Turo Virta: 1:08

So most people listening to this podcast already know what to do. It's eating better, moving more, being consistent, but still, they feel stuck. They start strong on Monday, and by Thursday, everything falls apart, and then they tell themselves, I just need more discipline. But what if that's not true? What if the real problem isn't what you do, but who you believe you are? And today's episode is about that, about identity, about why you keep falling back into old habits, and how to finally break that cycle. I'm joined by Toby Brooks, Professor, coach and host of becoming undone podcast, having several books and Toby has spent years helping people navigate life changes, rebuild themselves and turn setbacks into something meaningful. In this conversation, we go deeper than workouts and nutrition, as we will talk about why you feel stuck, even when you know exactly what to do, why willpower keeps failing you, and how to actually change in a way that lasts. So if you have ever felt like I know what to do, but I just can't stick to it. This episode is for you, so let's get into it. Toppi, first of all, thank you so much for taking your valuable time and coming to my show. Would you before we started talking about just a little bit about yourself, just the normal things as a person where you are living How is your family here? And yeah,

Unknown: 2:50

Turo, thanks for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. I am in Waco, Texas, and I'm a professor. I'm a dad of two adult, adulting children. My daughter just graduated from college. She's actually an opera vocal performance major getting ready to start grad school, and our son is a sophomore mathematics major. So they grew up in the same home, same parents, but two decidedly different paths. Probably the proudest thing. I mean, I'm so proud of them in so many ways, but it's really kind of cool because they both I'm in Texas, and that's a big state, and being all state in Texas is a big deal. My daughter was all state in choir, and my son was all state in baseball. I was a basketball player, and when I talked about having kids, I dreamed of having, you know, an all state volleyball player and maybe an all state basketball player. It didn't work out that way, but I'm happier with the way

Turo Virta: 3:47

it did. Yeah, I guess you can. You can never tell what is going to happen. And it's until they do whatever they enjoy doing. It's that's the most important thing, right?

Unknown: 3:59

Yeah, yeah. And so aside from that, I also am a podcaster. Previously was an athletic trainer and strength coach at the professional in Division One, and kind of all over levels. My wife is a counselor, and now that I'm kind of entering into the coaching ranks, we talk a lot about the difference between counseling and kind of overcoming pathology and trauma and then coaching, where you kind of take the healthy and turn it into more productive. And so it's been quite a ride, but thankful to be here. I appreciate the invite, awesome, awesome.

Turo Virta: 4:31

So I want to get right into it, because most people listening know exactly what they should do. They should eat better, move more, be consistent, but they still feel stuck to be from your experience, why does this happen?

Unknown: 4:47

That's a great question, and it was probably best explained to me by my high school basketball coach. He said, You know, this stuff is dead simple, but it's not easy. And what he meant by that was, we know what to do, just like you said, like if I want to be fitter, I need to feel better, I need to move more, I need to do a series of things, and in that way, success could become broken down into a discrete list of to do's today, I'm going to log what I eat, I'm going to monitor my protein intake, I'm going to get 10,000 steps, I'm going to lift some weights. It's a to do list, right? But the challenge becomes, where the simple turns into the not so easy is in the execution. And I always say strategic and purpose, relentless and pursuit better every day. The strategy is the easy part, breaking down my end result, the outcome that I'm looking for, whether that's esthetic goals, body composition, performance goals, whatever those are, I've got an end result outcome that I'm after, and I can reverse engineer that, but the challenge is in the strategic and pursuit, what do I do when I wake up on on a morning and there's just enough rain on on the road that I don't want to go for my run? For me, I've recognized that there are some barriers that, if I can get through that barrier, I'll do. What it was that I was maybe wanting or maybe not wanting to do. So for me, if I can get my gym clothes on, I'll work out. If I can put myself in that space, the workout comes automatically. So the challenge isn't lifting the weight. The challenge is getting my workout gear on and getting in front of that squat rack. So if you recognize where kind of the sticking points are, and you can just summon enough energy to get through that sticking point. It almost comes automatically once you get past that. So it's a little mental trick that we can work on ourselves. If, if I've got a paper to write, maybe the biggest challenge is I get my laptop on and I've got a cup of something to sip on, and I've got the music playing. That's the hard part. Do the hard part? One of my mentor says, do the do the simple things? And in some ways, he would say, you know, kill the easy things. And what we do when we're able to do that, things that are fairly straightforward, if we can knock those out mentally. Now, we've we've got success, and success tends to build on itself, and it starts to roll, and we start to do all the right things. The sad thing is, the same could be said for actions that we don't want to do. And if I, if I hit that snooze bar three times in the morning, I've already set the stage that I told myself I was going to get up at 630 I've already failed, and then if I don't make my bed, I told myself I was going to make my bed, and now we've just as success can build on itself. Failure can build on itself, and so choosing that one step at a time is kind of an actionable way to make sure that that that works in your favor.

Turo Virta: 7:42

Yeah, is it then? Like, really? Like, those are very good points. And I definitely recognize myself, and many, many people who I work with that, you know, they know, and often it's, it's getting like, maybe trying to get like, I love that. What you said about easy, taking those kind of easy things first, and then getting into those like, kind of harder ones and but then, is it really like about because many people think that they need more discipline. Is it really about discipline, or is there is something deeper going on?

Unknown: 8:19

Yeah, I would even take it a step further back. Many people that are, are, you know, the New Year's resolution crowd, for instance, so say, Oh, I wish I had your motivation. And they'll start with motivation. And I kind of hate when people pin their hopes and dreams on motivation, because motivation does come and go. There are days when I definitely want to get outside and do a run, or days I definitely feel like I need to lift something heavy today, and that's a high motivation day? Well, there are also low motivation days. You know, maybe I didn't sleep well, or I didn't eat well, or I've got a big project at work, and that motivation wanes. Discipline is consistent, and I would say that for most folks, if you're able to cultivate discipline and you're able to habitualize, the steps to your success, okay, so I would start with the end goal. What is it you want to do if you're training for a marathon? Okay, that's a great goal. Now let's break that down. What's it going to take for me to get from where I'm at in terms of my fitness and my mental preparation to run a marathon? I've never ran a marathon. I ran a 10k I was training for a half. That's kind of the the baby steps into distance running, where every time you finish one you want to do the next, the next length, right? I also had a goal of bench pressing 315 pounds and running a 10k on the same day without stopping. Like, that's kind of a dumb goal. But what's it going to take to do that? That's kind of some hybrid athleticism. I need strength and I need endurance, and those things tend to come at the cost of one another, and so it really does take discipline to do that. But if I've mapped the plan, the strategic and purpose for me is the hard part, the relentless in pursuit becomes a checkbox. It literally becomes if my goal was to bench 315, and run a 10k I've got to run on Wednesday. Did I check that box or not? And I use a habit tracker, and it will streak things. And there are ways that you can kind of incentivize your ability to follow your plan, but I'm an analytics guy, so I want to see at the end of the week what percent of the things I said I was going to do. Was I successful in completing one of my favorite motivational or discipline quotes, is yesterday? You said tomorrow, yesterday. You said you would do it tomorrow. Are you going to lie to yourself today? Or are you going to be true to yourself today? If I told myself I was going to run today or that I was going to, you know, improve my fueling plan. Did I lie to me yesterday? And that's a pretty powerful way to frame it. And it becomes much less overwhelming in its in its size. It's doable, it's actionable. I can I can do that one thing I promised myself I would do today, I don't have to do all the things I promised myself I would do to. Get from where I'm at to that massive goal at the end,

Turo Virta: 11:10

and it's, is it? It's, it's like, it's like, I said, it's step by step, and there is no like that. I love that. What you said about yesterday, that if you keep breaking promises. What you make to yourself, that is, that is like what I love to say that it's, it's either, if you can't keep promises, what you make to yourself, it's either you make, try to make two big promises, or you have to set lower the bar and set those, set those goals in a way that they in the beginning, often they feel almost kind of like too easy, especially if, if it's, if it's a time like a new year, or something like, you know, when you feel that motivation, it's there, and then you you know, it's very tempting to get started with something, something what feels like that. This is what I would be doing. Because it's, it's most of the people know that I we all imagine numbers that I should be doing. Let's I tell my example, like a strength training you should be doing it. But is it going to be one time in a week, two times, three times, four times, five times, and whatever number you pick, I would probably, in the beginning say that start a bit low, like, obviously, if it's one time, what you think maybe going lower than that is not a smart idea. But if it's starting, if it's if you think that is it going to be three times or two times, start with you, stick with it for a month. And then if you, if it start to feel easy, you are, or you are not happy with the progress, then you can, it's, it's time to then change those goals. And it's really the first goal is to be keep promises what you make to yourself. Yeah, as well said. So what is, what? What is kind of the biggest misunderstanding people have about change, like,

Unknown: 13:16

yeah, one of my doctoral research looked at the the impact, or the collision between beliefs and practices. And so I was looking at educators and frequently in teaching, we teach the way we were taught. It's referred to as the the apprenticeship of observation. If I've spent 12 years or 15 years, how many, ever years as a recipient of learning from a teacher, from my my youngest years, all the way through college, excuse me, you have to edit that out. If I've done that, I have viewed teaching in many different forms for many different people, but I've developed some beliefs about what it is a teacher does, what's their role in the teaching and learning process? What's my role in the teaching and learning process as a learner? We also have that same experience in athletics and coaching. We have an apprenticeship of observation. If I'm a basketball player, I've got coaches all along the way. If I make it all the way to the NBA and then I become a coach, I've got some conceptions, some beliefs, about what a good coach does, what a bad coach does. So where the challenge lies is when our knowledge about something collides with our beliefs about it. If I know in my heart that the best coaches are transformational leaders, and they are able to cultivate a relationship with their athlete, and there's give and take, and they get to know their athletes as people, but all I've ever experienced is transactional leaders that say performance matters, and they're drill sergeants and they are task masters and, you know, disciplinarians. That creates a dissonance in my mind, because I believe it in my head, but I don't know how to execute it in my practice. And so what I looked at in my work was, if we really want to change the practice we have, we can't just work to educate the knowledge, because head knowledge will just generate confusion and in some instances, disappointment. I'm frustrated because I know that this is a better thing, like, it's knowledge, head knowledge, but I I don't possess the ability to execute on it. And so what we looked at was, can we fundamentally alter the belief? Yeah, I want you to have head knowledge about what it means to train, what, what, what's a good set and rep scheme look like? What's good nutrition look like. That's head knowledge. But if all you've ever done is work out in a sauna suit and use antiquated loading methods, I have to give you some examples, some actionable ways that you can take that head knowledge and put it into practice. So if I'm working whether it's an. Athlete or a student or whatever. I'm trying to improve their knowledge, but I'm also trying to fundamentally impact their beliefs. If you don't really believe that intermittent fasting works, guess what? It probably won't. And I'm not making a case or a claim one way or the other on that, I just picked a random example, periodized loading, if you, if you are a strict linear progression person, periodization feels like idiocy the first time. Why am I lifting such light weight today? Right? But if you've had a chance to interact with it and see it in practice, and understand how a Master Practitioner that maybe you've never had before is able to put that into practice, and you witness it with your own eyes. Now we start to churn and cultivate belief, and now that knowledge becomes so much more powerful, because it's not just something I'm holding and feeling guilty about how I don't know how to use it, it's become something that influences the way that I serve people, and that's really the most important part.

Turo Virta: 17:06

Wow, that was so well said and explained. So was then, let's go a little bit deeper on those beliefs and identity so, so was You talk a lot about identity shifts. What does that actually mean in simple terms,

Unknown: 17:26

yeah, all too often, I'll say, we don't recognize when others are going through identity shifts. I worked as an athletic trainer in the college setting for several years, and my job was to take care of the physical and peripherally the emotional concerns of the student athletes who were there. You know, they were eligible, they were they were pursuing their degrees. They were part of our team. When they graduate, when they are done, when they are out of eligibility, or they're injured, or they've otherwise chosen to leave the team. They are oftentimes transitioning from something they've done for 1517, 18 years of their you know, 90, 97% of their life they've spent being a gymnast or a football player, a basketball player, and now suddenly, and with little to no support, that ends it's done. You're no longer a gymnast or a football player, a basketball player. Now you are looking for work in something maybe related, maybe not. And for far too often, my job as an athletic trainer is to serve those who are still doing it. That's what I'm paid for. Where's the support for those people who are in that transition? And what I discovered was, I initially thought that that's an athletics thing. I was a basketball player. I grieved the end of my career. I wanted to keep playing. I didn't have an opportunity to do that, and it was a massive, jarring, uncomfortable transition from athlete to former athlete. What I discovered is that's not unique just to athletes. Entrepreneurs go through the same thing. Artists, Broadway performers, I had one guest on my show, who was the drummer for the band, semi Sonic the song closing time that was a global phenomenon. They closed the Grammy Awards one year, and they were on the road playing for a crowd of 50 people the next without a record deal like literally, they went from global rock stars to somebody that people wouldn't recognize, and that's a massive transition. That's not just an athlete thing. Artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, high performers of all types go through this jarring sensation. And the question becomes, what do we do with that? Can I take the failure or the the success or the setback, and will that allow me or prepare me and set me up for what's next? And that's where the idea for my show came from. We go from being unraveled and undone to recognizing that everything I've been through to this point has prepared me uniquely for this moment, and I'm not finished yet. I am undone, and I'm going to take what I've learned and I'm going to magnify that and be better because of it.

Turo Virta: 20:15

Yeah, that is I totally can understand it. It's also my background as a former ice hockey player, and then all of sudden, when it ended you it was something like you said, I did it until late of 3031 32 and all of sudden you take it away, and then you are not hockey player anymore, and then you are asking it what you actually are. And but it's not only like, of course, my example is in sport world. But like you said, there are so many other like high achievers, or you get basically what you were always dreaming of, it of like artists getting the big breakthrough, and then all of sudden, it stops for some reason, and then it's like. At what is the next, what is and this is the point where so many like I, unfortunately, I have so many friends who were also hockey players or athletes, and soon as they retired, they cut into a huge problems in a life, becoming addictions like alcohol, drugs, gambling, stuff like that, and and that is that is so kind of avoidable, but there is, I feel like there is so much support, also less. Now I think it's a bit better, but still need is there, for sure, a lot more than there is support available.

Unknown: 21:52

Yeah, there's, there's a pretty well documented case of drew Robinson, who was a minor league baseball player, really highly touted prospect in the San Francisco Giants organization. And during covid He actually attempted to take his own life and survived. He was depressed. He was isolated due to covid. He had been bounced around from multiple teams, as often happens in minor league sports. And what I was describing about college athletes is even worse for professional athletes, because many times you may be uprooted and move multiple times within the same season, and the medical team that's responsible for you, they don't know you. They can't like I've literally had you as my hockey player for two weeks on my team, and you get traded somewhere else. And so in that midst, he became incredibly depressed, and he was concerned about his own welfare, and ultimately attempted to take his own life with a gunshot to the head, and he survived, and so he's now become a powerful advocate for mental health and athletes, and talking about how the people who need the most support, particularly in emotional and behavioral well being, are those athletes who are in the midst of this transition. Not only is their identity shifting, their geography is shifting their all their support structures are in flux. And so we as a society, as you know, if we're talking about Olympic athletes, then the governing body can take an active role in this, but we have to be able to support these people, because the traditional model just doesn't work. You know, if you've got a family physician back home, and they you never leave home. You've got health care, and you've got a community, and when something's off with you, people recognize that. For an athlete who's in that midst of transition, maybe they just think you're kind of a jerk and you're short with them, and they don't realize that you're normally this happy, you know, fun loving guy. People can't recognize that because they haven't had a chance. Haven't had a chance to really know who you are. So those identity shifts can land really heavily on a lot of folks. But I would say, Yeah, I've seen it in a lot of places. But your story as a professional athlete, or, as you know, competing in in levels like that, makes that population particularly vulnerable.

Turo Virta: 24:06

Yeah, yeah. But it's, it's also like in many, many other areas. But how does then this, this identity affect to our daily habits like training, eating or showing up?

Unknown: 24:23

Yeah, I think it speaks to self talk. And if, if who at my core kind of going back to beliefs, if I believe that my health, my wellness, my performance, is within my control, then my excuse me, then my actions are going to bear that out. I'm going to take the steps necessary to perform better and to be my best. On the other hand, if I feel like I'm a victim of circumstance, if, if you know, oh, poor me, I, I my my genetics aren't what Turo are. So there's no way I'll ever be as good as him. That's going to find its way. It's going to make its way into my daily routine. And so what I've tried to do for myself, and what I try to counsel my clients and my students and my athletes to do is get specific mission vision. Values are always the starting point for me. Tell me who you are, why you are, and who you want to be, if you can define those things. So we talk about vmvs in our class. It's one of the first things I have my students do. What's your vision? Who do you think you were created to be? And let's put that in writing, not not just, you know, again, like you said, we can, we can undershoot for that, or we can so overshoot that it becomes a demotivator. We have to. We have to hit that fine balance. For me, I knew I wasn't going to play in the NBA. My vision might have been to play college basketball, Okay, what about beyond that? Well, I really want to inspire people. Okay, so my vision might be to inspire people who are willing to settle for less than their best. Okay, that's my vision. Then my mission like, how am I going to execute on that vision? Vision, a vision without a mission, is really just an assignment without a plan. Okay, if, if I've got an objective to accomplish something, but I don't have any action steps in between, then it just becomes, I'm frustrated every day. I don't know how to get to 5% body fat, so that's my goal, but I have no idea how to get there, so I'm going to eat what I want, and I'm never going to exit. So the mission becomes where that vision starts to take on some I say, it starts to get some handles. We start to get some ways with which to execute on the vision. And then the values really speak to who I am as a human being. Like, how do I want to get there and and how do I want to inspire people along the way? So if I can get real specific about the vision, the mission and the values from there, I'm able to really just kind of drill down and lock in on what it is I'm setting out to accomplish. And it becomes much less daunting at that point, it becomes something that I recognize that a small decision, whatever that next decision is, people talk about this in the addiction recovery area a lot where they're not promising to never take a drink again. They're promising themselves that I'm not going to take a drink today, or maybe even this afternoon, or maybe even this hour, whatever, wherever granularity I have to break that down to make that something I can feel like I can reasonably do that can create success if I tell you Turo like, I need you to get your PhD, and in order to do that, I need you to read a book a week, an entire book, you know, 200 pages or more, that might be daunting, right? If instead, I say, You know what, I need you to develop world class knowledge and a field of your choice, and I want you to tell me what's what's doable. Can you read 10 pages a day? The whole 75 hard challenge got really popular, and one of those aspects was, I'm going to read 10 pages a day. That's a good kind of sweet spot. I can't just read that on my way to the bathroom and out, but it also doesn't consume hours of my day. So I love how actionable that is. Drink a gallon of water. I can't just sit down and in one sitting drink a gallon of water. I've, I've tried a couple of times pretty close to that, and it's not a pleasant experience. I have to be purposeful about hydration throughout the whole day in order to hit that target of one gallon. And that's a I, you know, as I'm talking like, that's a pretty good example of how we recognize the the the the the actionable chunks. If I, if I drink a cup of, you know, I've got a 16 ounce bottle. If I drink one of those an hour by the end of the day, I'm pretty close. If I haven't done that at all, and now I got to chug that whole thing. It's going to be a long night of getting up and my stomach like that. That's a, that's a an illustration of this concept, but it can be applied to other things, recognizing what are my my actionable chunks, and then just executing on those things.

Turo Virta: 29:19

And then, like, goes, it's, it's really, like you said, going like, breaking it into like, micro calls and and making it sound easy, of course, like to making that change, what we will talk a little bit later is to not make them, but take too many of them. Like, obviously, if you take even they are easy things, but you have 100 them per day, it's chances are that you are not going to execute all of them. But then there's what I what I hear. I wanted to hear your take on it like what I often happens is that people go back to their old habits, even they have had a strong start. Why do you think that this is happening?

Unknown: 30:05

What a great question. I think we do tend to regress to the level of our discipline. And if I'm really trying to integrate a new habit, I have to recognize that in order to make that normed, it's going to take time. Okay, and so kind of the old guideline is it takes at least three weeks, three to five weeks, oftentimes, in order to turn something into a habit. I can remember when I first started exercising, it was so I grew up in a really rural community. We didn't even have a weight room in our in our high school, so weightlifting and resistance training for me came later in life, which is, it's an aside, but it's great, because I can set PRs even at my own age, because I wasn't lifting heavily in my athletic prime, right? So, long story short, the the ability of a person to recognize and. Their own role in this process is, is for them to take the initiative. Okay? I'm I want to set this habit of exercising every day. I have to just normalize it from the start. This is, this is going to start out really easy, okay, the first day is probably these. I'm motivated. I am ready for the new me. My life is going to take on a new look. I'm going to look better. My clothes are going to fit better. All of that is if we're to graph that out that motivation is high, where does it start to wane when I'm doing the work and I'm not seeing the results? And in psychology, we talk about this as the trough of despair. If we would graph out, like I'm looking at my, you know, a graph of my results. If my one rep max on a particular lift initially, it actually goes down. I'm weaker after a big especially if it's if I'm under trained my first workout or two. If I were to one rep max test you after two workouts, your strength capacity would actually decrease. That's a normal response. We know that for a novice lifter, they don't know that because they've never done it before, and now they're disappointed. So all that motivation that was peaked and heavy and high and they were excited about now it's like, well, what the hell am I doing this for? This is hard work. All these things are heavy. I've got more laundry than I've ever had. Like, everything about this is hard and it's making me weaker. Why on earth would I continue to do that? Because they've never saw that through to the other side, where the adaptation starts to occur. So physically, it comes in two flavors. First, there's a neurological adaptation that comes pretty quickly. Think about like the wiring in your house. I can get dramatically stronger really fast, and that's a result of neurological adaptation. Now, where the real strength comes takes longer the physiological adaptation, the changes in my musculature are those are structural changes. So if the neurologic is the wiring, then the structural is the walls. That's the components. We're talking about, the skeleton and our muscles. And that process takes much longer to occur. And so what I see is, initially, that graph is really steep, and then, you know, if I can make it to that point. Now I'm pretty motivated, because I'm actually seeing my strength is improved, but I don't look that much different in the mirror, because nerves don't change my appearance if I can push through that barrier. Now the physiological starts to take over, and now my clothes start fitting better. Now I look a little different. Now my wife squeezes my arm when I walk by like those are some things that are occurring on a macro level. But oftentimes people abandon the process because they don't recognize that the success lies a little bit further down the road. And so it's really important, especially for someone who's never done this before, to normalize that. For someone that has done it before. Now we've got to tap into that. We've got to remind you that, hey, you remember the last time you trained consistently? Do you remember how sore you were initially? That's coming again? Don't run from it. Embrace it. Know that you're going to be sore, but also recover well, creatine, there are things we can do to try to minimize that, but we want to normalize it so that you're able to push through. So habit really does, to me, boil down to some pretty actionable mental I won't call them hack, but just some normalization of this is going to be hard. And just like I said, if the hard part for me is putting on my gym clothes, I recognize that that's what I'm trying to summon my energy to do. Same thing is true in terms of habit. Okay, two weeks in is the hard part for me, so I'm going to go to the gym, I'm going to do these things, but I recognize that two weeks from now, it's going to be harder to put on those clothes than it was today, and I'm going to bolster myself for that. Maybe write yourself a note of encouragement today for you two months or two weeks into the future, and say, Hey, Turo, I know that two weeks from now, you're not going to want to go into the gym, but I love you. I care about you. I want what's best for you, Turo, two weeks from now, you can do this, get your ass in the gym, and that's a trick you can use so that you recognize that I'm doing this for a bigger purpose. In the moment, the pain feels overwhelming, but I have to recognize that on the other side of that pain is the person that I'm trying to become

Turo Virta: 35:47

that's always, it's, I love advice, and because it's, it's, like you said, that often that motivation, it's especially if you are starting something new, motivation is always high. You are there. But like I said, it's usually, from my experience, it's two to four weeks. Weeks around that time it might, it depends on person. It could last a bit longer, but around there, it becomes harder, like, especially if something happens in a life, and that is totally normal thing, and you have to normalize that if you have wrote in that note, and you know already that is your expectation when you are starting that okay. Now this feels easy, but then you have kind of already that backup plan, or you have notes for yourself when it happens and what is the action plan, then when it gets harder, because it will. It's only it's not matter of if it's matter of time when it's getting absolutely harder. And I love that writing yourself's note or or planning even some emails you could there are so many ways how you could do it, like sending yourself scheduling email for two weeks from now and telling you that you know this is for my future self, an email and that is, those are always great ways to actually do it. Yeah. So what is, then, when we talk a little bit like when that life is changing, and there is, maybe you get the kids, you you have a busy period at work, stress, you are aging and your old routine stops working. What happens at that moment?

Unknown: 37:34

Another great question, I guess, the question becomes, do we blindly continue to follow the old plan that maybe isn't serving us? That's not me. I'm a data guy. Analytics is kind of baked into what I do. If the results start to trickle off, then I start dialing the knobs a little bit, you know, if I can identify the source of that. So oftentimes in males, we see, you know, testosterone levels are frequently pointed to as, okay, you don't have those same levels. You're not going to get the same kind of response in terms of lean muscle that you would have at 25 okay, well, I can try to medicate that if I want. You know, TRT injections are a thing. There are some strategies I can take the time that I work out is actually a pretty critical determinant of testosterone release post exercise, so I could start to experiment with as long as my schedule allows it. Maybe my morning workouts aren't doing it like they should. Maybe I'm going to start exercising in the afternoon or the evening. Same thing with nutrition, as my body, as my resting metabolism, starts to down regulate a little bit. Maybe I can't eat the same portion sizes that I once did. So I really do lean on the data. And that really begins and ends with, am I even collecting it to begin with? Am I looking at what my one RMS are? Am I monitoring my body composition? Am I tracking my habits? And unless I've baselined that, then I really have nothing other than just kind of this gnawing cognitive this, you know, this, this, this feeling that I'm not doing the right things, but I don't have any data to drive that on. If you get in your car and it feels like it's not going quite as fast as it should, because, you know, there's something wrong with your engine, but you don't have a speedometer on the speedometer on the dash, you just kind of feel like, maybe you're not getting the performance. The gages are what allow you to really determine with a high level of precision, like, oh, wow, my car is actually overheating. I'm looking at that temperature gage. Maybe I've got a coolant problem. Or I look at, you know, the oil pressure, maybe I've got something wrong. So those gages allow me to determine what's the source of my lack of performance. I think people can do the same thing. What are your gages? What are you looking at? We should be tracking sleep. We should be tracking things like body composition. We should be tracking things like our one RMS. And when we start to see those things change for better or for worse, that allows us to make a much better informed decision on what I can do to counter that.

Turo Virta: 40:16

What is I'm curious to know what, what kind of data you are tracking for yourself and for your health.

Unknown: 40:23

Yeah, so I use an app called lose it, which is a nutritional tracker, so that allows me to track kind of overall caloric consumption and macros. I really don't get too deep in the weeds. I really just look at what's my total caloric intake, and then I really try to look at, you know, two, two or so grams of protein per pound of body weight is kind of the target, and that's hard. It might I'm a big guy, so you know, getting assessed to a gram of protein per pound of body weight. So I'm 250 pounds. 250 grams of protein takes a lot of effort. I rarely actually hit that target. So if I can hit 200 grams of. Protein. It's pretty good day. I've been pretty disciplined. You know, the mouth discipline is where I needed to be. And again, for me, one of the biggest problems was breakfast, where I didn't have time to cook egg whites and do all these things. So I use a liquid. It's a powder, meal replacement. It's not a protein powder, but there's about 40 grams of protein, 400 calories, and it gets me started on the right path. So if I've got to get 200 grams of protein in, if I can knock 40 out at breakfast, I'm making some progress. So, so that's one thing I'll do. I use a workout app that allows me to kind of track my one RMS and all the major lifts, so I kind of monitor that. I also use a Hume body composition scale, and it will give you pretty precise date. I don't know whether or not it's like research grade accurate, but total body water, lean mass by limb. So you can even tell, like, Okay, this arm is is leaner than this arm and and that can be really important later in life for things like balance and fall risk, things like that. So there are a number of tools and trackers I don't use anything on. I mean, I have, but I don't consistently use, like velocity based training measures. There are gadgets and gizmos you can put on on the barbell to measure bar speed. If I were a competitive athlete, I'd probably lean in much heavier on those things. Force plate data has become very important, both for injury prevention and performance. Catapult data, the GPS trackers and those kinds of things that measure like your your peak velocity and the total ground you covered. Those are things that sports scientists will use. I don't need that. I'm not training to be an elite athlete. I'm just looking to inform my my my daily practice. So that's probably what I lean into most.

Turo Virta: 43:04

I personally, I track my, obviously, I track my. I have my sport watch, just regular, nothing fancy, but just my amount of steps. I wake myself every single day like it's a body composition scale where I get my weight, my body fat, visceral fat, and then my sleep. And obviously, with the nutrition wise, I basically, I have built my habits that way that I get I aim 450 160 grams of protein per day. And once I know that, I hit that pretty much, pretty close, I'm more or less I'm okay, and it's just funny, like, of course, like, it's not that for me. I It's hard. Like, I know some people, like, they like to track everything accurately, and then it's getting too much and, and, or take it like tracking food, or especially women taking their jumping on the scale. It makes them like, if you gain two pounds or one kilo scale weight in overnight, and it's like, it's today is completely ruined, but it's also how you are using that data. Like, for me, taking like, I don't have, at the moment, I don't have any body composition goals. Like, I'm pretty happy where I am at, and it's basically just on my own performance, well being, and trying to keep it up, keep it keep the same and but it's funny, like, when you see those trends, and you start to understand that why it's happening, like, if I look my average I don't care. I couldn't care less about daily values of my scale weight. What interests me is my average weight per week, and when I when I look my average weight per week, and that is going in the direction I don't like. It's either going too much up or too much down, then I usually understand, then I start to look at, okay, why is this actually happening? And then often it could be that okay, maybe with the nutrition, I haven't been as as accurate or as disciplined as I should be, or getting little bit loose with that, or just looking your sleep, or is the average how it's the average sleep? How is sleep quality? How is amount of average steps, what you are taking? And if you see trends that okay, was a little bit different week, average steps went down like two, 3000 per day. And at the same time sleep was suffering. So you don't have to wonder why there is some trends going in a scale weight or something. So it's all these tools when there is, like a for normal people, of course, for athletes, there is so many other things, what you can measure, what you can do, but it's just also like how to use, actually. Those tools and and depending, of course, on your goals and what, what things are important

Unknown: 46:11

for you? Yeah, yeah. I think the the fidelity of your data is important. Like you said, a scale really doesn't tell us the whole story. There's, there's recomposition occurring. I can, I can look dramatically different at 235, depending on how I've been taking care of myself, and so if all I ever do is step on a scale that is really a limited piece of data, so we're using something like these body compositions. I had this happen myself, and I think also we have to recognize I'm not an elite athlete. I'm not training for the Olympics. If I hold myself to the standard that I used to have. I'm almost setting myself up for demotivation, for failure. I had had a nagging knee injury. We had just moved there were just a lot of changes in life, and my workout habits had suffered. And so I said, All right, I'm rededicating. I'm getting back on the wagon, and I'm going to do better. So I started tracking my caloric intake like normal, started exercising and after I don't weigh daily. So kudos to you, but I don't find that that is a motivator for me for so. So if I weigh once a week, I can trend and track my data. So after the first week of kind of recommitting, really, no changes. Like, well, that's frustrating. That kind of sucks. Like, I'm putting in the effort I want to see the results. After two weeks, the metrics were actually improved, but my weight had gone up by two pounds. I'm like, I am I am under I'm in caloric deficit every day according to my app, and I have gained two pounds in two weeks. If that's all the data I had, and I'd never worked out, of course, I would say, Well, what the hell am I doing? I can do other things with this time that are easier and and get the same or better results than I gained two pounds. But when I went in and looked at the data, my body water was improved. My lean mass had gone up, my body fat had gone down, like my body was recompositioning, and in that process, I weighed a little bit more. It was probably more water than I had retained, but all my lifts were heavier. You know, my I felt stronger in the gym. The same load that I had two weeks ago, felt lighter today. So those changes were there, but if I didn't have the fidelity to really kind of tease that out, the bottom line is, I would have been disappointed. So that was an eye opener to me that I need to find the data and the dashboard that gives me usable data, not overwhelmed. I don't want to be so buried in numbers that I'm constantly collecting data, and I don't know what to do with it, but it can't be so blunt, like weight, that it doesn't really give me nuance into what's really occurring.

Turo Virta: 48:57

And if you if you like that, what I see with the clients is is the best way still, is to if your goal is to change, for example, body composition, just taking pictures and tape measurements. Those are like and those you don't need to do every single day or not even weekly, but every once in a while, pictures, especially in the beginning, when you take like I just literally talked one hour ago with my clients. We have been working now five months together. Her weight is still exactly the same as in the beginning, but when you look the pictures and take tape measurements, there is four centimeters less on hips belly from pictures, huge difference, but the scale weight is the same. And I thought that you can congratulate yourself to taking those pictures. Even, like most of the people, they don't enjoy taking pictures from themselves, but she did it in the beginning and now, because at this point, if you are like you think that you broke out, you you, you have been consistently working out. You have been eating healthy diet, doing things what you should be doing, but then you see that, why the hell am I even doing it? Because the scale rate, if that is, that would be the only way to measure the progress. You wouldn't see any difference. And why? What is the point even doing so? It's really about finding those ways to measure your progress, and not only one way to measure it, it's there are so many, so many different ways to measure it. Yeah. So what is like? What we we talk a little bit about life changes and those breakdowns. So why do so many people feel like that they have lost, kind of lost themselves in that phase when something happens, or when something what they have done previously is not working anymore.

Unknown: 50:56

Yeah, I refer to this as a purpose storm. In endocrinology, there's this idea of a thyroid storm, and the endocrine system is like. The chemical messenger within the body. And if the if the messaging system goes haywire, then it's, I mean, it's predictable that everything else is going to go haywire. You know, if the post office suddenly just completely shut down and lost its ability to send packages and parcels places, there would be calamity right in the midst of a purpose storm. We kind of have a similar experience where I thought I was on the track to be this elite athlete, or I thought I was going to be the successful entrepreneur, or fill in the blank, whatever I thought didn't happen. And so in the midst of that, it's disorienting. It's jarring to feel like, okay, if, if what I had put in that position of vision was wrong, or it's it's suddenly outside of my control, and that vision can't be then there's like a vacuum, what, what's going to take its place? And so I can go from feeling assured and working toward a goal to feeling like, well, what now? Like? What do I do? I don't know anything different. And consistently, athletes have explained that to me, where they train their whole life to be a professional baseball player, and got so far and then once that was gone, in the moment, in the midst of that. You're not thinking about how the skills that you honed as a professional baseball player could transition into a career. You're not thinking about how you know what. I know how to show up on time. I know how to work on a team. I know how to commit to a long term goal and see it through. Those are all skills that were honed in sport, and now I can use them in an office, or I can use them as a coach myself, or any number of things. But in the midst of that, in the storm, it's impossible to really see that. So where I really try to lean in is first, call it out, normalize it like it's going to suck. It's disorienting. You're going to feel blind for a time, and that is completely normal. From there, recognize that the clouds will start to split. You'll you'll start to recognize that the end of one thing also can facilitate the beginning of another and if, if I would have been able to just speak my life into existence, I probably would have chosen an easy path. I probably would have chosen a path that wouldn't make me best situated to serve other people. It would have just been all wins and gold medals and victories, right? But the process of adversity and failure and setback actually formed me stronger so that I can do those things. I always say, one of my favorite sayings is a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor, and that adversity and that setback that I have to train through makes me better equipped for whatever's coming next. So if I can recognize and call it out, it's perfectly normal to feel completely unmoored in that moment, to feel like you are adrift at sea and totally alone. That's normal. Okay, also normal. Within a few days, I hope you're going to start to feel a little lighter. You're going to understand that the closure of that door behind you doesn't have to be something that you grieve. I'm still sad to be an empty nester like I missed the days when, when I got to go to baseball games and choir concerts and all those things. I can't do that anymore, but I can be so caught up in grieving that past that I don't recognize what I've got right in front of me, like, what's my purpose now? What who can I serve today? And who am I better equipped to serve? Because I've been through that process. If I apologize, I didn't ask you about your family, but if you're a dad right now and you've got kids at home, I'm equipped to help you navigate the next few years of your life, because I've been through it, and that's really what we're about. That's what I love about sport. Is it? It allows us to come together with a common purpose, and we can speak life into one another because of the way we've been through things that maybe the person beside us hasn't. So call it out, recognize it's going to suck for a little bit, but then recognize that you're unraveling. Is it actually setting the stage for you to piece it back together? Behind me, let's see, right there, that plate you see, that's a Kintsugi plate. That's a Japanese piece of art. And I love the beauty of the idea in Japan, broken art became art itself. It was pieced back together using gold in the adhesive that that glued it back together. So what you end up with is something that was initially broken and could have been thrown away is actually pieced back together in a way that makes it unique and more beautiful. Than it was before. And that's kind of what adversity does for us, is it can break us, but in that breaking, we can piece our life back together in such a way that we're more valuable, more useful, better equipped for what comes next, as opposed to if it would have just been easy and we had never been broken to begin with. What did we learn from that?

Turo Virta: 56:30

Said? So what is, then, if somebody like this is like, more like a sort of purpose things, but if do someone who want to change their identity and not only behavior, what, how do you do it? And is there something like, what small shift someone can make, even this week still?

Unknown: 56:54

Yeah, I wish it were so easy. I do kind of go back to my previous answer. Start with your vision, your mission, your values, if you haven't taken the time to explicitly carve those out, do it, and then excuse me, even if you have take the time to revisit them, because we are not static organisms. We are constantly growing and morphing and changing. Our circumstances are always evolving. And so that mission, vision value is going to change over time, so I usually try to revisit mine at least once a year. My values are printed into canvases artwork on the wall in my office, and that's an accountability step for me. My first value is serve others first. And there are days when I'm tempted to want to serve myself first, and I see that art staring me right back in the face that says, you said, the person you were going to be was others first. You said, you know, so keeping yourself accountable, I think, is a key. You know, be be purposeful. Outline the path. And then again, that's strategic. And purpose, the relentless in pursuit is just execute on it. And like you said, if, if I set the thresholds far too low, that's not a motivator, like if my goal is to be able to beat a third grader one on one in basketball, okay, I'm pretty sure I can do that. But what have I gained out of that process? And that's a silly example. Likewise, if the goal is too lofty, it becomes a demotivator. You know, if my goal is I want to run a marathon at the end of next week, can't do it like it's not going to happen, and all I'm going to do is either become injured or demotivated or both in the process. So there is the sweet spot of being able to set targets that are doable but also motivated in the process. So, and that's just like anything that's trainable. My ability to set a good goal is a trainable skill. If I'm never setting and tracking my goals, I don't get better at it. So that's where the data comes in.

Turo Virta: 59:08

This is a good bridge to for next and last thing. What I wanted to talk is a little bit about self sabotage, because now let's say that you actually, you know, you have all these vision boards. You are there. You are you. Things are going well, but then people often start to sabotage themselves when everything is going well. Why do you think that is happening?

Unknown: 59:34

I think it goes to belief. We talked about how belief informs practice and the interaction between knowledge and belief and how they influence execution. If I don't fundamentally believe. And imposter syndrome is frequently tossed around. If I don't believe that I could be successful at such when I start to get close to that, you're going to start to see evidence of that self sabotage. I'm going to start to withdraw. I'm going to stop putting in the work that was getting me there. And so I always go back to belief I you, if you're treating the symptoms and not the root cause, then you're not really treating the disease. So if, if I can look at you and tell that maybe what you're executing on is less than what you had said for yourself. I can, I can come up with some strategies to help you get better at tracking your food log or at getting to the gym. But if there's something deeper, and this is where my wife, being a counselor, comes in. I'm a I'm a performance coach, she's a counselor. She's trained in ways of digging at eliciting past traumas and pathologies that need to be sorted through and work through. If fundamentally, I have a belief that I'm not worthy of being a success, that's a much different problem than I'm just not. Disciplined enough to execute on it, and so professional mental health can be a valuable aspect to this. If you've got something that's limiting you from your past, then that's something you need to work through. That's not something that I'm qualified or credentialed to do, but someone like my wife would be. So you have to recognize that sometimes the work takes more. It takes a team. You know, kind of that old adage, it takes a village to raise a child to be elite you need, you know, I need a tax professional. I don't want my tax person crafting my workouts any more than I want the person crafting my workouts giving me mental health advice, because they're not trained for those things. So identifying who your people are is really a critical step. And then, you know, trust them and cultivate that relationship. So well said. So if, if

Turo Virta: 1:02:02

first up a simple tools. So if, if if you, if someone is having a bad day, and you don't you feel like that, there is that self talk is coming in, and what is what someone could do when you start to recognize that now that self talk is coming in and you are really having a bad day, and what? What you would recommend in those days,

Unknown: 1:02:34

it's gonna sound silly. Have you ever seen the movie The Lion King, the Disney animated Lion King view? You know what I'm talking about. Yeah. Okay, so there's a scene there where Simba, the the would be king. He's living like tragedies happen. Mufasa has died. Simba goes off lives in the wild. He's got some free, loving friends, like you mentioned this after hockey, like you've you've probably got some teammates that are like Simba, where they've got some party friends, and they're just living the good life, you know, hakuna matata, but when he's doing that, he's not being the king, right? He's not living in the purpose he was created for. And it takes a wake up call from, you know, the ghost of his dad. But I love what Ghost Dad says to me. He says, Remember who you are. And he says that more than once, and he kind of leaves him with that lingering, kind of ethereal, remember who you are. If I lose sight of who I am, if I abandon the notion that I was created for good to be good, then I've not remembered who I am and remembering who I am in that tough day. I'm having a tough day today. I've got some difficult conversations coming my way. And Turo, I'm thankful to you, because answering this question is empowering me to remember who the hell I am and to walk proudly in my purpose, because without that, I would be tempted to dial it back and to be less than and not walk in that purpose. So maybe the strategy is, you know, to remember who I am. Maybe I just write it down. I've got some post it notes that I'll stick in my desk drawer or on my wall. I need to fix this, because I've mentioned this more than once. Right behind this camera, there's a piece of art my Son drew when he was three years old, and it's a little stick figure guy, and he says no working, and it's misspelled and it's but it's a reminder to me that I invested the best I could in that season. My son was desperate for his dad's attention. He wanted him to stop working and be with him, and that piece of art today reminds me I don't have the chance to be who he needed me to be today because he's 20 years old. But there is a purpose in front of me. There's someone I need to serve just like I should have served Him, and without that reminder, I might be tempted to be self serving. I might be tempted to do less than but I can't afford that. I have to remember who I am, and that helps me. So I don't know if that helps you.

Turo Virta: 1:05:20

Of course, that's so well said. Thank you so much for sharing, and I think this is, this is a great way to end this. Thank you. Like I still, I think we could keep I could keep talking so much longer, unfortunately, time limitations, I mean, and I don't want to keep the keep you too long. So Toby, where people can find you, where how to connect with you. Please share everything you want to share.

Unknown: 1:05:51

So the show is becoming undone. The website is undone. Podcast.com, that's the best place. I also have a coaching app that is built on these same principles, called Science of the comeback.com. That's that's available for anyone. I. Um. My website is Toby Brooks phd.com, and all my contact info is there. So happy to help in any way, whether that's a formal coaching relationship or maybe just need an encouragement, I'm happy to you know you don't have to pay me money in order to allow me to work in my purpose, my my mission and my vision is clear. I want to help and inspire as many people as I can. And if this message resonated with someone, I'd love to connect.

Turo Virta: 1:06:33

No, that's amazing. And likewise, it's usually those people like, I don't expect anything in change. If someone ever writes an email or or anything, you know, I do what I can and and I love the way how you are thinking and giving the purpose of helping others before yourself. And thank you so much for this conversation. I will put all links to show notes and

Unknown: 1:07:01

talk to you soon. Awesome. Thank you. Turo, you.