No Athlete Can Win At Your Game
Pick the problem you need and practice being the person you want to become.
“Don’t tell me how rocky the sea is, just bring the ship in.”
—Lou Holtz, football coach
I enjoy answering these interview questions posed by Authority Magazine because they’re so uninformed. Their questions perfectly profile people who don’t understand. If their questions were more intelligent, you’d wonder whether anyone got it. But being as uninformed as they are makes it possible to put misconceptions in the cross-hairs.
The topic of this interview is “From Athlete To Entrepreneur: 5 Work Ethic Lessons & Business Skills I Learned As A Professional Athlete.” As I wrote my answers, I felt like a Border Collie running a flock of sheep while throwing hand grenades.
Question: What or who inspired you to pursue your career as a high-level professional athlete?
Answer: Don’t look to professional athletes for insight or inspiration. They are not allowed to apply their athletic skills to their life problems. They are captured performers.
The real athlete is the person who invents their own game, plays by their own rules, and moves beyond their limits. The real athlete is probably someone you’ve either never heard of, or might not recognize because they don’t seek celebrity, and now play a new game.
Like a person who understands money as a resource, the real athlete doesn’t collect trophies. They use their skill for their advancement, not competition, and not for your entertainment. We call the player who repeats their act on command an athlete, but I don’t consider them to be. They’re a performer. They have all the same problems you have because they cannot define themselves.
Rock climbing became a sport in the 1980s. What used to lie outside of normal pursuits has since been brought indoors and made competitive. What once attracted wanderers and inventors has become a sport for racehorses and recidivists. What started as a meditation is now a race.
The mentality of rock climbing changed from the poetics of Ralph Waldo Emerson to the skewered butterfly of David Beckham. The sport gradually ceased to be transformative and is now a symbol of the illusion of liberation. Illusions will always be more popular than reality. You can buy illusions; you can’t buy reality, you must create it by your own hand.
Q: None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Was there a particular person who you feel gave you the most help or encouragement to be who you are today? Can you share a story about that?
A: The coach is a shadowy figure who holds you to a higher goal. The coach insists you define your sport as a metaphor for your spiritual worth. They insist you reach your highest potential despite your sense of limitation. A coach understands that winning, like money, is a metric and not a goal. Self-awareness is the goal, and only you can define it.
The most famous rock climber is only known to rock climbers who study the sport. He wasn’t well known at the peak of his career because few knew what he was doing. He was so far ahead of what everyone else was doing that he was off the radar.
John Gill combined rock climbing with gymnastics. Rock climbing was not a sport when he started climbing in 1953. The prevailing mentality was simply getting to the top to conquer the cliff. No one had studied climbing in relation to human physiology, and no one knew how to prepare for it. Much like we life our lives, climbing was seen as a way to get to victory with no understanding of the process.
Gill studied climbing microscopically. He looked at what limits progress both on the rock and in our bodies. He developed exercises and routines and applied them to the microscopic issues of friction, adhesion, leverage, and endurance. He made famous the one handed, one finger pull-up, along with many less dramatic exercises. Most notably, he climbed alone and, to a large extent, invisibly.
Where today’s climbers aspire to professional engagement and celebrity endorsement, John Gill approached climbing in the way The Buddha approached meditation. He was largely ignored because what he was doing was unrepeatable, except by the very few who were thinking beyond the limits of what was possible.
“Gill's approach to bouldering – artistic style being on par with difficulty – was rarely followed by climbers of his generation and is considered unusual today, difficulty remaining paramount. He also practiced bouldering as a form of moving meditation.”
—Wikipedia, from “John Gill (climber)”
In a sport whose challenges were rated in difficulty from 1 to 10, Gill invented a rating system that started where everyone else’s rating system ended. His system went from one to three, but no one knew what to make of it because few except Gill could get past one. As he became better known, his achievements pushed the modern rating system from a top level of 10 to 12.
Gill reached this level in 1961 on a climb he called Thimble, which he climbed free solo, without a rope. Another climb of equal difficulty wasn’t done for another 6 years.
Today, 60 years after John Gill climbed Thimble, climbing grades reach 15. This has come with new technologies for adhesion, new styles of climbing, and new forms of protection. I never met John Gill, but I climbed among the leading climbers of the 1970s who were inspired by him.
Q: Can you share the funniest or most interesting mistake that occurred to you in the course of your sports career? What lesson or takeaway did you learn from that?
A: My most transformative experience came on my first day rock climbing. I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing. I had never climbed a cliff before, and all that I knew about it was that you tied a rope around your waist and climbed.
There was no one around to tell me where to go or what to do, so I just headed up. After climbing about 100’ reality got the better of me when I reached a place where I had to think. Before that point, my movements were fluid, inspired, and focused up. But at that point, I looked down and the depths caught up with me. I was 10 vertical stories up a cliff with nothing but air between me and the rocky ground.
My pulse began to race, my hands began to sweat, and my body started shaking. Two choices were clear. I could fall and die, or I could reclaim my composure and proceed. As I was only 13, I had little preparation for this rather mature choice, but there were no alternatives. I often think of this situation in my work with other people who are facing their own dire choices.
As a psychotherapist, my work concerns itself with personal transformation. Many of my clients are high performers looking to break through to higher levels. Our culture mistakes counseling for therapy, seeing the need to change as a dysfunction. We see coaching as a kind of cheerleading, urging you on to do more of the same. It is not recognized that coaching is therapy because growth is always transformative.
"(Coaching) is a psychological game, it really is. You need to be right on top of your game with them. You gotta know what to say, and when not to say it... That’s what makes good coaches... Where does it come from? I don’t know. Half the time I don’t even know what I’m doing…"
— Lou Giani, Distinguished Member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, from The Learning Project (2019)
I have clients and colleagues who are or were athletes. They have a particularly courageous attitude and no shortage of motivation. Those that come to me as clients are looking for direction.
The athlete never thinks of themself as a loser, but being a winner is not the opposite. Being a loser is a label you put on yourself, or allow others to put on you. An athlete knows not to accept that frame of mind. Despite this, the competitive athlete looks to the game to define winning, and this is their Achilles’ Heel. The game can confer the label of winner, but the essential meaning of winning you must assign to yourself.
This is the pitfall of the athlete: you think you know the game you need to win, but the game you’re playing is not the game you need. The finish line is an illusion.
Q: OK, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the core focus of our interview. As an athlete, you often face high-stakes situations that involve a lot of pressure. Most of us tend to wither in the face of such pressure and stress. Can you share with our readers 3 or 4 strategies that you use to optimize your mind for peak performance before high-pressure, high-stress situations?
A: Progress requires several key changes in frame of mind from that of a winner to that of a growing person. It’s hard to say what is most important, as that is relative to what each person is most lacking. But here are a few qualities without which your evolution will halt.
Honesty: Most of us think we’re honest but we’re not. Honesty is not what you say that you know, it’s what you don’t want to say and have avoided. The older we get, the more dishonest we become while, at the same time, getting closer to the truth. The more attached you are to who you’ve made yourself to be, the less able you are to reveal yourself. “Coming out,” which is a term previously associated with one’s sexual preference, is really the act of self-disclosure. If you’re not willing to admit that you’ve lived your life in pursuit of other people’s illusions, then it’s unlikely that you’ll see yourself clearly.
Discernment: If you’ve achieved a measure of honesty, then use it to judge what’s valuable. Don’t pursue what’s dishonest, and don’t engage with people who are dishonest. You can start small, by making small requests and suggesting small truths, but know that this must grow to something that fills your life. You must become fully and insufferably honest, at least that’s how you’ll be seen by most people. As you reach that point, you’ll better understand why the people who are the most insightful say the least, and you’ll be one of them.
Persistence: Things don’t get easier, they get more meaningful, and you must accept that. As you grow in strength and sight, you see farther and your burden of responsibility grows. In fact, as you see how extensively dishonest and obstinately undiscerning people are, the greater is your obligation to grow yourself and help others grow themselves. With this comes the recognition that winning was never the point and has no point. The point is growing and pushing for growth even when you see little reward for it. There are no trophies for making the world a better place, but it will nourish you. Be persistent.
Self-love: It’s common in lists of important things that the most important is the last. That’s because it’s the most problematic and uncertain. Most of us don’t have much self-love and are not sure what it is. It’s the thing on which you build your self-worth, and you can only be worth as much as you can love yourself. It’s hard to define self-love. It’s one of those things that you know when you find it. Like the myth of the hidden treasure, you may never know if it really exists, but everything depends on your looking it.
Q: Can you tell us the story of your transition from a professional athlete to a successful business person?
A: Never succeed; that is an end game. Success means “game over.” Instead, see success in the playing, not the winning. This applies to all spiritual endeavors, which are the only meaningful endeavors there are.
If you get sucked into a winning mentality, then you’re destined to either fail, or find life to be empty. No one can give you what you’re looking for.
My clients with this winning mentality are struggling on both points: they can’t win enough, and their winnings are unsatisfying. In spite of all they’ve accomplished, they’re still on a tether and they’re someone else’s cash cow.
Take seriously the myths and stories of our age. You’ll find them stated simply in movies, and with more complexity in novels. These are the lessons of our age which permeate our culture. Jack and the Beanstalk is the story of counting your resources, making flawed decisions, and meeting the opportunities this creates.
Find yourself in stories like Oppenheimer, and see yourself in our fascination with apocalypse. Many popular themes have turned ultra-violent, and this is not a fascination with the past, it’s a dread of the future.
The problem with our culture and your life is that we are not directed toward or rewarded for what’s good for us. This is what real evolution requires: individuals applying honest discernment to find their own way and guide those who are around us.
At the risk of offending the Christian Right and the atheist Left, you are Jesus Christ. Maybe you’re only a small-J Jesus, but either way your work is cut our for you. What you need is what we all need, and don’t expect other people to appreciate you for it. Begin with your friends and family, and build community if you can bear it. If it feels easy or if you’re being rewarded, then you’re not doing it.
Q: What are some of the most interesting or exciting new projects you are working on now?
A: I prefer impossible projects. That way, I don’t have to change direction and I don’t have to discard anything I’ve learned.
In the near term, I focus on my clients whose problems seem life-long. I try to make a difference, even if I only make a small difference. Sometimes I make a big difference. I feel like I’m pushing on a door and then the whole wall falls down. I’m left thinking the whole issue was a stage set, and my efforts were a joke, but people tell me it’s no joke so I must believe them.
In the long-term, my interests are scientific. I appreciate having a library of resources and, like a pig with truffles, I root through academic garbage looking for small rewards.
Small progress in big problems can be consequential. Much of what I’m looking for is simply to reeducate myself. Much of what I’ve been taught is wrong, which is why these problems have gotten big.
In physics, quantum mechanics is like an ingrown toenail. Its confusions have remained unresolved for so long that physicists cannot walk straight. In the way that insanity used to be the uncle in the attic, the confusions of quantum mechanics have taken over the whole house.
In neuropsychology, I have a useful model for how the mind works. It’s such a useful model that I almost don’t want to develop it further and I have little idea what kind of fruit it will bear. I’m happy working as a solitary researcher letting my psychotherapy practice pay the bills.
In my personal life, I have two ex-wives and two growing sons. Their stories are not over and never will be. I have a couple of siblings who think they’re living their own lives, but no one lives their own lives. We are inextricably bound regardless of our distance. I reserve a certain amount of free-able space in my life for these people to reenter.
My work is personally rewarding so I do nothing else. I get plenty of real life experience dealing with my clients, and don’t want any more of the problems socializing brings. I’ve arranged my life so that I can spend the next 30 years alone on my personal projects.
Q: Do you think your experience as a professional athlete gave you skills that make you a better entrepreneur? Can you give a story or example about what you mean?
A: Mountaineering is a solitary sport. Rock climbing was sportified, but mountaineering is untamable. It’s the difference between being an explorer and being a professional. A few people have been seen as professional explorers, such as Alexander von Humboldt in the early 1800s and Charles Lindberg in the early 1900s. It’s questionable whether it’s really possible to be both because a professional sells their time, while an explorer uses it for themselves.
There is a fundamental mismatch between business and innovation. Most innovation goes unrewarded, and much of what’s rewarded is not innovative. The most rewarding thing that humans have done is wage war, which is why we keep doing it. War is the paradigm of offloading risks onto others while collecting rewards for yourself.
A successful entrepreneur oversells the promise of reward while under exposing the risks. Perhaps the best way to do this is to engage investors emotionally. Steve Jobs sold the personal computer as a world-changing event in a way that was similar to Henry Ford selling automobiles. And both did change the world. We have all been rewarded, but it hasn’t been as simple or risk-free as originally advertised.
Q: Ok. Here is the main question of our interview. Entrepreneurs and professional athletes share a common “hustle culture”. Can you share your “5 Work Ethic Lessons That Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Athletes”? Please share a story or an example for each.
A: First, don’t be an athlete. The athlete is too reward-directed and honest. You need honesty for yourself and your insight, but you can’t sell honesty unless you’re a psychotherapist.
Caution is essential for safety but overrating yourself is essential to garner support. In our paranoid society, even an honest self-appraisal will be seen as overrating yourself.
Don’t be impetuous and don’t avoid what’s coming to you. You fabricate your life lessons and many of them seem monstrous. They are your monsters and they have exactly what you need. The more you avoid them, the bigger they’ll grow and the longer they’ll hang around.
Have a plan and pace yourself. You can change the plan at any time, and you can modulate your pace to suit the territory. Do your best to keep moving, and don’t let failure get you down. Every failure is an opportunity.
All my brash mountaineer friends are dead or should be. The reason that Yoda is small and has big ears is because you don’t need to be athletic but you do need to be sensitive. Always keep an eye on the long-term consequences of your decisions.
Never be an asshole by your own standards, but it’s fine to be an asshole by other people’s. If you’ve made a lot of personal mistakes in the past, then you’ve got a lot to work with. Invite for the next round all those who have written you off. They probably won’t accept, but you’ll be free to wash the slate clean. Always try to keep a clean slate, you need it as a place to write the next chapter.
Q: What would you advise a young person who aspires to follow in your footsteps and emulate your career? What advice would you give?
A: Be careful and fastidious. Don’t waste time.
Pursue small opportunities, and make the largest mistakes you can afford. Don’t expect the obvious rewards.
If you do what other people won’t, then you’ll achieve what other people can’t.
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I'm sure it was designed for social-media campaigns.
I've had to chuckle, your answers make the questions look even more superficial and unreflected, as if they were designed to yield content suitable for social-media campaigns. Lots of interesting tidbits and insights there, thank you. It's interesting to learn about what motivates you in both scientific endeavours and your psychotherapy practice.