5-Minute Habits Olympic Coaches Trust for Success

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:00:00]:
Stress isn’t going away, nor do I think we want it to go away.

Nick Urban [00:00:05]:
You’re listening to High Performance Longevity. The show exploring a better path to optimal health for those daring to live as an outlier in a world of averages. I’m your host, Nick Urban, bioharmonizer, performance coach and lifelong student of both modern science and ancestral wisdom. Each week we decode the tools, tactics and timeless principles to help you optimize your mind, body and performance span. Things you won’t find on Google or in your AI tool of choice. From cutting edge biohacks to grounded lifestyle practices, you’ll walk away with actionable insights to look, feel and perform at your best across all of life’s domains. What do a motocross athlete with 27 broken bones and a business exec with a messy desk have in common? Well, for one, the same three strategies to smash through their biggest block. Joining us this week is Dr.

Nick Urban [00:01:15]:
Haley Perlis. She’s a performance psychology expert who helps business leaders and high achievers apply elite athletic mental strategies to reach peak performance. With a PhD in sports psychology and certifications in coaching, fitness and nutrition, she turns high pressure environments into platforms for success. Her clients include Fortune 500 companies and top executives seeking to master resilience, focus and decision making. Dr. Haley delivers science backed tools that go beyond motivation to drive lasting productivity and leadership excellence. You can find the resources and links to everything we discuss in the show notes for this episode which will be at Outlier O U T l I y r.com the number 216 I enjoyed this conversation with Dr. Haley and especially the part where she challenged me on on some of my own beliefs and an identity that I became hesitant to apply to myself.

Nick Urban [00:02:23]:
Stick around to the end to figure out what that is and without further ado, let’s join Dr. Haley Haley. Welcome to the podcast, Nick.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:02:31]:
Very happy to be here.

Nick Urban [00:02:32]:
Today we’re discussing one of my favorite topics and one that you just so happen to be an expert in and that is the role of pressure. As you were telling me a second ago, pressure as a performance enhancer. Before we get started on that topic, what are the unusual non negotiables you’ve done so far today for your health, your performance and your bioharmony.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:02:56]:
Oh wow. Okay, I do have good answers but you really just jump right into it, which I. Which I love. Non negotiables. Couple of things. Every morning so I’m an early riser but my, but my partner is even earlier. He gets up at 4:50 every morning and so non Negotiable. I get a kiss good morning and then I have about just 15, 30 minutes for myself to kind of.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:03:23]:
I like to ease on into the morning so I don’t really jump out of bed. And then before I do anything, two glasses of water and lemon. And I’m not someone who can walk and drink, so I need to stand there in the kitchen and I need to drink and I need to drink. So non negotiable. That would be number two. And then a morning walk every single morning, probably around 7 o’ clock, sometimes 6:50. Non negotiable. We go for a walk, 20 minutes.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:03:57]:
Now my schedule sometimes changes if I’m traveling or I get on a phone call. So the time of the walk, the quantity varies, but non negotiable walk, even if it’s out to the driveway and then back in.

Nick Urban [00:04:11]:
How did you settle on those specifically?

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:04:13]:
I specifically needed to drink more water. That was from a, from a wellness standpoint. I knew that I was not a good water drinker and I played around with tactics, you know, carrying a water bottle everywhere I go. But that didn’t, it just stayed full everywhere I went. So I realized that I had to make a point to stand still and complete that task. And I wanted to start, I like to start off the day well because then it gets me into the path of success. So it just kind of made sense to me that every morning stand there and achieve that first goal that for me, for whatever reason happens to be challenging. So that’s how I put that together.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:04:56]:
And the walk. I thrive myself or I pride myself on being a bright individual. I think it’s one of my strengths and, and what brings me brightness. One of. Well, two of the things that bring me brightness is physical activity. Not exercise per se, but just movement and being outside. So going for a walk and getting outside in that fresh air. Not that it’s my exercise for the day, but again, it increases the opportunity that I’m going to be my best self.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:05:25]:
And well, who doesn’t want to kiss in the morning?

Nick Urban [00:05:29]:
Yeah. So it’s interesting I ask you because I settled on a very similar, almost identical routine for myself and I curious to hear how people come to that particular routine.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:05:39]:
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting and maybe this is a great, a great discussion to dive into with goal setting and intentions. For me, it’s not just about what I want to achieve, it’s what’s getting in the way of me achieving those things. So I knew that I wasn’t a good water drinker. And I wanted to drink more water, but then I had to figure out what my barriers were to drinking water and then create goals that prevented those barriers. And then also, you know, I work a lot with athletes and one of the things we talk about is pre performance routines, what to do intentionally to give yourself the best shot at being your best. And my best is being a bright individual and what contributes to that movement and outdoors. So that’s how I came across those. How did you come across them for yourself?

Nick Urban [00:06:25]:
Pretty similarly, actually. And what I like about your work is that you are merging different worlds, or I guess that seem different at first blush. The world of athletics and physical performance, and then people who want to just achieve and succeed and thrive in other areas of their life, such as either in business and personal relationships, whatever. And what’s cool about your work is that you’re bringing those together and you’re finding the common themes, the common denominators behind those.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:06:56]:
My foundation, I chose sports psychology when I was 12 years old and I grew up as an athlete. So the foundation is sports. But then you’re right. How do we apply those principles, those tools to business, wellness and sport?

Nick Urban [00:07:13]:
Exactly. So let’s go back to the idea of pressure as a performance enhancer. Because most people, when they hear pressure, they think stress, and they’ve heard that stress is the root of all disease. It’s a big problem these days. We’re more stressed than ever, et cetera, et cetera. But there’s more to the story than that. Explain to me what you mean by pressure can be a performance enhancer.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:07:35]:
Well, first, the research is quite clear, and there’s plenty of research that talks about it’s not the stressor that is the most damaging, it’s our story around the stressor that’s the most damaging. And so right off the top, I like to find a story that’s going to support us, that’s going to serve us. Because stress isn’t going away, pressure isn’t going away. And my story is, nor do I think we want it to go away in workshops, let’s say in the business or the wellness industry. So we’re not talking about sport performance. I ask people in the audience, how many people have volunteered for a promotion network, how many people volunteer to get married, how many people volunteered to have children, to own homes, to try to get their bodies in shape. That is all of us asking for stress. That is all of us asking for pressure and having high expectations.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:08:33]:
Why? Because we want to live a fulfilled life. We want to experience all that life has to offer. We want to realize our potential. And we can’t do that without some level of stress and pressure and high expectations. So to me, and to, you know, hopefully that everyone that I work with, we start to immediately look at, I don’t want a life that’s completely stress free. Maybe a week on the beach would be lovely, right? You know, like, let’s have it for a little bit. But then we get complacent and we get bored. And I know that people who are entering retirement, it’s a fear for getting, you know, to get complacent and bored.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:09:09]:
So we want to really embrace it. Now. I know we want the stressors we choose. We just don’t want the stressors we don’t choose. Well, how do we then embrace the stressors that we don’t choose? One of the greatest ways that I do is arm ourselves with our strengths. So people come to me all the time in my practice or in workshops because there’s a problem that needs to be solved, right? There’s a challenge that needs to be conquered. I don’t care yet about the problem. I don’t care yet about the challenge that needs to be solved.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:09:40]:
I first want to know your, your strengths. Because stress can only be used as a performance enhancer. When you come at it with confidence and control and when you can expose yourself to that stressor, embrace that pressure with a big focus on your strengths. And I’m talking like tactics, technique, strategy, like strengths that will give you a greater level of perceived control. Put those two together. Confidence and troll increases your readiness to go and expose yourself to that stressor. So you, you have a different mindset, one that is a little bit more uplifting, one that’s a little bit more empowering with the intention of, of seeing what can happen.

Nick Urban [00:10:30]:
Yeah. To play devil’s advocate here, if you have those attributes in place already, isn’t the stressor not going to be really a stressor?

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:10:41]:
I can see that happening, but sometimes because you know, you can, then it becomes, this is actually a great thing, it’s a little bit different. But then it becomes more of a must happen, a demand instead of a enthusiasm, excitement as to what can happen. And the demand and the must. I am good at this, therefore I must achieve this. Right? I think it’s what you’re saying, right? That can, you know, wouldn’t that happen then? That is a distraction. That must, that demand is actually can work against you because you have a. Now you’re distracted and you’re actually, that’s when we choke. It’s like we have all the attributes, but they become frozen.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:11:24]:
So if we can embrace it. And I’m going to use my best attributes to see what can happen instead of what must happen. It’s a different reframing as well. But that’s a really good point you bring up, Nick.

Nick Urban [00:11:36]:
Well, let’s unpack some of the ways people can actually implement this into their lives. Are you finding that there’s any particular processes or trains of thought they can go down when something like this is coming up that allows them to, like, integrate this more seamlessly?

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:11:50]:
I think emotional regulation is a really big one, so that would be a process that you’d want to work through. And so, you know, we think anxiety, frustration, anger, fear, they’re unpleasant emotions. Therefore we label them as negative, you know, and then also being sad and deflated and, you know, complacent, that’s an unpleasant emotion too. So we think of them as negative. I think we need to understand that we’re feeling these unpleasant emotions not because the situation is necessarily bad. It’s okay to feel these things. And some people who are listening and watching to this episode, they actually have taken a moment. They may say, you know what? I actually sometimes need a little quick, swift kick in the rear end to get going.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:12:44]:
I myself am sometimes a procrastinator because I need to feel a little bit of that anxiety. But I’ve taught myself to, when I feel it, to just have a moment of clarity. This is okay. This is okay. What is it signaling? Me. Now, if I stay there too long, damage can happen and I freeze and I don’t make. And I waste my time and I waste my energy. But in the onset, when you feel that, I think emotional regulation is really good to come in and say, okay, this is okay, that I’m feeling this.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:13:15]:
It’s information, it’s energy. That would be the first process. And then the second step is to then use that energy to serve you as opposed to hurt you.

Nick Urban [00:13:24]:
So to contrast that, when most people, they procrastinate, because it’s very common, whether you’re talking about in school, you’re talking about presentations for work, or somewhere else. What most people do then is they procrastinate and they feel a level of anxiety, overwhelm, whatever, and then they just sit with that for a while and let it grow and think that there’s something wrong with them because they’re feeling it. Is that right?

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:13:47]:
I think so. I mean, yeah, there’s that fear and there’s, you know, that’s that fight or flight. So it’s the flight or the freeze. And then bad things can happen because then you get so low in your confidence and demotivation and then nothing happens. But what I just described to you is that sometimes I fuel on the procrastination because I’ve trained myself. This is training. This is all earned. We have to earn mental toughness.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:14:11]:
We have to earn emotional regulation. It’s not just given, unfortunately, we have to do the training. But I’ve trained myself to really understand, okay, am I feeling this, you know, to. And I can, I can use it now to motivate, or is it, you know, or am I really just pushing it off, pushing it off, pushing it off. And I, And I need to be able to tell the difference.

Nick Urban [00:14:35]:
Yeah, I’ve heard that the feeling of nerves and the butterflies of excitement and a new opportunity are very easily to confuse with that of fear and scary potential futures. And I think one of the things that high performers do really well is they recognize that feeling and they don’t immediately create a negative story around what it means. And because of that, they’re able to, I guess, change their association with that story to one that’s positive and uplifting and the sign they’re about to perform and have a great time doing it versus, oh, I’m about to fail. And this is the feeling of failure coming on. So I need to shut down and conserve energy.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:15:18]:
Exactly. And let’s just use that example of the butterflies in the stomach. And if I can, I’ll give a visual, like a visualization tool. Those butterflies can work in one of two ways. One is they can swarm around your stomach completely out of control, making a mockery of you and wasting all of your energy and creating a whole lot of fear and doubt because they’re in control and you don’t know what to do with it. Or. And I actually have learned this. A lot of professional athletes use this technique.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:15:45]:
Or like you just said, you don’t label them as negative. You actually just realize that the butterflies are there. That’s the first step. And then you say it’s energy. And then you use a visualization technique. It’s symbolic imagery. And you put those butterflies into an inverted V, like birds fly above. They fly above because they’re fast, because they’re efficient, because they’re productive.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:16:10]:
Are you closing your eyes and visualizing that? And, and then those butterflies are now energy ready to propel you towards the task instead of, again, that negative flying out of Control. You are now taking control of those butterflies and using them as good energy. If I can borrow from sports again, the best athletes, they actually compete better than they practice, they perform better than they train because they can use that pressure as energy for good.

Nick Urban [00:16:50]:
Any other ways of harnessing that energy? Because that’s a very fascinating concept. I’ve also heard it described. The opposite is that we don’t rise to the level of the occasion, we fall to the level of our training. So I guess there’s the difference between elite performance and high performance. And that would depend on your training and mindset and other things.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:17:11]:
Yeah, the, the falling to the level of your training is something that I’ve also learned from specifically in like military training. Like they do so much training cuz in their life and death situations and in those, you know, war situations, you know, they need to know that at the bare minimum, you know, if they were, they fall back to their mo, like their lowest level and their lowest level is going to be pretty high because they’ve harness that in other avenues where maybe it’s not a life or death or you know, maybe it’s not that type of situation. I do believe that we can use pressure to heighten our focus. And I believe that in the military too. I just know that that fall to the training. I believe I learned that in military. But you know, raising your game is something that I strive for. And if you’ve engaged in so much training and if you do, if the pressure gets to you and you fall to the, you know, you fall, say it again.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:18:15]:
Fall to the, to the level of your training. You just. It wasn’t that you’ve been training pretty, pretty. You’ve been training at a high standard. So that’s pretty good too. Yeah, you’re covered.

Nick Urban [00:18:26]:
I also heard described that you can either work on elevating the ceiling of your performance or raising the floor. And they’re both beneficial.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:18:35]:
They’re both beneficial. I mean, in my mind you’re taking responsibility. In my mind you’re engaging in the training. And in my mind you’re not letting your emotions or the situation come at you. Whatever you’re doing, you’re on offensive play. Even if you’re a defensive player, you’re an offensive play exposing yourself to that situation. And that’s the whole point of the training that I engage in.

Nick Urban [00:19:01]:
Somewhere in your work I came across the idea that there’s only three strategies you’ll ever need to conquer the mental blocks preventing you from performing at your best. What would those three strategies Be.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:19:13]:
Yeah. So I definitely wrote about this in, in my book and I believe in my experience and in my education, I have not, I have not come across a mental block that one of these three strategies can’t help. So mental block is simply, simply stated, a story, usually negative, but it doesn’t always have to be, but a story, real or pretend, that has the potential to debilitate us, the potential to hold us back. And so one option, which is actually nothing to do with your mind and everything to do with your environment, change your environment, manipulate your environment. And I use manipulate in a good way, but manipulate the environment and that on automatically has a shift in your mindset. It automatically has a shift in your energy. And can you give an example of that? Sure. So in sports it would be maybe an athlete needs to change a piece of equipment, or maybe they need to change teams or coaches, or maybe they need to change their training schedule if they can.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:20:16]:
In business, I’ve had clients that literally have just picked up their desk, turned it around to face a different window, or I’ve had athletes or sorry, business people who have cleared out their desktop right before they’re about to go into a meeting so that they’re clear minded. You know, they have this more confident, refreshing mindset instead of a cluttered, distracted, low confident mindset simply because of how their desktop looks. Something like that. In fitness, if you’re finding it hard to get motivated to exercise and you’re working out in your basement all by yourself, but you’re someone who really enjoys social activities and the outdoors, change your environment, manipulate your environment, get outside, find a buddy, and automatically that changes your mindset automatically. It increases your motivation automatically. Maybe if you’re with someone, you have vicarious experience, if they can do it, so can I. And now you’re more confident, but you didn’t have to do anything reframing wise.

Nick Urban [00:21:18]:
This also makes me think of the idea of like doing something that you can’t control, such as like cleaning up your room, organizing a desk, whatever it is, that little like autonomy, like the little bit of control that you can exert can translate into like I guess a clear mind or into the other situation in a beneficial way.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:21:37]:
Autonomy is key. Having feeling like you’re. That’s why I love responsibility. I love the acronym pride, Personal Responsibility in Delivering Excellence. Having that autonomy piece. And that’s something that some people are afraid of though, because if they take responsibility, if they take ownership and it doesn’t work out, oh no, but I again, it’s all about having Responsibility and having choice and ownership, and that’s that autonomy piece that’s really important.

Nick Urban [00:22:07]:
So much of this is about story, because even then, if someone doesn’t want to take responsibility for something, there’s a story that’s preventing them from taking responsibility over it.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:22:16]:
If someone doesn’t want to take responsibility, you know, there’s usually an underlying fear there. So we just want to, we want to look at, to see what that fear is. The second one is if you don’t want to change your situation or you can’t because you know it does happen. The second one then is more mental, and that is cognitive reframing. If I can’t change the situation, how do I change the way I look at the situation? And you know, a great story that I can share about myself, which is what started my entire career in sports psychology, was I was a young athlete, and at 12 years old, I was competing in a very important race. And my coach, right before I was about to compete, pulled out a hundred dollar bill and told me that he had bet on me to win this race. So there’s two stories, at least two stories, but one will create anger, fear, frustration, worry. How could he do that? What if I make a mistake and let him down? Or challenge? Passion, alignment, confidence.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:23:18]:
If he’s betting on me, he must believe in me. If he believes in me, doesn’t that mean I’m doing something right? So again, we want to look. And that would be embracing pressure, right? If you feel pressure, it’s because you’ve earned it. You deserve to feel pressure. If you have high expectations somewhere you have confidence, we just have to go and find it. I have another example that I can share about reframing. I was working with an athlete who could practice really well but couldn’t compete. He would choke.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:23:50]:
And he had a mental block and he was intimidated by his opponents. So in competition, it was all about what they’re going to do to beat him. And so I taught him a concept we call coopetition, cooperative competition. And it was turning competition something instead of something he’s afraid of, something that he embraces. So the script moved from, oh, no, what are they gonna do to beat me? To thank you opponents for showing up today, I want you to show up and do your best. Because if I beat you when you’re doing your best, that’s going to mean some awesome things, right? I mean, we don’t want to win whatever winning means to us. We don’t want to win when everyone’s at their worst. We want to shine above everyone else’s shyness.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:24:46]:
If we have. If we’re doing something competitive, we want to get the job because we were the best when everyone else still put forth their best efforts. So he reframed. He changed the way he looked at the situation of competition. And with visualizing and journaling and rehearsing. Three months later, he went to the Junior World Championships. And not only did he beat the opponents that he was intimidated by, he became the Junior World Champion.

Nick Urban [00:25:14]:
What is that rehearsing component?

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:25:16]:
Every time we have a thought, we plant a neuropathway in our brain. But I like to think of it as a thought seed. You just plant a seed. It’s just a seed. In other words, it’s just a thought. We have all these dominant habitual thoughts waiting, you know, that we’ve been practicing and rehearsing for years. Probably ready to just smush the new thought. So the rehearsing through again, visualization repeating, just speaking it out loud to people who you want to listen, that makes this new thought seed myelinate, but it makes it grow and grow and grow and grow.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:25:58]:
And then the old thoughts that are not serving, it’s like atrophy. They muscles use it or lose it, they just atrophy. And now we have our new thought, but you gotta do the work. You have to repeat that new thought. Thank you, opponents for showing up. Thank you for opponents for showing up. You know, a common one. Again, we’re playing around in the wellness and the business and the sport world, if that’s okay.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:26:20]:
Yeah, but a common one. You know, even though we were talking about movement, some people find it really hard to exercise after work because they’re too tired. And then I ask, well, what have you been physically doing all day? Now, I know you’re not doing it right now, Nick, but I am. I am sitting on my. You know, I’m sitting on my butt, physically resting. So at the end of the day, am I really too tired physically? No. I’m quite well rested physically, but I’m mentally and emotionally exhausted. Well, what’s the best way to recover your mind and your emotions? Movement.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:26:59]:
And have you ever regretted exercise? No. And have you always felt better emotionally and mentally after exercise? Yes. And does it have to be perfect? No. Is five minutes better than no minutes? So those are all these new seeds, but the I’m too tired is the bigger thought. So we need to rehearse. You know, I’m physically rested. I’ve been sitting all day. Exercise is the best way to recover my mind.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:27:25]:
And my emotions, I’ve never regretted Exercise. Something is better than nothing. And then this starts to grow and that neuro pathway becomes stronger, it myelinates, and then these thoughts atrophy. And now we can follow through on, on the goals that we’ve set.

Nick Urban [00:27:41]:
So what’s the disconnect here? Because a lot of people know these things, but perhaps there’s a blind spot where it’s like, okay, yeah, I guess now that you pointed out, when I’m sitting all day, I might be working my mind, I might be emotionally exhausted, but I’m not physically exhausted. But before you pointed that out, I was just looking at exhaustion as one bucket. Now I see that you can break it out into multiple different components. How do people go about, like, doing this? Like self coaching? Do you have any tips or tricks to be able to create these new stories that are the seeds, planting the seeds that we can then water over time?

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:28:20]:
The first thing is to identify what you just shared. And I know I’m not the first person. Oh, his name escapes me, but he was a contributor to Bulletproof, the biohacking who you just had on your, on your podcast. He talked about. Again, it’s. There’s the physical energy, there’s the emotional energy, there’s the mental energy, there’s a spiritual energy. So energy, even though they’re all interconnected, they all work with each other, therefore, different types of energy. So we have to be able to identify that.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:28:50]:
Wait a second. I’m not physically exhausted. I’m emotionally and mentally exhausted. So it’s. The awareness piece is huge. The understanding of it. And then you start to connect the dots. Like I just said, what’s the best way to.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:29:02]:
I am emotionally exhausted. I just spent the entire day on the phone or the entire day looking at my screen. I am emotionally mentally exhausted. But then we have to bring back that logic. What’s the best way to recover my mind and my emotions? Well, scientifically proven that fresh air and human movement, body movement, is the best way to recover my emotions. Now you. Then you may have barriers in that. And the barriers usually come with the word but.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:29:36]:
I get that. But I understand. But I want to. But whatever comes after the but is now the barrier that we need to set a new goal to conquer. So for me is, I want to drink more water, but I forget or, but, you know, I’m not someone who’s just going to, you know, I’m not a sipper. So I needed to, you know, I needed to look at my barriers and create goals that conquered those barriers. But you can do nothing until you’re willing to suffer a little bit at the beginning. Because with every change comes some type of loss.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:30:25]:
And you need to be able to accept that it’s going to be uncomfortable, that you need to be able to accept that you’re going to lose some things. And you have to prioritize and you have to want the success more than you fear the discomfort and fear the loss. And only then will you have the energy and the motivation and the discipline to follow through. For example, me standing there every single morning and drinking water and lemon.

Nick Urban [00:30:54]:
Yeah, I’ve heard that part described. In order for you to actually change your behavior, the pain of continuing has to be stronger than the pain or yeah, has to be stronger than the pain of changing. And then the behavior change becomes something that you will do because it’s less painful. Are there any tips or tricks to get through that more effectively? Because I think that’s where a lot of people, they get stuck. They don’t really know necessarily what is the potential on the other side of this practice. But if I stay in this, it’s a known, say three points of pain versus that could be zero, it could be 10. And so because I know this is familiar, I’m going to stick with this.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:31:32]:
If someone comes to me with a long term goal, like a dream, you know, I would never ever tell them don’t dream and don’t have a long term goal. I’m a dreamer. I have long term goals. But when used right, they can motivate. When used incorrectly, they keep you exactly where you are. Because it’s too daunting. Like I’m never going to, like I’m going to stop this forever. I’m going to do this forever.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:31:57]:
It’s just too daunting. It can be actually quite distracting. So instead I have two suggestions. One is to again, for today, for this morning, you know, maybe you’re gonna go far as for this week. You have to know yourself and what resonates. I am definitely like a today I’m gonna do this. So I don’t put these demands on myself that I’m gonna do this forever. Now as I develop the habit, I create these non negotiables like you asked me at the very beginning.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:32:30]:
They have now become non negotiables. But on day one, drinking water and lemon first thing in the morning and go for a morning walk and getting a kiss in the morning were not suddenly okay. These are non negotiables for the rest of my life. But as they became habits, they became non negotiables. And now because I’ve been doing it for so long and I see the benefit and I know what it’s like when I have missed them. Now I want them as a non negotiable. But if I start out that way, it’s daunting and it actually can hurt my motivation. So I would really keep it simple.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:33:03]:
Like one day. I mean step by step. My mantra is right, left, right, left. Literally step by step. The second piece, the second tool that I would recommend or tip is every day. If you’re looking to make some changes, again, small and something that you believe you can do, but every day. So exercise is a great example. The recommendation is to exercise three to five times a week for what, 20 to 30 minutes a day.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:33:35]:
From a mindset person, from a mental expert to me, that is like the ultimate definition of yo yo diet, of yo yoing. Because if I’m engaging in it three times, that means I’m not doing it four, if I’m engaging in it five times, that I’m not doing it for two. I’m not being consistent with a habit that I want to create. So I would take the 20 minutes, 30 minutes, I would narrow it down to maybe 10, 15, 5. If you’ve absolutely never done anything like this in your life, but every single day, and it may not be a sprint every single day because we need to recover and rest, but it could be active recovery. But you want to carve out that time every single day for exercise so that you start doing it consistently and building that muscle. And then once you start to reap the benefits, it then can become more of a non negotiable.

Nick Urban [00:34:26]:
That’s the approach I’ve used for different things more recently for writing. When I wanted to practice my writing skill, I would write 500 words every single day without fail. And at first it was really hard. It got easier over time. What would you say is like the minimum effective dose, if there is one, of watering that new thought or belief or action seed. You mentioned the athlete previously. You said that he was like rehearsing and is that like rehearsal 10 times a day? Is that once a day? Is that every couple days? I’m guessing it’s at least once a day.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:34:58]:
Thank you for bringing him up because that’s a good example for him. It became the words were thank you for showing up. And he wrote that on a post it note and that was then written in his locker and it was written on his bathroom mirror. So it Wasn’t necessarily like I required 10 times a day. But every time he opened his locker, he’d see it. Every time he brushed his teeth, he’d see it. So you put it in places where you don’t have to remind yourself to see it. You’re going to see it.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:35:27]:
Thank you for showing up today. But then there’s also. We had to really make sure that we knew, are you seeing it but not really seeing it? Do you know that it’s there but you’re not focusing on it? And if that happens, then we have to change the attentional cue too. We have to change the. So that it does start to make an imprint. But I do daily. I do believe daily. But how you do it kind of depends on what you’re trying to change.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:35:52]:
It kind of depends on your situation, your lifestyle. So I would really want to tailor that for your specific needs. But I do. But I’m like you, like daily.

Nick Urban [00:36:02]:
I think it’s a great idea too. Like the passive reminders where it’s not like, oh, okay, you need to spend 20 minutes, three to four times a day in deep meditation, just visualizing and thinking this. And then you got to layer on a bunch of other things. Like, we’ll make this practical for you. So you’ll see when you go about your day, hopefully you’ll actually focus on it long enough to register the fact that it’s there. And then we’ll also layer in other things on top of that. But it’s like we want to increase the amount of exposure you have to that idea so that you’re conjuring that up in your mind again and you’re watering that seed and hopefully taking some of that water from the other well established. I guess not even seeds.

Nick Urban [00:36:36]:
Plants.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:36:36]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we have some great stuff in there too. I mean, we don’t want to remove everything. We have some great stuff in there too. And so we can, you know, Atomic Habits is one of the, you know, more. More popular books with habits. And yeah, you basically look at something you’re already doing and then, you know, you attach that to something you want to start doing. So you kind of.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:36:59]:
You bridge it together. That’s a great idea. Some people do need the structure, the real regimented routine of I’m going to time myself for five minutes every day in meditation. Some people are like that. I personally am not. Every day I’m going to do this. But how it looks may be different, but other people do need. So again, behavior is the function of the person.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:37:26]:
And the environment. So you really have to look at the person, the environment that they’re in, and then figure out what’s going to work best.

Nick Urban [00:37:32]:
This is a little bit of a tangent, but in 2019, I heard Dr. Zach Bush say something that definitely shook my identity, and that was I always identified previously as a resilient person. And then when. What he was describing is that when you identify as resilient each and every day, you’re going to be looking for things to prove your identity. And by resilient, the thing you need to prove your identity is conflict or struggle or pain that you can overcome. I’m curious what your thoughts are on identity and how to craft a healthy, beneficial identity.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:38:07]:
Good question. It’s kind of like that, be careful what you wish for type of thing, right? Like, if you wish for resilience, you’re going to be thrown all these different challenges so that you need to prove your resiliency.

Nick Urban [00:38:17]:
It sounded like a very, like, how can there be anything wrong with having an identity that’s resilient? Until I realized there is a bit of a shadow there potentially. And since hearing that six years ago, I’ve been more reserved about assigning and sticking very hardcore to any particular identity like that.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:38:36]:
I don’t. I get that. So I do not want to just disregard it. I don’t know that for me, I would feel. Feel that I’m now suddenly on a mission to have a life full of challenges. Because I can. I identify myself as resilient, you know, and not that I characterize. Not that I do use the word resilient, but I do believe that something that I teach is that it’s not always about striving for perfection.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:39:02]:
One of our goals is to be the best recoverer we can be. So when something does go wrong to, you know, to be the best recoverer, that’s another thing I’ve learned in sport. The best athlete is usually not the perfect athlete. I don’t even know if there’s such thing. But it’s the athlete that best recovers. And so how do we take that into our lives? And that’s like, I do think it’s a strength of mine, but I don’t know that I’m suddenly out in the world. I still strive for perfection, but when and if things go, you know, when and if I miss something, I just want to be my best recoverer. But I don’t know that I’m suddenly manifesting a world of challenges just because I identify myself as resilient.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:39:40]:
But I do get the concept. But let’s talk about identity because that’s a really important piece. And I believe people do make one mistake with identity. They identify themselves as a role and not a strength. So what do I mean by that? I’ll just start with sports because I always do athletes, I’m an athlete. And then when something happens and they are forced out of their sport or they retire on purpose, a lot of athletes have a lot of challenges and worse, there are some lot of consequences because they don’t know that they’re anything but an athlete. And how am I going to hack it in the real world? You may be a spouse and then you, you know, and I’m, I am, that’s who I am. I’m a wife, I’m a husband, I’m a father, I’m a leader, I’m a manager, I’m a CEO.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:40:30]:
Those are all roles. And roles come and roles go. And sometimes we choose when those roles come and go and sometimes we don’t get to choose when those roles come and go. So I like to look at identity as our inner self, our characteristics that make us who we are. So I mentioned one of my best words for me is bright. Bright. I also use the word full heart because when I’m my best self, you’ve got all of me. When I’m my best self, I am all in.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:41:05]:
Now I love the trophy, like extrinsic motivation, but I’m all heart, intrinsic and I’m a strength finder. When I’m my best self, I look in the mirror, I see my strengths and not my flaws. When I’m my best self, I’m looking at everyone that I’m working with. I’m searching for their strengths. So those, that’s my identity. And I apply that to the various roles I have in my life in this moment.

Nick Urban [00:41:31]:
I don’t even know if coming up is the right way of describing it because I mean, for myself, I considered myself as an athlete. I still do. But it’s like even though I’m not playing sports currently, I have, my entire life I played sports. But then it doesn’t seem like I didn’t come up with it. It kind of just found me in some way. So how do you either come up with it or how do you encourage the conditions for an identity to find you?

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:41:59]:
What did you bring to your sport? Or what did your, what did the sporting experience highlight in you or develop in you? But like what, what are your, what were your strengths? What did, what did that entire experience give you or, or help you. I help you strengthen. What characteristics, what qualities?

Nick Urban [00:42:19]:
A lot of things, I mean, in myself. The ability to communicate and to work in effectively in a team, leadership, the value of hard work on the right things and the ability to, I guess, contribute to something larger. A lot of different things. I’m not really thinking of anything great right now.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:42:39]:
No. Yes, those are great. Those are great. Let’s just go with the first one because it was great communication, you know, so maybe you have this. I mean, listen, you’re a podcast host, you know how to communicate. You ask great questions, you speak, you listen. I mean, all those are communicating qualities. So as an athlete, you’re not an athlete, you’re a communicator.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:43:00]:
And you are applying that communication skill to your sport. And now you’re applying it to, well, this podcast for sure, and other aspects of your life. You’re relating to others and that is how you’re contributing. You’re sending messages. You’re receiving messages. You’re letting people, everyone who’s coming here to visit you at your podcast, they’re, you know, you’re communicating and they get to communicate in your community. You’re a communication platform and you’re applying that to all the various roles you have in your life, including athletics.

Nick Urban [00:43:31]:
Yeah, I see that. And to me it’s like the conglomeration of different qualities and attributes and, and actions aligns most closely with an athlete. But I guess it also could be, there could be another term that describes it that’s not a role and is more of an identity, like a longer term thing that’s accurate regardless whether, whether or not I’m playing sports.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:43:58]:
Yeah. And you, I mean, you like me, so we’re the same. I like the idea that I, that I was an athlete. I like the idea that I’m still an athlete. And so I’m, I don’t want to discard that, but it is not my identity. So it is something that I’m close to. It is a role that I have. It is a passion of mine.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:44:17]:
But I am, I, I know enough to not. I am not an athlete. I am these things and I, you know, apply it in the role of, of athlete because that’s going to help me, that it’s going to help me stay confident. No matter what season of life I am in, no matter what happens in my life, it’s going to help me and it’s helped a lot of people transition from one role to another. It’s like I’m. This, this is all I know. But now I have to fulfill this role. Well, now we’re going to create your identity based on you as your person, all of your strengths, all of your values.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:44:52]:
And now we’re going to transition that into the next role. And people have. It’s doable instead of, you know, paralyzing and frantic. But you’re, you mentioned values and values is another great. Is a great way, you know, you’re, you know what you value most in life. And we have to do the work. I can tell you my values are health, love and adventure. And I didn’t just make those up.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:45:14]:
Like I have done the training. I, you know, and so that really. And then I apply those things to again, the roles that I have in my life.

Nick Urban [00:45:22]:
So you mentioned three values. Is that specifically. Is there a reason you chose three specifically?

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:45:27]:
I like the number three in my education and my studies with psychology and the art of persuasion and just having us help us to learn and help us commit. Robert Gialdini, the author of a great book called yes, which is probably one of his less popular books, but this is where I learned this from. He. Yeah, it’s called yes. He talked about how more than three options the confused mind says no. Except for he says gelato tasting and the color of our tennis shoes. So I don’t know if you remember back in the day when we used to go to the retail store to buy Nikes or Adidas or the entire wall was like painted, like just 100 shoes just splattered on the wall that we could choose from. Awesome experience.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:46:21]:
Gelato. Go in there and get to taste every flavor because it’s an experience. But other than those two things, anything more than three, we get confused. So that’s why I liked. But. But as you said earlier, autonomy is really important. So I don’t want someone to just give me one thing and I may not feel bright one day. So I’m not.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:46:40]:
I don’t want to just be nothing that day. I can still focus on full heart or strength finder. If I’m not feeling adventurous, I can still focus on my health and my love. So I get to play around. But I like the three because my education teaches me that. Any more than three, I’d get confused and just say no.

Nick Urban [00:46:59]:
That makes sense. If we were to go back to the identity of or I guess the role of an athlete, what kind of difference would identifying is I am athletic instead of I am an athlete. Is it a synonym or is that like an important distinction?

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:47:15]:
I mean, right now, I guess it depends on Your definition of athlete? Well, you know, to me, you know, right now, I’m not a competitive athlete. I typically say that I’m athletic. I don’t know that I say that I’m an athlete because I work with athletes. So I’m not the same as them because they’re competing, but I don’t. But that’s just me. Would you. Do you think an athlete requires an. A person to be competing? I think it’s just semantics, to be honest.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:47:42]:
Whatever you.

Nick Urban [00:47:43]:
My internal definition is in competition. And so I say that I’m athletic, but I don’t say I’m an athlete currently for that very reason. But then again, I’m not sure if it makes a difference. I was curious if in your studies you came across that as being like, a big. A big differentiator.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:48:00]:
No, it hasn’t. I mean, now that you just asked me, I had to, like, reflect. I don’t think it makes. I don’t think it makes a difference. It’s really just what your story is and how it’s helping you. We don’t want these things to hurt us as soon as our stories hurt us. It’s a mental block, and then we need to engage in the three things. Although I think I only gave you two.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:48:23]:
I don’t think I’ve given you the third strategy yet, but let’s hear it. Oh, the third. Coming around. Yeah. So the first one for mental block. Change the situation. If you can’t change the situation, change the way you look at the situation. But sometimes it’s really even hard to change the way you look at the situation because sometimes things just simply suck and.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:48:42]:
Or they appear to you as just really sucky. So there is a strategy of accepting what is and taking action on what you control. So I call it accept and act. But again, it’s not as easy as that. Some people look at accepting as, like, giving up. It is what it is. I can’t do anything about it, so I’m just gonna have to accept it. That is not what I mean.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:49:07]:
I mean, accepting your situation with courage, accepting it with conviction, with steadfastness, so that you. So you’re not gonna devote any unnecessary emotional, you know, energy towards it. So accept this is what it is, and then take action on your strengths. Take action on what you. Like you said, you know, a little bit of control somewhere. Take action on what you can control. And that allows you to, again, not just be so focused on that story, on the mental block. You just accept it, let it go, and then you Become the highlight, the center of your life again with owning your strengths and exposing yourself to your situation with your strengths.

Nick Urban [00:49:49]:
Will you give an example of that? Because I think it’s very. It’s an important distinction between accepting it and throwing your arms up and just I. I guess apathetically accepting it. How does it actually look in practice? Like, what’s the difference between the two in, like a real world example? And how do you go. How do you make sure that you’re doing that properly?

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:50:13]:
I was working with an athlete. Um, I’ve got two stories, but this one’s. This one’s a fun one. Well, they’re both fun, but I was working with an athlete who’s a motocross athlete. So he had been dirt biking. He goes off a quarter pipe and he does some tricks in the air. And in three years, he had broken 27 bones. And he.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:50:32]:
And you have to be a little cray cray to do these sports like that, I always say. But he came to me because the. This 27th break was doing a backflip on his dirt bike, and he broke his shin bone, his tibia. And his doctor told him that it had been six weeks, he could walk again. But to him, he could not get back on the bike. I mean, he thought that if I can walk again, that means I should be able to ride again. But he mentally couldn’t get himself there for. Because of the mental block of the 28th break.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:51:02]:
And he was really afraid of breaking or worse. And he was frustrated at himself because a tibia, a shin bone, is nothing compared to the back that he’s broken, the neck that he’s broken, the femur that he’s broken. So he’s like, what is a shin bone? Why is this causing me so much mental turmoil? And the backflip was his easiest trick. So he was upset with himself. So he came to me and I can change a situation. He can never ride a bike again and never break a bone while riding a bike. But that wasn’t something that he was willing to do. I also couldn’t tell him, don’t worry about it.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:51:43]:
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Right? Which would be like the reframing or you’re not going to break another bone or like, first of all, that may be a lie. So we couldn’t really reframe. He did know that he was. Talk about resilience. He did know that he had. He had developed a lot of resilience from his 27th break. So he did know that Injuries did teach him something, but in the moment, he couldn’t change the way he looked at it.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:52:09]:
So we had to accept the fact that he was afraid of breaking another bone. Not we. He. He had to accept that with courage. Like, he had to want success more than he feared anything else, but he had to own the fact that it was a real possibility, and he had to choose whether he was going to risk that, accept the reality of the situation. And we talked about the fears, and he said it was the first time he was ever actually able to talk about the fears out in the open. And that just, you know, like, it just, you know, sitting on your shoulders, like, that weight, it kind of shrunk. Just be able to talk about it and to accept it.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:52:54]:
And after we accepted it, and we had to wait until he really, truly did. Can’t just fake that in those situations. You can’t fake it until you make it, and then it was okay. Teach me how to do a backflip on a motorcycle. Now, I have my motorcycle license, but don’t tell my parents, but my feet were firmly planted on the ground when he taught me. And he. And I wanted him to, like, really give me details. He’s a professional athlete, so he doesn’t want to tell me all the various steps, But I encouraged him to, like, break it down.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:53:26]:
And he gave me 10 steps. And he was frustrated in the moment because I don’t, like. I don’t. I just do it. I don’t have to think about all these strategies, Right? But while he was telling me and teaching me how to do a backflip, he wasn’t thinking about the break. So it was the combination of owning the fear, accepting it, and taking control over the details like tactics, strategies, technique of landing, increasing the probability that he lands. But that’s a whole lot of. That’s a lot of things to think about.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:54:00]:
So after he taught me the 10 things, I asked him to choose one. Choose one technical, tactical strategy that you know inside you, that you can do with your eyes closed if you need to, that will put all the other nine steps in motion and increase the probability. Never guarantee, but increase the probability that you’ll land. And he said, pull up on the handlebars. And then he accepted the risk, accepted that he’s afraid, and focused on pull up, pull up, pull up, pull up. And he visualized and he sat on the bike. Then he turned the bike on, you know, like, desensitization, systematic desensitization. And in six months, not only did he land the backflip but he was the youngest athlete to qualify for X Games in quarter pipe, accept and act.

Nick Urban [00:54:51]:
So the process there for him was to walk through the whole thing with you, and then he chose pulling up on the handlebars because that was something that was like the lead domino, if you will. And if you do that right, then you’re more likely to do everything else Right. And then he just really focused on drilling that, mentally watering that seed specifically.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:55:09]:
Right. Because what we were doing after the accepting the fear, we have to gain trust. We have to focus on what we trust in ourselves. We have to have that confidence be bigger than the fear. Even though we accept the fear, confidence has to be bigger than the fear. And so, yeah, so he talked me through it, and then he had the autonomy to choose, and then he zoned in on that. And when you zone into something so specific, you tune out the other stuff.

Nick Urban [00:55:38]:
And the other stuff can involve fear and overanalyzing the situation, wondering if you got each of the 10 components right. And then as a result, you don’t do some multiple of them. Right. Because you’re so focused on everything that you neglect multiple.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:55:54]:
No, when you know, again, this is personal, like, noise is whatever the noise is for you. So many people come to me, I don’t want to have to think. I just want to go. But when you are consumed with a mental block, you have to think, think less. I want to help you think less. Think strategically.

Nick Urban [00:56:15]:
One of the things you’ve mentioned throughout and that is that whether it’s athletes, business people, people focusing on their overall health and wellness, a lot of times it’s not that they’re necessarily the number one all the time. Without fail, they make no mistakes, but it’s their ability to recover like a professional, or in some cases as a professional. Are there any things there that you find helpful to recovering more effectively?

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:56:42]:
I’m not personally. Again, this is just my humble opinion and my personal preference. I, you know, like, failures, learning opportunities. Let me get through this. And then after the fact, when I’m kind of more in a calmer place, I’ll learn from it. But so, like, I don’t want to, like, sit and like the, like, I don’t want to sit in the failure and try to find the lesson. So my strategy is, you know, the comment when you fall down, get back on the horse. Get back on any horse.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:57:16]:
Just have a success of anything. So if I make a mistake in my nutrition, maybe I’ll have an immediate success in my exercise or in my work or in my relationship. So just have an immediate success, recover. And if you can recover in that specific. There just comes to mind in my work, if I forgot a call that I was supposed to be on or I missed a meeting, um, I’m going to jump on that and like, see if I can get in that call late or at least send a quick recovery, apologize, you know. So sorry. This must have been awful for you to just show up and I’m not there. How can I make it up? Like those things you want to quickly recover from.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:57:55]:
But I’m not going to want to learn in that moment. I’m not emotionally ready to learn in that moment. So I want to get. I want to have an immediate success, quick recovery, and then after the fact, reflect on it and say, how could I be better next time? So I like. I do like that strategy.

Nick Urban [00:58:12]:
Is the immediacy of the success more important or the magnitude? Like, does it need to be a really big success or is it more important that you have a quick success right after I.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:58:21]:
Yes, the latter. I believe it’s like a quick success. Because I don’t want to there. You know, there are moments when I just need to cry or I need to be angry at myself. Like, there’s a moment when I need to feel that and understand, you know, the failure. But. But there comes a time when that’s no longer going to serve me. So I need to get up and have a success.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:58:40]:
And a small success still gets me on the path of success instead of staying on the path of failure, getting just. You know, sometimes when we make a mistake during the day, in the morning, we end up making more mistakes and we end up making more mistakes, and we just get down and down and down on ourselves. I don’t want that to happen. So just. Just some level of success to just get me back in a place where I’ve got energy, I’ve got momentum, I’ve just a little bit of confidence. So it doesn’t have to be a huge thing. It can be a small thing.

Nick Urban [00:59:10]:
And then if you want to later in the day, after the day’s over, coming to an end, if you want to process it and unpack it, then you can do it. But like, you’ve already gone through day, you’ve had your wins, your recovery wins after that, and then you’re already feeling better so that you’re in the easier place to access whatever it was that was painful to begin with.

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:59:28]:
I think so at least. At least that’s in my experience professionally and personally.

Nick Urban [00:59:32]:
Something Else you mentioned in your work is practical ways to train focus. Is there anything there that you want to unpack?

Dr. Haley Perlus [00:59:40]:
The greatest way. And it’s funny, I’m going to come back to that awareness piece. The greatest way for all of us, I believe. Well, to start, there are many exercises and tools, but the greatest way for us to train focus is to have an understanding of what is relevant and what is irrelevant in the moment. So right now, Nick, you are the most and only relevant thing in my life right now. Now when we’re done, you won’t be. Then something else will become. Something else will become relevant.

Dr. Haley Perlus [01:00:10]:
But right now you are so. And I’m just happened to be facing a window and I saw, I did see someone walk by. And again, I have trained, I go, I’ve gone through the training. So I saw. And then I know that you’re relevant. So I now have the ability to, to not still focus on them, to bring my focus right back on you. Because you’re relevant, they’re irrelevant. And we can train ourselves.

Dr. Haley Perlus [01:00:33]:
One way to do that is to just set like alarms throughout the day, four times a day. Um, you choose the time and when the alarm goes off, you just sit in your moment and you say, okay, what’s relevant in this moment and what’s irrelevant? And then you evaluate yourself. Are you devoting your time and energy to what’s relevant or are you already, you know, are you finding yourself distracted? And then you have the opportunity to, to recover. And then also there might be a time where you do find yourself overwhelmed and things are coming at you all at once. But now you’ve engaged in the training and you have the ability to say relevant, not relevant, relevant, not relevant. And then that’s. So that’s step number one to identify what to focus on and what not to focus on. And then step two is to develop the skill, a muscle like any other.

Dr. Haley Perlus [01:01:23]:
We have to grow it. The skill of concentration. And there’s many, many tools and tactics. I love the concentration grid. It’s a fun game. Just go online and search for concentration grid. It’s a grid with numbers, 0, 0 to 99, the ones that I use. And they’re all scrambled.

Dr. Haley Perlus [01:01:42]:
And you just time yourself for a minute. Find 00, find 01, find 02, find 03. And then you get people. You maybe put on music or you go in front of the television or you have people talk to you and you need to tune all that out and zone in on the number that’s relevant, the one that you’re Focusing on.

Nick Urban [01:01:59]:
I like that. That’s like a easy, affordable way to do like brain training and neurofeedback type stuff. Have you looked into that at all in your resilience training using like heart coherence training or things like that for people who want to be able to perform consistently at the top of their game?

Dr. Haley Perlus [01:02:17]:
I have little programs when people are with me in person. We hook them up to a monitor where it takes their heart rate and then we have little video games. And it’s not something I created, it’s a software that I purchased. And for example, there’s three balls would be there and then you want to increase your heart rate by sitting, increase your heart rate and then the balls start to juggle and then you want to calm yourself down so that the balls come down. Or you want to control your breathing so you embrace. You’ve really focused on your breathing. If your breathing is in sync with this tree that grows and then shrinks, you get to the next chapter. It’s a little gain for biofeedback, if that’s what you’re referring to.

Dr. Haley Perlus [01:03:02]:
It’s fine. It makes it tangible, right? It allows us to see it or experience it a little bit more tangible than otherwise.

Nick Urban [01:03:13]:
Exactly. And for people who have a hard time meditating, they don’t know if they’re doing it right or they just want to like see progress over time. It can be very hard to know if it’s actually working right for you. But having some kind of like gamified, quantified thing out there you can actually see visually or hear the difference that’s occurring makes the whole process more enjoyable for a lot of people, myself included.

Dr. Haley Perlus [01:03:36]:
Yeah, me too. Me too.

Nick Urban [01:03:39]:
Well, this has been great. We’ve covered a lot of ground. Still have so much more we could cover. If people want to check out your work to grab your book. Personal podium. By the way, great name and cover. How do they find you or your book online?

Dr. Haley Perlus [01:03:54]:
Yeah, the best place for the book or for one on one coaching. And for everything that I’ve created best places, just go to my website. So Dr. Just er haileyperless.com it’s the best place to connect with me, send me a message, opt in, get, get some weekly mental toughness moments.

Nick Urban [01:04:14]:
And although we talked mainly about sports performance in this interview, you also work with other people as well. Correct.

Dr. Haley Perlus [01:04:21]:
Business, wellness and athletes. It all comes from a sport foundation and then we apply it to all aspects of all the roles we have in our lives.

Nick Urban [01:04:32]:
Perfect. A couple more questions for you before we Part ways today, if there was a burning of the books and all knowledge on earth was lost, but you get to save the works of three teachers, who would you choose and why?

Dr. Haley Perlus [01:04:45]:
Well, I first immediately go to my two mentors, Dr. Jim Lehrer and Dr. Jack Groppel, who created the corporate athlete that they started in sports. And then they spread this knowledge to all aspects of health and performance. And they have just been. They have taught me so much, and I want to, you know, their. Their legacy lives on and. And hopefully would live on.

Dr. Haley Perlus [01:05:13]:
My favorite book, Love is Letting Go of Fear. And I think that’s a book that everyone should read, and so that would be the best. You know, one of the greatest teachers that I’ve. That I’ve had was, was that book, Love is Letting Go of Fear. And the third teacher, for me personally, not that I recommend. Not that I recommend coaches or leaders to bet on their employees or bet on their athletes or parents to bet on their children, but I believe that for us to realize our true potential, we all need to learn how to embrace stress and how to be our best with pressure and with stress and harness it. I truly believe that. So I would.

Dr. Haley Perlus [01:06:05]:
I. You know, that coach is my greatest teacher.

Nick Urban [01:06:09]:
Well, I was going to ask you how you want to wrap this one up, if there’s any parting words of wisdom. And it seems like what you just shared is a great one, that stress isn’t necessarily the enemy. And in fact, stress can cause growth and new opportunities and enhance performance when it’s channeled effectively.

Dr. Haley Perlus [01:06:26]:
Yeah, and it can. It’s. It’s how we realize what we’re really made of.

Nick Urban [01:06:30]:
Well, Hayley, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. It’s been a blast chatting all things performance, sports, business, and beyond.

Dr. Haley Perlus [01:06:39]:
Thank you, Nick.

Nick Urban [01:06:40]:
Thanks for tuning in to high performance longevity. If you got value today, the best way to support the show is to leave a review or share it with someone who’s ready to upgrade their health span. You can find all the episodes, show notes and resources [email protected] until next time, stay energized, stay bioharmonized, and be an outlier.