How To Transform Your Mindset And Boost Performance With Steve Magness

The Mindset and Self-Mastery Show

“Confidence demands evidence.”

In this episode, Nick speaks with performance coach and author Steve Magness about the intersection of mental health, athletic performance, and personal development.

What to listen for:

• Performance coaching helps individuals navigate mental and physical challenges
• Trauma can set a brain’s prediction to be hyper-responsive to stress
• Mental preparation and visualization are crucial for success in high-pressure situations
• Self-awareness is key to understanding personal performance and growth
• Finding a balance between care and obsession can enhance performance
• Confidence is built through evidence and preparation
• Visualizing both success and failure helps in managing expectations
• Sharing the load with others can enhance performance and reduce stress
• Small tweaks in approach can lead to significant improvements in performance

“When we step into the arena, whether that arena is an actual arena or your boss’s office, our brain is predictive and calculates whether we’re prepared to meet the moment.”

• Our brains are wired to assess challenges and predict outcomes
• Preparation is key to calming the brain’s predictive analysis
• The “arena” can be any situation where we face pressure or judgment
• Confidence and readiness are about training the mind to focus on what you can control
• Understanding this process helps reduce anxiety and lets you show up fully present

“Confidence comes from giving your brain evidence that you are prepared.”

• Confidence isn’t inherent—it’s built through preparation and action
• Small wins or practice create “proof” your brain can rely on
• Preparation rewires doubt into belief, making confidence feel natural
• The more evidence you give yourself, the less external validation you’ll need
• Confidence grows when you approach situations proactively instead of reactively

About Steve Magness

Steve Magness is a world-renowned expert on performance, author of the new book Win the Inside Game. He has also authored four other books, including the bestselling Do Hard Things. He has written for The Atlantic, Runner’s World and Sports Illustrated, and has as served as a performance coach and speaker for teams and individuals in the MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, the US military, and numerous companies and organizations.

• https://www.stevemagness.com/
• https://www.instagram.com/stevemagness/

Resources:

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Click To View The Episode Transcript

Nick McGowan (00:00.725)
Hello and welcome to the Mindset and Self Mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan. Today on the show we have Steve Magness. Steve, how you doing?

Steve Magness (00:14.092)
I’m doing great.

Nick McGowan (00:16.192)
excited you’re here. think we’re gonna get into a lot of really really good stuff. I know you’ve got a book that it’s coming out and there’s some by the time this episode is aired this book will be out. So you have a book that’s out and there’s just a lot of cool things that we’re gonna be able to get into about mental health mindset and you know all those things. But Steve why don’t you kick us off? Tell us what you do for a living and what’s one thing most people don’t know about you that’s a little odd or bizarre?

Steve Magness (00:42.284)
Yeah, I’m a performance coach. What that nebulous term means is I help people try and deal with their mental and physical performance. I started out helping athletes. That’s where my background is. I was a pretty dang good runner and tried to help people navigate the mental side of that. And then I’ve expanded to help people from, you know, doctors to, you know, entrepreneurs to everybody in between because performance is performance.

One hint, oh man, that’s a good question. I could go a number of ways here. I think what I’ll do is tell people how I got into writing because a lot of people just think you’re a writer. You’ve always been good at it, right? And the answer is no, I used to suck at writing. In fact, when I was in high school, I was known as the kid who never read any of the books. I think I finished like one book in high school.

Nick McGowan (01:14.799)
the

Steve Magness (01:39.69)
I read the, this will date me the Cliff Notes and you know, took the test based on that. But I got into writing almost out of desperation. So as I mentioned, I was coaching and this since I was an athletic coach, so coaching track and field was my profession at the time. And I went through this crazy experience where I essentially was a whistleblower against.

Nick McGowan (01:43.047)
Yeah.

Steve Magness (02:06.19)
You know, the, some Olympic coaches essentially for Nike, some of the top athletes in the world. And I saw them breaking some potential rules. So I blew the whistle to us anti-doping. And there was a period of time there where it looked like I was, there was no way in hell I was going to be able to have a future in my chosen profession. So I looked around and said, I, a, I need to pay for lawyers. And I was again, a couple of years out of college making

$42,000 a year coaching track. I need to pay for things and I need a potential backup career. So I said, you know what? I know about running. Why don’t I just write about it? And my first book was all about how to train for your marathon or 5K or what have you. And I was so naive. I looked around and tried to pitch it to all these publishers. Everybody said no, because I had no writing experience.

And I just said, screw it, I’ll self-publish this thing and let’s get some finances and see if it takes off. And lo and behold, even with all of the grammatical errors of a self-published book and not having any idea what I was doing, it did really well. And a couple of years after that, it led to my first real book with an actual publisher that didn’t have grammatical errors and outside of the world of running.

And that launched my career to do what I do now, which is again, performance coaching, but also primarily I am an author of five books now and writing is the thing that I do.

Nick McGowan (03:45.341)
What a cool thing especially to be able to look back and say, didn’t want to read, I didn’t want to write, I didn’t want to do any of that, and now here you are. It’s a wild thing. Similarities, couldn’t help but kind of smirk with it because I used to tell people I hated reading even captions on TV. I just didn’t want to read it all. Did the same thing, Cliff Notes, you’re not, I guess you’re dating both of us because I’m 40. Cliff Notes was our jam back then.

They didn’t really crack down on the internet because it was still young and it was like, all right, cool. but being able to not have to read, like I remember the summer reading there, like you need to read The Hobbit or Fahrenheit 451 or whatever. Hobbit I read because my dad read that to me as a kid, but the rest of it, I was like, I don’t want to read any of it. Now I listen to audibles and read books and all that. The process of writing a book can be daunting.

My partner has an agency that helps people with that. And I know that there’s just an immense amount to go into it. Starting your first book, the idea and then working through all of that all the way to your fifth can be an uphill climb, but it can also be one of those like downhill slopes where like you start to do it, you get used to it, you start to move through, et cetera, et cetera. I speak to this from outside experience because of the clients and people I’ve seen do that. But part of it, I look and go.

how I know what that path looks like that I haven’t written a book yet. But what a cool thing for you to be able to go through and understand that there’s discipline within that. There’s even playing the game within that and the athletic side of it. Now, timing wise, and when we’re recording this, it’s basically the end of January. And as I was prepping for our time to record this, I thought about the athletic side and just the amount of time.

effort and energy that these people put into doing this one thing really, really, really, really well. And then how that ties into personal development. And as a Philadelphia Eagles fan, there’s a lot of people talking about inner excellence right now because A.J. Brown was on the side reading this book. I mean, as soon as I saw it and he was reading it, I just went to Audible and downloaded it. And then I noticed it went up like, I think, 58 million percent in Amazon. Like Jim Murphy just basically became a millionaire overnight because of it.

Steve Magness (05:52.75)
I mean, as soon as I saw it, he was reading it. just went to the article and downloaded it. And I noticed he went up like 58 million percent.

Nick McGowan (06:05.116)
I assume. Um, but I think sometimes people can look at athletes and say, well, they’re just a different breed, much different than myself in my corporate job or much different than myself in whatever it is. And that is not always the case. They’re just more in the spotlight per se. But what do you think when it comes to that sort of stuff, when people say, well, I’m not like that, or that’s not me. So they really can’t relate to it.

Steve Magness (06:07.758)
But I think sometimes people can look at athletes and say, well, they’re just a different breed, much different than myself in my corporate job, or much different than myself in whatever it is. And that is not always the case. They’re just more in the spotlight, per se. But what do think when it comes to that? People say, well, I’m not like that.

Steve Magness (06:32.013)
Yeah, I think you’re onto something I think you’re 100 % correct here because I think what I’ve learned in my journey helping get starting with athletes, but branching out beyond that is that performance is performance. And there are times where I kid you not where I’m listening to, you know, a physician tell me about like prepping for the surgery that he’s about to, you know, have to do. And I’m like, this is like an athlete warming up.

Or when I got to talk to a world-class drummer who, you know, drums for Taylor Swift, and he’s taken me through like the mental prep for getting out to go on stage. I’m like, this is an athlete going out into the arena. And I think even in those situations, we have to realize that like all of these ideas translate. Even if you’re sitting down at your desk, it translates. And I’ll give you a strange one, but a true one is in sport, we’re used to thinking about the home field advantage, right?

We play better at home. got our home crowd. It feels more comfortable, all that good stuff. Well, research tells us that in our workspace, there is a home field advantage. So if we literally have decorated our office or have pictures of our family or loved ones or friends on our desk, that will signal I belong here and you will perform better. Researchers have found that if you

Nick McGowan (07:27.301)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Magness (07:54.154)
spend 20 minutes decorating the place where you’re about to have a negotiation with, you know, opponent over, you know, whatever salary, whatever it is, you will get more money out of that. If you spent 20 minutes decorating versus if you just go into a random office that isn’t, you know, that doesn’t feel like you belong. There are so many studies on this. And I think this is where I think, you know, if

If listeners can branch out and be like, okay, yeah, it might not be the physical pursuit. But I can take some of these ideas because I’m still trying to get the most out of myself. I’m still trying to perform. I’m still often have to deal with expectations. Maybe they’re not from a crowd, but they’re my internal expectations of how I think I should perform, how much money I should make, what my career trajectory looks like. We can learn a lot from athletes in how to navigate that world.

Nick McGowan (08:49.403)
Well, it sounds like you’re kind of laying out one of those things that you’ve learned specifically from them and being an athlete yourself and seeing that in other people and then seeing that in like almost the normal folk in a sense. to consider somebody to be normal in a sense of like you have a normal job that’s not in the spotlight or as an athlete or something like that. Even somebody in their 20s or 30s that isn’t doing something

in a corporate job or running a business but play soccer on the weekends or something like that. We’re still able to translate those things back and forth but you gotta see it. As you’re talking about somebody prepping and decorating before a meeting, I picture somebody basically going into a boardroom meeting and being like, all right, before they get in here, I’m gonna put up streamers and fucking celebration and stuff like that. the rest of the manager walking in like, the fuck is all this? Well, I’m hoping to get more money out of you, you know?

But I think that’s also a crucial thing. My brain often thinks about things in like animations. That’s why that stuff comes up. But if somebody’s in a corporate environment and they’re gonna go in for their yearly review and know that they can probably get X percent or whatever it is, they’re still prepped for them to get their shit together. Not even just to say like, I’m gonna go in and sell them to give me more money, but like even walking in somewhere with confidence and just.

moving through the space to be able to do that. But that’s just one piece of that. So why don’t you break that down a little bit more of like what some of those macro pieces are that can be considered and thought about, but then kind of implemented in the moment without having to really think through it, you know?

Steve Magness (10:30.892)
Yeah. So the way I like to think of it is like when we step into the arena, whether that arena is an actual arena or, you know, your boss’s office to have that performance review, what happens is our brain is, is predictive. And it says essentially it’s doing this calculation that says like, am I prepared to meet the moment or not? And if I’m prepared to meet the moment, it changes how we respond to stress.

meaning we start to feel a little bit more like adrenaline and excitement, where there’s a little bit of nerves, but you’re like, let’s go, I got this. If we’re not, our predictive brain goes, hey, we’re not prepared for this. We don’t have a good expectation of this. So we’re gonna make you feel anxious and afraid because we want you to essentially self-protect. And that’s where we almost like shrink away, right?

Nick McGowan (11:23.917)
Hmm.

Steve Magness (11:27.168)
Instead of, saying what you believe and what you want to convey to your boss, you kind of just shrink away and just like, I’m going to be quiet so this can be over with as quickly as it can be. And if you look at, how, which way do we go on that? It’s the things that you just talked about and more so it’s that confidence. It’s, you giving your brain evidence that you are prepared? It’s the routine going into it. Are you signaling?

Nick McGowan (11:37.176)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Magness (11:56.182)
I’ve been here before. It’s, it’s how you view failure and success, right? If you see failure as this like self-defining moment, meaning like whether I get this like promotion or not is just going to cause me to be utterly devastated for weeks. If you’re, if you see it like that, then your brain goes, well, this is, this is a threat. Like I don’t want to be devastated for a while. So I’m going to protect.

Nick McGowan (12:02.105)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Magness (12:25.602)
Right? If you see failure is this thing that, yeah, it sucks. It’s kind of hurt for a bit, but like it’s part of the process and I can potentially learn and grow from this and come out better on the other side. Then that failure is going to might sting, but it’s not a huge threat. You go in to face the thing as a challenge instead. and there’s all sorts of this as well as, is actually there’s fascinating work that shows that whether we feel like a part of the team or belong.

Nick McGowan (12:25.976)
Yeah.

Steve Magness (12:55.566)
also shifts how we see the space or whether we see it as a threat or a challenge. for instance, there’s some research I talk about in the latest book, When the Inside Game, that shows that if we are standing at the bottom of a hill by ourself or with a friend, if we’re standing with a friend, we will judge that hill to be seven degrees shallower and we will say yes if someone asks, do you want to sprint up it? Okay.

Same thing goes, researchers have done this when they’ve looked at like lifting heavy weights that, you know, don’t tell you how much they are. People will judge the weight after they’ve lifted it to be lighter when they are with friends or they feel connected or part of a team versus when they are going at it solo. So I also tell people like in your office, in your workspace, in your connection with your family at home, it’s like, we are meant to share the load.

Nick McGowan (13:43.544)
Hmm.

Steve Magness (13:53.25)
We are not meant to go on the crucible by ourselves. So if you create the space or the environment where you are sharing the load, you are going to perform better.

Nick McGowan (13:53.656)
Mm.

Nick McGowan (14:05.176)
I’m sure we can all think about different situations that have happened where we go, oh yeah, that makes sense. Almost like going to the gym with a buddy or a trainer is different than going by yourself. And you can think, well, I can push myself. Yeah, but there’s somebody else there. There’s almost like this anti-matter kind of movement that’s like kind of moving you along. Something I want us to also talk about and consider and something that we talk about on basically every episode.

Steve Magness (14:25.272)
You

Nick McGowan (14:32.664)
is how trauma and how our attachment styles and just the different things that are kind of the untangibles, how that all relates to that. Because if somebody goes into that corporate, just use that office meeting to say, you know, they’re gonna get a raise or they’re not gonna get a raise or whatever. If somebody walks into that and has all this anxiety because of the things that have happened based on traumas that happened to them in the past, that’s…

vastly different than somebody who’s going to walk in and may just feel a little nervous because they’re unsure of what’s going to happen or what’s going to be said. And then there’s also the person that is like the athlete that I think about the most, the quarterback, that has to be the calm, collected, and able to be sharp in all the toughest moments. mean, right now, again, we’re talking about things at the end of January.

Steve Magness (15:00.334)
vastly different than somebody who’s gonna walk in and make you just feel little nervous because they’re unsure of what’s gonna happen or what’s gonna be said. And then there’s also the person that is, like the athlete that I think about the most is the quarterback that has to be able to become elected and able to be dropped in all of the…

Nick McGowan (15:26.444)
Jaden Daniels for the commanders has had an incredible year and it doesn’t look like anything phases him. And he even said in an interview the other night that I saw where he was like, but it shouldn’t, I get to play a game and I get to come out here and have fun no matter what happens. Like what a beautiful way to look at that. But there’s a piece of this where it’s the mindset side of it and the mental.

the mental attitude overall of like, I get to play a game, but also how do those traumas and how do those triggers and how do those anxieties and all that kind of relate? So when you have clients that you’re working with and people you talk to about this sort of stuff, how do you tie those together or help them kind of work through that to understand, yeah, there are these pieces, but it’s not always the same for everybody.

Steve Magness (15:54.702)
I’m like, well, I can play a game. But also, I’m into those dramas, and I’m into those triggers, I’m into those…

Steve Magness (16:14.094)
Our experience sets the stage. And the way I like to explain it is that past experience, especially if it’s traumatic, what it does is it sets that brain’s prediction to be a little hyper responsive, right? You’re going to see more threats. Why?

Nick McGowan (16:35.03)
Hmm.

Steve Magness (16:40.23)
rightfully so because your brain has been through a really hard spot or hard experience where it says like, this sucked. This was not this was not fun at all. Like this hit us deep. I’m going to remember that. So in the future, when we’re in a situation that might trigger a little bit of anxiety, your brain goes latches on to that that past experience and says like, you know, this is where I’m coming from. This might lead to that trauma again, like hit the alarm.

Nick McGowan (17:01.482)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Magness (17:08.984)
where someone who hasn’t gone through that, their alarm might not be as hypersensitive, right? They might not go from zero to a hundred, they just go from zero to 10. And I think it’s really important to understand that we all have these kind of different set points here. And that could be based on your genetics, right? There’s some research that shows that, you know, some people are more sensitive to stress responses or others. Could be based on your life experiences, some of which you had no control of.

I think the message though is this, is wherever you are at, you can train your brain to kind of turn up and down that alarm a bit. Okay? And we’re not looking for perfection here. No one, you know, they might say it, but no one goes into a really difficult spot and experiences no anxiety. In fact, if they didn’t, they…

Nick McGowan (17:48.895)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Magness (18:05.164)
would perform worse because we know we need a little bit of that physiological arousal or anxiety to perform well. So what we’re looking at is, okay, what can we do about it? And I think when it comes to traumatic experience as well, there’s all sorts of research, especially in the research around post-traumatic growth that essentially tells you the most important thing is that trauma might always be there, but we get to influence

Nick McGowan (18:26.431)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Magness (18:34.656)
almost the story around it and like how we internalize it. And this is where you go back to people like Viktor Frankl who tells you, you know, it’s all about the response to the thing. We need to create space between that stimulus, the thing that is triggering us and our response to the action. How do we create space? We integrate that story and have it make sense out of this. And I went through this as well, as I said at the beginning, you know, a large part of my early career was

was going through this whistleblowing experience. And I got to tell you, I was an athlete who kind of thought like, hey, I’m tough, I’m resilient to everything. Yeah, I’m going to go through some anxiety, but I’ve performed in front of, you know, on national TV in front of tens of thousands of people, whatever. But after going through that experience where I’m sitting across from, you know, lawyers just grilling me and tearing me apart and trying to get me to trip up, for a couple year period, like anything difficult like

I was about to encounter, my brain would go back there and I feel that like tensing up. And I think the thing to listen here is that like, if that’s what you’ve been through, that’s your brain and your body doing what it thinks is best. We just have to nudge it along and say, okay, I understand why you went there. I accept it. I get it. But like, that’s not our only path. We can have other paths here to deal with the thing.

Nick McGowan (19:58.55)
yeah. And I think if we look at the situations before they become a situation, it’s like doing the mental work beforehand. So many athletes talk about how they visualize how things are going to work out. at the same time, you can also understand that it’s potentially not going to go that way. You’re going to do the thing you’re going to do, but you can then change how that looks and be prepared to go into that situation. Even like in the Inter Excellence book.

He’s talking about somebody being on a free throw line just hitting a free throw. That you’ve hit a thousand million times within the past week. Just being able to hit those over and over over over again. You think of all the NBA stars that just have literally hit tens of thousands of those shots. Geez, if we asked Steph Curry how many threes he’s hit over the course of time, even on the opposite side of the floor, it’s probably in the

tens of thousands. But when the pressure is on and the story is created that if I don’t hit this, I’m gonna fail, I’ll be all these things and it’s how we manage that story and yeah, I’m right there with you that we then get to be able to do something with it. But I think we can also take the time beforehand to think through those things. Because oftentimes we’re not just instantly thrown into a situation that we were unaware of. You get to prep for these things in certain ways.

Steve Magness (21:22.222)
you

You know, the one thing that our brain kind of hurts, hates is uncertainty, right? Uncertainty gives us stress. So like, think about it. If you’re not prepared, if you haven’t dress, gone through a dress rehearsal, if you haven’t gone through this like visualization process, like all of that is, all of that is doing is signaling again to your brain and your mind, Hey, we’ve been here before. We’ve thought this out. We have a plan.

Nick McGowan (21:30.14)
Sure.

Steve Magness (21:54.446)
Even if you’re faced by that pressure and it’s like game on the line, like you have something to grasp onto. And I think this gets at a point that I think you hinted at there is that, you know, often when we think of visualizing or prepping, we think of, okay, I’m gonna visualize it as if it goes perfectly. But what, you know, my work and some of the research actually shows is that

we also have to visualize and think about what happens when it goes wrong. How are we gonna respond? Because what we’re doing is again dress rehearsal so that our brain can latch onto, okay, I missed that first free throw, but I need to make the second one to still give us a shot. Like how am I gonna respond when I visualized only making both of them, right? And I think that is the key is like.

You see this with athletes, know, LeBron James is famous for sometimes just practicing with his non-dominant hand. Because you never know, maybe you’re going up for the like layup and shot on the right side and you’re ready to go, but like a player gets up and has his hand in your face and you gotta switch through the layup and the other hand or the shot and the other hand. Like sometimes crazy stuff happens. So you get prepared for that situation. And I think, you know, in our own lives,

Nick McGowan (22:55.293)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Magness (23:16.374)
We need to do a better job of this. I sometimes practice, you know, when I’m about to give a speech or something like that, I’ll say, you know what, what happens if the, if the PowerPoint or the slide deck just doesn’t work? You know, what am I going to do there when I don’t have that crutch? I’ve got to be able to improvise on the spot and be able to do that, deal with it besides just like freezing in the moment. So like that mental prep going into the difficult thing.

often sets the stage for being able to handle it.

Nick McGowan (23:49.725)
think there’s a balance to it though, where you can get obsessed. You can work through everything and then when it doesn’t go the exact way you want it to go, you can freak out. And even with the situation like your monitor goes out or something happens to the slides, in pretty much all situations, people won’t know it’s a train wreck unless you scream, cry, and run off. And even then, they may not know it’s a complete train wreck.

Like there’s still hope with those sort of things. And even if that were the case where you screamed, cried, and just ran off and just disappeared, you can still learn from those things. And if that’s a worst case scenario, it’s not like you died from it. And worst case scenario, you died. You no longer have to deal with the problem. know, like there’s positives to all of this. But not getting obsessed with it and also not trying to just psychically make it a thing where I think there’s something to walk through.

and work through but allowing space, right?

Steve Magness (24:51.306)
Yeah, it’s that fine line. I kind of call it in the book, I actually talk about it. I call it like the balance between like caring deeply or being obsessed and letting go. And the sweet spot is often like in the middle because if we’re obsessed, what happens? That obsession turns into perfectionism. That perfectionism turns into like trying to force our way to be perfect and get everything right.

Nick McGowan (24:53.116)
Yeah.

Nick McGowan (25:01.446)
and

Nick McGowan (25:15.602)
the

Steve Magness (25:16.662)
And whether we’re talking about athletics or any sort of performance, you know, when you start trying to like tighten up and force it, it backfires, right? On the flip side, if we just like are a hundred percent loose and say, I’m going to let go, like none of this matters. Life is bliss. Like what have you. Maybe we don’t have that little, like just a little bit that says like, Hey, like you got to prepare for this. Hey, you got to, you got to show up.

So it’s like that middle ground between like caring deeply and being obsessed and then just being able to let go just enough where we can free ourselves to perform. I mean, it’s almost what Jaden Daniels got at, right? It’s like that he has just enough perspective where he’s saying, he’s not saying the game doesn’t matter. He’s saying, I’m fortunate that I get to play a game. And I think that’s more important.

and a nice way to say it more than like the game doesn’t matter or on the flip side, the game is all that matters. It’s that middle ground that really is that sweet spot.

Nick McGowan (26:20.731)
Yeah.

Nick McGowan (26:24.37)
Well, there’s a part of me that hopes that Jaden Daniels gets the yips by Sunday and can’t perform at all, but that’s because I bleed green. And by the time this comes out, I hope I don’t have to eat those words, but we’ll see. So I think there’s also kind of that balance too of not just the like going through those things and understanding that you can be obsessed and you could also not care and all of that. But this goes back to

the reps of it. You you’ve got to do this and some of it is just doing it in your own mind to get some of those reps. Even if you get into a situation where it’s like, I’ve repped through this thing 10 different times in my head, you are already a few times ahead in the real life situation because you’ve repped through it, but without getting crazed about it. So I do find it interesting how there are certain people that are really, really just calm.

cool, collected, that’s their jam, that’s who they are. Then there are others that have gotten to that point because of the pendulum swing, where they’ve gone crazy on one side, they’ve gone crazy on the other side, and then they start to figure it out and get to that. I’m sure there’s a lot of people that you’ve worked with and athletes and people that you’ve talked to that maybe haven’t said it directly like that with the pendulum.

Steve Magness (27:37.742)
Thank

Nick McGowan (27:48.26)
But they’ve worked through it so many times that it’s like, okay, cool, I’ve done this 40 times now, I get it. I’ve hit this free throw in tight spots at the end of a game 15 times in my career, I get it. But you’ve got to go through those things, do it. So are there any like, almost tips or tricks or like feedback that you have from people you’ve talked to regarding that specific thing?

Steve Magness (28:12.674)
Yeah, absolutely. I think you’re spot on with it. It’s all about the reps. know, confidence demands evidence and evidence comes from putting in the reps, right? I think when we look at tips to do that a little bit better, I think what we see is like, how you learn and internalize that matters a whole heck of a lot. So what we know from psychology is that

We have this like sensitive window period after like games or stressful performances or even workouts where we’re kind of pushing ourselves, where our brain essentially makes sense of the thing, right? And if we frame it, for instance, after maybe a tough loss where we miss that shot, if we take in that sense of window period and just like, you know, lose your mind, think this sucks, like this is the end of the world.

our brain starts to internalize it as like, you know what, I’m not gonna learn from this. I’m gonna internalize this as something to avoid and almost bring that fear of failure. If instead what happens is we put our mind in a place where it’s like, yeah, this sucked or like this went well, but like, what am I carrying forward? What that does is it makes those reps matter. Where I’ve seen this done really well.

is actually in track and field athletes who are like high jumpers or long jumpers. Because what happens is they only have a certain number of reps to make the bar, right? It’s like you either make the bar or you miss it. And if you miss it too many times, you’re done. So it’s like do or die free throws. And what the ones who do really well is after every rep, so after they make or miss the bar, they’ll go back, they got a notebook,

And there’s probably a million different things that went right or wrong. And you could try and remember them all, but research tells us that doesn’t work very well. So what do they do? They write the one thing down that they want to take to the next jump. So maybe that’s, you know, last step, push off the ground more or arch your back more as you’re going over the bar, whatever it is. But instead of thinking of the whole thing holistically,

Steve Magness (30:31.97)
They zoom in and take that one thing. And actually, when we look at the psychology around, you know, really high pressure situations and athletes who are struggling with underperformance or choking or even the yips, what psychology tells us is, for instance, if you’re kicking a field goal and like you’ve missed a couple in a row and your brain is spiraling, one of the best things you can do is essentially give yourself one spot to look at.

One focus point and say, I’m going to stare at this thing and just let it rip. And what it does in that moment is the problem with, with the yips or choking or like any high pressure situation is our brain goes from focused to like taking in everything. And when it tries to take in everything, it takes in nothing. So by giving it that one focus point, you’re just like, okay, block everything else out. Like.

kick it in that spot. And what research tells us is it tends to help us in those high performance situations.

Nick McGowan (31:37.977)
Yeah, I love that. I’m sitting here kind of smiling to myself in some ways because I learned that specific thing in my early 20s by playing beer pong. And then learned it was a thing years later. And people would ask me like, why the fuck are you just staring? I was like, because I know what cup I’m going for. And I know exactly where I’m going to hit it and what I’m going to do. And I would do it. And they’d be like, what the fuck? And I would like clean up the table, you know, and like

Steve Magness (31:51.256)
There you go.

Nick McGowan (32:06.958)
Who’s next? And I realized if I just focus on that thing, don’t ever break contact at all. I’m gonna keep nailing them and nail them. I might miss every once in a while, but for the most part, I’m gonna nail it. And then learned it was a thing where it wasn’t just, I was doing that because I was like, shit, I’ve drank too much, trying to one eye it. Because even years later, in my early 30s, I played water pong at that point and was just doing the same thing. was like,

coupling that together. again, and the reason why I bring that up is to be able to tie this stuff together, where the more reps that we do and the stuff that we see, we may already be doing some of these things. We may also be sabotaging ourselves with some of these things because of different situations or scenarios or stories and things of that sort that have happened where we’re just like, shit, you fall back into that. But just like everything that we talk about on the show, it’s all self awareness.

I hope that people can listen to this and go, you know what? Man, I do some of those things. that’s cool, I didn’t think about decorating or kind of getting my space together that can help. Or at least I’ve thought about that and maybe I can do something different with it now and just being aware of it. So for the people that are on their path towards self mastery, what sort of advice would you give to them?

Steve Magness (33:21.966)
I mean, I think self-awareness is huge. I think what happens is we get stuck in these ruts. I call it like the rut of expertise or competency, where we get pretty good at the thing. And what then happens is we stop noticing and stop being aware. We’re just kind of going through the motions. And that might help us for a little bit, and it can. But what it often does is it prevents us from like taking that next step on that self-mastery.

because you need the awareness to understand, huh, maybe I should try these things out. Or maybe I notice that when I do show up to the office in a certain mood or even maybe wearing a certain thing, I have a better day. Things go well. And if you can be aware of those things, you can start to connect them.

Nick McGowan (33:57.73)
Yeah.

Steve Magness (34:18.498)
And then once you start to connect them, you can kind of start to make sense of like, okay, when I need to show up, like, what are the things, what are the couple key things that really matter, instead of just showing up and being like, I hope this works. I hope I’m ready to go.

Nick McGowan (34:34.509)
Yeah, like walking in being like, all right, let’s see, see how this works out. Then that’s a good point. And it’s interesting how it’s kind of a simple thing too with the awareness of it. Like if you’re aware of something, you are then aware of something. If you’re unaware of it, how the fuck can you be aware of it? And I make this joke pretty often where it’s like the more self aware you become, the more self aware you become. The more self aware you become, the more fucking self aware you become.

But we get to do stuff with this and I think for the most part people that listen to the show are like you and I where we enjoy this stuff. Where it’s like the goal is to be able to be less bad than we were and a little smarter or at least a little bit more aware to make some changes and do some things. Like even what you’re talking about with pole vaulting. They’re like, all right, well, next time push harder with your left foot, arch your back or whatever it is. That makes sense to point out that thing because the rest of the path

is already part of the process that’s internal. So I think if we kind of take that as an idea as well where it’s like, look, you do these things over and over, but what are the kind of outliers and the things that you can do that you can tweak just a little bit? Where you don’t have to make massive changes, not always, sometimes you do, but oftentimes it’s just those little tweaks over and over. So Steve, I really appreciate you being on. I appreciate you getting everything that you’ve done. And I love the fact that you were like, I hated reading and now I’ve written.

multiple books because that’s a beautiful part of our life journey to be able to work through that and just to let yourself become who you are. So thank you for being you and before I let you go where can people find you and where can they connect with you and get your books?

Steve Magness (36:14.828)
Yeah, they can. My website is Steve Magness Magness.com. I’m on all social Twitter, X, Instagram, YouTube, at Steve Magness. And you can check out my new book, Win the Inside Game at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, wherever books are sold. I hope you check it out. And man, I really enjoyed this conversation. You’re doing some great work, Nick. So keep it up.

Nick McGowan (36:37.452)
Thanks, Steve.

https://youtu.be/PxxfTnr3efI