“If we lingered on the past play perhaps we would miss an opportunity...Essentially, by not moving on to the next play immediately, we would be compounding that mistake, either by making another or by missing an opportunity to make a great play. Failing to move onto the next play was itself a mistake because it took focus and concentration off the current moment, the only point in time we could do something positive to impact the game.” Jay Bilas, Toughness: Developing True Strength On and Off the Court
Russ wraps up his conversation with Stone Eleazer and Coach Braumon Creighton to discuss some final elements of mental toughness. The mark of not only a true athlete, but a true leader, is the choice to keep moving forward despite mistakes. Persistence, letting go, and moving on are what separate the good athletes and leaders from the great ones.
“If we lingered on the past play perhaps we would miss an opportunity...Essentially, by not moving on to the next play immediately, we would be compounding that mistake, either by making another or by missing an opportunity to make a great play. Failing to move onto the next play was itself a mistake because it took focus and concentration off the current moment, the only point in time we could do something positive to impact the game.” Jay Bilas, Toughness: Developing True Strength On and Off the Court
Russ wraps up his conversation with Stone Eleazer and Coach Braumon Creighton to discuss some final elements of mental toughness. The mark of not only a true athlete, but a true leader, is the choice to keep moving forward despite mistakes. Persistence, letting go, and moving on are what separate the good athletes and leaders from the great ones.
Hello and welcome to the lead different podcast. A quick note before we get started, this is the third and final part of the mental toughness series. Our host Ruschell is finishing up his conversation with Brahman, Creighton and Stone Eliezer Brahman is a two time NCAA wrestling champion at a USA wrestling gold certified coach and stone wrestled at the University of Florida and UC Davis. Before we joined the last part of the conversation, please make sure to take a moment and leave us a five star rating and write us a review. And if you find these conversations helpful, make sure to share them with others. And now let's finish up the conversation,
Speaker 2:
Eh, not what your country can do for you and what you can do for your country. You are crazy. One word. I have a dream, but one thing this nation will,
Speaker 1:
I got two other words for you.
Speaker 3:
Persistence. Persistence. I think, uh, that's grit, right? Yeah, that's, that's getting back up. Um, so listen, this, this, this
Speaker 1:
quote and Tony, would you think it's, uh, this is Jay bill. When I, I'll try to, I have to, it takes me a bit to grasp, but when I asked Mike Shashefski current co coach of Duke University, when I asked Mike[inaudible] what element of toughness he felt was under emphasized, he had a quick and direct response. Persistence. Persistence is your ability to keep going without giving up or giving in. If you can be persistent in your belief, preparation, communication, your willingness to endure and all the other elements of mental toughness, you will be tougher. Persistence is a mindset.
Speaker 3:
No, it's persistence. The mindset. I want to say one of the, one of the keys to success is show up, show up, like get up and go and for sure, persistence is number one to me. Um, how do you do it without persistence? Because you're not going to win your first time out. Whenever I'm teaching kids to and they get a little frustrated that they're not learning the skill right away I go, you know what? It would, I'd be upset if you learn it like the first second. Cause it took me so long to learn it. That wouldn't be fair.
Speaker 1:
Do you find that with kids that they want to get it, they want to get it down. I find that, yeah.
Speaker 3:
Depends on the personality. Yeah. Okay. Some kids get frustrated pretty easy and they want to learn it right away. Yeah. But, uh, and I actually like those kids, they, they have they desire, they want to be good, hungry and I can relate to wanting to be good. You know?
Speaker 1:
So I got, I got, I got a, I got a last one for you that I really like and I'm gonna I'm going to read you the quote ahead of time cause I think this one's the life one and I think it'll apply to all kinds of things. And then we'll get you out of here. We're here with um, ramen Creighton and still in the laser Russia. We're talking about leading different in a hope that you'll be able to listen to the episodes we put together. Um, cause this will may turn into three episodes as opposed to two because the discussion we're really having is about character. It's about heart, it's about toughness, it's about understanding yourself. It's about discovery. It's about teaching. It's about learning. It's about following. It's about leading. There's a lot there and don't, don't just take it at face value. Re listen to this and not because I'm in it because the lessons we're getting from Brahman in particular are extraordinary. We're going to talk about this last thing next play because I think that what I found as I was reading and thinking, listening is forgetting is one of the most important parts of success and it says this. When something happened in the game, and this is Jay. Bill is talking about how coach k she Shefsky coach them. When something happened in the game, positive or negative, we were conditioned by coach k to immediately move on to the next play without concern over what had just taken place. Moving on, quote, if we lingered on the past play, perhaps we would miss an opportunity to get a stop or a steal or otherwise impact the game in a positive manner. Essentially by not moving on to the next play immediately we would be compounding that mistake either by making another or by missing an opportunity to make a great play. Failing to move onto the next play was itself a mistake because it took focus and concentration off the current moment. The only point in time that we could do something positive to impact the game. That's awesome.[inaudible] do you prescribe to that as a coach, a leader as a,
Speaker 3:
for sure. I, you know, when I, when I, uh, consult with kids that are wrestling and I talked to quite a few guys that are rustling in the NCAA, just finished their tournament last week and one of the things I kept saying is, stay in the moment. Stay in the moment, stay in the moment, trust yourself, hate next, move. Next, move. Next match. Hey, it's okay. It's all about advancing you advanced focus on, yeah, one match right now. One match. And so that moment to moment focus is so key in an unlocking your body and being able to execute on demand, right? That uh, execution phase of it where you, where you release things and you take all the brakes off of your body and you just play the sport.
Speaker 1:
Wow. Take all the brakes off your body. I liked that. Done. Inhibited. Yes, let go, which is hard for human beings to do.
Speaker 3:
Very hard. And that's that flow state, which is hard to force. And when you over try it usually doesn't happen.
Speaker 1:
I raised my hand as guilty. Oh, you're trying. There's a lot. Overtrain this has been a great pie cast lead different. And I'm going to just close with a couple of contents and we're[inaudible]. So Ulysses s grant's one of my favorite people in history. General grant was civil war. They, uh, were fighting against the confederacy. Um, and they were getting beat pretty bad. I want to say they lost something like three or four or 5,000 guys that day in that day in the battle. Um, it was something, you know, they had such incredible numbers and those that wore, it was just massive. And a General Sherman was his right hand and uh, general, uh, grant was sitting on a log after the battle. They'd kind of retreated and come to stand still. It was Knightfall and a smoking a cigar. And he was sitting there mulling over the loss and the loss of the, the young men had been killed. And Sherman said, hey, we had a, we had a rough one today and it was almost that contemplate of state for Sherman of are we doing the right thing? Should we, should we, should we back off of this battle because we're just getting mowed over and grant puffed on a cigar and looked up at him and said we'll get them tomorrow. And they aint one of the extraordinary things, a lot of people like grant, some people don't like him cause it's so the loss of life and you can have historical debate about that forever. But grant I think one of the reasons he was one of those unique generals we've ever had in history is this capacity to forget. And sometimes you're watching sports and some of our people that are listening watch sports and they don't understand that. One of the things athletes that are great are really good at doing I think is forgetting. You know, suspending that reality. We're talking about objective reality. That capacity to go, you know Tom Brady throw an interception and win a Superbowl. Especially when you have true belief in yourself. You really have self efficacy. And you've built up enough proof that I know I can do it cause I've done it before so I know I can do it right. And that's I think what Tom Brady's working from. And, and, and so we're going to give you a little tip based on our podcast today. We talked some off the air so we won't give you that. You'd have to, you know, pay the big price, big bucks and get the off the air stuff. But we're coming up on a presidential election and one of the things I always go, how do I pick my president? And as I listened to this podcast, I go, I just learned how to pick the president. The kind of president you want is you want somebody who has capacity to grow from the inside out. It has capacity, can do or to be persistent. Uh, maybe look for a guy who wrestle and see if you can find one of those guys who go. But, uh, we are really grateful to have you in the studio. Ramen. It's been, I could go on talking to you. I'm talking about for 48 hours straight. I don't even think I'd have to eat a, they just keep going cause I, I'm just so, you know, I'm learning a lot from myself because I think letting go is a hard thing for me and being able to, to, to try. I've done, I've done a number of things, I work at a lot and I've had some success but just letting go and in a sense trusting the process and, and and, and then focusing on working hard for working hard. That's probably where I'm going to walk away with. Is that a good one? Just going, you know what? It's not about the goal or the achievement. It's saying okay what's the endeavor and just give yourself fully to it. I hope some of your students listen and I hope, well I'll tell you what I know a lot of students I work with are going to listen cause I'm going to be sending them to, and there are a lot of them are f are in college. They're fighting the battle of how do I juggle the job in college and you know, all these different things and I just think this is going to be tremendous for them. Any words stone you pulled off, you know, you, you backed us the best guessed in that we've probably had in, in, in a month up to, uh, well, it's been a pleasure and an honor. I, I'll tell you what to sit with you gentlemen. It's, I hope to come back soon. Go boy, you're coming back for sure. We got to get cold. I need to be coached out.[inaudible] stop man. I'm not with your look.
Speaker 4:
I want to get on the couch and have him to evaluate me from beginning to end. A stone. Anything you want to say as we close out?
Speaker 5:
No, just thanks to Brahman coming and sharing all the great, uh, I think the words of wisdom that I saw put in practice. I saw how well he did training my own son up and taking him from somebody who really lacked some mental toughness to becoming somebody who could believe in himself enough to be a champion. And one area. And I loved the fact that he was so, um, emotionally invested. And I think that's what leadership is.
Speaker 1:
And what'd you learn today is about leading different, some of the insights and ideas and perspectives that coach promen has, is a coach Creighton has, are, are, are unique to his experience as a young man, is a college champion as a coach, as a teacher. And a what was the name of your coach that you talked about? There's really like Denny, Mike Denny
Speaker 4:
I heard at Maryville University.
Speaker 1:
Maryville. Yeah, I wanted to say one thing about him cause I, I don't, I was, I don't know him but I think sometimes we've had spent so much time paying attention to coaches that are on television that are coaching at schools that, you know, make a lot of money and lucratively and we miss out on all these great coaches. So, which I would argue Dan Gable was one, even though he was incredible. Sometimes we're studying the wrong guys and we need to take a look at and[inaudible] those coaches that get, get that, get that thing going and keep churning out great athletes and that we don't even know how that came about. You don't have to be famous on TV to change the world, so we different, we hope you'll listen to our next podcast, but enjoy these. Have a great week.
Speaker 4:
Thank you for listening to the lead different podcasts. Make sure to take a moment to leave us a five star rating and write us a review. We'd really appreciate that and feel free to share our leadership content with others and go to Russ ul.com for more leadership content like this. Thanks again. We will see you next time.
