Mental Toughness for Creating Outrageous Achievement

Nick: It’s a pleasure and honor to be here today at CalSouthern. Thank you Barbra again for the invitation to be here. Thank you for the wonderful introduction that I wrote and the reason … I always like to send in an introduction. I didn’t used to do that but about a year ago I was asked to speak to a group of accountants in downtown Los Angeles a large group. They were having some real big problems on their team, they didn’t know if it was a morale issues or what the issue was. I talked to the person who was going to introduce me and he said, I said, “I will send you an introduction.” He goes, “Oh, no I don’t need that.” I said, “Well it might be a good idea because you don’t know who I am.” He goes, “Oh no I’ve been on your website I scoured that I know my team.” He says, “I really get what you do and I get what you are going to do for us. I really want to have a great transition from my introducing you, to you being able to help our team.” I think it was all men at the time, our guys he said and I said, “Okay.” He goes, “But don’t worry.” He says, “I’m good at this.” I go and I’m sitting right there and I’m thinking this is going to be great, he has really scoured my website and I’m going to be working with these guys for months here. I really want a good introduction. He stands up there and he says, “Okay guys I want you to listen and I want you to listen good. I hired a head shrink and he is going to come in and he is going to analyze you guys. I’m going to tell you, when this is all done I’m going to meet with him. Whoever he think is crazy in this room you are out. Let’s have a warm welcome for Dr. Lazaris.” I get up there and they are just staring at me, they are just, and as they are staring they start to glare and they staring they are start to glare and they start to squint. They start to get their brass knuckles out and they are calling Guido and saying, “Who is this guy?” I’m thinking what a way to start. That how I passed that on so you would not be squinting at me this morning. Hopefully a little bit about what I do and who I am will help set the stage for what we are going to do here today. In my 31 years of consulting and coaching, I’ve worked with individuals and organizations and I have had the privilege of working with executives, world class athletes with teachers, pastors, entrepreneurs and performing artists. In that 31 years I have never had anybody tell me, “Would you help me become mediocre? Would you help our sales team make less sales? We’re making way to many sales can you slow it down for us?” I never had anybody that was leading a team say to me, “Our team is performing, too high of a level, can you bring us all down a notch?” When I used to marriage counseling years ago I never had a couple come in and say, “Will you help us maintain our so, so marriage? We just want to keep it so, so.” I never worked with a golfer who said, “I’ve never achieved golf but I don’t care it doesn’t matter to me what I score.” I’ve never worked with a student who said, “I’ve got a big exam coming up or a little bit interview and all I want to do is survive it. I don’t care if I do well just help me get through it.” Never heard that. Most people who come to me, most people who consult with me, want to rise above mediocrity, they want to rise … let me make sure this is on, above mediocrity. They want to work toward something better. The problem is how do we get there? How do we take ourselves to that next level? What we are going to be talking about this morning are some guidelines, some principles for taking you whether it’s in school, in your classes. Whether it’s in your profession, whether it’s in your business endeavors. How do we take ourselves to the next level? I wish I can say I’m going to tell you things that you’ve never heard. This is all brand new but you know there’s really not much new out there. I’m going to share something’s we’ve heard that we’ve probably gone to seminars and listened too. The key is creating an awareness that leads to some action that leads to change. I hope as a result of our meeting today, you are going to take some of these principles and not just say this was an interesting morning. Or that was kind of fun or I got my credits for my class but that this day together will lead to some changes in your life. I’m going to share specific what I call mental toughness principles that are used by world class athletes by very successful business people and by performing artists who are at the top of their game. The key question that we are going to be looking at this morning is how do we develop the mindset of a champion? How do we develop that way of thinking, that attitude that we apply at school? We apply in business. We apply in the golf course? This principles work across the board. Before we start I have got some definitions, two main definitions that I want to share with you. The first one is the definition of mental toughness and the way I use it there’s different definition of these, is that it’s your ability to perform at or near your personal best on a consistent basis regardless of the circumstances. All of these parts of this definition are important. We are not trying to say, “How do I perform as well as the nice guy? Or how do I, when I go hear great speakers I look and I think man, I’m such a poor speaker compared to them.” The point is to how do we perform at or near our personal best? How do we take where you are at and bump that up? How do we do that on a consistent basis? I mean all of us? Even a golfer can have a great round of golf, how do you that consistently what’s the mental attitude the principles that allow you to consistently achieve your best? Probably most important in terms of this definition is regardless of the circumstances. How do we create, what we are going to talk about outrageous achievement regardless of what’s going on around ourselves? Regardless how difficult the class is or tough our marriage is or maybe what the economy is going through. The circumstances we often get sucked into and we become victims of what’s going on around us, how do we break free of that, how do we begin to take charge of ourselves. That’s the definition of mental toughness. The definition of outrageous is not the definition like this of offensive or intolerable or shocking behavior. We are not trying to get that kind of outrageous achievement. Like this, this is outrageous behavior, maybe some I should look to see if any of you look like, I shouldn’t have said, I should have checked first. Not that kind of outrageous. What we are talking about is how do we become extraordinary? How do we become unconventional? Remarkable in our business in our lives on our teams in our class? How do we achieve the unthinkable? How do we exceed the limits of what we believe is expected or usual? Probably one of the key words here is bold, how do we become bold in terms of our achievement, bold simply is to stand out. How do we stand out? How do we become fiercely, assured and confident? It’s been said, a bold thinker, a bold thinker and creator has a daring spirit an adventurous free spirit. It’s been said people do not know how to be outrageous anymore. People are settling, people are kind of pulling back into that’s good enough, sort of staying within being mediocre. Today we are going to talk about creating outrageous achievement like Barbra said, she liked that word outrageous. This is not how do we get better but how do we become bold, how we take chances, how do we stand out in the work that we do. I’m going to share with you six principles and again principles you’ve heard. I’m going to reinforce those; I’m going to talk about how important they are to take ourselves to the next level. You all know where we are going, alright. First principle, principle number one is be driven by a pursuit of excellence. Be driven by a pursuit of excellence. This has to do with inner drive, determination. I work with athletes. One of the first things we look at, it’s how you are driven to be excellent at what you do. When I work with team members at a business I ask them the same question, how determined are you to take your team to the next level? What is your level of inner drive? The question is, do I expect excellence and do I have a burning desire to achieve it? In class in school, some of you are students. I have two kids my son is graduating in a couple of months and my daughter has got one more year to go at the university. We always talk about this. My daughter will say, “I just got to get through philosophy.” She’s taking philosophy and, I got to get through. I said, “Do you have any desire to understand this?” She goes no, not philosophy like a bad example then okay. When she takes her journalism classes, she’s a journalism major, editor of the paper, writes stories, has a staff underneath her. Her desire there is just to be excellent as a journalist. My son is in theater, he wants to be as a best. He’s at a conference this weekend taking acting classes just to keep getting better. He has an inner drive. He knows how difficult the competition is. He is not worried about the externals. I ask him, people say, “You’re going to be supporting your son forever because he’s going into acting? I say, “No I’m not he has a drive.” He says, “I know how many are out there.” He says, “I expect myself to become excellent at what I do.” Do you expect the best in what you do? Whatever it is that you are pursuing? Do you act like the person that you want to be? Prince Lombardi, “The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.” Again we can be talking of classes, business, sports, art, what is your commitment to excellence? What do you expect out of yourself as a student? What do you expect out of yourself as an employee? Are your own boss? I work a lot with entrepreneurs, solo entrepreneurs it’s the hardest, people say, “That’s might be so nice to sit in your office at home and have no boss.” Well I’m the boss and I got expect great things out of myself. I have got have a high standard for myself. When somebody calls me up and says, “Hey you want to go have coffee? I have to say no I’m working on a project. I’m writing a chapter in my book.” Being able to be my own boss and being able to have an inner drive towards excellence. Maybe as a spouse or as a parent, about your health, what do you expect out of yourself in terms of your health or spiritual life? It’s been said that, “Your expectations shape reality.” What you expect shapes it. It’s been said, “What you see in your mind’s eye prior to any performance situation, throughout the day over the weeks, maybe even prior months tends to become who you are. I do numerous workshops on people who have a fear of public speaking. I ask them, “What you are seeing in your mind’s eye is that, speech is coming up, number one fear is public speaking. Number two fear is death. People would rather, Jerry Seinfeld says, “Be in the casket at a funeral than give the eulogy.” That’s how afraid we are of public speaking. I’ll ask them, I’ll say, “What do you expect, what have you being seeing in your mind’s eye? I see myself getting up there and stuttering. I see myself up there blanking out. If you are Dwight Howard and you follow the Lakers and you are going to do a free through and you see yourself missing as opposed to Kobe Bryant, who sees himself making it. What do you see in your mind’s eye, prior to something coming up that’s important to you? In exam, in interview, grad school interview. You expectations shape your reality. We’re not talking about comedian Paula Poundstone who years ago said, she’s talking about her dreams and she said, “I used to work at the International House of Pancakes IHoP.” She says, “It was a dream and I made it happen.” Hopefully your aspirations are higher than working at IHoP but the principle is not do I just want to get through this. Do I want to get through this economic downturn? I have colleagues, psychologist colleagues of mine and we are always talking and chatting and they’ll say, “Isn’t this terrible the economy, isn’t killing your practice?” I’ll say, “My practice has never been busier, not because I’m so great but because I did not give into, well when the economy goes down people don’t see a therapist. Or they want to reduce fee.” I did other things; I created new ways of doing what I do to get through this period. Or maybe you saying, I hope I don’t blow the interview coming up? Or this guy isn’t too much of a jerk to date; I guess he’s better than nothing. I hear that. This paper I’m turning in is good enough. You’re consciously or unconsciously it’s been said, “You get what you expect.” What are you expecting? Are you expecting excellence in what you do? Part of being driven to achieve excellence, you must decide what really matters to you? What really matters? Now this might sound like a very silly question but it’s the first question I ask everyone I coach. What matters to you? I just want to lose weight, that’s what matters to you, going on a diet losing weight? What really matters to you? I want to feel better, I want to look sharper, I want to dress differently. What matters to you? Get to the goal underneath the goal. Before you can pursue excellence, before you can set boundaries in your life, before I can tell my buddies when they call, that I want to go out and do something and set those boundaries and say, “No.” I have to know what it is I want. What are my yeses? What are your yeses? What is it you would want to accomplish in the weeks coming up? This next year. What is it you would like in six months to look back on and say wow that mattered to me and I achieved it? What matters to you, in what ways would your life be different? This is the question I always ask. What way will your life be different achieving your goals? What’s going to motivate you to make some of the changes that it takes? This is not necessarily always easy to achieve outrageous achievement. You have go to have a motivation. In what way will your life be different? I spoke two nights ago on public speaking anxiety. First question, what would your life look like? Well I would be promote more, I get respect from the team. I wouldn’t dread for weeks before I have to present to the group, he was having to share to his shareholders, CEO and he was just panicked about having to do that. In what way would your life be different if you came that? He said, “I’d look confident out there. The shareholders would follow me in a much stronger way.” In what ways have you give up things that matter to you as a result of being afraid to stand up? What things have you given up? We’ll talk about that in a minute. Do you have a passion to improve your marriage? Do you have a passion to work with more quality, work as a student? Do you have a passion to find the work that gets you more excited? Maybe what you are doing right now is not what you really love to do but you go, “Economy is bad, I need the money, stuck.” Maybe this is the time to start saying, “What do I really want career wise? What would I like? Deep down in your heart, heart of hearts what do you want? I suggest, if this was an all day workshop I’d have you write down what you would like to achieve. Then we’d go over that and I say, “Now what do you want to achieve under that?” We’d keep digging and digging until you say, “What I want? I want to feel great about myself when I do this or that.” I want to have that self respect. Write these things down, use them as a motivator. Use them as something to begin to set some action steps so you can achieve outrageous achievement. Paul Mayer, “A burning desire is the greatest motivator of every human action.” Saying that’s good enough won’t do it, unless you want to stay kind of the in the middle. If you desire to be successful, you cannot continue to live well that’s good enough. Tom Morris a professor of philosophy he wrote a book years ago, great book called True Success. He says, “Inner commitment or desire, with it we concur challenges, without it we stumble. With it we are willing to take risks when needed, without we just play it safe. With it we strive for excellence without we settle it for much, much less.” Be driven by a pursuit of excellence. First principle so critical to start with something that basic. Second principle, commit to a focused plan of action without tolerations. There’s two parts to this. Commit to a focused plan of action without tolerations. It’s been said that there’s no wealth to be found in an idea, there’s only wealth to be found from acting on an idea. I cannot tell you how many people I coach and come and work with, that come in and they just tell me and talk about what they want to achieve. I’ll say what are you doing to put that into practice? What is your first action step? I wish I could write a book, I wish I could learn to speak in front of a group, I wish, I wish. I want to be a better leader. They just talk about it. That’s a great idea but what are you doing to act on that idea. Are you committed to a focused action plan? After deciding what you want the next step is, do I have a little action plan? When I write a book I map that out literally for a year and I say in six months I want to have written this much in three months. I can get up in the morning, sounds a little obsessive compulsive, probably it is. I can get up in the morning and I can say, “Okay this week I am committed to writing 17 pages” or whatever that is. I have an action plan, a very focused plan for my writing. Mario Andretti the great race car driver said, “Desire is the key to motivation.” Which we just talked about but it’s the determination and the commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal, a commitment to excellence that will enable you to attain the success you seek. You have an unrelenting pursuit of your goal. Once you know what that is, is anything going to stand on the way of that. I work with a lot of high school athletes who want to do better. I worked with a swimmer recently who was desiring a scholarship to a university. We really talked about part of what was missing as this unrelenting pursuit of her goal. She would tell me, “I want this scholarship, I want to be accepted.” I said, “What are you doing? Well and we start talking about her self-doubt that got in the way of pursuing this in a way that she was able to. You ask yourself, “Are my activities in my life, are the things I’m doing and is the energy I’m putting into this activities laser focused on the promotion of goals, that express my desire for excellence. If you just simply take a look at your planner or your smartphone or whatever you use and look at that I can tell you where your desires are. Have you blocked out time to take a class in public speaking. Have you taken a continued Ed course? Years ago I was getting a little burnt out I was doing primarily psycho analytic therapy with victims of child abuse, adults who were abusing children. It was just burning me out after 15 years, 18 years of doing that. I decided I wanted to make a different direction a turn in terms of the kind of the work I did. I decide to follow up with some action of that, took some continue-ed education courses in sports psychology and performance psychology and I just loved it. I was able to take what I have been doing all these years and tweak and do something different and it just revitalized me in terms of the kind of the work that I do. Now that’s primarily what I do. I had to decide are my energies or my activities taking me toward my new goals? Your every action, everything you do is either an anchor on your tail or it’s the wind on your sails. Whatever you do either holds you back from what you desire or it pushes you forward. That even includes the people you hang out with. It includes the things you eat. I believe it includes the music you listen to. The things I’m doing or the people I’m hanging around or the energy I’m putting into something, is it pulling me back is it holding me back or is it taking me towards my goals? It’s interesting; it’s not very common when I do a presentation to get any comments about the presentation before the presentation. I’ve been getting emails about today’s presentation before I gave the presentation. I usually get them after and they are often not very nice, no they’re usually it’s okay. I get comments later but I probably got four, five emails in the last two days after this was kind of put up as lecture part of the lecture series. What I saw was people saying, I need that, I’m stuck. I’m stuck in my career, I’m stuck in grad school, I’m stuck in my business. I’m not moving up the ladder. I want to learn how to do better. I’m not going to be there so please let me know how I can hear more about this. I only share that because all of us at some level want to move ourselves to the next level. Are your actions and your behaviors holding you back or taking your forward? One of the first things you have to do is ask yourself, what in the world I’m I tolerating? What in your world are you tolerating that’s keeping you from achieving the things that you want in your life? What are you tolerating? What do you keep or what do you tolerate that keeps you from achieving your goals? What is it you’re tolerating? Who are you putting up with in your life? It sounds cold, right. Who is in your life? Do you have cheerleaders in your life, people that say, “You can do this? Or do you have people around you who say. “What do you think you’re doing? You can’t change careers. What do you think you are doing? You are not a great speaker.” I used to be terrified of public speaking, terrified of it all the way through grad school. I got my masters and I got another masters, I got a doctorate. I had up to here, boy put me in front of a group I would just have a meltdown. I decided one day if I’m going to pursue my career as a psychologist market myself, reach bigger audiences than you can one on one in a room. I’ve got to overcome this. I was tolerating my own self doubt. I was tolerating people around me saying, “It’s not a big deal, everybody is afraid of speaking.” Now who are you tolerating, who are you putting up with? What are the anchors, what are the beliefs that you have that are weighing you down? Maybe it’s self-doubt, maybe its guilt and shame. Maybe for some of you the belief that you can achieve more is holding you back. We allow the behavior of others; we allow certain life situations, we allow maybe poor personal boundaries. You say yes to too many things that aren’t really best for you because you don’t know how to suite yourself and stand up and say no. We allow discouragement and fear to interfere with our dreams and our goals. You might have a job again that you are tolerating. You might have negative thinking and self doubt that you just put up with and you just tell yourself that’s just the way I am. Friendships that are not reciprocals, anybody have friendships that, not to raise your hand but they call you and they tell you their problems. They dump on you and you give them all this great advice. Next week they call you and they still got the problem, they are not doing anything with what you’ve said. They use you that way. I know some you have those, I’ve had those. You tolerate poor communication in your marriage, you just kind of say, “Well we have been married X numbers of years, I mean we are going to be married 30 years in a couple of months and if I just tolerate for a moment, well we have married 30 years that’s pretty big deal these days. It’s okay if we don’t communicate well, no I can’t tolerate that if we want to keep going on the way we are going.” Do you allow other people to make decisions for you? Where do you want to go to dinner? I don’t care, no really? I don’t care but you do care. Do you not assert yourself that way. What I’m I putting with right now? Again I would suggest writing down what I call your tolerations list. Part of change whether it’s in therapy, whether it’s a coaching situation, whether it’s in a training all these begins with awareness. What I want to leave you with today is an awareness. Things you’ve heard and say you know what? That’s true I don’t do that. What do I want? Start to make a list of the things you tolerate. We do this in the classes that I teach the workshops and in every stairs I mean I don’t know … and then pretty say, “I tolerate this guy that just and I put up with this belief and all of a sudden people start writing.” Write down what you tolerate and then most important after you’ve made your list of what you tolerate begin to say, “What I’m going to do about that.” What actions are going to be taken as a result of that? I’m going to learn to stop saying yes to everything? Maybe I’m going to read a book on assertiveness, I’m I going to stop tolerating these people in my life that are so negative that pull me back. They say you can’t do that. I used to have people in my life who said you can’t do that. Just be happy … now I need people around that say, “Go for it, go for it.” Maybe you’re going to stop tolerating negative self talk; we’ll talk about that in a minute. The way you talk to yourself that gets in the way of achieving what you want. Make your tolerations list as long as you need to make it. Tell yourself, “I’m longer going to tolerate anything that holds me back.” Then part of deciding what you want and then having a tolerations list is begin to say you know what is my plan of action? What is my focused plan of action? We’re not going to talk about goal setting because we all sick of it but I’ll bet most of you don’t do it. I work with some very successful brilliant highly paid professionals. All over the world I talk with them. They say, ‘Don’t tell me about goal setting, I have been in every seminar on goal setting” I say, “Well tell me what your plan is for achieving what you told me what you want to achieve when you called me?” Well I just want to achieve it. What’s your plan? What’s your next step? What is your literal next step and they cannot tell me, they can’t tell me, even though they’ve gone to all these trainings on goal setting. Simply put three steps create a dream list. What do you want to achieve? In sports this is called the outcome goal. I want to become a great golfer; I want to become a great speaker. I want to achieve amazing things in my program here at school. This is the dream list and don’t edit it. Just write it out. What do I want? If I wasn’t afraid what would it look like? What kind of job would I have, what kind of person would I date? What is my dream list? Don’t tell yourself I can’t afford it or who do I think I am or how will I do that, that’s not the point of a dream list. That’s saying this what I want. Secondly write down your goals, this is where we start to get specific. What do I need to be doing to achieve my outcome goals? The more specific you are, the better the chance you’re going to achieve those. Maybe you say I want to be a better husband, that’s your dream, I want to be a better husband. Specifically you write down I want to become a better listener. How would I become a better listener. I’m going to get a good book on listening. I’m going to listen to a CD on how to listen better. Maybe that’s what you are going to do. I want to increase sales outcome, I want to increase sales. Specifically what would I do? How do I learn how to follow up leads? How do I get very specific about what it’s going to take, what’s the process goal to get me there? Third literally develop a plan of action. I have on my goals, my dream this is what I want, I break it down I’m very specific. The key for me is I put a date for attainment. I’m in an authors group and we meet once a year and we encourage each other, firmly strongly to finish our books. It’s coming up in June we meet again and they require us and I require myself to put a date By February this would be done and by June and I have a date and I work toward that. Set dates for attainment, then identify the obstacles. Say, “Okay now that I have got this, I know what I want, I’m very specific, I really want to get it done by this date, what do I know is going to get in the way? What do I know about myself?” Well I procrastinate or I’m going to want to do something else or I’m going to listen that voice that negative one. Whatever it is identify what the obstacles are. I do that with all my clients especially in business. I say, “What are the obstacles?” Then we have a plan for how to overcome those. Simple steps, powerful steps if you put them into practice, pick something this week and say, “I’m going to start this” you’ll be amazed to what you’ll achieve if you commit to a focus plan of action without tolerations. Third principle, develop and maintain self confidence. Develop and maintain self confidence. This sounds like one of those, well dah! of course. Most of the people I work with again don’t have the level of confidence that they need to achieve outrageous things in their life, outrageous success. The question is here do you believe in yourself, do you believe in your potential and do you communicate that confidence to others. Do you know do you believe it and do you communicate it. When you walk into a room and do people say, “This guy is confident. Or do you walk with your head down or you go to a networking event and you go right to the food because it’s easier to eat than to socialize.” We all do this, do you believe in yourself. Charles Garfield he wrote a book called, Peak Performers. What he did was he studied business people successful business people athletes performance he just did a study across the border of different who were successful in their field. He narrowed it and narrowed it down. He concluded, he said the greatest single characteristic he found of those who achieve the goals and success was a simple belief that they could do it. He said that was the consistent thing through all these successful people was they believed they can do it. They did not tolerate anything other than I’m going to achieve this. Now this is not the same as this cartoon I will show you up here of a psychologist leading a positive self esteem seminar. He says, “Lets here from that dumpy man with the thick glasses.” No, no that’s not how to develop a positive self image and that’s not me giving a seminar. Frank Lloyd Wright said, “The thing that always happens that you really believe in, the thing always happens that you really believe in and the belief and the thing makes it happen.” I am not talking about positive affirmations and the secret and all these, what I kind of think are woo, woo! kind of pop psychology techniques I guess will call them. I’m really talking about a deep core belief in yourself. Many of us they are therapists, psychologist, MFT’s clinical social workers, we know intuitively that the core of so much of this is a lack of belief in yourself. In terms of yourself we are really talking about self talk, we’ve heard of self talk. How do you talk yourself? What do you say to yourself when you’re under pressure? Is it positive or its negative? I worked with a high school swimmer last year and she was one of the best swimmers at the high school. The problem she was having is every time she got on the block, before they shot the gun, she fell on the water and she was disqualified. Every single time and the coach said, “I’m going to have to take you out of the team, at least the competition team.” Mom came to a seminar of mine dragged the high school girl; kids don’t like to come to coaching or classes. I talked to her and one of the first things I said to her is, “What do you tell yourself when you are sitting on the bench and they call your meet and you get up and walk onto the block?” What do you think the first thing she says to herself? “I hope I don’t fall in the water, I hope I don’t fall in the water.” What do you think Dwight Howard of the Lakers says when he misses or when he’s going to do a free throw? “I hope I don’t miss it.” What does a golfer say when there’s a par three, short little hole, little tiny lake in front of the green? He’s going to hit or she’s going to hit. They say, “I hope I don’t hit in the water.” Do you know what happens? They hit it in the water almost every time; you miss the free throw almost every time. She falls in the water and gets disqualified every time. One of the first thing we worked on was her-self talk. What does she say to herself between when she gets off the bench and she gets on the block. We begun to change that. The short version of the long story is she stopped falling in the water. Because what happens when you tell yourself I hope I don’t, your body gets tight, swimmer can’t be tight because they fall in. Golfer can’t have tight arms nervous. What do you say to yourself under pressure? How do you see yourself, is it positive or is it negative? Does everybody in here believe we talk to ourselves? I had a client years ago an attorney who came in and he says, “I’m just not achieving the kind of things my law practiced and I don’t know why? I’m really smart and blah, blah, blah.” I said, “I want us to talk a little bit about yourself talk, let’s about how you talk to yourself.” He thought I was crazy. He goes what do you mean talk to myself, I don’t talk to myself. I go everybody talks. I don’t. He gets up takes a check throws at me on the ground, grabs his coat and he says, “You know what? You need more help than I do” and he walks out. I thought well, can’t win them all, right. About three four weeks later I get a phone call and he’s from the attorney, he’s said, “I’d like to come in to see you. I tell my wife, nice knowing you, he’s not going to shoot me, he’s still mad at me after all this time. I said, “Okay sure come on in.” He comes in, sits down he goes, “You know what doc so I thought your crazy and I dot talk to myself. He says, “I got home and a couple of days” I get to set the scene; he has an answering machine on the floor next to his bed. It was a bachelor on a condo an answer machine, he had a cat. The cat apparently walked across the answering machine and stepped on the recording button, the memo button. It stepped on the button right when he was looking for an important file for a court case, couldn’t find it anyway. He was upset that he was looking for it, he couldn’t find it. What he didn’t know whole time it was recording him. He tells me he’s says, “About three, four days later I see I have a message” He goes, I have got a message. He plays it back and it’s him talking to himself and he’s telling himself, “You’re such a loser, dad was right, you’re never going to be successful, who do you think you are? Can’t even find a file folder” and all the exploitive that go with it. He just was beating, stuffing out of himself on this recording. He came and he was, you know what he realized? I talk to myself like that all the time. I beat myself up all the time, especially when it’s a pressure situation. Especially when I have to present something in court. He says, “I start to beat myself up.” Do you talk to yourself in a positive way or a negative way? Such a key core concept and one of the best ways to understand how the mind works especially in terms of performance, in terms of doing our best, is to look at the left and right side of the brain. This is a simple way, there’s research all over the place on this but it’s just a simple way to see how we process things in terms of left brain and right brain thinking, how the mind works. Left brain, think about in terms of it’s the part of us that thinks in words, it’s the part of us that thinks in numbers. When you’re going to take an exam for example, you want your left brain working overtime. You want to learn, you want to remember, you want to memorize its analytical, it’s technical. It’s useful in learning specific techniques. The problem with this left side thinking the problem in the way we talk to ourselves is we talk continually. We just don’t, that voice don’t doesn’t want to shut up and it keeps saying you are going to fall in the water. Who do you think you are? You’re going to blow this exam. Or go out with the kids who are taking their SAT’s bright kids, they sit in front of the exam and they blank out. They know the information but they get sacred my gosh! I don’t know that. Just work with someone who’s did exams for medical school. Top of her class, top of her class, I think its Stanford. Sits there and looks at it and panics and its all the recall is gone. Okay she walks out of the exam room it’s all back again. Because she’s, that left part of her brain that part of her that says oh my gosh! I don’t know if I can do this. It makes the brain activity go faster; kind of they call the fast beta states of mind. As an athlete or as performer you start to tell yourself I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I’m in enough. The brain waves gets faster and the result is the more stress you have, the more your brain waves go faster and faster. You have what I call; the simple way of lots of voices in your head, I can’t do that. Who do I think I am? You start dealing less and less with of the moment, the reality of the moment. I’m writing a book called The Art and Practice of Presence. How do we stay present, whether it’s on the golf course, how do we stay present in our relationship. How do we keep from looking back in regret or ahead and anxious anticipation? Most of us don’t live in the moment; we don’t live in the present. The left brain, that part of our thinking, that part of our mind keeps talking constantly. Starts running old criticisms when we blew it in the past. I have got a lot of those voices from growing up and … you can’t do that it’s not enough. It’s just still up there and I have to fight those. Now the right side of the brain thinks the sounds. Thinks in terms of images, thinks of in terms of feelings, it’s the auditory, visuals more kinesthetic. It’s creative, it’s artistic, it’s imaginative. My wife is an artist and she, in our home has a studio. There’s a wall and the other side of the wall is my study. It’s like a there’s a whole brain there. She’s artistic, I’m analytical. I’m solving problems, she’s creating. We are so different that way and it can create problems and it can be also wonderful. I have to tell her when she’s in an art project, it’s three in the morning and I see her studio light on. I’ll go in there and I’ll say, “You got to go to bed. What did you have for dinner? I didn’t eat, I see the food there. I say, “You got to eat.” She says, “No I’m in the moment, I’m in the zone in the sense.” When an athlete says the zone I’m creating right now. The results of being able to start to use the right side of the brain, to make that shift, this is where optimal and peak performance comes from. Any book, any study, any research you read especially in performance psychology, sports psychology we’ll talk about, the key to success to being a high achiever, is quieting that voice and getting into that zone. Being able to say you know, “I can do this” and slowing it down. That’s why a great athlete. In fact I was watching a DVD of the Rolling Stones; some of you know who the Rolling Stones are. They had played in front of 1,000,000 people in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro 1,000,000 people. They were interviewing Keith Richards the lead guitar player and they said, “How in the world do you concentrate and focus on playing when you look out and see all those people?” He looked at the interviewer and he says, “I don’t see those people I just play, I just play.” You ask a great athlete, crowd screaming for you to miss the free throw, waving white flags, they ask him, “Did that make you nervous?” I don’t see the flags, I see the basket. I see the pen on the green, I don’t see the lake. They live in the right side, they are creative, they are focused they are in the moment. It’s called mental quiet, how do we quiet that side of the mind that’s getting in the way of us having outrageous achievement. How do we get it quiet? How do we make the switch, really from what I call left brain thinking to right brain thinking? Some skills, some techniques, first one is practice focus breathing and we’ll do a lot of time on this. Focus breathing is so critical, when we get anxious, when we get scared, when we start to have self doubt, our breathing changes. What kind of breathing happens when we are anxious? Anyway, short? Shallow yeah it’s up here, right. Sometimes we get so anxious we take those gulps of air. I used to do that before I spoke. It just told me, I had been anxious, I had been holding my breath. Our bodies are designed under certain conditions to have that kind of breathing. If you go out in the parking lot here and someone is chasing me with a pipe, I don’t want to relax and relax and breathe nicely and get into my zone, right. I want to say, “Where’s my car? Where’s the door to get out of here?” I shift into left mind thinking and my breathing gets fast and it gets shallow and it gets rapid. The problem is, for most of us there is a danger out there. There’s no danger in the exam or danger on the golf course, but we begin to breath different. It changes the way we think, it changes your ability to memorize, concentrate, focus, all the research that’s there. This is not a lecture that’s not going to go for the research but its there in terms of the amazing things that happen, when you begin to breathe different what I call focus present breathing. It’s one of the most important tools you can use to quiet the mind. I’ve used it with high powered executives and I’ve used it with 11 year olds that are terrified with lighting. Everything in between, how do you breath? The most important and let’s do this for a second, put your pens down for second. The principle is we want to learn how to have our breathing be deep and slow and come from our lower lungs. The best way to practice this is to picture it like a balloon in your stomach and you are filling up the balloon in your stomach. What you are really doing is you’re feeling your lower lungs and you’re getting a deep slow, deep full breath. You are going to fill the balloon up, you’re going to breathe through your nose and you’re going to exhale and you’re going to deflate that. Let’s do that, let’s take a slow deep breath and let’s fill up that balloon with air, nice and deep. Hold it, now let it out through your mouth, let it out slowly, just relax, let it out. Let’s take another slow deep breath, let’s fill that balloon up. Hold it now let it out and this time really relax as the air is going out, relax your shoulders, relax your forehead, relax your arms. One more time let’s fill it up just hold it, now this time really relax, relay slow down, let the air out. Relax your whole body and muscles, relax. What was that like, three breathes? Weird, did you get dizzy? Did you, were you relaxed? Just three times, any comments? I don’t know if any of you noticed but when I said, “The second time relax your shoulders” everybody’s shoulders went down in unison and the third time your shoulders went down more. What is that saying, it means we are walking around like this, right. We are ready, we are always on guard, we have a level of tension a level of not being present almost all day long. I teach my clients, to practice this. The great part about this exercise it’s free, you are breathing in ways hopefully and you can do it anywhere. The hardest part about focused breathing is remembering to do it, to practice it. It’s amazing what it does, it’s amazing. I want to learn how to breathe and they say, “I was able to slow myself down and focus on the project we were doing. I got really good at this, I slowed my breathing and it quieted that part of my mind and I was able to focus over here in a more meaningful way. It’s practically to impossible to breath like we just did consistently and be tensed at the same time. Your body can’t do them both. The first step in terms of getting presence of quieting that voice that left side is to practice the focus breathing. Second one is monitor your self-talk. We talked about this a little bit already. What do you tell yourself under pressure? Are you thinking about what could go wrong? Listen for those negative self defeating messages you tell yourself. Maybe that’s what I would ask you to work on this week. I have clients that say, “I practiced that, I created an awareness of listening for that and I could believe all week what … how I talked to myself. Monitor it, be aware of it. Practice thought stopping. There’s a CBT Cognitive Behavioral Technique, that sounds so simple and it sounds like gimmicky. The reality is, best way to describe this. Is if I had a garden in the backyard and it’s got mad and dirt and it’s raining and the rain is making this little pathway and pretty soon the rain just keeps going down that pathway, it gets deeper and deeper. It’s the same thing we are discovering the neural science, neural pathways that our mind creates, neurologically pathways. That’s why when people are negative it really, it goes down that pathway they are negative all the time. I’m going to fall on the water. It’s a pathway that’s literally developed in their mind, in their brain. Just like that garden setting, if I want to stop that pathway and create a new one I’ll pack the beginning of that with dirt, I plug it up and the water will hit and the water will hit it and eventually creates a new pathway. One of the things we do is we do thought stopping. This week when you hear yourself saying, “I can’t do it or this test is going to be just way too hard or who do I think I am?” As soon as you can I want you to say the word stop. I want you to picture a bright red stop sign. Stop that path immediately. Start to create new ones. We got to first stop them, you got be aware of it. Tell yourself to stop. Create positive neuro pathways. Part of that has to do with listening for the what if’s. The word what if is the killer words for anxiety. I specialize in anxiety, in performance anxiety and I always tell my clients, “Listen for the what if’s.” When you say what if I’m late, what if I don’t … received well in the conference room when I present the sales figures, it doesn’t matter what it is. Those words what if drive up the activation level. They physiologically drive up your body’s activation level. You get physically tight and under pressure the what if’s get louder and louder and louder. Anybody in here say, “What if to themselves? Absolutely we do that all the time. Listen to the for the what if’s and I’m going to make a suggestion that sounds simple and silly. As soon as you hear yourself saying, “What if” I want you to say, “So what?” Because so what doesn’t mean I don’t care, so what means what I’m going to do different. What if I get up? So what I can breathe. What if, no slow down, so what I’m going to get through this. What do I need to do instead? Part of saying so what and what if, is to give this voice a name. I’ve done this last couple of years a colleague of mine back in New York, top sports psychologist. Talks about this, I went to a training with him and he said, “This sounds silly but that negative critical voice that we are talking about that keeps us from achieving outrageous success in our life, he says, “Give it a name.” For example, my name, my critical voice is Bob. I’m driving along and I turn left instead of turning right, I’m like I’m so stupid I can’t believe I turned, it’s Bob. We find out by giving it a name. You can externalize the voice, we can hear it. It’ll be like me, if I follow Barbra around and Barbra is going, “I can’t believe I did that. That goes stop it, stop it Barbra.” Or if I followed her and I was Bob I’d say, “Are you sure you want to invite him to speak he looks a little” … Barbra needs to turned around at me and say, “Shut up leave me alone, I’m done with you.” The girl that walked from the bench to the block, she had her Bob and we give it a name. She came back next week, I forgot the name but let’s just say its Sue. She says, “I got up and all I heard was Sue, over and over saying, don’t blow it, don’t fall in and I told Sue shut up, I have an important race right now.” We can begin to confront it. You’ll begin to hear that voice, remember you can’t change something I don’t care what kind of therapy or situation you are in until you have that initial awareness. Externalize that negative voice. Then rewrite your internal dialogue of an example of when I do public speaking seminars. The things I hear they are not going to like me, I have to be perfect, what if I look stupid, what if I make a mistake and they laugh, I can’t do this. If I only had more time, what if I blank out these are the kind of things. Anybody tell themselves these kinds of things sometimes? Absolutely. What you want to begin to do is we want to rewrite that, we want to have a positive dialogue, this is not again affirmations, this is literally saying I am going to change how I talk to myself. I am ready to go for it. I, literally in the parking lot when I pulled up and the first thing I said is I am ready to go for this, I want to be present and share some things that I know would change your life, the audience is on my side, that is true. That is not just something to say. Remember number one fear of public speaking, everybody out there is granted to me up here and you are not up here for most people. The audience is cheering you on, they don’t want you to mess up, I am going to do well, I am prepared, you’ve got to take a big exam, what are you telling yourself before the exam, is it these kinds of things, I can’t do this. If you are prepared and you have been studying and you sit down and take that exam and say I hope I don’t blow it, it changes things in terms of your ability to be successful. Develop and maintain self-confidence and the practice of self-confidence. Fourth principal take charge of your life, take charge of your life, we are really talking about when there is change going on, a lot of change goes on in our lives, an uncertainty goes on in our life, it leads us to feeling powerless, it leads us to feeling victimized. It leads us to feeling weak, when we feel like there is just things are going on around us that we can’t control. We need to start to think in terms of taking charge of our life by becoming proactive, taking responsibility by making choices in our lives. Two most powerful words when I coach someone is I choose, I choose to get over this, I choose to learn a different way to set goals, I choose to set to become a better speaker and the worst words I can hear is that is just the way I am, that is just the way I am. I have always been afraid. I will never be able to speak in front of groups. I will never be successful in terms of my career. I cannot work and I will tell a client I will not work with you if you stay with that is just the way I am. If you say that is the way I have been and I want to choose to do it differently that is where change starts. That is where change is, during times of uncertainty, take charge, take control. Be willing to take some risks, stop blaming the things around you. My son has a saying, he’ll have so much to do, so few people to do it for me. He just likes, he is the first born and even now he is 24, dad would you get me some more milk, my daughter will say get it yourself. She is independent. She doesn’t have that kind of victim kind of thinking, so much to do, so few to do it for me. Albert Schweitzer said man must cease attributing his problems to his environment and learn again to exercise his will, his personal responsibility. The good news is that no matter what happens to you, no matter what goes on around you, the one thing that you always have that cannot be take away from you is your ability to choose your response to what is happening. Your ability to choose, your response to what is happening, I worked recently with a gentleman in a utilities company in downtown Los Angeles and he was being groomed to move up the ladder and represent the city up in Sacramento and he kept passing the promotions over and over. Finally someone asked him why do you keep saying no to this incredible opportunity, he said because that position you need to do a lot of presenting and I am not a presenter, I have never been, I never will be. He had in a sense made a decision that I cannot do it. I said that is the reason? They called me in and I worked with him for a few months, he got promoted, he told me, he says you know what I was doing, he says I was taking this thing. I was afraid what happened and my response was I am going to get too nervous and the outcome of that I just kept saying no. There is a great formula E+R=O that I learned years ago. Jack Canfield who wrote the chicken soup for the soul books and I was in a training with him and did a story about my daughter in one of the books. He said E+R=O, E is the event, the thing that is going on. The event my speaking in front of a group plus my response equals the outcome. If the event is I would like you to do the presentation and my response is I can’t do that, or my response is my breathing gets so fast, the outcome is going to be disastrous. The one thing we have control over is our response, we can’t control the event, I can’t control what is going on in the economy but I took charge of my response and I started writing and I started speaking more and I started tweaking my business. The outcome is I am having my best year, not because I am great but because I responded differently and my colleagues are not responding differently, they are calling me up and saying what do I do, what do I do? Choose your response. Churchill said the price of greatness is responsibility, taking charge. Becoming an outrageous achiever is making choices not being a victim. Principle five, discover hope out of hopelessness, hope out of hopelessness. It has been said that change is hard on hope, when things are changing, it is hard, hard to be resilient, what does an athlete do? If you read the literature on sports psychology, a big part of it is on resilience. How do we deal with things when they don’t go well? What do you do when you have an injury? I have athletes that come that have career ending injuries, it is devastating. That change is just hard on their hope. This dream that they had on being an athlete is gone because of the injury, how do we get hope out of helplessness. It can lead to discouragement, our spirit can go down. It can limit our effectiveness. It is interesting that what happens when we get afraid, when we start to feel hopeless and helpless, we start to put on what I call emotional armor. We put on things to protect ourselves. In the old days, in the medieval times if you study, they would fight each other and just killed each other and someone had a bright idea, what if we build a shield, a metal piece that just goes over the chest. They built one and the opposing army said they are not dying as fast, well they have got those shields on, what don’t we put a shield on the back too. Then the other army said we will put them down the arms and then the legs and the feet. They finally they said let’s put it over the head and by the time they were done, the armies that had so much armor couldn’t move and they were defeated. The ones that were able to still be resilient and get around that were the ones that would win the battles. We tend to do that, we put on so much armor, we are so afraid of taking chances and risks and maybe it is because of how we grew up or how we were raised and maybe it is just a belief in ourselves the day that we are not enough. Eventually that armor weighs us down, that is why you have clients that come in and saying I have been doing the same job for 30 years and I am miserable but I am afraid to break out of that armor because it keeps me safe. What are you wearing, what kind of armor that holds you down, holds you back? The main one that I find in my work is the fear of taking risks, the fear of taking risks that are resistant to change. That keeps us frozen and paralyzed. One of the things I suggest is that you do what sounds again like a silly process but become more childlike. When I work with businessmen, I used to do these seminars up in the mountains and we would, we would all the left brain stuff and then they say now we are going to go up the top of this hill, we are all going to roll down like little kids, we are going to get our creative side going and then we are going to come back and we are going to get a white board and brainstorm. We would get up there and every guy would stand on the top and look down and no one would roll down the hill. There would be a few women there that would just, for whatever reason they would say this looks fun and they would roll down the hill and finally one guy would and then I couldn’t get them back in the hotel because the child part of them was having such a good time. The left side of the brain, the adult side of us is not very fun, adults are not fun, only a child is fun. The adult may try and got here on time, the adult made sure I got enough time to get on the freeway if there was traffic. That is not a fun side of me, the fun side of me is the part that gets creative and wants to have some changes and do some things that are different. Wayne Dyer said one of the most responsible things you can do as an adult is become more of a child, we are talking about not being childish but childlike. Again to be creative in your career, to be creative as a business person, even in your papers, my students, I teach online courses and I get just some incredibly creative papers, I just love them. I will write them back, I’ll say I just loved your creativity and your imagination. I read too many that are just very serious and childlike is being spontaneous, is being creative, imaginative, childish is being irresponsible. We are not talking about being childish, childlike, taking chances, when was the last time you took some chances in your business, on the golf course, in your class, become creative, outrageous achievers change that what if thinking to so what thinking. They say I want to go for this, I don’t know where it is going to go but I am going to go for it. They are spontaneous, they start dreaming again, give yourself permission to laugh, to have fun, to relax. Both of my kids are very creative, I have a writer and an actor and my wife is an artist, I am the freak in the family, I am thinker, the left brain analytic person. I am not as much fun as they are, they are fun, I am getting better at that, I am getting more and more fun. Give that childlike part of you permission to get creative with your work. I love this quote Zorba the Greek, with a little madness you can cut the rope and be free. Really what he is talking about, we have all these ropes, self-doubt, what are people going to think of me, this project really isn’t going to be accepted. I don’t even want to present it to the team. With a little madness you can start to cut those ropes and say I am going to go for this. I will tell you what happens, you stand out. You stand out on a team. You stand out in a class. My daughter has a philosophy in her class, she just hates speaking in front of the class so she volunteers first round, she gets it over with and she says it and the teacher will say interesting answer, its way off she’ll say but goes I love that you went for it. She gets points for the risk, for being outrageous in class. Of course you have all seen this picture of Einstein of having a little fun himself. Identifying, remove the armor that gets in the way, finally practice perseverance, part of becoming a courageous and outrageous achiever in life is the ability to hang tough, to be persistent. Vince Lombardi said the difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, a lack of knowledge but rather a lack of will. Do you persevere when things are tough? It is a main principle in sports and performance psychology is the ability to persevere, to hang tough. You give up too soon, do you feel rejection and you don’t persevere or maybe you don’t even go for it. Perseverance is a commitment, not in a one time basis but daily, hourly, continually. Is this you, you are a fighter, you are saying boy as of today I am tired of tolerating things or is this you? This is most of us over here, oh my gosh I’ve got an exam coming up, oh my gosh, tomorrow is the big presentation I have to give. Calvin Coolidge, nothing in the world he said can take the place of persistence, he said talent will not, nothing is more common that unsuccessful men with talent, genius will not, unrewarded genius he says is almost a proverb, education will not, the world is full of educated derelicts, he said persistence and determination alone are omnipotent, persistence and determination. Obstacles, lack of commitment to your dream or goal. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, great quote, I love it when we talk about commitment, he says perseverance is a great element of success, he says if you only knock loud enough and long enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody. Who you are waking up, what are you being persistent, what are you making noise about, make some noise, get noticed go for it. Lack of commitment, talking instead of doing, talking I already mentioned that, clients are coming in and they just talk, stop them. I heard that happened this week, someone was telling me all the reasons they didn’t follow up on kind of their homework assignment. I said stop it, stop, you didn’t do it. It is all that matters, I don’t want to hear your excuses. Mark Twain said nothing or says noise produces nothing, often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as though she has laid an asteroid. Noise produces nothing, what did you do this week. What did you do as a result of what I am sharing? Are you going to go home and say interesting, I have heard that or are you going to go home and say okay what am I going to do this week that will make a difference in my life. Outrageous success is not achieved through hoping and wishing and wanting, it is persistent effort and then waiting for the perfect time, I am a master at this, I wait for the perfect time. I just want it to be just right. Look for just the right opportunity instead of creating an opportunity. Remember we said take charge of your life by the power of choice not just waiting for it just to be right. Make a choice to commit to yourself to achieve the things you desire through action, hard work and perseverance. In conclusion, I am going to share a quote from Charles Windolph, pastor, author and he talks about attitude, he talks about attitude and we are relating it here to how do we create the mindset of a champion, how do we create outrageous achievement. He says the longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life, attitude to me he said is more important than facts. It is more important than money, than circumstances, than failure than success. It is more important than what other people think or say or do, it is more important than appearance or skill. Attitude will break your company, it will break your home, it will break your marriage, it can break a church. He says the remarkable thing as we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we are going to embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people around us are going to act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable, what is going to happen in the future. He says the only thing we can play on is the one string we have, our attitude. He says I am convinced that 10% of what happens in our life, that the life is 10% of what happens to us and 90% of how we react to it. It is with you, we are in charge of our attitude. We can create the kind of life that we want. My challenge to you, be driven by a pursuit of excellence, what is it that you want, make a decision, write down what it is it I want to achieve, commit to action, who am I tolerating, what am I tolerating, what thoughts and beliefs am I putting up with that are actually getting in the way of me being successful. Develop self-confidence, start to listen for Bob, listen for that voice that just, Bob wants to help you, he just wants to keep you safe but that voice gets in the way. Maintain self-confidence, take charge of your life, remember that E+R. What is your response to what is going on around you, change the outcome, discover hope out of hopelessness and practice perseverance. The good news today is that the ability to perform at or near your personal best like we started with, whether it is in business school or relationships, regardless of the circumstances is under your control. Thank you and we're going to … Speaker 1: Dr. Lazarus thanks so much. I'll get the Q&A started and I'll get it started with some questions more virtual audience and I'll give the in person audience a chance to gather their thoughts. First question, how do you balance being bold and seeking outrageous success, success perhaps beyond your expectations with having realistic goals and not setting yourself up for failure? Nick: Absolutely. Well when we talked about the three steps of goal setting and action plan, the first one was to have a dream list. I always start with don't put barriers on that, don't put a lead on that. Have your expectations be great, have them be big. Then when we go to taking steps obviously they have to be realistic. When we talk about our actions steps, they are realistic, they're measurable, they're specific. I'm not going to say someday my dream is to be a professional basketball player. I could put that on there but that's not realistic and maybe what I'm going to do is join a community league and just have some fun with that. Absolutely you have to know what your expectations are and your limitations. The problem with most people is they set those limitations before they even get started, they don’t stretch that. I will work with a client and will say let's keep this realistic but I want you to stretch those. Now, while I'd like to write a book I want to write one page a month. Okay, you could do that but I want to stretch that. Now when I say I want you to write 50 pages and finish the book in two months that's not realistic, that's not reality. Most people's problem is not balancing it in terms of that, we don't stretch enough and we don't go further enough. Speaker 1: Great. You've worked with performance anxiety for decades. How has it or has it performance anxiety changed over that time? Is there a greater frequency of it; is it different in some ways? Is it more or less severe? Are the triggers the same? How has performance anxiety evolved over the last 20 years? Nick: I'm not sure I've seen a change in terms of incidents, I haven't seen that. I've seen a change in terms of how it is addressed and again sport psychology has kind of led the way in that, bless you. I don't think there has been a change of principles that we discovered years ago in sport psychology that are still part of the same ones and they work, they work all the time, every time. There is no mystery around why we develop anxiety especially in terms of performance. I think if anything there's more awareness, we have more people coming in because it's kind there's awareness and there's help for that. Speaker 1: There are a couple of questions that came in that are somewhat similar. What do, a client that you might work with, what's the principles into practice but sometimes failure happens, whether it is a business person or a golfer, whatever, an athlete performing. What are some tips for, not to kind of get back on track when you experience failure right then but then also over the course of time? In golf they refer to scar tissue; older golfers that have experienced failure over time and that affects their play, they're less praised. What do you say, we are getting back on track both in that instance and then over the course of time? Nick: Okay, well one of the first things I do, I'm working with a golfer now and he's actually a student back east in a golf program. He had just had years of poor performance in the golf course in competition. When it's regular game he does fine, gets in competition and the thing we are addressing and the answer to that question is addressing what he's telling himself on the course. Regardless of the scar tissue, regardless of how many years you've "failed" the problem is not that, the problem is what you're telling yourself about that. That's what we addressed immediately, we addressed the thinking because it doesn’t matter if you are a great golfer or not, what matters is what you're telling yourself on the course. Speaker 3: Thank you, Hi Dr. Nick, excellent presentation, very informative; thank you so much. I can readily relate to, when you had the quote for [Mario Andredi 01:11:18] about desire being the key of motivation and the un-relented pursuit of your goal. What is this thing about desire, I mean it is kind of non-tangible. Where does it come from, how is it created? Is it based on the environment that you're in, that's my question? Nick: Desire is kind of a funny thing because it's a tangible thing in the sense of I desire to become a better speaker, that's the easy one. Okay, I don't seem to have the motivation, I don't have that feeling, I don’t have the drive for that. What I would do with someone there I'd say okay, let's talk about why you want to be a public speaker because I don't see the desire with this goal that you have. They will tell me because they're making me do it. Well that's going be really tough. I mean I can help you but there is no drive there, it's just to survive it. It's like the student that said I just want to get through the interview. I say what if we change that, what if the goal is to be so present during that interview that regardless of how you do, regardless of what they think, you're in a sense, you walk away saying I feel great about that. How would you like that? I'd love that, I never feel that. I would love that, I desire to have that feeling of being in control and walk away feeling great. Sometimes we've got to get what is called the goal underneath the goal and we get underneath it, we get underneath it. It's like I've got to go on a diet, is that a great goal? It's a horrible goal. How many people desire to go on a diet, no but maybe underneath that like I said are other things that when you get to that you say men, if I could have that I'd be motivated? We've got to get there, you've got to get there or all these things are sort of irrelevant because they are just things, they are just principles. If you say you know what, I want to be there, that's what I want. Now I go back and say how do I get there? Hi? Junín: Hi, I'm Junín Thomas and I'm in psyche 87700 and I'm so grateful to be here this morning. I plan to have to follow a career p0th such as yours. What's wonderful about CalSouthern is the adaptability to what our career goals are. I'm in this ID program, would you say that is the best program and from a credential standpoint and extra classes and internships what is the best course of action to have a practice similar to yours? Nick: Okay, great question. Well, just you see myself as an example I got my doctorate 30 years ago, 31 years something like that, started school obviously five or six years before that and I was in the first ID program. There was one in California one in Texas and I remember being terrified because everybody was getting a PhD. I'm not a research sit in the lab data person. I just like to get out there and work with people and so this idea, at least, I'm not sure about CalSouthern but I suspect its true really is going to focus on the therapeutic, much more than the research side of things. I had no desire to teach in the university even though I do, I wanted to work one on one with people. For me and I would be sure today this PsyD would just be a great way to go. It doesn’t mean you still can't do research. I mean if you're really research oriented you may want to think about that. To do the path that I have done absolutely I think this PsyD and especially the program here, they have emphasize that’s just exactly what you want, so. Hi? Ralph: Hi, I'm Ralph O. Jones and I'm in PsyD program, PSY 87524, we have different learning styles. Listening to you, your presentation probably would appeal mainly to those who have strong auditory skills. How do you motivate and communicate the same information to using different modalities? I might be more visual than auditory. Nick: Right, great question. I mean if we were doing a class on performance psychology itself specifically we would be doing things that really appeal again to that other side of the brain. We would do mental rehearsal skills, visualization kind of skills. There are people that learn that way and they visualize. Athletes again, most great athletes are really good at visualizing, do mental rehearsal, I do a lot of that with my clients. We walk then through that, we don't do a lot of talking so I don't bring out research, it's the last thing they want. They just want to how do I be successful? We do appeal to that. There are other people that say give me the points and let me write down my goals and I go for it. If you are more a visual person we would take your goals and we'd apply it to more of a mental rehearsal visualization kind of aspect. That's a key part of performance psychology in general which we didn't talk about but that's a great point, great point. Jasmine: Hi, my name is Jasmine and I'm a college student at another university and one thing I'm finding is how do you balance perseverance? Where you try and push whether it is relationships or with career goals, how do you know the difference between persevering for something and when it’s time to let things go and just say okay this is not beneficial? Nick: Okay, well certainly one of the things you're going to want to do is to do what I call an inventory every once a while. I will sit down with a client and say okay, how is it going? Even in therapy if you are a therapist every once in a while you want to sit down, do an inventory, are we getting there. Sometimes maybe the goal isn't a realistic one, maybe there's a skill I'm missing, maybe I've lost the desire, maybe I didn't take into account. Remember I talked about obstacles, I didn't realize that there will be these obstacles that I had to get a master's to do that, I always thought. You do want at different points along the way evaluate how it's going and ask yourself why is it not going forward. There might be something out there and that you're going to have that ah, that response to I'm going to do it differently. You may give up something, you might say you know what this is not going to work but most of the time again it's because we don't identify those obstacles. We don't really stop and take that. We usually quit or we get discouraged, yeah. Amber: Good morning Dr. Lazarus, thank you so much for your presentation. My name is Amber Atiaga and I am in PSY 87561 and my question is, you mentioned at the beginning of your talk that people today tend to settle for less than extraordinary. My question I guess is kind two folder: what are some ways in which you can help someone cultivate that drive and determination if you feel that that person has settled for less that extraordinary? Why do you think that is, the second part of the question is why do you think that is that people today tend to settle more so than maybe in times past? Nick: Well part of that goes back to the first principle and really sometimes the work is really the work that most of us don't do which is really what do I really want? For myself I was a pre-med major in college. I was doing really well and I hated it and I got to chemistry and I hated it and I said but I'm going to be a doctor. Well why was I going to be a doctor? Because my dad had always assumed that I was going to be a doctor so I always assumed I was going to be a doctor. I had no desire to be, I had a desire to be something that I thought I always supposed to be. I had the good fortune to meet with a counselor and I was doing fine. I started having trouble in chemistry and I sat down and I said this, I'm not enjoying this and he says "what do you really want?" I said I love working with people and I don’t enjoy biology, I don't enjoy research of it. He says have you ever thought of psychology and I said "yeah, the teacher was wacky; I would not have to take another psychology class." "Take one more." I had to decide what really mattered to me and I always thought I knew what it was and I discovered that yeah I want to work with people, I want to make a difference but I want to do it differently. I switched majors, took a psyche class, loved it and started down that path. The beginning step very often is not even a lack of desire it's I don't know what I really want and it might the voice that kind of says you could never do that, it's identifying that. Speaker 4: Hi, I have a question relating to someone I guess more of like an athlete. Is there a tip or tips that you have for someone who is pursuing more of a physical role like an athlete where their physical limitations come into play? Do you have any tips on how to overcome a situation when your physical limitations kind of lock? You have the desire, you want to go do it but you just can't, you hit a wall or a plateau so to speak. Nick: Okay, that's a great question because the issue can be there may be a literal reality based physical limitation. I mean I could want to be a basketball player but I'm not too tall and I'll never overcome that. Sometimes we have to acknowledge our limitations. There's nothing wrong with saying you know what this isn’t what I'm best at but yet I still love doing this , what else can I do and begin to look at other ways to do that. Especially for the athlete that's injured, that's a wall that they hit and part of it is accepting it just like the death. I have to lose, the dream I've had of being a professional athlete has to die and I have to grieve and I have to let go and I've got to mourn and I've got to move on. Sometimes there's a real limitation, sometimes and we know them. I know, was it David's ex dying, the angels short stop I think, I heard him speak a couple of years ago, small little guy. Everybody kept telling him, "you're never going to, you're too small, and you're too …" His father would say you can do this. You're not going to be as great as anybody else. He overcame a physical limitation and he became very good, he got MVP in a world series; yes? Gary: I’m Dr. Gary Woods, I'm an MFT student and I'm in the cycle pharmacology course at this point. My goal is to work with veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress. Most veterans are military people or training through their training. They have a lot of mental toughness, that’s something you don't pass if you don't have some of that characteristic. Even with that it doesn’t seem that that helps them when they go through these traumatic stress programs. How would your program maybe adapt to that situation and try to help people through their combat stress? Nick: Well, I mean certainly there are some additional issues that are going on there so we would address those. One might again be just the memories, kind of helping them work through those and we would be dealing literally with the stress, we'd really be much more focusing on kind of physiological, this progressing muscle relaxation, autogenic kind of training, things that would really address the physiological response that's a combination of the middle. It's pretty complex but I guess the simple answer is you really want to hit if from all sides. We are not just going to talk, we are going to work on some of the, teach them some skills, we are going to learn to breath, we are going to put all that together. This program in it of itself you'd have to do other things that address that specifically. Just like if you had someone that came in with childhood memories of abuse. I'm not going to teach him how to be memory tough, we are going to work that through and then when we get … because most of the people I work with are either successful or they're good at what they're doing and they want to go to the next level. If not, if they're really stuck somewhere probably for them or if I'm doing my clinical work I'll work with me on a clinical basis, but. Tom: I think we have time for one more question. Have you run into clients who might achieve success maybe even on a grand scale but that success comes with additional pressures and expectations now and they become uncomfortable with success and that's kind of a roadblock. Have you run into that and what are your techniques in that situation? Nick: Typically I call it the fear of success and the fear of fear that usually comes up before they're successful. The gentleman I worked with that was going to be groomed, was being groomed to work up in Sacramento when I met with him I said, "what is your fear of speaking?" and I was trying to get to what it is. His fear was he was going to become really good at it. I said, "Well if you become good at it why would that scare you?" "They'll keep asking me to do it and I'll be the guy that they have do all the presentations." That turned out to be true, he was the guy. He told me, he goes I'm so mad at you, we're laughing, he goes," I told you what I was afraid of and it happened. I did my presentation, I was in control of myself, I felt really good, I go like did and I'm done and the director comes up and says I want you to start leading the presentations." He thought of me right away, he goes I told him this was going to happen. Typically that happens and we're afraid that's going to happen. I have rarely met with someone who's successful, feels good, has self-respect, gets respect from others that then doesn’t want to keep being successful. The only thing that can happen is it means it can take you to something else and that scares you and then we've got to identify that.

Channel: CalSouthern PSYCHOLOGY

Views: 76,913

Rating: 4.8899469 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 90f_BbDZeV0

Length: 85min 26sec (5126 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 02 2013