[00:00] This isn’t do or die. This isn’t the last opportunity I’m ever gonna get. Like, let’s just go see how well I can do. Even if it is the one shot that you’re gonna get, you still have to adopt the mindset. Let’s see how well I can do. Welcome to another episode of Success for the Athletic Minded Man. Real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business and life.

[00:28] This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today at Bringing You a solo episode, we’re talking about performance under pressure. I’m gonna give you 10 tactics. For getting into flow and overcoming nerves. Self-doubt, any of those little voices inside that might be holding you back. And you might be thinking, well, Jim, I’m not an athlete now.

[00:49] Maybe I was an athlete in high school or college, but now you know, I, I’m not an athlete. I just gotta show up at work and grind away. And that’s supposed to give me the results that I want. That is what I’m gonna prove wrong today. Right. Explain to you and help you understand that you are in a performance game.

[01:08] And then I’m gonna give you tactics to help you perform at your best every day in every interaction, especially, especially the big ones where the pressure’s on. Listen, make no mistake, you are in a performance game. Life is a performance game. How you think determines the success of every outcome, the default thinking that you have determines.

[01:31] The words that you say, the body language that you have and how that interaction goes. It’s not just about grinding, it’s not just about showing up early, staying late, doing more, that that’s all required, right? The hard work is required. It is. Can I do the hard work with the belief that I can be successful here with the ability to get out of your own way and get those.

[02:00] The nerves, the self-doubt, the fear of failure, getting those out of the way. Again, in the big interactions, we’re gonna talk about those, right? The, the sales presentations, the job interviews, the, the annual review with your boss, what, whatever those big scenarios are for you, how do you approach those?

[02:19] What, it doesn’t matter if you just show up and, and do those and go hard, as compared to if you show up and do those and go hard. With the right mindset. Listen, I lived this, I worked so hard in wrestling and struggled for years because man, I worked hard. I was voted my team’s hardest worker in college for three of my four years there, my sophomore, junior, senior year.

[02:39] And I wasn’t always getting results though. And it wasn’t until I figured out the stuff that I’m sharing with you today that I finally got the results. That I had been working towards, and it’s the same in business. It’s the same in your career. It’s the same in every interaction that you go into, right?

[02:56] The goal for you is to get into a peak performance stage, not thinking, not your ego getting in the way. Not those little voices of doubt and that sort of default wiring that you were brought up with, you know, getting that stuff outta the way so you can perform at your best. And you know, I interviewed Michael Chandler back in episode number 217 and actually also back in episode number 99.

[03:18] I highly, highly recommend you go back and check out those episodes if you’re digging what I’m talking about here, because Michael Chandler, one of the best UFC fighters in the world. And one of the phrases that really stuck with me from our conversation was he said, I was a small kid from a small town, taught to think small.

[03:34] He’s gotten himself to a completely different mindset by doing the work. Doing the work. And I’m gonna share with you the results and a lot of tactics that I’ve gotten out of doing this work on myself as a wrestler, and then as a college wrestling coach, the kind of work that I’ve done with individuals.

[03:53] Both in ath athletics and, and otherwise, and on myself. So I, like I said, I’ve learned this through my own experience. This is stuff that I applied, learned as a wrestler, being a, a college wrestling coach, division one head wrestling coach, you know, applying this to myself in my life and my own, speaking in the, the performance game that I am in right now that you are in also, which is called life and also coaching high performing men, but also I, I coached a couple of college athletes.

[04:17] I actually never really shared that well. I know I never shared this here on the podcast, but. I’ve only ever been hired as a mindset coach for college athletes twice. I’ve never, I don’t market myself as doing that. I don’t do that. It’s not something I’m really all that interested in doing. But I got hired two separate times over the years.

[04:34] I, I’ve said yes in these particular scenarios, and I took, there were, there were two wrestlers, different teams, completely different scenarios, a couple years apart. And both of those guys were not all Americans. And then the ne the year after the year that I worked with them, uh, I got them, helped them get onto the podium.

[04:49] I didn’t get them onto the, I was a piece of the puzzle for them to help them get outta the way. So I’ve done this before and I finally have broken through for myself. Wrestling when I learned this kind of stuff that I’m gonna share with you today. And by the end of this episode, you’re gonna have at least three tactics that you’re gonna be able to keep in your back pocket to, to be able to flip the switch into performance mode and to be in the flow state for yourself in these high pressure situations and even in the low pressure situations.

[05:16] I’ll be honest, like I I, I’m in a low, relatively low pressure situation right now in speaking to you because I’m sitting in my office, I can. Pause, I can edit, I can rerecord anything I’m about to share with you. So there’s no, there’s no pressure for me here on this end, but I wanna do this well, right. I try have to get myself into the right mindset to.

[05:38] Deliver a message to you in, in the way I wanna deliver to you. So some of these tactics I actually used just a few minutes ago before I hit the record button, right? And you’re gonna be able to use these two in, in those low pressure and high pressure moments in your own life. And I’m gonna share with you 10 tactics.

[05:53] These are from the work that I’ve done, the work that I continue to do on myself, the work that I’ve done, and continue to do with others, and helping them reach their peak performance, be the best versions of themselves. Your mindset dictates every performance, and we’re gonna work on that today.

[06:10] All right, so 10 tactics for getting you into a flow state. 10 tactics for getting you into a flow state, overcoming your nerves, overcoming that voice and that self-doubt in the back of your mind. Okay, so let’s jump into the 10 tactics, right? My goal here is that you’re gonna have more than three that you’re gonna love, but I don’t want you to try to pick 5, 6, 8, 10 of these.

[06:29] I want you to pick three. That really resonate with you and, and I want you to keep these in your back pocket. And you can download the action plan. Go to jimharshawjr.com/action, and you can get access to this action plan and all my other action plans from over 500 episodes with incredible, you know, world-class performers who I’ve interviewed on this episode, on this podcast for years.

[06:48] And by the way, you can also have a conversation with Coach Jim AI, who is trained on just about every episode here. Um, you can talk to Coach Jim AI. Just go to CoachJimAI.com and you’ll get direct access to my AI where you can start to, you know, if you, you hear something here you like, you wanna go deeper on, you can have that conversation with the AI version of me.

[07:09] It’s pretty cool. I know my, my clients get a lot of benefit outta that. Alright, so let’s jump into the 10 tactics. Number one, slow. Slow controlled breathing. I just talked to my assistant pal and she might kill me for seeing this on the air, and she, you know, she has edit rights. She can edit the pow if you’re listening to this, and if you wanna cut this out, you can, but I, I’d love it if we could keep this in.

[07:29] She is also a performer, she’s an actress, and she was nervous about a play that she was in recently. And we would talk about this, I’d ask her about the play every time when we meet, every week during our weekly meeting. And she was talking to me about how she was nervous and I talked to her about.

[07:46] Breath work and slowing your breathing. And she was so thankful and it worked. It was really helpful. It would calm her nerves before she was going on stage. And she, it was a pretty big performance, pretty big production that, that she had just finished up. And this stuff really, really works. And so you have your sympathetic and your parasympathetic nervous system, right?

[08:04] Sympathetic is fight or flight. Parasympathetic is, you know, they say rest and digest or, you know, this is the, the calm version of you. And so controlled breathing. Slowing your breathing will change the physiology of your body. It stimulates your vagus nerve and it reduces your stress response. Like it reduces your, your blood pressure, your cortisol levels, just by controlling your breathing.

[08:30] And, you know, there’s different research out there, but most research shows that there’s been research that shows that the ideal rate of breathing is six breaths per minute. And that’s five seconds in. Five seconds out slowly. Breathing in for five seconds. Slowly breathing out for five seconds, and that changes your response rate, your, your stress response, again, your blood pressure, your cortisol levels, all of those negative things that get in your way When you’re nervous, they say the, the, the biggest fear that people have is, is standing in front of an audience.

[09:01] So I have to do this too. I’m, I stand in front of the audiences fairly often, and so I’m using this and it works. Another benefit of this is it maximizes your HRV, which is your heart rate variability. That is the, the amount of time between your heart rate. So I, when I first heard of HRV, I was like, oh, you probably wanna have a low HRV.

[09:20] It’s, it’s the opposite. You actually wanna have a high heart rate variability, basically. Indicates that you’re, you’re more resilient. Your, your nervous system is more adaptable and can kind of more easily switch from like, stress to calm. It, it, it’s, uh, um, an indicator of your resilience in the moment. So slow breathing increases, maximizes your HRV, right?

[09:44] So there’s these physiological changes that are going on. They’ve also done EEGs on people, and they’ve shown that slowing your breath increases. Alpha brain wave activity, which is connected to like relaxation and it decreases the theta waves, which is more
[10:00] sort of higher energy, higher when you’re sort of more nervous and anxious.

[10:04] So it reduces all of that. I mean, changes your physiology, right? It sounds silly and you know, you might think, ah, that’s not, you know, go on to the next one, Jim. Like, no, this, this one works. Alright. So slowing your breathing five seconds in. Five seconds out. Right. So breath work number two, visualizing the end.

[10:26] I, this is one of the ones that I use before I hit record here. I got up and I walked around my office, and I visualized the end of this episode, me being stoked that I recorded the greatest episode that I’ve ever recorded. And people are gonna share this. And you’re gonna share this with a ton of people.

[10:41] And it’s gonna, you know, the, the message is gonna reach thousands and thousands and thousands of people. That is my goal. That is what I visualized before I sat down and hit the record button. Right? And for you, you might visualize making the sale, right? The end of the sales presentation, the, the end of the inter the job interview, the end of the interaction that you’re, you know, you might get nervous about visualize it.

[11:05] It, it might be a tough conversation with your, your wife, you know, visualize the end of that. You know, if it’s a job interview, like visualize standing up from the chair, shaking hands with the interviewers and there’s just this praise and connection and it just changes the energy in your body, right? If you’re an athlete.

[11:25] For me, wrestling was visualize getting my hand raised, right? Certainly I would visualize the other parts of it as well, but that’s what I found to be the most effective is visualizing the end. ’cause if you can get to that end state that you want psychologically. The rest of it tends to flow. Okay, so visualizing the end.

[11:43] So number one was slow breathing. Number two is visualizing the end. Number three out of 10, gratitude. Gratitude for this, for this pressure. You know, pressure is a privilege. You’ve probably heard that quote before. Pressure is a privilege and you get to do this versus you got to, I get to do this sales presentation there.

[12:04] There are people at war. There are people starving to death around the world right now. You have to make a sales presentation and you’re nervous about this. Yeah. I mean, I get it right? I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m speaking to you ’cause I’m, I’m like looking in the mirror like there’s people who have, who would, who would give anything, anything and everything to be in your situation.

[12:24] Pressure’s a privilege. Penn State wrestlers, Penn State for, if you’re not a wrestling person listening to this, they’re far and away the most dominant wrestling team in the history of the sport. Arguably, or maybe not even arguably at this point, the most dominant sport college sports team currently and, and maybe ever, right.

[12:40] They’re, they’re probably going to be going to, to become the, the greatest college sports dynasty of all time. Kale Sanderson, the head coach, has won 12 of the last 16 NCA championships and I, I can’t even remember how many in a row. It’s been years since he’s, he’s not won consecutively and he’s only in his forties.

[12:58] And they have currently, as I’m recording this, they’ve have six guys out of 10 weight classes. They have six guys ranked number one in the country, in their weight class, six out of 10. It’s never been done before and it’s not just about getting great wrestlers. He gets these guys prepared. Well, when they’re interviewed coming off the mat, they talk about gratitude.

[13:18] I’m great. Just grateful to be here. This is a great opportunity, like gratitude for this, gratitude for this pressure, gratitude for this opportunity. When you approach something like that, you can reach your maximum performance, you can reach your maximum potential, or you’re letting fear and anxiety take over.

[13:37] In self-doubt, you will not perform your best. I mean, imagine this. Imagine you have two track athletes and everything is on the line, and they’re on the starting line. It’s a, I dunno, 400 meter race. And one of them is fearful self-doubt, and the other one is thinking, gosh, what a privilege this is. I get to do this.

[13:56] And let’s say every other metric is the same. They’ve trained the same, same history, same everything. Hypothetically, it’s the same person, but two different mindsets. Which one are you putting your money on? Yeah. 100 out of 100 times you’re gonna put your money on. The one who is feeling and thinking and believing that this is a privilege, right?

[14:14] That person, that individual will perform just a little bit more closely. To their full potential, right? So that’s number three. Gratitude for the pressure. So number one, breath work. Number two, visualizing the end. Number three, gratitude for this pressure. Number four is gratitude. For everything else in your life, you have already won.

[14:35] Like you have friends who love you, family who loves you. Most of you are living in Amer, listening to this Live in America. You live in the most abundant nation in the history of the world, right? You’ve already won. You’ve already won. Can you get yourself to realize and recognize all of the amazing things that you have in your life right now?

[14:57] You know, if you have a bottle of water in your hand before you step on stage, or when you, you know, uh, stand up to give that, that presentation in front of your colleagues or whatever that situation might be, a bottle of clean water in your head. There, there are people who, who don’t have that. Like in my church, we raise a bunch of money every holiday season, Christmas season, around digging wells for towns and villages.

[15:19] Around the world who don’t have clean water. Like I, you’re probably listening. If you listening to this, you can go get it. You probably have a clean glass of water beside you. Or you can walk 20 feet and go get one. Gratitude. Are you really grateful for all of the other things you have in your life? So that’s number four.

[15:34] And let’s going to number five again out of 10 here. Recognize that whatever you’re about to go into is a very short amount of time. If you’re going into. To give a, a talk, a speech, a presentation, a sales meeting, um, job, whatever it is, it’s a short time. Even in your day. The amount of time invested in that is not even gonna be mostly, most of the time.

[15:59] It’s not even gonna be a significant part of your day if you’re jumping out of an airplane, right? That’s high stress, high stress situation, jumping out of an airplane by the time, from the time you jump outta the airplane, open your shoot and hit the ground. It’s just a few minutes. You’re gonna take a shower for longer than you’re falling through the air, right?

[16:17] So it’s gonna be over pretty quickly. So keep like, keep really keeping this in perspective. Like you’re not gonna be in this high stress situation for more than a short amount of time, even in one day. That’s just a perspective tactic there. Number five, number six, we often think about what if this goes wrong?

[16:38] What if, and we go to the negatives. But here’s the other thing. Here’s the better perspective. What if this goes really great? Have you thought of that? Oftentimes we haven’t, right? Oftentimes we, we go to the negative, but what if, what if this actually goes really well? Because that’s an option too, right?

[16:59] This might be really fun. This might be really exciting. You might learn a ton from this. What if, right? Instead of the what if negative, what if positive? What if the positive things happen, right? That was another shift of perspective, right? So that was number six. We’re on to number seven here. Let’s review them real quickly.

[17:17] Again. Number one, breath work. Number two, visualize the end. Number three, gratitude for the pressure. Number four, gratitude for everything else in your life. Number five, this is just a short time even in your day. Number six, what if this actually goes really great? Number seven. You’ve gotta love to compete more than you love to win.

[17:36] I saw this in an Instagram reel from a guy named Johnny de Julius’s, uh, NCAA wrestler for Ohio State, and he was talking to a bunch of youth wrestlers and he said, you’ve gotta love to compete more than you love to win. Think about that and join the competition, the chance, the opportunity to go to battle.

[17:56] In that wrestling match or the opportunity to interview for that job, the opportunity to have that difficult conversation with your colleague or your boss or your spouse, love that. Love the opportunity to compete more than you want to actually win. Having that, that outcome that you want. That’s a shift in mindset.

[18:18] That’s a, uh, a shift to my friend Dr. Nate Zinzer, who I’ve had on the podcast, had him on back on episode number 336. Uh, in his book, the Confident Mind, he talks about, let’s see how well I can do. That’s it. Let’s just see how well I can do. Right? This isn’t do or die. This isn’t the last opportunity I’m ever gonna get.

[18:39] Like, let’s just go see how well I can do. Even if it is the one shot that you’re gonna get, you still have to adopt the mindset of, let’s see how well I can do. Because as Jayden Cox, world Champion Wrestler said on my podcast once, he said, failure actually is an option. And, and when you realize that failure is an option, it it, it takes the fear of failure away because yeah, sure that that’s a thing that could happen potentially here.

[19:04] But if you love to compete more than you love to win, you’ll show up as your best self. You’ll get your ego out of the way. Alright, so that’s number seven. Let’s go to number eight out of 10 here. Number eight, surrender the outcome. Surrender, give up on the outcome. Actually, I was reading recently in Dr.

[19:21] Zinger’s book who I just referenced, uh, the Confident Mind, Helen to Ruis was the first ever. American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in wrestling. I know I’m talking a lot about wrestling in this episode, but there’s a lot of wrestlers in, uh, my interview guests over the years, but especially in my early days.

[19:36] But I interviewed Helen back in episode 143 and great episode, by the way. I, I highly, highly recommend that one just around mindset because she talks about oof just some crazy self-doubt that she. A month leading up into the Olympics and how she overcame that and won the Olympic gold medal beat the greatest, the most decorated wrestler of all time from Japan.

[19:56] She had to wrestle her in the, the gold medal match and she beat her. It was, it was amazing.
[20:00] But in Dr. Zimmer’s book, he actually references an interview with, with Helen from, I think it was like Vogue Magazine or something, and Helen said I had to surrender the outcome. I have to surrender the outcome.

[20:12] Listen, you know, Stephen Covey, the, you know, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Told us, we have to begin with the end in mind. We know that, right? We have to have that, that end in mind, that goal outcome, and then you let go. You, you let go of the outcome and you focus on the process.

[20:28] And I had to learn this, like I learned this in wrestling for myself when I got to my 17th and final year of competition. Started wrestling when I was six years old. Now I’m a, a senior in college and I’m. Trying to, to reach my, a meaningful goal of becoming an All-American, going on the NCAA championships.

[20:47] I’m standing on the edge of the mat, about to step into my, the, the one match that will determine if I’m gonna be an All-American or not, and I’ve got seven minutes, 17 years, boiled down to seven minutes, talk about pressure. 15,000 people in the arena. 17 years of work comes down to the next seven minutes.

[21:04] I had to surrender the outcome. Trust me, it was hard mental gymnastics that I had to do to get there, to let go of the outcome and truly just go focus on the process, make first contact, attack. If we go outta bounds, be the first one back to the middle and get your foot on the line before the opponent does.

[21:23] Just to kinda work on his mind, right to, to show I’m hungrier than he is. Like all of those things, that whole process, like if I get scored on, you know, controlling my self-talk like that process. This is what I could control. I couldn’t control the outcome if the referee made a bad call or he hits me with the move.

[21:39] I wasn’t prepared for whatever it is, like I had to surrender the outcome in that moment. I desperately wanted the outcome. I desperately wanted to win, but I had to put that aside, override that default thinking and surrender the outcome, and that’s what you have to do as well, that will allow you to show up as the best version of yourself.

[22:02] That’s number eight. Surrender the outcome. Number nine again, number nine of 10. This is a tactic that really worked for me leading into that and, and this still works for me, leading into that moment, whatever that is, right? For me, when I was wrestling, I was stepping on the mat. Now it’s stepping on stage or jumping on a, a, a sales call with somebody, whatever that situation is.

[22:23] I actually had a big, uh, one of these couple days ago, uh, CEO of a. Big company who everybody listening to this would recognize the name of that company and probably the name of the, the CEO conversation with him. I just had to focus on, on something else. I had to number eight, surrender the outcome, and number nine, focus on something else.

[22:40] Not overthinking what I was about to go do, not overthinking it, I was prepared. Now just show up and do the thing. And for me, in re in wrestling especially, and uh, even in speaking, and maybe for you, it’s going into those, those big moments for you, whatever those are. You’re gonna probably tend to overthink, right?

[22:59] You can get your mind off it if you’ve done the prep, which which you have. And even if you haven’t overthinking in the moment, is not gonna help you now, right? So for me, when I was wrestling, I would literally go out in the hallway and I would read a magazine and tell one of my teammates, Hey, come and get me when, when it’s about five minutes before I gotta go on the mat.

[23:16] And they would come out and they would get me, and I’d already completed my warmup, and I would do another sort of short warmup before I stepped on the mat. But I had to get my mind off of it. I did. Get outta the pressure cooker environment. Couldn’t watch my teammates prior. You know, my one, at least one teammate prior to me.

[23:29] I couldn’t get wrapped up in his match ’cause he was my training partner. I had to go out and just let go focus on something else because I knew I could flip the switch under. Thinking wasn’t a problem. Overthinking was right. So number nine is about focus on something else, get your mind off of it. And lastly, this is for those of you who are men of faith, God has bigger plans for us.

[23:52] There’s something even greater after our time in this temporary broken world that we live in. There’s something bigger, far bigger than this. Whatever you’re about to step into this temporary thing that’s gonna be a short part of your day, that in the grand scheme of things, let’s be honest, it’s not really all that important.

[24:14] There’s something even greater out there. Right. So those are the 10 things, and I’m gonna give you two other episodes to go back and listen to at the end here, but, so let me real, very quickly review these 10. I want you to pick three. Pick three that resonate with you. Number one, breath work. Number two, visualize the end.

[24:30] Number three, gratitude for this pressure. Number four, gratitude for everything else in your life. Number five, this is a short time, even in today. Number six, what if this goes really great? Number seven. Love to compete more than you love to win. Number eight, surrender the outcome. Number nine, focus on something else.

[24:49] Number 10, if you’re a man of faith, God has bigger plans than this temporary broken world that we live in. All right, two other related episodes I wanna give you. Uh, actually, I reference the word he referenced, the one Nate Siner, episode 3 36. He was the, the mindset coach for Super Bowl MVP two, time Super Bowl, MVP, Eli Manning.

[25:08] When he beat Tom Brady, like guess who was in his corner? Guess who was in his mind? Dr. Zinzer, you get access to him. Actually, he’s come to my retreat and spoken twice to my clients. We got a course from Doc Zinzer in, in my, my community. This is your unfair advantage. Listen to that one. And then Jim Murphy, episode five 18, and he was the mindset coach for the number one golfer in the world.

[25:29] His one of his clients was the number one golfer in the world. He’s coached a bunch of top 10 and professional athletes and all kinds of sports, et cetera, but you get access directly. You get to listen to these guys, and here are the questions that I’m asking them. And if you’re listening right now, everything that I just said resonated with you.

[25:46] These other episodes are gonna really resonate because I’m asking the same questions that you’re resonating with that I’m giving you this information about right now. So go check out those episodes, 3 36 5 18. Spread the word, let my vision come true. My visualization before this episode was you are gonna love this so much, you’re gonna share it with a friend.

[26:03] Tell them to go check out this episode. Episode number 523 of the Success for the Athletic Minded Man podcast. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for your ratings and reviews. Any rating, whether you’re listening on Spotify, apple podcasts, or wherever you’re listening, your ratings and reviews mean so much to me.

[26:21] Thank you. I look at those. I appreciate you. Take action on this. Good luck.

[30:18] Take action. Good luck.

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