The Mindful Athlete Secrets to Pure Performance

His first book was called The Mindful Athletes, Secrets to Pure Performance.

if you're going to have more successes in my life but if I want to have anymore I'm going to have to continue to climb back into the chrysalis yes that's true but here's a way to unlock actually the nervous system does not know the difference between what we experience and what we think about and I usually talk about this image of me being in front of an old fashioned blackboard and I take my fingers and I use my fingernails you know I scratch the blackboard and people shatter it is like there's no blackboard there but the imagery of it creates the experience of it and so when we make a mistake and we keep reflecting on a mistake and how awful it was and how we're bad person what not we're creating that a nervous system is going through that so now if you switch that around and you focus on your past successes and you reflect on it and you keep playing them over in your mind then that grows now in your creating this mindset that allows you to have better cognitive functioning and you actually have more faith let me go back to love for a second this whole notion of love being all you need how scalable is that notion we could you have that attitude if you were present in the United States in a dangerous world with other superpowers trying to potentially topple your government or whatever that would be the challenge and the most important question we have to ask is whether the universe is friendly or unfriendly if it's unfriendly then we use all our resources to deny destroy that's war or to remove the threat but if we see the universe is neither friendly or unfriendly that doesn't matter what we do but if we see the world as friendly then I'd ask is to align ourselves with how things work so you got to have an open mind or open heart the BA would do solve issues and the BA would see things and learn from them and I go back to the Cherokee grandfather talking to his grandson in saying that he had this ferocious battle between two wolves inside of him one would call fear the other one would call love and the grandson you can't concern to say grandfather which wolf will win and the grandfather said the one did I feed so let's learn from it and how do we relate and I'm not polyannorous because I'm not gonna let somebody smack me and turn my cheek I'll be either going to put my hand up the block it or move out of the way but what I'm saying is if you have an open mind and open heart you'll be able to respond to what happens rather than react so your response will be measured and it will be an alignment of who you say you are and what you say you want to do that's why when I say all you need is love whatever I'm talking about is saying yes to life but also understand we're all connected but you got to see clearly and with love how can you be so confident that the universe is friendly I mean given the reality of inequality violence bigotry competition etc etc I mean there seems to be plenty of countermanding evidence yeah I mean I was on the other side of real withdraw tracks it's seen a lot of nasty fossil life being a drug addict and and whatnot and all I know is that I was able to transform in spite of all in the adversity it's in spite of being an African-American man who could be driving a car and get a DWB you know what a DWB is? Driving well black yes there you go and all of that stuff all this stuff is happening now and that's been happening even way worse when I was growing up so it's all you can do is do you as the Bible says live in the world not out of the world so it's like seeing yeah I'm seeing clearly I'm not naive but if I'm feeding the love wolf I have a better chance of being able to respond in ways that's going to create less suffering doesn't mean it won't be suffering because suffering is the first noble truth it's going to be suffering there's going to be people who are out of their mind and in their violent and doing nasty bad things or you know hiding out through drugs or you know any of the addictions or just being in hate all I know is when you're in the negative state at least the more suffering even though short term you might feel like you're doing something but what you give comes back to you hmm let me see if I can restate some of this I'm ad libbing here so I might mess this up but I think what I'm hearing you say is yes the universe can be or at least the world can be pretty hostile that is because people have had lots of adverse stuff happen in their lives prior to this moment and that has put them into a situation with their fear wolf or their capacity for hatred it has the steering wheel and you don't have to judge them per se you don't have to hate them back that's not going to help you can defend yourself protect your interests protect people you love do your best to compete but you don't have to dehumanize them otherwise them hate them in the process because that actually just weakens your abilities yes what I'm saying is there's a lot of new city universe so if you align yourself with how things work like I said gravity if you know gravity works a certain way then you behave according to how it is and so when you align yourself with love with divinity you're going to have a divine experience or you're going to suffer less than you would otherwise so it's like the nervous system is programmed to if it's pleasant approach if it's unpleasant avoid and if it's neither pleasant unpleasant and not equanimous then it's facing up it's not personal as this is the way it is and so how to train ourselves to stay in the center whether it's pleasant or unpleasant and not to face out but to be present and to be quantumist being eye of the hurricane as I would say that's huge is it possible that all of this stuff this equanimity you were talking about this capacity for compassion could be to many people simply academic if they don't actually practice on the cushion as a meditator yes so the cushion is one part of it but all day long you know how they're thinking how they're relating to then love work and play because you can meditate and do all that stuff but then you have to be it you know the total qualities of the heart you have to be compassionate be loving be kind and so a three-fold is not just action or just training the mind but also in behavior you know goodwill instead of ill will cultivating states of you know the heart so the heart is open and loving or at least tolerant and then the wisdom to see what's working and what's not working to see if I have under love glasses then then I see things a certain way if I have under fear glasses I'm probably going to be in fight flight of freeze coming up George talks about the connection between generating hope having optimism and achieving our goals what the negative committee is and using uncertainty and anxiety as opportunities to challenge or habit the habit many of us have of negative self-talk

He's written a book called The Mindful Athlete and he has worked with some of the best pro-athletes on a planet including Michael Jordan and Lake Kobe Bryant.

I should also say by way of introduction George has written a book called The Mindful Athlete.

But me being a perfectionist I kept at it and I read every book she had on the syllabus and that's how I started getting.

And then I looked at a reader book and then look at the back of the book and would say other books suggested readings and I would read those and I just read as much as I could about you know the mind body process

The Mindful Athlete and I want to talk about your work with athletes

The power of mindfulness as I talk about my book is a way of making yourself flow ready.

I should also say by way of introduction George has written a book called The Mindful Athlete.

But me being a perfectionist I kept at it and I read every book she had on the syllabus and that's how I started getting.

The Mindful Athlete and I want to talk about your work with athletes but I have not forgotten that you said a bunch of stuff earlier that I wanted to drill down on

The book is called The Mindful Athlete

and then writing a book about mindful athletes for teens