[00:00] Jim Harshaw Jr.: How does one go from being a recreational skier to an Olympian in four years? How does that same person become a New York bestselling author? How does that same person become one of the top speakers in the world? How does that same person become the leader of Himalayan expeditions? Same person achieved all of these different things, and he is doing things That you’re not doing.

[00:28] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And he reveals those secrets here today.

[00:34] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Welcome to another episode of success for the athletic minded man. Real talk. Unharnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business and life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today I bring you a doozy today. I bring you Olympian Vince Poscente. Now you heard what I just said about all of the things he’s accomplished.

[00:59] Jim Harshaw Jr.: This guy is an Olympian. He went from recreational skier to Olympian in just four years. He is a New York times bestselling author. He is one of the best. Top speakers in the world. He’s in the speaking hall of fame in the United States and in Canada. He’s led Himalayan expeditions. How does one human being achieve all of these things?

[01:19] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Vince does things that other people don’t. And he reveals these secrets today. This is one of the most fascinating conversations I’ve ever had. This is just an eyeopening, mind blowing. Interview you’re about to hear. So get ready to take notes and get ready to listen to this one twice. Here we go. My interview with Vince Pacente.

[01:41] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You went from being a recreational skier to an Olympic competitor in four years. How in the world does somebody do that?

[01:51] Vince Poscente: Well, through discomfort, it was actually, that’s a good question. It’s the first question I’d normally get. Cause who in their right mind decides to go to the Olympic games from a standing start?

[02:02] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Did you actually believe that was possible? Obviously you did, but I mean, how, how, how, or why does somebody come to believe that that’s possible?

[02:08] Vince Poscente: Yeah, I had, had, I’d raced in luge for a couple of years and quit. And I would have, if I had not quit, I would have been a five year run to try and make the Olympic team.

[02:18] Vince Poscente: The buddies that I raced with. Did not quit

[02:22] Jim Harshaw Jr.: like our friend, our mutual friend, Ruben Gonzalez, who I’ve had on the podcast.

[02:25] Vince Poscente: Well, yeah, Ruben with luge and, but I was racing for, it would have been racing for the Canadian team. And it was much more competitive to get on that, that team, but I’ll never know. I quit and these, I had a ticket for the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Calgary, my hometown, where I lived.

[02:45] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Was Luge a little too slow for you?

[02:50] Vince Poscente: Well, the speed skiing definitely is faster.

[02:52] Jim Harshaw Jr.: How fast for the audience? Tell, tell the audience how fast.

[02:55] Vince Poscente: Well, I’ve gone 135 miles an hour on skis.

[02:58] Jim Harshaw Jr.: That is absurd. So for the audience, I want you to just listen to that number. You know, it’s kind of, you hear the number, you go, wow, that’s fast. But like actually think about how fast that is.

[03:08] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Think about sticking your head out the window of a car going 60 miles an hour.

[03:11] Vince Poscente: Yeah. Your lips will go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

[03:13] Jim Harshaw Jr.: blah, blah. Not even half of the speed that you’ve been. I don’t even know if I knew that that was possible for a person to do that, but sorry, go ahead, Vince.

[03:21] Vince Poscente: You don’t start there.

[03:22] Vince Poscente: I mean, you start low and work your way up as I, as you did with Luge. And that answered your question that, that, to what makes you decide to go to the Olympic games. It, you know, often we talk, especially in the motivational speaker world is what do you want to create or what do you want to build or be a part of, this was not aspirational as much as it was, I never want that feeling of regret again.

[03:45] Vince Poscente: See, to this day, I’ll never know if I could have made the luge team for Canada, but I’ll be darned if I ever have that feeling again, that sting of regret. So that’s what motivated it.

[03:55] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And so tell us about that journey. How do you go about being a recreational skier and going to an Olympian from Canada in a sport like speed, speed skiing, you know, we’ve had Ruben Gonzalez on the podcast, like I mentioned a couple of times now, he was at my client retreat recently, and he wrote a great book called the shortcut, by the way.

[04:14] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I recommend that for everybody as well as, you know, talking about Vince’s books as well. So he had his kind of version of getting to the Olympics. Tell us your story, Vince.

[04:23] Vince Poscente: So the standing start was one where I was aware that the Olympic qualifying standards for Canada is you have to be top 16 or top half in the world.

[04:34] Vince Poscente: And then you’re allowed to be considered to be, to qualify, to go to the Olympic games, to represent your country. And because I had no ski race experience and I knew there were existing ski racers in the world, including Canada, who had the same idea to go to the Olympic games. It started off a philosophy that ended up being so fundamental to how to get to those Olympic games and fundamental to sales audiences or leadership groups that I speak to today, and it’s do what the competition is not willing to do.

[05:08] Vince Poscente: And at no time, did I ever think, even when I started that my competition was local at local races or national races, or even some international races, my competition were the top 16 racers in the world. And it would be fundamentally impossible to catch up to those people who had that much experience. It would be, they had 20, 25 years of a headstart of training, but in a heartbeat, you could do what those top 16 in the world aren’t willing to do.

[05:40] Vince Poscente: So when you make a reference point of who your competition is, think of the highest performers. Think of the people just killing it. People on top of their game, people at the rank one, two, three in the world. What are they not willing to do? So that was really the mantra, if you will, of every single training decision on how to get there.

[06:03] Vince Poscente: So you have to cover the basis. You have to be physically fit, of course, but I split it into four categories for what it’s worth. It was financial, physical, technical, or research, and then mental. And what financial things would be necessary to get to the Olympic Games? Sponsors, but what could you do in sponsorship that the competition is not willing to do?

[06:26] Vince Poscente: Physical, what kind of physical training? I went mountain bike racing in the summer, not racing, but just down mountains. And I would pretend that I was relaxing on my way down, letting go, not letting go of the handlebars, but if you’ve ever gone down a mountain on a mountain bike, you just feel like you got this death grip.

[06:42] Vince Poscente: Well, could you relax and actually take it in? And could you slow time down? You know, mental, a lot of mental training. I was going to the library, uh, researching things. How many athletes are at the library right now? None. They’re going to the coach and say, what do I do next? So the mental training was huge.

[06:59] Vince Poscente: I spent less time, physical training, more time, mental training to the tune of 2. 2 hours per day on just visualization and imagery, but what’s the competition not willing. Well, the library revealed ideas like biofeedback and sensory deprivation, float tanks, hypnosis programs, cross fertilizing hypnosis programs with a sensory deprivation float tank.

[07:20] Vince Poscente: So there’s all sorts of things you could do with the competition’s not willing to do. Yeah, so financial, physical, the third one was technical, and that’s the research, and then the mental is the fourth.

[07:31] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. Now, is it true that you strapped yourself to the roof of a car?

[07:37] Vince Poscente: Yes. I should send you a picture. I don’t know if you can admit that.

[07:40] Vince Poscente: I found it

[07:40] Jim Harshaw Jr.: online in my research. Oh, you did? Can you tell us about this? Yeah.

[07:45] Vince Poscente: Well, there is a backstory there. So I was at the library and I found And you were

[07:49] Jim Harshaw Jr.: sober, I believe, right? You were sober. I

[07:51] Vince Poscente: was very sober when I was reading this. Not so much when we were doing it, but there was a phone number for the Boeing factory in Seattle.

[08:00] Vince Poscente: And I called up this phone number and you hear a guy goes wind tunnel. I said, Hey, can you sneak me in your wind tunnel? That was a dead end. But when you do what the competition is not willing to do, I had a race car buddy, a driver buddy who said, well, I strap you to the top of my car if you want. So we went out to a remote part of Calgary.

[08:20] Vince Poscente: Uh, we went, it was a dead end. So we went all the way to the end, knowing there was no police. When we came back, I jumped in my. Now you’ve got to picture this. It was a pink rubber suit and a hot pink because it was free. That’s why it was wearing a hot pink suit and got on top of Peter’s car, strapped the skis into the roof rack of the car and then boom, took off down the road and you learn a ton.

[08:45] Vince Poscente: I mean, all you have to do is. Just stick your hand out like you mentioned earlier, stick your hand out the window of your car and you can feel what is aerodynamic and you can feel that pocket where there’s just no wind resistance and you know exactly what that feels like. The second you deviate, you can start to feel wind resistance.

[09:05] Vince Poscente: So aerodynamics on top of the car is very, very similar. Starting to feel that perfect body position that just everything got quiet.

[09:13] Jim Harshaw Jr.: That’s incredible. That is a great example of doing what the competition’s not willing to do and figuring out your game, learning something new and finding a way to get the skill and the experience that you need.

[09:25] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Quick interruption. Hey, if you like what you’re hearing, be sure to get the notes, quotes, and links in the action plan from this episode. Just go to Jim Herschel, jr. com slash action. That’s Jim Herschel, jr. com slash action to get your free copy of the action plan. Now back to the show.

[09:43] Vince Poscente: When we’re recording this, the Paris Olympics haven’t happened yet.

[09:46] Vince Poscente: And there’s a motto you’re going to hear Sidious Altius Fortius, which is swifter, higher, stronger, Latin for swifter, higher, stronger. Sidious Altius Fortius. So I, I created a fourth one, Latin word, which was smartiest, how much smarter. Could you compete, right? How much smarter can you lean into this and compete in a way that’s just smarter?

[10:11] Vince Poscente: And you know, the heroes in sport, in business, in life, are the ones that work harder and just, we even compete with each other. I put in 18 hours today. Oh yeah, I put in 19, didn’t sleep. I slept standing up. You know, we compete about how hard we work, yet it’s how smart we show up. How smart we compete, how we do what the competition’s not willing to do.

[10:33] Vince Poscente: And it ended up being a massive advantage. Jim, after two and a half years, one of the techniques I use were gold dots. And I, on my phone here, you see that gold dot right there. The gold dot was meant to be a trigger for what I called the emotional buzz. And the emotional buzz is a thought that creates a physical reaction.

[10:57] Vince Poscente: It’s, it’s literally science that the mind is so massively powered. The mind and body are connected. So if a thought has a physical reaction, there must be some reason that that’s resonating the thought of marching in the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games made no sense. How we started this interview, you know, what makes you decide that you think you can make, I don’t know, but I knew that had an emotional buzz, something about marching in the opening ceremonies.

[11:27] Vince Poscente: My gold dot, because the Olympic qualifying standards were top 16 in the world for Canada. I thought, well, I want to be, I should probably aim for top 10. Cause if I aim for 16 and got a 17th, oops. And then the other part of the gold dot was I am fastest in Canada. I interviewed a guy who had a PhD in the politics of sport at the University of Alberta.

[11:49] Vince Poscente: Half hour interview, do what the competition is not willing to do. How many athletes are talking to this dude? Right? He’s, I said, if there’s any advice you could give, what would it be? And he said, well, here’s one. Being ranked number one in the nation, because if you’re number two or lower, you’ll be subject to somebody’s agenda.

[12:07] Vince Poscente: But if you’re number one, you, you write the rules of what’s going to work for you in this sport. So the, this PhD in the politics and sports said that this, and so therefore my goal dot was I am the fastest speed skier in Canada. And top 10 in the world,

[12:23] Jim Harshaw Jr.: which doesn’t make any sense when you’re a recreational skier, but this is the, this is tied to your emotional buzz and this is how you’re going to get there.

[12:31] Vince Poscente: Right. And it passes that litmus test that this is worth paying attention to. There’s something called female intuition. We’re both dudes, right? You, what do you mean? It feels right. You know, but that there’s a lot of merit in that. Feeling of some sort of resonance, you know, I’m gonna bring up something.

[12:49] Vince Poscente: It was a book I wrote years ago called The Ant and the Elephant, and it was inspired by a speech I’d heard by a guy named Dr. Lee Poulos, and Poulos found that in a second of time, your conscious mind is processing with 2000 neurons. While your subconscious mind is processing with 4 billion neurons. So right now your conscious mind is processing with 2000 neurons in a second.

[13:14] Vince Poscente: And you’re watching this podcast and you’re looking at me thinking I look like the old man from up. I don’t know what you’re thinking consciously. But that’s with 2000 neurons in a second. It’s the subconscious mind activity in that same second, 4 billion neurons in that same second. That’s where the resources are.

[13:34] Vince Poscente: That’s where the, if you set something that is, this is a, this is an immutable truth. You’ll gravitate towards your dominant thought. And you’ll gravitate to that, what you believe to be true. So question, are you the architect for your dominant thought? And are you the architect for that? What you believe to be true, or is your dominant thought just showing up?

[13:54] Vince Poscente: Is your dominant thought just showing up to say, well, that’s just, I’m thinking that because that’s what it is. Or are you the architect of that dominant? What do you believe to be true? Is that truth just showing up or are you the architect of that truth? And that’s why these gold dots end up making this, it’s a trigger with an emotional buzz, To establish a dominant thought and you say something enough times, that’s called repetition bias, you say something enough time, it becomes true.

[14:23] Vince Poscente: Uh, so this is just the human condition engineered to work in your favor.

[14:28] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And for the listener, this, this can be applied to anything in your life. This is whether it’s your marriage or, or. You know, losing that 10 pounds or becoming the CEO of the company, like raising the million dollars for your startup, whatever it is like this, this can be applied.

[14:44] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So if you’re not watching on YouTube, if you’re listening, you should check this out on YouTube because Vince is holding up his phone and there’s literally a gold. Dot on the back of it. And so what you’re saying, Vince, is you, you find this thing that is, that creates this emotional buzz. And for you, it’s, it was walking in the Olympic, you know, the opening ceremonies and becoming an Olympian.

[15:06] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And that felt, you felt that how important that felt to you created that emotional buzz for you. And you tethered that thought and feeling to every time you saw that gold dot, is that right?

[15:18] Vince Poscente: Exactly. And if you have any question that this might work, Two years, two and change into my training to try and figure out how to ski race.

[15:27] Vince Poscente: And then ended up getting invited to the first world cup of the year at Willamette pass place in that world cup race going into the final. I was in fourth place. Forget my final result, but I remember the second race world cup race. Cause I was top ranked Canadian was ULA’s Finland. And I was eighth in that race.

[15:46] Vince Poscente: And then in the third World Cup of that same year, in top ranked Canadian still, in that World Cup race in Hünfeld, I placed 11th. But the thing is, they released the World Cup points on a piece of paper. You see your name, 10th in the world, in World Cup points. And tell me if that gold dot was a coincidence that I said I’m top 10 in the world, or it’s true, like it works.

[16:09] Vince Poscente: I mean, so what is that gold dot for you that you’ve established, that you’ve engineered, that you’re a part of? Or are we just kind of hoping and crossing our fingers that this is going to work out? So, you know, there’s a lot to be said for engineering this. Uh, if we’re facing challenging times, and I know, Jim, I know your story a little bit.

[16:29] Vince Poscente: I’m going to hold cheese. I mean, when you get these massive setbacks, this, what we’re talking about is actually kind of moot because it’s, when you’re in a hole, when you’re devastated, when you go through an earthquake, personal earthquake, what got you here, isn’t necessarily going to get you there. So, uh, that’s actually why I wrote this book over my shoulder, the, the earthquake.

[16:50] Vince Poscente: The Ant and the Elephant was a book, very prescriptive in nature. You know, it came out in 2003. I went through a financial crap storm, you know. It was bad. And to climb out of that hole is way different and way harder than climbing a mountain. And that formula that’s in The Earthquake was not prescriptive.

[17:14] Vince Poscente: In fact, the opening line of that book was there’s no linear way out of chaos. And so, but there’s still a relationship between the conscious and subconscious mind, the ant and the elephant, and that’s why it also is a parable like the ant and the elephant is.

[17:28] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So by the way, so that gold dot, you’re putting that in multiple places.

[17:31] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It’s not just in one place on your phone. Are you putting this in different places around your house?

[17:35] Vince Poscente: There’s one there you can’t see. There’s one there you can’t see. There’s one on that picture frame. There’s one in the odometer in my car. There’s one in the bathroom and in a mirror. Every time you see the gold dot, you go, Oh yeah.

[17:47] Vince Poscente: And you go through that. And I’ll give you a little tip on how this works. Is when you see the gold dot, just seeing it and going, I’m fastest. Let’s say example, I’m fastest in Canada. Top 10 in the world. Well, okay. What does that mean? Where’s the emotional buzz there? If I’m fastest in Canada, top 10 in the world, I’d bring in the five senses of what it looks like, smells like, tastes like, make it so much of an experience.

[18:11] Vince Poscente: There’s a term called visualization. Well, I called it. Experientialization is to experience the sights, the sounds, the tastes, the touch, have a literal experience from seeing the gold dot that it triggers that experience. And when you have an experience and then you couple that with gratitude or satisfaction, or just that sense of accomplishment, that experience is so visceral.

[18:38] Vince Poscente: That the subconscious mind, the elephant has experienced it. What if you did it a second time, a hundredth time, a thousand thousands times that experiences happen a thousand times, if that experiences happen a thousand times in your core, not just your imagination, but in your very core, you will gravitate towards that.

[19:00] Vince Poscente: So that’s how that works.

[19:02] Jim Harshaw Jr.: This was a big part of me getting onto the podium at the national championships as a wrestler. It was being there, seeing it happen over and over and over. I would, I would drive down the road. I remember driving down the road one time between my junior and senior year in college, cause I had never accomplished.

[19:20] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Any of any meaningful goals in my career, high school or college to that point. And I remember driving down the road in the summer and I was, I was visualizing, I was feeling this, you know, I would do it anytime I could, right. Anytime when I was going to the bathroom or driving or going to sleep, whatever.

[19:36] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And I remember literally crying because I was so grateful and I wanted it so bad. And I was feeling it and experience. I was like crying, driving down the road. It felt ridiculous. I feel a little ridiculous saying it right now, but like I was feeling the emotion. I was bringing myself to that moment and it was happening over and over.

[19:51] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And so when the big moment came, the seven minutes where everything was on the line at the national championships, and I had to wrestle the fourth rank guy in the country in front of 15, 000 people, I had been there. Like this calm, this awareness that like, this is the thing. This is the thing that I’ve been seeing.

[20:07] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And I had already been there and, and it happened, you know, the, I won the match. So this stuff works. So Vince, this sounds like the neuroscience. Science. Of performance. Is this something that you see, you talk about two over two hours a day that you are dedicating to mindset and sort of this type of training, is that what this is that we talked about neuroscience and Noro skills here?

[20:30] Vince Poscente: Yeah. Neuroscience neuroplasticity is a more recent term, but I will say this. You’d have to be ahead of lettuce. To enjoy visualizing something two and a half, 2. 2 hours a day. So that is why the library was a resource for different means to the same end. So biofeedback was one thing that I used repeatedly and it was a galvanic skin response where it would measure stress on your fingertips.

[20:57] Vince Poscente: And if you could lower the level of stress, then that’s a time where you imprint the subconscious mind. Because the way the brain works is there’s a part of the brain called the amygdala, and it is triggered by reduced oxygen flow, a. k. a. shallow breathing. Example, there’s a saber toothed tiger in the bushes, right?

[21:17] Vince Poscente: What kind of breathing? Are you relaxed and comfortable? Are you breathing shallow? You kick into fight, flight, or freeze. Fight, flight, or freeze have nothing to do with peak performance. Have nothing to do with optimum performance in a given situation. But when there is a, when stress is managed, there will be stress.

[21:36] Vince Poscente: When stress is managed, you’ll have a more optimum result. So can we condition our body? Of course, you condition through curls, you condition with bench press, you can condition the stress response. That’s one. That’s listening to that multiple hours a day. The sensory deprivation float tank. Called all these sports psychologists around Calgary.

[21:55] Vince Poscente: I need, I read about this sensory deprivation float tank. Is there one in Calgary? No, there isn’t. You know, that saying, I forget the book, maybe the alchemist, where you say, if you want something bad enough, the universe will conspire to get it for you.

[22:07] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. I’ve heard that. Hey, it may be the alchemist. Yeah.

[22:10] Vince Poscente: Yeah, I think so. And I was driving out of the real estate office because I had to be my own sponsor because I needed money, but I couldn’t just, Have a regular job. So I was pulling out of this office, having not sold a house that day, and I drove down the alley turn left. And there’s a woman putting this placard out in front of this new place that she’s just reconstructing.

[22:34] Vince Poscente: And it said float tank. And so it’s like, it happened in slow motion. And I said, is this a sensory deprivation float tank? And she said, yeah, it’s the first one in the city. And I said, how would you like some PR? Right? So I called up my resources at the Calgary Herald and I said, I’m using a sensor deprivation float tank as mental training to get to the Olympic games.

[22:58] Vince Poscente: She gave me three, four, five hours per week of access to this thing. Another story went to the library because I was trying to do mental training for ski racing and there was an audio hypnosis album called skiing with the wind. It was actually an audio cassette at the time. Listen to it, but the script wasn’t right.

[23:18] Vince Poscente: So I, I thought, well, do what the competition’s not willing to do. I rewrote the script, made it specific to speed skiing, took it to my dad, who was a radio TV broadcaster. He goes, Vince, you’re crazy. Stop this. So I took it to my mom and I said, mom, would you read this? And she said. Up for speed skiing. She goes, is it safe?

[23:39] Vince Poscente: And I went, what’s safer than luge? So I had my mom’s voice on an audio hypnosis album called skiing with the wind specific to speed skiing, which is straight down the side of the mountain. Zero to 60 miles an hour in three seconds, 125 miles an hour in eight seconds. No turns. There’s a speed trap at the bottom, the length of a football field.

[23:58] Vince Poscente: It takes you a second and a half to cross that distance. And to have an audio hypnosis album specific to speed skiing with my mom’s voice. And then the sensory deprivation float tank gal says, I just installed underwater speakers. Perfect! So I took my sensory deprivation float tank sessions and overlaid that with an audio hypnosis album with my mom’s voice specific to speed skiing.

[24:20] Vince Poscente: When you do what the competition’s not willing to do, you create this domino effect that you could explain to your competition what you’re doing and they would go, uh huh, what? You know, because when you lean into this, the solutions become so evident and so powerful and filling up that 2. 2 hours a week and added meditation and just hypnosis.

[24:42] Vince Poscente: I got everything. You just you name it. It was filling up that time. As much as possible and more mental training and less physical training, which was what the competition wasn’t willing to do. So it, and it worked ranked top 10 in the world after two and a half years. So the gold dot ended up changing a year prior to the Olympic games.

[25:01] Vince Poscente: I’m the fastest speed screen in the world and the Olympic champion. How’s that one. That had an emotional buzz, standing on the highest podium, listening to your national anthem, feeling the weight of a new medal around your neck, you know, biting it, that taste, touch, sounds, whatever. And so a year leading to the Olympic Games, that was the gold dot.

[25:19] Vince Poscente: And I’ll give you a little insight here. In my keynote speeches, I don’t tell the audience what the end result from that gold medal run of the Olympic Games was. Yes. Ranked top 10. Yes. Going into the gold medal run. Yes. The guy before me misses the world record, but 0. 2 miles an hour. I’ve been going two and a half kilometers an hour faster than him.

[25:40] Vince Poscente: You save your best for last. I’m not just going to break the world record. I’m going to do annihilate it. And what color metal are you taking home when you annihilate a world record? Yet I hit a bump and show the video and the audience watches this in, you know, in this video is real time, but isn’t that life, right?

[26:00] Vince Poscente: We all hit bumps. How many times in your life have you won, right? Just maybe a handful, but in your life, how many times have you not reached your goal or whatever? Hundreds. We’re not defined by the bumps we hit. We’re not defined by the goals we reach.

[26:16] Jim Harshaw Jr.: But that’s only true if you’re willing to dream big, aim high, set the goal, because I think a lot of people are afraid to say, I am the number one in the world, I’m the Olympic gold medalist, because that’s Well, wait, what if I’m not, then, whatever it is.

[26:34] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So you weren’t, but you, you were close. You had everything lined up. You was as close as you could possibly get to doing that because you had that vision. Right. I mean, because you had the courage to actually believe something that was, to be honest, a little absurd, recreational skier to, okay, go Olympic gold medalist.

[26:53] Vince Poscente: Well, yeah, I, I’m 100 percent on board with that. I’m also going to add that I’m now a dad. Well, I’ve been a dad for 27 years and there’s one thing I’ve taught my kids. Just one. And you asked them, they would say, well, what advice would your dad give? And it’s never make a decision based on fear. And so. If the decision is, well, what if I hurt, get hurt?

[27:19] Vince Poscente: Or what if I feel bad or what if I’m not safe? Well, then mitigate the fear, mitigate the opportunity to get hurt so that there’s more safety, minimize the risk and optimize the opportunity. I mean, there’s all sorts of ways to rationalize it. Everything people listening to this, if you don’t make a decision based on fear, just never make a decision based on fear.

[27:40] Vince Poscente: And we can truly shock ourselves with the outcomes that end up happening. In talking about outcomes that end up happening,

[27:48] Jim Harshaw Jr.: you are not only an Olympian were one of the best in the world at what you did. You were also a New York times, bestselling author. You are also a hall of fame speaker. You’ve led Himalayan expeditions.

[28:01] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What makes you different? I mean, have you. Just what we’ve been talking about for all of those, or have there been other things? I mean, what, what makes Vince different? Like any one of those would be, uh, you know, highlight of anyone’s life.

[28:16] Vince Poscente: Well, you know, a couple of things come to mind is number one is when I was 21 years old, ran into the Australian national parachute champion, and he convinced me to come down to Canberra and skydive.

[28:31] Vince Poscente: The second jump. Now this is a static line. There’s no tandem jumps. You’re on your own. The static line deploys the shoot. The second jump, the chute did not open and going towards the earth. I mean, the chute was out, it was wrapped in the ropes, but I remembered the emergency procedures that he had taught earlier that day with, there’s a yellow ring, you take your thumb through the yellow ring, you extend your left arm.

[28:54] Vince Poscente: You deploy the main chute, you’re back into free fall, take your right hand, extend that cable, and it deploys the reserve chute. And in this case, it worked quite well at that moment. I realized that I could handle any kind of prep, like from the days following, you know, when you think about something, maybe it was a car wreck or some, some significant activity.

[29:16] Vince Poscente: And I realized I could handle any kind of pressure, right? It was just evidence. So I had that advantage. A few months later, I paid 5 for a fortune teller to look at my left palm. And with these kind of foggy eyes, this old Asian guy, he looked at me kind of, I don’t know if what he saw, but he said, what do you want to hear?

[29:39] Vince Poscente: And I went, well, what do you see? And he looks and he goes, Well, uh, it looks like you don’t make it past 40 and I went, Oh, so I have a deadline, right? So between that and the deadline, what makes a person go for that? That, that experience. Those experiences led to the Olympic experience. And then there’s one more.

[30:02] Vince Poscente: A friend in high school had passed away. I was 16. She was 17 or so. Her name is Jill Kudrick. And all of us went, she had heart failure and it was incredibly sad. She would light up a room. It was May. She died on a Monday from heart failure. On Friday, we’re at the funeral. And it’s a lesson that defining moments.

[30:29] Vince Poscente: Moments of emotional intensity equals defining moments reveal decisions that we will make at that time and some decisions work for us and some of them are so fundamentally much of an inflection point that I made a decision to try everything at least once. Do everything at least once, as long as it’s moral, ethical, and legal.

[30:51] Vince Poscente: And to have Jill’s death create that impetus, that inflection point to try everything at least once, that’s why I tried luge and that’s why I tried speed skiing. And I’ll add one fourth one to answer your question in the longest version possible. It’s called the asshole theory. And the asshole theory is that a buddy of mine, I had crashed in a speed skiing race.

[31:16] Vince Poscente: And I was shaking. Like I went, I qualified on my butt through the finish line and qualified for the next round. And so I was now on my second set of skis, not my best skis. Cause my best skis were destroyed from this crash at a hundred plus miles an hour. Nervous. And he had, his name is Laurent Marichal and Laurent pulled me aside and he could tell I was nervous and said, Vince, you got this.

[31:43] Vince Poscente: And I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. He says, no, no, no, no. You got this. Look. Do you know what the asshole theory is? I said, no, he points at a guy that’s on the track, just about to go. You see that asshole over there? Yeah. If that asshole can do it, so can you.

[32:00] Vince Poscente: All right. Okay. Got it. So how did the New York times bestselling book happen? All those four things. How did the, uh, Speaker Hall of Fame thing happen with Zig Ziglar, Augmandino, Jim Rohn? I was one of the youngest inductees at the time. How did that happen? I didn’t do it on purpose, but I did have a new gold dot after the Olympics.

[32:21] Vince Poscente: I’m the top 10 speakers in the world, right? There’s no rating, as you know, speakers. There aren’t. But I, that was a, I had an emotional buzz to it and all of a sudden I’m marching on stage with getting accepting the award for the hall of fame for speakers in my late thirties. I mean, this curiosity that we all have, we’re all curious at a very deep, deep level.

[32:46] Vince Poscente: If we lean into that curiosity stuff shows up, if you’re not making any decision based on fear, the stuff that shows up means that you’re going to use the mathematics of opportunity means you’re going to open a door and go, Oh, there’s two more doors. Why don’t I open that door? And so that all plays out, man, who knows what’s next?

[33:05] Vince Poscente: I don’t know, but I know something, something’s waiting out there and I’m just opening doors for the listener.

[33:11] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I think this is like one of those episodes you got to listen to a second time. And you’ve got to do something with this information might be too much. This is gold, you know, no pun intended, obviously with the gold dot, but this is, this is fascinating Vince for the listener who, who’s bought into what you’re saying, first of all, can you recommend, let’s say one or two of you, but I know you’ve written quite a few books will be one or two of your, your books you would recommend.

[33:37] Vince Poscente: Well, the New York times bestseller that I wrote is called the age of speed. But it was more of a concept book for the time because I refer to the blackberry as the crackberry and all that. So let me pick out the two I’ve mentioned already, the ant and the elephant, which is prescriptive, aspirational in nature, really understanding how the conscious and subconscious mind works, and then absolutely make your second book The Earthquake.

[34:02] Vince Poscente: Because The Earthquake is, we all suffer some sort of setbacks. Uh, some of us are, those are massive with somebody listening, lost their job or lost a child or got bankrupt or some sort of devastation that rocks us to the core and we don’t know how to get our footing. That is the book I wrote for. In fact, I wrote it and it’s perfect for veterans because veterans have left the military.

[34:31] Vince Poscente: Their life was laid out for them. They’re what they had to do and accomplish. And now it’s just feeling like one of those. Things in the outside of the car wash or the, you know, the automotive sales where it’s just flopping around it, it can feel so untethered, you know? So anyway, I would say the ant and the elephant and the earthquake would be a good, if they go to my website, I see all book orders and I’ll sign the book for them if they want to, they want a copy.

[34:59] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Very cool. Excellent. Excellent. We’ll have Vince’s and it’s just vincepacente. com if I’m not mistaken. Right? Yeah. Vincepacente. com. We’ll get you there. P O S C E N T E. com. So you can buy the books there. Vince for the listener who’s bought in and wants to take an action item away from this, what’s one thing that they can do in the next, say 24 to 48 hours to take action outside of buying, buying a book or books.

[35:22] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What’s one action item they can do right now.

[35:24] Vince Poscente: Here’s one, make a list of without thinking, just list of all the things you’d like to accomplish. And everything from, let’s say, run a marathon to create a business to whatever, and make a list, make sure there’s at least 25 items on there and don’t edit, just write it down, even if it seems ridiculous, pick out the one that scares you the most and open the door behind that one, poke at that one, look at that one that scares you the most, and I promise you, I promise you on the other side of that is a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment and curiosity that it has been scratched.

[36:05] Vince Poscente: There is something waiting for you to circle, but don’t think about what you’d circle. Like you can’t edit, you can’t edit. You just write 25 down and then, uh,

[36:15] Jim Harshaw Jr.: no thinking.

[36:16] Vince Poscente: Yeah,

[36:17] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I’d do that. Wow. All right. We’ve got our marching orders. Everybody listening, you know what to do next. Vince, thank you so much for making time to come on the show.

[36:26] Vince Poscente: Jim. Uh, thanks for bringing me on. I, when I got the email, I was like so excited. Ruben it’s said, would you be interested? And I said, hell yeah, that sounds perfect. Yeah, you’re doing great. You’re a great listener. Yeah. It’s just awesome. So keep it up. Yeah.

[36:41] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Well, great to connect with you, Vince. Talk to you soon.

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