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# #018 Questions & Answers
- URL: https://adamringler.com/podcast/018/
- Published: 2017-10-27T20:14:52.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-20T05:08:57.000Z
- Author: Adam Ringler
- Tags: Decoding Excellence, #podcast, Career Development, Mindset

In this episode (or Mini-Episode) of the Decoding Excellence Show, I am sharing a few of the many lessons I've learned from a variety of the great experts and guests who joined me on the Decoding Excellence show.

This was a lot of fun and a great distraction away from the typical interview fashion of the show. I hope you enjoy some of the things I chat about throughout this mini-episode. We'll return to the typical Decoding Excellence show shortly, so keep your eyes out for new episodes.

**Today on the show, I discuss:**

- Advice to young coaches
- How failures setup future success
- Great resources for coaches
- Weird & absurd habits
- How to say no to distractions
- How to regain focus

## Key Takeaways From This Episode

I covered a lot of ground in this mini-episode, pulling threads from dozens of conversations with world-class coaches and performers. Here are the principles I kept coming back to.

**1\. On Advice To Young Coaches: Be A Human First.** The coaches who last are not the ones with the flashiest programs. They are the ones who learn to navigate everything around the training plan. People, personalities, pressure, alignment. Be a human, not a robot. Care personally about your athletes and your staff. Find mentors, ask dumb questions, and do the unglamorous work without complaint. Growth in this profession is educational before it is financial.

**2\. On Failure: It Is The Mechanism, Not The Obstacle.** Every failure is a step toward better performance if you run the post-mortem. I tell my staff that fear of a mistake should NEVER lead to a failure to take action. Make the safe mistake. Debrief it immediately. The coaches and athletes who embrace struggle as the growth mechanism always outlast the ones trying to avoid it.

**3\. On Saying No To Distractions: Protect Your Attention.** Attention is the cornerstone of my performance model. Be where your feet are. That means saying no to the noise, the drama, and the shiny objects that pull you off the mission. Leave your baggage at the door, and expect the same from the people you lead. Focus is not found. It is defended.

**4\. On Regaining Focus: Simplify And Shorten The Loop.** When you feel scattered, the answer is almost never more complexity. Chase clarity, not complexity. Shrink the target to the next rep, the next session, the next day. Get immediate feedback on whether it worked. Small wins stack into momentum, and momentum restores focus faster than any motivational speech.

**5\. On Resources: Learn From Everyone.** Everybody has one lesson to teach you. Read widely. Listen to people outside your discipline. The best ideas I have brought into performance departments came from books, podcasts, and conversations that had nothing to do with sets and reps. Approach every person you meet with an empty glass.

Give the episode a listen above. Then pick one takeaway and put it to work this week. Small, immediate application beats passive consumption every time. That is how mini-episodes become major changes.

You can catch up with me on Twitter at @AdamRingler  
. You can also navigate to my website at [AdamRingler.com](https://adamringler.com/) and browse the many articles I've posted.

This episode of the Decoding Excellence show is brought to you by Central Virginia Sport Performance: The Community. They can be found at CVASPS.com/Community

[Tweets by AdamRingler](https://twitter.com/AdamRingler?ref=adamringler.com)

Thanks again for listening to the Decoding Excellence Show! I appreciate all the support growing this Sport Science, Strength & Conditioning, and High-Performance Coaching resource. If you have taken anything away from the show, please login to iTunes and navigate to the Decoding Excellence page and leave us a review.

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## Key Takeaways

- For young coaches: be a human first. The coaches who last navigate people, personalities, and pressure, not just training plans, and growth in this profession is educational before it is financial.
- Treat failure as the mechanism, not the obstacle: make the safe mistake, debrief it immediately, and never let fear of a mistake stop you from taking action.
- Protect your attention: focus is not found, it is defended, so say no to the noise and leave your baggage at the door.
- When focus slips, simplify and shorten the loop: shrink the target to the next rep or session, get immediate feedback, and let small wins rebuild momentum.
- Learn from everyone: the best ideas often come from outside your discipline, so read widely and approach every person with an empty glass.

## Listen and Subscribe

Find this episode of the Decoding Excellence Show on [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoding-excellence/id1205636566?ref=adamringler.com) and [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/093GVrPwd9l832q3EWhVKc?ref=adamringler.com), or use the player above.

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## Go Further in This Episode

Enjoyed this conversation? Here is how to get more from it:

- **Read the transcript below** to revisit key ideas at your own pace.
- **Share this episode** with a coach or colleague who would benefit.
- **Subscribe to the Decoding Excellence Show** on [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoding-excellence/id1205636566?ref=adamringler.com), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/093GVrPwd9l832q3EWhVKc?ref=adamringler.com), or your favorite app.
- **Join the newsletter** at [adamringler.com/newsletter](https://adamringler.com/newsletter/) for weekly insights on human performance.

---

## Episode Transcript

*This transcript was automatically generated. While we strive for accuracy, some words or phrases may be misheard.*

\[00:00:00\] You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe, whatever you want, you take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Sport Science, Strength and Condition, High Performance Coaching. Welcome to the Decoding Excellence Show. Today's episode of the Decoding Excellence Show is brought to you by the Central Virginia Sports Performance Community. If you haven't checked out CVASPS.com forward slash community, I highly suggest you do it. I've logged on to the website and accessed some of the greatest materials when it comes to continuing education. You have presenters that come on and you guess lectures in addition to having access to what is otherwise the CVASP seminar and the last six years of seminars.

\[00:01:21\] Let me tell you, me and my performance staff have been going through some of them, some of them that we've missed, and it is top notch material. I highly suggest, oh my goodness, I can't even speak today. I highly suggest that you check out the community. JAS put together a tremendous amount of continuing education resources with community contributors like Dr. Brian Mann, Nate Brookerson, Ryan Horn, Devon McConnell, Landon Evans, and myself. It's a great resource if you're looking for a new continuing education domain. Check it out at CVASPS.com.

\[00:02:06\] Hey everybody, welcome to this week's Decoding Excellence Show. Many episode where we are turning the microphone around and rather than inviting a guest aren't to talk about what their specialty is, I'm going to turn the microphone around and maybe have a little bit of a monologue and ask myself many of the same questions that I love to ask the guests on the show. Today will be a day of reflection, maybe some introspection, but I think it's a great exercise to be willing to answer the same questions that you're often asking other audience or guests. So today is another great episode. It will be a shorter episode. So bear with it another 20 to 30 minute mini episode. And I am incredibly excited about bringing it to you guys. I know that there will be a lot of wisdom and a lot of things that you guys can pick up from this episode. So without further ado, here is this week's mini episode. Hey everybody, this is Adam Ringler, the host of the Decoding Excellence Show. And thanks so much for tuning in for another week's installment of what is otherwise a mini episode, an experiment where I am turning the microphone around and either sharing little bits of wisdom from what I've learned from the different guests that have come on our show.

\[00:03:36\] Maybe some of the things I'm experimenting with what I'm thinking throughout my day throughout my week. And maybe some of the books and resources that I've been exploring over the last couple of weeks. But today's mini episode is a bit different. So I'm really excited for this week's episode because what I'm going to do is turn the microphone around and ask myself many of the questions that I love to ask the guests who come on and star in the Decoding Excellence Show. So I thought this might make a great sort of distraction away from our typical scheduling and our typical interview fashion. And this is essentially the premise of what was last week's episode as well. So I'm excited to do it. And let's get into some of the questions. So the first question that I often ask my audience members and the guests that come on to our show is, how do you mentally prepare every day before you come into work to do your best work? And for me, that really depends. So my day as of lately, just during this transitional period, has started sort of chaotically every morning.

\[00:04:51\] It's a little bit different. It's unpredictable. And that is just based on the logistics of what is otherwise the schedule that we have. But some of the things that I like to do, especially in my morning, you know, like if you're familiar with collegiate strength conditioning, you often know that you will wake up way earlier than maybe your family. If you are maybe like an introvert like myself, right? Like you might actually enjoy that moment of quiet time before the hustle and the bustle of things get going. And that's certainly myself. And that's sort of the domain that I would put myself in as well. So one of the couple of things that I do, obviously, I wake up. If you want to really know the nuances of my morning, which I'm sure you don't, but let's explore it just so we maybe tease out some of the habits and the similarities between my day and your day or other high performing coaches out there. But I typically start with wake up. I brush my teeth. I get the coffee going or tea some mornings and big fan of green tea or matcha and probably over the last five years will have gone down a rabbit hole of exploring different year of amates, which is another sort of caffeinated beverage, super caffeinated beverage, one that I really like with the little lemon in it.

\[00:06:09\] However, I get that going. And then as that's either percolating or as water is heating up or while the tea is steeping, don't kill me guys, especially your hard hard core tea fanatics for maybe over steeping my teas, but while that's going what I really like to try to do is pop into a headspace application on my phone, which is a maker of a guided meditation app. I talked a little bit about it on the last show. There's there's many different alternatives, whether it's headspace or calm and Kevin Rose and Silicon Valley entrepreneur is also coming out with a new app also guided meditation. I think team app called Oak, so be on the lookout for that. I'm sure that's hidden Apple devices here soon. However, I try to go through a take 10 or a 10 minute meditation, essentially a priming exercise through my morning where I go through try to focus on my breathing. I focus sort of on a body scan. I'm searching through my body where there might be tension. I try to come back to my breath. I try to just literally sit there and focus on just my breathing, which is challenging to do in the morning. Why? Because if you're type A personality like myself, you wake up and you probably think of the hundreds of things that you need to do want to do have to get done before your morning starts. So that has been something that I've been exploring over the last four or five years of really trying to stay consistent with some guided meditation throughout my morning.

\[00:07:45\] And let me tell you, especially with a four and a two year old at home, the opportunity, the mindfulness training, if you will, from that meditation, exercise or practice has a lot of carry over. And I think Andy in headspace does a tremendous job of really sort of dedicating that session and focusing on the benefits not only for yourself before the people that are around you, your family, your co-workers, the people that you service throughout your day. And I found a lot of similarities between other coaches. When I start to talk about mindfulness training or meditation or visualization, I'm surprised by the number of other coaches that also engage in a very similar practice. And that really starts my morning off on the right note. So after 10 to 15 minutes of guided meditation, that's the time that I usually, at this point in time, sit, drink some coffee. I might listen to a podcast while I'm getting ready for work. And then I jump in a vehicle and I drive off and commute into work. But that morning routine has been consistent probably for me over the last eight, nine years or so. Maybe the added benefit of doing a little bit more mindfulness training the last couple of years. But that has been something that's been really, really positive for me.

\[00:09:03\] I know if you're a student athlete listening to this and we preach about having three square meals and three snacks and continuously feeding, although for me, I end up doing a lot of intermittent fasting. The my morning is just purely either coffee with a little bit of heavy cream or it might be a water based tea, no cream, anything like that. And then I usually have like a meal later in the day, right? It might be after a workout, might be after a conditioning workout. And that has worked for me for a while. And it seems seems to be going pretty well. And that's the way that I find myself preparing myself mentally throughout the day, or at least for the beginning of the day. And those are sort of the consistent patterns and routines that I often have. So another question I love to ask my guess is how is a failure, or maybe an apparent failure, set you up for later success in life.

\[00:10:03\] And if you're human, you're going to come across some failures somewhere in your life. And I think the biggest thing for me is two points of critical failures in my life that really set me down. What is otherwise this path into strength conditioning and one of which I spoke on a different podcast about, but it was the realization that I was just not a good enough wrestler to continue on the collegiate pathway in what is otherwise big 10, which is I think still the powerhouse conference when it comes to wrestling. I quickly as a young naive 18 year old arriving at Michigan State University, thinking that I was talented enough to be on the wrestling team quickly found out that I was otherwise a at least locally or regionally back where I came from. A really big fish in a small pond and being surrounded by other incredibly talented wrestlers and athletes, I quickly found myself at the very bottom of the list and it was very humbling for me. To fold right because all of my life I was an athlete I was preparing for this pathway of continued wrestling through high school and through freestyle and Greco Roman and up to college and then suddenly that loss of identity when I was no longer a college wrestler as that hit. And that was that was a huge sort of failure for me and it honestly shook me quite a bit you know I wrestled with sort of who I was as a person at that time like any for probably 18 or 19 year old would which is a very turbulent time to be to discuss anyways but that loss of identity led me down a path of soul searching rather and that's really what got me into sort of fitness and got me into training right because.

\[00:12:07\] Really when I look at this I was I was never really a great talented wrestler in my life I I worked really hard and I tried to out work competitors very Dan Gable ask but I thought well if I'm not good enough to beat them on the wrestling mat right via just talent alone why can the least guarantee that nobody was going to outwork me so I lend myself to being in a weight room being in a gym and trying to cross train to prepare for that sport. And when wrestling no longer existed for me at least competitively I double down on training and really got interested into that aspect so I started reading more and more programs to start to explore more and more tax and books and different methodologies of training and then you couple that with the fact that I was a collegiate athlete and I was exposed to strength conditioning. And that's where sort of my passion began and I didn't even really know it because which led me to what is otherwise my second big failure which was I was still a young naive college freshman and not only did I lose the identity of being a collegiate athlete two years later as I was going down this road I essentially was chasing a business degree that I never really felt was what I wanted. So I did it and I did it for external circumstances to appease others or whatever and it wasn't really a decision that I thought of for me and then I had a very very powerful conversation that I would never forget and I really sort of realized that rather than chasing a stigma or what I thought others might have wanted me to have. Having this conversation I chose what I wanted to pursue which was strength conditioning right I was reading all these books on fitness and training and all this and you know I was avoiding the books on micro economics and macro economics and study and personal finance and accounting and all this and it was clear as day I mean it was right under my nose that I should have just realized that where my passion lied was strength conditioning. And that's when I changed my degree to kinesiology I doubled down my efforts academically and stayed throughout summers and and literally was being as as attentive to my kinesiology and academic studies as I possibly could and that is where I chased my degree and I'm ultimately began an internship and chase that was fortunate enough to have a college strength conditioning coach red way cam at Michigan State.

\[00:15:02\] Who took a chance on me and gave me an opportunity to try to cut my teeth and learn about college strength conditioning and and remains a great mentor and a great friend today and then I was fortunate enough to get a graduate assistantship and the story goes on and on and on right but to otherwise very obvious failures that were rattling to me when I was told I wasn't just essentially smart enough or didn't have the grades to go to a business school and then secondly. That when I lost that identity of being a student athlete but honestly without both of those things I don't think I would be where I'm at right now another question that I love to ask is what advice would you give to a smart driven college student about to enter the real world well ideal with smart driven college student athletes all the time I also deal with college age graduate assistant. And interns that are applying for their first entry level strength conditioning position all the time and what I would say is that is infinitely easier to give advice than to take it so with that said I I often offer quite a bit of advice well what I would offer is this when you have the option to and everybody's life circumstances are different travel go around meet other coaches meet other coaches interact network build relationships visit other sites learn other philosophies learn other principles try to find people that disagree with you and then try to wrap your head why they may be in a position where they disagree with whatever your thought beliefs are I think the more that you do this the more that you visit other places here about other philosophies that are different to your own very similar to the Bruce Lee quote you can then absorb what is useful discard what is useless and then add what is specifically your own but if you don't do that and you're not exposed to those other methodologies or philosophies then I think you're you're missing out on a large portion of continuing education another question I love is what are some bad recommendations you hear in the profession or in the area of this expertise well I do have an opinion on that and my friend Brett breath

\[00:17:36\] I spoke about this on many other podcasts but I'll shed some light to it as well we are an industry that seems to want to glorify the fact that we work 20 hours in a given day right that if you're not on the floor coaching for those 20 hours or not a coach and as a consequences of this right we see many many coaches that are either in poor health that are facing burnout that have lost friends that have lost loved ones that lost family members because they put the job first and by no means of disrespect to our industry or to our profession right this is a service based business and you must provide high quality service to the student athletes and those that you work with however you also need to take care of your own health and your own relationships and your own family so one of the advice that I hear given to people all the time is whether it's being the first in and last out which I admire that don't get me wrong I think you need to pay your dues you need to grind you need to do whatever it is in the first part of your career

\[00:18:52\] And hell maybe even into the later parts of your career right be willing to do what it takes to get the job done but the glorification of just spending time in the weight room to be the first one in or to be the last one out when you have no real reason to be there is a hallmark of misaligned priorities especially if you have other places and other teams that you're a part of i.e. Your community your church your religion your family whoever right whatever part what other additional team that you're a part of you owe it to be a great team member a great team leader to those areas of your life so these the athletes that I service absolutely they are a part of our family both my wife and

\[00:19:39\] Myself and my children they're a part of our family but in addition to that we also have our own personal intimate family and a lot of times I hear so many coaches talk about having better relationships with the athletes that they service than their own wives their own husbands their own children and above all I think you do need to cultivate and you need to have those relationships with your family members so if you don't have business or work to do in the weight room then why are you coming in at 6 a.m. In the morning if it's just to be there that is terrible advice the next question I'll ask myself is what are some of the resources that helped you become more proficient in

\[00:20:26\] Strengthening conditioning and coaching well I don't even know where to start with this question I've made it a habit in my life to compile resources right whether books audio videos conversations with other coaches so if I were to try to stand in front of you and say that I'm a self-made strengthening coach a self-made man that would be a complete lie I stand on the shoulders of giants I know it's cliché to say but it's true

\[00:21:04\] I am the person I am because of the books that I've read and the resources I've consumed so I don't know I mean that's a very challenging question obviously I had mentors in my life both at Michigan State University and elsewhere along my coaching journey and like I said earlier it's a little bit like that Bruce Lee quote I've absorbed what is useful from the coaches and from the books and from the resources that I've read I've discarded what I can't use what I I deem useless and there's some things that other coaches might prioritize

\[00:21:42\] And say this is the holy grail where I've looked at and said I don't know maybe not for me maybe not for my athletes maybe not for where I'm at in my life and then maybe thirdly I've added what is specifically my own and that is the personality and the inherent traits and characteristics and the personality that I bring to the floor so I think it is a hallmark of self realization it's a hallmark of knowing yourself who you are, who you're not, what your strengths, what your weaknesses are hiring people around you to compliment or check what are your weaknesses and then really put a spotlight on the things that you do incredibly well and put those in the forefront

\[00:22:31\] Resources books I borrow from business I borrow from personal development obviously I've read the strengthening classics I'm a big fan of using online resources continuing education, membership sites I've done a number of those like strengthcoach.com, strengthcoach webinars, even the new one which is what I've talked about earlier on the intro of the show the CVASPS community which is a phenomenal new continuing education resource so there is it's a world of continuing education out there the problem is there's a lot of noise and not a lot of signal so rather than being maybe a pioneer to one of these continuing education resources you should be a settler you should wait you should sort of test the waters and then when you see what has some traction then sort of settle

\[00:23:29\] With that continuing education resource but books, audios, videos I think if you have the accessibility which we do right this is the thing that I stole from Kelly Starrett and one of his videos is that nowhere in the course of history do we have the greatest access to high quality world-class coaches at our fingertips like we do now right with Twitter, with Instagram, with online connectivity and high speed internet we can literally Skype call with some of the world's greatest coaches in an instant and we didn't have that 30 years ago right if you wanted to learn about Olympic weightlifting and you were in Des Moines, Iowa well I'm sorry you'd have to you know hop on a bus drive a car and find an Olympic weightlifting coach in a different city or in that city

\[00:24:26\] Now you log on you go to Google you search your community and you search whatever topic that you're looking for and you can have instant accessibility to high quality coaches another question I ask my guests all the time is what is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love well where do I begin? We have these online personas right of what you think a person is all about but when you sit down and you actually break bread with a coach or another person or whatever industry you start to realize that whatever persona one might have on the internet or whatever their faceplate might be

\[00:25:14\] There's a lot of nuances there's a lot of personalities that you just don't get to pick up on because you don't get to see that aspect in 140 characters so I don't know there's a lot of different things that might make me uniquely me I love the fact and I admire this of people that have a very sort of stoic property to their sort of demeanor I look at coaches like Mark Antonio who's obviously a Michigan state head football coach and admire his level of steadfast and stoicism in his coaching abilities I hope to someday emulate that and that is sort of maybe characteristic of a strong mind or of a ease of mind perhaps

\[00:26:08\] And that is something I'm consistently trying to improve and work on through meditation and mindfulness training I'm a big connoisseur of movies and music movies and shows whether it's game of thrones or our beloved breaking bad I mean there's a number of different things that go into absurd habits or things that I love I'm a big connoisseur of different teas whether it's your mamate which isn't really a tea green teas I love to experiment with them I love to smell although I'm not the biggest fan of the flavors without a little bit of lemon flavoring so that is something I'm trying to become more of a connoisseur of because I do love the ritual of making tea of sitting down for tea

\[00:26:58\] It's just that I don't necessarily like the flavor which is you know a large part of consuming tea so that's sort of absurd as I get closer towards the end of the show some of the questions that I start to wrap up the show is is that in the last five years let's say maybe three to five years what have you become better at saying no to whether it's distractions or invitations or et cetera if so what are some new realizations or approaches that have helped you or tips that have helped you decline invitations which sort of seems bizarre why would you want to decline any invitation?

\[00:27:43\] Well one of the people that I borrow a lot of resources and sort of thoughts from is Derek Sivers and he's been on a number of different podcasts not a strengthening conditioning coach an entrepreneur actually the founder and CEO of CD baby went on to make millions and millions of dollars and now is living the good life but nonetheless he has a very interesting personal philosophy and one of the things that he accredits that philosophy to or his sort of where he got in his life is the fact that he literally just said yes to everything like do you want to do this gig?

\[00:28:23\] Yes do you want to play it for five dollars? Yes do you want to go and do this side gig? Absolutely credits it just his willingness to say yes to anything and everything well what challenging is I think sometimes especially when you do that for a while and I was probably certainly the same way yes yes yes yes to everything in my life that you begin to very quickly deprioritize yourself and maybe people around you and I think as you have more responsibilities and things you need to do

\[00:28:59\] You need to be very strategic about what you do what are high sort of reward or high return activities and what are low ROI's or return on that investment activities as well so you know there will be times where it'd be great hey could you come out could you do the speaking engagement could you come do this or do that and really what I try to do is weigh it in sort of the ideology of when I'm thinking about it I understand that my time is limited and time is something that you can absolutely not get back right money financial gains whatever whatever it might be professional gains or losses whatever

\[00:29:45\] Right you can make that up you can lose you whatever but time is something that absolutely no matter how rich or how poor what your status is you'll never be able to get that time back so you know a lot of the times I think of I think of this I read a lot of stoic philosophy and one of my favorite sort of authors were Marcus Aurelius and his private wartime journals and what I really love in in one of his writings was the idea of what is otherwise momentum worry which is a philosophy or at least a thought that you could leave life right now

\[00:30:27\] The very breath that you're taking could be your very last breath ever and I know it's sort of morbid to think about but if that were the case what would you want to be doing and a lot of the times it would either be I want to be doing my best work or I would want to be surrounded by my loved ones my children my wife my family and that is sort of maybe the philosophy that I try to carry is that I want to make sure that the time that I have on earth the time that I have is spent doing what what is otherwise high return activities

\[00:31:09\] And a lot of times it's it's being surrounded by the ones that I love my last question that I will wrap up most shows with is just that when you feel overwhelmed or unfocused what are some of the activities or what have you done to help regain that focus for me it's a number of different things right and I might have talked about on other shows and it might be I don't know maybe I'm overkill with this topic but whenever I feel incredibly overwhelmed I do a number of things and the strategies just sort of determined are determined by maybe

\[00:31:56\] The time allocations that I have a lot of the times I think most of our strength conditioning coaches maybe got into this industry right we escaped to the weight room for a release in some respect so the weight room and physical activity is a huge sort of proponent of a huge release for me when I start to feel unfocused and my daily life or my work life returning to the weight room and returning to what is otherwise physical labor can be something that sort of centers me it's almost like a little bit of a physical meditation for me if you will

\[00:32:36\] I think the second thing that I do often is that when I do have the time and I carve out the time I allocate and make this time that going through some guided meditation sitting down whether it's in a lit room dark room a quiet place and actually going through whether it's otherwise that guided meditation via headspace or elsewhere that can help sort of restore my clarity and my calm and my focus on what I need to do and then the third thing is whether it's utilizing a bullet journal or the best self journal

\[00:33:13\] I do a little bit of writing and the strategies I've taken away in a phenomenal product out there called the five minute journal and it talks about it essentially guides you through a number of different things like it you write down in the morning you write down in the evening a few different things and some of the things are like what are you grateful for? So gratitude journaling if you will right so a lot of the times it's taking stock

\[00:33:41\] And the things that you already own and already have like hey you know what I'm really really grateful for the fact that my children are healthy my wife is healthy I have a profession and a job that I love to do and I'm surrounded by great high quality professionals that are all interested in doing the same thing right supporting our student athletes and winning championships and that is just a good piece in the morning to sort of say hey you know what things are okay right like as you wake up it could be a lot worse right

\[00:34:13\] There's some some easy wins in the beginning of your day that you can be grateful for to help sort of guide your mind on the right on the right path and again at the end of the day you start talking about journaling writing down wins that you had during the day like what what were some little wins well I did that 60 minute workout or I accomplished this goal that I wanted to do at work or I sat down and and meditated for 10 minutes or whatever it might be right

\[00:34:41\] Like you're just journaling you're writing this things down and you start to have a little bit of a moment of reflection of what happened during the day and then you can sort of coach yourself right you're sitting there and you're thinking okay what can I do better tomorrow so you're certain to align what you did in reflection with ways of improvement and this journaling every night while it takes three to five minutes for me has been a powerful thing to help me understand where and when I'm utilizing my time wisely

\[00:35:13\] Where and when I'm not and help aligning myself under those high strategic high return and investment activities that will help continue to hopefully lead me down a pathway of good fortune and my best work

\[00:35:36\] Hey everybody that's going to be this edition of the decoding excellence show many episodes starring me which is sort of random but if you like these sort of self-driven monologues hit me up on Twitter is at Adam Ringler or you could go to decoding excellence.com or at Adam Ringler.com and leave me a note let me know what you want from these many episodes and we'll curtail this show to what is otherwise maybe some of the questions that the audience might have if there's something I can do to provide you a little bit more clarity or drive the conversation in a different fashion

\[00:36:20\] I would love to do it for you you guys are my muse you guys are what I cater to this is a show with is which is sort of an interest only to you guys and I want to make sure that the show reflects that so if there's anything I can do for the audience please let me know I would love to help drive the conversation towards that direction and help provide some answers or at least maybe ask them some more confusing questions that might make you think a little bit because that's the nature of the show. We want to think we want to start to decode and better understand what goes into excellence performance

\[00:37:00\] And that takes a lot of reflection so thank you guys again so much I look forward so much to having some great participants and guests coming on the decoding excellence show here soon so keep your eyes out our new episodes and until then thank you