The Art of Manliness - The Science of Getting Psyched Up

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast if you're an

00:00:12.040 athlete you know that it can be helpful to get psyched up before a big game but getting in the

00:00:16.200 right mindset is important in any kind of high-stakes scenario whether you want to perform

00:00:19.980 your best in a big meeting presentation interview audition or conversation my guest has some tips

00:00:25.660 he gleaned from interviewing athletes soldiers entertainers and executives on how to find that

00:00:30.140 mindset his name is daniel mcginn and he's the author of psyched up how the science of mental

00:00:34.800 preparation can help you succeed the first step to getting into an optimal mindset is managing

00:00:39.440 negative emotions so we begin our conversation with what works in mitigating stress and anxiety

00:00:44.280 from there we talk about how to get others psyched up with an effective pep talk and why the leaders

00:00:48.640 who came out of world war ii use the classic raw raw style more than leaders do today we then discuss

00:00:54.080 the role of music in getting yourself psyched up and what daniel learned from the dj for the red

00:00:57.900 sox about crafting the perfect pump-up playlist daniel shares how visualization and having a personal

00:01:03.060 highlight reel can put you in a positive headspace and whether or not anger competition and trash talk

00:01:08.080 improve performance after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is psyched up

00:01:24.080 all right daniel mcginn welcome to the show brett thanks so much so uh you got a book that you wrote

00:01:37.860 a couple years ago called psyched up how the science of mental preparation can help you succeed

00:01:42.540 and i'm curious you are an editor at harvard business review but this book you wrote about

00:01:48.700 the psychology of getting psyched up it's a book that focuses on sports but also getting you know

00:01:54.340 how getting psyched up carries over to other domains of life as well how did you end up writing a book

00:01:59.340 about the psychology of getting psyched up well it's a great question at harvard business review we

00:02:05.440 spend a lot of time reading academic journal articles and talking with business school professors

00:02:10.500 it's not obvious why somebody like me would get interested in a book that draws partly from sports

00:02:16.080 psychology part of it stems from the fact that i was a a not very good high school athlete i played

00:02:22.380 football and basketball i spent a lot of time on the bench but i was in that atmosphere where i watched

00:02:28.500 the things that the coaches would try to do to mentally prepare us for the game to get us in that

00:02:33.300 right mindset the rituals the music the rivalry that they tried to instill in us to get us to perform

00:02:40.180 at higher levels at harvard business review when i got here i started seeing actual research coming

00:02:45.680 across my desk a lot of it from business schools that looked at how some of these practices do play

00:02:51.460 out in professional environments and then the third thing was i would occasionally run into people

00:02:56.860 in all walks of professional life a lot of them former athletes who were using these techniques

00:03:02.540 themselves trial attorneys who would do certain things before they would go into the courtroom i remember

00:03:08.060 one old friend who was an accountant of all things he'd been a college football player and you know we

00:03:14.300 think of accounting as sitting at a desk crunching numbers actually when you get to a high level in

00:03:19.280 accounting you spend a lot of time in the boardroom in front of directors giving important presentations

00:03:24.500 and before he went into a boardroom he would listen to certain music he would work out that morning

00:03:29.660 because it would make him feel stronger he would do visualizations so he was really using athletic

00:03:35.580 preparation techniques for accounting so some of the stuff may sound strange but you actually run into people

00:03:41.780 using it okay so attorneys are using it accountants i imagine ceos are using some of the stuff about

00:03:48.600 getting psyched up or psychologically amped up in their work as well yeah if you think about it so

00:03:54.820 think back 50 or 100 years to what people's work life was like you know think back to say being a farmer

00:04:01.680 or being on an assembly line every day is pretty much the same in those jobs you know every day is like

00:04:07.840 the next now think about what many of our professional jobs are like today every moment is not like the next

00:04:13.680 you know if you think about your work life in a month there's probably two or three important days where

00:04:19.820 you have a key meeting or a key client phone call or a sales presentation or maybe just an interview with

00:04:26.800 one of your podcast guests that's more important than the others high stakes moments that are more reliant on

00:04:33.700 high performance than the others and that's really where i started to see some of this the idea that

00:04:38.400 you can sort of isolate your career moments down to these peak performances and if you can find some

00:04:43.660 tricks or some hacks to really get yourself into the mindset to do even 10 better during those it's

00:04:48.840 going to have a measurable difference so let's talk about how we can get psyched up so we can perform

00:04:53.140 at our best you talk about the first problem people have to deal with when they're getting ready for a

00:04:57.820 high stakes performance is managing negative emotions so jitters nerves anxiety what's the

00:05:04.460 source of those pre-game jitters whether it's pre-game an actual like sports game or pre-game

00:05:09.820 you're about to give a important business pitch so our bodies know that our bodies recognize when the

00:05:17.260 stakes are higher and they respond chemically with a fight or flight reaction our bodies are flooded by

00:05:24.280 adrenaline which on the one hand adrenaline can be a really useful substance when you hear stories

00:05:29.940 about somebody lifting a car off of somebody who's being crushed that's what adrenaline can do for

00:05:34.940 you if you're in the emergency room and your heart stops they inject adrenaline into you to get it to

00:05:41.100 start again so the chemistry of our body when we get into these sort of high stakes moments it can be

00:05:48.040 really powerful but it can also cause you to do things you don't want to do it can cause your mouth to go

00:05:53.920 dry it can cause you to sweat it causes some people to blink a lot it can cause you to shake imagine

00:05:59.820 giving a business presentation where your adrenaline kicks in and you're experiencing some of those

00:06:04.900 things it's a natural response it's your body's reaction to the fact that it knows the stakes are

00:06:11.460 high but it can really work against you a little bit of anxiety can be useful especially in the lead

00:06:17.860 up to a high stakes event because it can lead you to actually practice more and do things that will

00:06:23.840 prepare yourself a little bit better but the moment you take the stage generally you want to be able

00:06:30.040 to maintain manage and minimize that anxiety because it's only going to do bad things to you

00:06:34.400 yeah there's a u-shaped curve for anxiety and how useful it is so you need a little bit you know

00:06:40.420 sort of a medium amount is good because i used to help you prepare also that that adrenaline and

00:06:45.120 things like that it can energize you so you can perform well but if it goes too much then that's when

00:06:50.500 things start falling apart yeah it's definitely a goldilocks kind of situation you know when you

00:06:54.620 think about a whether it's a sports team that comes out flat you know that's what would the term we

00:07:00.460 use for a team that seems sort of unexcited unenergized that's obviously going to lead to

00:07:05.460 subpar performance but on the other hand if a team comes out and they're too nervous and they're

00:07:09.680 too tentative and you know you see a basketball team where nobody wants to shoot the ball that's a sign

00:07:14.500 that they're a little bit anxious so you really do need to find that medium spot whether you're doing

00:07:18.040 an athletic performance whether you're doing some sort of a professional event a little bit is good

00:07:22.300 but generally too much anxiety is going to be a problem so what does the science say about what

00:07:26.540 works for managing pre-game anxiety well different people use different techniques you can reframe the

00:07:35.280 anxiety as excitement that's one of the things that research has been shown to help there's a professor

00:07:41.680 here at harvard actually that did a study where she took people into the lab and she had them

00:07:47.580 performing karaoke or doing high stress math problems and she'd have one group of people

00:07:54.220 say i'm so nervous she'd have another group of people say i'm so excited and time after time

00:08:02.240 demonstrably like in significant numbers the people who reframed their anxiety as excitement

00:08:08.140 did better it's just sort of looking at the glass half full it's sort of an opportunity mindset as

00:08:13.460 opposed to focusing on what might go wrong they're focusing on what might go right so a lot of

00:08:18.640 athletes use an artist they use pre-performance rituals to prepare for a game or a show what were

00:08:24.780 some examples of pre-game rituals that you came across when writing this book in an athletic setting

00:08:31.240 rituals are great if there's a pause so obviously soccer is a very fast moving game not a lot of pauses

00:08:38.160 but when it comes to penalty kicks that's when everything sort of stops and the player has a few

00:08:43.040 moments to do something before the kick so that's the kind of thing where you'll see a ritual in the

00:08:47.660 middle of a game basketball baseball you'll see lebron james his rituals have changed over time

00:08:54.040 one of the things that he's always does is he goes to the the scorers table takes some chalk and throws

00:08:59.580 chalk dust in the air in a very sort of elaborate fashion he sometimes during his career has flashed hand

00:09:06.480 signals signifying the area code for akron ohio where he grew up he often will have specific

00:09:12.540 handshakes he does with each teammate before the game in baseball you'll see players uh writing things

00:09:18.720 in the dirt with their bat before they go to the plate so every player is different but the idea is

00:09:23.680 they have something that they do every time the same what do these do like how why do they work in

00:09:28.860 helping people perform better so there's really two theories why routines or pre-shot routines or

00:09:36.000 rituals work number one is that you're kind of cuing your body uh your body sort of gets into like a

00:09:42.680 routine think about like before a rocket launch you're used to having a checklist and you know

00:09:48.140 go system and a countdown that having that kind of process can sort of help your body prepare and

00:09:54.580 sort of get into the groove that habituation can kick in so that's number one number two the other theory

00:09:59.880 is that if you don't have something routine that you're doing before these high stakes events

00:10:04.860 you're probably going to sit there and be nervous and worry about it and so some people think that

00:10:10.060 the reason these rituals and routines are useful is they just give you something to do to occupy

00:10:14.840 your mind and to take your mind off of whatever negative thoughts might be creeping in oftentimes

00:10:20.120 when people think about getting psyched up we often think about a coach giving a pre-game or

00:10:24.360 halftime pep talk so we're moving away from managing negative emotions like anxiety we can do that

00:10:30.080 through reframing the anxiety or through rituals now we're talking about how to get those positive

00:10:34.860 emotions right getting amped up so that the pep talk and you actually talked to the guy who wrote

00:10:41.380 the pep talks in the famous sports movies rudy and hoosiers so what do you learn about giving an

00:10:47.180 effective pep talk from this guy so the right pep talk varies a little bit by the moment so it's hard

00:10:55.200 to come up with a generic one that will work in every instance but some common themes come through

00:11:00.560 if you listen to lots of these as i did when i was reporting this book one of the themes that often

00:11:05.640 comes up is sort of togetherness or the connectedness of the team if you watch sports these days you'll

00:11:11.920 often see the coaches on the sidelines of certain sports mic'd up so you're not just listening to

00:11:16.340 the pre-game talk but you can actually listen to them in the huddle and they'll often talk about trusting

00:11:21.160 each other or you know being part of a team the idea that it's not just about you it's about this

00:11:26.900 group of people so that's one of the things that comes through the other thing that sometimes comes

00:11:31.720 through especially when you get into sort of championship or very high stakes sort of scenarios

00:11:36.520 is that look this is the environment you've been practicing for the whole time there's that famous

00:11:42.420 moment in hoosiers where the coach has the player take out a measuring tape and he measures that the

00:11:48.240 basket is 10 feet off the ground and then he says how far back is the free throw line and they measure

00:11:53.380 oh it's 15 feet back so even though they're in the biggest stadium that they've ever played in the in

00:11:58.620 their lives he's normalizing the experience look this is a normal basketball court the same kind you've

00:12:04.320 been playing on your whole lives don't let this crazy environment get the better of you this is exactly

00:12:10.600 what you've been training for so those are two of the themes that usually come through all right so the

00:12:14.840 team togetherness or just focusing on the process and that's some of the interesting you found is

00:12:20.000 in your research that with amateur performers whether they're athletes particularly athletes

00:12:26.320 the more raw raw let's win one for the gipper that seems to be more effective but for professionals

00:12:32.880 that doesn't really do too much the better pep talk for professionals are more like instructions correct

00:12:39.580 yeah one of the people i talked to when i was reporting the book was stanley mccrystal who was

00:12:44.720 the leader of the special forces during a lot of the iraq and afghanistan wars and he certainly gave

00:12:52.540 pep talks at points when they needed them but one of the things he said to me was look you know when we

00:12:57.720 were in iraq we were leading at least one mission and sometimes multiple missions every night and

00:13:03.900 you can't try to get people all riled up emotionally for something they're doing twice a day every day

00:13:10.220 it just kind of becomes a job to them so in those instances the talk before the mission was much more

00:13:16.520 tactical it was instruction based it was okay here's what we're going to do we don't need to really appeal

00:13:21.900 to your emotion it becomes sort of like a job whereas if you go back to world war ii when we had the era of

00:13:29.780 the citizen soldier when people had been drafted into the military people had very very little

00:13:34.860 experience in there that was an environment where the commanding officers were much more likely to

00:13:40.220 give sort of a traditional rah-rah pep talk because those people were probably scared and they needed it

00:13:45.100 yeah i think it was mcraven was in charge of the bin laden raid and he pointed out that the speech he

00:13:54.280 gave before that was just here are the instructions just going through the process and those guys weren't

00:13:59.480 amped up at all i said like some of them actually fell asleep on the way over before they executed

00:14:03.680 the raid yeah they they did a couple of them slept on the helicopter and that speaks to the idea that

00:14:09.220 you know obviously that was an out of the ordinary assignment for them because of the high value target

00:14:15.780 they were going for but yet the mechanics of that uh that was their job they're used to doing that

00:14:21.560 if you watch a professional athlete who's playing in front of 70 000 people in an arena it's hard for you

00:14:27.840 or i to imagine being calm or treating that like an everyday experience but when that's your everyday

00:14:32.940 job you do get used to some of these things in ways that you wouldn't anticipate and i thought it was

00:14:37.440 interesting you made the point about how coaches did pep talks or how we think of doing pep talks

00:14:41.720 they're very emotionally charged ones it came out of world war ii so you had all these guys who served

00:14:47.120 in world war ii they were volunteers as a consequence the sort of pep talks they got there were the more

00:14:52.740 emotional ones and so when they got home they just carried that over when they became sports coaches

00:14:58.760 and so you had a lot of the very emotional you know let's get let's we're gonna win this for the

00:15:03.640 team blah blah blah blah but then as things got more professionalized you went away from that and it just

00:15:09.080 got more focus on the process that's a more effective pep talk for professionals yeah one of the fun moments

00:15:15.140 i had when i was reporting the book was realizing so if you deal with professors in academia they tend

00:15:22.520 to be very siloed and all they really know about is their own little discipline so i found that there

00:15:28.380 was this couple of professors that were studying the science of halftime speeches in sporting events

00:15:34.980 then i found a professor who'd written a dissertation on military speeches and then i found a husband and

00:15:41.300 wife professor who studied the business speak of what they call motivating language theory which is

00:15:47.780 basically how to give a pep talk in a business setting and none of these people knew about the

00:15:52.940 others but when you actually sat down and looked at their work it was super cohesive and and essentially

00:15:58.300 these are all sort of variations of the same thing there it there is sort of at least a generic

00:16:03.340 business kind of pep talk where you're trying to make some meaning of what people are doing

00:16:09.280 you're trying to create some empathy the idea that i know this is hard but we've done hard things

00:16:14.800 together before now let's go out there and do it so there are there is sort of a common language to

00:16:20.240 this whether you're in a military setting a sports setting or a business setting okay so like for let's

00:16:26.420 say someone's a manager based on your research there's some commonalities there but what would be

00:16:30.400 sort of an effective template for a pep talk so first you're going to remind them of what you're

00:16:37.440 asking them to do so for instance one of the days that i spent reporting the book i went and visited

00:16:42.940 yelp the tech company that does reviews on websites lets people upload reviews of restaurants and what

00:16:49.060 have you now the way that yelp makes its money is they have thousands of sales people who are calling

00:16:55.040 businesses cold calling them for the most part and trying to get them to buy advertising on the yelp

00:17:00.640 platform so i went and visited one of the yelp sales offices on the last day of the quarter when there

00:17:06.000 were hundreds of people cold calling pizzerias and car washes trying to get them to buy ads to make

00:17:11.320 their number you know they were a publicly traded company they needed to meet their earnings for that

00:17:15.800 and i watched the pep talk that the sales manager gave in the morning and she basically she tries to put

00:17:21.800 great meaning behind every action they take that day so you know i know it's hard to pick up the phone

00:17:28.480 and make that call but every call you make gets us closer to closing another sale and every sale we make

00:17:35.840 gets us closer to meeting our office goal to meeting the team goal and to letting this company be

00:17:42.580 successful so she's sort of taking that small task that each person is doing moment by moment and

00:17:48.760 connecting it to the larger mission of the whole organization and then the next thing she'd do is she'd say

00:17:55.400 you know you've all been trained the same way you all have the ability to do this let's talk about

00:18:01.280 john for a second john started here three months ago and last week he closed 18 deals so she'll isolate

00:18:09.100 on an individual salesperson who's been trained the same as everybody else but is having inordinate

00:18:15.240 success and so she'll sort of single and call people out in a positive role model way so those are some

00:18:20.920 of the things you'll typically see in situations like that meaning making empathy positive success

00:18:25.940 stories and then also maybe go back to the process like remind people you've got the training here's

00:18:31.580 what you got to do and that can maybe help get rid of some of those nerves right like the hoosiers

00:18:35.860 effect you know it's just it's like any other game yes if you think about certain kinds of sports or

00:18:41.520 certain things you do in sports and sales especially in business so you know the thing that that's hard to do

00:18:48.440 in sales is to make five calls and get hung up on or get a no and get the fortitude to make that sixth

00:18:56.940 and seventh call that's a hard thing to do in basketball if you've missed the first seven shots

00:19:02.300 of the game but you're a good player and the team wants you to keep shooting to shoot that eighth and

00:19:07.620 ninth shot knowing you've hit the last seven that's really hard to do and the right pep talk can sort of

00:19:12.600 help keep you in the right frame of mind to do that we're going to take a quick break for a word from our

00:19:16.980 sponsors and now back to the show so one thing that a lot of people do to get pumped up is they got a

00:19:27.580 playlist of music to help them get pumped up what did you learn from the guy who is the dj for the red

00:19:33.800 socks and the patriots about crafting the perfect pump up playlist so i learned a whole lot from him he

00:19:41.640 really was considered at the time this this was a few years ago he since left that job but at the

00:19:46.660 time fenway park was considered the best musical ballpark in america and this was largely because

00:19:52.020 not only would he work with the players to pick the right walk-up music that would play as they were

00:19:57.500 walking up to take their at-bats but he also had sort of improvisational music that he had ready to pull

00:20:03.360 out at a moment's notice when the right play came along probably the biggest thing i i learned from him

00:20:08.980 is that the songs that pump you up and the songs that pump me up may be very different songs based

00:20:15.520 on the emotional connection that they bring he talked about a baseball player who had sort of a

00:20:21.320 slow-moving country ballad that he'd walk up to the plate with and the first time the player told him

00:20:26.560 he wanted to use that he said gosh that doesn't sound very motivating why do you want to use that song

00:20:32.060 and he said well that's my daughter's favorite song and i need to be reminded when i go up to bat

00:20:37.220 that i'm doing this for my family this is the way i make my living and the more success i have at the

00:20:42.440 plate the more success my family's going to have so that's a song that reminds me of my daughter and

00:20:47.300 that's what i want to play so the songs every song every person is different a lot of this comes from

00:20:52.200 our emotional connection with music from our past and that can be an important part of the way we

00:20:57.120 choose songs that motivate us okay so it's going to depend on the person you talk about i thought this

00:21:01.180 is one of my favorite parts of the book you talk about eye of the tiger it remains one of the most

00:21:06.680 popular pump-up songs of all time if you look at spotify it's pretty much on all the list for pump-up

00:21:12.380 playlist tell us about how eye of the tiger came to be and why do you think it remains one of the most

00:21:17.220 popular pump-up songs of all time well so one of the days i spent reporting the book i flew out to

00:21:23.640 the suburbs of chicago and i spent the morning with the guy from survivor the guitarist who wrote that

00:21:30.500 song and the song came about they wrote it especially for rocky three because sylvester

00:21:36.000 stallone had heard an early demo of theirs and thought they'd be the right band to write this

00:21:41.220 and he talked about so that's the a great example of how the music and the words of that song come

00:21:48.320 together so the opening of that song has a very sort of staccato guitar string it's not really even a

00:21:55.040 melodic it's just sort of a and the quick sounds in that are supposed to illustrate your heartbeat so

00:22:04.700 it's supposed to sort of convey the jittery fast-beating heart of a boxer and then the more

00:22:11.500 staccato sounds are supposed to represent the punches coming and you can imagine once they put

00:22:15.660 that to film how effective that was one of the things that that guitarist told me which was

00:22:21.300 interesting is that song has been downloaded millions and millions of times from itunes and

00:22:27.140 many of the people who download that song never saw rocky three so they never saw the images that

00:22:33.020 go along with that song they're just responding to the words and the music so it's an interesting

00:22:37.140 example of if you're old enough like me i saw that movie in the theater so of course i remember it

00:22:42.620 but there's a whole generation of people that have come after that for whom the music is just a song

00:22:47.760 but it works really well i thought it was interesting so you know when sylvester stallone

00:22:51.580 went to survivor first they only had like three minutes of the movie completed at that time and so

00:22:58.660 yeah it was like a montage a training montage and that's that's how they developed that that intro but

00:23:03.220 then the rest of the song they couldn't write it's like i gotta see the rest of the movie

00:23:06.200 and the chorus eye of the tiger it just came from there's that line where creed he's giving rocky a

00:23:12.280 pump-up speech and he's like eye of the tiger man eye of the tiger and like they're like yes

00:23:16.140 that's the song that's the name of the song and the rest is history and the guy who wrote it he

00:23:20.200 admitted that i don't think i could ever write a song like that again it was a moment in time

00:23:24.580 and i'll never be able to capture that again but i'm glad i did because i think they did a follow-up

00:23:28.800 to wasn't in rocky four they wrote a follow-up song didn't go anywhere yeah so survivor had other

00:23:36.480 hits beyond eye of the tiger but that was their only rocky song that did well and and you know i think

00:23:43.580 for people of my generation that's absolutely a song that will always be on our playlists so

00:23:50.060 maybe eye of the tiger will do it for you but again your big takeaway is find the music that works for

00:23:55.740 you if you find the right song for you it really can have it can change your mood i talked to one

00:24:02.680 woman when i was reporting the book she was a manager in a company where essentially the company

00:24:07.700 was sort of failing and she'd have to go into meetings and try to be like super upbeat even

00:24:13.400 though there was just this drumbeat of bad news and she thought back to a time in her childhood when

00:24:19.500 she was really happy and she remembered going to see the broadway play annie which has a song called

00:24:25.360 the sun will come out tomorrow and she used that as her psych up song before she would go into

00:24:29.900 business meetings she would put her headphones on and she'd listen to the sun will come out tomorrow

00:24:33.580 which is a show tune you don't think of that as a psych up song but for her it absolutely worked so

00:24:39.460 you know even though we think of like certain formats maybe it's a rap song maybe it's a rock song

00:24:43.900 for different people if you find a song that's meaningful and and sort of affects your mood in a

00:24:49.400 very positive way it can be effective well you highlight a former podcast guest of ours dr mark

00:24:56.000 mclaughlin who's a neurosurgeon and he has he has his playlist that he listens to it's like country

00:25:02.140 music or he has different kind of music for depending on what he's doing i think i think

00:25:06.100 it's interesting he does yeah i watched him do a very long spinal surgery i had to gown up and um

00:25:12.740 so yeah he's a he's a brain and spine surgeon down in new jersey he's a former college wrestler

00:25:17.560 and he has all sorts of things he does to try to put himself in this right mindset he has lucky

00:25:23.980 instruments that he keeps in the operating room that he doesn't actually use in the surgeries but

00:25:28.520 they're kind of a talisman for him so he keeps those around he has lucky numbers he uses and he

00:25:34.260 takes a lot of the things that he used to do before wrestling matches and he now does those

00:25:39.200 before he does surgery and i got to watch him do that for a day all right so pump up music just find

00:25:43.480 what works for you it's going to be different and i think you did make that point i think oftentimes

00:25:47.240 when people pick pump up music it's going to be very generational like a lot of the pump up music

00:25:52.560 that i listen to it's like the stuff that i listened to when i played football in high school

00:25:57.880 back in the late 90s early 2000s and i imagine you know for someone you know i think you're a

00:26:03.940 little bit older than i am it's going to be it's going to be like survivor is going to be your go-to

00:26:07.860 pump up music type stuff yeah it's funny probably about 10 years ago i was at a wedding with some

00:26:14.580 friends from high school and i was not a wrestler but our high school had a very very good wrestling

00:26:19.440 team when i was there and one of the guys at the wedding was a wrestler and they used to run out

00:26:25.480 into their arena to this particular song and the song came on at the wedding we were at and he was

00:26:32.860 sitting there in a dress shirt with his sleeves rolled up and i watched the hair on his arms go

00:26:37.820 straight standing straight up and this was 25 years after we'd been out of high school just hearing

00:26:44.900 that song that he'd come out to his wrestling matches to his body continued to have a visceral

00:26:50.480 physical reaction to it so yeah those songs really do have a hold on you let's talk about positive

00:26:55.760 self-talk what does the research say about visualization and positive self-talk and getting

00:27:00.380 ready for performance does it actually work it does there's a fair bit of research on it whether

00:27:05.700 it's visualizing things that are in the future so golfers professional golfers before they take a shot

00:27:11.680 they always imagine exactly where they want the ball to go that's just a standard practice among

00:27:17.180 elite golfers is that they visualize positive success some people will visualize things from

00:27:24.200 their past i kind of think of that as the greatest hits kind of thing imagine if an athlete has like a

00:27:30.000 highlight reel some people will actually watch a highlight reel of themselves or listen to sort of

00:27:36.180 an audio highlight reel before they go into a game because they're reinforcing the idea that they've

00:27:41.740 had all these great moments so what do you do based on the research you did what do you do for self-talk

00:27:46.840 to get pumped up so i try to come up with ways that reinforce the idea that in my chosen field which is

00:27:56.460 writing and editing that i've been successful at it so sometimes if i'm about to write something that's

00:28:02.820 either hard or it's sort of an assignment i've been putting off or just seems particularly challenging

00:28:08.620 i'll pull out something i wrote years ago that was unusually successful or that i felt was some of

00:28:14.320 my best work and i'll just take 10 minutes and quietly read it sometimes before i come on a podcast like

00:28:20.380 this one i'll go back and listen to a prior podcast where i thought i did a really good job and where i just

00:28:26.460 feel like maybe it was a trick of editing but they just made me sound really good so i'll listen to

00:28:31.360 myself i'll be like wow that sounds really good you know you're not so bad at this when you get in

00:28:35.740 the right spot so i try to remind myself gosh i've been really successful in the past i have

00:28:41.400 a decent skill set i'm poised for success here so just sort of finding those reminders i used to work

00:28:47.740 in an office where we would take pages of our magazine that were very well done and hang them on

00:28:52.560 the wall sort of like a trophy case and you know just having that environment walking around with

00:28:57.800 things that remind us that we're a successful organization that can be very useful to people

00:29:02.120 and don't be afraid of the affirmations you might feel silly doing you know i'm good enough i'm smart

00:29:07.500 like those it actually does work yeah one of the places i visited when i was reporting the book was

00:29:13.860 west point the u.s military academy and they have a very large performance psychology department there

00:29:20.460 and they would actually they worked mostly with the varsity athletes but they would also work

00:29:24.480 with some of the cadets that were trying to go into the rangers or some of the elite fields of the

00:29:29.420 army and they would work with them to develop these audio tracks where they'd actually hire

00:29:36.560 professional narrators and there'd be they'd bring in special music so for instance if you were the

00:29:42.840 goalie on the lacrosse team they would ask you about your best games of all time and then they would

00:29:49.740 it'd almost be like having like a radio announcer come on and be like you know john you know you are

00:29:54.600 an elite goalie remember the game against navy when you stopped three goals remember when you were

00:29:59.580 all conference and they'd have special music in the background and they'd actually have the players

00:30:04.280 listen to these things on headsets before practices before games it almost feels like some of that

00:30:09.020 subliminal advertising that people used to talk about in the 50s where like they'd flash popcorn very

00:30:14.300 quickly on the movie screens to try to get people to think about popcorn well some of that stuff

00:30:18.360 actually does work you know priming is a psychological technique much the way you prime an old gasoline

00:30:24.060 engine you can sort of manipulate the mind to put it into certain mindsets to perform and even at

00:30:30.400 west point they're using some of this stuff to try to get their players to perform better

00:30:33.780 can watching you know inspiring videos or looking at inspirational pictures or memes can that help

00:30:39.420 people get psyched up too i think it can i know from the time i spent with the red socks that

00:30:44.160 one of the things their video team does is they if a player wants it they'll create special highlight

00:30:51.360 reels just for that player to watch on his phone before games so the idea there again is you want

00:30:56.700 to remind people about their best performances string them together because it boosts their confidence

00:31:02.160 it boosts their mood it reminds them how good they are and how good they can be in today's game

00:31:06.900 let's talk about competition you found research that competition can help us perform better how so

00:31:12.280 so if you've ever done any sort of racing sport biking or running anytime you're going up against

00:31:20.800 another person the research shows people tend to speed up in that instance you know that's why

00:31:26.080 they have pacers in races so simply competing against another person in that format just makes people

00:31:34.440 try harder makes them compete harder so then if we know that's a phenomenon then how do we take it out

00:31:41.680 of an athletic context and use it as a motivation to perform and that's something business people

00:31:46.320 think about a lot and what are business people doing to do that so sales is one area so some sales

00:31:53.920 organizations will use leaderboards where you can actually see you know who's selling the most and how

00:31:59.840 much they're selling and who's in first place and who's in fifth place sales organizations will often

00:32:05.600 you know obviously everybody in sales is compensated with commissions and bonuses but sometimes there

00:32:11.020 will be things like president's club where you know the people who are selling more will get a trip to

00:32:15.440 hawaii with their spouse and you know they could just give them the money instead of the trip to hawaii but

00:32:21.080 part of the reason they do that is it's creating a little bit of competition and rivalry within the firm

00:32:26.580 which has proven to help people be a little bit more successful there's some research that people have done

00:32:32.320 over the years suggesting that people who have like a frenemy at work somebody who they're collegial

00:32:38.440 with but they see a sort of their direct competition those people might work a little bit harder and try

00:32:43.780 to perform a little bit better so this idea that even if we're all on the same team there might be a

00:32:48.840 little bit of intra-team rivalry they can get us going that's something that a lot of businesses are

00:32:53.100 cognizant of and also in that chapter about rivalry you talked about the role of could be a negative

00:32:58.760 emotion anger in performance so oftentimes another thing you've heard if you played sports you got to

00:33:04.260 get angry like think about how this team did you wrong you actually talked about in your book and

00:33:08.740 your experience your coaches would be like look at these guys they did this to us there's the

00:33:12.340 disrespect and the goal was to get the players all angry so they go out and perform better does anger

00:33:18.320 actually help improve performance in certain settings it can especially if it's sort of a

00:33:24.040 a physical and power-based competition so if you think about like in they've done studies on

00:33:30.000 weight lifting power lifting that anger is a really effective emotion in that standpoint the story i told

00:33:35.560 in the book was we were playing our high school rivals in football and we had a pep rally the night

00:33:40.940 before and we received a bouquet of dead and sort of disgraced disrespected flowers from a florist that

00:33:49.580 apparently the other team had sent us and that really got people riled up and angry and we ended

00:33:54.380 up winning the game later on it turned out we actually tracked down the florist and it turned

00:33:58.680 out that our coaches had sent them to us in order to manipulate us and make us angry so in certain kind

00:34:04.200 of physical settings anger can be effective there was a study done as well on pep talks that somebody

00:34:10.680 studied halftime basketball pep talks and when the coach got really angry at halftime that sometimes worked

00:34:18.040 very well but generally the further you get away from physical and the more you get into sort of like

00:34:23.100 cognitive or mental or professional kinds of stuff the less effective anger is going to be

00:34:28.340 all right so the sales was that glengarry glenross yeah might might not be as effective to get all angry

00:34:35.040 yeah especially nowadays i think people's tolerance for expressions of anger in the workplace are

00:34:41.280 probably lower than they were 20 or 30 years ago so i'm not sure that being super angry in a work

00:34:47.820 setting was ever going to be very effective but i think it's hard to think about how we would

00:34:52.440 research this but as a hypothesis i would say it's going to be less effective and more likely

00:34:56.880 to cause trouble in 2023 than it would have been in 1993 well something that a lot of players

00:35:02.780 athletes do to get a mental edge over their rival or competitor is trash talk and there's been

00:35:09.140 research people have actually researched trash talk does trash talk actually help so it can help

00:35:15.540 there has been research on it it's something that sort of puts your competitor off balance it takes

00:35:21.100 them by surprise it sort of disrupts their equilibrium so trash talk is a situation where

00:35:27.240 it's less about pumping you up and it's more about sort of pushing your opponent possibly making your

00:35:33.380 opponent angry making them more emotional so what you're trying to do there is instill negative

00:35:38.720 emotions in your opponent in a way that's going to impede their performance and

00:35:42.460 in certain contexts it can work certainly a ton of it goes on my children are a little bit older now

00:35:48.060 but one of the things that surprised me you know we've all seen trash talk at a professional level

00:35:53.040 but i've seen 10 year old basketball players do some really ferocious trash talking so it's

00:35:57.860 definitely something that's trickled down over the years there are people in business that try to do

00:36:02.440 it there are companies that will talk about competition and try to get you know if you're at coke they'll

00:36:08.160 talk about pepsi and how they want to beat pepsi or hertz and avis you know you go back through sort

00:36:12.740 of the classic business rivalries over time so there are in a business setting there are people who try

00:36:17.540 to sort of trash talk focus on rivals and why we're better some of that can work in certain settings but

00:36:24.120 again you're sort of playing with fire there yeah the in the business side of things you gave the

00:36:29.000 example of john laguri he was the ceo of t-mobile and he he openly trash talked his competitors and i think he

00:36:36.860 was trying to like throw them off but i think he also did it and you make this point to sort of

00:36:41.160 galvanize the employees at t-mobile like hey look at this guy he's out there you know flinging arrows

00:36:48.980 we're gonna stand behind this guy it really made a lot of sense in that time and in that industry if

00:36:55.520 you think about it he was the ceo of t-mobile in the late 2010s by that point everybody in america who

00:37:03.400 needed a cell phone had a cell phone you know you're not there's not a huge growth market for

00:37:07.760 more people buying cell phones so the whole way that a company like t-mobile is going to grow it's

00:37:12.540 by stealing competitors from at&t and the other and verizon the other competitors there and he had

00:37:19.380 a just a very in-your-face social media savvy strategy he would just trash the customer service

00:37:26.260 and the pricing of the competitors day in and day out on social media he would engage with employees

00:37:32.700 engage with people who are switching over obviously they did television advertisements

00:37:36.920 as well but he really saw his twitter account and trashing verizon and at&t as part of their

00:37:43.640 marketing strategy and it worked pretty effectively for a while so yeah it could work for maybe in the

00:37:47.560 short term but after a while it might not work and it might not work it probably won't work in all

00:37:51.720 situations yeah again i think it worked there because the competitive dynamics of that company

00:37:57.500 it was very authentically in keeping with the personality of the ceo he'd been a competitive

00:38:02.740 runner and sort of a trash-talking athlete when he was growing up and it worked because that was an

00:38:08.660 industry that had a whole lot of retail employees who responded favorably to seeing their ceo engage in

00:38:16.440 this kind of behavior so i think it worked very specifically to that context but not every company is going to be

00:38:21.840 able to make that work so what tips from your book are you still using today to psych yourself up for

00:38:27.340 whatever you have to do in your work and in life that's an interesting question i'd say i'd say two

00:38:32.680 things about that number one i have become a big believer in doing things that reinforce my confidence

00:38:40.320 and remind me of past good performances i'll tell a story that's not about me um after the book came out

00:38:47.600 i was giving a talk to a group and afterwards it was a group of sales people and afterwards one of

00:38:53.300 the sales people came up to me and he said hey i want to tell you a story about confidence i said okay

00:38:59.440 he said in my home office where i do a lot of my sales calls from i keep a crown on my bookcase and

00:39:06.980 it's the crown i won in high school because i was named homecoming king and sometimes before i make

00:39:13.480 a call i put my homecoming king crown on and nobody can see me and he said the reason i that crown is

00:39:20.080 so meaningful to me is because i moved from one town to another halfway through high school so i didn't

00:39:25.540 even show up in the high school i graduated from until i was a junior and within a year and a half

00:39:31.300 i'd made enough friends in this new high school to be voted the homecoming king and that crown reminds

00:39:36.780 me of my ability to connect with people so i don't personally put a crown on before i make calls

00:39:42.360 but the idea that there's something in your life that reminds you of some special ability you have

00:39:48.300 and that if you can touch it or look at it or have it in your office that can be something that's

00:39:53.180 useful to you that's certainly one thing i took away from the book the other thing i i took away and

00:39:58.180 this is again something that after the book came out something i heard from people that's changed the

00:40:03.440 way i think a little bit i work sometimes with a ceo who runs a big organization and he read the book

00:40:09.440 and we talked about it afterwards and he gives a lot of presentations and a lot of big public talks

00:40:14.200 and i expected those would be like the high stakes moments in his professional life and he said you

00:40:20.140 know i yeah i give a lot of talks and stuff like that but they really aren't the high stakes moments

00:40:24.580 in my life now when you get to this level the one-on-one conversations are really important if i'm

00:40:29.740 you know if i have to have a hard conversation with my sales chief or if i have to let someone go or if i

00:40:36.400 have to give a negative performance review or tell somebody we're not going to pursue a project

00:40:40.980 he's like those conversations are really important there's only two of us in the room but those are

00:40:45.620 probably the conversations that i need to really bring my a game and get psyched up about it's not

00:40:50.420 when i'm in an arena with 5 000 people so that idea of what constitutes high performance changes over

00:40:56.480 time that's something else that i've heard a little bit since the book came out that i think about a lot

00:41:00.900 well daniel this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book in your work

00:41:05.520 so the book is called psyched up and it's available at amazon and all bookstores and

00:41:11.360 libraries and i hope people get a lot of out of it all right well daniel mcgin thanks for your time

00:41:16.080 it's been a pleasure thank you my guest here is daniel mcgin he's the author of the book psyched up

00:41:20.820 it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere check out our show notes at aom.is

00:41:24.940 slash psyched up where you can find links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic

00:41:28.220 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

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00:41:43.400 we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of and if you haven't done

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00:41:56.920 continued support until next time this is brett mckay reminding you to listen to aom podcast

00:42:00.760 would put what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - July 12, 2023

The Science of Getting Psyched Up

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