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Hey everybody, welcome to another
episode of Impact Books. Today we're
reviewing The Mindful Athlete: The
Secrets to Pure Performance by George
Mumford. This was a surprising gem for
me. It wasn't something that I was
looking for. I was actually seeking some
more sage words from my boy Phil
Jackson. Now, while I don't consider
myself much of a sports fan, when Phil
speaks, I listen. So when I saw that he
had written the intro to this book, I
actually discovered that Michael Jordan
credits Mumford with transforming his
encore leadership of the Bulls. And if
you know that story, it's pretty
compelling. So uh Mumford also famously
worked with Kobe Bryant, Andrew Bayham,
and countless other NBA players to help
them turn their game around as well.
Now, Kobe was quoted as saying, "George
Mumford helped me understand the art of
mindfulness, to be neither distracted or
focused, rigid or flexible, passive or
aggressive. I learned just to be." Now,
those are some seriously like Buddhisty
woo wooy words, and Mumford goes really
deep into that kind of stuff in the
book, but he backs it up with
neuroscience. And ultimately, this book
ended up being really powerful. Now, in
the book, Mumford details the power that
comes from fine-tuning the mind as much
as you fine-tune the body, which is
something ironically that most people
don't do. But what really gives this
book real weight for me is that Mumford
is a former drug addict who used
mindfulness techniques as a way to find
sobriety and deal with the pains that he
was struggling with in his life that led
him to drugs in the first place. And he
actually credits mindfulness with saving
his life. As such, he speaks of the
techniques with the urgency and
reverence of the converted and that
really gives the book a lot of energy
that I enjoyed very very much. All
right. In the book, he lays out exactly
how to develop mindfulness citing the
neuroscience behind the phenomenon that
he's describing, which really really is
key for me because it gives me the
ability to visualize how it's all
working. And when I can visualize
something, then I can really get control
of it. And Mumur does an amazing job of
that. If you're not familiar with the
concept of mindfulness, think of it as a
highly cultivated meditative state that
makes it easier and easier to access
flow even in the highest pressure
situations. So, it's going to apply
whether you're an athlete or not. If
you're ever dealing with high pressure
stuff, this book is really going to be
useful. All right, impactful takeaway
number one. You must learn to unlearn.
All right, whether you're an athlete or
anything else, you almost certainly have
picked up bad habits along the way. I
know I have. And we'll call a bad habit
anything that doesn't move you towards
your goals. But before you can move
forward, you're really going to have to
unlearn a lot of these bad habits,
strategies, and techniques. Anything
that's keeping you from really achieving
at the level that you want. And as
Mumford makes clear, a big part of
developing a championship mindset is
unlearning the negative and limiting
thought patterns. He outlines some
pretty strong methods for retraining the
mind, and strategies for retraining the
mind really are at the heart of this
book. All right, this is really why I
like the book as much as I did. If
there's one thing I would say that
anyone who wants to achieve at a high
level is absolutely going to have to get
good at, it's
identifying and unlearning the behaviors
that hold you back. This is especially
true of limiting beliefs, which are a
big part of what cripples most people.
All right, impactful takeaway number
two. Mindfulness is learning to find the
eye of the storm. All right, this struck
me as a fantastic way to think about the
desired outcome of mindfulness, which
I'm not sure a lot of people really know
what they're trying to get out of it.
And especially if you replace the word
find with create, which is exactly how
Mumford actually approaches the advice
in the book, even though he doesn't
often use that word. What you're trying
to do is create the eye in the storm. As
Mumford explains, there are times in
life, and certainly in competition,
where chaos is swirling all around you.
It's total madness. It's absolute
mayhem. And what you have to do is
create space in the middle of all that
where your mind can work from a place of
undisturbed calm. You can't always
control the world around you. I think we
all know that's true. But you can
control the state of your mind. And that
is the universal lesson that I think
everyone can benefit from. And Mumford
delivers the goods with detailed
strategies for creating that space of
calm where the higher level centers of
cognition in your brain remain active
but not too active. allowing people to
slide into flow even in the midst of the
swirling madness that often ends up
enveloping all of us. All right,
impactful takeaway number three. Get
good at what Mumford calls kinesthetic
visualization. All right, it's a fancy
way of saying visualize the things that
you want to see happen. As he notes, the
brain cannot tell, pay attention to this
one, the brain cannot tell the
difference between what is real and what
is imagined. It is a fascinating concept
that I've heard a lot of other people
talk about and I think that much of
anxiety is born out of a failure to
understand this point. This one is
really critical guys. While he's not
suggesting that you won't be able to
perceive the difference between reality
in a daydream, he's not saying that
people are crazy or schizophrenic. And
what he is saying is that the brain will
encode for and rewire for experiences
whether those experiences are real or
simply imagined. Let that one sink in.
This is one of those things that I'd
come across a lot but it never really
stopped to think about what it means.
Now for instance what I'm talking about
is if you repetitively worry about
messing up and you think about how
embarrassed you would be to publicly
fail at something new, your anxiety is
going to grow. you're literally going to
wire for anxiety because you're
experiencing that failure on some level
every time you rehearse that scenario in
your head. So, if you're obsessively
worrying about things, you need to
remember that your brain is actually
wiring to make those connections
stronger and stronger. And that's why
the most important thing that you can
practice is envisioning things going
perfectly, exactly according to plan.
Because on some level, your brain now is
going to encode for that experience as
well. It's going to encode for things
going the way that you want them to go.
That's why you want to obsess over
perfect performance because it primes
you for confidence and performing at
your best. All right, it's always brutal
for me to boil down the book into just
three quotes. This book is no exception,
but here are three that really jumped
out at me and I thought were incredibly
powerful. Number one, your performance
starts with your mind. Now, I promise
you, truer words were never spoken. No
matter how much you train your body, if
you don't also train your mind into
championship shape, you will never
achieve at the levels that you want to
achieve. This is one of the reasons that
Tom Brady was drafted so late despite
becoming one of the greatest NFL
quarterbacks in the history of the game
and why so many number one draft picks
go on to do absolutely nothing. It is
easy to test for physical skills, but it
is hard as hell to test for the mental.
But ultimately, I think that the mental,
far more than the physical, is going to
determine the success of anyone in any
endeavor. All right, impactful quote
number two. We can either make ourselves
miserable or make ourselves strong. The
amount of work is the same. All right,
that one comes from Carlos Castanada.
And I think that the reason it resonated
with Mumford and is certainly the reason
that it resonates with me goes back to
Mumford's illustration of the concept of
kinetic visualization. You get what you
focus on. And no matter what you focus
on, it takes the same amount of effort.
So whether you decide to focus on things
going well or things going poorly, it
takes the same amount of energy, but the
end result is so dramatically different.
You've got to be very intentional about
what you choose to focus on because it
is going to determine the quality of
your life and the very chances of
success. All right. Impactful quote
number three. Without love and joy
motivating your efforts, you're not
practicing right effort. All right.
Right effort is a concept that Mumford
comes back to over and over in the book.
It's a concept that the right effort is
whatever effort is most gracefully going
to take you to your desired outcome.
What struck me about this concept is how
true it is that when you fill yourself
with love and joy for the game, whatever
game you're playing, it creates a mental
suppleness and fluidity that really does
make accessing flow so much easier. And
when you're in flow, your performance is
going to be so much better. All right.
All right. When you focus too much on
crushing your opponent and other dark
and heavy feelings, I mean, this
literally reminds me of Star Wars. When
you're focused on the bright, the light,
the positive, your outcomes are going to
be so different than if you're focusing
on crushing and defeating and it's all
aggression. So, finding that
mindfulness, creating the eye in the
storm, the calm assertion versus
emotional
aggression, that's when you're going to
get the best outcome. When people are
trying too hard, when they're focused
too much on winning, that's when they
choke. All right, there are so many
amazing quotes and ideas in this book,
there's no way that I could cover them
all, but if you go to impact theory.com
right now, you'll be able to find more
quotes from the book that have lodged
themselves deep in my brain, and I think
that you'll find them useful. All right,
this is always my favorite part of the
reviews. How am I going to use this in
my life? I can't tell you guys how much
mindfulness and meditation have changed
my life. And they have become a huge
part of my daily routine. And there are
some great techniques and subtleties
mentioned in this book like kinesthetic
visualization and using the metaphor of
creating the eye of the storm that I've
already begun to use in my life. I I
really cannot emphasize enough the
importance of having a mindfulness andor
meditative practice in your life. Guys,
it is a really big deal. And if you're
like me, you've been avoiding it, but
stop avoiding it. This is one of those
things so many people talk about and
they talk about it because it actually
works. And Munford goes into the
sympathetic nervous system and the
parasympathetic nervous system. And
that's really what this technique is all
about. It's learning to control the gas
and the break in your mind is a very big
deal. And the mindful athlete really is
an amazingly good place to start if you
haven't already created a system for
yourself. All right, as always, I want
to leave you with one more quote.
According to George Mumford, arguably
one of the greatest sports psychologists
on the planet, quote, "Success is
99%." All right, for the rest of that
quote, you guys are going to have to
read the book. You know how we do it
here. So, go check it out. I highly
recommend this book. And if you haven't
already, be sure to subscribe. We're
doing this weekly. And until next time,
my friends, be legendary. Take care.
[Music]