Speaker 1: 0:12

First, I think for anybody that's thinking about mental toughness, I wanted to share that in my mind, I've really always conflated mental toughness with discipline, and discipline is what Ben talks about when he talks about the prize fighter day. Right, discipline is doing what you said you're going to do, when you're going to do it, and keeping that promise to yourself. Mental toughness, in my mind, is a step further. It's how do you stick with the discipline when life decides to punch you in the face? And so, as I reflect on mental toughness today, I want to share a few stories from my career thus far in my life thus far and how I think I have placated well to pushing myself through some mental toughness barriers.

Speaker 1: 0:54

But as I share some of these stories, I want you guys to also know that I'm a human, just like you're human, and there's been plenty of times where I've let negative self-talk get in the way longer than maybe it should have, and I haven't necessarily broken through those walls as fast as I could have. But we're always working to get better, and that's exactly why you guys are watching this today is it's in the pursuit of being a better human being than you were yesterday. So let's dive into mental toughness. Happy to share a few of these stories with you guys, and then I'll leave you with some reflecting notes and we'll go from there. So let's dive in so.

Speaker 1: 1:24

I think one of the areas in my career that I've had to tap into mental toughness a few times has been the idea behind people supporting your success in theory but maybe not supporting your success in practice. And I'm in an incredibly blessed position now because I've insulated myself with circles around me that are great friends, great mentors and great coaches of mine, like Ben, that will support my success regardless of the level of success that I'm achieving, even if it means surpassing them in the level of success that they've had. And I want to pivot there for a minute specifically to a story that I can remember, where I was hanging out at a happy hour on a Friday. I had left the office early, I had some meetings to get to later in that afternoon and I was sitting down with these folks that I would consider to have been mentors of mine or managers of mine back at the time and I was having some early success in my career. I'm very blessed.

Speaker 1: 2:23

I run and operate a financial planning practice. We operate almost like a fractional CFO for the clients that we serve and we were having a lot of accelerated growth. We were bringing on bigger clients than we had ever seen before, Our revenue numbers were growing pretty expansively and in the middle of all of that I had to make some hires. I had, unfortunately, to make some hires and fires right, and they always say right hire, slow, fire fast. And I try to kind of take that into my career and give people a fair shot. But if it wasn't going to work out, it's not the right fit for anybody to allow somebody to struggle in a position that maybe they weren't meant for. But what started to happen is when I went to this happy hour, the pivot and the tone of some of these conversations started to change and where some of these meetings before had been very optimistic and very motivational and you can do this, you can do that, you can achieve your greatest dreams. As I started to check the boxes and really accomplish what some of those greatest dreams were, I realized now, looking back and reflecting on it, that that started to become a threatening action, potentially, or a reflecting action for some of my mentors, where they would have to reflect back on themselves and say, well, I'm not doing what Gary's doing or I wasn't where Gary's at when I was his age and for all intents and purposes I don't know if this was necessarily where their head was at, but it almost felt like they were like who are you to accomplish the level of success that you're having at your age in our city, in our town, if I didn't accomplish that myself? And I'll never forget, if I can be vulnerable with you guys for a moment.

Speaker 1: 3:56

We were sitting. It was one of those long bars, high tops. We're all in a higher school than I'm in today and we were just talking about the business and what we were doing and what our goals are, and you know where we were at and what was happening with our clients. And as I would start to explain some of the stuff that I had going on, one of the mentors specifically was like well, you're not smart enough to work with those people. What are you doing, Right? Why aren't you bringing on a senior advisor like myself, Right, Bring me onto those meetings, Let me help you with that stuff. You don't know what you're doing. I sat there for a minute and I was thinking what do you mean?

Speaker 3: 4:26

Right?

Speaker 1: 4:26

I know what I'm doing. But a little bit of self-doubt right Clicked into my brain and I'm like do I know what I'm doing Right? Um, cause, we were having some success meeting with these big clients that again we we never had the opportunity to meet with before. But Ben would share this with you, I'm sure others would as well. But you know, where discipline and opportunity kind of come together is where you have some of your greatest successes. And so you know, we had put together years and months of work to put ourselves in a position where we could work with these higher level clients. But at the end of the day there was still that lack of belief because we just hadn't done it yet and we were just starting to. So there's a comment made like that. And then, you know, outside of that there were some other comments made that I think I've buried deep within my skull at this point, but the one that sticks out to me most specifically.

Speaker 1: 5:15

The first was who are you to be meeting with those people? You're not smart enough to do that. And two, hey man, you're a jerk. Who are you to do all of these things? And I'm thinking here to myself, I'm like I'm a jerk, why am I a jerk? And so I asked that question well, what do you mean? I hadn't heard that before from this individual, and what they were messaging to me was I had fired an individual from my team that was a friend of somebody else on their team, and so obviously there were probably some things being said around the office, but we had to cut this person loose because they weren't meeting the expectations that we had set or the guidelines that we had written out, and we had given them a fair shot, as you should all employees, but it just it wasn't going to continue to be a good fit. So then I had to sit there for a second as well and reflect on myself and say well, wait a minute, am I a jerk?

Speaker 1: 5:59

And it's weird, because you would never believe certain negative things about yourself until you hear somebody that you once respected say them to you, and I would never have thought to myself that I was a jerk, right, I would never have thought to myself like, oh, am I smart enough to be doing this? But when it's said in the moment, there's a lot of doubt that comes from that. And so I remember internalizing that and kind of brushing it off. I'm very non-confrontational. That's changed. I've learned that in business you have to be okay with confrontation sometimes and that's okay if you handle it the right way. So I just absorbed it and internalized it. And I remember going and sitting out in my car calling my fiance at the time, who's now my wife, and I'll be honest with you, I had tears, you know, and I just kind of sat there for a moment in reflection. I said, like what am I doing? What have I gotten myself into? And I just kind of sat there for a moment in reflection. I said, like what am I doing? What have I gotten myself into? Why are my friends not believing in me? What did I do to hurt these people's feelings? You know, am I doing the right thing? Should I even be doing this? And I'm very appreciative because obviously she had poured into me and told me hey, absolutely, those things are not true. You know who you are right, and sometimes you just need a real fan to tell you those things.

Speaker 1: 7:06

And it was also at this point in my career where I had hired my first business coach, and so I had sat down and reflected with them and the biggest thing I heard and I may have said this already at the beginning of this video but people support your success in theory, not always in practice, and I had to stew on that for a minute and start to really learn how to view what people were saying through a specific lens. And what I learned is you have to have a filter system so that, as information is coming in from other sources, you don't just take it at face value, but you really filter it down further to say, okay, whatever these people are saying to me is probably a direct reflection, in some way, of how they potentially feel about themselves, or they just don't understand the arena that I'm in, and so they have to project certain things onto me to help them understand or compartmentalize in their brain how I'm able to accomplish the things that I'm accomplishing. And I'm sure everybody on this call that's a high performer has ran into something like this before in their lives, or maybe you're running into this right now. It's the friends you don't hang out with anymore on Thursday nights or Friday nights because they want to go out to the bar and you're focused on building your business. Or it's the family members of yours that say, oh, why are you working so hard? Right, you know what are you doing for vacation this year and they're not necessarily motivating or pouring into you about where you're heading for your business.

Speaker 1: 8:26

So I share that as just a quick little story and, if anything, a little bit of encouragement to say you know, for all intents and purposes, screw the naysayers, focus on where you're heading, be crystal clear on the vision that you've painted for yourself and know that your vision is your vision. For a reason You've been blessed by God to be a visionary and think about the things that you can accomplish that nobody's accomplished before, and that's a gift. Most people have to see somebody do something to believe they can do it themselves. And so if you're somebody that's chasing a big, audacious goal that's never happened before, it's going to take an extreme amount of mental toughness through the no's, through the trials, through the tribulations, and an extreme amount of mental toughness through the no's, through the trials, through the tribulations and, like my story today, more importantly, from the naysayers that are going to be your friends and family.

Speaker 1: 9:10

Who cares about what a stranger says that doesn't hurt? It's the people that you thought you were close with that can tear you down the fastest. And so what I want to encourage everybody on this call to think about, and what I would tell myself right as I'm looking at this camera and talking to a younger version of myself and I'm going to deliver the same message for an older version of myself that would probably struggle with this still, because it still hurts to this day is just focus on the people in your circle that cheer you on while you're going to accomplish those goals, and then pour into those people and lock arms with the folks that continue to encourage you while you're accomplishing them, because those are your real friends, those are your real mentors, those are your real coaches and those are the people that are going to be on the top of the hill with you one day, while you're looking down on everybody else that said you couldn't achieve what you wanted to achieve. So crush the rest of your summer, dominate the day, and if you guys want to reach out or have any questions for me, I am more than happy to share stories of trials and tribulations.

Speaker 1: 10:08

We've been building our practice now for the last 10 years. We've accomplished some pretty amazing goals that I never thought would be accomplishable before, and I'm blessed every single day to reflect back on the people that have helped me along with that journey, and one of those people certainly has been. So. It's a huge honor and a blessing to be able to pour into some of you folks today, but get after it. Crush the rest of your summer, make 2025 the best year yet and focus on becoming the best version of yourself every single day, one day after the other, better than you left it before. We'll talk soon.

Speaker 3: 10:38

Hi folks, I'm Sherry Wink, very honored to be here today. Thanks to Ben and his team for having me amongst all these other amazing speakers that you're hearing over these few days. For 40 years, I've been a sports agent for celebrities, journalists, doing book deals, marketing, publicity, speaking and all kinds of things related to image and message and helping athletes and celebrities get their message across. Over the many years that that has changed, from the days of just being able to do a book to now being able to post on Instagram and speak and all kinds of things, and I've seen a lot and I've done a lot over these years, and a lot of what I've had to do is deal with the mental toughness aspect of working in sports. I began in sports before any women were in sports and before sports marketing was even a thing, so I'm going to talk to you a little bit about that today. One of the other things that I've done is written two bestselling books, books with Tim Grover. I've written other best-selling books as well, but most recently Relentless and Winning with Tim Grover, that you might be aware of. If you're not, you should read those books because they're all about mental toughness and I work with Tim on many things now and that is the crux of my business that brought me here today.

Speaker 3: 12:05

Mental toughness is such a complicated thing because it's not the same for anyone, for everyone. It may mean something different to you than the next person who's watching this. You may struggle with the mental toughness to lose weight while you totally crush it in the business world, or your business might be needing some mental toughness, but you've got everything else together. You may deal with mental toughness in a relationship, but you have other parts of your life that are totally on point, so it doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. What it really means is what do you need to do up here to get this dominating your heart and your emotions and your fears and your failures and things that are stopping you from getting to where you want to be? How do you put your mind ahead of your feelings when you need to? That is mental toughness at its core. A little bit about me, and then we're not going to talk about me anymore.

Speaker 3: 13:06

As I said, I began in sports marketing before it even existed. It was a really long time ago and nobody knew what that was. So I said, oh, I'm going to start an agency for athletes and we're going to do book deals, and people were like what, how People are going to pay you for this. Like what is that? You should work for a big agency. You should do something else. You should do this, you should do that. Why are you even in sports?

Speaker 3: 13:33

You don't know anything about sports, which was completely true, and I saw an opening in a market that I felt like I could impact. I had worked for a publisher and I felt like there was a hole in this. And the real story is really long and I'll spare you, but it had a lot to do with seeing a space that nobody was filling and people were coming to me as I worked in the book publishing world to do sports books and I saw an opportunity. So it created two opportunities to push through mental toughness, one being there were no women in this business and two were all the people around me saying, no, that's not a thing. You could be so successful doing something else. So I'm going to be successful doing this and I didn't know if I would or not, obviously, and one thing led to another and I had a lot of failures and I made a lot of mistakes and I pushed through it and I pushed through it, and what I learned from it is you have to be able to.

Speaker 3: 14:36

You know close out what people are talking to you about. That gets involved in the mental aspect of what you do. You know people think about mental toughness like it's just one ongoing Instagram post, right, you can flip through your social media and there's all the gurus and all the geniuses many of them who will probably be here at this seminar talking about mental toughness, and they all have their own experiences with it. It doesn't mean they're all right for you, but you cannot achieve or obtain mental toughness by listening to people's messages. You have to experience it yourself. You have to go through something and come out the other side knowing that you succeeded at it.

Speaker 3: 15:21

And it isn't possible every day, but every day you require the ability to push through something. It's as simple as getting up and having the mental toughness to say I am going to the gym today. Or the mental toughness to say I'm going to make that phone call that I'm dreading. Or the mental toughness to say I need to get out of this relationship, or I need to elevate my business, or I'm not going to be intimidated by what's about to happen to me in this meeting. All of those things are degrees of mental toughness and it's all how you apply them to your life Every day, every decision, and it's not a question of hard decisions or easy decisions. They're all decisions and they all have to be made, and you need to make them with what you know and not what people are telling you and the belief in yourself If it doesn't work out, you're going to be okay.

Speaker 3: 16:13

So my business as an agent is about negotiating. I negotiate deals every day. I get deals every day. I lose deals every day. I get rejected every day. I'm literally in the business of rejection. You might be too, depending on what your business is. Most businesses require some degree of rejection. How do you handle that? How do you embrace? Okay, this one didn't work, this didn't happen. Do you fold up? Does it become a terrible day? Someone asked you later how your day was. It was a disaster. Was it really a disaster or did you just get the blueprint to figure out what might be next for you? That's mental toughness If you have the ability to look at a situation, a negotiation.

Speaker 3: 16:59

Maybe you're trying to get more money on your job. Maybe you're trying to just bump yourself up to the next level. Maybe you're trying to get more money on your job. Maybe you're trying to just bump yourself up to the next level. Maybe you're switching careers. If you have the ability to look at the situation as instructive. What did I just learn from this? What do I need to do different? It's not all about crushing it. It's not all about dominating. Those are nice social media messages, but it's not the reality of our everyday life. And if you're going to be mentally tough, you have to be in for the long haul with yourself. Trust yourself to embrace the days that just don't go your way and know that it's not a disaster. You're getting up again the next day and you're still going to have the same questions or issues getting up again the next day and you're still going to have the same questions or issues.

Speaker 3: 17:52

So embrace the idea that you are mentally strong enough to tune out the noise, turn out the chaos and get through whatever is standing in your way right now one way or another. You don't have to share it with others. You don't have to tell other people how great you are. You don't have to post your results. You don't have to brag about it. You just have to know here that you are strong enough to figure it out, and you may figure it out in a day, a week, a month. You may change gears completely because you just didn't figure it out. That's mental toughness. I hope that, whatever you experience watching these great speakers, that you accept the things that they're telling you that you can do, put aside the ones that aren't for you and find the messages that really resonate. But at the end of the day, the only person that can teach you about mental toughness is yourself, and I wish you all the best with that.

Speaker 2: 18:44

Hey, it's former Dallas Cowboy and current business owner, darren Woodson, and I wanted to talk a little bit about being mentally tough, because I think when we talk about football players, we always associate football players with being tough on the football field, not so much on the mental side, but just being able to handle yourself and run into each other and tackle and catch the ball and those type of things. But I would tell you, being mentally tough as an athlete normally starts on Monday morning, especially after a loss. I can't tell you how many times after a loss and I'm a three-time Super Bowl champion but after a loss you are tested, your medal is tested, because on Monday morning the first thing you're gonna do is wake up in the morning and look at the person in the mirror and that person in the mirror is gonna tell you and reflect back on what happened the day before and it's either you get over it or you don't. But there's going to be reminders in these landmines all day long after a loss, because the first thing you're going to do is you're going to get in the car because you got to go back and watch yesterday's film with the rest of the team, so you're going to get in the car and the radio station is going to be criticizing you either you personally or your team on Sunday's performance, and it is brutal half the time. You know the Stephen A's of the world, the ESPNs, the NFL networks, the local radio stations. Yes, you got to get over it, you got to move on.

Speaker 2: 20:20

And then when you get to your facility, where your practice facility is, you're going to watch the day before his game and the coach is going to have that clicker and he's going to go and criticize you in front of all your colleagues on your bad steps, the misplays, the touchdown you gave up, all those negative things that happened. He's going to be critical and it's not going to be a casual critical. It's going to be some yelling and screaming and probably some cussing going on at the same time. And then, tuesday morning, pretty much the same thing. You're probably going in on a day off just to get your body right your hands, your shoulders, everything, your beat ups. You're getting in the cold plunge, you're getting in the hot tub, you're doing all the little things to get prepared for Wednesday's practice. And Wednesday you start to practice for the next game. Thursday same thing, saturday, same thing, and all the way through that week you're preparing not only mentally but physically for that game on Sunday.

Speaker 2: 21:25

So here's here. It is about mental toughness. You have to overcome you. Monday morning, after a big time loss, the first person that you have to overcome is not outside, it's within, because the person in you is a coward and doesn't want to face the music, doesn't want to face hearing all the criticism, doesn't want to deal with all the negative talk from your family, your friends and armchair quarterbacks yes, you, the armchair quarterbacks. You don't want to hear all that, but you got to overcome it. You got to put it in the past. It's over with. Deal with it in the past. It's over with, deal with it.

Speaker 2: 22:03

Number two you better have a process in place. If you have a ritual that you go through every single day, that will help you. If it's getting up in the morning at a certain time, if it's your workout at a certain time, eating the right foods, doing all the little things, making sure you call mama on your way to practice, doing all the little things, that is a routine that you can stick with. That is key. And number three you got to forgive yourself. It's that simple. If you forgive yourself.

Speaker 2: 22:37

That's half the battle, because you're not going to win all the time. I don't care if it's on the football field or in business. You're going to get your butt handed to you every once in a while and you're going to have losses. That's just life. It is what it is. Be resilient, bounce back and take the next step. See, I've lost a ton of games. I've won three Super Bowl champions, but I've lost way more games and had to deal with being resilient and bouncing back from it, because not only are you dealing with self, but everybody else is watching you, wondering how you're going to deal with it. So, being mentally tough, three things. I'm going to keep on saying it.

Speaker 5: 23:44

Deal with you, have a process and already are, and that when we remember who we are, we can tap into the divinity that is flowing to us and through us so that, as an extension, we can create and have and be and do and achieve absolutely anything and everything. But I'm going to be the first person to tell you that I wasn't always the way that I am today, creating impact and supporting and inspiring and connecting and, more than anything, reminding people of the divinity that is them. What I can share with you is that I always was being prepared. I was always being qualified In the same way that you, right now in your life, regardless of circumstance, you are being prepared. You are being qualified. In the same way that you, right now in your life, regardless of circumstance, you are being prepared, you are being qualified. You see, you have a dream or a goal or a desire on your heart to have and to be and to do something, and whatever it is that you're going through right now, regardless of how hard it might feel to you, how debilitating it could be at times, it is the pre-qualification, so that when you overcome that, when you work through that, you gain a tremendous amount of a vantage point of information that you can then take, turn around and teach and share. You see, I don't believe that our lives are exclusively about us. Our lives are about that, when we have lived through what we've lived through, we now have a skill set to turn around and teach and share and uplift or inspire, which is what makes teachers like Ben Newman so incredibly beautifully and profoundly impactful out and in the world, as are you.

Speaker 5: 25:17

And so my story, where I would like to begin today, was lying in my bed staring at my ceiling fan. And I don't know about you, but I was having one of those moments where I was staring at the fan and just thinking man, how did my life get this bad? How did I end up where I am? Have you ever had that? Where you've been in a moment, lost in a thought, in a daze, and where you really profoundly and deeply start to ask yourself is this even your life?

Speaker 5: 25:44

Because I felt so disconnected from who I was, what I was doing, that I felt like an observer in somebody else's experience. I was angry beyond belief. I was frustrated. I had built resentment from over four years, from a business partnership where I felt like a victim. I felt like people were belittling me, that I wasn't being seen, supported, celebrated and everyone was taking advantage of me, and that emotional baggage of constantly being angry and resentful and frustrated. Well then, let's add guilt and shame, because I turned into a miserable person. I was always mad, always angry, always screaming, shouting, cussing everybody out. I had placed all of my value and worth in how everyone around me interacted with me, and if they didn't see me and validate me, then it was an internal job for me to be able to now hold them accountable for not giving me what it is that I wanted.

Speaker 5: 26:44

Lying in that bed, I had the remembrance of why I had gone into business with my business partners in the first place and to give you some more context, I want to tell you one of my business partners was my best friend and my brother. Years back, he and I would play in the sandpit as kids, moving our little toy cars, creating roads and homes and worlds. My mom would come outside, sometimes in the summer at eight, nine o'clock at night and yell come on, guys, come inside, take a shower, get the dirt off you, we need to eat and we just didn't want to stop playing. We were so immersed in this imaginary world of just being able to create Our lives truly at the time did not come from much. So to be able to immerse ourselves in a world where we could have and do anything felt liberating and felt exciting.

Speaker 5: 27:32

Well, in my early thirties I went to my brother and I said to him bud, you and I are best friends Like we've always dreamed of playing in the sandbox. Why don't you and I go into business together? Let's get back into that sandpit, let's create a world and a legacy to support our wives and our children, and let's you and me do this together. And so we did. We jumped feet first into creating something. We brought in an additional business partner that my brother wanted to have inside the business, and I wanted this to be an equal venture where we were just three people, like the three amigos, creating something together with all the best intentions. I gave every single one of us an equal share of the company, even though it was my business, my idea, and I funded a hundred percent of everything. And so the dream turned into the nightmare. And you know, I paused there for a moment because the emotion still comes up in me of how eager and excited I felt, and then shocked I was, that my emotional state created such a profound shift so fast. I remember that it was almost as quickly as the ink dried on the contracts giving everybody an equal share.

Speaker 5: 28:44

My brother, my best friend, who was my confidant, who was my greatest cheerleader, my greatest supporter, all of a sudden became somebody who was very competitive. He started to attack me, he started to challenge me. He started to say those are stupid ideas and I don't want to do that and you're too bullish and you're too strong and I don't want to do this idea and that'll never work in the real world. To two, three days later, him walking in saying I have this idea and it's amazing and we should move forward with it, and it literally being the idea that I had come up with two days prior. And then having that feeling of like are you kidding me? Like how did we go so wrong?

Speaker 5: 29:21

And the more this happened, the more I started to get angry at my brother. And, to add insult to injury, I was paying my brother's salary, I was paying our business partner's salary, but I wasn't able to draw a salary because I was literally going into my savings every single month and paying, and paying and paying. And then our company grew to over seven figures in a tremendously short amount of time. But their spending habits and choices and decisions that they were making without consulting me added to the injury, because they would buy things and they would spend money on stuff without these discussions, and at the end of the month I would then have to come in and continue to fund the company or we would lose everything. And no matter how many times we spoke about it, no matter how many rules we put in place, no matter what I did, it just continued to get worse and worse and worse. And so not only did I spend four years working for free, not only did I pour in every single cent that I had, my savings account was now dwindling.

Speaker 5: 30:20

And so the anger, the resentment, the frustration, the guilt, the shame of how I was reacting, how I was responding, who I had become, was so debilitating that that night, lying in my bed staring at that ceiling fan, thinking God, like this cannot possibly be my life, like I'm going to lose everything, it wasn't now just about losing my business, it wasn't just about losing my income, my savings account. I was now real fear of losing my life, not for fear of taking my life, but for what would the quality of my life be? What would the health and the wellness factor of this compounded anger and resentment growing in my body? You know, another memory that came to me, lying staring at that ceiling fan, was my mom saying to me as a child that we would never allow to use the word hate in our home, because she would say we are God, we come from God, we're an extension of God, and that God is in everything. You split the rock and God is there.

Speaker 5: 31:20

And then to say hate, that would be the omission of God, because hate is the opposite of love. And so if you say that you hate something, you're saying that you are acknowledging the absence of the presence of God in something which cannot be possible. And so we would have to say words like dislike, or dislike immensely. And as a child I disliked immensely Brussels sprouts. Love them today, but I genuinely disliked them. And so I would start out with the feelings of disliking my brother. But then I just got to the point where I outright hated him. I hated my business, I hated my life, and I started to really hate me.

Speaker 5: 32:02

And lying there, I had a conversation with myself where I said enough is enough, man, because I realized in that moment that I had been outsourcing my emotional state to somebody else. I had been outsourcing my happiness, my joy, my fulfillment, my freedom. I outsourced that somebody else had to be a certain way in order to make me feel a certain way, and I made the commitment that never again would I give my power away. And so I didn't lie in bed any longer. I got out of bed, I sat on the couch in my bedroom and I took some deep breaths in and deep breaths out, and deep breaths in and deep breaths out, and a memory of a book that I'd read at least 10 years prior, of the ability of breathing in calm white light through the top of the head down. A integrated spine is bringing in calming white energy into the body. And then, when you release stress out the center of the chest, you're imagining releasing stress that your body actually starts to become more calm and you create a separation between you and your emotional state.

Speaker 5: 33:06

And so I just breathed in and out, and in and out, until I felt better. And I did this day after day after day within waking, until every single morning I was able to tap into, connect to that feeling of calm, and I would drive to work. And by the time I got to work, an hour later, sitting in traffic, I was already mad and angry and resentful and frustrated, remembering all the things that they had done and said. And I wouldn't get out of the car until I had breathed in and out and became calm. Within a few hours of being at work, I would be frustrated and triggered and mad again, feeling the same as I had been for days and months and weeks and years before. And so I would go back to my car and breathe in and out, and in and out, and for a while I became the standing joke at the business. Where's Rudy? Probably in the car, doing his meditation. And I just constantly focused on breathing in and out, because every time I left that car or got up off my couch I felt peace, I felt relief and I no longer felted the anger, the pain and the resentment of what I'd been feeling.

Speaker 5: 34:08

Little did I know that that exercise was the most profound shift or change in my life, because at the time I was being prepared, I was being qualified of what does it look like to live like the majority of people on the planet, 75% of people living today, are in chronic heightened stress 75% of the time. That means every waking minute of every waking day, for 75% of the people on the planet are in that state. When you're in stress, you lose logic, reason, inspiration, intuition and creativity. You lose the left and the right brain function, which is necessary to have a logical or rational thought. And in those moments of heightened stress we react to the default of who we used to be, pulling from the automatic program of reacting and responding, which was why for four years, I was mean and angry and resentful and frustrated and the minute I saw something going wrong I would attack because my brain wasn't thinking with logic and reason.

Speaker 5: 35:03

I was reacting and responding, and reacting and responding based on how I had been reacting and responding. And the more I reacted and responded, the less reacting and responding. And the more I reacted and responded, the less my life changed and the more that I did it, the more compounded that emotion became, until eventually I started breathing in and out and in and out, and found calm and clarity. And in the calm and the clarity I reconnected the left and the right brain. I felt the logic and the reason, the inspiration, intuition, begin to flood into my mind. I did this every single day until I became proficient at it and within less than three months, my company absolutely skyrocketed. Profitability went through the roof. I stopped having to put money into the business. One of my toxic business partners left. He gave me my company back without having to be bought out. My brother, who was my best friend, once again was my best friend. Now I want to be very clear. At no point in time did my brother change. I changed Internally. I changed how I was feeling and as I changed how I was feeling, he changed how he was reacting to me. When I no longer reacted to anger, resentment, frustration, using the old program of how I was, I now, all of a sudden, started to react and respond as who I wanted to be, and when I changed how I wanted to be, everything around me began to change.

Speaker 5: 36:25

My exercise for you is to create separation between you and your emotional state so you can create coherence in the brain, so that you can stop reacting and responding and start intentionally, carefully, calculatedly planning who do you want to be and how do you want to feel. I have taught this exercise to billionaires in their offices in New York City, to everyday entrepreneurs around the world, and that is to create separation. By imagining your emotion is surrounding you like a suit of armor. I want you to conjure an image of the Michelin man, and that imaginary bubble around you is your emotion. You are not your emotion. You are the awareness to the emotion.

Speaker 5: 37:04

The very first step in the Empowered Life Method is to become aware the emotions are indicators and that, if you can unzip that suit of emotion, take three steps away from it. Turn around, cross your arms, look at it and ask yourself what was I feeling and why was I feeling that way? You have now created separation and space between you and the emotion. You are no longer the emotion, you are the observer of the experience and in that moment you have your power back. You've got logic, reason, inspiration, intuition and creativity and from this bondage point, you now can make an intentional decision about who do you want to be, breaking and dismantling the old program of how you used to be. If you adopt this into your life right now, I guarantee you it is going to create a profound shift in your life.

Speaker 5: 37:52

This was my story, but it could be your story too. Within a matter of months, you could be living a very different life, having a very different experience, by no longer reacting and instead being intentional and moving forward with all of the faculties that God gave you to have, to be, to do and to achieve as the incredible, powerful, creative being that you came here to be. I hope I get to hear some of your incredible love stories. Do share them with me as they unfold. Thank you for your time today. I love you guys.

Speaker 4: 38:22

Do you know that we all have an internal thermostat set in childhood that determines how much good we allow into our lives and the length of time we allow ourselves to feel good? Do you also know that each one of us has a reflex, a unique, deeply subconscious way that we self-sabotage usually kicks in the moment that things are going too well. It doesn't matter how talented, smart or capable someone is, whether I'm working with an executive, an entrepreneur or a singer in Nashville If they don't understand this thermostat and learn to catch the reflex, they will always pull themselves back down. Now my goal today is to bring your awareness to this and share how you can spot the early warning signs that you're about to sabotage your own rise so you can catch it, you can override it and you can move forward without missing a beat. But before I do that, I have to just give a huge thank you to you, ben, for having me here today. It is an absolute honor to be part of your event. Your strategies have been incredibly instrumental in my own rise and they always will be. Thank you for having me. So let me tell you all how I first noticed my own rise reflex. You know patterns are so important. If you can spot patterns in yourself and others, you can predict the future and also you can change it.

Speaker 4: 39:44

I was asked to speak on the largest stage I had been on to date. Just happened to be in the height of COVID Live audience in front of me, broadcasting in 15 countries, tens of thousands of people. I get to impact when the world's shutting down. We deployed ourselves into Vegas. It was my first big debut and it went really well. Unfortunately, almost as soon as I was done, I started to feel the symptoms of COVID. I got COVID right away, didn't think much of it, because the world had COVID and everybody who was around this that didn't have a mask on I didn't have a mask on on stage ended up with COVID too. The next year I was asked back. This time I really crushed it, moving more into myself on stage. I got to share my messaging and my methodology. The energy was so high coming off of that event. It was a time to move into massive action. It was a time for me to rise and go for it.

Speaker 4: 40:48

I unfortunately ended up with COVID again, this time way worse. That thing knocked me down for weeks. I was down for over a month. I get back up. I get back to life. Six months go by, I launch my podcast as planned. I'm moving forward.

Speaker 4: 41:08

I am now on site interviewing somebody that I had looked up to for a really long time. When the interview was over, he wanted to hang out. We casually hung out afterwards for a couple hours, and, after he got to know me, understand my background and see how I think and move, he asked me if I'd be interested in being an advisor on a big project. What an honor. People that I have looked up to for a long time are now starting to see me as a peer. That wasn't the only place that that sort of thing was happening in my life. Things were shifting for me. I was moving from a place of being the person behind the scenes supporting others to now stepping forward and being seen.

Speaker 4: 41:52

I returned from that trip. Guess what? I started to get sick. This time, though, I knew exactly what was happening. I wasn't sick. This was my rise reflex kicking in, showing up with a very important assignment to cool down the energy and force the momentum to fade, but not this time. I didn't know how I was going to do it, but I knew I had to find the source of its fuel and starve it.

Speaker 4: 42:18

You know, your rise reflex might not be illness, it may be injury. You may do something silly and always find yourself in pain. It may be injury. You may do something silly and always find yourself in pain. It might be procrastination. It might be worry. It might be drama. You might start a fight. You know, oftentimes, most oftentimes, it shows up in a different category of life. You start winning over here. Your relationship starts to break down. You know you gamble, so it's hard to spot. It could be hard to spot at first.

Speaker 4: 42:50

Procrastination was another way that my rise reflex has shown up over the years. I get a verbal yes and then I would wait to do the next step, like just send the contract already. Christy, right, it took months to put a strategy together and get the attention of the local producer for the Today Show. I wanted to be the go-to high performance coach that they called and I got it. And then I delayed sending the information and booking the date for the first time that I was supposed to be on live TV, being so busy. There were other times in my life that I'd be so busy with the wrong items that when it was time to do the thing that I was really good at spend time to figure out my messaging. I didn't have any gas left in the tank.

Speaker 4: 43:39

Now I see this show up with my clients in different ways as well. I had a client once that every time he had a big financial win I'm talking tens of millions of dollars he'd end up in a major fight with his wife over something silly, bizarre, wouldn't make sense to the outside person, right. Winning sometimes tens of millions of dollars and then coming home and picking a fight with how much she spent on groceries that day and picking a fight with how much she spent on groceries that day. I had another client that would celebrate big and drink too much after the smallest signs that he was starting to move into momentum. You know, at a time where he should have his head down, stacking more of those wins, as Ben says, he'd create chaos. It would cause him to feel embarrassed and want to hide At a time where he should be at every single event he's at home hiding.

Speaker 4: 44:32

The rise reflex is your internal snapback mechanism. It's how your body, mind and nervous system react when you start rising beyond familiar emotional settings, ie your thermostat. Your thermostat is the level of success, joy, visibility or love that you're comfortable holding. Go beyond that. That reflex is going to kick in. It's going to try to bring you back down to what's familiar, not what's possible. It could show up as illness. It could show up as overwhelm. It could show up as procrastination, drama. You're picking fights, indecision, conflict. It's not because you're not ready, it's because your subconscious says this much good doesn't feel safe to me.

Speaker 4: 45:15

So step one is determining where your thermostat was set. So let's go back for a minute, because your internal limit was learned, it was not chosen. So take out a piece of paper or your notebook, wherever you journal, and if you need to pause this and think about each one of these questions, I would encourage you to do so. Just three, just three to get you started and ask yourself when was I made to feel bad or wrong? For winning, for being confident or for shining? Think back to early childhood your family, your friends, school, sports, your first jobs. Were you ever meant to feel bad or wrong for winning, for being confident or for shining? For winning for being confident or for shining? Now, sometimes, sometimes it's actually. Oftentimes it's subtle, right, it could be as simple, as you're sitting around the breakfast table and mom asks everybody for their report cards and little sister didn't do so good and she went first and she gave her grades. But you got straight A's. And when it came time for you to say that you got straight A's and you worked your tail off to achieve those straight A's because it didn't come easy to you when you looked up to see the look on your mom's face, your mom was actually focused on your little sister and your mom's reaction on her face to your little sister being even more embarrassed now is what you learned. That's the moment that you learned. That's where your thermostat was set. You know my own example. This carried with me for a long time in life. Now.

Speaker 4: 47:05

There'd be times in my childhood that I would speak and it was as if I didn't even speak. I remember like, thinking, like did that? Did I just think? Did I say that in my head or did like the words actually come out? Because there was no reaction, there was no attention. In fact, it was almost like I got ignored. And so for years, decades, you know, I felt misunderstood, I was afraid to speak up. You know I see things differently, I process differently. My perspective is different. I'm a problem solver, like this lesson. I'm going to get to the root of it.

Speaker 4: 47:40

A lot of people don't want to see, or maybe they couldn't accept, or maybe they couldn't understand. I don't know the reason. All I know is the reaction and that set my thermostat as I climbed the ranks in corporate America. If anybody knows my story, I climbed the ranks through the medical device industry and I left six years ago. I pivoted because it wasn't the right thing for me anymore. I'd done everything that I could do there and I just wanted something different. But as I was climbing and I'd be in the rooms with you know, with all the executives, my superiors would see, they'd see that I had something to say, but I would set her to say it. And all of that stemmed from childhood. That was my tamp, because I'm like do people understand the way that I think? Like this isn't going to land right? Am I going to get that same reaction where nobody says anything? What does that even mean? I didn't know what it meant.

Speaker 4: 48:31

Second question what beliefs about success or happiness did I absorb from my environment? Did anybody around you say that don't be too much. Money changes people. Stay humble or you'll get knocked down. Don't get a big head. Those people with money, they think they're better than us. Was that ever said in your environment? Is there a chance that you absorb that?

Speaker 4: 48:56

And the third question I'd like you to ask yourself when something good happened, was it immediately followed by pain, rejection or chaos? Now, those are the moments oftentimes, that the thermostat got locked. In the example above earlier, that I shared money and fighting. You know that person that would win millions of dollars, that would earn millions of dollars, and then go home and start a silly fight. Well, that was what his childhood home was like. Money and fighting went together. Were you abandoned? Did your light shine so bright that somebody abandoned you? Somebody didn't like that and they pulled back from you? Or was there a divorce or something else that you tied in during that time? Were you number one for a moment on a team somewhere, but then came down from that? Was there ever a time in your childhood where something good happened and then, immediately after, there was pain, rejection or some type of chaos? You'll likely find a moment that became a message and that message has been calling the shots ever since. Whether true or not, it's your child mind's interpretation, whether true or not, your mind believes that it's truth and it's been calling the shots ever since.

Speaker 4: 50:22

It may take a little time and a few conversations, sometimes with my clients. It takes a few conversations, a few passes. Sometimes with my clients, it takes a few conversations, a few passes for us to figure out the moment or the moments. And that's okay, it's totally okay. You can write these questions down. You can come back to this. This next step will allow you to spot it right away. All right, so step two in this whole process is to spot the rise reflex warning signs. Let's bring it into the present.

Speaker 4: 50:57

If I were to say to you what do you do when things start to do? What do you do when things start to go really well? Do you get sick, like me? Do you get injured? Do you delay the next step in action? Do you overthink? Do you pick a fight? Do you get sick like me? Do you get injured? Do you delay the next step in action? Do you overthink? Do you pick a fight? Do you ghost opportunities? Do you suddenly start to doubt everything? Do you tell yourself this isn't the right time? Do you create drama? Do you stay busy with everything except? Do you have excessive worry? Do you find something to worry about?

Speaker 4: 51:26

I had a client that something huge would happen, something big, and he should be able to be in that moment for a minute, for a minute, and he couldn't Like. As soon as he would settle in and be proud of what he did, his mind would race Like oh my gosh, I haven't talked to mom. Oh, what about my daughter at school? It was like he would have he'd have to have something to worry about about my daughter at school. It was like he would have he'd have to have something to worry about.

Speaker 4: 51:55

Now ask yourself are there any warning signs? Do you get physical tension in your chest? And it's okay if you don't. I think you'll start to notice these things over time. But before you start to, before you pick the fight, you know, before you delay the action, do you physically feel something, a tightness in your chest? Is there a flood of what ifs that go through your head, an urge, a sudden urge to control everything? All of a sudden, do you have to clean your house? Do you have to go for a walk? What is it for you? Those are your rise, reflex, early warning signs. Your job is to catch them before they take the wheel.

Speaker 4: 52:30

Tips to override. Once you spot the reflux, here's how you override it and you stay in forward motion. Name it out loud, just like I did. Whoa, you're not sick. Christy, you're not sick. This is your rise reflux, trying to protect you from what's unfamiliar. Guess what? I didn't get sick. That third time Didn't get sick. Naming the pattern creates distance between you and the sabotage.

Speaker 4: 52:57

Number two breathe before you bail. The urge to delay or disappear is usually a nervous system spike. It's not a real threat. Breathe, move, reset your body before you respond. But you have to respond fast. Step three is do the next brave step quickly, send the contract, make the call, say yes. The longer you wait, the stronger the reflex is going to get. You could ask yourself this question what would the future version of me do right now? Then go do it.

Speaker 4: 53:28

Number four environment matters. It really matters. Get around people who are doing it anyway, people that have overpowered their own rise reflex. Ben Newman's bootcamps are filled with people. Whether they know it or not, they've overridden this reflex many, many times and they will continue because they're putting themselves in the right environments. Get a coach If you want to go fast and consistently overpower this.

Speaker 4: 53:53

It's imperative that you have someone in your life that can spot these moments and walk alongside you as you move through them. It's uncomfortable. Remember, all of this lives in your subconscious. True self-awareness, in my opinion, is when you let somebody from the outside in so much easier to see so much easier for me to even see in my clients faster than it is for me to see in myself. A coach or somebody from the outside. They can spot it fast. It could be a friend, it could be a spouse. It's up to you.

Speaker 4: 54:29

Number five, let people celebrate you. Sit in the wind for a moment, not forever, but for a moment. You have to train your system to normalize expansion. This is how you raise the thermostat by holding the heat. You're not alone, my friends. We all have this. Your system is protecting a version of you that no longer needs protection the rise reflex. It's here to keep you safe, but that safety is outdated. So your job now is to catch the reflex, override the snapback and rewire your new normal. This reflex is not going to go down without a fight. It's been keeping you safe for a really long time. I always say she's been well fed. But if I stay in it, I know I can win it, and so can you. These are the moments where mental toughness is taken to an entirely new height. It is time for you to rise past your own limits. I believe in you.

Speaker 6: 55:33

Mental toughness Forum 2025. Thanks for being here. Thanks for being a part of this. Ben Newman, thank you so much for the opportunity to be a part of this. Ben and I's journey goes back damn near a decade now, and it's been incredible to see the influence that Ben's events such as this have on those individuals such as yourselves that take the time to really invest in your growth and your development, and it's really neat to be a part of this and be able to share a little bit today with you some ideas and framework around growth and maybe a bit of a non-traditional sense, intertwined with some experiences and some stories that I think many of us will be able to resonate with. But I want to start with the most important thing, and that's, you know, appreciation to you, ben, for putting this together and appreciation to each of you for listening to this and taking the time out of your schedules to focus on your growth, focus on your development and the impact and the ripple effect that that has for those around you as a result. And so, when I thought about today's topics, a lot of different things came to mind, and I'm thinking to myself all right, I got to keep this tight, I got to keep this focused and I got to create value for each of you as part of this messaging, and I kept coming back to one very specific theme and that's the idea of getting better right, and each of you are listening in and taking time to get better. And so what does it look like to get better on a consistent basis, versus just these windfall events that maybe occur in our lives as a result of a lot of work, as a result of a lot of effort, but things that can be intentionally done to create consistent and rewarding growth? So that's what we're going to talk about today. So let me give it a little bit of context around you know what it sounds like, looks like, feels like to achieve.

Speaker 6: 57:10

So think about the things as we're starting, maybe, our professional career or as we're growing up, or even as we start to get into leadership and different responsibilities. So much of the focus is on getting to a certain point right, getting the job with the company, getting the first promotion, getting the first bonus check, getting the president's club recognition rewards these are all incredible moments. Think about outside of work. Think about with your fitness. Maybe it's a race or a PR that you're able to accomplish, think about in your personal and social lives. You find your companion, you take these amazing trips, you have the wedding, you have the honeymoon my gosh you get to have the joy and amazingness of having a kid. Like these incredible life events and we look forward to them, and rightfully so, because they're amazing events, and we highlight them and we promote them and we talk about them.

Speaker 6: 58:00

And then what? Oftentimes, when we get to the point of a quote-unquote arrival, it's a feeling that's much lesser than we expected. It doesn't have the sense of completion or maybe even like recognition or reward that we expected. It's just we get to a certain point and then the now, what question comes up. It's a question that comes up in so much of the work that we get to do. Right, but now what? What happens next? And that's the part I wanted to focus on in this discussion today. Now what?

Speaker 6: 58:35

So many of you have accomplished so many incredible things. You've achieved more than maybe you even thought you'd be able to achieve, or maybe others around you thought you were capable of achieving. And for others, you're still trying to figure it out. Right, you feel like you haven't scratched the surface yet. Let me say this I don't care where you're at on your journey, you're just scratching the surface, and if you have that mindset and you have that belief, you're going to be able to accomplish not only a whole lot more moments of joy and quote unquote arrival, but how they feel will be vastly different because of what it means to get to that point. Think about a vacation, right, a lot of us focus on and we think about, we work up to the vacation myself included, by the way right, and so you put in all this time, effort, energy, and then you get to the vacation. You have the vacation, you get recharged, maybe you get to relax, maybe you're thinking too much about your work, maybe you're thinking about too many other things, but then you come back and guess what? It's not any different, it's in the same spot. It's in the same place, unless you choose to make it be in a different place. There's this thought process that when you get to these moments, it sort of solves itself. Nothing solves itself. Things are solved as a result of continual effort.

Speaker 6: 59:55

Focus, as Ben says so well. Intentional focus, right, what that means. So I want to ask yourself where is your intentional focus? Where are you focused on getting better. Now I'm a guy. I've worked with Ben. We've had a partnership and coaching that we've done together. Ben was a coach for me before that. I've known Ben for a long time and he is one of the most disciplined human beings you will ever come across. His intentional focus is one of his greatest strengths. You don't have to be that disciplined where you're doing unrequired workout I don't know how many days in a row now is for that man but you do have to have an incredible focus and discipline on the things that matter most If you want to achieve at a level that you're going to have a sense of pride in, and so to do that, you got to ask yourself each day what does better look like and then, most importantly of all, what categories are most important for you to get better. Now I'm a guy that has had a lot of different visual motivations, reminders, all these different things.

Speaker 6: 1:00:59

I call crutches, like moments to check me in, make sure I'm focused, make sure I'm where I need to be, where my feet need to be, as they say and what I've really come to the conclusion of is that I need to focus on the core areas of me that not only influence what it is that I'm trying to do, but influence those around me. So I want to share with you a little bit of what I found to be a really powerful formula of not just moments of joy, the vacation, the recognitions, the achievements but moments of fulfillment, because here's the difference Joy are moments and again, not to get me wrong, those are incredibly powerful. We want as many of those as we can possibly find, but fulfillment has staying power. Fulfillment has a longer shelf life. It stays with you because it's a continuation. We're not arriving, we're continuing on to the next stage, to the next chapter.

Speaker 6: 1:01:50

I get to work with track and field team members at times and one of the things I find fascinating about track and field we all focus on the finish line, especially sprinters. Right, you focus on well, you got to sprint as fast as you can to that line and you win the race and that's true, by the way. Of course they do. But what's so fascinating about some of these elite sprinters? They don't talk about just the finish line, they talk about the through line, the continuation. You never see a sprinter, by the way, stop at the line, they always run through it.

Speaker 6: 1:02:17

But I feel even more impactful as they have a center line of focus, the areas of focus of where they're getting better. In the case of them, it's form, it's effort, it's discipline. Think about your own. What are the things that are meaningful for you? I'll give you my own personal example. When I really assess the things that I know that are really impactful not just for me, my family, my clients, my business I come to three core areas and I feel like if I'm putting effort into getting better in each of these, I can have quote unquote, the best day that others perceive or the worst day that others perceive, but I know if I'm doing these three things every day, focused on getting better, that's creating fulfillment. So for me, it's relationships. Number one Am I working on improving my relationships with my spouse, with my children, with my family, with my friends, with my clients? If I'm focused on relationships, I'm creating fulfillment, I'm creating impact.

Speaker 6: 1:03:13

Second one health. What am I doing every day that my future self will thank me for? Daily decisions, dozens of them that are contributing to what my future self and health will look like. Am I getting better in that area Doesn't mean that I eat perfectly, far from it. Love candy, love dessert, love to have a good drink, all of those things, but am I, as a theme, focused on getting better? Am I doing so in a continual way?

Speaker 6: 1:03:40

And then the third pillar I like to say triangulating the sense of growth and fulfillment is am I adding value? Am I adding value for my clients, for my family, for those that I care about in my environment? Because that creates a ripple. By adding value for others, by extension, they could create value for those around them. Now, I'm not saying that these should be your three. I'm not saying that the idea of just better on an isolated piece is what you should do. What I'm trying to highlight, though, is the impact that that can create, the intentional focus that that creates and, most impactfully of all, creating not just moments of joy in your life and your achievements, but creating fulfillment and creating an example that others are able to look at and be inspired by and be driven by.

Speaker 6: 1:04:25

Again, this journey isn't just for ourselves. This is about what we get to create for those around us, and the greatest fulfillment comes from what we get to create for those around us. It's almost like that moment in your life where you go from like you can't wait for your birthday, right, because you can't wait for the gifts that you get. Because it's your birthday, it's your day. You get to celebrate you. And then you get to that point where you realize I want to celebrate others, the gifts that I get to give, the opportunities that I get to create and experience with others. For others, that's fulfillment.

Speaker 6: 1:04:59

And in business there's a very similar recognition that elite performers identify with.

Speaker 6: 1:05:04

They get to that point where they realize the greatest fulfillment comes from the impact that they're creating with and for others, and that requires us getting better every single day.

Speaker 6: 1:05:14

So, no matter where you're at on your journey today, no matter how you arrive to this today, no matter what stage of that race that you're on, know that there's better and that know if you can demonstrate your intentional focus and you could put your effort and your energy into getting better. You're, by extension, going to create more fulfillment, not only for yourself but for those around you, and that has a long shelf life, that has a ripple effect that extends far beyond you in a way that's incredibly rewarding. Appreciate you being a part of this. It's really special to be back in this program, being able to represent what the Mental Toughness Forum is all about. It's about creating value and serving you and, by extension, helping you serve those around you. Thank you so much for the opportunity, ben. Thank you so much for the opportunity to each of you, for listening. I appreciate you and excited for the growth and the better that you get to create all around you.