0:15

Pushkin. Let's

0:20

play a game. Line up Americans

0:23

in a row, all of them by how

0:25

likely they are to start a revolution. At

0:28

the front of the line, you might put let's say,

0:30

a student activist, or

0:33

an energetic member of some aggrieved interest

0:35

group, or some evil genius

0:37

with a knack for computer programming. At

0:40

the back of the line, you'd put who

0:43

who among us is least likely to

0:45

go to the trouble of trying to change the world.

0:48

I don't know a lot of us are complacent,

0:50

but somewhere near the end of the line, I

0:52

think we can all agree we'd find

0:54

the golf and tennis coaches of

0:56

America's country clubs. When

0:59

I hired on to be a

1:01

tennis pro as a

1:03

middle class country club in

1:06

Seaside, California. Tim

1:09

Galway is the name of the board tennis

1:11

pro in this story. He's

1:13

in his eighties now, but was in his thirties

1:15

when the story begins. It was

1:19

four o'clock in the afternoon. I've

1:21

been teaching all day, not coaching,

1:24

and it keeps a little

1:26

boring telling people where

1:29

the weight on their foot should be and where

1:32

they should hit the ball on the racket on

1:35

the afternoon In question. Tim was teaching

1:37

a guy with a slice backhand who wanted

1:40

to learn how to hit topspin. The

1:42

guy was taking his racket back too high.

1:45

Ordinarily, Tim Galway would just have told

1:47

the man, hey, don't take the racket

1:49

back too high, but he lost interest

1:51

in the sound of his own voice and pretty

1:54

much everything else, so he just kept quietly

1:56

tossing balls at the guy's backhand.

2:00

Three or four minutes a

2:03

strange thing had he

2:05

was hitting topspin back end

2:08

and said nothing. But

2:11

then I said something in my

2:13

head, you lazy

2:15

bum, you missed

2:18

your chance. If you had

2:20

only taught him before,

2:23

then you would have gotten the credit for

2:26

his toss spin back in.

2:29

I said, wow, And this

2:32

was maybe the key point. I'm

2:34

more interested in teaching

2:37

than I am in this student learning.

2:41

That was the moment that Tim Galway

2:43

had an idea, because I

2:46

just said, Okay, I'm

2:48

going to see how much improvement

2:50

I can see in front of me with

2:52

how little teaching for

2:55

reversing your usual

2:57

approach. How little can you tell

3:00

them rather than how much can you tell them exactly?

3:03

So you have this inside about

3:06

yourself and your teaching methods, and

3:08

you just you're gonna do it a different way.

3:10

You're going to see how littlely you can say. How

3:14

long do you do that before you start to think I'm

3:17

onto something my

3:19

next lesson. His next lesson

3:22

is with a complete beginner. She

3:24

doesn't even know how to hold a tennis racket. Goalie

3:28

thinks maybe he shouldn't try out this new idea

3:30

coaching by not saying anything. Then

3:33

he thinks, nah, screw it, let's

3:36

try this again. How can I start

3:38

a beginner without telling the fundamentals?

3:41

And so I said, I'll just

3:43

drop a few and hit them so

3:45

they'll see me. They'll see me. I

3:49

did that five or six times,

3:51

and she said, I noticed the first

3:54

thing you did was

3:56

turned your right foot sideways.

3:59

He said, yeah, yeah, I don't worry about and

4:02

just take these balls and

4:04

the do it. No, I did say

4:07

shut your eyes and see

4:09

yourself hitting the ball. I

4:11

didn't say like I did. And

4:15

this is the absolute She hit

4:17

like this. This, I

4:20

mean everything I would have told. She

4:22

didn't know any different. Her foot

4:24

didn't move. So the one thing she

4:27

consciously thought about, she didn't do exactly

4:30

everything that she was just kind of unconscious.

4:32

She did said, oh

4:34

my god, not the one when did she

4:36

do everything without

4:38

instruction, but

4:42

she didn't do the one thing she

4:45

decided herself she

4:47

should do. In

4:52

the history of coaching, this is a revolutionary

4:54

moment. Who put chocolate in my

4:57

peanut butter moment. Galli discovers

4:59

that performance is all about focus.

5:02

Focus on the wrong thing, and you'll

5:04

do the wrong thing. What shocks

5:07

me what was

5:11

to see Tennes's

5:14

improving without

5:16

the student trying to improve.

5:20

All I would do is ask them awareness

5:23

questions or give

5:25

them awareness instruction. Awareness

5:28

instructions meaning saying

5:30

stuff that caused them to focus on what was useful,

5:33

like where the ball was when it hit the racket.

5:36

People love Galway's weird tennis lessons.

5:39

He offered no criticism, no praise,

5:41

hardly any talk at all, just

5:43

to nudge here and there, to silence the voices

5:45

inside their heads, the

5:48

voices that caused them to tense up. One

5:51

day, one of the country club students blurted out,

5:53

you should write a book. Kim

5:56

Galway had zero literary ambition,

5:59

but he did it. He wrote a

6:01

book about how to coach

6:03

tennis. His text was one part

6:05

Eastern mysticism and one part

6:08

practical advice on how to crush your opponent

6:10

on a tennis court. He

6:12

thought about calling it Yoga tennis. He

6:15

wound up calling it The Inner

6:17

Game of Tennis. In

6:20

the fall of nineteen seventy four, right

6:22

before his book came out, Galway

6:25

asked his publisher how many copies they hope

6:27

to sell. Twenty thousand,

6:29

they said two. Three quarters

6:32

later, I had got my third royalty

6:35

statement and I had gone from forty

6:37

thousand to eighty thousand to hundred

6:40

thousand. And I

6:42

went back to Random House and I said, how come

6:44

it was so wrong in your estimates?

6:48

And he said, well, we thought it was

6:50

a tennis book. The Inner

6:52

Game of Tennis is not a tennis book.

6:55

It's something else, which is

6:57

why it's now sold something like two million copies.

7:00

And Galway is inundated with requests

7:02

from people who want his help, because

7:05

inner voices torture all of us, not

7:07

just country club tennis players. I

7:09

get asked to give a

7:11

lecture about the Inner Game to the Houston

7:14

Philharmonic. I

7:17

played no classical instruments.

7:21

At the end, they applaud politely,

7:24

except for the conductor who comes up

7:26

and says, I'm not going to believe this till

7:29

I see it. And next

7:31

thing he says is who's going

7:33

to volunteer for some coaching

7:36

from tim as

7:38

Faye would have it. One tuba

7:40

player volunteered alone.

7:43

Galway did the same thing with the tuba player

7:46

that he did on the tennis court. Sir,

7:48

what do you find most difficult

7:51

in performing at your

7:54

level with the tuba? That's

7:56

the one question that doesn't

7:59

ruffle the ego. You

8:01

just say what's the hardest thing? Now,

8:04

things are, but what's the

8:06

most difficult thing your

8:09

level? And so he says

8:12

articulation in the upper range.

8:16

Never heard the phrase. And

8:18

I say it was so

8:20

hard about that? Galway

8:24

has not the first clue about playing a

8:26

brass instrument. He doesn't even

8:28

know the words you need to talk touba.

8:31

It's all he can do to listen. Well,

8:33

you go, and

8:37

uh it sounded good

8:39

to me. I

8:42

said, so

8:44

how is that in terms of clean

8:47

articulation? He

8:49

says, uh, not so good.

8:52

He said, so there was it was dirty

8:54

to some extent. How did you know,

8:58

as mass Well,

9:00

I can't hear it because Bella

9:03

the tube is too far, but I

9:06

can feel it in my tongue. My

9:09

tongue gets dry

9:11

and it's towards feeling thick. Galway

9:15

tells the tuba player to stop trying to

9:17

hear his own sounds and to focus

9:20

on his tongue. So I said, don't

9:22

try to keep it change. Just notice

9:24

the changes and moisture. It's

9:26

only a few measures. Sounds

9:36

about the same to me. The

9:46

whole orchestra gets up

9:48

on their feet and gives us standing ovation,

9:51

and you can tell the different. So I

10:01

said, oh my god, this is

10:03

easy. I know nothing

10:06

about tubeas nothing about classical

10:08

music. I don't know. And

10:11

I got everything from him

10:14

as I needed, and

10:17

it seemed like magic. Because now

10:23

this is new. The coach doesn't

10:25

need to know the first thing about what's being

10:27

coached. All the

10:29

coach needs is a gift for playing around with people's

10:31

minds. Two things

10:34

follow from this. Anyone

10:36

can coach anything, and anyone

10:39

doing anything now needs a coach.

10:46

I'm Michael Lewis, and this is

10:48

Against the Rules, a

10:50

show about various authority figures in American

10:53

life. This season

10:55

is about the rise of coaches, and this

10:57

episode is about the

11:02

inner game. The

11:07

first big leap that game coaching

11:09

makes is into the business world. Tim

11:12

Galway starts getting requests from

11:14

corporations to

11:16

help them figure out how to coach their executives.

11:20

In the early eighties, the Bell telephone

11:22

monopoly was being broken up. The

11:24

new head of AT and T Corners Galway

11:26

on a tennis court. He says, the

11:28

people of AT and T now need to learn how to

11:30

compete. Just a few years earlier,

11:33

Galway had been nothing more than the local

11:35

club tennis pro. Now the

11:37

head of one of the world's largest corporations

11:40

is inviting him to try to fix one

11:42

of the world's largest corporate cultures.

11:45

He started out just saying everything

11:50

to change. So

11:53

at the end of the

11:55

two minutes, summarize

11:58

in everything from the top level

12:00

to the bottom level to change.

12:04

He said, So, Tim, what's the problem?

12:07

Galway told him, point plank you

12:10

the problems you

12:12

your whole bossing people around management

12:15

style. A monopoly could get

12:17

away with being autocratic, but now

12:19

that AT and T had to compete in the marketplace,

12:21

well, everyone needed to stop listening to the boss's

12:24

voice in their heads. The leader is the interference.

12:27

Tiffany Gaskell is director of coaching

12:29

and leadership at a British company called Performance

12:31

Consultants International. Tim Gaway

12:34

helped to create the company thirty five years ago,

12:36

after all these corporations started asking him

12:38

for advice. When you're on the tennis court, you're

12:41

in your head. That voice

12:43

is the one that's saying, oh, no, you're not

12:45

good enough to do this. In organizations,

12:48

because the leader is the one that knows

12:51

the way, then the other people don't know

12:53

the way. Performance

12:56

consultants is still at the center of coaching the executive

12:59

mind, but the inner game

13:01

has become an industry. Gaskell

13:04

guesses there are roughly a quarter million of

13:06

these coaches worldwide, helping

13:08

business people deal with the voices in their

13:10

heads that make them worse at their jobs.

13:12

I was working with the

13:15

managing director of a waste company,

13:17

waste management company, and every

13:20

month they were missing their recycling targets,

13:23

and so we sat down

13:25

and he said, okay, so what's

13:28

going on here? We're missing our recycling targets.

13:31

And he explored

13:33

his own beliefs around recycling

13:36

and realized that he just didn't believe in it because

13:39

he said, you know, we're just sending it on

13:41

a boat to China. It's not really solving

13:44

the problem. Here. We have a common

13:46

source of interference, not really wanting

13:48

to do the thing you were meant to be doing because

13:51

you don't believe in it. The performance

13:53

coach helped the waste management boss

13:55

created a recycling program that he could

13:58

be proud of, and from

14:00

then on they hit their recycling targets.

14:04

That's interesting. I mean one response

14:06

to this would be just to quit the waste management business.

14:10

But he didn't do that. He found a better

14:12

way to recycle. Yeah, and finding

14:14

a better way to recycle eliminated

14:18

this interference he had that he hadn't fully acknowledged

14:20

that the whole thing was pointless. Yes, exactly.

14:23

So It's like, as we become aware of

14:25

stuff, then we can we have a

14:27

choice and responsibility

14:29

to do something about it or

14:31

not about

14:34

now. I can hear Bobby Knight throwing

14:36

a chair across the room.

14:38

I mean, what is this bullshit?

14:41

It all started on some country club tennis

14:43

court. And these mind coaches or performance

14:46

coaches, or wherever you want to call them, they've only

14:48

got a few simple ideas that they repeat over

14:50

and over. The voice inside

14:52

your head needs to be managed. Screw

14:55

that. I don't have time for headcases. Criticism

14:58

and praise are equally counterproductive, as

15:00

they both amplify the inner critic. Suck

15:02

it up, you whimp. Focus

15:05

your attention on things you can control rather than

15:07

the things you cannot. Work your

15:09

ass off, and you'll control everything.

15:14

On the other hand, Bobby Knight

15:16

might be shocked by who's finding this stuff useful?

15:27

Before the Break, I talked about

15:29

how coaches are now being brought

15:31

in to help people who've never had

15:33

coaches before. We are what we repeatedly

15:35

do excellence that has done an act, but a

15:37

habit. So we don't rise to

15:39

the occasion. We sing to our training. Right.

15:42

You gotta put together effective routines

15:44

to operate well under pressure. There's

15:47

a mental game of firefighting huge.

15:50

That's Jason Bresler, former baseball

15:53

player at the US Naval Academy, lieutenant

15:55

in the Marine Corps. Fought in the Battle

15:57

of Fallujah, fought other battles in Afghanistan.

16:01

In between battles, he joined the New York City

16:03

Fire Department, where he now fights fires,

16:05

among other things. To challenge

16:07

that our generation has is one

16:10

is the complexity of these events that we go to.

16:13

They're just ever increasing into complexity because

16:15

there's the active shooter threat, there's terrorism,

16:17

there's transportation accidents, there's biological

16:20

exposure. All these like, it's we do far

16:22

more than just go to fires. No, two

16:24

emergencies are the same, but

16:26

they all have one thing in common, an

16:29

inner game. All

16:31

right, more stressful at time?

16:34

Hopefully what do we think stressful?

16:37

Why? By my heart rate was elevated,

16:40

I was I esk

16:42

guys like, do you ever have a

16:44

negative conversation with your with yourself?

16:48

You know, like in a moment where you're just like, don't suck,

16:50

right, or now you make a mistake and you're like, I

16:52

freaking suck. And universally,

16:55

every single guy, particularly the most

16:57

experienced guys that have been to so many fires,

16:59

and they say yeah all the time. Jason

17:01

fights fires himself, but he also helps to run

17:03

the training programs for firefighters, and

17:06

he noticed that firefighters didn't usually dwell

17:08

on their inner states. They fought

17:10

fires, and they didn't talk about

17:12

the conversations they had with themselves when

17:14

they did it. And at first they looked at me like I

17:16

was kind of crazy, right, I'd say, well,

17:19

hold on a second, hold on a second, do

17:21

you recognize that conversation isn't at least

17:23

bit helpful? And everyone

17:26

would say yeah, I'm like, well, is it easy to

17:28

change that conversation? And they're like hell No.

17:31

All of them were game to be coached about

17:33

a thing they hadn't ever really put into words.

17:36

So Jason brought in a twenty nine year old

17:38

mind coach named Ben Oliva.

17:41

One of the things we're trying to do here is

17:44

speed up the path

17:46

to being an expert. So this

17:48

coach wears jeans and a hoodie with a kangaroo

17:51

pouch. He'd never fought a fire.

17:54

He'd never been in a fire. He might

17:56

have started a fire to roast marshmallows

17:58

or something. He knows fires

18:01

the way Tim Galway knew tubas. But

18:04

he's talking to a group of firefighters who seemed

18:06

to believe he could make them better at their jobs. I

18:09

think is the difference between routines and superstitions.

18:16

Okay, so I'm going to suggest that there is a difference.

18:22

Ben has a laptop and a power point.

18:25

The firefighters sit in a semicircle around

18:28

him. Firefighters always

18:30

seem like they're waiting for something to happen. Okay,

18:32

So if you're you're a superstition. If

18:34

you don't do it, you can't perform well. Yea

18:37

like a lapse of your routine is going to throw you off

18:39

right, kind of like they're tied together. What if

18:42

this happens, some this won't happen. You're pointing

18:44

to an important point here, which is that superstitions

18:46

often give us the impression

18:48

that we cannot be successful if

18:50

we don't do them, whereas routines are

18:53

more flexible. Ben

18:55

studied astrophysics and psychology

18:57

at Williams College, where he also played baseball

19:00

and football. That Williams, he noticed

19:02

that some of his teammates were just way better in

19:04

practice than they were in games. Why

19:06

was that he left Williams

19:09

and got a masters in sports psychology.

19:11

Now he coaches the minds of players for

19:14

the Boston Red Sox and the New York Giants.

19:16

Also a bunch of lawyers and doctors and

19:19

some actors and singers you've heard of. Bene

19:22

Leavitt does the same work with firefighters that

19:24

he does with everyone else, starting with

19:26

trying to eliminate interference distractors.

19:29

One are the things that pop in your

19:31

head. They end up posing on that you don't have full

19:33

control. Decisions that

19:35

a fire that already have been made in executy,

19:38

past decisions, other

19:40

people's readiness, other people's

19:43

readiness. Okay, so like other

19:45

people's performance. Yeah yeah,

19:47

other people time of year. So

19:50

external factors in the environment, whether

19:53

excellently. That throws so many

19:55

apps up. Oh it's gold. I can't

19:57

play well. One

19:59

of the guys had girls.

20:05

That one gets me a lot. There's

20:08

one, a really big one that I'd like to point out

20:10

that we haven't hit yet. Past

20:12

mistakes, past mistakes.

20:15

I can sort of understand baseball players getting

20:18

hung up that way, they're all head cases.

20:20

But firefighters tactical technique.

20:23

He's not going to make us a better firefighter. Jason

20:25

Bressler Again, he says he can see the

20:27

effect mind coaching has on the way that fires

20:29

get fought. In the course of adopting these

20:31

techniques and applying them, we're

20:34

likely to become a better version of ourself, which

20:36

then inevitably is going to make us a better firefighter.

20:38

Who doesn't want to accomplish that. Plus,

20:42

it's like you're nobody unless you have a mine coach.

20:44

That's gonna be part of this, right, I mean, if everyone else

20:46

has a mind coach and you don't, how can you compete?

20:50

How do I compete? Hey,

20:55

Michael hold up? Just need to adjust

20:57

your mic rolling

21:00

in Berkeley. So I've just made

21:03

you performance coach against the rules.

21:05

You are our podcast performance coach, and

21:08

I bring you in for the first conversation

21:10

and you come sit in our studio.

21:13

What are the things you ask me to try to

21:15

figure out? Try to diagnose? And

21:20

Okay, so, um, should we should we

21:22

do this? Should we do? Like? Um, yes,

21:27

let's do this. Tiffany Gaskell of Performance

21:29

Consultants International. I

21:31

just finished interviewing her and was about

21:33

to let her go. But you can't

21:36

talk to one of these mine coaches for long before

21:38

you start thinking about new uses

21:40

to which they might be put. Yeah,

21:42

because none of the people who've worked

21:44

on the podcast have improved in any way. So

21:47

they're just trapped in their own little worlds. And I

21:49

just think, I think what I think of them, and but

21:51

nobody's made any progress at all. So

21:54

it would be nice if we could go somewhere

21:56

I don't know where, so help

21:58

us. So

22:00

I'm just putting my hand on my head because

22:04

um, there was um. So they come

22:06

from, right, That's the first thing that's

22:08

really port. The first thing is

22:11

that it is not a remedial

22:13

thing. So Michael Um,

22:17

in terms of me coaching you, then

22:20

it's like I'm going on

22:22

a journey with you and walk walking down a path.

22:25

So what I would ask is that

22:28

essentially we work

22:30

on you, not all the people around you.

22:32

See what I mean? All right?

22:35

The leaders, the interference I almost

22:37

forgot. Okay, so let's start

22:39

this. So, Michael, if

22:41

you had something you wanted

22:44

to be coached on, what would that be? You

22:47

mean, how would I like to improve? Is that the question?

22:50

Um? Yes, that's a good one. Here's

22:54

here's one. It's

22:56

it's not huge, but it's noticeable.

23:00

I don't like the way I

23:02

am can be distracted by small irritations.

23:05

A microcosm of this is just driving. My

23:09

ideal state as a driver is

23:12

detached amusement at

23:14

the poor habits of other drivers. I

23:16

have trouble staying in that ideal state

23:19

and not not descending

23:21

into bitterness and fury on the

23:23

road. So that's

23:26

just an example. But I assume

23:28

if I'm that way in the car, I'm that

23:31

way with other things, and I don't

23:33

see any benefit to the bitterness

23:35

and anger I feel towards others when

23:37

they are inept. Okay, that's

23:40

a great thing for us to work on. Okay,

23:42

you're ready to go. Yes,

23:45

So um, Let's imagine

23:49

that you are sitting in the car.

23:51

We're doing your dream scenario. Now,

23:53

Okay, I've got my eyes closed,

23:56

great, me too. You're

23:59

sitting in the car and

24:02

everything is just as

24:05

you'd love it to be. Tell me about

24:07

what that feels like. It

24:11

feels like being in a sensory deprivation

24:13

chamber where I'm alone with my thoughts

24:15

and the car is almost just driving itself. So

24:19

you are enjoying

24:22

being with yourself, moving along,

24:25

getting to where you're going to m And

24:31

in terms of like our

24:33

goal for the end of this, let's say that something

24:36

happens outside of your little bubble. How

24:40

is it you stay in your bubble? How

24:42

would I stay in my bubble if I was trying to stay

24:44

in my bubble? Well, if I'm in a good

24:47

state of mind, I

24:50

laugh. I

24:52

see someone run a four way stop, or

24:54

someone tailgating me, or

24:58

an ancient person going three miles an hour,

25:00

and I think different strokes

25:02

for different folks. Isn't it got

25:05

detachment? The detachment?

25:07

You're detached. I'm detached,

25:10

That's the way I Otherwise I start

25:12

to get upset. And when

25:14

you get upset, what's there instead m

25:18

a desire to reek reek

25:21

vengeance and a kind

25:23

of fury that is just inexplicable

25:25

given what's happened. Okay, I desire to

25:27

let them know just how awful they are

25:29

as human beings. Okay, so we got

25:32

judgment right there. Right there, you

25:34

go a lot of judgment. Okay,

25:36

So there's the detached happy place.

25:38

There's the judgment hell

25:41

place. Is that right? Yeah?

25:44

True? Okay, yea. So um,

25:46

let's just get back into your detached

25:49

happy place. I

25:52

mean, I'm there. Great. Just

25:54

tell me about this bubble. What's

25:57

going on inside the bubble? Yeah? What's the bubble?

25:59

Like the bubbles playful? You

26:02

could also be seriously playful in

26:04

the bubble. I'm thinking about uh

26:08

famla, or I'm thinking about, more

26:10

commonly, something i'm working on, like

26:13

this long scene in the middle of this episode.

26:16

I could be thinking about whether to let this tape

26:18

just play or insert some narration

26:21

to break it up. But I'm not because

26:23

of the noise in my head. Okay.

26:26

So have you got your feet on the ground toes?

26:31

Yes? Great, So just putting

26:33

your feet on the ground, do you feel that connection

26:36

with the ground and

26:39

staying in the bubble and

26:42

just really feeling this

26:45

positivity and the bubble around

26:47

you. What color is a bubble? Blue?

26:51

Light blue, kind of a sky blue,

26:55

and so you've got that all around you.

26:58

It could be pink too. What's

27:01

the feeling in this bubble? It's

27:06

warm and cozy. Great, no

27:09

negativity? Yeah, no negativity.

27:11

And on a scale of one to ten, how

27:15

strong are you feeling this right now at

27:18

this very moment, yes, call

27:21

it an eight. So what we want to

27:23

do now is find a point

27:26

on your body

27:28

which you can associate this feeling with. So

27:30

you've got your feet flat on the ground and

27:33

you can feel this is

27:36

resonating around you, isn't it the bubble?

27:38

Mhmm? Sometimes blue, sometimes

27:40

pink, but yes, it's resonating. And

27:42

so where's the place on your body

27:45

that you can, like, for example, your chest, to

27:47

access this feeling. If you

27:49

keep mentioning my chest, it's hard for me to think of anything

27:51

but my sorry

27:53

about I'm

27:55

feeling. Yes, I feel like I am being led to my chest

27:57

where it might be who knows where it might be, my

27:59

tip of my nose or my little toe could

28:01

be anywhere for it. Um,

28:04

I would actually say, my

28:06

toes great, and

28:08

to tell me about that, tell me about your toes,

28:11

And well, normally your

28:13

toasts take your toes for granted, right unless

28:15

they're injured or they're unsightly

28:17

and you don't have shoes on. But otherwise

28:20

you don't really think about your toes. They're in your shoes.

28:23

But when you're really aware

28:25

of your body and you wiggle

28:28

your toes inside your shoe, it's

28:30

a it's a very distinct sensation, and it's

28:33

a it makes you feel very self aware.

28:36

So I'm wiggling my toes

28:38

inside my shoes and it's giving

28:40

me pleasure. Can that give you access

28:42

to the bubble? It might? It

28:45

might. It might also cause me to hit

28:47

the accelerator a little fast in

28:49

the car. But but it's it's um

28:51

But yes, absolutely, I

28:55

could work on connecting the

28:57

feeling of the wiggly toes to the

28:59

bubble. So my request

29:01

to you is that next time you aren't driving,

29:04

that this is what you do, all

29:07

right, when your face with a situation that

29:10

could get you into that judgment place, I

29:13

promise I will do it. It

29:17

seemed like such a simple request, but

29:20

the inner game is not as easy as it looks I

29:32

came to this episode with one question,

29:35

why why are these

29:37

inner game coaches now everywhere? I

29:40

mean, they used not to exist, and

29:42

it's not as if they required some new technology

29:45

to make them possible. Leonardo

29:47

da Vinci could have had this kind of coaching. Now.

29:49

There was a guy with interference issues, hardly

29:52

finished anything he started. Maybe

29:54

if he'd had a mind coach, Saudi Princes

29:56

would not have to shell out four hundred and fifty

29:58

million dollars for fake Leonardo's because

30:01

there'd be so many real ones to choose from.

30:03

Anyway, here's a thought. This explosion

30:06

in mind coaching first required that

30:08

a scide give itself over entirely

30:11

to markets. It needed

30:13

life to be seen as one giant winner

30:15

take all competition. It

30:18

needed a new kind of anxiety. So

30:26

you feel like you've put a ton of time into

30:28

the physical side, but the mental

30:30

side you haven't had that much direction.

30:33

In training, Ben Oliva trainer

30:35

of pro baseball players and Wall Street traders

30:38

and New York City firefighters. He

30:40

spends a shocking amount of his time coaching

30:42

young people, teenagers who

30:45

have somehow become swept up in our general

30:47

performance anxiety and so you're

30:49

interested in figuring out, Yeah,

30:52

what you can do to get better from that? I

30:54

know about you from what your dad told me. But

30:58

here's the thing. I work with lots of

31:00

high school athletes and parents are kind

31:02

of unreliable source. Yeah,

31:07

so I'm not going to fully rely on what

31:09

he was telling me. Okay, the

31:12

girl is a seventeen year old high school

31:14

softball player. She's hoping to

31:16

be recruited to play at elite colleges. She

31:19

thinks her father can't help her. But that's

31:21

not new. Teenagers have always found

31:23

their parents to be mostly useless. What's

31:26

new is their urgent need to optimize

31:28

their performance. We're going to refocus

31:30

like we're training a puppy. If we're

31:33

going to train your mind like we train a puppy

31:35

all time us for two minutes, my

31:38

suggestion is you close your eyes. You

31:40

do not have to on your marks.

31:43

Good, said guy. I'll do it. These

31:46

sessions are usually confidential, but he's made

31:49

an exception here because the girl is my

31:51

daughter, Dixie. A lot

31:53

of the time when

31:55

I go to bed, I have a bunch of things

31:57

on my mind. So I was like, well,

32:00

this is kind of a form of meditation. Let's

32:03

see if I can. Because when we did

32:05

it, like, all I really had to focus

32:07

on was that I wasn't thinking about the

32:09

test I just studied for, or like the

32:12

practice SUCH just had. So I

32:14

definitely had to restart a lot. We

32:18

live in Berkeley, California, so

32:20

a lot of Dixie's teachers already make her meditate.

32:23

If they gave Olympic medals and meditation,

32:26

we might just sweep. We'd

32:29

also win recycling. Okay, So

32:31

when you got distracted and then brought

32:33

your attention back. Yeah.

32:36

One of the other pieces of this is noticing

32:38

if you judge yourself right, distracted

32:42

right, because one of the bigger themes

32:44

here is trying to manage our self judgment,

32:47

usually in a way that's actually helpful for us

32:49

rather than unhelpful. Yeah.

32:52

I know she's my child because when she's told

32:54

to meditate, her first reaction is

32:56

to win at it. She may never have heard of

32:58

Bill Parcels, the legendary football

33:00

coach, but she'd agree

33:02

with his most famous line, you

33:04

are what your record says you are.

33:07

Okay, So what's the problem

33:11

with judging our success based on outcomes?

33:15

Well, we get into a mindset

33:17

where we think we're supposed to get on base

33:19

every time one and

33:22

that's like, are

33:24

you kind of a perfectionist in that way?

33:27

Well, that's the thing. It's like, I don't

33:29

like that's definitely how I

33:31

am a lot more in high school. So

33:34

that's the problem of judging ourselves based

33:36

on outcomes is that we lose

33:38

track of the things that get us the best

33:40

outcomes. So by focusing

33:42

all our energy on the outcomes, we

33:45

end up getting worse outcomes. Yeah,

33:47

it's really kind of twisted. It's

33:49

even more twisted than that. My

33:51

child has been engaged in this insane

33:54

competition for the attention of college coaches

33:57

since she was thirteen years old. The

33:59

pressure on her grows every year. She

34:02

has the sense that any given at bat

34:04

might cause a coach to love her or to hate,

34:07

and thus determine the course of life.

34:10

Every weekend, Dixie travels with your club softball

34:12

team. It's one of the best teams in

34:14

the country, and it plays against the other best teams.

34:17

Wherever they play, college coaches gather

34:19

to watch, but only because they are one

34:22

of the best teams. If they

34:24

started losing all the time, they wouldn't be invited

34:26

to play against the best teams, and no one would want to see

34:28

them play except maybe their parents. Lose,

34:31

and the coach from your dream school might

34:33

never see how good you really are. To

34:38

get a sense of what it feels like to be inside

34:40

my child's dugout, probably also

34:42

inside her head. We stuck a wire

34:44

on her coach, who was reacting to some

34:47

screw up by one of Dixie's teammates. That

34:49

one wasn't even any of dirt, and you missed it.

34:51

Get around the fucking blood. Don't be positivity.

34:54

Shut up, so I'll give you positivity.

34:58

I know you want to call child

35:00

Protective Services. And if Dixie's

35:02

coach said this sort of stuff inside of an institution

35:05

a high school, say, or college, some

35:07

parent would complain and should be FI. But

35:11

you know who'd be the most upset if that happened

35:14

her players. Well, when you know her,

35:16

you don't take any of that really seriously,

35:19

like if that makes sense, like that's

35:22

just her, Like it's not you

35:24

don't you just can't take it personally,

35:27

is it was it harder to

35:30

sort of keep your mind in the right place

35:33

when you had a coach that you were intimidated

35:36

by. That's

35:38

me obviously talking with Dixie

35:41

in the car after a softball practice. I

35:43

mean I was intimidated by her in the beginning,

35:45

like the very beginning, but it was

35:47

more I just really didn't want

35:50

to disappoint her. If she's not

35:52

yelling at you, then you're doing something wrong. If she's

35:54

not noticing you, then that's

35:56

a bad sign. Why is that? Because

35:58

she's not paying attention to you. She's like, she

36:00

doesn't care what you're doing. She

36:03

If she's paying attention to you and yelling at you,

36:05

it means she cares. And that's

36:07

the most important part. Oh

36:13

my god, we're living this fucking team

36:18

here. We have a paradox. Why don't

36:20

you try to seeing them all? That will be a good strategy

36:23

is to actually look at it. Play at the

36:25

highest levels of any competitive sport, you'll

36:28

hear a lot of this sort of critical voice. You

36:30

might even sense that you need to hear this voice

36:33

to push you to places that you never push yourself.

36:37

The paradox is that you also need to silence

36:39

that voice, at least inside your own

36:41

head. This comes up over

36:44

and over again in Dixie sessions

36:46

with Ben, how much she cares

36:48

about her coaches, but how hard

36:50

it is to stay calm in their presence

36:53

and how hard it is to play well when you're not

36:55

calm. I'm really hard on myself

36:57

for some reason, like on that team

37:00

with the coaches that I had, Like it's

37:02

almost like I had like so much respect

37:04

for them that I didn't want to let them down because

37:07

like and

37:09

my coaches. And then another

37:12

thing I do definitely when I'm nervous

37:14

is like I

37:16

don't know, like my eyes almost like freeze

37:19

and it's

37:21

really stressful because I have

37:23

like naturally really good hand eye coordination,

37:27

and so I'll still hit the ball, but

37:30

I know if my eyes were on it, I would

37:32

have hit it a lot better. Right, So think

37:34

about that. That means your attention is somewhere

37:36

in the future on what

37:39

if this happens, what if that happens, rather

37:41

than on the present moment actually

37:44

on trying to pick that ball up right

37:46

out of her view. So let's do

37:48

an exercise just to show you

37:50

that you have control of

37:52

your attention when you are aware of it.

37:55

Right, So what's your attention talking

37:57

to you? Right? I would hope

38:00

that it's on me at least for the most part. But

38:03

if we want to write, I can tell you

38:05

to shift your attention to the way that

38:08

the seat feels underneath you, the

38:10

way that your weight feels on that seat.

38:14

That's really a weird thing to pay attention

38:16

to, right, Yeah, And it would

38:19

be weird if you were sitting here talking to me paying

38:21

attention to that sensation. Yeah,

38:24

that would be like a really weird thing to be doing.

38:27

Yet. But you

38:30

can do it if you want to, right, Or

38:33

you can just wiggle your toes. The

38:35

point is that Dixie can learn to pay attention

38:38

to the things that are useful, to pay attention to her

38:40

breath, for example, or the ball as it leaves

38:42

the pitcher's hand. Just as the tuba

38:44

player can stop trying to listen to his own music

38:47

and focus on his tongue, Dixie

38:51

needs to find the thing that helps to focus

38:53

on. I don't know what the right focused

38:56

cues are. This is personal, it's

38:58

individualized. There's there's not focused

39:01

cues that are best for everybody. But you just told

39:03

me you hit your best when you're aggressive and loose.

39:06

That sounds like a killer focused

39:08

kid. Ben

39:12

and Dixie spoke over Skype every week for

39:14

months, just the two of them.

39:16

We taped only a few of these sessions, and even then

39:18

we didn't listen in. But one day,

39:21

when I was driving her home after softball practice,

39:23

I asked her how it was going, and she told

39:26

me that when she stepped into the batter's box, she

39:28

now had a phrase in her head, loose

39:30

and aggressive. And is

39:33

it like, how do you say it the way

39:35

you would say it to yourself? Like you hear it

39:37

in your head? Loose and aggressive,

39:40

loose and aggressive. Loose and aggressive.

39:43

So it's light, it's not loud.

39:46

Yeah, what

39:48

would have been in your

39:51

head before you

39:53

did those drills with him? Don't

39:55

swing and miss, you have to move

39:57

the runner, don't

40:01

fuck up, don't

40:03

look at your coach. Typically

40:08

things that started with don't get

40:15

rid of the don't That's what Ben had been

40:17

teaching her. The new strategy

40:20

gets this trial run into tournament being inspected

40:22

by roughly fifty college softball coaches.

40:25

The opposing team's pitcher has already signed

40:27

with the University of Texas.

40:29

She lights out, her dropball drops,

40:32

her rise ball rises, and her fastball comes

40:34

in at sixty five miles an hour, which is the equivalent

40:36

of a ninety four mile an hour fastball and baseball

40:39

Dixie's teammates all have trouble dealing

40:41

with it. Everyone's striking out, her swinging

40:43

late. Everything feels like it's happening

40:45

too fast. Dixie

40:48

now comes to the plate. There we go next day, Get on

40:50

time. The first pitch is a fastball,

40:52

high and inside, just extremely

40:55

hard to react to quickly enough to hit hard.

40:57

A month earlier, she'd have been frozen by it.

41:00

Oh, you

41:03

did it. That's the sound of it. Hit.

41:05

It's a rocket down the left field line. She

41:08

didn't just not freeze, she was ahead of

41:10

it. She

41:12

never reacted so quickly to a pitch in her entire

41:15

life. After

41:17

the game, I didn't say anything about it. I'd read the inner

41:19

game of Tennis, and the last thing my daughter needed

41:21

was another voice in her head. She'd

41:23

been coached to stop thinking and

41:25

trust her reactions, which

41:27

can be hard for a smart person to do. But

41:31

eventually I debriefed her, asked her what

41:34

she thought had happened. I developed

41:36

a routine that acted

41:38

kind of like a safety net for me, Like knowing

41:41

that I had a plan made me know

41:43

if I executed it or not, and

41:45

so having that as my goal instead

41:47

of focusing on the outcome it

41:50

made it a lot easier to not

41:52

be hard on myself because I was like, well, I executed

41:55

my plan, I did everything I was supposed

41:57

to do, and it just didn't

41:59

work out. And that's how this game works. So

42:01

I just have to let it go and do the same

42:04

thing next time. And right, you

42:06

know, like because it made me realize that I cannot

42:08

control everything. Right, my

42:12

daughter is saying I cannot control everything

42:15

of her own free will. And I'm

42:17

sitting in the driver's seat about

42:19

to drive home from softball practice, wiggling

42:21

my toes at every intersection instead of screaming

42:24

at the other drivers. And yet

42:27

there's still a part of me that thinks there

42:29

is just no way this shit can work. Explain

42:32

to me why people

42:34

didn't figure this out five hundred years ago. Yeah,

42:37

it's interesting, isn't it. Tiffany Gaskell

42:39

again, creator of my pink road

42:41

rage bubble. People have cared about performance

42:44

for a long time. Why wasn't

42:46

Sir Lancelot when he was jousting,

42:49

Why wasn't he wiggling

42:51

his toes or clenching his abs or

42:54

I don't understand. I'm

42:56

thinking about the evolution of humankind,

42:59

and I'm thinking that we are in a place now

43:01

where we are you know Maslow's

43:04

hierarchy of human needs. There you go so

43:06

basically like once you've got various

43:08

stuff to can care of, so that's like survival,

43:11

than we're going relationships, than we're going up to

43:13

relationships with other and then

43:15

we can go into the place where we can self actualize.

43:18

And I think that a lot of

43:20

the developed world is in that place

43:22

right now. Are you just smuggling

43:24

therapy into people's lives by calling it coaching

43:26

and making them feel better about it? Well, actually,

43:29

therapy is more

43:32

about things that have happened

43:34

to you in the past that you're trying to deal

43:36

with, and coaching is really about

43:38

okay, going forward. You know, there's a

43:40

saying which is therapy is a path of

43:42

tears and coaching is the path of laughter.

43:49

There was one other surprise in all this. It

43:52

occurred to me as I watched Dixie play.

43:54

It had taken me longer to notice, and I was

43:56

more hesitant to credit her inner game coach

43:58

for it, even though the change was

44:01

entirely in her mind. It

44:05

seemed like she was aggressive there. Then

44:07

had come to Southern California on other business

44:09

and I dragged him out to see Dixie play. He

44:12

said he didn't usually do this because he got so wrapped

44:14

up in outcomes and started doing stuff that was counterproductive

44:17

to his coaching, like cheering. Praise

44:19

was bad because it was still judge. Anyway,

44:22

we were standing along the left field fence, surrounded

44:24

on all sides by college scouts and

44:26

anxious parents and screaming coaches.

44:29

Me trying not to care too much about what was going

44:31

on on the field. Ben actually

44:34

not caring too much. Since

44:36

she started talking to you, she's been

44:38

the two things I've noticed. One

44:40

is she's been much more

44:42

aggressive in the zone without

44:45

losing her discipline. So her at bats have been

44:47

very good. The outcome has not always

44:49

been what she'd hope, but it's been fine. I mean,

44:51

she's hit well pretty well. But

44:54

the other thing is I think

44:56

she's starting to learn

44:59

not to be hard on herself. It's

45:01

our focus, and where

45:04

I notice it is it when she's

45:07

hard on herself, it's an express

45:09

have a more general trait, which is she's very

45:11

judgmental. She's hard on a lot of people. She's

45:13

critical, and so she will sit there

45:15

and be meant. She won't say it, but she'll have

45:18

thoughts about her, critical thoughts about her teammates,

45:20

and of course critical thoughts

45:22

about her parents and m

45:25

and learning to

45:28

take that off herself. She's

45:30

been noticeably nicer to me, like

45:33

like all of a sudden, Tabitha

45:36

turn to me a couple of weeks ago and said, who is this child?

45:39

And so it's I don't want

45:41

to give you that much credit yet, and who knows

45:44

how long last. And I've not said a word to her

45:46

about any of this, but it's been it's

45:49

been really surprising to see

45:52

just a little bit of hesitation before she goes

45:55

into the critical

45:57

negative mode. Winnings

46:01

great, so's kindness. That

46:04

kindness might help you to win. Well, you

46:06

gotta love that. It

46:10

looks like we're playing fucking a B tenant

46:13

under team and it's two to nothing. They

46:15

are like seven hundred softball coaches in Northern

46:17

California that Dixie could have played for. There's

46:19

a reason she insists on playing for this

46:22

particular coach. It's not always

46:24

easy or pleasant, but there's a point to it.

46:27

Tim Galway might say the coach was creating

46:29

interference. Dixie would

46:31

too, but she thinks the interference

46:34

is important to have you know

46:36

that's bullshit. That's a bullshit

46:38

approach to life. We

46:41

can benefit from interference. We

46:44

need coaches who teach us how to be comfortable being

46:46

uncomfortable in a way our parents don't and

46:49

probably shouldn't do. You need

46:51

to stop being a lazy piece of shit and get around

46:53

the ball and get your ass up and block and

46:55

work for your picture or I'm going to kick your ass.

46:59

Got its?

47:01

The trick is to let their voice into your head

47:04

and then let it out again, use it,

47:07

learn from it, then learn

47:09

to mute it. Yeah, Miya's going to get ahead

47:11

in account and throw

47:17

so fast, Stayley, so fast, luc

47:20

agressive, blue

47:24

senecrest. Oh,

47:35

I'm Michael Lewis. Thanks

47:37

for listening to Against the Rules. Against

47:40

the Rules is brought to you by Pushkin Industries.

47:43

The show's produced by Audrey Dilling and Katherine

47:45

Gerardo, with research assistance

47:47

from Lydia, Jane Cott, and Zooe

47:49

Wynn. Our editor

47:52

is Julia Barton. Mia Lobell

47:54

is our executive producer. Our

47:57

theme was composed by Nick Brittell, with

47:59

additional scoring by Stellwagon Symphonette.

48:02

We got fact checked by Beth Johnson. Our

48:05

show was recorded by Tofa Ruth and Trey

48:07

Schultz at Northgate Studios in Berkeley.

48:10

We got recording helped this episode in Milwaukee

48:12

from Jaw Media and Neo Soul

48:15

Productions. Special thanks to

48:17

Deputy Chief Dan Lipski and Eric

48:19

Nurnberg of the Milwaukee Fire Department

48:22

and Jason Brasler, Christopher

48:24

g iSER, and Ralph Longo of the

48:26

New York City Fire Department. As

48:29

always, thanks to Pushkin's

48:31

founders, without whom I would not exist, Jacob

48:34

Weisberg and Malcolm Gladwell. My

48:38

dad is totally oblivious to it too, Like

48:40

he's just working out in the other room where I was originally

48:42

setting up recording. He's like, no, no, no, you

48:44

have to get out here. I'm working out, And I was

48:47

like, Dad, I'm doing this for you.

48:49

Also like I have this Mica,

48:54

but yeah, I just switch around everything.

48:59

What are you doing? That's hilarious. No,