137: Calming Performance Anxiety Like a Pro with Dr. Tom Hanson

Pete Mockaitis
Tom, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Tom Hanson
You’re very welcome. It’s awesome to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s so good to have you and I wanted to say, first of all, ILL.

Tom Hanson
“Go, Fighting Illini.”

Pete Mockaitis
Indeed. Yes, that’s good.

Tom Hanson
Well, I spent Green Street and Murphy’s.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes, it’s still there.

Tom Hanson
I heard.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s expanded.

Tom Hanson
I played rugby all three falls that I was there and never lost the big ten match. We had a great time. We had a lot of good foreigners and had a great time. So, spectacular memories.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s fun. That’s fun. And I’d also like to get your take on your children’s books.

Tom Hanson
Well, my children’s books are really my wife’s children’s books. I just spent four years writing Heads-Up Baseball 2.0 and she downloads these children’s books in a night. She’ll wake up and say, “I wrote a children’s book and I drew the pictures.” We like stories. We have simple wins. In fact, that was the theme from this book talking on Joe Maddon. You might even be a Cub’s guy.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Tom Hanson
But “Do Simple Better” was his big motto that helped them win the World Series. And Bear Good’s children’s books are really about that. It’s like, “Hey, keep it simple and just do simple better,” as a way to be great or whatever it is that you might want to be. Keep it simple but just do it better.

Pete Mockaitis
Makes sense.

Tom Hanson
Yeah, so for her that’s with the children’s book. That’s where she’s coming from.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s fun. Well, I wanted to start us off, you know, you’ve got some fame associated with your work with the Yankees and Rangers and other major league baseball folks. So, could you introduce those who are not familiar with what are the yips and could you share your story of how you helped some folks through them?

Tom Hanson
Okay. So, really what I’m focused on, ever since Illinois, then I went to the University of Virginia for my formal training in sports psychology. I’m not a psychologist. It’s a PE degree so I’m like a PE teacher that just kept going to school, never could get my toes quite on the line right, and so I had nine years of college to work on that.
And it’s really about, “How can you be better? How can you really be awesome at whatever it is that you’re doing?” I can work, and have worked, with people from a massive variety of domains but the commonality is that they’re all human.
So, if you’re a manager, or whatever you might be at the moment, you’re a human performer, and there’s elements of the human design that obviously go across whatever the domain is. And I see human performance in a moment-to-moment basis as happening on a continuum from totally freed up and trusting it to the yips.
So the yips are on the low end of the scale. They are not, though, some disease that’s off the spectrum. The way they’d show up is like a catcher catches the ball and just has too much anxiety to really throw the ball back to the pitcher. And he’d throw and miss the pitcher, he’ll not be able to throw it. It’s like a spasm. It’s like stuttering for throwing, or stuttering for golf. Those are my two main sports where clients come to YipsBeGone.com. And in golf it can be they can get to the green but they can’t putt or they can’t get off to tee. They can’t draw the club back, there’s some type of anxiety.
And as far as helping people, one of my favorites is a guy in his late 30s who in high school was going to be drafted as a short-stop and then got these yips and just could not make the throw across and didn’t even get drafted. He went on to join the military, served, fought in wars, came back, started a family and then could not play catch with his own son. He still had this throwing problem. It’s like he could go fight in wars but throwing with his own son…
And so I worked with him, I used a technique called tapping where you literally tap on different spots on your body that interrupt that pattern. We’re looking to break that connection between the thought of, “Okay, I’m going to make a throw. A throw equals danger.” That gets linked up in their head. We’ve got to break that link so throwing equals fun.
Helping him, I’ve got a letter that he wrote me about being able to throw with his son that moves me just to remember it. He’s like going on about what it means to him to be able to play catch with his son and also feel like he wasn’t going to pass it on. It’s not uncommon for parents to have it and then kids have it. So, it’s human performance and it just – we get in our way.
There’s lots of details in the design of a human that we could go into. It’s not really the focus here but it does provide a context for talking Who Will Do What By When? and anything else because it’s all human and human design of what can work and what gets in the way.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s so fascinating and I’m thinking right now of a client I have who reached out and said, “It seems like as I’m doing these interviews for a new role at the company, I’m there. I keep sort of choking or getting super anxious during the course of these interviews even though everyone thinks I have great skills. It’s just kind of concerning like, ‘What’s going on with the interviews. Can we trust this guy with the sort of the higher-up situation?’” And so it sounds like that’s related.

Tom Hanson
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
And so is tapping the answer? What do you do?

Tom Hanson
Well, it is a powerful tool that gets in there at a deeper level than just talking about it in my experience. And, yeah, he’s got some belief that, to me, it all comes back to this, and again this is the context for everything that I do. After 30 plus years of working mental game of blank, I worked with a lot of executives and leadership teams, I worked with 13-year-old, 10-year-old baseball players, and they’re all human.
So, information comes into us, our mid brains says, “Hey, am I safe?” “Well, let me look at past experiences with this.” And if yes, I’m safe, then the control stays up in the cortex and we have the ability to run our motor programs. And if it says, “Well, no, remember this happened. Oh, it could be bad.” Control those to your lower brain and its survival mechanism – fight, flight or freeze. And it’s like a hijacking. It doesn’t matter what your cortex says.
I liken it to a regular hijacking of a plane. If every passenger in the plane was licensed and skilled at flying that plane it would not matter if they couldn’t get to the cockpit and it’s the same with your cortex. It’s like, “Oh, it’s just a baseball game,” or, “It’s just an interview. Everyone says I should have this job.” That’s in your cortex.
But if your mid brain says, “No, danger. It’s not safe,” then we’re going primal and then all bets are off as far as what you know. And so that’s what would be going on and what has to shift is that perception at the deeper level of, “Am I safe? Yes or no.” And that’s why the tapping is a very powerful tool. It’s not a miracle. It’s a powerful tool that helps break that link between an event and a fear. If you see it as a threat then your performance is compromised because what happens in our body is designed to defend us against a physical attack.
So that person going in, “If I talk to my boss I always say something stupid,” there’s two levels of ways that I address that. One is what they actually do, have a script, have what we talk about in the book, “Here’s what to say.” That’s great. So here’s how to deal with the anxiety that comes up is that level, the actual level that I like to work on is stopping it from coming, changing that root perception, the belief that this is dangerous or that this is a threat. And so that’s, again, where the tapping or other things can be used but that’s what needs to shift.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s fascinating. So I’m curious then if someone finds himself in that spot right now, it’s like, “Boy, whenever I enter into this particular context I get all anxious.” What would be sort of your step one, two, three for someone who finds himself in that position?

Tom Hanson
Well, if I were to do that without being able to talk with him, because the first thing I would do is I would interact with him to find out how it shows up exactly for them. So, given that, I would focus on, one, just their deep breathing. Well, really, here it is, to make it easy, is my ABC’s.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Tom Hanson
My ABCs are from this book Play Big: Mental Toughness Secrets That Take Baseball Players to the Next Level. A stands for act big. So, with that survival mechanism what we tend to do is protect, and so that with contraction we get small. And so physically lifting your head and chest up changes your dynamics. Have you ever seen Tony Robbins? He’s big on, “Hell, yeah.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Tom Hanson
And so when you have a big physiology, big physically, it’s harder to do badly. It opens up energy. It changes your dynamics. We were talking TED Talks before we got started, the woman who has the one about the power.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Amy Cuddy, yeah.

Tom Hanson
Awesome. Love that. And so that’s A for Amy. Well, in our case act big. So, you’re going in head and chest up, it doesn’t have to be over the top but head and chest up. B stands for breathe big. Long, slow, deep, steady breaths or just one but long, slow. If you’re going in today, as soon as anytime you feel nervous about this afternoon’s thing, go to the breath. See if you can get it to your belly. Maybe you can’t because you’re so wound up but see if you can draw some nice, long, slow breaths, counting to five in and five out, or whatever you’d like to do.
So we got A is act big, B is breathe big, C is commit big. Commit to what you want to have happen. What would I like to have happen in this meeting? What’s the goal? And then you could come up with all kinds of verbs. So that’s dealing with your state.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Tom Hanson
Act big. Breathe big. Commit big. And that’s for a pitcher. “So what should I do between pitches?” Do your ABCs. “I’m walking into a job interview what should I do?” Do your ABCs. Walking into – you name it. Do your ABCs because it’s the only thing you can control is yourself, you can’t control the outcome and they help get you present.
Then I would say, “Okay, with that C, what’s the ball?” Whatever it is, in baseball, in hitting, the ball is the ball. In tennis the ball is the ball. Well, what is it in a moment? Like with this interview the key is to get your energy out onto the ball and out onto the other person. If I want to sell something I need to be out over there in him or in her with my energy, what’s going on with her, then I tend to disappear.
Otherwise, I’ll, “Hey, what do you think about me? Is this the right shirt?” All these stupid answers. That’s all about you. And the more you can get your energy out onto the ball, which can be a person in this case, the better off you are. So, commit to, “I’m going to serve that person no matter how I feel. I’m going to keep going out there to be of service, or to go for this goal or target.”
So, act big, breathe big, commit big and then D, do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s good. And so then does tapping happen separately or could that be in the mix as well?

Tom Hanson
Yes, you see that’s done before to address the perception in the first place. The ABCs, it’s great but people will be so overwhelmed or can be so overwhelmed by the emotion of what comes up that it just gets wiped out. Like New Orleans had levees but they weren’t up to the Katrina that came in. We had levees.
And so it is with emotions, it’s like, “Oh, I’ve got my ABCs but I still choke.” Well, what came up was just overmatched than a nice little mental technique and so that’s where the tapping undercuts the belief that gives rise to this stress in the first place.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s so fascinating and helpful. Thank you. I also want to make sure we get a chance to hear some of the wisdom from your book Who Will Do What By When? It’s funny, I got your book way back when shortly it came out, I think, in 2007 because I was writing a book about accountability, and said, “Well, I should know all the key books on accountability.”
It was a very different kind of a perspective. Mine was, folks help each other flourish and challenging each other to form good habits and support, and yours had more of a team company organizational feel. So kind of what’s the story behind your work there?

Tom Hanson
Well, the essence of it is was like, “What to say to get things done? How to communicate?” Now it’s a leadership book in one way but everyone is a leader if you look at it that way. You’re leading your own life. And so here’s how to have influence, here’s like exact words to say that have power. These are like power words that if you use them, and use them correctly in the model that the book lays out, you have a much better chance of success.

Pete Mockaitis
Exactly. Power words. Please lay them on us.

Tom Hanson
Well, there are words that pretty much everyone knows. It’s like with my computer, or we’re having some audio thing getting started, there’s people that know more about it than me.
I know how to plug stuff in, I know the computer but I don’t have distinctions about the computer the way a computer person would. I remember I had my computer fixed because there’s distinctions inside the computer. Well, here are some distinctions inside a word like declaration. Declaration might be the most important of all of these words in that it’s declaring, using a word to create something that’s so.
You’re speaking into the future. You’re speaking into the present and future. The most famous, of course, is The Declaration of Independence, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident,” and off you go. We’re free. Well, now they had to fight the war but that was what they were operating under. They were operating under this declaration that we are independent from you and, therefore, if you’re trying to take our money or anything else we’re going to war and we’re going to fight you. So, a declaration.
I was working with a guy yesterday who is a technology person, a really bright technology guy but he just gets walked on. He has basically trained people that he’ll do whatever they ask him.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay.

Tom Hanson
They’ll interrupt him. He’s working, and they come in, “Hey, dude, I got a problem. Can you help me?” “Oh, sure.” And then there goes the next hour. Then he tries to come back to where he was and so forth. And so he was operating AOD, what I call absence of declaration. He didn’t have a declaration about his time that, “Okay, from 12:00 to 2:00 that is my focus time. I’m available. Like my office hours are from 3:00 to 5:00. And from 3:00 to 5:00 on these days I’m very open to your questions, but these times I’m not.”
And so he needs to make a declaration that says, “This is when I’m available.” Otherwise, he’s AOD and SOL.

Pete Mockaitis
Or he’ll be DOA if he doesn’t.

Tom Hanson
Exactly. So, his thing, it’s just an outer game and an inner game. So we say these power words where he makes a declaration that, “Okay, on Wednesday is my focus time.” Well, for me, I’ll take my own example, every Tuesday is blocked off, it’s focus day, and not until at least 3:00 will I take an appointment because I’m going to do some project on Tuesday. People will say, “Oh, how about Tuesday at 10:00?” I go, “No.” “How about Wednesday?”

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Tom Hanson
Because I have a declaration that Tuesday is a focus day. And so if I’m absent a declaration then Tuesday is fine and my schedule gets all scattered and I never really get anything done because I don’t have the rigor. But that’s the outer game is make the declaration. The inner game then is having this inner strength to actually follow through on it, and that’s another matter. But at least having the words puts you on second base. You still have to then not take the interruption and say, “I’m sorry. I’m busy.”
But the more you do, so it’s like, “Well, how do I build that up? I want to move up the corporate ladder. How do I build up that inner confidence that I see in these other people?” Well, by making and honoring promises to yourself the more he’ll carve out, “Okay, for one hour, this one hour I’m going to take the fun. No interruptions for one hour.” And he does it and then he celebrates it, “Yes, I did it.” It’s like little inner strength weight training, inner strength training that you make these declarations which another word for it, and this is a huge power word, is promise and that’s a major word in the workplace.
The reason we wrote, yes, that’s the question, the reason we wrote Who Will Do What By When? is because after we got fired by the Yankees we started doing a lot more corporate coaching and we found that people just don’t do a good job. Everyone want to do, “Hey, what’s the vision? And what’s the high level thing?” And it’s like, “Well, they don’t make and honor promises.”
So, in baseball you throw and catch, throw and catch. If you can’t throw and catch you’re in big trouble. That’s the fundamental. In football, block and tackle, block and tackle. You can design all these fancy plays, but if this X can’t block that O then it doesn’t matter because it’s all going to get blown up. In business, it’s making and honoring promises. And a promise is a declaration, a promise is, “I will do X by Y. I will do the Jones project. I’ll have it done by Friday at noon. I will do X by Y.”
And then the honor, no one fulfills all their promises, stuff happens. And so if you know what the book is about, basically if you know in advance that you’re not going to be able to fulfill that promise you go to the person and renegotiate. If you blow through it and you break a promise then you go back and you apologize and clean it up, and there are steps for how to do that.
And then if that hasn’t happened, the person who is promised to, the promise-ee, is to go to them and say, “Hey, my understanding was that you said you’d do X by Y. I don’t think you did that, did you?” “No, I didn’t.” And then off you go to negotiate it. So, if people can say, “Well, duh. Come on. Really, you wrote a book about that?” Well, yes, we did because we just saw it’s very absent. Very absent from the work world, and so that’s part of our mission.
When I work with the little league team, or a big league team, what are the fundamentals? “Oh, I’ve got to catch and throw. Catch and throw.” In a business, “Make and honor promise. Make a promise, honor it. Make a promise, honor it.” And that is how you build up inner strength and that’s how you build up this trustworthiness.
I’m using your guy’s book there – Zak?

Pete Mockaitis
Paul Zak.

Tom Hanson
Great interview you did with him. Thank you for that. So I bought his book and it’s all about trust and oxytocin that comes and release when there’s trust. So how to be trustworthy, he’s talking about. He has his acronym, which is very cool, of each of those letters of oxytocin, a voice to build trust. And, for me, our focus is all those things with particular emphasis though on the actual language of trust.
How do you build trust? Business moves at the speed of trust. Everything, all his numbers and research about the more trust the more productive and revenue. And I’m saying the throwing and catching of trust, the throwing and catching, the fundamentals of business is making and honoring promises. Again, there’s a language to it.
So the words like declaration, you’ve got to have a declaration. Make a promise is a type of declaration. What’s the gap? Then you make a request, “Hey, will you please do X by Y?” And there’s four answers that you’ve got to accept, “Yes, I’ll do X by Y,” or, “No, I won’t do X by Y. Are you kidding?” or, “I don’t know. How about if I do Z by Y?” or, “Ah, I can’t say for sure. I have to check with my peeps. And how about I get back to you by noon tomorrow on that request?”
You see how there’s a clarity in that. It doesn’t have to be stiff-o but there is a rigor to it that is just usually missing. Why? Because of the inner game stuff that we even started with. Like the yips, it’s like, “Ahh, I don’t know.” It’s like, “Hey, will you do this?” “Yeah.” And it’s like you’ve got to play the “by when” card. It doesn’t just get play, “Well, great. By when will you do that?” And, “Oh, well, that’s totally different.” Right? The key on either way is having a promise because if there’s no promise then there’s no grounds for complaint.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Well, that’s a great sort of set of frameworks there. And I guess I’m curious if you’d say you’ve gotten some pushbacks, like, “You wrote a book on that? Come on. No, duh?” What would you say – and, oh, man, time is blind here – maybe the one- or two-minute answer to what gets in the way. Why, in fact, are promises so often broken?

Tom Hanson
Because our primary objective as humans is survival, it’s safety. And so everything that we’ve talked about from beginning to end, and we really could talk about in terms of human, the cornerstone of it or the umbrella of it all is going to be human safety because for me to say, “Well, by when will you do that?” it risk a confrontation. And you say, “Well, it’s not life or death.”
Well, we’re geared for survival and hunting and gathering, and so if you upset people, like an authority, then they may kick you out of a tribe and that’s a death sentence. You can’t eat very much. You certainly can’t mate. You got nothing with the mating if you are an outcast of a tribe. So we’re all geared for safety first and that’s where the trust comes in where it all happens where it moves faster. When there’s trust there everything goes well.
Well, no, it’s not true. Everything goes more efficiently, effectively when there’s trust, it’s because we’re not contracted. We’re open and we’re open to possibilities. We’re thinking possibilities for what could happen with the company versus, “I’ve got to cover my own butt.”

Pete Mockaitis
I see. And so you’re saying in that fearful moment of, “Hey, can you do this by Y?” you know the answer that you prefer to hear is, “Yes, of course.” But in reality that might not really be possible.

Tom Hanson
Exactly, and you might be afraid to say that. Because you ought to say, “Okay. Well, I can do that. I can do X by Y. I just need to say, though, that if I do X by Y; A, B, C or D that we’ve agreed to, one of them has to fall off and I have to not do that. So, would you rather have me do X or which one should I not want?” But who says that?
And what Zak is talking about in that culture, he was pumping up Zappos, they would say that. It’s like, “Well, yeah, I could but realistically something has got to give. Do you want to have me do this or this? Choose.” In normal environment, unfortunately, it’s like, “Well, do both. We’ve got to do them both.” And it’s just not really possible so something has got to give or you’re going to push this onto somebody who can’t do it.
And so a lot of it has to do with, “In your organization is it safe to make the declaration?” No.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Tom Hanson
In most work cultures it’s not safe or an option really to make the declaration, “No, I won’t do that.” Or even what you want to have is a relationship of trust that enables a dialogue, “Okay. Well, what’s really important here?” And go back and forth. Having that relationship makes the information go.
My son had played the trumpet solo the other day and he knew that by the time it came up his lips were tired and he wasn’t doing it very well. What I would want to have had happened was that he discuss that with her that he might be able to lay low on some of the practices before, rehearsal right before the performance. He blew his lip out in a rehearsal. And it’s like, “Okay. Well, get in better shape, yes.”
But if the relationship dynamic is such that you’re safe to say, “You know, can I just kind of dog it here in the rehearsal because I’m having lip issue?” “Oh, sure.” Or, “No,” depending on how it goes but you see how the dynamic of the relationship determines what happens there.
Like I mentioned Joe Maddon earlier. The year before they won the World Series he was Manager of the Year. A guy said, “Hey, what were your priorities going into spring training?” First spring training he went to Cubs, he said, “Relationships. The first three weeks – relationship. That was it because with bad relationships nothing is possible. With good relationships anything is possible. So it’s all about relationship.”
And so there’s an inner game that we talked about but there’s also this outer game of using these words – promise. “Do you promise?” You might not say it like that. You say, “Hey, will you do X by Y?” “Yes, I will do X by Y.” And then if it is done then you’re off to the races, and it works. And it’s human dynamics in the book, as you may recall, the subplot is a guy’s relationship with his wife. It’s a fictional story.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, right. That’s the drama. Like the goal.

Tom Hanson
That’s right. Exactly. It was going to be the goal and to have this. They were going through a divorce. My wife is a fantastic coach, she’s a master of coaching, works with executives and leadership teams but she was also, and still is, working with a scriptwriter in Hollywood who had written for Emmy Award-winning shows. And she said, “That is just too much. Make it a girlfriend or you’re distracting from what you want them to get.”
And so it’s his girlfriend, he shows up late again for dinner, and she’s had enough. So that’s where the book starts off, the guy just has no integrity. It’s really what we’re talking about, being true to your word not from a moral standpoint, “But you said you’d do X by Y. Did you do X by Y?” That’s integrity, you’re in integrity. And so she dumps him, it’s kind of a spoiler alert but it’s only about page four, and he’s got the rest of the book.
It’s the same with his team, they blow up at the beginning and he thinks it’s them. And then he talks to a coach who says, “Hey, you want to look in the mirror and start there.” And he’s got the rest of the book to try and get his team going and get the girl back.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I’m hooked. Well, now, I’d like to shift gears a bit and hear about a few of your favorite things. Could you start us off with a favorite quote?

Tom Hanson
A favorite quote? What comes to mind is I had a wooden carving made up of, “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s nice. Thank you.

Tom Hanson
I put it up on the kids’ wall because it’s like you remember what’s really important.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s great. And how about a favorite tool whether that’s a product or service or app, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Tom Hanson
I really grew to with Screencast-O-Matic.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Tom Hanson
Screencast-O-Matic. It’s a great name, great product and enables me to do screen captures stuff, different things with video and audio. I love it.

Pete Mockaitis
I love anything that has O-Matic.

Tom Hanson
I know, right? I know. How can you not get that?

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a favorite habit, a personal practice that’s been helpful for you?

Tom Hanson
It would really be my breath or going with the deep breath, really tuning into where I’m at in terms of anxiousness level and knowing that a good slow breath like that can really change my state dramatically.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it’s great. Thank you. And would you say there’s a particular nugget or sort of Tom Hanson original message that seems to really connect and resonate with your audience in terms of they’re nodding their head and waiting for more?

Tom Hanson
What comes to mind with that is maybe this idea of in and out that you’d go in, you check yourself to see, “Well, how am I doing?” Like I just said, “How am I doing awareness-wise, or anxiety-wise, or stress-wise? What’s going on?” But no matter what, then when it’s time to perform you want to get out onto the ball or out onto whatever it is. Between pitches you can check in, and then no matter how you feel it’s time to get out onto the ball. It’s the same with a meeting, anything else, this idea of getting your attention out and off of your self is liberating. Get some head nods.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And is there a best place for folks to get in touch or learn more about what you’re up to?

Tom Hanson
Well, the company website is HeadsUpPerformance.com, and we are just launching, as we record this, or preparing to launch something at WhoWillDoWhatByWhen.com. We’re creating a course that we’ve been using for a while but we’re formalizing it to make it more available to help people work these things into their game.
You’d think, “It’s A-OK now. I got it. I heard him say it.” Well, it’s like hearing someone talk about fielding ground balls or hitting. You really need to do it in order to get it into your body. And so it’s an embodiment course for this so that you build up, yes, the outer game tools of knowing the words but also really that inner game strength to use them effectively. So that’s at WhoWillDoWhatByWhen.com.
I mentioned Yips Be Gone. There was another yips. I kind of made it tongue-in-cheek like the O-Matic. It’s like YipsBeGone.com is where you could learn more about that. Then Play Big Baseball is where this other book can be found.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And do you have a final sort of parting challenge or call to action for those seeking to be more awesome at their jobs?

Tom Hanson
I would say that it is in the present moment. It’s so easy to get caught up in the future-thinking of where you’re trying to get to that you can miss doing a really great job in the present. You’ll do a much better job in the present moment if that’s where your focus is as well as being a lot more fun and more enjoyable to say, “Here’s where I am and there’s acceptance of where I am.”
It doesn’t mean you have to like it. It doesn’t mean that you’re satisfied in a way that you’re not going to drive forward, but an acceptance of like, “You know what? Here’s where I am today, I’m going to enjoy the heck out of it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s great. Well, Tom, thank you. This has been so much fun. Keep on doing your good work there.

Tom Hanson
Thank you very much. Loved it. Same to you, keep doing a good job with this. I’ve really enjoyed going through multiple of your podcasts. You do an awesome job yourself.