620: Steve Magness - Defining Success on Your Terms, Setting Process Goals, Speaking Up in the Face of Fear, Winning The Inside Game, & Living a Meaningful Life

32:40Are you doing things that are meaningful and helpful in the world? and wherever we get that status, it gives us this degree of significance, meaning, you know, I matter. And I think this is important because nowadays our world increasingly makes us feel like we don't matter. And part of that is that we live in a global world where it's really hard to feel significant because, you know, you or I can go online and we can find dozens of people probably who do the same thing. And in our mind, we could say, oh, they do it better than us. Like, we're not that good at the thing that we're trying to do.

33:19Where 100 years ago, you know, if you were the best writer in your, you know, city or neighborhood or what have you, you felt pretty good because you couldn't compare yourself to everybody in the freaking world. So I think like the significance is harder to get, but it's important. And then that direction is, it's having a purpose. It's seeing a future. It's having hope. And we need paths. And if we have multiple paths or different paths for direction, then we tend to live a happier, healthier life. And I think too often, again, modern world has kind of narrowed our paths and said, like, this is the only definition of success.

34:02This is the only way forward when we know there's multiple. And then the last, but I think probably the most important especially in our modern world, is that belonging, that sense that there's something bigger in the world that you're connected to more than just yourself, that we have community and connection. And again, I'd argue that the modern world often makes us feel, even though we're hyper-connected, we can connect or follow whoever, we kind of miss out. We don't have that deep sense of genuine belonging. And what research tells us, and it makes sense, is that, you know, think back to when we were on the savannah in a tribe.

34:45If we had others around us, then we had the security to go explore, to hunt, to gather, to do things because we know we had the community behind us. If we were caught on the savannah alone, it often meant danger and possibly death. we are built to belong. And being part of a community sends a safety signal that allows us to get more out of ourselves. And I think we've kind of eliminated or downplayed that, and it's hurt us societally. It's definitely a commonality of sustainable excellence is those people are really good about surrounding themselves with Anthony Pompliano might call them compounders or people that will be there for you, support you, lift you up, push you, nudge you, right?

35:43Make you want to strive for something bigger. Those are the friends of my life that, man, I love them. You know, they're there when it's tough, they got your back, but they're also there next to you celebrating when it goes well and they're there to say hey dude i think you got a little bit more they got a little bit more they should be aiming a little higher that you go bigger and those people are goal i try to be the same for them but this idea that we can do it alone or that like it's it's weakness to need others is lame it makes no sense it's not a commonality among excellent leaders in fact it's the opposite the excellent leaders are really good about surrounding themselves with other excellent people.

36:24Yeah, there's some fascinating research. I love this topic. And you're spot on. There's some fascinating research that has found in psychology that we share the load. So part of our emotional regulation system is dependent on those others. Meaning when we lose, we bounce back better when we have friends and colleagues around us. Literally, our biology will change. Our testosterone and cortisol will differ if we suffer defeat alone and keep isolated versus if we are around others. Whether we bounce back after that loss, you mentioned sometimes you need that person to tell you you're capable of more.

37:07Research tells us that if a friend tells us, hey, you sucked at that game. You should have done X, Y, and Z better. If a stranger does it, our cortisol goes through the roof. If a friend does it, guess what? We don't have an increase in cortisol. We have an increase in testosterone because our body is priming us saying, this is someone who cares about us, telling us we can do better. I'm going to be engaged. That's why testosterone fuels some of that motivation internally. You can get back on the horse and do it again. And the other thing I'd say about belonging, and I outlined this in the book because there's crazy stuff, is that when we have others around us that support us, it literally changes our perception of how difficult things are.

37:55Researchers took a bunch of athletes, stuck them at the bottom of a really steep hill. And when you're alone, you judge the hill to be super steep and you say, no, man, I don't want to run up that thing. That would hurt. When you're with others, you literally judge the hill to be 10 degrees or about that shallower. And people say, let's go up it. I know it'll be hard, but let's take on the challenge. They've run similar studies with lifting heavy boxes and weights and running a far distance. It's we always, when we're with others who support us, we always judge the task to be a little bit easier.

38:35It changes our perception and that shifted perception changes our performance for the better. Wow. I love having the research back that up. But just another reminder of how important it is for us to surround ourselves with people that high character, a high get after it attitude, or at least people that we think will help nudge us forward. And then we do the same for them. You've written that this may sound obvious, but I want to go deeper on it. It's, is that it's a mistake to make success and failure of virtue. Why is it a mistake to make success and failure a virtue? Yeah. So what it does is it puts us in that protective mode.

39:20So when we make success or failure of virtue, it becomes self-defining. There is some fascinating historical research that found that essentially up until the 17, 1800s, saying I am a failure was relatively rare. We generally said, I failed at this thing, right? If you go all the way back to ancient Romans, ancient Greeks, what did they do? They didn't say, I failed at growing these crops. They said, oh, the god of crops or whatever caused this to go awry. And the reason we did that for a long time is, yes, it is a little justifying, but it protects us so that we could go then try and grow crops again.

40:12This researcher found that that all changed in the 1800s with the bank credit system is banks essentially had to define who to lend money to. So they started saying, this person is a good for nothing, meaning they were not going to be able to pay back that loan. And since then, we started to define our pursuits of success, failure, and different avenues and jobs as self-defining. And when we did that, what happens is now our job becomes, if we succeed, it's not just we did good or bad at this thing. It becomes a representation of us. And what all sorts of psychology literature tells us is that when it is us on the line, not surprisingly, it often puts us in this fear or threat mode, this survival mode where it's like, oh my God, if I lose this game, I'm a failure.

41:13People are going to think less of me. I'm not good at what I, you know, I'm not a good person or a productive person or what have you. And your body complies. It says, you know what, if my sense of self is on the line, I'm going to make you feel stress, anxiety, more cortisol, less testosterone, less adrenaline. We're going to feel that stress. Now, there are exceptions, but those exceptions are way rarer than anybody thinks. You know, most of us are not Michael Jordan, even the best of the best athletes. And the representation I'd give to demonstrate this is this is at the heart of choking in sport.

41:53So when you see people get the yips or just melt down on the highest stage, you got to remember, these are athletes who are professional, who have trained at the highest level, who have a degree of resilience and toughness that is often, you know, insane. They've made it, but they still choke. And the reason is their brain defaults to the survival of threat mode because it says, for whatever reason, it determines, oh my gosh, I am on the line here. And it's almost like the animal playing dead, right? It says, I can't take on the lion, so I'm just going to faint. That's what our brain does when our sense of self is on the line.

42:39it treats us as if our life is on the line. So what's the best thing to do? It's not to run towards the thing. It's to faint, play dead, or scurry up the tree to try and survive. Is that what happened to Simone Biles years ago? Absolutely. So what you find, and again, the research is young on this, but it's fascinating, is that for whatever reason, something clicks and the athlete internalizes that this pressure means that like I am on the line. If I don't make this, like my sense of self is destroyed. And the body literally disconnects. We call it in psychology, we call it a perception action uncoupling.

43:28So generally think of it like this, Simone Biles, she goes and does her twirls and twists and all that stuff. And she's an expert. Her body knows what to do. She feels when she's doing all those twists, believe it or not, she knows where she is in the air, right? Because she's a pro at it. When this choking occurs, the threat takes over, your body disconnects perception and action. So when she experienced those twisties, the reason it was so dangerous, she went up and did those twirls and twists and she didn't know where the ground was or where her body is because her body kind of checked out and played dead.

44:07It's the same reason that if you see, you know, baseball players like Rick Ankeel, who lost the ability to throw, you know, to home plate or Chuck Knobloch, who could no longer throw from second base to first base, even though he's been doing that for decades at a high level, it's almost like we transport back to when we first learned how to throw a ball where we didn't have that alignment with perception and action. And the reason that occurs is because that threat feels so real that your brain essentially goes, forget it, man, check out. Protect means faint, disconnect perception and action.

44:45how do we overcome that if that happens to us on in different levels like maybe you could use real life examples instead of a pro baseball player or the greatest gymnast maybe ever or one of them at least how what about for the everyday person who faces their version of the yips whatever that might be and what do we do to overcome that yeah so first off i think it comes down to what we're talking about is the external versus internal and how we define success is generally when that happens, we swayed all the way to the external and our definition of success has essentially become impossible. So of course our brain's going to shut down.

45:23So what it means, and Simone Biles actually talked about this during this Olympics, not to use their example, but she talked about how she had to get back to how she defined success when she started, which was more of play exploration. I want to compete, but I'm just trying to see what I can do versus make others happy, satisfy others, right? Same applies to us in our life. We've got to do the work to redefine what it matters, reorientate instead of letting this outcome take over everything. The second part of it is I kind of simplify it and I call it like do something that shifts your or changes your perspective or simpler, like do something crazy, which means this is often, you know, that we get stuck in this rut.

46:18So our brain is predictive. So when we get stuck in the rut and let's say we're going to work and we're trying to nail this presentation, but we just, every time we get up to give it like anxiety takes over and we just forget everything. Right. What happens is our brain learns. Okay. When we go up and give a presentation, it's time to be in threat mode, forget everything. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So what we have to do is get out of that rut and nudge us out of that rut, which often means doing something to like intentionally shift our perspective. So example, if I'm giving a speech and I always struggle at it, instead of like memorizing the speech and saying, this is what I'm going to do.

47:05This is what I'm do. You start off your speech by saying, Hey, I really struggle at this. I've choked the last time I've, I've given this, you know, this, this top, it's just how it's going. I'm going to try my best. If you see me sweating up here and choking, that's what's going on. You'd say that to an audience. Absolutely. Have you done that before? I haven't done that, but I'll tell you this. I've done something similar. The first time I went and talked to NBA team, this was early on in my career. I was a runner and a running coach at that time and hadn't done anything outside of this. And for some reason, NBA team comes and says, Hey, Steve, I want you to talk to all of our coaches and stuff.

47:53And I said, are you sure? And they're like, yeah, let's do it. So I walk into the, you know, whatever. I walk into this room and it's all these coaches I watch on TV and I'm young kid and, you know, can't play basketball or shit. And I stood up and I told them, I said, I know nothing about basketball. I'm not going to tell you anything worthwhile about basketball. If I tried, you'd see that I was faking it. I probably don't even know about elite performance as much as you. You guys all know more than me. I'm just up here because, you know, at that time the GM invited me and I'm not going to turn down this spot.

48:42And then I went into, but here's like what I do know. And what I'm doing there for me is, is in that case is I felt the pressure. I felt the anxiety. I didn't quite feel like I belonged up there. I was imposter syndrome. So I reframed it and changed the stage or set the stage in a different manner where my brain goes like, all right, like, you know, I guess we'll lower the bar here a little bit and take a different tactic. And that allowed me to, I think, have a pretty good presentation. Do you think, though, that could hurt because the audience may be wondering, why is this guy up here then? What are we doing?

49:24Should I even pay attention to this guy? Do you think that could hurt you starting like that? Absolutely. But I think what it is, and this is where the nuance is, is it's got to be genuine to it. There was another time, again, early on in my career, for some God unknown reason, the entire strength and conditioning governing body for the United Kingdom invited me to talk. And if you look at me, you're looking at me, right? I'm 5 '10", 140 pounds. And I'm standing in front of all these dudes and ladies who can lift a hell of a lot more than I ever could. in that environment, I remember standing up there and being like, everybody in this room can lift more than me.

50:11I'm not here to tell you about that. You're not going to learn anything about me about that, but here's what I am going to. And it was genuine. And I think that is the key. You're not going to use that in situations where people bring you in and they're like, Steve wrote a book on striving. We're going to come bring them in for striving. If I say, hey, I don't know anything about striving, that's going to backfire because that's their expectation is they're going to learn from me about it. So I think you have to be, again, intentional on how you're using these tactics. But sometimes doing things to shift that perspective are really important.

50:51I'll give you one more example before we move on from this that I think is important is when I was coaching an athlete, a runner who was struggling for this, right? They'd get through halfway in the race and they look great. And then just, just, it would just, you could tell in their eyes they had more, but their brain was going to doom loop. Right? So what we did is I said, you know what, forget it, right? Your goal is this. I want you to be with the lead pack at halfway. If you blow up, great. I want you to blow up and fall apart. And what you're doing there is giving them permission to, it's okay if I blow up, but as long as I put myself in position, that's what mattered.

51:33And guess what? They put themselves in position and held on pretty good because they weren't worried about blowing up anymore. So I think there's all sorts of these kind of like reframing or shifting techniques where if you're in that rut, we need to find some way to shift you out of that perspective, to give you their permission to see what you're capable of. It's funny to see what happens. I coached a girls flag football team in an all boys league this year and our girls were tough. They were awesome. And we ended up winning the whole thing, but we had one girl on our team who was scared to carry the ball, but we wanted everybody to get a chance to carry the ball.

52:10The boys are kind of big and strong and fast, but we were too. And I said, listen, you're getting the ball display no matter what and I don't care what happens I don't care if they grab your flag in the backfield I don't care whatever happens I just want you the second you get the ball to run as fast as you as humanly can as you can and and and do whatever you can and they get your flag they get your flag maybe you'll run in the end zone who knows what happens and this girl got the ball and absolutely took off as fast as she could and all of her teammates knew she did not want to get the ball like they all knew and she takes it and goes and scores you know like 40 yard touchdown run and her team goes bananas and the look on her face was like it was like a life-changing moment man because someone who goes from I don't want to do this I'm scared to death it's easier to not carry the ball I don't want to be embarrassed to then this belief this self-belief of like I can do it and sometimes you need others.

53:08Sometimes you need teammates. And sometimes your self-talk is just not accurate. It's not right. And I think those stories are useful because like we all can draw from moments like that, whether it happens to us or happens to other people. And that's why I think it's useful that you talk about this stuff so much and how you could implement it, whether you're learning from somebody else or for yourself into your own life. Yeah. You know, your story. I love that coaching. I'm going to hire you as a coach because that's brilliant. But it reminds me of, you know, some of the research and practice of what I've seen with elite field goal kickers in NFL.

53:44So if you look at the research and you talk to them, if someone's struggling, you know what they tell you to do is the exact same thing that you just did there, which is you simplified and gave like one specific direction. Literally the research tells you struggling NFL kicker, what do you do? Or starting kicker, what do you do? You tell them, pick a point between the upright, focus on that, kick the ball there. And what happens in the reason this works is because stress, pressure, anxiety, feeling over threat, it tends or it tells our brain to go haywire. We start ruminating, catastrophizing, thinking if this goes wrong, if that goes wrong, what do I do if I do this?

54:24You know, the crowd's doing, making me go nuts, all this stuff. when we narrow in on one precise thing and say, this is it, just for a moment, our brain says, okay, I'll tune the rest out and just focus on this. And it's almost like we get tunnel vision and it allows us to perform in situations where often it feels overwhelming. One of the phrases I use, Steve, when I would be scared as a quarterback, especially in my freshman, sophomore year, when I'm young and they're older guys and I felt intimidated by them, this simple phrase, execute my job, execute. There's, you know, there's 22 guys on the field.

55:03I'm like, Oh, all this crazy stuff, execute my job. And I know what my job is. I know what I'm supposed to do. And so it was just execute my job. And that had this like calming feeling to myself of this self-talk of like, I can execute my job. I can do that. Like, I know, I know my read, I know, what I'm supposed to do here. And then I've just this, that, that little focus on narrowing. I love how you put it, narrowing the focus almost just frees you up to then let it rip versus thinking about 22 people and all the craziness and the chaos is like, execute my job. I know what I'm supposed to do and then just let it rip.

55:42And I feel like that could be applied in all areas of life. It does because again, stress causes go crazy. You know, one of the tools that I learned early on. I used this in speaking, but I learned it from running as, as you can see with the audience who can't, I wear glasses. If I take out my glasses, I can still see kind of, but not very well. When I started to feel the pressure, when I started getting good at running, I decided, you know what, for certain races, I'm going to run without my glasses. Why? I could see the, my competitor ahead of me, but I couldn't see jack shit around me. Right.

56:19And in that that forced me to do what? Narrow my focus. I'm going to stare at the guys I'm competing against in front of me. Forget the crowds. Forget anything else. Forget everything else going on. Like this is all I can literally see. And that's why, you know, again, speaking, sometimes I do that as well. But this is why when you know, they tell you public speaking, go focus on a couple of individuals who seem engaged. because you narrow your focus and you're like, I'm just going to talk to this guy who's smiling. Go find those eyes. Go find the head nods, right? You know what, Steve? You find the head nods and you look for those eyes.

56:56And I'm with you. I'm always looking for the head nods and find those eyes and those are my people. It's so funny how that works. That's it. But it's the same as when you're a quarterback. What it does is it narrows you on to, okay, this is my job. I'm going to do this. Forget all the noise. And that's how we perform best. I can't believe it's almost been an hour. Okay. One more thing. want to hit before we have to run, man. And that is your three part, you know, I love sustainable excellence. You love sustainable excellence. We both study it for a living. I'm fascinated by people who have sustained excellence and you have a three part framework for sustainable excellence, be, do, and belong.

57:35Can you go deeper on what it means to be, do, and belong? Yeah, absolutely. So here's, here's what he said. We've talked a lot about threat and pressure and survival mode. And what it takes to perform at a high level over the long term is essentially what I call clarity on yourself, clarity on your pursuits, and clarity on where you are or how you're connected or your belonging. And if we can get those things, we're a more resilient performer over the long haul. So if we look at B, what does that mean? It means clarity on yourself, meaning that, again, we talked about intertwining yourself in the success and all that stuff.

58:16We want to be a diversified person who acknowledges that, yes, I care about these things, but I'm also complex. Meaning, as I said, I'm a father, I'm a dad, I'm a writer, I'm a runner, I'm all these things. And when you have that diversity, what it does is it gives you the ability to bounce back and handle the tough spots. And the other part on being, I think, as well is it also centers you on what actually matters. Again, too often when we get pulled to the external, the things we're chasing, we start to believe that they are the thing that matter. But you ask anybody in sustainable excellence, they'll come back to some insights on how they define success.

59:09They'll come back to values that they have, the things that they hold deeply and stand for. We've got to know those. If we do, going to perform well. And then when we look at our pursuits, that doing part of it, I think it comes down to a lot of how we take on the challenges that we pursue. We've talked about this a lot, is that if we get stuck in prevent defense, we're never going to be able to explore our potential. So how do we get out of that? Give ourselves the freedom to try, explore, to fail potentially, because it's only in that exploration do we learn, A, what we're capable of, where we went wrong, how we could get better, and again, whether we want to keep going down this path.

1:00:01So I think it's, again, that complexity of understanding that our pursuits can have multiple definitions of success. And the last one we've touched on a lot is that belonging. And you just can't go places without a great support network, without feeling that we're connected, without feeling part of a community. And what I try to outline in the book is that, A, that's essential. but B, sometimes we fall for the candy version where we just try and fit in. And the difference is this, is when we belong, we're bringing our whole selves to the activity and we're essentially expanding ourselves or leading to growth of the group.

1:00:49When we choose fit in, we're just looking for a place temporarily to, it's like middle school. I'm just looking for a table to sit at, right? And that might satisfy you for a couple of days, but we know from middle school, it feels a hell of a lot better when we feel when we find that, you know, football team or track team or chess team or math club that is like, these are my people, man. And that's what we're looking for is don't try and just find a table to sit on. Find your people who support and challenge you. And that's where your true growth is going to happen. The new book's called Win the Inside Game.

1:01:33How to move from surviving to thriving and free yourself up to perform. Steve, you killed it with this one. It is so good. not surprised considering I've read I read all your stuff with Brad on the growth equation and your previous books grateful for your friendship and how generous you've been with sharing all of your book proposals and notes you probably don't even remember that you've shared all that stuff with me but it's been a massive help for me as a writer because I really look up to how generous you are but then just how excellent you are as a thinker and an explorer and a writer so thank you so much man and I highly highly encourage people to read win the inside game it's uh it's so good but thanks again man and as always I'd love to continue our dialogue as we progress man you got it man thanks so much for this I appreciate all your work here you're doing a great job so keep it going

1:02:33it is the end of the podcast club thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club if you are, send me a note, ryan at learningleader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Steve Magnus. A few takeaways from my notes. To live a meaningful life, we need to feel four things. That's coherent, significant, directed, and belonging. Coherent means life adds up. You have a cohesive story. Significant means you matter and you can make a difference. Directed mean there's a purpose to your life and pursuits. And belonging means part of something that is bigger than you.

1:03:12You're a part of something that is bigger than you. Then we talked about clearly defining your purpose and what you want to do. For Steve, he said, it's, quote, explore interesting ideas that will help people. And those things will help him too because he's curious about them. And Defining that one sentence will free you up to say no to things outside of your purpose and then to narrowly focus on actions that align with your purpose. Clearly define that and it's freeing. And then Steve's framework for sustainable excellence. Be, do, belong. B, clarity on who you are, do clarity in your pursuits, and belong clarity on where and how you fit in.

1:04:06So good. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Steve Magnus. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that and you also go to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and you subscribe to the show, very important. You write a thoughtful review and rate the show, hopefully five stars. By doing all of that, you give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much.

1:04:40Talk to you soon. Can't wait.