Why The World’s Best Athletes Stop Trying To Be The Best

(soft music) - Hi there, welcome along to another episode of High Performance. It's a Wednesday, so it's myself and Damien sitting and chatting, hey buddy. - Hi mate. - Hi mate. - Very well, thanks. So we've got a bunch of guests who'll be gonna hear from previous High Performance guests. We'll share some interesting clips from them, and they're all around a similar theme. And the theme is, why the world's best athletes stop trying to be the best. And it's not just us talking, and not just us hearing from former guests. We're actually gonna be joined by someone, and you're gonna speak to a man who can give us so much richness and depth and information in this space. So first of all, you should tell us why people should stick around to hear your conversation with Ben Crowe. - Well, we're coming up for Wimbledon, Jake, and this is a man that Andre Agassi recommends. This is somebody that Ash Barthie were with before she won Wimbledon. Steph Gilmore, the eight-time world surfing champion credits him with Transformer in her career, is an Australian performance coach. His name's Ben Crowe, and he's never told any of his clients that they're the best. - Now, as a couple of parents who spend their lives telling our kids they're the best, they go and do great things. That kind of seems counterintuitive, or it's not the kind of thing we hear a lot when it comes to trying to get others to reach their own version of High Performance. And why does he not tell his clients that they're the best? - Well, he helps them separate who they are from what they do. - Nice. - Now I know that might sound simple, but most athletes, most people have never actually done that. You know, think about, one of the first conversations you'll meet when you meet with strangers, what do you do? Not who are you? Do you know what I mean? And the cost of not doing this is exactly what we're going to talk about with Ben today. - Okay, well, before we get on with the episode, just to tease you excitedly, whether you're walking the dog out for a run or driving the car, here is what you can expect from Ben Crowe, a bit later on. He's a little teaser. - Look about the side, David. In your building book about separating what you do from who you are. Why does so many of us find that such a difficult thing to all couple? - In recent times, yeah, the world's have gone so external and extrinsic, money, fame, status and recognition, rather than internal and intrinsic to get to know who we are, the human being that is not the human doing. So we learn, unfortunately, that we believe if we do something and achieve something, we will be somewhat, you know, we'll be somewhat. - Well, before we hear from Ben, we're going to hear from three tennis players who've been on the show, Boris Becker, what a conversation. Joe Conte, one of my favorites, and Colin Nyland, who might not be a name that trips off the tongue, but the conversation we had with him was fascinating. All of them talking about the struggle of professional tennis, what it actually feels like from the inside. And then, of course, we'll frame our conversation with Ben as the antidote to that struggle 'cause that's really what he's there for. So where should we start and why, Damien? - Well, while I was start with Bumbum himself, Mr. Boris Becker, when I was at the Suddhalta, meet with him, you know, when he was in the room with us, and he's charisma, he's sort of forcibly personality, and just his stride of views on the world sort of filled the space in. He was a force of nature, but he was interested in listening to him reflect on his career. When most people remember him winning when we were in 17th, what happened when he reached the age of 25? - Absolutely, because I think that we look at this as well. What an amazing young talent. He went and dominated the world, but as he told us on the show, by his mid-20s, he was exhausted, not physically, although probably also physically, but mainly psychologically. His Boris explaining more. - There was a time in my mid-20s, where I was burned out. I was tired of tennis. And maybe in hindsight, today, I would say, at 25, take a break. Take a year off, see what you want to do. If you're still willing to pay the price to be the best tennis player, you can be, smile the roses a little bit. So I didn't do that. I kept on, and I had contracts. There was responsibilities and so forth. So I played that up until I was 32. Maybe I would have played longer if I would have taken a break at 25. You lose control over your life. And everything is decided for you. You know, some people have good interests. Of course they do. But you no longer can go, okay, I'm tired for tomorrow's practice. You have to give a press conference because you're not having the practice tomorrow. Because the tournament sold the practices. People are watching your practice. Or when you don't want to play tournament, why do you get a fine? Then you have to explain to the world, my shoulder hurts, they go, show me evidence. So you have to go to a doctor. And he has to give you medical. So everything you do is judged. Now, considering all that, I did well a long time. But I think at 25 or so, 24, 25, I thought for the first time, maybe it's time for break because I'm too much. It's about I want to live, I want to have a social life. And I want to be normal. Now that's so interesting because the very thing that gave me everything I ever wanted took away the one thing that he needed, which was the energy to carry on. And I think so often we have a podcast called High Performance. We talk to high performers, but we don't actually really go too deep on the cost of high performance. And that's really Boris telling us that it almost cost him more than it gave him. Yeah, definitely. And also as well, I found it interesting about not having that courage or the confidence to go and say, I just need a break from this. I need to step away because it was almost on that hadonic treadmill of the more we played, the more money we made, the more people once it's a sponsoring. And sometimes that willingness to say I just need to stop this. And that allowed him, that would have allowed him he argued to go and find the pleasure and the passion that it had playing when he was a young boy. And that would have then sustained him to have a far longer second half of his career. I mean, how often have we chat with people that say I wish it had enjoyed it? I wish it had found the moments of joy in what I was doing. And if we get caught on this idea of what's the next achievements, what's next, he could often blind us to what's right in front of us. And I thought that was interesting from what Boris spoke about. And especially given the context of what subsequently happened in his life about the prison sentence that to our conversation we had with him was dominated by him anyways. But he talks about finding the joy in small moments. And I think his career stole that from him. And so many of us are not allowing ourselves to feel the joy until we achieve great things. And it's only when you hear from Boris saying that it was the great achievement that stole joy. Or when you speak to Johnny Wilkinson, as we did, who said he was happy for 30 seconds after winning the rugby world cup. It's a great reminder that we can't create the next generation of young people attaching achievement to self-worth. Well, I mean, I often point to the research of a psychologist called Barbara Fredrickson, who explored this very topic of joy because she argues that an emotion like joy is actually an evolutionary puzzle. Like what does it give us as a species? We understand fear. It gets us away and allows us to survive. But what does joy do? And Barbara Fredrickson's work basically includes that it broadens our perspective and it builds our confidence. So having moments of joy where we can just get off the treadmill and stop and just appreciate where we are, it gives us a sense of perspective of what we're doing, where we exist in the universe. But also gives us the ability to reflect on what we're gaining, what we're acquiring by pursuing some kind of task. And we've actually spoken to a lot of high achievers who are so scared of the moment that the high achievement no longer gives them the high thrill. I think we should talk about this because we were drawn by Johanna Conta. She reached top five in the world, but she told us that age 24, she was crying on her bed, telling her mum, she knew she wasn't meant to be famous and she couldn't understand that what was happening. Please remember, this is someone who is a high achiever from a young age. And as a parent, everywhere I look, I see parents desperate for their kids to be achieving great things at 10, 11, 12, 13 years old thinking that's going to set them up for a great life. I'm afraid to say everyone the messages that we hear on this show tell us quite the opposite. So what was going on with Johanna Conta? Have a listen and let's find out. My parents are their lives in Australia. They racked up a load of debt moving over during the financial crisis while they both lost their jobs. Like it was a whole family dynamic of sacrifice and knowing that having, for me, I felt personally responsible for that. And so I think it was trying to deal with my dream on what I hadn't yet achieved coupled with, well, we're also in this state because of me. Pain times resistance equals suffering. So if I'm in pain, let's say at a 10, but, and I'm resisting at a 10, my suffering's going to be 100. But if my resistance is zero, then my suffering's zero. This idea, Damien, of pain times resistance equals suffering. So if we can make our resistance to anything zero, then our suffering becomes zero. That's not just a formula for tennis. That's a formula for life. Yeah. Well, Albert Ellis, the famous sort of psychologist, talks about so many of us suffer from an excess case of masturbation. And you heard that right. It was masturbation rather than tonne of bivolga. 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Met Ledd e gofo fiwedd usig i cjarweg Head of Bel learn o��d mewn gwsturd, sifio ddwy eioio'm. un i'n gwnw i ang carym生 yr un chellywyr, poledau ideaionsneau hwn, iddeu rhywbeth rwy mharkau stralgain. Mae'n gwaio rhai amdol, ac mae'n gwaio ar angenelfrushad yn garunaid i'n gwaistanau 모rach. So fix y rhoi o關aithu yn amser fwybheny. Gwy success y rhoi o'r mhark AU. Gwy seflyn noneodio recognise namedreggel o drw mynd o jag rôm, ac ffllarwyr yn cael yr programbaeg by síddor diolch gath maethu yn cymych yn ar y fyw energywnaes yw'r gwaio ar y fyw energywnaes a'r gwaio ar y fyw energywnaes a'r gwaio ar y fyw energywnaes a'r gwaio ar y fyw energywnaes 'Dennon Australian Performance Coach' is work with Ash Barty, Steph Gilmore, the eight time world surfing champion, Dylan Old, got two time women and wheelchair tennis champion. He's work with the NBA teams, Australian cricket teams. Andre Agassi anestra Parrell, no less vouch for this person. And I think the key moment here, Daemon, is this isn't someone telling people that they're the best, this is someone telling people the total opposite. Absolutely, I sometimes don't understand, who are they beyond what they do, to separate their identity from the results that they get. And he asks three questions that I think are really powerful. Who am I? What do I want? And how do I want to get there? And what comes out of the process has been proven to win numerous Grand Slums. There's also a nice moment where he asks you a question. Make sure you stick around with that as we hear. Daemon Hughes talking to Ben Crow. We'll be right back after a quick word from our partners. When you and I were growing up, Daemon expectations used to mean things you can control 100%. I can want the sun to come up tomorrow, but I can't control it. I can't guarantee it. There's no expectations that the sun will come up. But today, either because of greed or focusing on what other people think, expectations today, loosely has been defined as something we can't control. And yet we still want to control it, which is also the definition of pressure. So today's definition of expectation is also today's definition of pressure, which is why you'll always hear those two words used together when you're watching sport on the weekend. They'll always talk about this so much pressure, there's so much expectations. Because we've kind of bundled the two words together like these two nasty cousins that follow each other around. And once you realize that, you can't uncouple it, you can't unsee it. So whenever I hear the word pressure, almost always, the person has an unhealthy or unrealistic relationship with what is expected of them or what isn't expected of them. So the quickest way to remove pressure from your life, like right, is very second, is to reframe what is expected of you and I and what isn't expected of us. And thinking we have to live up to someone else's expectations is not our life task. Like that's not our responsibility in life. Like we can't control what other people think about us. So believing we have to, or expectations of outcome that creates outcome pressure. So once you can identify that and you reframe expectations as things I can control, you actually remove pressure. And it's quite extraordinary when people have that kind of aha moment. And so it's, yeah, it's been almost a journey for me to kind of identify where the distractions are coming from. So if we use the example then, because it's very clear before and after with this word, expectation, in the world of Ashbhati, we'll do, describe your work with us. So and we'll start, if you, if you wouldn't mind, Ben, telling us about that claps at the French Open. Like what did you see happen? Yeah, absolutely. So Ash's, this is her first grand slam semi-fine or the French Open in 2019. And she started on fire. She's got her kind of A Game Awards, which was calm, confident, clear, focused, and sharp. So whenever at any moment in a, in a point or in a game, she can go back to those A Game Awards to remind her of the best version of herself. She's five, I love up 40, 15 up in the first set. And suddenly she tightens up rather than lightens up. And there's a rain delay and she gets distracted. And suddenly she loses the point and loses the point. And then she loses the game. But then she loses the next game. And then she loses the next game. Right. And then suddenly, you know, it all spiraled out of control. And then she suddenly she lost the unloosable set. And then she's three love down in the second set. And I distinctly remember when her, when she sits down at three love down in the second set, she, she going back to her A Game Awards, but talking to her after the match, she has this epiphany. She suddenly realizes she's, she almost says to herself, and if you ever see highlights of this game, Damien, you'll see what I mean. She starts almost laughing at herself. She goes, well, don't asch, clearly you're going to lose this match today after being five love up in the first set. But you're letting the conditions of your environment determine your mindset. And she kind of says to herself, hang on a sec. I decide by mindset. Like I decide my attitude. I decide myself what I decide, which is kind of the definition of agency right. It's not what happens to us is how we respond. And in that moment, that epiphany, that perspective shift, she walked back on center court, and she goes, okay, I might lose this match today, but I decide rather than letting the conditions of her environment determine her attitude. And she broke the girl's serve for the first time in nine games. She then held her own serve for the first time in nine games. She won the next six games in a row. She won the set six three. She won the next set six three. And the next day, she wins the French Open, right. And two weeks later, she goes to Birmingham, England. And she becomes the number one tennis player in the world. And she stayed there for the rest of her career. And her life at that moment, right, will never ever, ever be the same again. But if you go back to that moment when she was three-love down in the second set, she had a choice to make. She could have let the conditions of her environment determine her mindset. "Uh-uh, I decide my mindset. "I decide my attitude. "I decide myself worth." Once she realized she had that power to take back control, it didn't guarantee she'd win the match, but it did guarantee she'd be authentic. She'd be able to control the things she could control. And with that perspective shift, yeah, kind of her whole life changed her. - No, I'm intrigued by the A game words that you describe. - Yeah, so we don't work with Aethle. The process, first and foremost, it's kind of, well, really to answer three questions. The first one is, "Who am I?" Where you kind of, she connects with herself. And the words and mantras, the best represents the best version of herself. And makes sense of her story from an inner fan, not an inner critic, right? 'Cause as humans, we're really good at saying what we're not. Not good enough, loved enough, smart enough. And we kind of suck at saying what we are. Like I am, I am worthy, I am enough. So part of the journey was to make sense of her story and to separate what she does from who she is. And realize that playing tennis is what Ashbody does, but it's not who she is. And once you can connect back with the human being, not the human doing, and she can learn to be totally committed, but fully detached and not attach herself worth to whether she wins or loses a game of tennis. Once she does that, the second question she needs to answer is, "Okay, well, I've worked out who I am." Now, what do I want? Like what do I want from this crazy thing called life? What are my goals? What are my dreams? What's my purpose? What are my values? What are my needs? And then the third question is, is how do I get there? What are the tools from a performance point of view that can help me get there? And when we get back to performance mindset, the process is learning to accept the things we can't control and focus only on the things we can control. And she realized that there's so many things she can't control in a game of tennis. The big ones is expectations of others, the opinions of the media or social media or the Australian fans or a coach or a parents. The second one is expectations of outcome. Like she can't control the results, but she can control the process. She can't control the weather. She can't control, you know. So you develop an acceptance list of all the things you can't control. Once you can identify and acknowledge and then accept and let go of all the things you can't control, that acceptance list is this beautiful boundary that creates freedom. You know, freedom to compete, have fun and play. So that's the first part of the process. It is really, because we're so bad at accepting things we can't control, especially athletes, right? That's stubbornness, they think they can control. So then once they've developed an acceptance list, then they develop a focused list. And the focus list is what all the things I can control. And typically there's three things an athlete can control. The first one is intention. Like, you know, what do you want? What's the goal? What's the strategy or what's my role on the team? The second one is effort, like how hard am I prepared to work or train or study or practice? And the third one is mindset. When it comes to mindset, we help an athlete develop a set of words that represents the best version of them in that performance, right? So if Ash is focusing on being calm, it's like medically scientifically impossible for Ash to be anxious at the same time. But the opposite is also true. If she's anxious, because she's focusing on the outcome of this serve, that it's impossible for her to become. So she identifies five words, five A-game states, if you like, that represents the best version of her. And then she practices those words, you know, in training and before matches and in matches, right? And it's more instinctive than anything, but at least she can come back to these anchor words that represents the best version of her. And typically calm and present and confident are words that a lot of athletes use. LeBron James uses those words, for instance. You know, Andre Agassi had these A-game words. And Ash Badi was able to develop her. So at any moment, she could come back to that authenticity. - That's brilliant. Thank you for explaining it. But can we go about question number one, because you talk about this side, David, in your building book about separating what you do from who you are. - Yeah. Well, in recent times, the words have gone so external and extrinsic money, fame, status and recognition, rather than internal and intrinsic to get to know who we are, the human being that is not the human doing. So we learn, unfortunately, that we believe if we do something and achieve something, we will be someone. You know, we'll be someone. And you know, you can blame media, you can blame social media, you can blame materialism or consumerism, but it actually starts in grade three. In most countries around the world, the education system in grade three, that's when grading gets introduced. And that's when kids go from intrinsically playing with numbers and playing with shapes to extrinsic. Suddenly there's grades and suddenly my parents are interested in my grades. Suddenly I'm not in that class anymore. I'm in that class. I'm not in that team, that team. And a nine year old boy or girl, it's too young because they believe from that moment on, they have to do something or achieve something in order to be someone. And the same thing happens at secondary school and colleges. So if we can, and I noticed at Nike, that we did a really bad job of educating athletes, what was real versus what wasn't real. And I saw these athletes get so distracted by extrinsic motivations. And they forgot the intrinsic reasons, these little boys or girl fell in love with sport in the first place. And so, but I noticed at Nike that athletes that went internally, not externally. And Andre Agassi is a great case study. So I'll be to separate what they did from who they were. So their identity became less about being an athlete. And more about their core values. Or their intrinsic motivations around play and purpose and learning and growing and helping others and being part of a team and seeing what was possible. We call these things intrinsic motivations and we can control those, right? But if our whole identity is a human doing, not a human being, then our self-worth was dependent on whether we win or lose a game of tennis, right? That's a lot of baggage to take on the tennis court. It's hard enough to win a game of tennis, right? And that, attaching our self-worth to our results as well. Which sort of leads me into, does two billion stories in your book had laid you to recount for us if you don't mind? That sort of captures that essence of focusing on the intrinsic rather than the extrinsic. Tell us about Roger Federer and then tell us about Staff Gilmore. Yeah, well, yeah, well, first of all, I said, Roger Federer, he fucks his whole life on three words. Humility, gratitude and humor, right? So humility, even if he beat it up, a player, six love, six love, he's just a great, great player. He's loving him in the locker room, right? Really humble. Gratitude, I'm so grateful to be here. You guys are the best. So he's always so appreciative and grateful of his fans and the support. And humor, he'd always have that kind of that beautiful Swiss giggle, right? Nothing to do with playing tennis, but in my opinion, everything to do with him becoming one of the greatest tennis players of the modern era in terms of his perspective about what was important and what wasn't important. So he also got into the play state, as the alterie got, we call it neotny. And neotny means the older you get, the younger you become. Oh, but the other men have a lot of work. Remind you of neotny. Neotny, yeah, it's a beautiful word. It's basically primes as a gene that we have. My father had this gene, right? He was just a larykin from Australia. Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, in my opinion, has this gene, right? That the older he becomes, the younger he gets in terms of his attitude. And one of the reasons I dedicated that play chapter in the book to Nike and to Phil Knight is, because I learned a lot of these lessons, when through Phil and my relationship with him and Nike. But also through the athletes like Roger Federer. But Steph Gilmore, yeah, she was probably the first athlete that I guess all the perspectives she was in the book. I applied them to Steph back in 2012. She just won her third world title in a row. So what you just explained for people that are not familiar with Steph, who she is and her incredible achievements, Ben? Yes, so yes, Stephanie Gilmore is the greatest surfer of all time. She is eight-time world champion surfer. And back in 2012, after just winning her third world surfing championship, she got viciously attacked by a drug addict out the front of her apartment, randomly, who was on ice, an attacker with a hammer and broke her skull and broke her arm. And she sadly went off the tour. And through her parents and through her sponsor, family reached out to me. And we started working together in 2013. And Steph went on this beautiful hero's journey to make sense of that adversity. And it's one of the most beautiful truisms that I know you know very well from listening to your podcast over the last few years. But all my clients know, and I know personally, but obviously Steph knows this truism. And that is your greatest growth always comes from your darkest times. And your greatest learnings in life always come from me almost difficult times. And there's a reason for that. There's a reason your greatest failure can lead to your greatest success. In Steph's case, it unlocked two beautiful superpowers. The first one is humility, because it just grounds you and the beautiful facts of your reality. life sucks the. are the cards I've been dealt, right? It just grounds us, right? She's just been attacked after winning three world titles. She lost her innocence through that process. But then it also unlocks this incredible curiosity. This curiosity to turn this adversity that you're facing with possibility like, okay, where to from here? How do I get through this? Like, you know, who can help me? And that's what led Stephanie and I start working together. But the other reason your greatest growth comes from your darkest times is it also unlocks your core values. Because you got to dive down into some energy source to get you through this, you know, this crucible moment. And it could be love, it could be courage or perseverance or resilience or, you know, positivity or optimism or, but when you dive down to this energy source to get you through this, you're starting to connect with your authenticity. And once Steph did that, she could able to kind of find herself the human being that was not the human doing. And through that adversity, she was able to then work out who she is and what she wanted out of life. When she came back second time around, back onto the tour, her perspective has shifted so beautifully. And she was able to kind of dedicate her surfing to her family and the people in her corner. She found her purpose just beyond achievement. She found the sense of fulfillment in terms of why she serves, which was to inspire other young girls to have the courage to get out of their comfort zone and follow their dreams. And then from that place, she went on this incredible journey and won another five world serving championships. But the great thing about Steph's story, in my opinion, was to win her eighth world title. She got into the play state in the most beautiful way and traded the whole thing as, as, as play as like this fun competition to remove the pressure and the expectations that for a lot of athletes when they become successful, I think they have to repeat that and they often get caught up in that pressure that we mentioned. But as, sorry, Steph was able to get younger and younger and younger, attitudeally and find that play state. It was so beautiful two years ago when she won the world title again. What a beautiful story. I mean, what do you tell us about that play state? Because there's a line in your book that I underlined when I read it, where it said that most adults are underplayed rather than overworked, which really resonated with me. Yeah, I'm obsessed by this word at the moment, because everywhere I go in the world at the moment, it's probably the biggest distraction I see in organizations is fear. And we don't call it fear. We typically call it pressure. And the opposite of pressure is freedom. And the opposite of play is fear. Most people think the opposite of play is work, but it's not. It's fear. And as humans, we're designed by nature to play. Like it's pre-verbal before we learn how to speak. We're in this kind of playful. And there are a lot of the few other species that are the same as homo sapiens. But today we've become play deprived, which is a bit like being sleep deprived. You know, when you sleep deprived here, you know, cranky and frustrated, well, it's the same when you're play deprived. That there's incredible study in the US, where they studied the most hard and criminals in the criminal system to see what they had in common. And the number one ingredient they had in common was that when they were kids, they were play deprived. And I've been working in sport for over 30 years. And I've never seen a dynamic right now. The amount of athletes whose job description is to play, but they're not in the play state. They're in the fear state. I caught up with emotional pressure or our comp pressure. And plays, then also the number one ingredient why anyone in the world goes to work. This study's been going for over 100 years. And I think it was the 1980s, the University of Rochester, and then Harvard, Stanford. And they were able to codify the top six reasons why anyone in the world goes to work. And what I find so fascinating about this study is the number one motivation is play. Now play is not table tennis. Play is finding the time and space for creativity and experimentation of flourish. Purpose number two, as in the play that you do, the work you do has a reason and that reason really matters. There's real purpose and meaning to it. And the third one is potential. Potential means learning and growing and getting outside of your comfort zone. The most amazing thing about those three intrinsic motivations, I mean, is we can control those three intrinsic motivations. Like what does play look like for Ben Crow today? What does purpose look like? You know, what does potential learning and growing look like? The next three, extrinsic motivations, we can't control them and they actually decrease productivity. And they are in order, emotional pressure, which is expectations of others, outcome pressure, which is expectations of outcome. And the sixth one is inertia. Inertia means I haven't got anything better to do. I might as well go to work. I'll get my paycheck, but I'm not going to rock the boat. I'm not going to be political. I'm just going to do my job and, you know, and just go about my thing. So if you can help people get back into the play state and organizations getting back into the play state, the most incredible freedom to, you know, compete, have fun and play. And in the book, I talk about the three types of play that organizations can, and the simplest one is curiosity play. Just simply making questions celebrated rather than berated like it's political suicide for me to ask a question if I'm not allowed to. Yeah. If you make curiosity and asking questions as the most, and I tell the story when Nike was signing Michael Jordan, you know, every basketball shoe in the world was white. And, and Michael and Nike wanted to create a black and red one, but they weren't allowed to because the NBA would ban them and, you know, find him $5,000. Until one of the young designers in the room said, well, what if we did it anyway? Like what if we put more black and red in the shoe? And what if we paid the fines? And what if we made a television commercial over it? And then within six months it became one of the biggest shoes in history, right? Not the number one basketball shoe was, but the number one shoe in the world. And so that's an example of curiosity play. Spontanati play is my favorite where you just notice more things and everything's on offer, but like improv acting. And you notice yourself saying, hmm, isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting? Kind of pattern recognition wise. And the book I tell the story when, you know, when Boris Becker started playing on the tour, he was, you know, pretty much unbeatable with his surf was, you know, boom, boom, Becker, right? And the first couple of times that Andre Agassi played Boris, he just got ragged old from one side of the court to the other. But yeah, at this time Andre played Boris, he noticed something, you know, thinking about Spontanati play. He said, you know, every time Boris serves, he sticks his tongue out. And if he stings to the left, he's there for the left. And if he stings to the right, he serves to the right, right? And if he stings in the middle, he serves down the line. Now, Boris didn't know he was doing that, but Andre figured it out. Right? Now Andre played Boris another nine, ten times in his career. Andre never lost another match. And the hardest thing was not doing it on every point, right? And when Boris retired, Andre told him the truth. And Boris goes, oh, my God, he used to go, I'm tell my wife, it's like he can read my mind. So I was just reading his tongue. So that's not, that's like Spontanati play. And the third one is called Nonsense Play. So think of Paul McCartney and the Beatles coming up with a crazy, you know, Sergeant Pepper's, you know, fictional characters and started mucking around with synthesizers and Indian music and sounds and so forth. They're literally mucking around because he thought a roadie said, passed me the, you know, the Sergeant Pepper is at a salt and pepper on a flight. And when you tap into Nonsense Play, like, you know, I could have written a whole book on the billions of dollars of commerce. Once people understand what, what, you know, how powerful these playstates can be. But at the moment, as I mentioned, there's so much pressure and fear in the world today that so I asked my clients, you know, to ask themselves, you know, as many times as they can through the day, am I in the playstate or am I in the fear state? -Festate. -We'll be right back after a quick word from our partners. And if they're in the fear state, or regardless, actually, of how they answer that question, the second question can always be, what does play look like for me here? Sometimes play looks like being really still in prison and problem solving. Sometimes it looks like really hard work. Sometimes it's having fun. Sometimes it's curiosity or experimentation or imagination. But as long as we're in the playstate, we're not in the fear state. And you can kind of catch out yourself. And then, you know, what we do when I'm working with someone, we teach them what their play state looks like. So, you know, Damien, if I asked you off the top of your head, you know, can you think of an early play memory, you know, when you're a young boy growing up, it might have been playing in the street with kids. It might have been on a family holiday, might have been climbing a tree, right? But we all have played memories, right? These beautiful memories of when times stood still. So, what I do is I help people identify, and it's a beautiful exercise to do, right? Finding your early play state. Off the top of your head, Damien, can you think of an early play memory when you were younger? -Well, the one that comes to my ban is they start with a blank piece of paper and a load of coloring pens. And I still love it now. Like when I get a blank piece of paper and just the idea of playing and creating something, playing it for my imagination is what, as you're saying it, it brings me real karma. I remember doing it when I was a kid. I used to love sitting at the kitchen table and just sort of doodling away. And even the Boris Becker, the tongued come out well, they sort of focus it and concentrate and occasionally now I still get the chance of my wife will catch me and she knows that I'm in a place it because my tongued is coming out well and while I'm focusing and drawing or trying to scribble ideas down. -Well, the good news is Michael Jordan sticks his tongue out when he performs and so does Kelly Slater and a lot of the greatest things. -Oh, a big, great company then. -There you go. Damien, how old are you roughly in this memory? Probably say about seven. Okay, so go back to that little boy, that little seven-year-old boy who loved drawing and coloring and call out the words, it best describes how that little boy was feeling in that memory. Try and come up with about five words for me please if you can, just off the top of your head. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Playful would obviously be a word. Yeah, playful, absorbed, calm, pleasure would definitely be there. And just creativity. Beautiful creativity and imagination. Yeah, I love it. So if I then, if we were doing a session, I got you to find another play memory and started to call out those words right and then another one, you'll start to see this consistency of language. And I've done that exercise literally thousands of times. And typically there's five states that often, or they come up, one is playful, one is free or carefree, or derivative of those. One is excited or adventurous, or a derivative of those. One is safe or warm or connected or belonging. Yeah. And the fifth one is loved. And I was at a conference a few years ago, actually in the UK I think it was. And there's a psychiatrist in the audience and she said, Ben, why do these same five states keep appearing when people do this exercise and find their early play memory states? And she said, I don't know, it's above my pay grade. But maybe, just maybe at its core, that's who we are. And our authentic state, before we get pimples as teenagers and we think we've got a fit into a tribe, right. Before that happens when you find the memories before the memories, right. Because in that moment, you didn't have to do anything or prove yourself to anyone. You were playful and absorbed and safe and excited and adventurous. We often forget, as we get older, we think that life is serious. And we think we have to conform to a certain set of ideals and so forth. And we lose that authentic playfulness. What's also incredible is whatever we love doing, our play states younger, has often formed or informed what we've done later on in life. So if you were playing with a Lego as a kid, there's a good chance you got into engineering or architectural design. If you did play dress ups as doctors or nurses, there's a very good chance you ended up in the service industry in some way, shape or form. So it's incredible that not only our play states, but our play history can often inform what we do later on in life. And once we join the dots, that's quite exciting to go back to when we feel like there's something missing in our life. In my opinion, as I mentioned, bringing play back into our life. In whatever shape or form that actually looks like, the reason I'm obsessed with it, though at the moment, and the reason, you know, there was a reason I wanted Andre Agassi on the front cover of my book, because he was the first athlete that truly understood vulnerability in my opinion. And it was a lab, but it makes sense of his adversity and makes it back. Adam Grant is on the back cover of my book. The reason I wanted Adam Grant is, is because he helped me understand how to simplify complex issues and so forth. And give me the confidence to get going, not being a trained psychologist in the way. But Esther Perel is also on the front cover of my book. And she was the first person to help me understand the correlation between play and love. Because there's a school of thought and psychology that there's only two emotions, love or fear. And every other emotion is one of those two states. Like, you know, confidence, excitement, passion is love and anxiety, stress, worry is fear. And again, it's above my pay grade to argue whether that's right or not. But what I do know is it's exactly the same with play. Because the opposite of play is not work. The opposite of play is fear. So I thought, okay, if the opposite of love is fear and the opposite of play is fear, then the correlation as Esther helped me understand between play and love is extraordinary close. And it's suddenly dawn when I was writing the book that, wow, maybe, maybe love is the noun and play is the verb. Maybe love is the intention and play is the action. Maybe play mobilizers love. And maybe just maybe the Beatles were only half right. As human beings, yes, all we need is love. As human doings, all we need is play and play mobilizers love. And I firmly believe that. And because the world's become so extrinsically obsessed with money and fame and status and recognition, we do not understand, in my opinion, just how powerful it is getting back into the play state. You can mind purpose and find potential and learning and growing. In my opinion, that's the closest you are to getting into flow, right? In terms of the ingredients for flow, in terms of the sense of autonomy, being really playful in the present moment, doing something that really matters in that sense of purpose, but also that sense of mastery in a kind of realizing your potential. So for me, those three Ps, play purpose and potential, correlate beautifully to what it means to get into the flow state as well. Which is why I'm kind of obsessed by these interesting things at the moment. So, I mean, this has been an amazing, fascinating chance. So thank you for giving us your time, Ben. I suppose my last question for this is, what would you say is one practical tool that you would want a listener to walk away from listening to this, to know, to do, to understand on how they can introduce more play into their lives? Yeah, how to bring more play into their lives. Well, the first and foremost, if I have to give someone advice very, very quickly, it's sometimes I ask them to create a tabelist rather than a tabelist. If they want to connect with the human being before the human doing, and you can do it tomorrow morning, you know, before you get out of bed, rather than write a tabelist as I get them to write a tabelist. Your tabelist might be, I want to be playful or grateful or kind or courageous. The great thing about that tabelist is we're in total control of those words. There's so many things in life we can't control, but the human we want to be is not one of them. And that can be one of the most cathartic ways just to create freedom and to find success differently. On success, a lot of people are obsessed by success thinking, you know, when I get that promotion, then I'll be validated. Once I'm in that relationship, then I'll be loved. And we're in this gap mentality. And the gap mentality means I'm here, but I want to be there. And there's a gap between where I am now, where I need to be in the future. And it never works as the goalpost just keeps moving around. It creates this cortisol, this pressure. But there's such a better way to live your life. And that's to measure backwards rather than forwards in the gap. You measure backwards into the gains. So if I gave you a sheet of paper right now and I said, right, oh, let's go back to when you first started in your career. Damien, and you can measure backwards three years, five years, 25 years, right? It doesn't matter, but if you measure backwards to when you first started to where you are right now in this studio. And if I asked you to write down all the little wins, all the little successes and all the little gains you've had from when you first started to where you are right now. And then I said, okay, how do you feel? You'll typically say one of five words. You'll say, Ben, I feel grateful that I had this beautiful life. I feel successful. I had all these successes, right? I feel confident. I feel happy. And my favorite word at the moment. I feel content. Now, I'm not done yet. There's all these goals and dreams I want to chase down. But it means everything I go after from this moment on is a want, not a need. So the way to redefine success, we teach this to young kids, is rather than saying, I know I'll be successful when, you know, when I get that promotion, when I get that degree, when I get that job, whatever. But get them to say, I know I'm being successful when, because if you answer that your success list from that point of view, I know I'm being successful when you're bringing success into the present moment. So you don't have to wait to be happy and you don't have to wait to be successful. You might say, I know I'm being successful when I get eight hours sleep. Or I have a belly laugh with a good friend. Or I watch my kids get out of their comfort zone. Or I have a crucial conversation with someone at work or I learn something new, right? Or I get every green light on the way to work. Or I watch a beautiful sunrise. It doesn't matter. What matters is your starting to determine what success looks like for you and only you. And when that happens, we start to become self-determined. But today, we're socially determined for our success. Because I'm comparing my journey with someone else's journey, which is creating all that anxiety and that pressure in today. So I get kids to redefine success into the present moment by developing quite a different type of success list. And then they can start to redefine what a win is as well, right? So what are three wins I had today or three wins I'd like to have tomorrow? And again, I define what a win is for me and only me. So yeah, we teach them these little things that are quite profound in terms of perspective shifting. Well Ben, will the brilliant producer of them myself, we both said that this morning is. It's a bank holiday here in the UK. So we both said this morning when we woke up that we get to spend some time chatting with the other. And it's been an absolute treat. And again, I didn't encourage anyone that's listening to. this, it's enjoyed this fascinating chat that you get to read Ben's Billion Book, that's how it in the UK and July. So thank you for sharing your wisdom, your experience and some really valuable tools on how we can all be a bit more playful. My pleasure, I mean, and yeah, look forward to actually meeting you in the flesh one day as well. So good, he's got a book out right? Yeah, the book's called Where The Light Get Send. It's been published in the UK from the start of July, so you should be able to get it anytime now. It's a brilliant meal, really good. As you heard in the interview there, we talk about not just sport, we talk about Teddy Roosevelt, we talk about the lawyer, the stood up against Donald Trump fairly recently, and a whole range of other topics about where Ben's wisdom has helped them find the joy in what they do and ultimately deliver their definition of high performance. Fantastic. Have you managed to get to that point in your life where you don't wrap up your success, either as a podcast or as an author or as an academic? Yeah, yes, I've tried to, definitely. It's hard sometimes, isn't it? I think I recognise it's often in moments of insecurity where you sort of fall back on, but where you fall back on what you might call achievements or successes that you've had. And just learning to recognise that my kids don't give a shit. My kids want me there for just being the dad. My wife wants me around for being a husband and that's enough. Have you? Not even close now. Like everything I do here is about numbers. I just can't separate the two. So I have a bad week if not many people have watched or enjoyed an episode of High Performance, and I get like this burning anger inside me to change things and disrupt stuff and what's the problem or don't have to calm myself down. And like I will look three of our times a day at the download numbers and the listener numbers and the follower numbers and like, I know someone's just gone this mad allup of just flipping between all the different platforms you can find high performance. But then do you then start to think that that diminishes who you are though? No, I don't think so. No. Because you can focus on that's just the professional side of me. Like I've got a whole other world as a dad, as a friend, as a love other things. But I think what it is, when I'm in professional mode, I'm like absolutely desperate for this to be the best it can possibly be and get really well-known when it isn't. But then it doesn't dominate. I don't wake up in the morning. Maybe I do, maybe I do wake up in the morning. Yeah, maybe I don't know, man. But I think I think you're further along the path than what you initially said because the fact is you can want to win without wanting to win at the expense of I think so. But I'm also 48, not 18. Like if I was 18, I think it'd be a real problem. It probably was a real problem when I was 18. Yeah. You know, I was like 24, 7 obsessive then about my work. I'm probably in a better place. But it's still, I think it's okay for it to matter. That's the other thing. It's okay to really want to be fucking brilliant at something. Absolutely. And be annoyed if you're not, but just to not let that e you up. Yeah, that you can walk away at the end of a day and have done the best that you can. Yeah, yeah. I think so. Thank you, mate. Thank you, mate. I hope you enjoyed that conversation. I hope that it held value for you. If it did, please like, please subscribe. Please let someone else know about the kind of great stuff that you can find. Full free, thanks to us here at High Performance. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.