885: How to Build the Mental Fitness and Resilience of a Champion with Greg Harden

By July 27, 2023Podcasts

 

Legendary coach Greg Harden shares the secrets of his world-famous athletes for conquering fear, fatigue, anxiety, and self-doubt.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to master your response to any situation
  2. The secret to being a top performer
  3. The #1 subject for you to become an expert on

About Greg

Greg Harden is a Peak Performance Coach, motivational speaker, and executive consultant who is best known for his work with seven-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Tom Brady. He also worked with Heisman Trophy winner and Super Bowl MVP Desmond Howard, and twenty-three-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps.

He’s spent over 30 years building them at the University of Michigan, including 400 future professional athletes, 50 NFL first-round draft picks, and 120 Olympians from over 20 countries. He gained national recognition when 60 Minutes Sports profiled him as “Michigan’s Secret Weapon.”

Resources Mentioned

Greg Harden Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Greg, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Greg Harden
Oh, thank you for having me, sir.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to be chatting with you even though you are Michigan’s secret weapon, as in the Fighting Illini we didn’t like losing to Michigan.

Greg Harden
Well, the Fighting Illini.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right.

Greg Harden
The always great competitors and most exciting.

Pete Mockaitis
Very much. Well, I’m so excited to get into your wisdom. Maybe, could you kick us off with a particularly memorable story for you in your career, coaching some of the greatest athletes ever?

Greg Harden
Wow. The thing that comes to my mind instantly is, “What’s the difference between all these mega stars and people who don’t make it?” And what we come up with over and over and over is not only were they hungry, they were humble. They were coachable. That made them coachable. They came in with a mindset that made it clear that they wanted to be the absolute best but, most importantly, they came and were able to surrender the ego enough to learn from others.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. Can you think of a time that, I don’t know, Tom Brady or Michael Phelps or someone you worked with did just that that stood out?

Greg Harden
Tom Brady, I mean, Tom was really clear about what he wanted. He had watched what I had done and what we had done, Desmond Howard and I, and he was curious as to whether or not it could help him. And so, he walked in and he was kind of low in the depths chart, and made it real clear that he wanted to be a starter at Michigan, and I made it clear to him that, “I can’t help you be a starter at Michigan but I can help you understand that if no one else believes in you, you believe in yourself.” And he said, “Let’s start there.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That’s cool. Wow. And so then, from there, how do we go from low in the depths to superstar?

Greg Harden
Well, what you do is you start by being a regular schmo who’s going to out-train and outwork everybody. We talk about his gifts, he can’t outrun you, he can’t outjump you, he can’t outlift you in the weight room but you couldn’t measure his heart, and you couldn’t measure his mind. His mental game was so strong, back in the day, you didn’t have all these fancy schmancy phones, we would have to kick him out of the training room where he was studying film all day long, like he was a coach. He had a coach’s mentality and he was a student of the game. He studied and studied and studied, and was more prepared than anyone could imagine when it was showtime.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, you’ve put together some of your learnings in your book Stay Sane in an Insane World: How to Control the Controllables and Thrive. Tell us, what’s the big idea here?

Greg Harden
Well, the big idea here is to teach people to become the world’s greatest expert on one subject – themselves. That’s the mission. The mission is to get people to be obsessed with something other than all the things they’re obsessed with. And what I’m asking them to do is focus just for a moment on becoming so critically conscious, so aware, so mindful that you’re able to look at what’s working in your life and what’s not working, to keep it that simple.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Could you give us an example?

Greg Harden
Well, if we’re talking about just trying to make your life work at your job, if your communication style is not working at your job, you need to be aware of it. If members of your team think that you’re arrogant and unapproachable, you need to be aware of it. You need to be so sophisticated that you are always examining how people are responding, you’re always examining how you come across and how others come across, and you’re studying everyone but, in order to really know Pete, I’ve got to know Greg. I’ve got to know me so well that I can read myself in different circumstances and situations and know when I need to shift, when I need to adapt, when I need to change.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Could you share with us a story of an example of someone who saw a real upgrade in that self-awareness?

Greg Harden
Desmond Howard, Heisman trophy winner, MVP of the Super Bowl. Desmond Howard was ready to leave the institution when he pulled me aside and asked if he could have a conversation. I said, “Sure, let’s talk.” He talked about how he was unhappy, how he came in as a running back, and he had been shifted to a wide receiver, and how he wasn’t getting any playing time, and he was frustrated, and he was being recruited hard by other people.

And I looked at him and I suggested that perhaps his press clippings from high school had nothing to do with what he was accomplishing here. I said, “What you need to do is understand that, right now if you leave, who cares?” I said, “If you leave now, you told me you were the guy in high school. Hell, I was the guy in high school.” Pete was the guy in high school.

Pete Mockaitis
I really was, yes.

Greg Harden
So, I said, “Son, you may have to examine what’s working and what’s not working between you and the staff. And what does the staff think about you?” I said, “If you liked, Desmond, I’ll go and chat with the people who are around you and ask them, ‘What’s working for this guy? And what does he need to improve on?'” He said, “Go ahead.”

So, I went and found out that they were totally unimpressed with his commitment to blocking. And back in the day, if you were a wide receiver, and you didn’t block, you weren’t getting on the field. They also thought that his attitude was pretty much, “I and me,” and the team was not the issue, and he believed that this was Desmond Howard University, and then they said, “No, it’s not going to work.”

So, I went back and told him, and he says, “Oh, I didn’t know I was coming across that way.” I said, “Yeah. Well, even though that’s not your intent, that’s been the results. So, let’s come up with a strategy that can change everything.” So, what I suggested to Desmond was that, “First off, you need to decide to be the best athlete on the team, not the best receiver, but the absolute best athlete on the team. You need to push yourself in areas that you hate. If you can give 100% a hundred percent of the time at stuff you don’t even like, what happens when you get to the stuff you love?”

Desmond was not someone who wanted to run. Desmond decided to run 10 to 15 miles extra per week while everyone else was doing something else. When he showed up in August for camp, he was the best-conditioned athlete. He was always in the top three of every event, every activity. He transformed himself. I suggested also that he needed to irritate or perhaps piss off the defensive coordinator. He said, “How do I do that?” I said, “At least once a week, try to knock somebody out and apologize afterwards.”

And I said, “You don’t like blocking? You better love blocking. You don’t like running? You better learn to love running. And convince yourself, con yourself, maneuver yourself into thinking differently and being passionate about everything you do, not just the things you like but the things that are required.”

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s talk about that. Con yourself into loving the things you hate. That sounds powerful, maybe dangerously powerful, but I want to know how I do it.

Greg Harden
Well, you practice, and train, and you rehearse. The keyword is practice, training, and rehearsing. When we talk about getting in shape, people understand practice, train, and rehearse. When we’re talking about mental fitness, the mental gain, you have to teach yourself that you can practice, train, and rehearse to upgrade in ways that you think, in ways that you operate, how you can generate passion.

For example, let’s talk about anxiety. Well, there’s a thin line between anxiety and excitement. Your body reacts pretty much the same. Your heart starts pounding so you’re sweating, and your breathing is impaired, “Am I anxious or am I excited?” So, what we begin to help people understand is that there’s a thin line between those emotions, and you can trigger and turn anxiety into excitement, and fear into passion.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I like that. Now, I’m curious then, when we do need the turning into, if you’re conning yourself, is it just you’re telling yourself, “I’m excited”? Or, what are the steps or the how-to, the process?

Greg Harden
Well, you begin to start training yourself to notice when fear and self-doubt, when anxiety shows up, and you begin to track it, you begin to understand it as a predictable part of life. So, what we do is, the first thing we do is convince people that fear and self-doubt, that fear and anxiety are predictable, therefore, manageable. It’s part of being human. So, that’s the first order of business is to begin to get you to understand to stop being stunned when you’re anxious, stop being overwhelmed when you’re anxious, “I’m anxious. It makes sense to be anxious.” And, as a matter of fact, fear is predictable as all get out.

Because, think about this, you hear, “Be fearless. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” That’s total nonsense. Some of the greatest moments of my life, some of the greatest moments of your life and most of the people you know, they’re about to crap their pants before it. Am I right or wrong?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s funny. I’m thinking about when I proposed marriage to my bride, I was, like, probably shaking.

Greg Harden
Right. It’s so predictable but we need to learn how to embrace fear, how to embrace anxiety and recognize it and tell it, “Come on in,” and tell it you don’t have time right now but, “Hey, I expected you, I knew you’d be here, but I’ll get back with you later because, right now, I have something to do.” So, fear becomes manageable when we begin to anticipate it as being part of life.

Let’s take it further. So, then if I’m fearless, that means I’m courageous. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is facing fear. Where encouraged it doesn’t even exist unless we’re facing fear. So, yes, be courageous, face fear, grab it by the throat, laugh at it, anticipate it, and then move on because you’ve done it before. And we love being anxious and excited. Why would you go to an amusement park? No, why would you go to a carnival on the corner that’s been setup overnight and get on any of those rides?

Pete Mockaitis
Sure.

Greg Harden
You’re a brave and courageous person if you get on some of those carni rides, right? But think about this, you go to the big-time amusement park, you get on a ride called The Demon Drop, and you go up 10 stories, and some 19-year-old, smoking a cigarette, puts you in a coffin-like capsule, straps you in, closes the door, pulls a lever, and you plummet nine floors.

And then the hydraulic lift kicks in and it saves you, and of course, your stomach did go into your nasal passages before you got off and you screamed. Then you got off and say, “Let’s do that again.” We love fear. We have to begin to understand that fear is passion. It’s predictable as all get out, and part of life, and part of being human.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, we predict it, we welcome it in, and then say, “Well, hey, I’m a little busy right now, so I’m going to have to get back with you later.” That’s all there is to it.

Greg Harden
It’s not all that is to it, but if you train yourself and you repeat it over and over, because what we’re talking about is self-talk, “How do I talk to myself?” We talk to ourselves all the time, sometimes out loud, but that’s not the issue here, right? So, we begin to train ourselves to how we process, how we think about things. We anticipate we’re going to have some anxious moments, and we talk our way through it until we get so confident, it becomes a habit of facing fear, it becomes a habit of anticipating it and dismissing it, and getting back with it and understanding it and talking about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I’d love to get your take on the opposite end of emotion. So, when we’re fearful, anxious, or really hyped up, what happens when we’re just, “Ugh, waah, tired,” unmotivated, not feeling it? How do we play that game?

Greg Harden
Well, so you’ve heard me say it already, “Train to give 100% a hundred percent of the time.” That’s total insanity. You can’t give 100% a hundred percent of the time. But if it’s my default mode, if it’s what I fall back on, if it’s something that I’m committed to trying, I get to the point where, instead of being, yeah, your worst day can be 30%. Okay, you’re a good guy. You can make it all the way to 50. You’re tired, you’re broke down, you don’t want to do something.

But if your default mode is to give 100% in everything you do, your worst day will be better than the average person’s best day. That’s where we’re going. We’re going to a spot where, “I mean, I don’t feel like doing this,” and you do realize that some of your greatest performances, you were sick as a dog, you were worn out and tired, and you came through because you were relaxed.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Greg Harden
Am I right or wrong?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m actually thinking about, I don’t know, this is just so mundane as oppose to championship athletes, but I’m thinking about some of my greatest performances in, I don’t know, chess or Tetris, which really do push my brain kind of as fast or hard as it can be pushed at times. Yeah, sometimes the tuckered-out times did end up being the best, and I guess that’s the missing element because I was relaxed.

Greg Harden
Isn’t that something? I mean, sometimes you’re so tired, you’re too tired to be anxious. Some of the greatest moments, we’ve seen our heroes and heroines who are just broke down and worn out, “And I was sick and I threw up all this morning, but I’m going to give my best,” and their best ends up being a world record.

So, again, everyone else is trying to manipulate and maneuver you into doing, into buying, into performing. You have to be able to do it yourself. And you need to be able to convince yourself that, “I’m going to just absolutely do my best. I know I’m worn out. I know I’m tired. I know jetlag has set in, but opportunity knocks.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, when we’re training ourselves to give 100% one hundred percent of the time, what does that training program consist of, just doing it again and again? Or, are there some key steps or conditioning protocols?

Greg Harden
Well, it’s kind of hard to describe it any other way than practicing. Now, this is a story that I think you’ll like. I’ve worked with a lot of megastars and people who are absolutely the best in law, in engineering, in medicine, boom, boom, boom. But I had this young man from the West Coast who was not a fake gangster. He was from a family, there’s a family business, grand daddy, cousins, uncles.

And he somehow, miraculously, turned into this outstanding athlete so he got a scholarship and he came to the university. And they warned me, “You’re going to have to work with this guy.” And I said, “Well, why did you recruit this guy?” They said, “You’ve got to see him play.” “All right.” Well, he was a really good athlete. He wasn’t the greatest in the world but he could perform and he could pull his weight, and he was a problem.

In the first few weeks, he was in my office because of this, and in the next few months, he was in my office because of that. Well, for several years, we worked together, and, lo and behold, for some odd reason, we bonded. For some odd reason, he started changing, “Okay, that’s nice,” and he was not getting in trouble. But, now, he’d come by my office, “G, what you doing?” “Waiting for you. That’s all I’m doing. I’m just sitting around, waiting for you.” And he’s, “Oh, you’re so silly.” We’d get together and we talk and talk.

So, one summer, he shows up at the office, “G, what you doing?” I said, “Well, I’m bored and that’s not good for you.” I said, “Come on, sit down.” I said, “We’ve been working for several years, and you know you’ve changed and I’m so proud of you. I’m so impressed with what you’ve done and how you’ve carried yourself in the last just few months. But we need to find something else to work on.” He said, “What’s that?”

I said, “People think you’re dumb as a box of rocks.” He said, “What?” And I said, “Yeah. And you don’t care, do you?” “Nope.” I said, “But you might be.” He said, “Hey, wait,” and he used some colorful language. I said, “I’m not saying that you are. I’m saying we don’t know.” I said, “Have you ever been a student?” He said, “No.” “But you still have to go to class. This is an institution where you actually have to go to class, you actually have to pass the classes. All you’re doing is trying to be eligible, right?” He said, “Yeah.”

I said, “But what if we had nothing else to work on, and we decided to work on you being a student involved in athletics?” He said, “Meh.” I said, “Here’s the deal. I’m not trying to get you to be a better student. I’m trying to get you to be a better person.” He said, “Go on.” I said, “This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to use academics to make you a better athlete.” He said, “This better be good.”

I said, “I want you to practice, train, and rehearse being a better student. I want you to do your studying. I want you to do your reading. I want you to anticipate that you’re going to have the tests and not wait till the last minute to figure it out. I want you to see if you can prove something to yourself, not to anyone else. This is not about anyone else. I need you to practice, train, and rehearse the mental discipline, the self-motivation, the self-control that it would take to become a student.”

“If you can train yourself to give 100% at academics, something you’re not even invested in, what could you do if you mastered your mind, mastered your own ability to process, to be disciplined, to be focused, to shut out the noise, to stop daydreaming, and to be focused like a laser beam on the task at hand? This is not about academics, son. This is not about athletics. It’s about what kind of man can we create that can take on the world at any level?” He says, “Whoa, you’re crazy.” “Yeah, but we got nothing else to work on.”

So, we worked and worked and talked about it, and, you know, “How are you doing? Are you studying? Are you reading?” boom, boom, boom. So, several months goes by, and I’m not thinking about it that much. At the end of the year, he walks into my office, “G, what you doing?” “Waiting on you.” He said, “Man, you’re not going to believe this. I’m on the dean’s list, fool.”

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Greg Harden
And we giggled and laughed and rolled on the floor, and people thought we’d lost our minds. But I’ve got a gangster from the West Coast, thrilled to have mastered his own mind to the point where he became a student involved in athletics. And it’s one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had in my life.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome, yes. Whew! Now, when you say practice, train, and rehearse, which you’ve said a few times, I’m curious, are there distinctions such that practicing is a different activity than training, is different than rehearsing? And how would you distinguish them?

Greg Harden
They’re all the same. And you know how our mind works. For some person, the word practice, it’s going to trigger. For another person, the word train is going to trigger, and rehearse. You’ve got to see them as a compilation, a formula that all leads to the same destination, and that’s being someone who’s disciplined enough to train their mind to commit to improve and maintain performance over time.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Now, you mentioned, in your book, controllables. What do you mean by those and how do we master them?

Greg Harden
There is an old serenity prayer, “God, guide me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to face the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” All this is telling us is that there are some things we can control and there are some things we can’t control, and we have to be able to discern what the differences are.

And being able to control myself is the hardest. I can barely control myself, and I’m trying to control my boss? If we’re talking about being awesome at your job, I can’t control my boss’ personality or style. I can’t control their expectations, real or imagined. I can influence all that but what I can control is how I respond, how I react, how I play my role, how I manage what I do, how I tell the boss. I have to be so sophisticated.

When I talk about controlling the controllables, they’re just giving me some more to do. I’m going to go to my boss and I’m going to make it real clear, “We need to prioritize. You just asked me to do six things. Prior to that, you’d asked me to do three. We need to review these six and determine what’s going to be A, what’s going to be B, what’s going to be B2. And I need for you to be clear, boss, what is the priority because I have my idea but I need to get input from you.”

Now, how is that controlling the controllables? That’s all I can do. I have to make sure that I’m not set up to fail. And so, setting myself up not to fail, I’m going to be assertive enough to walk in, and say, “We need to make some decisions. I need your input, boss.” I can’t control the boss but I can control what I’m sharing, what I’m asking, and how I’m going to respond. Controlling the controllables is a critical piece of the puzzle and it’s in terms of staying sane in an insane world.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Well, so now I’d love to get your view on we talked about humility, being coachable is huge in terms of a key mindset that unlocks all kinds of good things. Are there any other top mindset shifts you’d highlight for us?

Greg Harden
I would challenge anyone to, I mean, we know some people who are, like, the best friend you could have in life. You’ve had some friends that are some keepers, and maybe only one or two but you have some. But we sometimes notice that even those people who are really great at being a friend to everyone else are horrible at being a friend to themselves.

Your best friend in life should be you. So, introducing to people the whole idea of 4As, for example. The 4As are something that when everyone says every and all, they’re either going to say something profound or completely stupid. All people have 4As. The need for attention, the need for affection, the need for approval, and the need for acceptance. We’re always looking for attention, affection, approval, and acceptance.

I don’t know about you but I’ve made a complete fool of myself trying to get, pick one, and I’ve also risen to the top of my game seeking attention, affection, approval, and acceptance. But where we have to go when we’re training people to be the best version of themselves, at some point I’ve got to put the word self in front of those As.

And the simplest piece is to teach people self-love and self-acceptance. I’m glad that you’re able of loving and caring about everyone else but I need you to consider self-love and self-acceptance. Accepting yourself, flaws and all. Because if you’re good friends, your friends could be flawed, they can mess up, you think, “But you’re my friend. Okay, I forgive you. Let’s go.”

But we’re so hard on ourselves, sir. We are so difficult to please. And when we shift to being a peak performer or a top performer who wants to maintain it over time, I believe an X factor is self-love and self-acceptance. Imagine telling a 320-pound lineman the key assignment is self-love and self-acceptance.

So, one of the things that I would challenge anyone to do is not only give 100% a hundred percent of the time, but love yourself unconditionally, to learn how to do it. And if you can’t do it by yourself, thinking about it, and processing it, practicing, training, and rehearsing, get a consultant or a counsellor. Counsellors or consultants.

When we’re talking about business, I’m telling the CEO who wants to know, “How do you transfer all this to my industry?” I’m going to tell the CEO, “You’ve got to create formulas for people to be able to get the help that they need to transform themselves, to be able to dig deeper and get more out of themselves.”

So, I’m sorry, I get excited.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, no, I love it all. Well, now, Greg, I’d love it if we could zoom all the way inside your brain for specific self-talk approaches that might model this in practice. So, let’s go through a whole loop of, “I don’t feel like doing something. I’m bored. Now, I’m doing a thing and I’m scared, fearful, anxious. And then, oops, I just learned that I screwed it up, and now I’m beating myself up.” What would be the great self-talk arc of moving through these three phases and contrasted with the terrible self-talk arc moving through these three phases?

Greg Harden
Well, let’s think it all the way through, like, “I’m so stupid. I just always…” I have to catch myself, “Well, that was stupid perhaps but it doesn’t mean that I’m stupid.” So, what I ask people to do is to train themselves to not just stop at the first and second thought, but take it to the third, fourth, and fifth thought, “God, I’m so stupid.” “Okay, I’m not stupid. But that was stupid. Beating myself is not working. Oh, okay.”

You’ve got to have in your brain a couple of phrases, “Beating yourself up does not work. It’s ineffective.” So, you’ve heard someone say, “Beating yourself up doesn’t work.” I need you to take it to, “It’s ineffective.” Worrying does not work. It does not change the outcome. Beating myself up doesn’t work. Worrying doesn’t work. I caught myself.

So, what we teach people is to catch themselves when they’re in the middle of beating themselves up. I’ve had people have a notebook where every time they catch themselves in negative self-talk, they jot it down. They even jot down what was happening at the time, what triggered it. And they end up finding out that if they are diligent, they do a lot more often than they thought.

So, the mission is to get people to, ultimately, eliminate but that’s a stretch. We need to reduce how often and how long we beat ourselves up. We’ve got to reduce it and telescope it, and get it down. But we get it down by being critically conscious, mindful, and aware of how often I do it, and I catch myself. So, your brain gets all the way to, when I catch myself, then I beat myself up for catching myself, “Oh, God, I’m doing it again. I’m so stupid.”

And so, we catch ourselves, and then we commit, once again, to retraining the way that we think. The commitment has to be there. People always talk about what they want to do but you’ve got to not just dream big. You’ve got to believe big in order to become big.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Greg, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Greg Harden
Become the world’s greatest expert on you. And sometimes you will have to get input from others. You’ve been to some good schools, you’ve done some really good things, and you’re an international player, right? B school, boom, boom, boom. Anyone that’s been near the B school has heard of SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to our organization.

What are the things that are working, not working? What are the opportunities we need to exploit? What are the threats to us becoming world class? I have the audacity to take SWOT analysis and give it to individuals. I’ll ask you to do a SWOT analysis on yourself. And if you don’t like the word weaknesses, let’s say challenges, SCOT analysis.

And so, I’ll have someone do a SWOT analysis on themselves, and then we’ll review it. Some people are really good at identifying strengths and horrible at identifying weaknesses. Some folks, all they can see is weaknesses and are limited at seeing strengths. I will then ask them to get two to three people who they love, who loves them, who they trust, who will not take advantage and abuse any power that you give them, and ask them to do a SWOT analysis.

Then, we’ll have a review of what you’ve written, what several other people who care about you have written, and see if there are some congruencies, if they can see things that you cannot see or have not seen, that’s reinforcing the changes that need to be made. So, critical self-assessment is an artform that people must practice, train, and rehearse, getting better at being able to not really good at criticizing themselves but really doing a self-assessment is what we’re trying to get people to.

And so, I guess I get excited just thinking about, “How do you teach somebody to become the world’s greatest expert and then daring them to pursue self-love and self-acceptance?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Beautiful. Thank you. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Greg Harden
“No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.” Eleanor Roosevelt.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Greg Harden
Carol Dweck’s Mindset is filled with research, and she can talk like a human being and not like just a scientist.

Pete Mockaitis
And that sounds like a favorite book. Any other favorite books?

Greg Harden
Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning. That was like a bible to me. When I was really young and dumb, I would have a New Testament in one pocket and Viktor Frankl in another pocket, and would walk around talking smack because I’m grounded.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Greg Harden
Identifying self-defeating attitudes and behaviors.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite thing you share that people quote back to you often that really resonates with them?

Greg Harden
Well, your self-worth and self-esteem must not be based on external forces. How I feel about me should not be based on performance.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Greg Harden
GregHarden.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Greg Harden
Commit without question or pause, to giving everything you’ve got every chance you get. Give it 100% a hundred percent of the time as your default mode. And if that’s your default mode, your worst day will be better than the average person’s best day.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Greg, this has been a treat. Thank you and keep on rocking.

Greg Harden
My man, most enjoyable. Thank you so much for your time.

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