[00:00] Dr. Jeff Spencer: We have to spend time with the boogeyman, and we all have our versions of what that is, and we need to learn to engage that and raise our ceiling progressively. And as we do that, then we build a level of confidence in ourselves, and at a certain point, you can actually go from a place of uncertainty to a place of boldness.

[00:22] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Because you’ve confirmed to yourself what your true capability is. And as you develop this, and as that continues to build throughout a lifetime, it actually does create a certain level of invincibility.

[00:36] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Welcome to another episode of Success for the Athletic Minded Man. Real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr., and today I bring you Dr. Jeff Spencer. Dr. Spencer has coached the elite of the elite. I’m talking Tiger Woods, Maria Sharapova, Bono from U2, Lance Armstrong, and many, many others.

[01:03] Jim Harshaw Jr.: He’s worked with Richard Branson and Jim Quick and all these amazing people. In this episode, you’re going to learn exactly How he coaches people like this, like, what does he say to a Bono to do before he steps on stage? What did he say to Lance Armstrong when he was cycling before he got on the bike? I mean, what does he say to these world class performers?

[01:24] Jim Harshaw Jr.: These people who are the best at what they do in the world, maybe in history. How does somebody like this coach them to be even better? And do you think you could learn a few things? From what he would share with them that you could apply to your life. Absolutely. Yes, of course. And you’re going to learn all those things in this episode.

[01:41] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And I asked him some really interesting questions like what are the habits that these elite performers have? You know, what are the things in common that they do that they believe that makes them great? You’re going to learn all these things and a lot more in this episode. So here we go. My interview with Dr.

[01:55] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Jeff Spencer. You did not have success. handed to you. Tell us about your early life, Jeff.

[02:03] Dr. Jeff Spencer: I was very fortunate. Number one, I had an aspiration to become an Olympian when I was seven years old. I just thought that’d be the coolest thing ever. And I had no idea how I was going to do it, but I was called to it.

[02:13] Dr. Jeff Spencer: It called me into pursuit of it. And I had three Angels that played an essential role in that. My first mentor was my cycling coach. He invited me to come train with this group and I was 13 at the time. And he was in his late twenties and his group was Olympians and world champions. And he said that if you understand what it is that we’re talking about and you understand what it is that we’re doing, then you have the potential to become an Olympian.

[02:39] Dr. Jeff Spencer: I can’t put that into you. That has to already be there. And so he taught me the skill of winning. He said, winning is a learned skill. It’s not something that we’re naturally born with. Will and talent do play a role, but they’re not the ultimate rate limiting factor. It’s like, do you know how to win? He taught me that really well.

[02:56] Dr. Jeff Spencer: And I was an Olympian when I was 21. So it took us 10 years to get there. My second angel was, uh, I met when I was 18 at the university of Southern California, where I was a scholarship student there, studying sports science. He was really not so much the body crafter and the tactical crafter that my cyclic coach was, but he was really the heart of me.

[03:18] Dr. Jeff Spencer: And he was a true renaissance man, and he developed a type of art glass sculpture using hot glass. And he chose me to be his apprentice. And that was a very unlikely pairing because I was an Olympic student with aspirations of becoming Olympian. But what he did at the breaks in between when I was helping him develop his masterpieces is that he read classical music to me.

[03:40] Dr. Jeff Spencer: He played classical music. He read the great literary works of antiquity. He shared with me the great philosophers. So he said, I need to fill you up on all this stuff. And so I had the ability to absorb that. So we had the tactical aspect of performance from the cycling. And now we have this other unique creativity side that was in me already that was brought forth through my second angel.

[04:04] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Then my third angel was a Frenchman who was of stature of dignity. And I knew that there was something really different about him. And he had such a resignation, not a resignation, but a reconciliation of self because he was very Confident yet that well mannered and he was tied into the cycling world and he helped me with certain connections that advanced my career.

[04:25] Dr. Jeff Spencer: So those three parts together brought out those elements that were already in me that I had no clue existed. They drew out my potential that was already there. It was just hidden and I didn’t know that it was there. And so when I got my master’s degree in sports science, I started working with athletes and helping them win a bunch of gold medals and be really highly paid professional athletes.

[04:44] Dr. Jeff Spencer: And I’ve helped athletes win over 40 gold medals. And all different sports, et cetera. And then business people came to me and said, well, I want to become my own champion. You must know something about that. Can you help? So I was able to help them become their own champions as well. And then, so the business people had a problem that they needed to solve.

[05:01] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Like, I don’t want to die in my early forties. Like I see my same age counterparts. How do I not do that? And the athletes, how do I extend my career? Because that’s the thing that’s going to limit my career and my livelihood actually. So I went back to chiropractic college and then I got kind of like my third leg of the stool, which is I knew how to win because of my cycling coach.

[05:21] Dr. Jeff Spencer: I knew how to craft the aesthetic, to be creative, to tease out the best of what you got. To be able to perform at your highest level. And now I had the ability to help them get well and stay well to have a long and prosperous career, but also have the physical ability to be able to push when you need to draw your greatness out of you.

[05:37] Dr. Jeff Spencer: So that was how I got there. And then, when I started to work with some of the more well known people, you know, the, the U2s and the Tiger Woods and things like that is that they saw that. I saw everything from every perspective because there’s nothing that I haven’t seen. So they didn’t need 10 experts.

[05:52] Dr. Jeff Spencer: They could come to me and I could decide how much of what needed to get assembled for them to be able to have their specific way that was doable to be able to perform at their best and evolve that basically over a lifetime. And so that’s how I got here. And that’s why I guess we’re talking today.

[06:07] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah, it’s a fascinating journey and you’ve gotten to work with some incredible people.

[06:11] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And I want to hear some of those stories. The first question I want to go back to is. Learning how to win. And I think that is such a critical lesson in sports. And a lot of the listeners were athletes at some level in their lives. And we, we, we get what that means. And maybe we don’t, I think we can talk about that in the, in the context of sport, but also how does that translate into.

[06:36] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Business and careers. How do you learn how to win?

[06:39] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Well, first off, we’re humans first, and then we’re athletes or business people second. So the technical aspects of the difference there is a technical issue. It’s not something different. We don’t disassociate from everything that makes us human. So first and foremost, I think that we need to understand how humans are constructed and how they are hardwired in terms of making decisions.

[07:01] Dr. Jeff Spencer: And, you know, Being able to take ideas and cultivate and grow ideas and the manifested potentials, you know, that are now three dimensional and they’re actually, you know, changing lives. And so for me, that’s kind of where it starts. And in my opinion, it’s not really about a psychology, you know, you can’t think your way onto the top of the podium.

[07:20] Dr. Jeff Spencer: You know, you have to evolve your capacity to be able to do that. And each of us has our own unique path to be able to make that happen. And when we understand the biology behind that, Then we can look at it from the perspective of. and not get frustrated, not talk us out of things when we’re on the verge of a personal breakthrough, etc.

[07:40] Dr. Jeff Spencer: For me, that’s where this process starts.

[07:43] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What do you mean a biology? Talk about the biology behind this.

[07:46] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Yeah, well, 100 percent I’ll just take an example of an athlete that he was here to win the gold medal in the long jump and two and a half weeks before the Olympic final. And he was currently leading the world championship, quite honestly.

[07:57] Dr. Jeff Spencer: And what more do you need? You know, you wouldn’t need a confirmation that you can win. Well, that’s it, you know? And so we started in the middle of the unravel and they contacted me and asked if I could help and being an Olympian myself, yeah, I was naturally interested to support him. And I said, look, Greg, you know, there’s something you need to understand here is that you’re mentally spinning out, you got the best coaches, you got the best of everything, but yet you’re mentally disconnecting from your state of readiness to be able to win because you’re leading the world championship, what else do you need to know?

[08:22] Dr. Jeff Spencer: It’s just, you know, you, the human. It’s starting to spiral out here. And I said, you need to understand something about your biology as it relates to how you think. And I said that we have two types of mentalities that are at war with each other 24 hours a day. And your survival biology is faster than you can think.

[08:42] Dr. Jeff Spencer: And your survival biology puts thoughts in your head. And those thoughts that get put into your head by your survival biology. They’re always, always have a catastrophic ending, always. And so that’s what’s happening to you right now. And so let me give you some evidence of that. Like I said to Greg, can you give me an idea of what this biology looks like?

[09:01] Dr. Jeff Spencer: I said, yeah, if you’ve ever gone through an intersection on a green light and the guy runs a red light and somehow you know how to turn away from the crash. You didn’t neurologically think of that because it’s faster than your nerves can transmit information. But there was something there that acted on your behalf that saved your life.

[09:17] Dr. Jeff Spencer: You said, well, what about the emotional side of that? And I said, well, yeah. Have you ever been kind of startled by somebody and they said something and you answered back faster than you could think? Well, how did it work out for you? Did you say the right thing? Well, no, it’s exactly the opposite of what I should have done, but I was scared.

[09:33] Dr. Jeff Spencer: I said, well, there you have it. So you have this survival biology that you didn’t ask for, um, That’s our, our primal biology. Our primal biology is survival and it has to be faster than we could think in times of imminent danger. And I said, this is what’s happening right now. And if you identify that, like with you as the decision maker, then you’re screwed.

[09:53] Dr. Jeff Spencer: You’re not going to win. But I said, the good news is, is that you have another hardwired biology. What I mean by that. Is that this is innately put into us as part of the species. We all have that survival instinct first. Great. But you can’t build a life of prosperity on being a survivalist. It isn’t because it’s not about your gold medals.

[10:13] Dr. Jeff Spencer: It’s about your survival. So you can’t get there. I said, but the good news is on the other side of this is that we are also hardwired because our highest instinct hardwired, meaning innately into us, Is to be a seeker. We’re born to be a seeker. If you look at what science says about that instinct. Be a seeker precedes procreation.

[10:36] Dr. Jeff Spencer: It precedes shelter. It’s at the top of the pile. Seeker of what? Yeah, well, that’s what I’m saying. So if the seeker in this context is what are we seeking? I think every one of us is seeking a life of meaning and purpose and contribution. If you really look at it, I’ve never met a person can wait to get up and fail.

[10:52] Dr. Jeff Spencer: I’ve never seen it. I know a lot of people that aren’t living the life that they’d like to have. Let’s say Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Well, what is that? It’s self actualization. And I do believe that to be true. So we have these two biologies that we didn’t put into ourselves that are at war with each other 24 hours a day for control over our decision making.

[11:10] Dr. Jeff Spencer: And so we have to be very mindful that the catastrophizer within us is our survival biology. But if we identify that with us, I mean, how many times have you done this? Have I done this? You dummy, you should have known better than that. Why did you go back and do it again? You stupid idiot. You know, you’re never going to get anywhere.

[11:26] Dr. Jeff Spencer: How do you expect to get anywhere if you act like that? Okay, well, I’m taking a biology and I’m condemning myself for it and I’m talking myself into something that discounts my ability to manifest my highest capacity. But if I realize, oh, yeah, well, that’s a survival response to a set of circumstances, but if I look at this through the eyes of a champion, so for example, You’re given an opportunity.

[11:47] Dr. Jeff Spencer: The first thing that the human nature, uh, fear based survival side is going to say is, what do I stand to lose here? So you get all defensive, you start to tighten up, you start to be too cautious, you try to be too perfect, you try to call all the variables, and what happens? Nothing happens except a disintegration of being able to achieve that goal.

[12:04] Dr. Jeff Spencer: But if you step into this by saying, well, what do I stand to gain here? It’s optimistic, it’s expansive, it’s big, it’s growth, et cetera. We can make that choice. And so I said to the athlete, you have to really be clear about this, Greg, is that if you think you’re the real person that’s spiraling out right now, and you don’t recognize that as your biology, then you’re screwed.

[12:24] Dr. Jeff Spencer: But if you look at this as a natural survival, Aspect of you that needs to be superseded by what I call the champion’s mind that thoughtfully considers options and choices to be made to be able to convert opportunities and to manifest the successes, then you’re going to go out there and you’re going to win the gold medal.

[12:44] Dr. Jeff Spencer: I said, if you understand this distinction, then we can get back to doing rather than trying to be perfect. We just need to do the one or two things that count that you’ll win. You know how scary that is to do that? Because I see this all the time. People get to a point where they’re on a threshold of a breakthrough and they screw it up every time because they start to get too perfect.

[13:05] Dr. Jeff Spencer: They start to get too concerned about losing the opportunity. So they try to control everything and then everything turns to crap. And I said, you got to go the opposite way. Well, I know, but it just doesn’t seem natural. I said, yeah, well, you don’t want to be natural. You don’t want to go with your natural impulses.

[13:20] Dr. Jeff Spencer: You want to be supernatural and you want to supersede that with what history tells us to be true. And you just do one or two things and you’re gonna win. I said, don’t change your warmup. You’re screwing around with your warmup. Your body’s scared. You think you’re doing it a favor, but you’re scaring your body.

[13:36] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Your body doesn’t know what to do yet. You’re confusing your body. Just go back to your normal warmup. And I said, the first four steps to your run up are going to determine where your foot hits the board to get the lift. To be able to win two things and you win, be around happy people. Don’t try to get perfect.

[13:49] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Don’t try to get too serious. And he trusted what I said. He applied the thing, boom, presto, instant gold medal. Then he went on to win the Commonwealth games. He won the world championship and he also won the European championship. He won everything there was to win because he understood the boogeyman inside his head.

[14:05] Dr. Jeff Spencer: was his survival side biology. It wasn’t really the hymn, the champion. So we just needed to apply what the champion needs to do that history informs us that needs to get done, which is simplicity, presto, instant champion in four different disciplines. That’s what I mean by that.

[14:22] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Wow. Put this in the context of some of the names who we know you, you’ve worked with the Tiger Woods of the world, the Lance Armstrong’s, what kind of work?

[14:30] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Did you do with them? Did they have a boogeyman in their head?

[14:34] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Every one of them has a boogeyman. I remember I was working with an athlete. He was playing for the Boston Red Sox, a big lefty pitcher. And he said, every time I start to warm up in my head, something tells me I’m gonna throw the ball over the catcher’s head.

[14:45] Dr. Jeff Spencer: And every time I recognize that, that’s exactly what I do. I said, it goes back. You do the one or two things that have to go right, or the one thing that has to go right. That’s all you need to do. If you do the one thing that has to go right, at the right time when it needs to be executed. And you trust your preparation.

[15:03] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Like the champion’s golden rule is do the homework and the test is easy. Right? So all the preparation that we do behind the scenes. Sets us up and then all we need to do is execute it. We need to trust it. But usually when we get to a place and we start to go back to what didn’t work before, because we get scared and our survival biology takes over and we screw it up every time.

[15:23] Dr. Jeff Spencer: So, you know, whether it’s Tiger, whether it’s Lance, I mean, you know, Lance told me once he said, I had this voice inside my head telling me I was going to blow up, you know, on this particular stage of the tour. And that’s kind of what happened. Pitcher threw the ball over his head. You look at anybody like, you know, with Bono and U2 and stuff like that.

[15:40] Dr. Jeff Spencer: I mean, they can be really unsettled before they go out on stage for an opening concert for a world tour. We shouldn’t be surprised by that. We should expect it. I say, well, let’s expect this because we know that this is coming. This is our biology. You can’t shut your biology off. It’s with you every day for your entire life.

[15:57] Dr. Jeff Spencer: We know that this is coming. But we, all we do is we need to apply that one thing that has to go right. And as long as we do that, then everything that you did in your practice and in your preparation, then now can be applied and presto,

[16:10] Jim Harshaw Jr.: you’re going to perform at your best. So you’re blowing it down. It sounds like to a simple one thing or one or two things.

[16:17] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Is that right? What might that be? For let’s say, just go with the Lance Armstrong or, or a Bono from you too.

[16:23] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Yeah, well, it would be with Lance. Like, you know, you have to eat before you’re hungry because, because if you don’t eat on the bike and on that day actually felt too good, so he broke his routine, you didn’t eat enough.

[16:33] Dr. Jeff Spencer: So he kind of bonked out prematurely. I mean, that, that was self inflicted because it was misinterpreting the circumstances. Like for Bono, this is so simple. You walk out on stage. And all you do is you focus on saying your first word because everything else in the 40 years of experience that you have is already there.

[16:50] Dr. Jeff Spencer: You don’t need to think yourself to someplace that you’ve been at a million times over 40 years. You just need to do that one thing where your whole history is now accessible to you and it presents itself as you’re living it, as you naturally would. So it’s just only one word. I work with a woman who is very successful.

[17:08] Dr. Jeff Spencer: She had this massive business in Canada and she had a weekend event where she did a 15-minute welcome address to the people and she’s not particularly eloquent, et cetera. And so I told her the one thing that we want to do, all you want to do is that first word and that first word and everything rolls off your tongue.

[17:28] Dr. Jeff Spencer: So we practiced for four months. Just doing that one word. And so she said that one word, it was absolutely perfect. She exponentially grew her business from being able to apply that one thing.

[17:38] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So what might that be for the listener? Let’s say, you know, they’re going into maybe a sales presentation or a job interview.

[17:47] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So there’s some sort of high stakes situation. So I’m curious, number one, two things. So number one, what might that be as an example, just to give a reference point for the listener. And then number two. Even on a day to day, got to show up. I’ve got to perform as a leader. I’ve got to perform as a business owner.

[18:03] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I’ve got to perform in whatever role it is in my life. So let’s start first with the high stakes interview, sales presentation. What might that be for the listener?

[18:13] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Sure. Well, well, it would be what’s the greeting going to be like. So the door opens and you walk into the room and there’s Mr. Big, you know, sitting in the chair there.

[18:22] Dr. Jeff Spencer: What to do? You know, to me, you would decide what that is. You know, how do you start this? Well, you would go over, probably extend your hand to do a handshake and say, thanks for this opportunity. I appreciate this very much. So you’re not trying to embellish it. You’re not trying to gain favor. You’re talking to him at the same level as he expects you to be.

[18:41] Dr. Jeff Spencer: If he’s going to consider you, uh, pairing with him on some type of activity or some type of ambition, like together, that’s fastest way to do it. It’s like the one thing. So let’s take this in daily example. We’ll show up and be a good listener. Just listen to what people have to say, and then you’ll take your cues from what they say, and you’re going to trust your response to it, because you probably know what the answer is.

[19:06] Dr. Jeff Spencer: You already have enough experience to know what to say, but you just need to understand what the question is, and then you can respond to that correctly. So, it’s always going back to this state of readiness, where we trust our capacity, and we listen, and then we execute the one thing that gains us access to everything.

[19:26] Dr. Jeff Spencer: And that to me is the ultimate secret.

[19:29] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What about a scenario where you’re a Lance Armstrong and you’ve got to eat or you’re Bono and you’ve got to stand in the right place and remember your first word, you’re Bono, you step on stage and there was an X there where you’re supposed to stand. That X has been removed that somebody put a speaker there.

[19:45] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You walk in and Mr. Big is not Mr. Big, it’s Mrs. Big. And they’re sitting in a different place and you’re in a different room or whatever, like something totally goes awry. How do you coach people to think through that scenario? Because certainly those come up. Well, you have to expect it first and

[20:02] Dr. Jeff Spencer: foremost.

[20:03] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Here’s the deal. Is it like our preparation for things and the steps that we do to be ready? That’s a future projection. It’s not reality. It’s a future projection of what we believe the circumstances to be. And the likelihood of that being as we imagine it are almost like zero. So, you know, once we meet reality, then we decide what we do that’s appropriate for reality.

[20:24] Dr. Jeff Spencer: But most people in their I have to be perfect and it has to go a certain way where it really doesn’t. It has to be appropriate for the moment. And if you can show up and again, you’re a good listener and you perceive the actions that represent what has to go right at that moment in time and you execute that and you trust that.

[20:46] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Well, that’s the sign of what really a champion does. So we have to, Be mindful that there’s a difference between our projected estimated reality in reality, what it is once we get there, and most people think, well, it’s all in the preparation. Well, it is to a certain extent, but once you get there, then you may have to call the audible, you know, when you see the defense is different.

[21:06] Dr. Jeff Spencer: So we have to expect that as being part of it.

[21:10] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What do you see as? Commonalities between elite performers. Like you’ve worked with so many, so many from Maria Sharapova to Richard Branson, Tiger Woods, like Lance Armstrong, so many different fields of play. What are the common things between them?

[21:27] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Well, I mean, the fields of play, it doesn’t matter.

[21:29] Dr. Jeff Spencer: There are technical differences, you know, Tiger needs a putting coach and, you know, Maria needs a serving coach. Okay, great. Well, those are the technical aspects of the discipline, right? We all share the human hardwiring that we’ve discussed here a bit, and it’s really knowing how to read that and knowing how to step in and do those things that have to go right, in my opinion, and you have to train for those things, you know, so that you have a reflex already built.

[22:00] Dr. Jeff Spencer: When something shows up where you can respond appropriately and you know it because you’ve baked in time for variance of certain things there.

[22:09] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You’ve worked with a lot of these amazing people. Who would you say is the hardest working? Like who’s the hardest working athlete you’ve ever trained?

[22:19] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Well, there’s different levels, uh, you know, working could be intensity.

[22:23] Dr. Jeff Spencer: There, there’s a lot of different synonyms that we could use for this, but I mean, I mean, obviously, If you look at Tiger’s historic ability to concentrate in situations and being able to execute under severe pressure, I mean, it’s impressive. It really is. Lance, similarly, I remember, you know, in training camp, there was a 10 mile climb to the top after, you know, a 5 hour training ride.

[22:47] Dr. Jeff Spencer: It was freezing cold and there were snow drifts 10 feet high on either side of the road. And, Top of the climb, this 10 miles, you know, the top of the climb at the very end, the, all the riders took all their clothes off and they got inside the cars with the heaters on, they had warm tea, and. What Lance did, he zipped up his jacket, he coasted down to the bottom of the hill and rode it back up another 10 miles, and you know, he’s tenacious in that respect, you know, he’s unfathomable and, uh, you know, because of his, uh, cancer recovery, he’s a very interesting kind of guy, it’s like I always felt like coming back, like a lot of people that we have this pain avoidance situation where we’re always kind of bartering with how much energy and time is it going to take and what are the risks and what sort of a pain am I going to have to endure?

[23:28] Dr. Jeff Spencer: You know, whether it’s psychological or whether it’s physical and, you know, Lance coming back when he literally had a death sentence for the extent of his cancer, I mean, 15 golf ball sized cancers on his lungs, cancer in his brain, cancer in his abdomen, testicles the size of a lemon. I mean, quite honestly, that’s like a death sentence.

[23:46] Dr. Jeff Spencer: And so he knows. Actually, like, when he would race, it’s like, I don’t think the pain to him was a reminder that he was still alive. And so it’s not like he avoided it or enjoyed it, but it’s about, I am still here breathing. And so many people would avoid that as much as possible. But, you know, he didn’t really do that.

[24:10] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Again, there are these reminders that bring a certain supernatural quality out of us when we have something that is that difficult and carries that level of potential impact.

[24:23] Jim Harshaw Jr.: There’s a quote that I’m reminded of. And this is, this is something I heard there was a head wrestling coach, former head wrestling coach at University of Minnesota, Jay Robinson.

[24:32] Jim Harshaw Jr.: One of his athletes came back to visit him and he, his athlete had become a special forces. I can’t remember if he was a Green Beret or Navy Seal, but, and they were having a conversation about toughness and the coach asked him something along the lines of, so how do you get tough? Like, how do, how do we make tough people?

[24:51] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And he said, and his former student athlete said, you get tough by doing tough things. I think that really crystallized things for me. You think about Lance Armstrong, obviously he had a death sentence and you get at some level it makes you tough. So I’m curious to your response to that idea. Well, again, we go back to the human

[25:09] Dr. Jeff Spencer: biology.

[25:09] Dr. Jeff Spencer: We’re afraid of what it may be like and we haven’t even done it yet. I mean, it’s like my daughter, Dad, we’re going to lose tonight in soccer. I said, well, how do you know that? Well, I saw a picture of the team and they’re bigger than us. So therefore they’re going to win. So you don’t even know that. You haven’t even played.

[25:21] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Can you just put that aside and see what happens? You know, we’re all deciding in advance what it is. And from that, then we’re deciding how much effort we’re going to put into it. We all fear pain. And so we. Or kind of bartering, maybe even subconsciously, about how much time and effort we’re going to put into something.

[25:36] Dr. Jeff Spencer: And I feel that that’s part of what I said earlier, that Champion’s Golden Rule is do the homework and the test is easy. So, in my opinion, you have to build into your preparation these milestones where you’re going to run up against what you believe to be your limit. And your limit is generally much shorter than the possibility of what it really is.

[25:56] Dr. Jeff Spencer: But you don’t know that because your fear based survival instinct is not going to let you go to that place. And I can honestly tell you that, you know, as an Olympian myself, that the hardest barrier Is to know how to put it all on the line and not hold anything back. All of us want to hold back at a certain point.

[26:12] Dr. Jeff Spencer: We got this invisible hand that pulls us back and just doesn’t let us go to where we need to go to do it. And so, therefore, I think we have to, we have to build into our life these moments of strain, these moments of fear that are appropriately chosen for us to be able to engage a current barrier to Thoughtfully address it and know that it’s coming so that we see the reality of what it really is and we made it much bigger than it really is.

[26:40] Dr. Jeff Spencer: But we don’t know that until we get there. That’s like, yeah, like I do intervals on my bicycle. They’re pain. They’re pure pain. And I do them in the afternoon. And the reason why I do it is because. I need to train myself to know that I got pain coming in the afternoon, but I don’t want to be thinking about it for seven hours between now and when I get there.

[26:57] Dr. Jeff Spencer: I want to go about my job and my work as if that doesn’t exist. I know it’s coming, but I’m not going to invest any energy in the possibility of what I think, how painful it’s going to be. I want to learn to engage that gracefully. So again, we have to, Spend time with the boogeyman, and we all have our versions of what that is.

[27:17] Dr. Jeff Spencer: And we need to learn to engage that and raise our ceiling progressively. And as we do that, then we build a level of confidence in ourselves. And at a certain point, you can actually go from a place of uncertainty to a place of boldness, because you’ve confirmed to yourself what your true capability is.

[27:35] Dr. Jeff Spencer: And as you develop this, and as that continues to build throughout a lifetime, It actually does create a certain level of invincibility, quite honestly. And that’s not being reckless as a thrill seeker. We’re talking about developing a trust in self that knows how to step into things and do things appropriately because we’ve trained ourself to be able to learn and apply that skill when it counts.

[27:59] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You’ve talked about having a blueprint. What do you mean by having a blueprint?

[28:05] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Well, to me, every successful person does have a blueprint, you know, if you look at a blueprint for building a house, it provides a structure and within that structure, there are different places that are selected for certain things to happen that are consistent with what the needs of the homeowner are.

[28:24] Dr. Jeff Spencer: We kind of need the same thing in my own opinion. You can’t just go out there and make life up. It 20 years to learn something you can learn in 18 months. For If there was a structure behind it, and there are certain, you know, again, principles that are very obvious that need to get done to be properly prepared to do something.

[28:45] Dr. Jeff Spencer: And then, in the course of executing those things to get to where you want to get to, there are very predictable things that you will encounter in process to that. And when you have that. Blueprint of stability, because remember, you have a human survival brain that’s going to start telling you crazy stuff, you know, where you start going for the pixie dust and all the magic things and you heard Fred does this.

[29:05] Dr. Jeff Spencer: So you try what Fred did because you’re frantically trying to find the secret thing, you know, rather than having a sober look at what are the facts tell us and where’s the leading edge of creativity. To get to some place that we have a clinical body of evidence and knowledge that if we apply this, then we could probably get to that place like faster.

[29:26] Dr. Jeff Spencer: So that’s the way

[29:27] Jim Harshaw Jr.: that I look at this. Where do we find a blueprint? Do we go on Amazon? Grab one on Amazon or download it somewhere?

[29:34] Dr. Jeff Spencer: That’s a, that’s a very interesting point here. So, so what I did, it’s like I, I have what I call the champion’s ladder and there are five rungs on the ladder. The reason why I like the ladder is that it’s analogy of going from here up.

[29:47] Dr. Jeff Spencer: It’s an ascension process, which I, Feel that we should all be doing over the course of our lifetime. We should be refining ourselves and getting better and better and better. That many things as we go through the different levels of development that constitute like a lifetime. And I found that through my observation of things that there are.

[30:05] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Uh, like five key areas that we have to have and master a competency in, and we develop those concurrently together over a lifetime. And the first rung on that ladder is have a champion’s mind. And you know, I don’t like the word mindset because mindset’s rigid. It’s like, it’s a set. It’s a rigid thing. If I think good thoughts, I’m going to win.

[30:28] Dr. Jeff Spencer: That’s not really true. You know, when we talk about a human mind, we’re talking about a reaction to something that’s almost like primally automatic that doesn’t require any nuance thinking or consideration where the The champion’s mind really thoughtfully considers the context in the options and the choices in the timing of application and what should be done when.

[30:55] Dr. Jeff Spencer: It’s a very thoughtful, deliberate process, and we kind of scratched the surface on this by identifying the fact that we do have. A human biology that is survival based that will help us survive, but you cannot create a life with distinction if your life is unsurvivable. You cannot get there through that, because that’s not what it’s there for.

[31:15] Dr. Jeff Spencer: But we also said that you have this biology that’s towards seeking, and we discussed the idea of self realization in that. And so we have to understand the human side of us as a human and how we think to be able to then start to be very thoughtful in terms of the choices that we make that take us towards our bigger future to create and live our greatest and best legacy.

[31:43] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Yeah, second rung is you have to control your day. Because if you can’t control your day, you can’t control your life. It’s just that simple. And if you can’t control your life, then you’re incredibly inefficient. You can’t be trusted as a leader. You know that you’re not stepping up and performing in a way that you should be to be able to honor your talents that we’ve been gifted with.

[32:04] Dr. Jeff Spencer: We know that we’re not creating and leaving our best work. So learning how to control the day is a really important aspect of that. In my opinion, so that goes back to scheduling, timing of what we do when, how we consider our personal biology and all of that. To me, that’s an essential part of this. The third rung on the ladder is that we have to be able to produce and manifest possibility.

[32:30] Dr. Jeff Spencer: And that goes back to the idea of knowing how to when, you know, there is a structure. That I’ve observed and I’ve created a model based around that about what you need to do to prepare to be able to step onto the playing field to be able to convert. And move through the different steps that are required to go from idea to manifestation of the goal itself.

[32:52] Dr. Jeff Spencer: You have to be able to know how to convert possibility. Otherwise, we’re still kind of swimming in shallow water. There’s no way that we’re ever going to get to where we could potentially get to. The fourth rung on the ladder is that we need to be able to see what’s coming. We need to peek around the corner.

[33:10] Dr. Jeff Spencer: We need to be able to see the blind sides that enable us to avoid preventable problems. And we need to be able to see potential opportunities that are starting to form so that we can seize them when they show up. The biggest risk that anybody faces Is making choices on what they believe something to be when it’s not, and taking action on what it’s not.

[33:31] Dr. Jeff Spencer: They may think it is, but if it’s not, it’s still not. Or to be blindsided by a preventable problem. Those are the variables that need to be accounted for, and that would be rung number 5 on the Champion’s Ladder is momentum. We need to be able to generate and carry momentum forward because there’s only so much time and energy in this dimension that we live in.

[33:53] Dr. Jeff Spencer: And we need to hold that sacred. And every time a person starts and stops and starts, stops, starts, stops, starts, stops, that takes energy to slow down, decelerate. It takes energy to start to get back momentum and that can increase the energy consumption and time consumption that limits the available time for creating bigger and better goals that represent what our talents could produce.

[34:16] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Therefore, allow us to live like a full potential life as a full potential player over a lifetime. Those are the five rungs. And that just came from me. That’s from my observation. And if we develop those five areas simultaneously together. over a lifetime. It creates a very compelling competency to be able to handle just about anything with maximum dexterity and results.

[34:41] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I’m curious about number three. I think it was manifest possibility. Is that what you said? That would be

[34:48] Dr. Jeff Spencer: it. Yeah. We all have possibility. Well, how do we gain access to it? How do we even know what it is? So that it becomes something that’s, that’s tangible that was actually produced. Yes.

[34:59] Jim Harshaw Jr.: How do you go about that?

[35:00] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Is there any habits, routines? I mean, what’s the kind of work that goes into this?

[35:06] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Yeah, well, I think it goes back to the champion’s gold rule. Do the homework and the test is easy. So what’s the homework? How do we get ready? How do we get ready? Well, there’s five things in my opinion. Number one, you have to be very clear and make sure you have the right goal.

[35:21] Dr. Jeff Spencer: And I didn’t say a big hairy audacious goal, and I didn’t say a smart goal. I said the right goal. And for a person’s state of readiness and all their assets, And given the context of the world that they will be executing the process of goal achievement in, there’s always going to be a best goal. And the goal that you think it is may not be it, which may lead to complications, et cetera.

[35:44] Dr. Jeff Spencer: So I’m a big fan. Let’s make sure that we have the right goal. And I have, I have a process by which we can determine what that is. I think most people don’t take enough time to really determine what the goals are. They’re more thinking about what is the goal going to get me and how am I going to be living once the goal is achieved.

[35:59] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And if I’m not mistaken, like your, your work begins with clarity. Like this phase one is clarity. Like, where am I? What do I have currently? And that I can build on. Is that right?

[36:12] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Yeah, there are, well, there are three things you need to know, in my opinion. You need to know, number one, do you have the right goal?

[36:17] Dr. Jeff Spencer: How do you figure that out? How do you figure out the right goal? And I think that you have a framework for that, right? Yeah, I do. I have a process for that. You know, we go through a series of questions that we look at. It’s a self audit. And then at the end of that, it depends on what we see and that would determine whether or not.

[36:30] Dr. Jeff Spencer: It’s the right goal to pursue now, or maybe it’s the right goal, but it’s premature to do it. Maybe it’s something I don’t know what to think about. So we park it in the garage for a while, but we don’t forget about it. You know, so again, clarity, because if you know, you have the right goal, then your anxiety is going to drop.

[36:45] Dr. Jeff Spencer: If you don’t know whether you have the right goal, then you’re always going to be anxious. Can I really do this? Is this too big? Is this too small? What is this going to take? So you’re wasting all this energy worrying about all these things because we haven’t defined whether this is the right goal or not.

[37:01] Dr. Jeff Spencer: So the second thing is that, you know, we need to understand why are we doing this? You know, what is the motive behind this? Because when we understand the motive, then it gives us a higher level of insistence that we do pursue and we do achieve that goal. You know, we do have a different level of purpose.

[37:19] Dr. Jeff Spencer: The next thing is impact. So, okay, so you got this goal here, right? So how’s it going to impact you? How’s it going to impact your family? How’s it going to impact humanity? How’s it going to impact the planet? You know, people don’t think about that, but that’s a really important consideration before you even get started.

[37:35] Dr. Jeff Spencer: You know, we haven’t even started the car yet, but we’re thinking about this. And that’s why that’s important, is that it has everything to do with purpose. Because when you understand impact, and it’s what you want it to be, That you’re going to stand into purpose. You’re going to make sure that this happens, but if you don’t think about it, then it’s going to be a little bit less committed.

[37:55] Dr. Jeff Spencer: In my opinion, the reason to do it is because you’ve been called to it and it’s a natural fit for your assets. And it can come easily to you and you’re making your unique contribution. And so I think, again, that goes back to the human mindset, the champion’s mind. You know, so this idea of being very thoughtful about the reality, not the fear of our perception of survival, but the real possibility.

[38:22] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Because everything we do, every one of us is going to leave a legacy. And it’s going to be a testimony for everybody to see, for all of humanity, all of time. What we do with our time and our talents. That’s what it is. So when we kind of look at the 4 things that we talked about so far, and that’s just about doing the homework to start to pursue the goal.

[38:45] Dr. Jeff Spencer: We haven’t even started pursuing it yet. And then you end with, do we have the resources? Do we have the tools and the technology? Do we have the skills? Do we have the materials? Do we have the team? Do we have the time to really look at that? So if we look at those 5 things taken as a collective, and we have that in front of us, then we’re going to get a really good idea.

[39:08] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Of, is this a good idea for me to do? Most people don’t do that. They just get started because they think, well, you know, the universe is just going to fill in all the parts. Or if I don’t get started now, somebody is going to take my place in line. I’m going to get pushed to the back of the line. Or I’m not going to be able to keep up, so I’m going to get kicked out of the cool kids club.

[39:26] Dr. Jeff Spencer: You know, that’s kind of the way the human mind works. And those are not reasons to do anything, in my opinion. So when we talk about the preparation side of it, and we’ve agreed that we’ve gone through those five steps, And everything’s lined up and we know that we’re ready. Okay, well, then you push the start button.

[39:42] Dr. Jeff Spencer: That’s where you can now actively start pursuing the goal. And there’s got to be an active process that allows you to get started safely. Most people, you start off too fast or you’re too sloppy. Then you may get stalled. It’s like Seabiscuit that’s favored to win the Kentucky Derby. They trip out of the gate because they didn’t practice getting out of the gate.

[40:02] Dr. Jeff Spencer: So they lose because they didn’t practice this little transition between readiness And actually, when they’re at full stride, you know, so we need to make sure that we start correctly, not too much too fast. And then we get to the daily grind, you know, where it’s like, man, I put all this time and effort into this.

[40:18] Dr. Jeff Spencer: I’m not getting anything back close to what I think I should be from the time and effort that I’m putting into this. Maybe I should quit right now while I got something and that’s where people are really vulnerable. But that’s every. Every aspiration has a daily grind in it, and that’s where you’re being shown what you need to do to complete the process, but we think that it means that we can’t do it.

[40:40] Dr. Jeff Spencer: We should be expecting the daily grind, so when it shows up, we just need to keep looking at the metrics, and we need to do the things to fill in the gaps. And eventually, what I do know is going to happen is that you’re going to get up and believe, like, I believe that now I can do this at a certain point.

[40:55] Dr. Jeff Spencer: If you stay in the game long enough, you’re going to get up and believe it. Because a lot of people think when I get the belief, then somehow belief is going to get me to the finish line. It’s not. It just means that you believe you can do it. You’ve got to go from believing you can do it to knowing you can do it.

[41:07] Dr. Jeff Spencer: So you’ve got to build your skill. You’ve got to bring the team a little bit closer together. To preparation and then we have 5 steps to performing where we’re in actual pursuit of it. Then we have an idea of what’s in front of us. So we’re not taken by surprise and we don’t misinterpret what we thought that it should be.

[41:25] Dr. Jeff Spencer: But generally, the things that we think that it should be may not be correct. As I said earlier, that’s one of the biggest reasons why people stumble is that they believe something to be true when it’s not, you know, so we want to avoid this as much as possible. So that’s the whole reason why I created this is called the Goal Achievement Roadmap is what it’s called, and I created it based upon my knowledge and experience over 60 years, you know, working in the high performance space.

[41:52] Dr. Jeff Spencer: So I hope that answers the question about, you know, being more deliberate. And having a structure and a blueprint to be able to take ideas. And actually manifest them to become realities.

[42:04] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Everything you just shared speaks to a concept that I talk about a lot. And for the listener, you know this by now, if you’ve been listening for any length of time, there’s a pause that is required before execution.

[42:17] Jim Harshaw Jr.: There’s a pause, a stop, an evaluation, a question period. And we call this a productive pause. And a productive pause is defined as this. It’s a short period of focused reflection around specific questions. That leads to clarity of action and peace of mind. And that is all required in order to achieve your best life in order to achieve whatever those right goals are for you.

[42:41] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It doesn’t, it’s not about just starting. There’s some clarity that needs to be had first, some evaluation. What are the assets I have, et cetera. The listeners, you just heard the whole plan there from Jeff, who, and he’s, he’s coached the best of the best in so many different fields. Jeff, for the listener who wants to take action on this, what’s something that they can do in the next, let’s say 24 to 48 hours to take action on what you shared here today?

[43:08] Dr. Jeff Spencer: I would

[43:08] Jim Harshaw Jr.: say,

[43:09] Dr. Jeff Spencer: give yourself permission to not be practical and make a list of things that you really want to do, that you feel like you’re called to do. Give yourself permission to do that. Not being practical, like I’ve never done that before. Nobody in my family’s done it. I don’t know how I’m going to do it.

[43:25] Dr. Jeff Spencer: What is it that you believe that you’re called to do? That’s probably even a better way of describing it. It could be what you want, but I think what do you call to do that there’s just something within you that’s, you know, there’s a gravity that’s pulling you towards something and you know that to be true.

[43:40] Dr. Jeff Spencer: I would make a list of that because what I found is is that. When we pursue the goals that we have in our mind, they’re not as big or as powerful as standing in receivership to be informed of something that we’re called to do. Like, for sure, I was called to become an Olympian. You know, I didn’t, I decided to answer the calling.

[44:02] Dr. Jeff Spencer: Yeah, of course. But I found out also something people don’t know about me. I was a very well known art glass sculptor. And I realized, I showed my art in the best galleries in New York City, is that when I was In the process of creating one of my pieces, rather than just be a technician where I was creating the vision I had in my mind, if I remain receptive to bigger ideas in the process of the creation, when they showed up and I recognized them and I was able to adapt and incorporate and follow the lead that was presented to me, I could create something exponentially better than I could have ever come up with in my own mind.

[44:45] Dr. Jeff Spencer: So I’m saying when people. You ask me, well, how do you decide? You know, what dreams you’re going to pursue. It’s like, I don’t pursue dreams, you know, I stand a receivership of ideas and thoughts that are presented to me. And I found that when I engage those with full commitment, because I’ve lived this for 60 years, I’m 73, like right now.

[45:07] Dr. Jeff Spencer: So this is not new to me that it always comes out. A thousand times better than I could have ever conceived of it mentally in advance or visualized it. And it also comes almost like effortlessly where there’s not the torment, uh, in the energy expenditure, the worry that accompanies many of these dreams that we have, that we start to push too hard to try to get, and the resistance sometimes is, you A little bit overwhelming.

[45:36] Dr. Jeff Spencer: We start to get fearful that it’s not going to happen, which prompts us to sleep less and do more. And then we get more confused. You know how this all goes, right? So I just wanted to kind of fill in some of the gaps there with how this sort of works for me in my process.

[45:51] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Jeff, for those who want to find you, follow you, et cetera, where should we direct them?

[45:57] Dr. Jeff Spencer: drjeffspencer. com. D R J E F F S P E N C E R. com. And one of the things that I do is that I do a couple of videos a week, very small videos about, you know, My experience with people of the caliber that you and I’ve been discussing today, it’s called the weekly spin. And so go to my website and you could certainly gain access to those videos and things like that as

[46:20] Jim Harshaw Jr.: well.

[46:21] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Excellent. For the listener, as always, we’ll have those links and everything right in the action plan. Go to jimharshawjr.com/action. We’ll make sure you get those. Jeff, incredible conversation. Thank you so much for making time to come on the show. Thank you, Jim. What a pleasure. Likewise.

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