But, like, it-- maybe even from your own life, if you have this experience, like you-- The seasons of life seem to be tough transitions for a lot of people, and, and even in particular high performers who, who have built this, we'll call it brand or identity around some level of performance, and then they, that season comes to an end, and how do you cycle through that to the next season, and, and how do you do that without losing your mind?

So there's a football player who won seven, uh, Super Bowls named Tom Brady, and, uh, he, after he won, uh, um, his third or fourth Super Bowl, he said, "God, is that all there is?" And then Bubba Watson wins, uh, the Masters and calls up Teddy Scott a few days later, and he says, "Teddy, is that it?" Teddy's like, "Bubba?" He's like, "Is that it?" He's like, "What is it?" He's like, "That's all.

I mean, now it's nothing changes." And so for both of these guys, they achieve the pinnacle of their sport and this super success, and they're still empty.

And this is, you can find this for thousands of years.

You'll see it everywhere you look.

If you look hard, you'll see people that have millions or billions of dollars.

I mean, look at Pete Cowen, the, the man in black, one of the, um, world's most, uh, famous and successful swing coaches.

You know, obviously, I want people to, to, to get deeper into your world and the book and everything, but, like, how do I start to crack that code? Like, what, what's the first thing I need to do to, to just start to end that cycle of, of being a half-day behind?

So tell us about the moment you decided to give away all of your possessions and move to the desert.

Yeah.

I was, um...

I'd always, since I was little, I always d- dreamed that I was gonna be a superstar, and what I thought that meant was to be the guy that, um, every guy wanted to be and every girl wanted to be with, and hitting home runs, and this superstar.

So when my career ended, it was such a devastating thing, and I was so lost.

And so I went back to being a personal trainer like I was in grad school, and...

But I always had this, this sense that I wanted to make a bigger difference than, um, just the physical.

Yeah

event that may last less than a minute?

And similarly, how can a major league baseball player in game seven of the World Series, bottom of the ninth, full count, bases loaded, two outs, down by one, how could that guy have peace and confidence? And I just really didn't get any answers that I thought were suitable.

And so I called another psychologist and another and another.

And then I spent five years full-time researching and writing about the solution.

And there's two things that I really found.

One was that Your heart, I call your heart, your spirit, your soul, your will.

I use all those interchangeably.

But did you imagine, I mean, what was going to happen from there?

right? Yeah.

Yeah, I thought I was going to go through this whole thing.

So what happened in grad school, I became a personal trainer, and I met this kind of life coach, Kevin.

And he said, let's go for a job in pro baseball.

Skip the high school and college route by getting to know the people that can hire you.

And so I sent a snail mail letter.

So then my whole master's degree turned into how to build a championship team and interviewing major league baseball managers and GMs and so forth.

So bring me back to the...

What are those first steps of helping them to start to experience that joy more often or that calmness, no matter the circumstance, more often? Where do you think?

Belief is the number one thing, most important part of the BFF, Best Friends Forever, because beliefs, in fact, impact everything that you do, impacts your future, impacts your moment to moment, what you feel comfortable with, what you don't feel comfortable with.

your ability to dream or not dream, ability to visualize how you learned from the past and look at current events in your life.

And so one of the first things we do is make sure that they're speaking the truth about the past because oftentimes people come to me and they're underperforming and they say, I'm struggling with this or I'm struggling with that.

And the truth is that's something in the past they're telling me about.

So if they're a violinist and they're struggling with nerves and they're telling me, I'm struggling with nerves, but they're talking to me, and they mean they struggle with nerves when they're playing the violin, but it's not true if they're saying I'm struggling with nerves when they're talking to me because you're not playing the violin and struggling is a present tense word.

Because your subconscious is where your beliefs are formed in your heart and your subconscious, We always want to make sure everything we say is truthful.

How do you, especially in the full life that you're living right now, how do you keep that focus at the forefront of your mind?

always inflated or deflated.

And when I think about mastering the ego, I think of three things being unoffendable, unembarrassable, and unirritable.

And there's five questions that I find very helpful.

So mastering the ego is one of the primary things that I help people do in order to be their best at anything.

Pro athletes, of course, but anyone.

It's because we all have a mind that compares ourselves to others and puts ourselves on trial.

And so these five questions are the five fear questions or five F questions.

Can you just explain the transactional world, the eternal world of love, and just how that sits in the matrix of the three worlds?

This is the president's house where

George Washington lived for seven years.

I've had people who can only walk like one square block and I can do most of the tour in that.

This building here is Congress Hall.

to early philadelphians he likes to call superstars made us the fastest growing city in the country this is william penn's original plan for his city penn's so-called holy experiment offered religious freedom

and then franklin came along 20 years later and improved everything it turned out that it was the seed of a nation we ratified the declaration in philadelphia

he often leads tours around philadelphia's historic district this

is the president's house where george washington lived for seven years i've had people who can only walk like one square block and i can do most of the tour in that this building here is congress hall his gift for

guiding came as a result of writing for a local newspaper.

A society held reporter around 2010.

They wanted the new column.

So I said, well, how about we do exploring the city? The columns were compiled into a book called Real Philly History Real Fast.

It ended up with about 52 stories, none of them more than four pages, but packed with detail.

And I dedicated to Penn and Ben.

[laughs]

[laughs] So that was Tuesday of his, uh, seventh event, and then Thursday he goes out and shoots eight under, leading the tournament, first-round leader, and he finishes solo second, one stroke off of a playoff.

A amazing event.

And going into the weekend, you know, he's missed all these cuts, and all of a sudden now he's got a chance to win.

And I said, "Look, when it's your time to win..." I didn't say the word winning.

We don't talk about results like that.

I said, "When it's your time to hold a trophy, it will be your time.

[laughs]

Hmm.

I was like, "You are.

You're taking it personal." When I think of Inner Excellence, I think of self-mastery, and when I think of self-mastery, I think of, of mastering the ego.

When I think of mastering the, the ego, I think of three things: being unembarrassable, unoffendable, and unirritable.

And so part of that unoffendable is taking things personal, 'cause it really limits your life.

And so I thought, "Are you taking this personal?" And it's like, "Well-Yes, you are taking it personal.

I am.

So can you maybe define those for us and talk about their relationship to ego and to fear?

And what did you discover? When did you realize there was performance science out there, number one, and number two is that you wanted to learn more and make it your living?

When I was a teenager, my coach told me that, about sports psychology, so I've been interested ever...

Any, any way to get me to, to become a superstar, I was really interested.

And so sports psychology has been an interest of mine since I was a teenager.

Um, but yeah, I left for the desert to try and figure out what can I devote my life to, 'cause I, I've always had kind of an obsessive personality.

I've, I've wanted to be a superstar when I was a little kid.

And in that time in the desert, I realized that two things that are really crucial.

So tell me some of the things we- you should do to prepare to succeed.

And what did you discover? When did you realize there was performance science out there, number one, and number two is that you wanted to learn more and make it your living?

When I was a teenager, my coach told me a- about sports psychology, so I've been interested ever...

Any, any way to get me to, to become a superstar, I was really interested.

And so sports psychology has been an interest of mine since I was a teenager.

Um, but yeah, I left for the desert to try and figure out what can I devote my life to, 'cause I, I've always had kind of an obsessive personality.

I've, I've wanted to be a superstar when I was a little kid.

And in that time in the desert, I realized that two things that are really crucial.

So tell me some of the things we- you should do to prepare to succeed.

Mm-hmm.

In AA and the power that you talk about, and the power that I talk about, this surrender to a power greater than yourself.

And so first asking yourself, "Am I willing to face my fears?" And, and then, "Am I willing to face any feeling?" This is a big one, because most people are not willing to face any feeling.

They're willing to physically do a lot of hard things, and, um, but there's some feelings that we're like, "No, I'm not gonna-"

Mm-hmm.

And so the feeling is what we wanna, um, we're gonna go look for that feeling, and I got that from Conor McGregor.

He talked about when he was first a, a new pro athlete and how he got into the ring or the octagon, and he had all these nerves, and he's like, "What is this feeling? This is so uncomfortable." And then he started to go and look for it, and he's like, "Now I go into Madison Square Garden and, you know, and I kick butt." Um, and, uh, so I was like, yeah, we need to go look for the feel.

We can't run from them.

And, uh, and I love watching her see the difference in style and, and the articulation because I want her to know that, like, all of the things she wants in her life, she can have, but it won't be easy, no one's gonna give it to her, and it's gonna kinda suck at the beginning.

Whenever you're in that moment when you're nervous and you really want something, obviously the best performance comes when you have freedom.

But it's easy to get attached to that because you're, like, thinking, "Okay, this is really important." And so we get attached to it and have tension.

So what you can do is ask yourself, "What do I want more in this moment? To be successful right here this one time or to get better at these moments?" In other words, to master my ego, to not be so caught up in what people think.

So what happens to most people is that they come to these points in their lives where they're really uncomfortable.

Maybe they're giving a speech or playing ping-pong in front of a bunch of people.

It doesn't matter what it is.

Yeah.

What's your reaction to that?

We're all human, and so our greatest need is for love and, and acceptance.

And so we all have a mind that's, that's always threatened, always comparing, and never satisfied.

The, the w- the part of the mind I call the ego.

And so it's something that, as humans, we're always battling with.

The ego says, "If you're more successful, you're gonna get what you want most." It doesn't say this out loud or, or in certain words, but it's, that's what it's always implying, is if you're successful, you're gonna get what you want most, which is that love and connection.

If you sell more books or get more followers or more money or more promotions, you're gonna get this thing that you need most.

How do we teach people to have courage or self-confidence to, to take that space? Like, it-

Wow.

I'm like, "Your name is Zoe?" And, uh, 'cause I was in this kind of a daze, I'm like, "What?" And he's like, "Yeah." I go, "Do you know what your name means?" He said, "No." I said, "It means absolute fullness of life.

I've been studying that for five years.

I just wrote a book about it." So I wrote, "Dear Zoe, thank you so much for sharing your beautiful music with me today.

You don't know what that means to me.

Love, Jim." I give him the book.

I never see him again.

Keep going.

Okay.

Like lived in the baseball academy for a couple of months with no, no shower, showered at the gym.

Um, but what kind of epitomizes my time in the desert was...It was my first or second New Year's Eve, I'm in this empty house, writing in my journal, and I hear a noise.

And I go outside and I see fireworks, and that's the first time I, I realized it was December 31st.

I didn't know what day it was.

And so, it was a lonely time, so I was there for two and a half years.

Um, in my time in the desert, I was just, you know, "What am I gonna do with my life?" And I decided to become a personal coach to pro baseball players, and teach them how to, how to have peace and confidence under pressure.

Go on.

So tell me more about fear and how you manage it, how we all can better manage it.

Yeah.

So it's a great question.

So one of the first things I do with clients is help them understand how fear works, how the mind works, and especially the subconscious that's running our life, and our lives, and, and what your heart deeply wants.

And so the heart, which I define as- as your will, your spirit, um, your soul, the deepest part of you where your greatest fears are and your, your greatest dreams are, that's the part that needs the most training.

And Inner Excellence is really about pursuing a life that matters, a life of meaning and fulfillment and deep, enriching relationships where you're learning and growing, and especially, like you said, facing your fears.And fear is, is, in general, it's a very self-centered thing, and the biggest challenge that we have in performance and in life is getting in our own way.

Our own thoughts are really hurting us.

Jim, if you're meeting with somebody who is, let's say, early 20s, just graduated college, they wanna leave a positive dent in the world, but they're not exactly sure what they're gonna do or how to do that, what are some general pieces of life/career advice you'd give to that person?