Mental Toughness Habits of Ultra Performers, with Ben Newman – Episode 207 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Ben Newman, bestselling author, international speaker, and high-level performance coach, talks about taking yourself back to an emotional moment in time, breaking down your own game film, repeating what makes you great, shares a few stories about Tom Brady, Ray Lewis, and more, and above all, explains the need to keep fighting.

About Ben:

Ben Newman is an entrepreneur, investor, 2x Wall Street Journal bestselling author, international speaker, philanthropist, and the nation’s top continual peak performance coach whose clients include Fortune 500 companies, business executives, high performing and professional athletes in the NFL, NBA, MLB, PGA, and WNBA, as well as the NCAA. His book, “Leave YOUR Legacy” was ranked by CEO READ as a Top 25 business book.

Known for his ability to inspire and motivate with actionable steps, Ben has presented to numerous FORTUNE 500 companies and other notable organizations, including Great West Life-Canada, the United States Army, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Quicken Loans, Cintas, Northwestern Mutual, the University of Iowa, Boston Medical Center, Australian Gold, NAIFA, AFA Singapore, MARS Snack Foods, the Minnesota Vikings and more –– helping their leaders grow and develop successful national sales teams for years. His corporate speaking events have included financial firms, religious groups, health care groups, charitable organizations, national sales organizations, sports teams, and communication companies.

Ben’s authentic, powerful, and engaging presentations have become nationally recognized. Ben has shared the stage with Jerry Rice, Ray Lewis, Tony Dungy, Colin Powell, Brian Tracy, Ken Blanchard, Jon Gordon, Dr. Jason Selk, Floyd Little, Aeneas Williams, Tony LaRussa, Walt Jocketty, Tom Hegna and other leaders and legends in the world.

Ben is also the host of the top podcast, The Burn, where he takes you into the minds of some of the highest performers in sports and business to tell their full story.

Ben lives in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri with the true measure of his success, his wife, Ami, and their children, J. Isaac and Kennedy Rose.

Learn more at BenNewman.net.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
Ben Newman, his expertise is in the area of mental toughness, and ultra performance, and it’s cool, he works in business, but he also works with sports teams like the Rams in the NFL, he’s worked with the chargers and the cowboys and the Rams. And he has been a performance coach for the North Dakota State bison who won a national championship and the Mizzou basketball team, he shared the stage with people like Jerry Rice, and you know, Ray Lewis. And so here he is. So Ben, welcome to the show.

Ben Newman
Thank you so much for that introduction. That’s amazing to have this opportunity to be with all your listeners. But one thing I want to add to that bio, because you’re highlighting the good stuff, is I have tried to fight to get better every single day. And I’ve always found that when we get knocked down, that’s when we really learn what we’re made of. So I’m excited to learn from you and excited to be with all your listeners.

Host
So let’s talk about getting knocked down. First of all, just since we’re on the topic of the NFL, and I know that like you only work with teams in the NFL, but that you’ve got a good little roster there. And I know specifically one of the things you do is you work with the rookies, but how do you prepare a rookie mentally for the NFL? Like what’s that like?

Ben Newman
So I’ll share it with you go from, you know, playing in college where there’s hundreds of teams to 32 teams, and it’s the best in the world. But there’s one caveat I want to add. And it’s where I often spend a lot of time with athletes, and I’m going to relate it back to all the listeners, you’re also fighting for a job you don’t think about in college. You know, it’s the love of the game. It’s the passion for the game, these rookies even drafted guys, right seven rounds in the draft. Sometimes they show up. And there are people fighting to take their job, they don’t care where you were drafted, you are looking at a depth chart to determine how good you are. And it’s easy to get distracted in terms of your focus. And then these men who are bigger and stronger and have the experience, they want to hit you as hard as they can, because you’re not a teammate yet. I want to take your job. And I think sometimes we as individuals, no matter what we’re doing, we get we get distracted, right? We get distracted from what we’re supposed to do. So what I always encourage athletes to do and really for the listeners, everybody listening, if I was sitting one on one with you, you could describe a period of time in your career where you have been most successful. You could take me back and tell me what that emotion felt like what your behaviors look like what your belief felt like. And that’s what I do with these athletes. I say forget about the distractions, we got to clear the clutter. Do not worry about a depth chart, focus on what it looks like for you to be your best. And we’ve had the blessing of working with many individuals. I actually wrote an article for Forbes you guys can check it out. It’s called Heart harnessing the power of your vision about will Compton and Wilcoxon was an undrafted, free agent. Everything I just shared, I did with him the first time we ever met. He was an undrafted, free agent out of University of Nebraska. Fast forward four years, starting middle linebacker for the Washington Redskins, and he’s their defensive captain. And literally the first time we met everything I just said, Tell me what made you a captain and Nebraska helped me understand the feeling and emotion. What do you believe and forget about the things you can’t control, we actually use a technique that I call your emotional trigger. So we actually take that player back to that ideal state, I want to feel the emotion tell me what the grass felt like under your feet. Tell me what the sweat felt like dripping down your nose. And the moment you put your hand on the ground before they snapped that football. What did it feel like? And where was your belief system? I want to take you right there. So think about it. Let’s take one of your listeners right now who’s in sales. And right now they are stressed about a big target. They’re stressed about a big quota. And we take them to that moment they can see it, they can feel it. And then we actually say, Hey, Ben and I are going to sit back and we’re just going to listen, and we listen to all that emotion. The follow up question then becomes what were you not thinking about? When you were in that state of telling me how great that moment was? Well, I’m not thinking about the quota. I’m not thinking about the stress. You see, we all have the ability to control our thoughts and our mindset. If you focus on the stress of the quota, you’ll be stressed out by the quota. If you get yourself into a mindset where I can say all I can control is one dial at a time. I’ll be locked in up just like a football player. I’m locked in and focus six seconds to play. I’m locked in and so Just one dial at a time. And I’m gonna give my love my passion, my energy from my work to this phone call. And when I’m done with this phone call, I’m gonna go to the next. And I’m not gonna worry about the last one or the next one, I’m gonna worry about this one right now. So when you’re thinking about getting into that state, we silence the noise, we silence the distraction, and we can focus.

Host
So when you talk about a rookie, one of the things you said kind of earlier going backwards was you talked about focus on what it looks like to be your best. I’m curious about this competing versus yourself, versus competing against other people in the world of professional sports. Do you think that both of those exists? Is one better than the other? And is there more of one than the other?

Ben Newman
Every NFL team 32 teams, every one of their goals to win the Super Bowl, you know, no team is gonna say, you know, our goal is that we lose every football game this year, I hope it’s just a terrible season, right? I mean, everybody, every team wants to win the Super Bowl, Every team wants to crush the competition. But the reality is, that’s just the goal. The only way that we can tackle that goal is for each individual on that team, to give their very best, it’s for each individual to say, for my position, this is what I’m responsible for. And I’m gonna take personal responsibility for the action I need to take in terms of how I break down my game film, the nutrition I put in my body because of the energy that it produces, to the effort that I put forth in the field, to the effort that I put forth in the weight room, to the effort I put forth in terms of my vision and my belief system. Once you’ve designed that, it comes down to the choices that you make every day. And that’s between you and you. And I shared the stage in Vegas last year with Jerry Rice. And before Jerry and I took the stage Jerry looks at me and he says, You know what, then I’ve never been able to understand how could somebody not give 100% When it’s 100% their choice. So to me, if a team’s gonna crush the competition, they’re gonna win the Superbowl. Everybody has to be locked in one heartbeat with a mentality, they’re all going to give their best, the vision, the crush the competition, that’s the goal. But I think these high performers that have told you we want to crush the competition, they’re still focused on their accountability every day and doing their work. They’re doing it 100% of the time, the high performers.

Host
And you think that, you know, like, I think of Ray Lewis, and pardon me, just goes, surely there’s some part of that guy that’s just thinking about just killing somebody, like just crushing, like just going out and just demolishing somebody.

Ben Newman
Ray and I last year, we’re having a conversation about what it takes to be great. Will Compton who I mentioned earlier was at this event Ray and I were speaking at, we’re sitting before the event starts Ray literally walks right over to Wilkinson, and completely ignores that I’m sitting there because it was his opportunity to mentor well, he puts one hand on each knee. And if any of you ever seen a Ray Lewis video, I mean, the veins are popping out of his neck fire in his eyes. I’m thinking what in the world is about to happen right here. And he looked at Wisconsin, and he said, Well, are you ready for me to take you to school, he said, I’m going to share with you when I found the difference. He said the difference for me is when I started taking personal responsibility for myself, I broke down my own game film. And when I did that, early on in my career, I recognized that when I was playing four yards off the line, I was nasty. But when I stepped up one yard to three yards off the line, they didn’t know what to do with me. He said we know the rest of the story, don’t we comp, and he’s the greatest linebacker to ever play the game. Super Bowl champions, Super Bowl MVP. So the question for all the listeners is, when is the last time you broke down your game film? When’s the last time we slowed down in this fast paced world we live in to say, what makes you great? And what if you repeat what makes you great? And what if you look at areas of opportunity, and you try to get better every day to get great in that area, too. That’s how we increase our performance. So So picture this first time John Gordon, I ever shared the stage, it’s 2008. We had about 350 people in the room. My mentor, right? We’ve never shared the stage together. He’s never heard me speak live. And all of a sudden, we get to the end of the talk. And I’m like ready for the feedback like John like, how did I do? And he looks at me, and he says, Ben, Ben, I love you, man. The message was great. But man, you are serious as a heart attack. He’s like, Did you realize that you’re allowed to laugh and smile and tell jokes? And I think like, where are we in life? If we don’t have those people who are there to make us better? And I didn’t I didn’t fight John on that. I said, I do need to be myself. I was being too tense from the stage. I wasn’t letting my natural character and my goofy side sometimes come out. So now all I want to do I want to connect with people in the audience, because I’m trying to be my best because I’ve got mental was trying to help take me there. So it didn’t that coaching is so important that breaking down the game, but the willingness to take the feedback and to act on it. That’s how we improve.

Host
Yeah, let’s talk about star players for a second, you have this dynamic this balance between the team performing and the team winning. But then you have star players, how does a team full of people who are performing at the highest level these ultra performers, should there not be star players? Should it just be the team? And that’s all that matters? Or is it okay?

Ben Newman
Absolutely. I’ll give you the example of Tom Brady. You know, if you look at Tom Brady, some people hate the guy, some people love the guy, but that is the greatest NFL player to ever walk the face of the earth. And he is humble. He is always about the team. He never takes it about him. And he works his butt off. I had the opportunity to be in there with the Patriots, I had mentored one of their running backs. And so I got the party on the field with them, I got to see the approach to the you know, how they prepared for the game. And, and I’m telling you, Tom Brady has a focus and a demeanor about him that allows other people to follow and to work harder, he makes people around him better, because he doesn’t have a big ego. There’s not a lot of swagger. It’s all about the team. And it’s all about being the best. And I think the more that star performers have that mentality, I’m here for us to work as a unit to get better. No team in the history of football has ever won a game with a quarterback and no defense and no offensive lineman or wide receivers, one player against 11. It’s never happened, it never will happen. It can’t happen. And Tom Brady’s taken that approach, and no matter what players they surround him with, he just wants to get better. And he wants to work as hard as them. The greatest teams recognize that not one person is more important than another. Not one person is more important. So think about even for me for our company, I’m no, I’m not more important than anybody else. Because the reality is, you know, we have employees, and we have subcontractors and people who help us run our business. Everybody’s equally as important. It doesn’t matter that I’m the one who’s with the players, or I’m the one who’s on the stage. We all have to do our job we all have to perform in order to have an impact on somebody’s life.

Host
But you know, do you think jealousy is a big deal on the team? You think that kind of stuff comes up?

Ben Newman
That is one of the issues I deal with a lot. You know, a lot of the conversations I have are things that I really can’t get into, on on an interview, things of that nature. But you can imagine that in real business or sports, but you know, those are the conversations when we can really help somebody is when you tell me what’s really on your mind that’s holding you back. It Oh, don’t just tell me how amazing of a practice you had. Tell me when you’re literally struggling with the fact that the guy next to you who you know, you’re better than is making three times as much money. Tell me that that’s bothering you so that we can have a conversation to get past it. No different than one of your listeners right now, who’s somebody who’s been there 10 years in a company that maybe doesn’t believe in meritocracy, there’s somebody who you’re a better performer than them. Yet, at the point where you’re at in your career, you’re making less money, but all we can control is to stay in our lane and to wait for our time. Because all I want for all your listeners is to say, when my opportunity comes, I’ve done everything I can control one day at a time, I stayed in my lane and I continued to believe in myself. It doesn’t matter what anybody else does. Because when the time is ready and the opportunities there, they’re going to look and say this guy or this gal gave it their best every day. James 112 One of my favorite verses blessed as the man I’ll say man or woman who perseveres under trial for when they have stood the test, they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love them. Every single one of you listening right now God has given you everything that you need to write your story. Take it not not one book at a time, not one chapter at a time. Take that pen and go one word at a time and focus and be intentional with that word. Stay in your lane and know you’ve got everything you need to have an impact in the world.

Host
Powerful stuff. Where should people go if they want to connect with you and and learn more about mental toughness and peak performance?

Ben Newman
Come follow us on Instagram at ContinuedFight Twitter as at ContnuedFight. My mother who passed 11 days before my eighth birthday. She’s the legacy that I fight for every single day to keep writing her story. And she taught me the greatest life lesson I’ve ever learned. And that’s why we say at continued fight. It’s not how long you live. It’s how you choose to live your life. So keep fighting. Let’s rise up together and keep writing your story.

Host
Ben Newman, thanks for being here. And hey, keep keep fighting the fight.

Ben Newman
Thank you so much. Keep fighting the good fight as well.