Let's make things that matter. Together.
Derin ‘Dmac’ McMains is a former baseball player, coach and manager turned Director of Mental Performance at global cybersecurity company, ReliaQuest. He’s taken mental performance principles to train athletes, executives and other high performers to take their game to the next level. In our conversation, Derin and I talk about mindsets and how changing your relationship with your goals will allow you more freedom to make mistakes and trust the process instead of the outcome.
We explore how your self-image has a big impact on the goal setting process. Derin reveals his unique framework to setting goals that lets you see not only the action plan but also the story you need to tell yourself to make it happen. He puts it simply:
“How I see myself determines how I see the world. So how I see myself, my identity, determines my perspective and my perspective is going to determine my thoughts and my thoughts are going to determine my emotions and then it’s my emotions that influence my actions.”
This perspective flips the script on how we typically think of goals. Instead of relying on achieving goals to boost our self image, Derin suggests it starts with a positive self image and the goals come second. No doubt that this conversation with Derin will not only give you a fresh perspective about goals but also lets you walk away with the right mindset and more importantly, action steps to take them on.
Derin McMains is a former professional baseball player and manager, now Director of Mental Performance at global cybersecurity company ReliaQuest. McMains has spent the last decade-plus training athletes, executives and other high performers using mental performance principles to take their game to the next level. He’s built out mental performance programs for the San Francisco Giants, Seattle Mariners, and the University of Notre Dame. One of the most important skills he teaches is a simple (yet not easy) one: learning how to be a high performer by staying in the present moment.
Zack Arnold: I'm here today with Derin McMains, also known as DMac, who's a former professional baseball player and a manager. And you're now the Director of Mental Performance at a global cybersecurity company ReliaQuest. Now you, Derin have built out mental performance and conditioning programs for the San Francisco Giants, the Seattle Mariners and the University of Notre Dame. You're also the podcast host of No Show Dogs. And I am incredibly excited to chat about mental performance conditioning mindset, and all things mental performance today. So I really appreciate you taking the time to meet with me.
Derin McMains: Oh, Zack, I'm looking forward to this conversation, when I had the opportunity to come on the show, I can tell you got really excited and just fired up to see where this goes.
Zack Arnold: Nice. All right. So here's where I want to start, do doing a little bit of our due diligence and research. You've got a lot of acronyms after your name, you've got MS, you've got MA, you've got one I had never seen before. And I went down a rabbit hole for like an hour on CMPC. So there's a whole lot of stuff we're going to cover. But the place that I want to start is, what the heck does it even mean to be the Director of Mental Performance? How does it factor into all of these various acronyms? And how does a baseball player work for a security firm?
Derin McMains: There's so many places to go with that quiz question. So I think the best place to start is let's start with baseball player to cybersecurity company. So played professional baseball for seven years moved into coaching and managing did that for five years in the San Francisco Giants organization. But it's during that time is when I realized the value and the importance of mindset, and how it impacts performance. Because we would, we would select the best players in the world, they'd all show up look great in practice, and only three or four of those would really show up in the game. And that's when I really realized, wow, there's something to mindset. I knew it as a player, I'll be honest with these act like when I saw a sports psychologist or someone that worked in mental performance, I avoided them like the plague. I didn't want nothing to do with them. I thought, hey, that's where the week go. And when I became a coach and a manager, I learned there couldn't be anything further from the truth, right? You don't have to be sick to get better. And it was when I went back to school to get my first master's, which is the MS master of science and psychology. I was trying to learn more about hey, how can I just be a better coach, I figured it made sense to understand psychology. Then in the middle of that I learned there's a whole field of sport and performance psychology specific to performance, right? And performance can be anything from from sport, military, movies, like you do, right? I mean, anything that requires some level of goal setting, self talk, all those types of things, visualization. And so I thought, wow, okay, well, I want to go do that. So when got a Master of Arts in Sport and Performance Psychology, now I can tell you two masters does not equal a PhD means nothing. It's like, oh, cool, I just get more letters, you know, a little disappointing.
Zack Arnold: It looks good on LinkedIn.
Derin McMains: It's one of those things that that you're proud of. And at the same time, when you write it down, you're like, do I need to do this, you know, I always go back and forth between it, you know, but and then the CMPC is a Certified Mental Performance Coach. And that's through the Association of Applied Sport Psychology. And so that's our, that's our group that supports all of us to make sure you're getting, you know, high quality individuals that have trained in the mental performance space and have, you know, research based practices behind it. And so that's kind of where all those letters came from. Now, how I got into cybersecurity. So when I moved in from managing and I went into mental performance, specifically, again, I was like, man, I could really do something beyond just coaching on the field within these white lines. And San Francisco Giants came asked me if I wanted to roll out their first mental performance program, I had no idea what to do, you know, I'd played the game, I'd coached the game and then I'd had this, you know, educational background now. And I thought, Okay, this is the best way to build a program. I tell you, I failed more than I succeeded, I was surrounded by a bunch of great people. That made me look smarter than I am for sure. I can confidently say that. But along the way, I think like anyone you learn through all the mistakes that you make, you know, and so from that went into, working specifically with went from working with players to coaches, from coaches, I realized, wow, leadership principles, kind of carry across, you know, all walks of life, and then got hooked up with the founder and CEO, Brian Murphy of ReliaQuest and the end of 2018. And he is all in on mindset, understands kind of what it looks like to go from from sport and how to bring it into the business, specifically the tech space. And so I consulted with him for a couple years. And then after the crazy COVID season, I wanted to stay in the middle performance space but wanted to do some a little bit more just me right. And so I went and started my own consulting and then from that reliaquest said, you know, Brian Murphy specifically said, Hey, why don't you come join us full time and do for us what you did, you know, Notre Dame, Seattle, Mariners and so on and so forth. And I asked him, I said, What do you think that looks like? He says, I have no idea. You figure it out. And I said, Okay. We've been doing that ever since. And I can tell you, you know, like Even when I started with the Giants a long time ago, a lot of mistakes early on still making those today, you know, trying to figure out the best way, you know, how do you impact sales? How do you impact marketing? How do you impact engineers? How do you impact? You know, our security analyst, right? Because they're all going to come at it from a different perspective, you know, but the success principles are the same. But it's the storytelling that goes around it that paints it in a different picture that gets people to act, right. It's the stories that we tell people that ultimately get to the emotion, which ultimately leads to action. And so it's definitely challenged me and how can I be a better storyteller around these success principles that hopefully cause people to act and do the things that I know they ultimately want to do?
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and not only is it about the stories that we tell other people, as I'm sure we'll talk a lot more about shortly. It's about the stories we're telling ourselves. All right, so many stories, we're telling ourselves, which even though I don't have all the letters after my name that you do, I can feel confident that a big part of mental performance and mental mental coaching is understanding all the stories and narratives that we tell ourselves. And one of the reasons that I'm really interested and excited to bring you into this space, is I love the intersection of completely different areas in different industries, where there are core principles that intersect in your world of cybersecurity, or sports or management or consulting completely different than the creative space that I've lived in my entire career. But when it comes to core leadership principles, core management principles, core human principles to be better at your job, all those things intersect in all areas. And I find that if you just live in your own little silo, and I learned how can I be a better editor or writer or director or producer, the core human skills that are necessary are all over all the various industries, and you can learn so much from bringing other disciplines and having that cross disciplinary conversation? Which is why for anybody that's like, why is Zack talking to a guy that works in cybersecurity? This doesn't make sense. This is why we're talking to Derin, and this is why I'm so excited about it.
Derin McMains: You mentioned it, I mean, it is storytelling, right. And it is the stories that we tell ourselves is, they're so impactful, right? And that's where awareness comes in, it's you know, I can tell you a lot of times, it's, it's not the thing that bothers you, it's the story, you tell yourself about the thing. That's what bothers you. And so a lot of times it is unpacking those stories that we're telling ourselves about those events about those things that we can't control, right? And how do we tell ourselves a better narrative? So we can control our response going forward? And and you're right, it doesn't matter what industry you're in, this is a human, this is a human thing, right? And how do we get better at understanding this piece of hardware and software inside our skull? Right? How do we understand that better, so we can leverage it for the good, right? So we can, you know, kind of, like I said before, do the things that we ultimately want to do, right? It's but it's I think we run into those temporary, temporary emotions that keep us from our long term commitments, right? And so it's like, how do we how do we develop those mental strategies, so we can push back, push past those things and get to where we want to go?
Zack Arnold: Yeah, so the the plan here is there are so many different mental skills that we can talk about, there are processes of you have this process of setting smart ask goals, which even though the acronym is slightly different, you and I have a very similar approach to goal setting that I want to get into. But rather than just starting to break down frameworks and processes and lists, I actually want to turn this into a very personal story, because I have yet to find somebody that's at the perfect intersection of what I think is one of the core challenges that I have as a budding athlete. And I'm going to the end, the reason being that it goes back very deep into my past, this is a story I've never told before, but you are the number one person to help me unpack this, because I believe there's something about this that applies to my challenges literally to this day. I kill let me break this down for you. So when I was in middle school, the way that it worked, I was in Little League from either second or third grade until my sophomore year of high school. Baseball was my life. I was obsessed with baseball. And from third grade to about eighth grade, I was borderline, maybe I'll start maybe I'll sit on the bench. It was kind of back and forth. And then I had my Grossberg and at the time. I don't know how it works in different cities. But what was where I grew up, there were two separate leaves the you can plan where if you were going into ninth grade, you could be you could be practicing or so Oh, no, actually, I was in ninth grade. So I was on the junior varsity high school team. And I was very much a benchwarmer. But then at the same time during the summer, we had this league that was called the Babe Ruth league that was seventh, eighth and ninth grade. Right. So I don't know if that's something that you're familiar with or not. But so there was one player on the Babe Ruth team that literally could hit anything and to hit over 500 That summer, like one of the top records in that Babe Ruth league history. Another player would literally strike out every single time it was an absolute disaster on the high school team that was a freshman. Both of them were me. I was crushing it in Babe Ruth that summer and then as soon as I became a freshman in high school, I was a complete and utter disaster. And the only thing that I can break down On between, those are number one I had. On both of the teams, I had one of the coaches that was the same and one of the coaches that was different between the two. And it was the difference between constant negativity and B rating and pointing out my flaws, versus pointing on my potential. And the other one was that on one team, I'm in ninth grade. And I'm the the elder or the veteran of the team, where I had the ability to be a mentor and help whereas in the other one, I was the smallest scrawny as kid on the high school team, and I was picked on incessantly. So let's go ahead and break that down. Because there's, there's a significant level of sports performance anxiety that still haunts me to this day, for my inability to perform at one level, while I'm hitting over 500 at the exact same age at the exact same time. What the hell is going on here?
Derin McMains: Well, where do I start? So I think, you know, retrospectively, you know, obviously, what we're looking at here, I think two things for me that I heard showed up right away. One is comparison, right? So there's the comparison trap, where in one space, you're like, I'm the top dog, I'm the guy, right? Everybody's counting on me, which puff your chest out a little bit, right feels good when you know, you're one of the oldest ones on the team, then, but what can you know, benefit you here on this team, because you're the top dog can work against you on this team, because now you look at yourself, because your identity is attached to maybe the status of which you are on that team. And so now my identity is around like, I'm the I'm the young kid, I'm the smallest one you know, I'm in now you probably gonna have to try harder, you feel like you have to try harder to make up for maybe lack of strength or wherever you're at, right? And so that's, you know, that, for me, the first one is around comparison, and how that impacts our identity. And then then I think about why identity is so important, because how I see myself determines how I see the world, right? So how I see myself, my identity determines my perspective. And my perspective is going to determine my thoughts. And my thoughts are going to determine my emotions. And then my it's my emotions that influence my actions, right. And so when you get caught in that comparison trap, right, and you don't see yourself as someone that is maybe should be there or is up to the level that people around you now you're going to try harder, beat yourself up when you can't keep up, right. And then it's just a spiral, right? And then in baseball, it is so hard because you get it's 30 to 45 minutes between it bats, that's a lot of time to beat yourself up, right and put yourself in a bad place for the next time you come up, you know, and it is just, that's what makes you know baseball, golf, tennis, those types of sports so difficult. So the first I would say is comparison. Second side of that would be unfortunately, the coach that wasn't positive, right? I mean, baseball is a game that is built on I hate to say it's a game of failure, right? I like to say, it's better, it's a game of adjustments, but I get it look, you go up there, you expect to get a hit. When you don't, it hurts, right? Because there's no one that can bail you out. It's you in the batter's box. Everyone's watching, you know, all eyes are on you. It's not like soccer, where there's a team and you think like, Oh, my teammate picked me up, No, nobody's picking you up, you're by yourself with that bat, and we're watching you know, so there's a lot that goes into that. And so when you don't have a coach that's supportive, that's able to point to solutions point to the things that you're doing, well encourage you for the next one, knowing that you're probably beating yourself up more than anybody. And so he needs the one that needs to come in and in you know, try to level the playing field get you back to neutral, at least right? To not have someone in that type of role that you probably looked up to just based on their, their status, their role, right, they're the coach, you probably were taught to respect your coaches. And so you're respecting this person who's now being negative to you, which is going to further impact your identity. Right. So I think those two things. Were definitely working against Zack, you know, and, and that's a tough place to be in. But I can tell you, I've been there, right. And I know that every person that's listening, this has found themselves in those positions before where they found themselves in the comparison trap, where they found themselves in a situation where maybe a leader wasn't supportive, right? But that's why I always go back to think about the importance of identity, right? And it's like, being very intentional about establishing what you believe right? What you believe about one the world but what you believe about yourself, you're Have you established your core values, like what do you stand for? Right? And then the last piece, you know, Why think mindset gets so tricky is there's that self image piece, which is, you know, kind of how you see yourself in different contexts, right? So example would be me working in a professional baseball locker room, I have a lot of confidence, I see myself my self image of myself, and that environment is very high, I think I can handle that. I can tell you, Zack, if I if I get a leak in my sink, right now, like I don't see myself as someone that can handle that. And so has nothing to do with beliefs and core values, everything to do with self image in my own competence to handle that. I start thinking about black mold. I'm wondering if my house is going to collapse you know, I'm thinking all these awful things anxiety, who do I need to call like, you know, all these things because my self image of myself my identity, as someone that can fix a leak in my sink is not real good, you know? So I think those two things are at play kind of looking back at your career there.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and we will go into this a little bit the We're in a second because there's kind of one last thing that I want to add on top of that. But what you're talking about here are the scripts, right? We write all of these scripts and all these beliefs that we have. And I want to dig deeper into these. But there's one further thing that I wanted to add to that story that I think we can come back to a little bit later, which is that I can't remember if it was my mom or my dad, or both of them. But they were both very supportive. And one of them, I made an observation that I find so interesting that again, still haunts me to this day, they would say that they would watch, like I said, this was all within the span of the same few months, where I was hitting over 500 and Babor with and then I was such a complete and total disaster as a freshman for the high school baseball team. And they would say, when you entered the batter's box, you were two completely different people. And one of them, it's like, I own the box, right? Like I was standing there confidently, and you could just see the look on the pitchers face, like, oh, man, like, I'm not going to strike this guy out. Same person, same span of time, would walk into the batter's box when I was on the high school team, just making, you know, like, Oh, my God, what am I doing here and I don't belong, there is no difference in my strength in my ability to hit a fastball, right. And that's funny, because I just had this memory of because there's this overlap of leagues, it wasn't even a matter of one could argue, well, when you were in babe, Ruth, you had younger pitchers that were pitching slower. And then in high school, you're going up against, you know, faster, more skilled pitchers, I literally remember going up against the same pitcher. And it was the same experience, one of which I get hit the guy over and over and the other which he would just incessantly strike me out, it was all about environment and the mindset and how I saw myself in that environment. And that's, you know, again, that's that goes into this idea of there were scripts that I was telling myself, right, so I would assume that in your world, both as an athlete but also as a manager, you've heard an endless amount of scripts that people truly believe in their heart of hearts is true. Right? So how do we start digging into what are even the scripts that are playing in our head? And then how do we start to manage them? Or even more importantly, rewrite them?
Derin McMains: Yeah, well I think that's the importance of having a coach and having people around you that you trust, and that have your best interest in mind. Right? That's why it's so important to surround ourselves with, with with other people like that, you know, we weren't, we weren't created to do this alone. We were created to be in community, right? And so it's like, how can I lean into others. And so that's why I would encourage others to whether it's a teammate, whether it's a coach, you know, whether it's a sports psychologist, mental performance, coach, whoever it may be, but you do have to have a safe place that you can talk about that, right? Because you can't defeat what you can't define, right? Just like you can't develop what you can't define. You can't do it. And so it's like, hey, let's define the problem. What is the story? And that's this was the question I ask people all the time, like, what's the story? You're telling yourself? Right? You tell me like, what's the story? You're telling yourself? What's the story, you're telling yourself about consequences, right? Because I think you go into this at bat. And you're like, if I don't get a hit, my gonna get cut, like his coach gonna yell at me, right. And so now you've already gone to the future, which means you've left the present your best performance is in the present moment, you're already thinking about consequences. Or you're thinking about the past of like, well, I didn't do it that well last time. And then you kind of carry that with you. And that's why it's so important to find a way to be present in the batter's box when our stories aren't great, because our stories aren't always going to be great. But there's numerous times I walked through the batter's box, not sure if I could do what I was doing, then I got in there took a deep breath. And that's why it's so important to understand the power of our senses, right? It's hard to, it's hard to breathe in the future dry. You can't smell in the future, you can't taste in the future. And so to really think about, you know, as a baseball player, you got bubblegum, some chewed tobacco, whatever it was, it's like, really think about what that taste is. And that brings you right to the present moment, right? Because you're not thinking about consequences or past mistakes, you're just like, hey, this thing tastes pretty good. And then it allows you to let your subconscious take over and do what you've trained it to do. Right? If, if I thought about how to ride a bike, which I know how to do, if I thought I picked my knee up, put my foot down, flex my torso, I don't know I'm talking about if I'm, if I'm thinking about how to ride a bike, I'm not gonna ride it very well, I'm gonna crash versus I just pick out a target. And I just go and I enjoy my, you know, bubble gum along the way. And so I think about that, right? Versus like, what are the stories you're telling yourself? Let's get a strategy that you can get to the present moment, while you're in the batter's box while we work on this story. And then it's as simple as like, well, what story do you want to tell yourself? What's true? Right, let's start there. What's true? And what's true is not well, I'm never going to I'm never going to make it. So you don't know that. You couldn't make it? You don't. So let's not like that's not even true, right? Well, if you look at my bet, we're not looking at your past. Just because you didn't work out yesterday, doesn't mean it can't work out today. And Today's a new day, right? And so you start to unpack like what is true? And then the second thing is like what is helpful? Like, this is telehealth. Let's tell ourselves a helpful story. What's most helpful? Well, what's most helpful is I can go up there and look for a fastball to hit perfect. Perfect, let's just not worry about past let's not worry about let's just go hey, let's just go look for a fastball to hit. Right. And then the last thing that I think is a good question to ask ourselves when we're trying to create a new new narrative is like, what's kind? Like what's what's just a nice thing to tell yourself Right, because what I do know is I'm a lot nicer and kinder and more encouraging to my kids and to my wife and to my friends than I am sometimes to myself. And so I gotta really check myself and go, Hey, what's a kind? You know, what's a true helpful kind story? I can tell myself, right? That's not fabricated on like, hey, I can do the, you know, it's like, no, it's, it's in the present moment, right? And it's based on the next thing, my past doesn't have to predict my future, right? My preparation is going to help predict my future, I'm not gonna make sure I'm prepared, right. But these are all things that I think when we're creating a new story that helps to, to just walk through it and talk through it with people. That's what I do all the time. In my job, I work with professional athletes and business executives a lot around, hey, what's the story, you're telling yourself, I can give you a quick story of working with an NFL player recently. And he's defining his worth by how many sacks he gets. He can't control how many sacks he gets, can't control, you can't even control the plays that are being called sometimes it's not his job to run back, you know, to go back and get the quarterback, sometimes it's not his job. And so, first, let's like, let's unpack that, like, does it make sense to attach your identity to something you can't control? That something he writes, that is something that is performance based. Because if we do now we're setting ourselves up for this emotional roller coaster. And we know the highest performers in any industry, they're consistent, they show up every day, you know, like, doesn't mean they're perfect. But they're consistent, you know, what you're going to get from them. And so, hey, let's not attach our identity to something that we can't control, because then we're going to be riding this emotional roller coaster. And then the second piece of it for for him specifically is like, Well, what do you need to do? Right? Not what have you done? Or what like, what do you need to do, and it came around this idea of round, I just need to play through the whistle. Like it was really, then this seems so simple, it took us a long time to get to that. But it was like I need to play through the whistle. Like just I'm not going to assume that somebody else is going to make the tackle. I'm going to play through the whistle when the whistle blows when the echo of the whistle blows, right. And I finish hearing that the play is over. And it was amazing. Like it was that simple just to be able to turn something around on what his focus was his focus went from, how can I did and as a result that I can't control to something I can control, or I can hustle through the whistle?
Zack Arnold: Yeah, it's funny, you bring that up. And I want to come back to this a little bit later. Because there's so many things to just unpack and what you said. But one of the things I know I want to cover before we finish is the smart AZKALS framework, because my framework is very dependent on are you in the driver's seat with this goal? Are you in control versus Are you not in control. And there are so many people that I talked to and again, most of my clients, if not all of them are in creative fields, I work with very few athletes, all the same problems, all the same stories. And they're defining themselves in their worth, by the jobs or by the opportunities can't define yourself by that you can like you said, to find yourself on the effort, whether or not you're going to show up every single day, how many outreach emails that I send, as opposed to how many jobs have I gotten, especially, you know, given the current economy, that's much more challenging. But I want to come back to there's two things in here that to me are the the foundation of today's conversation, the first of which is the idea that I truly believe from my own experience. And from my experience, as a coach, it is nearly impossible to identify any of these scripts on your own. We are so bad as human beings that having any level of objectivity whatsoever, such that all the things that I find that I'm exceptionally good at for my clients I suck at for myself, oh my god, do I suck all these things where I will break something down and simplify and like, here are your next steps. I'm like, Oh, my God, I wish I could do that for myself. And I say, so do I because I can't any things I can do to help you I struggle with. And I find that a lot of times the things that you coach or you teach are often the things that you struggle with the most because it forces you to learn them and develop them. So that leads me to speculate. And you correct me if I'm wrong. Is there a world in which you became a mental performance coach, because you too, had a lot of struggles with the mental side of things at some point.
Derin McMains: For sure. And I didn't realize that though, as a player, what happened was, so I had five season ending injuries in my seven years as a professional player. And so that was that was the genesis of my identity was attached to my performance, because what happened was I couldn't perform anymore. And I struggled like who, who am I? Like, am I even valuable? Right? Went through depression, severe depression, where I like, didn't even want to get up didn't even know, like, didn't think I had any value to the world. Right. And so that was my struggle that I realized that I had. It didn't really benefit me. I'll tell you what Zack, like, because when I was playing, like when your identities wrapped up in your performance, and you're a good performer feels great, right? I mean, let's be honest. And so I was lucky enough that I played well enough that it felt good the whole time. And then when I got hurt, guess what? I wasn't the same player that I was. So not only could I not play, but when I came back, I wasn't as good. And that crushed me. Right and so trying to battle through that. I'm a perfectionist, and that's you know, I'm destroyed. juggling perfectionist, I say struggling because I know I am. And I always have to battle it all the time.
Zack Arnold: And I call myself a recovering perfectionist. So we have a lot of common.
Derin McMains: Recovering is way better. I like that. I'm gonna take that. So, please, yes, as a recovering perfectionist, you know it. It's a constant struggle in really my daily life. Right. And, you know, I've had the I've been fortunate enough to have the experience that I've got to unpack it with some friends of mine to say like, Why do I feel like this? Because it you know, and I've been able to go all the way back to like, I'll tell you when I was in the first grade, I was in the first grade, had an extremely terrible stuttering problem. could barely speak. Everyone had finished my sentences for me. It was extremely frustrating. And what happened was my parents went in spoke with the school counselor, Principal, I guess whoever they spoke with, and they decided that, hey, we think his mind might be going faster than his lips can keep up essentially. So they brought in I remember this clear as day they brought in a school counselor, school psychologist. And remember those inkblot tests? I don't know if they still do them, but Oh, sure. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So she showed me the I remember her is like sitting in this kind of like, dimly lit, weird elementary school room, you know, in Mountain Home, Arkansas. And so here we are, she's holding up this this inkblot. And I just remember, as a first grader thinking, like, this is silly, like, what am I doing here? And she's like, What do you see? And I thought, Well, I'm gonna have fun with this. And I started telling her about this tree and this squirrel and getting this acorn. And then he sees a butterfly. And I'm just going and I'm just having a good time as a first grader. Come to find out. A few weeks later, I go to the second grade, they just put me in the second grade. So I did the first in the second grade together. And I remember it being March 1, because I remember walking in. And it was written in cursive on the chalkboard. And part of the assignment that day was to read cursive and write it in print. And I just remember looking on what is this? Like, I was just learning to read now this is crazy. Like, what is this? And but I figured out it was March 1, because I remember seeing the one and the 1980 something you know, and I'm like, oh, that must be I'm looking at the calendar on the wall. And like, March, you know, so then I felt really smart. But I remember people looking at me and go Oh, wow. Like he's doing really well. And so kind of what happened was my worldview became right away. The world is judgmental, good or bad. It served me well in some areas. Honestly, as a as a recovering perfectionist hasn't served me well. But you know, one of my earliest worldviews is that people are judging your performance. They're judging how you're doing in school. They're judging the way you speak. They're judging the way you play sports. And so I think that has helped me in a lot of areas be able to work in the professional sports industry for, you know, 23 years now, I think that's helped me because it's kind of my worldview, and I've accepted it. But it also shows up and holds you back in a lot of areas as well, right. And so that's the thing that again, but only gain that awareness through others. And it was like, I remember laying on a table guys working on my shoulder. So I've had three shoulder surgeries to wrist surgeries, those were my so my season ending injuries, and we're just having a conversation on you know, go back to some of your earliest memories. Like why do you think that? Why do you think that Well, where did that come from, and all of a sudden, I get all the way back to like, holy cow, man, my worldview was shaped as a first slash second grader. And it just kind of stuck with me this whole time. But But again, grateful for it. And the key though is knowing it because then I can find a kind of like said early can't defeat what you can't define. And I know that that's a thing that I struggle with. And so, a lot of times I'll just tell her, Hey, check me on this. Like, am I being maybe a little too OCD on this? Am I being a little too perfectionist? You let me know if if we can move on with this?
Zack Arnold: Yeah, that's a question that I have to ask my team all the time. The number one thing that I'm told by my team or by other consultants or coaches is they say, slow down. And what would this look like if it were simple? Because I have a tendency to overcomplicate overanalyze and overthink everything. I'm the president of overthinker. synonymous, right. And I'm really, really good at helping other people avoid overthinking and simplify, but I can't do it for myself. And what I want to go back to because I've done my guess is this is something you've worked through. And if you haven't, then maybe we'll figure it out today. And that's just total speculation. But what I'm curious about is that if we're looking at seven seasons, if you being a professional baseball player, five of those seven ended in season ending injuries, one could say that one season or two seasons, like yeah, those are the brakes. It's bad luck, it's wear and tear on the body. There's got to be some pattern that has something to do with mental mindset or view to have five season ending injuries. Did you ever dig into Is there something deeper to the injuries other than shit happens when you're a professional athlete?
Derin McMains: No. For me it was, I mean, you definitely could trace it back to mindset, for sure. But it was a byproduct of too much work. But where did to why did I overwork? Why did I overtrain? Essentially, perfectionism, right? Attaching my identity to my performance, like it was always like, I don't know how this is going to work out. But what I do know is it's not going to because of lack of effort, right? And that's why like hard work work ethic is one of my core values like, I will always, all out work it now this is where you know, undisciplined strengths become our weaknesses. This is what happened, right? It was, it's worked my tail off to get to where I was, but perfectionist tendencies showed up, right? And then it's like overtraining, overtraining, lead to shoulder injuries, right. And then once you get one and overhand throwing sport, it's like, now you're predisposed to get another one, which is something I learned along the way. And so overtraining after already having one shoulder surgery not good, then you get a second one overtraining, even worse idea. So those were all things that you definitely could trace back to mindset and how it showed up.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and that's something that I've been digging into as well, because I certainly haven't used my shoulder to the extent that an overhead throwing person that does it professionally, would, but in about five and a half years of training for Ninja Warrior, it's all kinds of swings and throws and climbing. I mean, you're in this position for half the day, right? And my body wasn't built to have that level of mobility if I decided to start training at the age of 38. And I know in my mid 40s, right, so one could argue, oh, yeah, it's just inevitable that that would happen. But when I look at the timing, specifically of the second injury, it was a lot more than just Oh, yeah, should happens. But the shortest version is that about a year into the training, I got a SLAP tear, which for those who don't know, basically, there was a crack in the cartilage, which is kind of like the cup that holds the shoulder shoulder in place. And I rehabbed and really built the strength in the mobility just to kind of hold it all together, which to this day, I still have to be careful about but then the second one was I tore the tendon that connects the anterior deltoid to the bicep right here, right? Bicep Tenma. Is that the bicep? Yeah, exactly. So the bicep tendon. But the reason behind and this is where I wanted to get into this a little bit further. And this there's going to be a little bit of backstory, what so I'm, like I said, I'm basically stealing a free coaching session with you know, a world performance expert in sports, but I think it's going to be really beneficial for the audience. We we've gotten now back to the sports performance anxiety where the script is, when the game is on the line, I choke, right? That was my experience. And that was the script that I was taught from my coaches. And from all the players on the team that would obsessively pick on me when I was a freshman in baseball, I should have been a star I was the big name and the Babe Ruth league. But I'm actually failure when the pressures on I choke, right. So that was the script that was really written into my mind when I was 1213 years old. Then I start practicing American Ninja Warrior and training in it for years. And I really excelled at the training side of things because like you, I have a work ethic to a fault, where for me, it was I'm going to show up, I'm going to be the most consistent person, it wasn't going to be the best ninja. For the group that I was training with. I was usually the worst one from a skill set perspective and from a strength perspective, but I just kept showing up. And the other component in my mind was I'm going to find the limit every single exercise we would do 16 exercises, alternating, pushing and pulling. And I was always the one that found the limit. So even though I wasn't the best or the strongest, I was the one that inspired everybody else to find another rep or two because they're like, Well, Jesus, if he can do it, we can right. So in training, I really excelled. All of a sudden you put me on the stage. And I mean literally on the stage in the Superdome. 24 cameras on me choked to the point of I got to the starting line, I looked down and I said, oh shit, which one is my right foot. Because I'm supposed to start with my right foot on this kind of one specific exercise and obstacle I trained on over and over and over, totally choked. And at the time, I didn't understand what happened. But then I started to break it down. And I'm like, Oh, this is about all that bullshit when I was a freshman at baseball, isn't it right? So that actually happened twice, two years in a row. And then just this year, I got the call not to be on the show, but to actually be an obstacle tester. Which means that through all of my my networking abilities that I teach my students about every day, I got in with all the producers of the actual show. And it just so happened they built the real obstacles for the show. 10 minutes from my house. There's this warehouse where they had basically the entire course that you would see on TV was in a giant parking lot. And they sent me a calendar and a schedule and they said you're welcome to come test anytime you want. You can come to Universal Studios and test before the show is like this is my dream come true. For five years I've trained for this. I hurt myself three hours in on the first day, and I don't think that's a coincidence.
Derin McMains: Oh, man. That makes me sad. I'm kind of sad first before I even want to say anything. I'm just I was so excited to where this story was going because I'm thinking like, I can't wait to hear how you worked on all these obstacles.
Zack Arnold: Uh huh. Yep, I did three obstacles and three hours woke up the next morning. I couldn't lift my arm past this and it was stuck here for two months. And in those two months, all of the things that you talked about as far as the depression and the identity issues like my, my, what I do for a living and how I make money is not wrapped up in being an athlete the way that yours was. But still, there's a large part of my identity. And I've been sharing the story with people for years, that it just felt like I had failed myself. I had failed everybody else that was counting on me. And it was it was really debilitating from a mental perspective. But I'm still convinced to this day that that injury was not an accident. You could we could go through the mechanics of how it happened. Sure. And if you looked at the mechanics, you'd be like, it's pretty obvious how your tore your shoulder like Ninja Warrior is not built for the faint of heart, and it's it injures a lot of people, it's like, I get injured doing CrossFit. Well, that's not really, you know, that's not a mystery how that happened, right? Sure. But beyond the kinesiology and the biomechanics, I really believe that there's something deeper underneath, where the timing of that injury was not a coincidence, but I can't totally unpack it. And even though it's maybe different than a lot of the experiences my audience goes through, that's not training for Ninja Warrior. I think it is very similar to when we put ourselves in these high pressure situations, and there's some form of self sabotage. So I'm just I'm curious how you would how you would come at this?
Derin McMains: Sure. Well, my first question would be who all is counting on you, you mentioned, you said, Hey, there's a lot of people counting on me to do this, who's all counting on you,
Zack Arnold: The 1000s of people that are on my emailing list that I email every week, and I tell the stories and the failures and the progress, I talk about it on the podcast all the time. So you know, 10s of 1000s of listeners plus the readers, and then just from a much more personal perspective, family, I mean, the amount of sacrifice necessary to be able to go from couch potato, and you know, award winning DadBod to competing as a ninja warrior like that takes time off the calendar that sacrifices where I can't show up to this event, or I have to commit to this or I have to travel and spend money. So there's a lot of commitment that goes into it. So for me, it would be people that have been following this journey for years. But more importantly, it's just it's family that's made sacrifices to allow me to pursue such an audacious or, you know, like, smart ass goal, as you would put it.
Derin McMains: Sure. So the sacrifice, though, and the people, they follow you for the pursuit, they don't follow you for the success of it. Right. I think that's the first thing I think it's I think it's always important to understand, I think a lot of times, I fell into this too, where it's like, my family, friends, I came from a small town I mentioned Mountain Home Arkansas at 500 people. So you, like a whole town knows it, like what you're trying to do. And the story that I was telling myself was that if I didn't succeed in playing the major leagues for 10 years, I failed everyone. I failed everyone. And that wasn't true at all. Like, I'm still married, my kids still love me, I go back to mountain home, I still have my same friends. They, what they tell me is hey, that was cool. Tell us about that write that tell us about the pursuit is ultimately would what we what we talked about today, right? Sure. Is there a little part of me that wishes I could have accomplished the goal, of course, right. But at the end of the day, what I did was I created cognitive tension. And my guess is we, we create this story that we're like, there's 10s of 1000 people that are following my journey. They're my fan, everybody has sacrificed for me to have success. And now that puts so much thinking pressure on you in that moment. And that cognitive tension is going to lead to physical tension. physical tension is not gonna allow your muscles to work that the way you've trained them to work, and they're gonna be more likely to break. Right? And so first, I would challenge you on Who are all these people that are counting on you? And what are they counting on you for? Right? And so I'd say let's just unpack that first. Because what I've learned along the way is I can connect with a lot more people through my failures than I can through my successes. Right? People want to know like, what was it like to get punched and get back up like, state championship game? How about this Zack state championship game senior year? ultimate goals, when the state championship we do it. Brawl breaks out at the end of the game. I lose two teeth right here in front big bra. I get knocked out cold, right. And so now I'm on the front page of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. They're going oh, there's Oh, that's the kid and I went around for the next few years. Oh, that's the kid that lost his teeth. That's the kid that got smoked in the brawl like that. Like that was like what people would label me now. I was like, All right, like didn't bother me. Like I had goals bigger than you know what what people were were saying, right? And so but the point being is, I think people are always trying to put labels on us. People are always trying to do this. And it's like, it's our job, and our job, meaning our job working with others that support us, right. Like we don't have to take all this on ourselves. It's our job to say, hey, like, I'm not going to let the world put a label on me because labels lock opportunity out. And all it does is create tension. And I start creating this story. It kind of goes back to that story of like, everyone's counting on me, right? But definitely, when we go into those moments, and we really want something continued? I gotta say this, maybe no one's counting on you. And maybe you just want it so bad. You just want it like it is, it is the dream of your life to get this thing. How do you know that's what's best for you? That might be what you want. But how do you know that's what's best for you? We don't, right? But when I when I changed the relationship of what I want for this big goal, versus I just go, Hey, I'm gonna give my best and I'm gonna trust whatever happened is what's best for me right? Because this is not happening to me. It's happening for me. And that's a way that I can reframe something rango. Okay, that gives now gives me the freedom to go do what I want to do, right. And I'll just give you another example of a story. Another player that I'm working with right now, we went from, Hey, have to perform well this week to have to learn this week. So simple, but just a simple change in perspective, right? We talked earlier about perspective, thoughts, emotions and actions, you change your perspective, and they change the way you think about the game. So now if I'm not going to this game, to prove that I belong, I'm not going to, to show everybody how great I am. I'm going in this game to learn. Now I go in this game to learn I'm making a mistake, that's okay. I'll get better from it. You know, that's okay. And the cool thing is, when you go into that mindset, when you go into that game with that mindset, what happens is you make less mistakes, you're now more free when you play, right? You have more freedom to express yourself in whatever you're doing. Because you know that this moment is just a part of your journey. It's not the defining moment, right? And so I think just being able to step back, right and I can't even imagine like, then putting that opportunity 10 minutes from your house and you thinking like this, it I have arrived, right? And I can the way you're talking about it, I was lit up with the I was following you. I'm like, Yes, this is gonna be awesome for Zack be able to go and do this. And so I can't imagine how excited you were and probably you wanted it so bad. You're like this is it? You know, and I think it's just that moment of like, created so much tension tension, because you want to so bad tension me and cognitive tension, turn into physical tension made your muscles more tight, which ultimately led to injury, right. And I can tell you guilty as well, right? It's like I wanted to be a major league baseball player, right. And so I overworked overtrained one, and it's so bad, I get so tight in there, I wanted it so bad. I broke, you know, and so I think there's a sweet spot of like, wanting something for the sake of it's, it's cool, because it's, you know, it's something that you're running towards you prepared for it, right. But you just simply want it, you don't have to have it, right. And then whatever happens from it, you trust that, you know, it's going to be what's best for you. Because you still have the opportunity to make it what's best for you.
Zack Arnold: I think that's a brilliant way to break it down. And just to add a further layer to the actual physical tightness of it. I agree with everything that you just said. And that's actually deeper than I've ever really gone and analyze this. Now to add a couple other layers. On top of that it was 50 degrees. It was outside, it was drizzling, I had fallen in the water three times. And I'd been standing there like this waiting for my turn to go again. And then I do an eight footless che holding a rope onto a small platform with a jarring motion on the shoulders. Right? So just that in and of itself. Those are the conditions to tear a muscle. But I truly believe that much deeper than just the environment. It's exactly what you said. It's the cognitive weight or pressure. And if it's the idea of all these people are counting on me, logically, I'm totally with you. It's the journey is the pursuit that inspires people. And nobody ever said, Oh, you mean you didn't succeed? God, what a loser. Right, right. I mean, I've I built my entire business on vulnerability in the pursuit. But Jesus, would it just be nice to actually like, accomplish the goal, it just like have a nice little code at the end of it and say I also did it. And I know that you can very much relate to that where it's like, Yeah, you were in the major leagues for seven years. When the vision is I want to be successful in it for a decade, there's always there's that little cherry that you didn't get to put on top of the sundae. Right? So that's that just emotionally it's so much harder to accept that we're logically and totally on board with your argument. Emotionally. There's still a part of me, it's like, yeah, but Right. You just I want that so bad. So I know that you can relate to that. And the piece of this that I want to dig into a little bit further as where you talked about this, this idea of performing versus learning. So it's just as a quick shameless plug. I did another podcast recently about something that's called the performance paradox. It's a new book out from the author's name is Eduardo ber Sanyo. And he is the basically the protege of Carol Dweck, who literally wrote the book on mindset called mindset. And I see you shaking your head, you're like, Yeah, of course. I know. Carol Dweck and mindset, because it's probably a foundation of a lot of the work that you've done. So I wanted to dig a little bit deeper into when it comes to these stories or this worldview. I think it's imperative for anybody approaching any goal. It doesn't matter what field it is. It doesn't matter if it's creative, its athletic or otherwise. If you don't understand the difference between fixed mindset and growth mindset, and you don't understand how much control you have over the perception of the world, you're going to fail before you even begin.
Derin McMains: Absolutely. That, Carol Dweck 's work is the foundation of everything I do. And I would venture to say most every mental performance coach, if they're not operating that way, they're not a very good one. And so even at reliaquest, the cybersecurity company out this, that is the foundational book, right Mindset by Carol Dweck is the foundational book because I haven't read a self improvement book really, that doesn't reference growth mindset at one point throughout it, right? They just might reference it. I think she coined it back in the 70s was was when she coined that term. But it truly is. What I think is the unlock for performance is to understand like, I'm not here to prove myself, I'm here to improve myself, right? seems so simple, simple is not easy. We know that. But that's why I always go back to like mental training, because we need to be reminded more than we need to be instructed, because the world tells us if you don't win the championship, you fail. If you don't hold the trophy, you lost if you don't get the job, if you don't get the you know, if you don't get the part, you failed, right? That's not the case. Right? We're in a marathon. What I know is you and I are still breathing, we're still moving son still planning on it rising tomorrow, you know. And so that's what I do know. And so even though the biggest failure, I've survived every biggest failure of my life, and you have to because we're sitting here talking about it, right. And I know everyone listening to this has also survived the biggest failures of their life, they might be at the bottom of the valley now. But that doesn't mean they can't take a great step today. Right? And that's what I think the genesis of a growth mindset is all about, right? And why it's so important, because we need to be reminded that, hey, regardless what happened yesterday, Today's a new day, and what are you willing to do to get that thing, and that's why, you know, you've mentioned SMART AS Goal Setting a few times, like that's why it's so important to have goals, because that directs your focus, right, that directs your eyes, which ultimately guide your steps and your thoughts. And so when I think about helping athletes unlock the growth mindset, it's, you know, eye rolls at the beginning, right? Because what happens is, they get paid for results. Plain and simple. I don't perform, I don't get paid. And I say this all the time, there's a difference between what matters. And what's helpful. What matters is you perform 100%, I'm not going to argue that because if you don't perform well, you don't have a job, right, that matters. But what's helpful is not thinking that if I don't perform well, I don't get my job, right? And so what's an alternative? That's what we're talking about? Like, what's the perspective? What's that? What's a way I can view this competition, what's a way I can view this practice, or what's a way I can view this session, that's gonna allow me to bring my best self to it. And the way that I gotta do it, my perspective is like, no matter what happens in this moment, I'm going to be better because of it, because I'm going to learn, but the only way I can get everything out of it is if I put all of myself into a vulnerable, right? I put everything I have into it. If it doesn't work out, that's okay. sunrise tomorrow, I'm gonna try again, you know what I'm gonna learn from it. And so having that mindset, right, really unlocks for a lot of people the freedom to create the freedom to perform whatever it might be knowing that this is not again, kind of you know what we said before, this is not a defining moment. It's just a refining moment. And whatever happens from I'm going to be better because of it.
Zack Arnold: Well, I know that one of the things that I've realized with the fixed mindset, or the growth mindset, and I'm very much now of the growth mindset, but one of the challenges that I had, and it comes from a place of tremendous privilege, but I grew up intelligent, and I grew up getting good grades, and I grew up succeeding all the time. So the fixed mindset was, I am a smart person, and I succeed, right? That's just what it is. And I'm sure you see the same thing with athletes where they're just born with aptitude and talent, right. And that's great. Until it isn't, until there is a failure or until there's some whether it's a performance goal or a new skill that they can acquire. It's not about oh, I need to learn this. It's a matter of, oh, well, I can't do this, or their entire identity is shattered, because I remember, I don't remember exactly how old I was. But it probably wasn't until my mid 20s, where I had to face my like, first real legit, massive failure. And I realized I've never been taught to manage failure. I've just, it's, it's failure wasn't even an option. Like sure there were failures along the way, and failed tests and this and that. But by and large, there were a lot of success markers until I realized nobody ever actually taught me how to deal with failure. And as much as I would have thought I had a growth mindset. I had a completely fixed mindset. And the success came from, well, I just succeed and I'm just smart. And I'm just, you know, I just I scholastically achieved things until I realized that that was actually more of a crutch and more to my detriment than allowing myself to fail and learning how to manage that failure, which is then when I discovered the growth mindset and like, Oh, now I get it. And I would guess you see that with athletes all the time that are naturally talented. But that only gets them so far.
Derin McMains: For sure, yeah. Routinely, I think this is probably the most consistent one because they've always been big fish, small pond, right? And then all of a sudden they get in the ocean. And now it's like, oh, shoot, everybody's good. Like talent is no longer a separator. Talent is the baseline like everybody's talented. Now, what are you going to do? How are you going to separate yourself? And that's, you know, honestly, where mindset shows up. That's where I mean, being intentional in your nutrition, being intentional in your sleep, being intentional in how you recover, being intentional in your workout, right? And that's where like, the intentionality of like, Hey, how can I take my strengths and make them super strengths? You know, how, how can I, you know, obviously, moderately improved my weaknesses, but what research shows us in performance psychology is like, hey, you need to maximize your strengths. And that's what's ultimately gonna make you valuable, at least in the professional sports industry, right. And so it's helping athletes realize that, because they used to be able to, I can do everything. And I like, actually, I can do these couple things really well, better than everybody else, you know, or whatever it might be. And so it is helping them get there. And it is a very, some get there faster. But what I do know is, and as you mentioned, I've experienced this too, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners have is failure still tends to be the greatest teacher, right? I always say like behavior change comes from two places. You learn enough you want to, or you heard enough, you have to. I know this, and I still wait until I heard enough I have to, right?
Zack Arnold: Funny how we never learn.
Derin McMains: What's wrong with us. And so, but that's why we teach, right. That's why we have this podcast. That's why right, because we're hoping that others will learn enough that they go you know what that sounds like a great idea. I'm going to try that on growth mindset. Haven't heard of that. I'm going to think about that. You know, and so that's the, for me, that's the hope behind teaching, right? That's, that's what I hope is that people can learn new ways to think about things learn new ways to see things that will ultimately unlock the potential inside them. Because I've seen it so many times. People show up that physically, you look around, you're like, I don't know, I don't know. And all of a sudden, they have an unlocked in their mindset. And it's a growth mindset. And they believe they can get a little bit better every day. And they're not afraid to be vulnerable. They're not afraid to raise their hand to try something, they're not afraid to ask the question. They're not afraid to try the new technique in front of their teammate. They're not afraid. Because they're not because their identity is not tied to their performance. And they know that whatever happens today, I can get better from it. And they're the ones that improve the most, right? They're the ones that take those last 5% that separates yourself at the top of the mountain, right that that's the unlock, and I've just seen it over and over again. And the challenge is to get people to buy into it before they fail. Because sometimes, you know, when you're at that level, when you get up there, and there's new people come into the top of the mountain, it's really tough to get back up there. And so I just tried to encourage people like, hey, invest in your mindset first. Because that's gonna be the separator at the end, you know, so you know, and that's part of why I'm driven to do what I do, because I just, I love I get fired up to see people have success, or I get fired up when someone's like, I don't know if I can do this, I get fired up when someone runs into an officer or someone like you where it's like, I don't know what's going on. And then all of a sudden, it's like, you find the joy of being on American Ninja Warrior again, right? It's like that fires me up, because I just know, like, we get one crack at this thing called life, let's enjoy the heck out of it. And let's unlock all the things that we have inside of us. And it's our mind that generally holds us back.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, just clearly, to clear to me at this point that you and I are kindred spirits, that the reason we both get out of bed is to help others realize their potential because there's just there's nothing more fun. Especially than like seeing that unlock moment. I've seen it over and over and over. You see the light in somebody's eyes, where they go from I don't believe I can to Holy shit, I just did that. And that's why I train people in Spartan Races in tough waters. And why I do Ninja Warrior, because I love seeing that moment. And I see it happened, the entertainment industry and the people that I work with in my coaching program. And I want to come back for a second to this idea of separating at the top. Because so many people get lost in this idea that I just need to I need to have all the basic proficiencies and I just I have the natural talent or the aptitude to be an actor or to be an editor or to be a storyteller or writer or composer, right. I've I've just always been good at it. And that gets you so far. But then like you said at some point, every single person has talent. And I think it feeds into something you said earlier, but I want you to clarify it seems to me there's a lot of direct correlation between that and this idea that having undisciplined strengths, then become our weaknesses. Is this a similar idea? I want to unpack this a little bit further.
Derin McMains: Yeah, yeah, I think so. It's because what's happened at least you know, speaking from personal experience and also experience working with with others. It is our strengths that get us to this place, right? It is that thing that that gets us there and I think what happens is we lean too heavily in an area that maybe we don't know how to utilize it, right? Like, again, going back to perfectionism look like, there is a there is a healthy amount of perfectionism that goes into high performance for sure, right? It's like I don't accept, good enough, good enough is never good enough. But there is a point when you get to the top where it's like, and again, this is the art. This is the art of I think high performance, high performance is not a science, it's definitely an art because the art of it is there is a level that is good enough, what is it? I don't know, right? I don't know what it is for some people. But I do know that an approach where like, I'm just gonna outwork the whole thing all the time every day, that will make you break. I do know that right? And so I think when when people get to the top, like, how do you separate yourself at the top is you got to keep climbing, even if there's not a top right, it's like, because I worry about when athletes go, I just need to stay here. I'm like, Oh, we're in trouble. You know, because stay means no movement, no growth, no risk, with no risk comes no learning when no learning comes no growth, right. And so I think what happens is, when we get to the top, some people in my experience, one, one, it's so bad that they're afraid to take that next step into the unknown, and maybe do something they've never done before. Or risk, I've come this far, I don't want to screw it up. I just, I'm so close, you know. And it's like, I think we see like a lot of times in long term goals, people really struggle in that, like, they crushed for the first 80% and 90% of the goal. And then they get within the last 10%. And they go from being like, aggressive approach to it to now like, I just don't want to screw I've done this too long, I don't want to screw it up. And it's like, well hold on your approach to get to the top of the mountain was to put one foot in front of the other, get your eyes locked in on the target, and go, and now you're at the top and you're just like I don't you know, I hope you know, I'm just going to try to hold on here, you know, it's easier to climb than hang on, you know, that's what I tell people. And so I think that's why vulnerability shows up at the top. Like, I think it's the it's the creatives, the performers, even athletes, to coaches, the coaches that are vulnerable enough, when they get to the top to say, I don't know, try something new, to ask for help, collaborate, you know, well, it's always been me, well go collaborate, now that's gonna make even better, you know. And so I think it's those people that are willing to be vulnerable, that's what I've seen, at least in professional sports, is if you want to separate yourself, vulnerability tends to be the separating point. But again, that kind of goes back to identity, right? It's like, you can't attach yourself to your performance, because it's really hard to be vulnerable, right? Because then you're gonna say, I don't know. And if you don't know, what does that make, you gotta get on sticky again. And so that's just what I would say is kind of like that last piece that helps those at the top separate themselves and continue to grow and continue to improve. Because, you know, industries are changing, methods are changing, people are changing, and if you don't stay vulnerable, and on the backside of that courageous, right, those two go together, if you don't, if you don't stay vulnerable and courageous, it's gonna be hard to stay and keep climbing at the top of the mountain.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, the simplest version to that is I want to put 17 exclamation points after the importance of being vulnerable. Could not I can't emphasize that enough, I tell that to my students all the time, that if you're trying to keep up this facade of I never makes mistakes. And I'm great at what I do, and I don't want to share that I'm struggling, you're not going to be able to surround yourself with the right people, with mentors, with advocates, with coaches with trainers, right, and you're not going to be able to move forwards, because you're just stuck in that fixed mindset. And I'm not willing to grow. So I'm gonna put exclamation points on that. And I could talk about that for hours. But I have two more things that I want to dig into. So I'm going to kind of frame both of them or we can dig into them one at a time, I now want to dig a little bit deeper into this kind of SMART AS goals framework that we keep kind of talking about. And then I want to talk about what I believe is of all the and I hate using the term soft skills, but I want to start there because people understand what a soft skill is, I prefer to call them human skills. But I believe that one of the most important human skills for success is presence. And I know that's something that you emphasize tremendously as well. So I want to talk a little bit more in kind of the final part of this conversation, understanding what presence really is and how to practice it is a skill no different than if I want to learn the piano, learn your scales, if I want to learn presidents. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. So I want to get there as part two. But I want to talk about goal setting and I'm gonna, I'm gonna do my best to not turn this into a TED talk. But I have the feeling that you and I feel very similarly about goal setting, which is that when I started to learn the science and the psychology and dig into all the goal setting over and over, I see SMART goals, SMART goals, SMART goals. And my feeling about SMART goals is they're great. If you're a corporation that wants to set quarterly objectives. If you want to achieve something amazing SMART goals are boring. as shit. And to me, it doesn't cover nearly enough. It isn't inspiring enough. But the other problem I have with this goal setting framework, is that the next step after what do I want to achieve? What goes on my to do list? And where do I get started? And I tell everybody, the key to achieving your goals before you do a single thing is asking yourself the question, what is stopping me from achieving the goal and identifying your obstacles? So let's dig into your SMART AS goal setting framework because I think you and I have a lot, a lot in common with how we approach goals than I want that to lead towards the nest necessity to have presence to then achieve these goals. So let's talk some SMART AS goals.
Derin McMains: SMART AS goals. So SMART AS goals. So I'll spell it SMART, I think you got that part. A S is how we spell 'as' right. And so obviously when you say SMART ASS goal setting people pay attention, right? So that's part of it is like, Hey, how can we make this sticky? And that was honestly part of it. But the most important piece of it is the AS stands for adversity steps. Like identify the adversity, right? You know, what's holding you back? You do. You might say you don't but get with somebody. It's kind of like we talked about the very beginning of this, get with somebody get with a coach, get with people that have your best interests in mind, talk through it, what's the thing that's holding you back? There's a reason you're setting the goal? Because you haven't accomplished it yet. And probably because there's a whether it's a psychological limitation, a physical limitation, whatever environmental limitation, whatever it is, there's some sort of adversity that's holding you back. Right? So, you know, from the, I mean, I'm not gonna assume everybody knows what SMART stands for. So the S is specific, M is measurable. A for me is adjustable, R is relevant, like, why are you doing this? T is the timeline, what What's the timeframe in which you want to accomplish this? And then the A and the S is the adversity steps. And so when I walk people through this, you know, we'll work with we'll start with S first, what's the specific goal? And then we go right to as it's like, Alright, what's the what's the obstacle? What's the adversity? What are the steps going to be because what happens is when you when you identify tons of research supports this as well. But when you identify the the obstacle, the most likely obstacle or adversity, it's going to show up, you're more likely to be encouraged when you definitely encounter it, right? It just makes sense. Like, oh, hey, I plan for this. I was ready for this, you know, oh, and I've already outlined the steps for this. Very cool, right. And so you actually get encouraged when you run into it. You've already set yourself up, to persevere to be resilient, whatever word it to be gritty, whatever word you want to use. But that's that's the key to being a great goal setter is to establish like, hey, what, what are the what's the adversity? And what are the steps that I'm going to do? And when I would say this in steps is not always physical, sometimes steps are like, what's the story? I'm going to tell myself, like, when this thing shows up? It's like, Hey, I plan for this perfect, let's go, right? That can be the module, I knew this was gonna come. Let's go, you know, something like that. And so I think in any goal setting, I think it's important to put in there like, what's the story you want to tell yourself to help you accomplish this goal? It's not just a to do list. It's like, what's the narrative? You need to tell yourself? What's the identity you need to take on? Right? Like, I use this example all the time. I love like, I love actors. I'm so fascinated with the mindset it takes to be a great actor, and I share with athletes all the time. I talked about Hugh Jackman. I'm like, Wolverine, PT Barnum, same guy. Like, he's the same guy, you know, but it's mindset. He gets into a mindset where he's the most belief, He that is Wolverine, you know, he's gonna kill somebody, you know, or it's like, a guy's the greatest singer and dancer I've ever seen, you know, and you're watching him as PT Barnum. And so. But that's the power of mindset, right? You can get into character. And so when there's a goal, there's a big, hairy, audacious goal you want to run after? What's the identity you need to take on to make sure you accomplish that and then start to tell yourself that narrative like that is a part of goal setting for sure that I don't think enough people tap into I think they just oh, this was my smart goal, or this is my smart ass goal. Okay, I'm gonna set and then oh, I didn't accomplish it. Well, no, You never tap into the power of mindset and what is the identity you need to take on and the perspective you need to get after it. And then the the the other thing I would add to that probably one of the most helpful things that I've shared with people along the way I didn't know is going to be helpful, Zack, but it's in any goal that you're going to set. I always put refuse to snooze. Refuse to snooze, whatever goal you're chasing. Refuse to snooze, because what happens is the first decision that you make every day, the first decision you make every day is am I going to honor my commitment? Or am I going to honor the way I feel? Am I going to let my commitment drive my my behavior? Or am I going to let my feelings drive my behavior? If I hit because here's the thing, every morning, I wake up, I don't feel like getting up. So if I hit snooze, what happens? I'm becoming a victim to my feelings and I'm gonna let my feelings drive my behavior. And I promise you if you let your feelings drive your behavior, you will never hit the biggest goals of your life won't do it. But if the first decision you make every day is like, you know, I set this alarm last night I was gonna get up at 5am Getting up. That's it, you know. And so I've just found along the way that empowering people with this mantra of refuse to snooze, helps them get a little bit closer to that goal, because they've honored the first decision of the day. And they let their commitment drive their behavior, not their feelings. And so I would add that into any smart ask goal setting, I was finished with that, for sure.
Zack Arnold: I feel like you see me way more than I thought you're gonna see me in 72 minutes having a conversation together. Because I can very much relate to this. And I think that my own personal challenge that I have right now, at least specific to the Ninja Warrior goal is that for the first five years, I was excited, I was motivated, it's hard to maintain motivation and excitement for half a decade, right? For most people, it's a month or two, maybe I was able to maintain it for five years, then I hit this wall and the wall, actually, I hit about two or three months before the injury, which again, also makes it feel like the injury was not just a coincidence. And again, there are physical factors that go into it. But about three months before I started to hit that wall of just physical burnout with the training. And what I'm still trying to figure out to this day is that I feel like I was leaning on the crutch of I'm really excited and driven by this goal, then I hit a wall of I don't feel like training today. Therefore, I am not going to train today. And sometimes I would push through that feeling and I would train and the training was just a disaster. And even the trainer that I was working with who is like top ninja in the sport, you go to the Superdome 50 foot banner of this person, right? Like we're talking to top name. And even she would be like, what's going on? Like, you're you're not yourself, like I wasn't pushing, and I just wasn't really present. And like I said, I want to get the presence in a second. And it was just a matter of I didn't feel like it anymore. So what I want to do is I want to look at the balance between this idea of refusing to snooze because right now I'm, I'm more in the snooze mentality than I would like I'm not snoozing for an hour, but I hit it once or twice in the morning. And there is a level of that's not who I was before the injury or before I hit this wall of burnout. But then Isn't there also a flip side of the argument, which is that if I had listened to myself more, when I felt the burnout coming, what I have avoided the injury, the way you would have avoided your injuries, because you were working through it so hard. So I'm not going to I'm not disagreeing with the refuse to snooze mentality. Sure, aren't there both sides to this argument?
Derin McMains: 100% Right. And honestly, I think probably most of the things that you and I have talked about, there are two sides of it. Right? It just kind of goes back to that art of high performance because I've been around a few high performers where they couldn't have a care in the world. You know, their workout routines are very, I would say unintentional, uninspiring, you know, I mean, those are few and far between, but I have seen those, and it's like, wow, that works for that person, because if they put too much focus on and if they really knew what they were doing. I don't know if they could perform that well. Right. And it's, you know, I've heard some people say, it was like, Hey, let them stay stupid, right? Let them stay stupid. They don't know, just don't mess them up. Like don't let them know how good they're doing this, you know? And so I've definitely seen that that side of it, for sure. And I would agree with you that there are times, right, it's like, we should obviously listen to our bodies. You know, I definitely would never discourage someone do that. But I do know that. It's discipline that ultimately leads to devotion, right, I think sometimes is like, well, it starts with desire. And it's like, yeah, it does start with the desire, but desire to me is more emotional, right? Versus like, don't wait until you feel like you want to do some. If you say like, yeah, that's the thing I want to do. In this start with discipline, right? And discipline is just making yourself do it. Right. And I wish it was a simpler way. Or I guess an easier way to be able to do that. When we talk about refuse to snooze. What we what I always have someone do is put their phone on the other side of the room are in another room because it literally forces you out of bed to go turn off the thing, you know, and you're like, golly, and then you're you know, generally the people that I work with, they're cursing me under their breath. And they say and they're like, I don't know why they agreed to this. But, but what it does do right is that discipline that ultimately leads to devotion, which then leads to desire, if you really think about it, like cold tubs, you know, like, I love cold tubs as an athlete, I did a lot. Don't do it as much now, just because I don't have the training room that somebody sets it up for me, honestly, you know, but I always loved it. But it started as a discipline because it's painful. And then I did it so much. I was disciplined to do it so much that it then became a desire. I started with discipline violators, like you know, I kind of missed that I kind of missed the way it made me feel, you know, and then all of a sudden it's like now it does become emotional because I have so discipline that just became something that I wanted to do. And so that's how I would I guess that's how I would position right around the refuse to snooze. Right. We're like, what we're trying to do is say, hey, if this thing is important to you Then let's let's stay locked in on it, fully commit to it, see what happens, right. And let's honor the first commitment of the day that you made the night before.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I completely agree with you that there's always going to be two sides to it. And I would say that, shortly before the latest injury that I had, I knew something was coming, I knew it was time for me to step back and slow down. And I could just feel I just, I felt different, I just felt heavier, and I felt more sluggish. And I just, I didn't have the same spark or the same sharpness with a lot of the precision moves. So I don't think that there's any doubt that that partially led to what happened with the injury. So as far as the refuse to snooze mentality, if we're going to use that as the framework, it was that to a tee. But I also know the worry I'm now I'm like, I could use a little bit more of the refuse to snooze, right, like, I settled a little bit too much into taking a break from the training and slowing down. So again, it's not an all or nothing, it's a little bit for me more of a spectrum. And I'm, I'm closer to one end of the spectrum, which isn't a you could hit the snooze button less and you could have more discipline versus before was way too far on the extreme end of no matter what doesn't matter how I feel, I am going to push through and I'm going to make this goal happen, which I believe partially led to the the result. And that's why I want to come to what I believe is one of the most important human skills that we need to cultivate, which is presence. And I know the presence is a big thing for you. It's one thing to just understand what presence is it's wholly another to ask how the heck do I actually develop presence as a skill. So I'd like to close out today talking about the importance of presence and how we develop it.
Derin McMains: This is the magic, right? This is the magic and it is so difficult I'm going to get to in a moment, but it is so difficult, because it's that thing that when you're searching for it, you can't find it. Because you're trying so hard for it. And then when you realize you're in it, you leave it because you're you know, you're now aware of like this is when it's like oh shoot, I just left it, gosh, dang it. So it is it is the it is the space to be and this to me goes back to goals because I let's talk about flow state, right? flow state is you got to really have three things to get to the flow state, clear, specific goal, right, clear, specific goal with a finite outcome. Right, that's first and foremost. Second, this clear, specific goal with a finite outcome has to be challenging enough that it stretches you like there's a chance that you might not accomplish it, right. And so think about this clear, specific goal, finite outcome challenging, just beyond your comfort zone, and you get immediate feedback on how you're doing, right. So for me, the perfect space to find this is like someone that's rock climbing. Rock climbing is almost like the perfect thing. And I'm sure you've experienced this as someone who's trained as a Ninja Warrior. It's clear, specific old finite outcome. definitely challenging beyond your comfort zone a little bit beyond your comfort zone. And I'm making progress, like immediate feedback progress the whole time. Right. And so one of the thing is, first, it's first helpful to understand what are the things necessary to achieve a flow state? Right. And so now, since I know that, well, where do you want to experience presence? Where do you want experience flow? Right? Because to be fully present, it's kind of leads into flow. They're kind of like, you know, back and forth there. So one, it's like clear intention. What's the clear intent, and the clear intent can be result that's future focused. Right? So it can't be like I'm going into get a hit, right? And baseball, like I'm going well, I'm already in the future, right? I'm going in to get a fastball like because that's going to happen. He's going to throw right now I'm in the moment, because I'm looking for something that's going to happen in this moment. Right. And so I think, like, in any environment, though, it's like, what's, what's the intent of what you're trying to do? Is it challenging you? You know, I think a lot of times, you know, I talked about the comfort creep before where it's just like, we think we want to be comfortable, right? With our best life is not found, being comfortable. Our best life is found just beyond our comfort zone. Why? Because that's how we find a flow state. That's where we experience most engagement. That's where we experienced presence, that's we experience a loss of time because we're so involved in this thing that's be that demands our attention. Right? And so you set the intention has got to be, again, outside of your comfort zone, whatever that is. Hardest part, though, is like this immediate feedback, like how you're doing, right, because sometimes it's like, I mean, for me, I think about I can find presence in a lot of different places. I can find it parenting my kids, I can find it in the batter's box, I can find it as a coach, right. But the thing that always takes me out of it, generally, is judgment on how I'm doing. And the problem is when I'm judging how I'm doing, it's because I care about how people are perceiving me, which kind of takes me back to my identity being wrapped tie into my performance how I perform determines how I'm a good or bad person, whatever, right? And so it literally goes all the way back to like, our identity and not wrapping it up in, in what we do, right. And it's such a deep conversation, but we can train to it, right? It's like mindfulness meditation. Those are all things that help us become aware of when our mind is wandering, right? And how we can bring it back to the breath. Because if I mentioned earlier talking about our senses, right, it's like, a simple way to help you get present right away is to smell or is to notice something in your room and get curious about it, right? And it's like, I'm sitting here in my room. And I'm like, they're like, I'm looking right now in this closet. And there is a baton with a heart and like, it looks like wedding stuff on and I'm like, and now I'm getting curious about what my I see. And for a moment, I'll be honest, as I was looking at, I forgot I was on a podcast with the right. So I was like, Is that my daughter's is that my wife? Like? Are we going to a wedding? What are we doing here? Right? So what is the importance of like, Hey, how can I invoke my senses right now? Because I can only experience things like, with my senses in the present moment. And so I think that's just a tool that people have and training to it just means I would I encourage people again, I do this a reliaquest. Or even with football players in practice, sometimes it's like, you can get a Where's Waldo book, right? Or you can say sit in an office and like, find something that other people haven't seen find something you never seen before. Hey, what's the smell? I can hear? You know, be careful with that one, but
Zack Arnold: Especially after lunch?
Derin McMains: Yeah, totally. But it's those simple things. And then once people go through it, then you say, Hey, how, like, How'd you experience that? Right? I think that's why people love coloring books, or why you know, where's Waldo works, because it's like, clear, specific goal, the finite outcome, right? Challenging beyond your comfort zone that everybody looks like Waldo in this picture? Where the heck is the guy with the glasses, you know? And then I'm getting feedback. Well, he's not on the right side of the page is he down here, and I'm doing what Nelson 12 minutes has passed before I find this little guy, you know. And so those are exercises that again, train the skill and that train skill to teach you like what it takes to be fully in the moment. And then I would say the last thing would be routine, right? It's like building a pre performance routine, whether you're, you're writing, whether you're going into an audition, whatever you're doing, like have a routine because what a pre performance routine does is it It calms the mind, because the mind knows what's going on. Right? It's like, if you're thinking about the audition, you've never been in that in that space before. If I'm thinking about the game, and I've never faced this picture before, whatever it is, like where am I, I'm in the future, I'm focused on the result, versus Hey, what's my routine to prepare for this, now my mind goes, Oh, I've done this before, hey, we're cool. And then our mind is rest, right? And then it rest and allows will be fully present. And so I can, you know, go over whatever I need to go over, right? Some people pray, some people read some people, you know, have whatever they do. But that's, that takes intention. Because you have to develop your routine first, right, you develop your routine, whether that's at home, or wherever it is, and then no matter what environment you're in, you control that three foot world, right, and so like, you own that three foot space, and it's like that three foot space is mine to do my routine and, and that helps you get present for when you can go in and do your best work.
Zack Arnold: I feel like I could easily do a part two for 90 minutes just unpacking this a little bit. So I'm gonna refrain from that because I want to be respectful of your time. But I will say that the one thing after my second quote, unquote, failure was the second time that I was on the show. I said to myself, I think if there's one factor one lever that I can pull that moves the needle, I need a pre performance routine. And I spent a year putting together this routine that was 10 or 15 minutes, it was the same music on the same playlist. It was the same stretches the same exercises in the same routine, which as we've talked about, can very much feed into the OCD or the perfectionism. But there was so much science about the importance of those triggers to get you into a mindset. Like I always used to wonder like, why why would a kicker tie their shoes 17 times before they kick, it just seems absurd. But that trigger says, Okay, it's game time, it's time to get into the present moment. And I got to the point where it just that even the 15 minute routine, I could do two minutes of it. And all of a sudden, I was in it, like I was focused in the power of that was immense. And I've also applied that to creative work. And I build habits and routines, where I can be scattered and all over the place. And I've got emails to respond to I'm getting all these text messages. But I've got a series of a few steps that I do between five and 15 minutes. I can eliminate all but eliminate all the noise in there and I'm into the document I'm doing the writing or like with a podcast, right? I've got a 32nd to a one minute routine before I click the connect button that I do every time does not matter what's going on in the world. Even like right before this call there's without going into too many details. So many distractions and so many things going on in my life on a personal level I manage and this and that and the other thing, but I have the confidence that if I go through this routine, and I hit the connect button for 90 minutes, I'm here You're, I'm in it, all that shit is going to be there. When you and I are done. It's not going anywhere. I promise it's not going anywhere. But I've developed a pre podcast routine. And I've done it so many times that I have the confidence. This leads me to that present flow state. And for the most part, I feel like I've stayed in and I feel like you've stayed in it as well, to the point where I look at the clock, I'm like, how the hell have you and I've been talking for almost 90 minutes. It's just it disappears when you're in that flow state, right?
Derin McMains: It does Wow. Yeah. So those 90 minutes
Zack Arnold: Having said all that, I want to be very, very conscious of your time, because this has been tremendously valuable. But the last place that I want to leave people is if they want to learn more from you learn more about your work. This is what I call the shameless self promotion portion of the program. What's the best way to people to find you and or connect with you?
Derin McMains: Yeah, I think you know, you mentioned it on the front end, the No Show Dogs podcast is is what myself and another mental performance coach, Dr. Nicole Detling, we, we host and we interview some of the top performers from the sports industry. And then how does that experience mindset behaviors habits equate to a business? Right? So that's one way and then my Instagram is dmac_mindset, right? And that's something that I'll just be honest, I got to get better at the people been telling me hey, what are you using this thing for? I was like, I don't know, I'm learning.
Zack Arnold: Another thing that I have in common, what the hell is Instagram? How am I supposed to like, like, I'm 100 years old when I tried to figure out Instagram. But I definitely get podcasts, I'll make sure that we have a link to the no show dogs podcast. Because it sounds like there's there's so much synergy between the stuff that you talk about, and the things that I talked about different audiences, same strategies and say mindsets. So like I said, that's why I love the intersection of these different areas, because you and I are having a conversation, where we're in two completely different worlds using the exact same strategies to achieve goals. So having said that, I cannot thank you enough for the time to come on the show today, share your story, share your strategies, I have no doubt that those that are listening today, we're gonna get value out of it. So unless I've missed anything pivotal that you wanted to share, before we go, I just wanted to make sure to thank you for coming on today. And I asked one question of you. You absolutely can.
Derin McMains: What do you love most about Ninja Warrior?
Zack Arnold: What I love the most two things, I can't break it down to one because again, I'm horrible at simplifying things. For myself, the first thing that I love the most is that it forces me into that flow state of presence. Because the exercises that I'm learning are so far outside of my comfort zone of like, oh yeah, I can do that. That's not hard. Everything in Ninja is scary. And it's like, I don't know, if I can do that that's really hard. I'm, you know, 15 feet over a big tank of water, there is no faster way to be in a present state and understand what it truly means to be in a flow state than that. But the other thing that I love about it, which again, is completely contrary to the script in my head of I have failed others is how much me sharing this journey has inspired people. Right? I don't know anybody that's literally training for Ninja Warrior and getting on the show because of me. But I know countless people that have said, You know what, I can run a 5k. Or I'm going to try a Spartan Race with you because they see the things that I'm doing. So it's a combination of for me, selfishly, I love how it gets me into a flow state. And then bigger picture. I love how sharing the story has inspired other people to also pursue discomfort and find their true potential, which is the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning.
Derin McMains: I love that man. I love that, you know, I just want to highlight you didn't say winning. It didn't say, you know, and so I just want to remind you, when you're the next time you get out there, you know, do it for the love of finding flow and sharing the story. You know what I mean? Like it ain't about winning and ain't about doing it forever. It ain't about it being in your backyard. It's about finding flow and being able to share a story with others that you obviously love and care about. And so I just want to encourage you next time you're out there to remind yourself of those things.
Zack Arnold: I love that I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to grab that audio and it's going to be a part of my pre pre workout and pre warm up routine just so I hear that over and over and over because that's that's the voice and I need in my head and that's that's why I wanted to make sure to have you on today. So once again, Derin absolute pleasure. can't thank you enough for being on today. Yeah, thank
Derin McMains: Yeah, thank you all the best man.
This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, and the show notes were prepared by Debby Germino and published by Glen McNiel.
The original music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Joe Trapanese (who is quite possibly one of the most talented composers on the face of the planet).
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