[00:00] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I’m not telling you anything you haven’t heard in some way, shape, or form before. But what I am telling you is how to do it now. How to do it in your life, how it works in your life, how it works in the real world, so you can actually do something with this and reach your full potential.

[00:23] Welcome to another episode of Success for the Athletic Minded Man.

[00:30] Real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business and life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. How are you liking the new podcast, by the way? I’ve gotten a lot of anecdotal feedback. Love hearing from you guys. So let me know what you think. A lot of you listeners are telling me this is really hitting the mark in terms of the message that I want to hear.

[00:52] And who I am because I know a lot of you, a lot of you are either clients or people I’ve been in contact with before through social media or otherwise. Of course, a lot of you who I’ve never been in touch with. So I’d love, love, love to hear from you. Reach out to me on social media, make a comment on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, et cetera, on any of my posts.

[01:13] I’d love to just hear from you. So this is the fourth part of a five part series. This five part series is about the framework for peak performance in business and life, how you can approach success in business and life like an athlete, right? When you have this infrastructure in your life, like whether or not your athletic career was anything to write home about or not, that’s really irrelevant.

[01:39] What we can see is that in the lives of world class performers, especially in sport, we can see an infrastructure that’s in place there. You had it. I had it. The Tom Bradys of the world had it. And we can see that you can maximize your potential whenever that infrastructure is in place. Without it, you will drift; you will be average or mediocre, and whatever that is to you, right?

[02:07] Whatever level that brings you to. But if you really want to maximize your potential, this is the plan, this is the process, and this is what I’m sharing with you. So part one was the overview, that was episode 439, the first episode after the new year and when we rolled into 2024. Part two was about creating a clear vision for your life and the values uncovering your core values.

[02:33] Part three was about aligning those goals with your values and with that vision, just like when you’re an athlete, like there was a vision for what success looked like—very clear in part two—is aligning goals with that vision. Again, as an athlete, your goals aligned with that vision, aligned with those values.

[02:52] And now we’re moving into part three of the framework. So part four of this series, okay? So part one was just kind of the overview. Now part two and three where I just shared there. Now part four of the series or part three of the framework is the environment of excellence. Now, here’s the deal. I’m not telling you anything you haven’t heard in some way, shape or form before, but what I am telling you is how to do it now, how to do it in your life, how it works in your life, how it works in the real world, so you can actually do something with this and reach your full potential. Okay.

[03:31] All right, so there’s a four part framework under the environment of excellence. All right, and this is what I’m going to give you today. This four part framework, and the way you can remember this four part framework is with an acronym.

[03:43] The acronym is this. MAPS. M-A-P-S. Just like you need a map to get from point A to point B, you need to have your maps in place in your life so you can get from where you’re at to where you want to go. And here’s the first part of this four part framework under the environment of excellence.

[04:04] M stands for Media.

[04:07] What is the media that you have in your life? There’s so much media out there these days. There’s an endless news cycle, endless scrolling you can do on social media. Are you choosing wisely the media that you have in your life? Listen, I’m gonna come right out of the gates with the worst kind. It’s the news.

[04:25] It’s the news media. If you listen to Fox or CNN, and you’re buying into all of what they say, then you’re not getting facts. They don’t have something behind them, right? You might be getting the truth on either one of them, but it’s a biased truth. And I’ve really steered myself away from either one of those.

[04:47] And I’ve really started to tune into—there’s two newsletters that I get. So I try to push the news, the sort of cable news out of my life, because I know that I’m not getting unbiased truth. So I subscribe to two newsletters. One’s called 1440 and their sort of tagline is “facts without motives.” 1440—you can Google actually, we’ll have the link in the action plan here, but it’s called facts without motives.

[05:11] It’s great. They find news that is not politically driven. They give you kind of their unbiased neutral opinion around things as possible. And then you can click on the link and read more, but the other one is Tangle. And this guy will kind of go deep on a particular subject.

[05:29] They’ll kind of give you kind of what’s out there, what’s being discussed. They’ll say, here’s what the right is saying. Here’s what the left is saying. And I’m going to try to give you my best unbiased view. I love it. I love it. It’s just gets that negative bias out of my life. Or at least minimizes it.

[05:43] So anyway, media, that’s a big part of the media for me. Also social media. When I was in college back in the ‘90s. And wrestling, I didn’t watch much—a whole lot of television, but when he did, I was watching the national championships or the world championships or breaking down film of myself or of my opponents.

[06:01] What does that look like for you now? Like, you can scroll on YouTube and you know, I get sucked into like, I don’t know, Key & Peele, and some pretty, pretty funny stuff on YouTube, but it’s very easy to get sucked into that stuff, but I’d rather watch things about building my business or things that are actually of use to me, right?

[06:19] Daily Dose of Internet? Not really useful, although very entertaining. What is the media that’s in your life? And are you actively curating the right media for you? There’s one of my clients, I’ll call him JP. JP removed Instagram from his phone at our retreat last year. This is a step in the right direction.

[06:43] I don’t think he’s actually even downloaded it again, if I’m not mistaken, but this is the environment of excellence. It’s like, what is the media that you’re allowing into your life? What is the media you’re deleting or removing or pushing out of your life? I mean, this is the environment of excellence.

[06:58] This is how it works, right? This is the media, the first step, the first part of the environment of excellence, right? So one thing actually, just as I was preparing for this episode, I was thinking about this for myself and how about how JP deleted this app from his phone. I’m like, you know what? Let me, let me look at my phone.

[07:17] I need to bring the Bible app onto my home screen. It was like on the second screen of my iPhone. I’m like, it needs to be brought more into my life. So I moved the Bible app from screen two in a folder onto screen one. I moved one of my apps off of my home screen on my phone. Like these are little, little things, but they help you live more in alignment with your values, right?

[07:38] That little action that I took this morning is just a small step in the right direction for me. What action are you going to take, right? This is not about just, Hey, let me just talk at you for a while. You listen, and then you go on and with your day and doing nothing about it. This is about taking action.

[07:54] So as I’m talking here, as I’m sharing this stuff, think about what you’re going to do. All right. I took one small action today. I hope you do at least one small action as well. All right. So M is for media.

[08:05] A is for area. This is simple. This is, when I was wrestling, I had my goals posted on my wall.

[08:11] I had a poster of the gold Olympic gold medalists on my wall. I had my training log right in the top right hand corner of my desk. It was right there. Nowadays, I have a standing desk. I’m recording this and standing up right now at my standing desk. If you’re on YouTube, you’re watching this, you’ll see me there.

[08:26] By the way, if you’re not subscribed on YouTube, go over there and subscribe. We’re investing more into YouTube, into these videos and some of the editing and just making these really, really useful for you. So love it if you subscribe, comment, like my videos; that really helps grow. So if you’re enjoying this stuff, you know, obviously it’s all free.

[08:45] That would be great payment for me if you just subscribed and liked and make any comments cause that shows the algorithm of YouTube that this is valuable stuff and, and puts it in front of more people. But what else on area? Like the standing desk is big for me, having healthy food nearby. I always have my water bottle next to me.

[09:05] I have healthy food. If I’m bringing snacks out to my office, I’ve got this office space out in my backyard. I have my own area. I created, built, had this office built last year, and this is my environment of excellence. So I have healthy food. I have water. I have a standing desk. I have my goals posted right within arm’s reach.

[09:21] I’m touching it right now. I just picked it up. This is my journal. I’ve got my goals, my micro goals, I write down my three gratitudes in here every morning. My chief definite aim if you’ve read Think and Grow Rich, I’ve got my two—actually I have two chief definite aims in here that one personal, one professional, but that stuff is all within reach.

[09:40] It’s all within reach. I’ve reduced the friction or what Steven Pressfield, a few episodes ago, what Steven Pressfield calls “resistance.” I’ve reduced that as much as possible so that I can do the things that I want to do, do the things that I know I need to do to be productive, to be high energy when I’m at work, to stay focused, to be disciplined, to be consistent, reduce that friction.

[10:05] This is A for area. Optimize your area, your physical space around you for success.

[10:13] Quick interruption. If you like what you’re hearing here and you want to learn how you can implement this into your life, just go to jimharshawjr.com/apply to see how you can get a free one on one coaching session with me. That’s jimharshawjr.com/apply. Now back to the show.

[10:31] All right. P in this acronym. M-A-P. P is for People. This is a pretty obvious one. This is the one that you’ve been told since you were a kid—choose your friends wisely, pay attention to who you hang out with. I think back to my wrestling career. When I made the biggest jumps, it was when I was hanging around the right people.

[10:52] So high school team was very mediocre. Statewide, we’d never had any real success at a state level whenever I was in high school. But when in the summer, I would train with the Pennsylvania national team and we go to the national championships and it was the best guys in the state of Pennsylvania, and I was training and working out with state champions and state place winners and national champions and all Americans, high school Americans, and it just raised my level.

[11:19] Like, “Oh, that’s the level. That’s the standard, right?” When I was hanging around those people, those coaches and those wrestlers, there were new standards. “Oh, this is how these people eat, these guys eat, this is how they train. They train at a much higher level. Like, okay, now I get it.”

[11:33] It just became a new standard, right? Mike Krafchick was a Division One All American teammate of mine. He was an All American when I was a freshman, a first year at UVA. A freshman—UVA calls it first year because you never really graduate as a senior. It’s not your last year of learning. It’s your fourth year of learning, you know?

[11:54] That’s the vernacular of the University of Virginia. But anyway, Mike was a fifth year senior. I was a first year. Mike used to just beat the living snot out of— it was so bad, man. But I used to watch how he trained. And one day after practice, I stayed after to watch him cause he’d always stayed late like every day.

[12:14] So I’m like, “Mike, what do you do? How’d you get this good?” And he just, he told me, he’s like, “You got to do more than everybody else. Just do more. Show up early, stay late.” I thought we were working hard. I mean, it was college. It was like, I went from high school to college.

[12:25] I mean, holy crap, this is freaking hard. And he’s like, no, this is table stakes. This is like the basics. This is the minimum. Going to practice every day is the minimum. And so that raised my level. Who are the people in your life pouring into you like that? Whenever I wanted to learn how to become a professional speaker, I signed up for Toastmasters.

[12:43] If you’re not familiar with Toastmasters, it’s a national—I guess, international organization. There’s chapters in every city in America. And most small towns have multiple chapters. Charlottesville has like three chapters of Toastmasters, but it’s a very safe and structured environment to learn how to be a public speaker. A bunch of people sign up and you get to speak and practice different talks in a safe environment and get feedback.

[13:07] Who are the people you’re surrounding yourself with? I’m in a mastermind right now. I’m the dumbest guy in the room. I’m learning so much. I mean, there’s such amazing entrepreneurs in this mastermind group who are doing—many of the multiple seven figures. They’re operating at such a high level and I want to be around those people. Right.

[13:29] I want to be the dumbest guy in the room because it raises my level, my standard, my expectation. I see how they’re running their business and I go, “Oh, okay. That’s the level.” Now this works the other way too. Negative people. Alex Hormozi, if, if you’ve heard of him, he’s written several business books.

[13:45] He’s kind of a big deal out there these days, but he talked. Actually, I didn’t hear the interview, but somebody was telling me he was talking about how he doesn’t always go visit family, I think, over the holidays or whatnot. So I’m just sort of quoting what I heard a friend tell me, but he’s not maybe visiting his family as much or certain people in his family or certain people in his life because they’re negative.

[14:10] He’s operating at such a high level now, and those folks don’t necessarily align with that. They’re not part of his environment of excellence. And I’m not saying you have to ignore your family. I’m just saying are there people in your life who energize you, help you be the best version of yourself?

[14:29] And there are people in your life who don’t? And you have to choose how you’re spending your time and who you’re spending your time with. I’m so lucky to have had an amazing experience wrestling. I’ve gotten to be friends with Olympic champions and national championship coaches, et cetera, et cetera.

[14:45] This podcast is another avenue for me to connect with amazing people. I’ve become good friends with Ruben González, for example, 4-time Olympian, amazing speaker. He’s spoken worldwide. He’s got testimonials from Lou Holtz and Zig Ziglar, some of the biggest names out there. Ruben’s connected with those folks. Ruben Gonzalez, Travis Macy, ultra endurance athlete, world class. John Register, Paralympian speaker. Charlie Brenneman. He was ranked seventh in the world and a UFC fighter.

[15:15] These are the people I get to be around, and I’m choosing to be around them. So again, you can’t just listen to what I’m talking about and say, “Oh, that sounds like a good idea.” No, like what are you going to do? What group are you going to join?

[15:29] That’s part of what my coaching program is about. It’s about getting these guys together. It’s mostly men, some women, but like getting these guys together around other like minded people who want to operate at their highest level, who want to push themselves, challenge themselves, and they’re willing to pay for it.

[15:45] They know that if they open their wallet, choose to make an investment in themselves, they will be an even better version of themselves. They’ll make more money. They’ll have a better marriage. They’ll be healthier and fit. And it’s a simple process. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it is simple.

[16:02] I’m laying it out for you as clearly as I possibly can right now. You have to get around the right people. Media, Area, People, M-A-P. S is for Speech. What is the language that you’re using? The mantras. Like when I was competing, I had a mantra. I learned this sort of later in my career. I wish I had learned it earlier, but choosing the words that come out of your mouth and overriding the default thinking inside of your head.

[16:27] I was talking to a client just recently, very successful. He’s a division one athlete at an Ivy league school. He’s very good at what he does now. He’s world class at what he does. And he’s talking about this negative mindset that he has. And he’s like, “Jim, here’s where my mind goes.” And I was like, it was kind of crazy to hear from this guy operating at such a high level.

[16:47] So his potential is even higher than it is now. And we talked about how he has to control the words that come out of his mouth, the mindset work that he has to do. You can’t just hope that something changes without investing, without putting the work in. You actually have to do the work, the mindset work.

[17:08] “Mantras, that’s weird, Jim. Who does that?” Well. World class performers do that. Bruce Lee, I’ve talked about this in recent episodes, but Bruce Lee, I mentioned the book Think and Grow Rich. Bruce Lee read the book, created his own chief definite aim, and he would read it out loud. This is what people do.

[17:30] And you’ve always heard this since your athletic days or since you were a kid—control your attitude, you gotta have a good attitude. What is attitude? Attitude is words. Attitude is the words that you say, like internally self talk and externally. That is what dictates your attitude, right? If you’re struggling with your attitude, change your words, control your words, choose the words that you want to say.

[17:57] The words that you know that you need to say, and as you’re saying them, feel them, feel that they are true, like, feel inside of your body that they are true. I watched a video recently of Aaron Donald, plays for the Rams. He’s a defensive lineman, pass rusher for the Rams. He’s one of the best in the NFL.

[18:12] And there’s this video of him walking up and down the sideline, talking like a crazy dude, talking like a crazy man, like saying the words that he needed to hear himself say, “You want to be great today. Go be great today. You wanted this. This is your opportunity. Go take it.” And he’s feeding him.

[18:29] He’s like working himself up with his own words. Like who does this stuff? Well, some of the best in the world do this stuff. You go, “Oh, Aaron Donald. He’s just good. He’s just talented. He’s just a freak athlete.” People like to say “freak athlete.” No, no, he’s doing this stuff to help him perform at his best.

[18:49] Are you? Are you? That’s the question. Are you? Are you taking action? Are you going to take action on what I’m talking about here today? We think that people who operate at such a high level athletes or military, we think that that just comes easy to them. No, they have an infrastructure in place.

[19:07] They have this infrastructure that I’m sharing with you today, this environment of excellence, which falls into the larger infrastructure that I covered back in Episode 439. Go back and listen to that one. That’s part one of five where I cover sort of the overview here, right? You have to do this. You have to take action, like one action.

[19:26] What’s that action for you, right? Maybe it’s delete CNN or Fox app from your phone or subscribe to Tangle or for 1440 newsletters, right? Again, I’ll have the links in the action planners—not affiliate links or anything like that. It just I think they’re useful resources and I think it makes me better.

[19:43] What else you can do? That would be media, area, block time to organize your office space, get your office space organized. That’s your environment of excellence. That’s your physical space. That’s A for area. In terms of people, you could send a text message to somebody. Who’s that one person you want to go have coffee with?

[19:59] Who’s the one person you need to bring in your life? Text that person, send an email, connect with someone. Speech. Create a simple one sentence mantra. Whatever that mantra is for you, one sentence mantra, write it down, remind yourself every day to say it every morning when you’re in the shower or pouring your coffee or driving to work. That would be something under speech. Media, area, people, speech. Simple process, four steps, remember the acronym, take action, good luck.

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