquisition of recognition or significance, I can tell you that it is not love and connection, even when you get it.

26:39And the pursuit of that as your main life goal will leave you very empty. And I think it's really important that someone writes about this, which is what you did.

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