Sally Jenkins, THE RIGHT CALL: What Sports Teach Us about Work and Life
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
[0:06]This 30 minute podcast features a new author interviewed by me every single day, 365 days
[0:12]a year for about 30 minutes.
[0:15]I am also the publisher for Zippy Books, which publishes 12 books a year, and fiction
[0:20]and memoir.
[0:21]Our books are already out now.
[0:23]You can check it out on zippybooks.com.
[0:26]And we have a magazine called Zippy Mag, where we have lots of wonderful essays and
[0:30]lifestyle features.
[0:31]That's at zippymag.com.
[0:33]We have classes, it's a B-Classist.com, and I recently opened a book store in LA called
[0:39]Zippy's Bookshop at 1113 Montana Avenue at 11th Street in San Monica.
[0:45]I hope that you are able to enjoy some of our other offerings, but this here podcast is the
[0:51]basis of all of it and started in 2018, and no matter what I do, this is basically my favorite
[0:57]thing.
[0:58]Enjoy.
[1:03]Zippy Mag is the author of the right call, What Sports Teach Us About Work and Life.
[1:08]Sally has been a columnist and feature writer for The Washington Post for more than 20 years.
[1:12]She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2020 and in 2021, and was named to the winner
[1:17]of the Associated Press Red Smith Award for outstanding contributions to sports journalism.
[1:22]She is the author of 12 books of nonfiction, including The Real All Americans, The Story
[1:26]of the Carlisle Indian School, and its use of football as a form of resistance, following
[1:31]the close of the Indian Wars.
[1:32]Our work for The Washington Post has included coverage of 10 Olympic Games.
[1:36]In 2005, she was the first woman to be inducted into the National Sports Writers and
[1:40]Sports Caster's Hall of Fame.
[1:42]She received her Bachelor of Arts to read from Stanford University in 1982 and resides
[1:46]in New York.
[1:47]Welcome, Sally.
[1:48]Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss the
[1:51]right call, What Sports Teach Us About Work and Life.
[1:55]Thank you.
[1:57]You're welcome.
[1:59]I found your book so, well, first of all, I was watching the French Open yesterday
[2:04]with your book right next to me and heard the announcers mention the book that I call
[2:10]it up.
[2:11]My husband was sitting right there.
[2:12]I was like, this is the book and I grabbed it and they were like talking, anyway, I thought
[2:15]it was so great.
[2:16]So congratulations on that.
[2:18]Thank you.
[2:19]I have a lot of friends in tennis.
[2:20]There's some tennis in the book, they're Billie Jean King and Chris Everett and Martina
[2:24]Navratilova are in the book and so I think my tennis friends were anxious to give
[2:29]it a shout.
[2:30]I loved in the book when you said something like Chris Everett was asked if she was a good
[2:35]looking enough and she said, not bad or close enough or something like that.
[2:40]Just missed.
[2:41]Just missed.
[2:42]Yeah.
[2:43]Isn't that a great line?
[2:44]Yes, that was a great line.
[2:45]Chris, he's very funny, very salty, dry, hilarious, surprising sense of humor.
[2:51]It's my favorite thing about her.
[2:54]She's great.
[2:55]Every bit as great as you would hope she is, but in none of the ways that you expect.
[2:59]Huh.
[3:00]She's a very surprising person, very, very funny, very self-aware and self-deprecating.
[3:06]And not at all sort of hotty, you know, or great in the conventional sense.
[3:11]So.
[3:12]Wow.
[3:13]Let's get to know.
[3:15]I had like the Christie Everett book when I was, I don't know, five and she was 60.
[3:19]I don't know.
[3:20]Anyway.
[3:21]I think we all did.
[3:22]Yeah.
[3:23]Yeah.
[3:24]Yeah.
[3:25]I shouldn't have said it like it was anything unique, but she was my, my hero for a long
[3:30]time when I loved tennis and so I don't have a worthy one, you know, that's out, right?
[3:36]Because some of them aren't always.
[3:38]It's true.
[3:39]You never know.
[3:40]Yeah.
[3:41]They can just appoint us in the end sometimes.
[3:42]Yes.
[3:44]Well, your proximity to basically all the greats of every sport is amazing.
[3:51]And I know you've done years and years of Pulitzer Prize winning reporting on all of them.
[3:56]And then included so many mentions in the book.
[3:58]And my husband is a huge sports fan not to keep talking about him.
[4:01]But every single person you mentioned who I didn't know.
[4:04]And I knew a lot, but not all.
[4:05]I would be like, well, what about, you know, someone's so dungy.
[4:09]And he's like, it's not dungy.
[4:10]It's dungy.
[4:11]And then he was like, hysterically laughing.
[4:12]And anyway, it's a good gig.
[4:18]You know, I've met a lot of people and have the chance to talk to a lot of people.
[4:22]And here's the thing about the right call.
[4:25]The book is basically an attempt to sort of look at all those, you know, really interesting,
[4:31]but very, very divergent people have talked to, right?
[4:34]Whether it's Tony dungy or Chris Everett or big wave surfer, Laird Hamilton or Michael
[4:39]Phelps, the Olympic swimmer or Gil Ellis, the World Cup soccer coach.
[4:44]And just see where there habits and their thinking and their methods intersect.
[4:50]And so that's what I tried to do.
[4:52]And then I tried to sort of unpack all those in chapters that focus on like the, you
[4:57]know, what were the seven core values that they all subscribe to no matter what they do.
[5:01]Yeah.
[5:02]And is there anything in that that you and me can take home?
[5:05]Yeah.
[5:06]You know, athletes they all us and they dazzle us and we, there are idols as kids.
[5:12]We revere them, but we don't always know exactly why they're so important to us, you
[5:17]know, or even whether they should be, right?
[5:19]That's the other question.
[5:20]Should these people be so important to my kid, right?
[5:23]Or to me?
[5:25]And so I really tried to get at what matters about them, you know, to all of us.
[5:29]What should matter about them to all of us?
[5:31]Well, and what they teach us too, because one of the big takeaways from the book that
[5:35]I got is how much discipline and practice and all that matter.
[5:40]And that you cannot have talent, but that is not what makes the best athletes in the
[5:44]world.
[5:45]Talent is just one thing.
[5:46]And it is not luck.
[5:47]It is diligence and sort of relentless practice and drive to achieve and improve constantly.
[5:56]And it's just like hours in the pool for Michael Phelps.
[6:00]And even when you talked about how he practiced so much, the visualization of all the
[6:05]things that could go wrong, and then his goggles did fall off in the Olympics.
[6:10]And he was prepared for that, like that was so important.
[6:13]I thought I feel like that's one of the main things.
[6:16]It's like visualizing, practicing, rehearsing so that when you're in it, you don't have
[6:20]to focus on, am I making a decision?
[6:22]It's just instinctive.
[6:23]This is just what you know what to do.
[6:25]Yeah, because the messaging system, the mail, right, the mail system between your brain
[6:29]and your body and back to your brain again, that mail system has gotten incredibly efficient
[6:34]because of all of the diligence that you put in.
[6:36]And diligence is a great word.
[6:37]I wish I had used it in the book, actually, because it's much, much better than discipline
[6:42]or conditioning.
[6:43]I mean, diligence is what they have, right?
[6:45]And that's a quality anyone can apply, truly.
[6:49]I mean, you can acquire diligence for yourself and you can build your habit, your habits
[6:53]to be more diligent yourself.
[6:54]You don't.
[6:55]I mean, the biggest thing that frustrates athletes like Michael Phelps is the idea that
[6:58]they were born with some genetic freakish gift, right?
[7:03]I don't know any athlete that's not really frustrated by that idea because they know how
[7:08]much work they've put in for how many years and they know what really built their careers
[7:12]and their greatness.
[7:13]And so to sort of act like they got some fortunate kiss from God, really short changes
[7:19]them.
[7:20]And it cheats us too, again, out of understanding what we really can learn from them.
[7:26]Thank you.
[7:27]I think it was Patrick Mahomes who built a whole football training facility in his backyard
[7:31]with his bonus, right?
[7:32]So he could practice more.
[7:33]Yeah.
[7:34]It's that sort of much, but you know, yeah, he's sound like a $250 million contract.
[7:41]And you know, here's this guy in his 20s and his idea of fun was to build half of football
[7:45]field in his backyard so he could get a little extra work in.
[7:48]But you know, he lives the game.
[7:50]He just, he grew up his father was a major leader.
[7:52]He grew up watching how great athletes practice and how they live their careers.
[7:57]And so that's what he wanted to do with some of his bonus money.
[8:00]I'm assuming he spoiled himself in a couple of ways.
[8:03]But yeah, but one of the things that you really notice is that these guys is, you know,
[8:09]they don't overdo it either.
[8:10]I think it's important to stress this, especially for kids, they are younger athletes,
[8:15]but also for anyone trying to do anything in an office, you know, this notion that you have
[8:19]to be hard-charging 24-7 is really, really misplaced and really, really wrong.
[8:25]Athletes get a ton of rest and a ton of recovery.
[8:29]I mean, my home's made put in a field in his backyard and do extra work, but he also takes,
[8:36]you know, months off and, you know, they get a lot of massages and they do a lot of self-care
[8:41]and every guy in the NBA now does yoga or Pilates.
[8:44]It's a funny story that's not in the book.
[8:47]When Mike Shishewski became the Olympic basketball coach for the USA program,
[8:52]Mike was the head coach at Duke, and so he coached really high-level players,
[8:57]but he'd never, he hadn't coached NBA level players who do this for a living.
[9:01]And he said, guys, I'd like to start training camp with two-day workouts.
[9:05]We'll work out in the morning and we'll come back in the afternoon because we have a lot
[9:08]of basketball stuff to install.
[9:11]And, you know, LeBron James is in the Kobe Bryant's looked at him and they said,
[9:15]we can't do two days.
[9:16]You know, the afternoons are when we do our yoga and our Pilates.
[9:19]And Shishewski was like, what?
[9:21]And they were like, yeah, that's when we do our stretching and our yoga and our Pilates,
[9:24]and we get our rubdowns and, you know, and he realized what, what, real care these guys take
[9:30]of their physical resources, their mental, physical, emotional resources.
[9:34]They really marshal their energies quite carefully and they're very cognizant of not,
[9:39]Tom Brady, the great quarterback, talks about inputs and outputs and would keep very,
[9:45]very careful score of like what was a drain and what was adding.
[9:49]So I think it's important, any of these concepts that we talk about with the book,
[9:55]you know, conditioning, practice, discipline, they need to be seated with the idea that you-
[10:00]build in a lot of recovery and a lot of refreshment
[10:02]into all of that stuff.
[10:04]Interesting.
[10:04]And actually, the physical can be the break
[10:07]from the mental, like with Bob Iger,
[10:09]who is walking three miles after work.
[10:12]And like, what am I doing with my time?
[10:13]Oh my gosh, all these people are speaking.
[10:15]Yeah, it's so active.
[10:16]And yeah, Iger's taking long walks
[10:20]or sometimes 20 mile bike rides, you know,
[10:22]just to get his head out of Hollywood, I guess.
[10:25]So yeah, I think, you know, for me,
[10:28]quite honestly, being a deskbound person,
[10:31]the exercise is a pretty critical break for me.
[10:34]And building that stuff into our day,
[10:36]actually, you become more in command
[10:38]of your schedule rather than less,
[10:40]which was a lesson I got from a really interesting guy
[10:43]named Dana Cavalea, who was the performance coach
[10:46]for the New York Yankees for many years.
[10:48]And Cavalea has kind of a side business,
[10:50]working with CEOs or executives.
[10:52]And the first thing he does is help him really get a grip
[10:55]on their schedule.
[10:56]And Cavalea said, you know, once you start building in
[10:59]the things that are really, really good for you,
[11:01]you'll be amazed at how other people kind of come around
[11:04]to your schedule rather than you are always being reactive
[11:07]to other people's.
[11:09]You know, when you establish a small handful of non-negotiables
[11:12]and you just start saying, no, I can't do that at that time,
[11:16]you'll be amazed at how people are more flexible
[11:18]than you might realize.
[11:19]You know, and you're not the one who always has
[11:21]to be making the change.
[11:22]Yes, good point.
[11:23]Which is a lesson I'm still trying to learn.
[11:25]I'm talking, I'm talking, I'm much better than that.
[11:31]Like possessed for myself.
[11:33]So.
[11:34]But you know, I was thinking because in a way,
[11:37]books and reading have the same sort of practice element
[11:42]that some of the on the field training does too.
[11:45]I was, I interviewed recently Amy Newmark,
[11:47]who is the publisher of all the chicken soup for the soul books.
[11:51]And when she, she talked about getting cancer
[11:53]and because she has spent her life reading these essays,
[11:56]when she got cancer, she's like, okay, now it's my turn.
[11:59]Like, and she kind of knew what was coming
[12:01]and knew what to do and knew so many people had gone through it
[12:05]that she had, she had gone through the mental practice
[12:08]when it happened to her, not to minimize it.
[12:10]Of course, it was terrifying.
[12:11]And she's still dealing with it and all that.
[12:12]But somehow in life, we cannot do all these practicing.
[12:16]So I think what some people do like myself
[12:18]and big readers and everything is like,
[12:20]we read the things that are coming next
[12:22]or we read to go over and over about how to get ourselves
[12:26]at a bad situation.
[12:27]So we read about like overcoming adversity or something
[12:30]so that we kind of have those tools
[12:32]even though we don't really have them.
[12:33]What do you think about that?
[12:35]Yeah, I mean, I think that's very true.
[12:36]I mean, that's the story in my life, I think.
[12:40]But you do find, I mean, the one thing I will say is,
[12:43]yes, that's very, very true.
[12:45]But the other thing that happens is you find
[12:46]that some of these habits sort of stick a little bit more
[12:49]than others just because they just make you feel better
[12:52]or to find that you're operating better in your life.
[12:55]I'm a much better preparer than I used to be.
[12:58]These athletes that I've been covering for so long
[13:00]slowly but surely had an effect on how I go about my own work
[13:04]and my own life.
[13:05]So a great example is like it's really hard
[13:09]and pressure packed to write 1,000 words on deadline
[13:12]in 90 minutes when a big game is just ended.
[13:15]Like the Super Bowl ends at like nine o'clock at night
[13:18]and you've got 90 minutes and you've got to interview them,
[13:20]get all the way downstairs, interview the players,
[13:23]get back up, usually the game was only decided
[13:26]in the last two minutes or so or the last five minutes.
[13:29]It's a really pressure packed exercise.
[13:31]And 1,000 words just for references,
[13:34]it's about five pages of copy, right?
[13:37]And so that's really hard.
[13:39]And I learned and I borrowed this very much from athletes.
[13:42]I learned to have stuff pre-prepared.
[13:45]I would go back over all the things guys said
[13:47]in the week leading up to the game
[13:49]and pull out the quotes that I thought were likely
[13:51]to be useful or relevant afterwards
[13:53]and have them typed up and ready to go
[13:55]along with some observations, some things,
[13:57]some pressure points in the game
[13:58]that I thought might be important.
[14:00]Now I wouldn't necessarily use all of it
[14:02]but having 500 words when you've got to write 1,000
[14:07]that are already prepared.
[14:08]Okay, now your job is half as hard, you know?
[14:11]And that was just a method that I took straight
[14:14]from watching athletes and coaches prepare for the big game.
[14:17]I was like, I started thinking, all right,
[14:19]why are you getting yourself as ready for this as they are?
[14:23]You know, if you study,
[14:25]if you're pretty sure what's gonna be important
[14:27]or who's gonna be important
[14:28]and you got some material ready to go,
[14:30]you're in a much better position to perform well
[14:33]under pressure and feel good about the job you did afterwards,
[14:36]you know?
[14:37]As opposed to early on when I would like bolt a coat
[14:40]and a glaze donut and breeze into the press box, you know?
[14:44]And, you know, just kind of watch it on the fly
[14:46]and I wasn't that bad, but you know what I'm saying?
[14:50]It's a big difference.
[14:51]It's just a big difference in how you feel
[14:53]and how you perform when it matters to you the most.
[14:57]Totally.
[14:58]What are you talking to also about?
[14:59]Good leadership and how part of being a good leader
[15:02]is knowing when you've led your team astray.
[15:05]You gave an example of a coach who,
[15:08]I don't remember who the coach of the team,
[15:09]that somebody was like running straight towards someone
[15:11]when they should have run away from them.
[15:12]But the point is the whole team got together after
[15:15]and the coach was like,
[15:16]okay, you guys have to have bail me out of this.
[15:18]I've made it obviously a huge thick,
[15:20]like an owning up to it as opposed to covering it up
[15:22]or whatever and how important that transparency is.
[15:25]Yeah, and if he didn't have a real backlog of trust
[15:28]with those guys, it was Tony Dungey in the Super Bowl.
[15:31]Oh, yeah.
[15:32]And then again, there we go.
[15:33]The decision gets spent the whole week
[15:35]telling his team that they were gonna kick away
[15:38]from this guy, Devin Hester,
[15:40]who's the fastest, you know,
[15:41]most blistering kick returner in the league.
[15:44]And then the day of the game, he kind of thought,
[15:47]I'm being weak to kick away from this guy.
[15:49]And like, maybe we need to go right at him
[15:52]and we'll kick right to him and we'll really hit him hard
[15:55]and like send a message and then we'll have the upper hand
[15:57]for the whole rest of the game.
[15:59]So he kicks off to the guy and the guy immediately
[16:01]like breaks it for a touchdown.
[16:03]And he just had to call his team back together.
[16:05]He made a really critical mistake.
[16:07]He changed the plan right before the game
[16:10]after preparing all weeks to do something else.
[16:13]And, you know, he second guessed and self doubted himself
[16:16]in the last second.
[16:17]And he had to call his guys to get him say, you know,
[16:20]I told you we were gonna have to weather some hardship here
[16:22]and this is one of them, it's my bad, my mistake.
[16:25]It's all on me, I need you guys to bail me out.
[16:28]And, you know, that moment was critical.
[16:30]They go on and win the game.
[16:31]And it was really critical because it's a real example
[16:34]of candor, which is another subject in the book.
[16:37]Leaders who are that candid with the people around them,
[16:40]with their constituents tend to fare much better.
[16:43]And it's not just because people like them better for it
[16:45]or respect them better for it.
[16:47]Dynamically, what happens when you exercise
[16:50]that kind of candor is people are candid back with you.
[16:53]So you get better analysis, right?
[16:57]You get better information.
[16:58]Things aren't as foggy because people are covering their asses
[17:02]or rationalizing their own behavior
[17:04]because they're more comfortable in admitting their own mistakes.
[17:07]So you get a much clearer picture
[17:10]which enables much better thinking and decision making.
[17:13]So that's the argument for candor.
[17:15]It's not just because people will trust you.
[17:18]It's because everything around it will operate better.
[17:20]So interesting.
[17:22]Wow. So when you were writing this book,
[17:25]how did you go about doing this without, you know,
[17:28]in the beginning you dug about
[17:30]you're being clutched under pressure type of moment,
[17:33]you know, choking when like the athletes hadn't choked,
[17:35]you're like, why were you choking?
[17:36]Tell me about writing the whole book.
[17:38]And if there's anything I missed
[17:39]in terms of what we should be taking away.
[17:42]I'd choke like a dog.
[17:43]I mean, in the middle of trying to give the money back.
[17:45]I tried to give the money back.
[17:47]It's hard.
[17:49]Books are so hard.
[17:50]You know, they take a long time to write.
[17:51]I mean, so there's that thousand words
[17:53]that you write on deadline at a big game, you know,
[17:56]or the tennis tournament or a Super Bowl.
[17:58]Books are thousands upon thousands.
[18:00]I mean, a chapter is 10,000 words, right?
[18:03]So, you know, 10 chapters is 100,000 words.
[18:06]I mean, that is a marathon process.
[18:08]It takes months and months and months
[18:10]and every day at the typewriter and you wake up with it,
[18:13]like, you know, you open your eyes in the morning
[18:15]and you have like one fleeting moment of peace
[18:17]and then you think, oh, God, the book, you know.
[18:21]And it feels like you're just never gonna get it done.
[18:23]And then as you get closer in the pile of pages,
[18:27]I'm a big printer because I have to see the pages grow.
[18:30]I have to stack, right?
[18:33]The stack starts then and then it grows
[18:35]and that's the only thing that gets you through.
[18:37]But, you know, I was really discouraged,
[18:39]it's very discouraging and I cry.
[18:41]And on my agent and said, it's terrible.
[18:43]I'm afraid I'm gonna have to give the money back.
[18:46]And she said, well, let me look at it.
[18:47]I'll tell you if it's really bad
[18:49]and I think it's gonna hurt your career.
[18:50]And then she called me later and said, you're crazy.
[18:53]You know, you're just tired.
[18:55]So, you know, it's a process and it's a horrible way
[18:58]to live.
[18:59]It's a horrible way to live.
[19:00]I did that with, I have a novel coming out in March
[19:02]and when I was like, I don't know, a third of the way through.
[19:04]I was like, I don't think I can do this.
[19:06]And I literally, I did the same thing I called my agent.
[19:07]I was like, I think I should give it back.
[19:09]I don't think I can ever do this.
[19:10]I think, I told my whole story in 20,000 words.
[19:13]Now I don't know what to do.
[19:14]I don't know what to do about that.
[19:17]Yeah, no, I don't know.
[19:18]We did, it's the business we chose.
[19:20]I don't know why we did this to ourselves.
[19:22]I just envy people who are finished at the end of the day, right?
[19:27]They just, they don't have to think about it over dinner
[19:30]and think about it again when they wake up in the morning.
[19:32]They're just finished.
[19:34]I don't know though.
[19:35]I feel like, I don't know.
[19:38]Yeah, I mean, pros and cons.
[19:41]Yeah, then there's nothing hanging over their heads
[19:43]for a long time, but then they, maybe they don't feel
[19:45]as accomplished at the end of it when they finally get it done.
[19:48]I don't know.
[19:49]I always think about this thing that Lance Armstrong told me
[19:51]once about cycling.
[19:52]I was trying to talk to him about what keeps a cyclist
[19:55]on the bike and the Tour de France.
[19:57]I mean, you know, all doping aside quite often.
[20:00]Honestly, I don't think there's any substance
[20:01]that can help a human being stay in the saddle of the bike
[20:05]in the eighth hour of the day and get to the top
[20:09]of Montvantu in the middle of the Pyrenees,
[20:12]going up a hill that a car transmission
[20:15]has a hard time getting up, right?
[20:16]I mean, it's just the most spectacular
[20:19]fleet of endurance I've ever seen.
[20:20]And anyway, I said to Lance one time,
[20:23]I was talking to him about what enables him to do that.
[20:26]And he said, you know, I'm the guy who can take it.
[20:29]You know, and he truly had a sense
[20:32]that he had a higher pain threshold than others.
[20:35]And that was his identity.
[20:36]I'm the guy who can take it, you know?
[20:38]I do think there's something to that, though.
[20:41]I mean, you know, my husband played professional tennis
[20:43]for like 12 years and taught tennis and all this stuff.
[20:46]And he'll be like, oh yeah, it hurts like my wrist.
[20:49]And it'll be broken.
[20:50]You know, something like ridiculous.
[20:52]And I'm like, go to urgent care.
[20:53]Like what are you doing?
[20:54]And he's like, no, it'll be better tomorrow.
[20:56]And maybe the next day.
[20:57]And I'm like, oh, you know, my left Achilles
[21:00]has been hurting for three weeks.
[21:01]So I better sit out, right?
[21:04]So maybe athletes, like, do they not care as much?
[21:08]Do they not feel it as much?
[21:10]I don't know what it is.
[21:11]Maybe I'm just a wimp, you know?
[21:13]They've learned something really, really deep.
[21:15]And this is one of the things that have come
[21:16]to really admire them for, really have deep regard.
[21:20]I mean, athleticism is acquired, right?
[21:22]It's groups, there's lots of neurological combinations
[21:26]of practice and conditioning.
[21:28]And they've made that messaging system
[21:30]in their brain and body really, really efficient.
[21:32]And they're highly, you know,
[21:34]all those things that look intuitive on the court
[21:37]or on the field are actually micro decisions.
[21:40]They're highly alert, very reactive in the moment,
[21:43]but there's a mountain of work behind it,
[21:45]a mountain of planning and preparation.
[21:47]But the thing I admire about them,
[21:48]I think maybe more than anything,
[21:50]is they're not as easily destroyed as we are.
[21:53]They have a tolerance for setback and reversal
[21:57]that we don't.
[21:58]Like they don't think about putting in the middle.
[22:01]We've just accepted as part of the process
[22:03]that stressing the body and stressing the mind
[22:06]and stressing the spirit is a natural cycle
[22:09]in what they do.
[22:11]And so they're much more comfortable with that.
[22:13]And they really comfort is not the only thing
[22:16]we're seeking.
[22:17]And so much of our world today,
[22:19]everything we watch on TV, everything we listen to
[22:21]was all about comfort.
[22:22]We're being sold, comfort, comfort food, comfort clothes,
[22:27]comfort furniture, all of it.
[22:29]And athletes are just the dead out there going right
[22:32]against that grain.
[22:34]I mean, you know, when I was working with Lance,
[22:36]I did, it's not about the bike with him.
[22:38]And my father is a Hall of Fame sports writer,
[22:40]was a Hall of Fame sports writer.
[22:43]And I came home one day and I said,
[22:44]Dad, I need to talk to you about Lance.
[22:45]I'm not getting an answer from him
[22:47]on the most important question.
[22:49]And the most important question
[22:51]I had for him is, what's the pleasure
[22:53]in sitting on that bike for eight hours writing up a mountain?
[22:57]And Lance said, I don't understand the question.
[22:59]And I said, well, you know, what feels good about it?
[23:01]What's pleasurable about that?
[23:03]What are you getting pleasurable out of it?
[23:05]And he said, I just don't,
[23:07]I really don't know how to answer that question.
[23:09]So I told that to my father.
[23:11]And my father said, well, you're asking the wrong question.
[23:14]He doesn't do it for the pleasure.
[23:15]He does it for the pain.
[23:17]And I said, wow, he said,
[23:19]go back and talk to him about the pain.
[23:21]So I go back to Lance and I said,
[23:22]you know, my father says,
[23:23]you don't do this for the pleasure.
[23:24]You do it for the pain.
[23:26]And Lance said, that's exactly right.
[23:28]So then we started talking about pain.
[23:30]Pain is very clarifying, you know?
[23:32]It demands a total immersive focus.
[23:35]It's actually very simplifying and decluttering.
[23:38]You can't think about anything else that's bothering you
[23:41]while you're trying to stay on that bike.
[23:43]Diana and I had the endurance swimmer who swam from Cuba
[23:47]the Key West, spent three days and two nights in the water.
[23:51]Same thing, I had the same conversation with her.
[23:54]She's the woman who can take it.
[23:55]She's the woman who at 64 years of age could swim
[23:58]in the Florida street through a sharks and jellyfish
[24:02]and make it to the other side.
[24:04]And again, while she was in that water,
[24:07]nothing else matters.
[24:09]It's actually a beautiful place to be in some way.
[24:12]And the other thing Diana said about that was that
[24:15]she said, there's an incredible experience,
[24:18]perceptual experience in getting someplace really far away
[24:22]under your own power, right?
[24:24]With nothing else helping you.
[24:26]So these are the types of experiences that athletes
[24:29]can turn you on to if you'll let them.
[24:31]You know, a couple years ago, I went,
[24:33]Diana now organizes marathon walks called ever walks.
[24:37]And I joined a group of people that she took on a long distance
[24:42]trek from Boston to the tip of Maine.
[24:45]We walked 20 miles or more a day because six straight days.
[24:48]And everybody kept saying, where are you going?
[24:50]Well, we're going to Maine.
[24:51]Well, why are you walking to Maine?
[24:54]Why are you walking?
[24:54]Are you raising money?
[24:55]We're like, no, we're just walking.
[24:58]I don't even want to drive.
[25:00]I was like, where's the plane?
[25:03]It was one of the greatest trips I ever took.
[25:05]She was absolutely right.
[25:06]There's something remarkable about working your way
[25:08]through discomfort and coming out the other side of it.
[25:11]That's what athletes have to teach us.
[25:13]That's what they have to show us.
[25:15]Yeah.
[25:16]I guess they're just different forms of discomfort.
[25:18]We can be very stressed.
[25:20]Like I think stress, maybe stress is sort of like the poor man's
[25:24]physical endurance tactic, right?
[25:27]With like, I'm not willing.
[25:28]I'm not willing to swim for five hours or something,
[25:32]but I can sit at my desk till two in the morning.
[25:35]I mean, it's not the same, but it's
[25:37]for you to scare yourself a little bit on your bicycle.
[25:39]You know, I mean, let me handle it in the big wave
[25:42]surfer set a really interesting thing to me that's in the book,
[25:46]because there's a whole section about stress
[25:49]that I talked to Laird about, because I mean, stress is like,
[25:51]not even being able to see shore.
[25:53]And here comes an 84 wave at you.
[25:55]But Laird said something so fascinating.
[25:58]He said, your body does not know what's stressing you.
[26:02]Your body doesn't know if you're stressed
[26:04]because you're in the water and you have a wave coming at you
[26:07]that looks like a rabid dog, or if you're stressed
[26:10]because your 16-year-old daughter took the car keys
[26:13]and left the house about two hours ago and hasn't come home yet.
[26:17]He's like, your body, you know, is not real attuned
[26:20]to what exactly is doing this to you.
[26:23]And so understanding that, you can start to mitigate some stress.
[26:26]Like, you can start working with some methods
[26:29]to help yourself deal with stress better.
[26:31]And one really good way is saunas or cold showers.
[26:36]And those two things trigger incredibly
[26:39]helpful cascades, you know, chemical reactions, particularly
[26:43]as you work up towards being able to bear cold water more,
[26:46]you find yourself coping with stress better.
[26:48]It's a trick.
[26:49]It's a hat that Lance uses quite a lot.
[26:52]I mean, I'm sorry that Laird Hamilton uses quite a lot.
[26:55]Immersion, hot and cold therapies really
[26:58]help your body acclimate to stress.
[27:00]He also wrote in the book that when you have a moment
[27:03]of high stress, like when you're going fast down
[27:06]a hill or something, that the brain hyper focuses
[27:09]on what's right in front of you.
[27:10]So maybe that's the flip side of that.
[27:12]Yeah, there's a great quote in the book
[27:14]that stresses nature's way of helping us rise
[27:16]to a moment that matters.
[27:18]I mean, it's a gift in some ways.
[27:20]It makes us more alert.
[27:21]It triggers the fight or flight response.
[27:23]And so it triggers certain things in your body,
[27:26]for instance, that can be helpful or not helpful.
[27:28]So when your body reacts to stress and it turns
[27:32]on the fight or flight response, it sends blood
[27:35]from your small muscle groups to your large muscle groups.
[27:39]So one of the things that happens is you
[27:40]lose fine motor control because there's
[27:42]less blood in your fingers and your toes.
[27:44]Under stress, it's harder for me to type.
[27:47]Like I have felt that literally.
[27:49]I mean, you watched the French Open.
[27:51]I mean, Carlos Alcaraz went into full body cramps
[27:54]from the sheer stress of playing Novak joke
[27:57]of it's the number one player in the world on clay
[28:00]in 80 degree heat.
[28:01]I mean, that was anxiety that made him do that.
[28:05]He's a very young player.
[28:07]He'll learn to cope with it better.
[28:09]But that's what happened.
[28:10]I mean, all the blood rushed from his hands and toes
[28:13]to his quads and his back.
[28:16]It's a fascinating response.
[28:17]Once you actually start exploring that stuff,
[28:19]then you can figure out how to deal with it
[28:21]a little bit better, right?
[28:23]Well, this is all fascinating.
[28:25]If I know so fascinating, is it right?
[28:28]Yeah.
[28:29]What are you doing after this, like not today?
[28:31]I mean, I mean, I guess today is what I meant.
[28:33]What projects are you undertaking?
[28:36]Let's see.
[28:37]Well, literally today, I'm going to go try
[28:38]to run around the reservoir a couple of times
[28:39]when we're done in the city.
[28:41]I just finished a story that's going to be coming out
[28:43]that I'm very, very proud of about Chris Everett
[28:46]and Martina Navratilova and how they've been,
[28:49]they're very close friends after all these years.
[28:51]And they've both been going through cancer together.
[28:53]And so it's a story about how these two former champions
[28:56]have dealt with the very humbling experience
[28:59]of their respective cancers.
[29:01]And I'm working on this controversial issue
[29:04]about the PGA tour and of Saudi money coming in
[29:08]and basically trying to buy golf.
[29:10]So, wow.
[29:11]Yeah.
[29:12]You had quoted, I think, Pian Nilsen in the book
[29:15]and my mother is a huge golfer.
[29:17]And she had them, she's had like many weekends
[29:20]with Pia from a great teacher.
[29:23]Yeah, I don't know.
[29:25]I think.
[29:26]Anyway, thank you so much.
[29:29]This was a interesting, I found your book
[29:31]absolutely fascinating and have taken a few nuggets
[29:34]that will really stay with me forever in terms of how
[29:37]I think about things from leadership to all of that.
[29:40]So, yeah, so thank you very much.
[29:43]Well, thank you.
[29:44]It was great to meet you and thanks for having me
[29:46]and paying attention to a nice little book.
[29:52]You're welcome.
[29:54]All right, okay, take care.
[29:56]Bye bye, bye.
[29:57]Thanks for listening to this episode.
[30:00]Soad of moms don't have time to read books.
[30:02]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[30:04]at Zebioans, and at moms don't have time to read books.
[30:07]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebioans.com
[30:10]and sign up for my virtual book club
[30:11]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[30:14]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texturesound
[30:16]for the Sound Editing.
[30:18]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[30:19]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.