Shane Parrish

I think it goes back to almost the opening of this episode, right, where are your emotions in charge or are you in charge of your emotions?

I'm not advocating an approach where you're not emotional and you're robotic.

I'm just advocating an approach where am I making decisions?

Are my emotions making my decisions or am I making my decisions?

And if the answer is my emotions, then that's fine, but that's probably not gonna get me the outcome that I want.

And if I'm making decisions fully aware of those emotions, I can feel those emotions, I can have those emotions, but often if you feel emotional and you can opt out for a second, in opting out of that second,

You can make that decision later.

You don't have to make it when you're emotional.

You can walk away.

If you look at athletes, athletes have to perform.

They have a timeframe involved in their performance and they get emotional just like the rest of us.

So what do they do?

They have rituals built into their game.

If you watch any NBA player, they bounce the ball the same number of times before they shoot a free throw.

If you watch a tennis player, they bounce the ball the same number of times before they serve.

And what they're doing in that moment

And I've talked to a lot of head coaches about this.

What's happening is whether the last play was the best play of their life, the worst play, whether the ref was totally unfair to them or fair to them, doesn't matter.

What matters is this, I'm going to center myself and I'm going to focus.

And that's what we need to do.