EPI 230: Inner Excellence - Train Your Mind For Extraordinary Performance And The Best Possible Life. With #1 NY Times Bestselling Author Jim Murphy

Welcome back to another episode of the Peak Performance Life podcast. Today, I am very excited to have the number one New York Times bestselling author, Jim Murphy. He is the author of a book called Inner Excellence. Train your mind for extraordinary performance and the best possible life. This book went viral when a member of the Philadelphia Eagles was caught reading the book in the middle of the playoff game on the sideline. And it just went absolutely viral. After that, he also has a new book called the best possible life, how to live with deep contentment, joy and confidence, no matter what he has trained professional athletes and what he's going to share with us today. I am so excited about you all know that this is my favorite type of stuff to talk about this mindset and how to change your life through mental models and frameworks and things like that, which Jim is just an absolute expert in. So Jim, thank you so much for joining us here today. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, well, let's let's jump right into it. And maybe we'll start with that story of what happened kind of with Inner Excellence and how it kind of took off. Yeah, sure. So, well, I was a pro athlete, I played five years in minor league baseball, and my identity was completely wrapped up in my position as an athlete. And when I got injured and had to retire, I felt like I lost everything. And I ended up getting a job at FedEx downtown Seattle, Washington. And when I was delivering packages trying to figure out what to do with my life, I got asked if I wanted to coach a high school baseball team. And I never had considered it as a possibility. But it just worked with my schedule. So I did it O'Day High School Junior varsity. And we went undefeated, had such a great time. And then I get a master's degree in coaching science. That and so my first book came out of that my master's paper, where I interviewed 39 major league GMs and managers, based on managers on how to build a championship team. I get a job with the Texas Rangers, two weeks after graduation, I quit six months later in tears, it just was a box that I couldn't fit into. At the time I felt like a total failure. Now I realize that it was it was got had much bigger plans for me. Of course, when you're going through really, really hard times, it's really hard to see and I had no idea. And then, yeah, I just after coaching in the Olympics, I come back to Vancouver, BC, my hometown and try to figure out what to do with my life. And I ended up decided to go live a life of relative solitude and figure out what to do with my life. And so I gave away most of my possessions and moved to the desert. And I went there to go figure everything out. And that's where Interext was was born. So yeah, did you do five years or something like that in the desert? Yeah, I was there two and a half years actually a teammate of mine in pro baseball, I'd called and asked if I wanted to come help him for the weekend to open up a baseball academy. And I just thought, what if I went down there and helped him out part time and move there, and then just live the simple life to figure out what to do with my life. And so it's not like I was living in a teepee or anything. I was I was in town. I'm eds outskirts of Tucson, Arizona. And I lived in the baseball academy for a few months, there's no showers. So I'd shower at the gym. And like one of my first New Year's Eve, I am in this empty house and I hear a noise and I go outside and I see fireworks. And that's when I realized it was New Year's Eve. So it was it was a pretty lonely time. I was there two and a half years. After a while, I decided I wanted to become a personal coach to professional baseball players teach them how to have peace and confidence under pressure. And my first few athletes did amazing. So then I decided to put together a little manual for future clients on how to have peace and confidence under extreme pressure. I call up a sports psychologist and ask him how can an Olympic athlete train for four years from an event that may last less than a minute and have peace and confidence in that situation. And that I just didn't get the answers that I was looking for. So I called another and another and then that turned into five years of full time writing and research that became the book Interexcellence. Amazing. Amazing. And then so Interexcellence comes out. And I think from what I heard it's only selling maybe one or two copies a day just kind of going along. And then all of a sudden, I think it's AJ Brown of the Philadelphia Eagles gets seen on the sideline, the cameras catch him, and he's reading your book in the middle of the game. And then things kind of go crazy from there. Yeah, that's right. It's a really crazy story. I didn't know I had no idea he was reading the book during the games. I'd seen a picture of him in uniform with the book, but I had no context. So I didn't know anything about it. I saw about a month earlier. And so I just thought, huh, that's cool. And then that Sunday night was January 12 when everything changed. I was watching a different football game. And then I see all these texts. My mom was dying that week. She died that week. And it was an answer to prayer because she was suffering. But it was a somber time. This was this January. And I look at my phone, I think, oh, my mom must have died because of all the texts. And then the text said, you need to watch the turn on the Eagles packer. And I was like, wow, this is probably going to be significant. And then it turned out to be quite significant. Incredible, incredible. And now since then, you've kind of coached many people and have obviously many people have read your book and learned a lot through there and have gotten incredible success from your books. So I'm sure the people listening are going to want to learn like, Hey, what's what's in these books? What is the secret sauce that's getting all these pro athletes to be reading it in the middle of the most important game of their life potentially. So yeah, why don't we go into a little bit of kind of what you cover in these books? Well, when I was in the desert, there's the first thing I realized as I I wanted to devote my something my life to something that was meaningful. And when I was there, I realized that I don't want to at first it was just I want to be the best performance coach in the world. And I want to write the best coach the best book ever written on mental toughness. That was my goal. And then I realized what good does it do to help someone win a world championship or be world number one or Olympic champion if it doesn't improve their life or make the world a better place. Like what if they're a jerk and they kick the dog and scream with our kids and you know, they're just not a good person, then did I do anything good? And so I realized I wanted to really make a difference. And the thing that really changed my life and was kind of a the foundation of Interexcelence was realizing that the training needed to perform your best under pressure is the same training to live the best possible life. And when I say the best possible life, I mean a life of deep contentment, joy and confidence, no matter what I mean a life filled with love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self control. Nice. So yeah, so say more about that. What are like you said, so similar things. So what are some of those kind of concepts? Yeah, the training is the training to be wholehearted. So when we're born, we're born with a divided heart. There's part of us that just wants things that are eternal, like love, joy, peace, inner strength. And but then there's part of us that are our ego that I would like part of our mind that I called the ego, the part of our mind that's always threatened, always comparing never satisfied. That part is that's the division is we have this human nature, and then we have this part of us that's created in God's image and then they're going in different directions. And so the human nature is the kind of the default. That's how we're born with this. This what I call self centeredness, our biggest challenge in performance and in life is self centeredness getting in our own way. And it kind of shows up in three main ways. One is overthinking just way too many thoughts from way too many concerns. The second one is is negative thinking or judgmental thinking. And the third one is self consciousness concern for what will happen to me if I screw this up or if I fail. What will people think about me? How do I compare? How do I? How do I fit in? And so those are the three big challenges that we face in performance and life and it's comes from this self referential life of seeing everything of how it impacts me and from my point of view. And so that's our greatest limit and challenge. Yeah, yeah. So I think I've heard you talk about like so when you come from a place of you're here to give and serve and it's not about you, then that maybe kind of takes away some of the pressure here. Yeah, there's no fear and love. Love is completely fearless and that's why I always say selfless is fearless. And you can just think about when you're at your very best doing anything. Were you concerned about self? Was there self protection? Was there fear? When you're at your best? There's no thoughts of self whatsoever, at least in the best performers in anything. There's no thoughts about self at all. And so with no thoughts about self, there's no concern for self. There's no fear. It's just completely caught up in the moment. And the same thing, even if you're not a performer, same thing if you're caught up in a great book or movie or caught up in a great piece of art. When you really experience beauty at a deep level, there's no concern for self or thoughts about self. And that's one of the big powers of beauty. So I mean, look, it sounds easy in concept, right? It's like, oh, just don't be don't think about yourself. Don't you know, whatever, just think about other people and serve probably a lot harder to break all this conditioning we've had for so many years. And, and, you know, so yeah, what do you think about that for someone listening and saying sounds good? But how the heck do I do this? Well, the book's 310 pages or something. And it was five years of full time writing and research. So yeah, it's it's a lifetime of lifetime pursuit. And it's a it's a way of life. It's it's not like don't buy the book inter excellence to just to say how I can, you know, get rich quicker or anything like that. It's like, do you want to live the best possible life? Then it might be something for you to consider. And so inter excellence in one respect is, is it's the pursuit of self mastery. And when I think of self mastery, I think of mastering the ego. Like I said, the part of our mind that's always threatened and comparing and never satisfied, either overinflated or underinflated and always very, very busy and always on trial. Everything is a trial. What however you do, like you're going to cook a meal, you're going to, you're going to go to practice, you're going to go to work, everything is always evaluated. How did I do good or bad? Good, I'm okay for the next moment. Bad. Now I'm now I'm getting judged. And so that's the ego that that is always threatened like that. And so mastering that part of our mind that's always threatened is is crucial for inner peace and inner strength inner peace and inner strength go directly together. And so, and they're both tied to gratitude and mental toughness and beauty. I think of those things, those five things together, beauty, mental toughness, inner strength inner peace and gratitude. And so gratitude is the key. Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree. I think gratitude is is even though it's talked about quite a bit in the personal development circles, how many people are actually doing it consistently. It's really a powerful, powerful tool. I agree with that. With ego, you must be working with a lot of professional athletes who have gotten to this level. It's almost like, it's an interesting thing that ego right because on one hand, the ego can drive you to be more successful or be the best you could be because you want to be better or whatever. But on the other hand, you got to be very careful that you don't think you're better than other people or anything like that. But I'm just kind of curious a little bit about when you work with these kind of high level athletes who must have had or still have some big ego. What does that kind of look like when you're working with them and how can you know there any exercises or practices you kind of try to get them to do. So ego to me is similar to fear, anger, fire. They're all powerful and all dangerous. All can really hurt you, but also can propel your performance anger can make people perform better fear can make you practice harder and drive yourself to to get up at 3am and work 15 hour days. So fear, anger, ego, it can really push people to work really, really hard and do some achieve extraordinary things. But the problem is it's very dangerous. And the problem with ego is that it's always threatened and and when you're threatened, then there's no freedom. And so inter excellence has three pillars and that's belief, freedom and focus. And so you can think of BFF best friends forever. So these are kind of the three, three pillars of inter excellence and so belief a subconscious comfort level with what you feel is possible and freedom, the ability to play like a kid and have fun. And have a sense of joy, and then focus ability to be fully present. You can also think of inter excellence as an in depth system to be fully present in your life, no matter what the circumstance. Hmm. Yeah, yeah, really powerful stuff there beliefs obviously extremely powerful right the old quote kind of from Henry Ford whether you think you can or think you can't either way you're right. And that's something I learned from Tony Robbins many years ago as well and doing some NLP trainings many years ago like really got ingrained in me about like the power of beliefs and like, I actually first have to believe something is possible in my mind, and and truly believe it I'm not just say it but deep down inside I don't believe it right how do I actually truly fully embody it. It's such a such a powerful thing. What about for people maybe listening right now who say hey I want to develop a more powerful belief system. How do I, you know, many people are not even aware that they're constantly going you know saying the same negative beliefs and limiting beliefs over and over every day. Any advice for for people in that situation. Yeah, yeah beliefs are the thing that limits most people. It's a thing that separates the best from the rest and anything. How do we get that subconscious comfort level to feel that you can do things you've never done before and become someone you've never been before. So we have to get good at handling feelings. There's no way to, if you want to do extraordinary things you have to let go of your past and let go of who you've been and the story that you have about yourself. We have to let that go. And it's really hard because if I let go of who I've been and let go of my story of who I am then who am I if I don't have a past it's really scary and so most people want to hold on to their past and when they do that they're holding on to their limitations. And so what I do is I help people understand how their mind works, how the how their subconscious mind which is so much more powerful how that works, how fear works, what your heart deeply wants, what the control center of your life is, which is your heart and your subconscious work working together. I think of your heart in three ways. I call it your heart or your spirit or your will. And that's what we need training for and especially training it for joy. I define joy as a deep sense of well being freedom and gratitude independent of circumstance and inner buoyancy and delight that comes from sacrificial love. And so, yeah, that's where the powers at. That's great. That's amazing. You mentioned focus and being present. That's another thing obviously that many people probably struggle with. Can you say more about that or how you know how do how does someone become more present and have a better focus. Most people are very anxious today. And they're also very very busy. And part of the reason that they're very busy is because they're anxious. And they're anxious because they're busy. What I mean by that is, if I stopped, I'm going to fall behind that can that can be one of the feelings. And then I'm not going to compare well. There's an obsession in Western culture with being productive and achievement because our deepest need is for love in our greatest fear as humans is rejection to not get that love. And so if I'm productive, if I achieve something, then I can get that love. And if I don't achieve it, then not only am I not going to get the love I'm going to get the worst, which is rejection of the love. And so it's a very scary thing. So in order to be present, we need to ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives. There's no way you're going to reduce hurry and live a life with a lot more space in it, unless you simplify your life. And the only way you're going to simplify your life is you have to clarify what matters most in your life. You got to get rid of what's not you and kind of hone in on who am I? How do I want to feel? How do I want to live? Who do I want to become? What are the characteristics of the people that I admire most past and present? What do I value most and put that into one sense and make that your life purpose. And if that purpose is based on some aspect of love serving others, then it can be a powerful thing that can really help you simplify your life and be more present. And when you're more present. Well, first of all, there's no fear in the present moment fears a self centered future orientation in general. When you're more present, you see more beauty. I want to share one other thing about beliefs. Beliefs are so crucial. Beliefs are feelings. So most people spend their day in my estimation thinking about six or seven different groups of thoughts over and over and over. And those groups of thoughts are limitations about who they are, how the world is, what's possible and not possible for them. And those limitations and thoughts come with feelings. And so what happens to most people is that they have experiences in their life and then they fail in their mind. They think it's a failure and so they get hurt emotionally and nobody likes to be hurt. And so they're like, Oh, like touching a hot stove. I don't want to do that again. And so they shrink back and get tentative. And then the, you know, by the time you become an adult, you're 20, 30 years old, 40 years old, and then you've gotten hurt so many times. And so we keep shrinking back and lose the ability to dream and being able to dream. You know, I had such a great talk with Danica Patrick, the race car driver, and she said, I'm such a big dreamer. And it's not a surprise to hear that from someone who has achieved such extraordinary things. And she said she's also not, she doesn't take things personal. She's an, I mean, she actually, she said she's not caught up with what people think about her. That's what she said. And that also is makes sense because if you're concerned about people think that you're going to be tentative and afraid of making a mistake. Because what will people think. And so if you want to expand what you believe is possible, then we need to get good at uncomfortable feelings, get good at handling those feelings. And when you're really uncomfortable and embracing the feelings because when you come to the edge of your beliefs, what happens to most people is they shrink back and they never expand what they believe is possible. And that's kind of the essence of inter excellence is to expand what you believe is possible to do to do that. We need to come to the edge of our beliefs, our edge of our feelings and sit in those feelings and not run from them. Yeah. And you mentioned also like people taking the time making the space. I think that's really important. I mean, one of the biggest game changers for me in my life has been my kind of morning time where I, I love living in Las Vegas because it's sunny pretty much every day of the year except for maybe a handful of days. And I go outside in the morning, try to take my shirt off and get some sun if I can. And I'm just creating space. I'm doing a lot of gratitude. I'm doing visualizations. I'm thinking about a higher kind of a better version of myself trying to, you know, increase my belief system. And it's been an absolute game changer for me. And I kind of tell a lot of friends about it. And, you know, the importance of not just waking up getting on your phone, checking news and social media and then being bombarded and kind of like the rest of the world controlling your, your mind and what you're thinking about in your belief system and actually creating that space. I think it's been one of the most powerful things that I've been able to do personally. So yeah, I think, is there like, like there's got to be, because like you said, you have to create space in order to even get out of your head and think higher level about a lot of the stuff that you're talking about, right? That's right. Yeah. Yeah, I think. So yeah, so what do you do have, do kind of teach people, hey, take thinking time, you know, or, or, you know, maybe have a certain time on your calendar set aside for thinking or gratitude or something or is there any kind of practice you recommend people do there? Yeah, definitely. So I was listening to a guy named Tyler Staten yesterday, last couple days. And talked about what he called the secret hours. And I started thinking about that phrase and I don't know exactly what he meant, but I know what I started to think about what I call the secret hours. I think of it as the three hours from once you wake up in the three hours before you you turn out the lights. And I think of those as secret hours, because those six hours are crucial in your life. And I know that I don't think that I'm alone, that I've spent a lot of those hours in the last year or two, especially since everything happened with AJ Brown, where I've been on social media a lot more to respond to people and post things. That I spent a lot of those secret hours online on my phone. And an addiction is anything that stops your growth. And the phone has been the biggest addiction that I've had in a long time. And so I think the secret hours are super crucial. The ideal in the morning is your first hour you you make no decisions in the first hour. So inter excellence, you can think of it as a series of habits of thought and action throughout the day. That are how do I line up with my purpose more often? How do I get into that flow of resonance where I feel fully engaged heart, mind and body, unattached to how I want to feel. Yeah, love that. Absolutely love that. So your new book now just came out in paperback. I know the audio book and the in the second version is coming out soon as well. The best possible life. Talk about what are some of the things that you kind of expand on in that book, compared to inter excellence. Yeah, that book is getting re-released March 31, 2026. So what that book had turned out to be, it's a book on the spiritual life. I think the best performers in the world, they walk by faith, not by sight. The best lives ever lived walked by faith, not by sight, whoever's going to win the masters in April and golf, they're going to walk by faith, not by sight. What I mean by that is they're not going to be attached to the circumstances in the moment. They're going to stay connected to the vision. And the best life, no matter if you believe in God or don't believe in God is a spiritual life. In other words, it's a heart-centered life where you're not attached to the ups and downs of everyday life. You're staying connected to the vision. And so that's what this book is about. But it goes beyond that. The book is titled, The Best Possible Life, How to Live with Deep Contempt and Joy and Confidence, No Matter What, but it's a book based on the Bible on how what I feel is the way to live the best possible life. How do you live with deep content, enjoying confidence, no matter what? Well, you've got to surrender your heart and your life in service of others. And so that book is about how to live with deep content, enjoying confidence, no matter what. Well, you've got to surrender your heart and your life in service of others. And so that book is a much smaller, shorter book. I had this kind of interesting experience a few years ago. I had an NHL hockey coach and an NBA Hall of Fame basketball coach tell me in about a six week period the same thing. Jim, I read Inter-Excellence, loved it. I'd give it to my whole team tomorrow if I thought anyone would read it. The NHL coach told me, Jim, I've been with this team nine years, never seen a guy carrying a book before. And so I was like, okay, I need to write a simpler book because Inter-Excellence is pretty dense. A lot of material and not something for that you just look for easy reading, but more rather something as a manual to reread. And so this book, The Best Possible Life, is aimed at the seventh grade reading level. So more stories, much shorter, and just on how to live the best life, spiritual life from the Bible based perspective. Amazing. Amazing. Yeah, and I agree 100%. I think some of the things that I've been trying to work on myself and I'm not, you know, I don't practice any one particular religion or anything like that. I actually grew up in a household that had a Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu all in the same household. Wow. So yeah, with my stepbrother and my stepfather and mom and dad. So yeah, it was interesting. And while I don't practice any one particular religion, I do consider myself spiritual and I love studying spirituality and some of the best things I've learned are just having, you know, whatever you call a God, or you know, I use the word the creator, right? Having faith and certainty in the creator, in God, right? And so that's been really powerful. And so kind of just trusting, right? And I know in religion, they always talk about having faith, right? If you truly trust in the creator, then why be so nervous and anxious over everything, right? So yeah, I think it's been extremely powerful. And also, kind of yet, not being reactive is another thing I think a lot about. I think so many of us, something happens and we're so quick to react. But how can we pause, not be reactive? That's been a big thing for me as well in terms of spirituality. And there's one more thing that's living my mind. I'm sure I'll remember in a minute, but would love to hear kind of some more of your thoughts around maybe, yeah, what you think about that? Yes, in the book, I talk about how everyone has faith. There's nobody that doesn't have faith. Everyone believes in something. Either you believe there is a God, there's no God, or there's multiple gods. You got one of the three options. And but if you believe there's no God, then you're believing there's something else that's holding the stars in place and spinning the earth and created everything. And so I think it takes as much faith to believe that there was no creator as there was a creator. But that doesn't really matter to me. It's me, the big thing that I want everyone to know whether you're Buddhist, Muslim, atheist is that there's a power beyond you that is holding the stars in place that is growing the grass. It's positive energy that if you connect with, you can get out of your own way and you can get into this flow that's really, really powerful. I also talk about in the book that what you love most is what's running your life. Your heart is a control center of your life. I'm working with your subconscious mind. And what's your, your top love, your greatest love, that's what's running your life because that's where your greatest love and greatest fear we're going to work together to run your life. That's your God, whatever that is that you love most. Yeah, and the other thing I was thinking about before is, is the question I try to always ask myself every day and having kind of my journal is how can I help and inspire more people or thank you creator for guiding me to help and inspire more people, kind of going back to what you said earlier. I think it's really important. And I just, it feels good, right when you help people you feel good, whether you want to call it, you know, good karma or whatever you want to call it. You feel better about yourself, which I think creates a better belief system, maybe for you with your unconscious mind, hey, maybe, maybe I do deserve certain things in my life because I'm a good person. Look, I do good things, right? Yeah, and one thing that I think that you might consider also is, is you can think about, okay, if there is one creator God who created us all with a purpose. Does that God want me to have a relationship with him? And if he doesn't like say there's no God, or then, or he doesn't care about a relationship with you, with you, then it doesn't matter if you say a prayer to him, it doesn't matter because there's no God or he didn't care. But if he does care, it matters a whole lot. And so I would, I would encourage you and everyone watching to say a simple prayer and say, God, if you're real, show me, I want to know you. Yeah, that's really good. Really good. So I know you work with a lot of top performing athletes kind of bringing this back now because we have a lot of people who are not professional athletes, we have a lot of people who are just, you know, in their 40s and 50s and just trying to live a life that they are passionate about, right? I think for me, one of the things I think about is, you know, when I'm an old man looking back at my life, I don't want to have any regrets, which is another kind of question that I like to ask myself in my morning thinking time, which you need to create space in order to even have time to think about these things is when I'm an old man, when I'm an old man, what will I regret not doing or doing and kind of trying to cross those off the list now, you know, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. So, yeah, what else. So for the average bringing it back for the average person now normal person, how can they kind of use your concepts if they're not a professional athlete but they want to not have regrets they want to live a happy passionate purposeful life. You know, what do you think those kind of people can find in your books that could be helpful for them. Well, first of all, this book is more for them than a professional athlete in many ways, because I think the average person in Western culture has more pressure than a professional athlete. And what I mean by that is they have a harder life and a professional athlete, they've got an off season. Most of us don't have off seasons, and they've got coaches that give them advice and give them massages and take care of their body and their mind and everything and most of us don't have all that. And so in many ways, any excellence is meant for these for the rest of us, not the not the pro athletes. And so the voice the book was initially written for pro athletes what I found out is that if you want to be the best professional athlete that you can possibly be it's about human optimization. It's about being the best that you can be as a person and so that works for all of us. And so if you want to think about how can we can all use this stuff. The number one goal every day for and when I give an inter excellence retreat it's the same retreat it doesn't matter if you're a CEO, a homemaker, homeless person or Olympic champion, I'm going to it's exact same retreat because we're all human we all want the same basic thing we all have the same basic fears. And so the number one goal for all of us is to learn and grow. And within that we have four daily goals. The first one is to give the best of what you have today. The second one is to be present, because there's no fear in the present moment. And when you're fully present then you're fearless. The third one is to be grateful, because gratitude as I shared earlier is directly linked to inner peace, which is directly linked to inner strength. And then the fourth one is to focus on your routines and only what you can control. And if we think about the first one giving the best of what you've got every day. One of the coaches I interviewed for the book. He was sharing with me, his name is Frosty Western out of Civic Lutheran University won four national championships and football and he said there's three types of best. There's being the best, which is very rare like national champion or world champion, if ever. And then there's being your best, which is also quite rare to have a personal best day. And then there's your best shot, giving it your best shot, and you can do that every single day. And so that's what we do. That's what he did. And that's what we do. And then within that, it's I think it's super important to realize that some days are going to be what I call the 30 or 40% days. And some days you're not going to have much to give. And if you try and give what you might have, if you expect that you're going to have 100% day and a 30 or 40% day is going to be a day of frustration. And so we're just going to give the best of what we do have. You're going to be like, okay, today's a 30 or 40% day. I don't have much to give and my results may not be good, but that's okay. I'm just going to give the best of what I do have. Can I tell you a story about that? Please. A couple of months ago I was I was in New Jersey and I was I spent 12 nights late nights working on the best possible life for the rewrite coming up in March. And I had two interviews in Manhattan and I thought it was a two hour drive according to the GPS took four hours and it was also driving into rush hour. And I even looked up if I leave at 7am what time will I get there and it said I would get there at nine but I was I was an hour late. And so getting there driving through rush hour Manhattan rush hour traffic was not the most Zen ish experience and I walk in and their whole team's ready to go for the interview. And I was not ready to go. I had a little bit of stress and then I was my thoughts were negative. I was like, oh man, I'm so I'm tired from the last 12 nights. I've got this stress, stressful drive that I just did and now they want to go right now because they've been waiting for an hour. And I was like, I need to use the bathroom. So I go into the bathroom and I was like, okay, I need to get sorted here. And then I thought, what would you do if I was coaching you and I thought, oh, I got to remember the goals for daily goals. And then so the first one give the best of what you guys like, oh, today's a 30 or 40% day. And so I was like, because I was starting to think negative. Okay, I don't have much sleep. I'm tired. I just did this stressful drive. Why am I even doing this? I don't why did I take this interview? Like if my mind was going negative is not going to go good, etc. kind of spiraling. And I was like, wait, no, stop all that. And so I went to two things. One, I should remember my goals and to give the best of what I have. And today's a 30 or 40% day. It may not be very good, but I'm going to give the best of what I have. And then I also remembered principle number one of inter excellence. There's three principles of inter excellence. And number one is everything is here to teach me and help me. It's all working for my good. So remembering that remembering the first goal of the four daily goals was really, really helpful. I've done several hundred interviews since January 12 of this year. And I think of those two in person interviews I had that day where I felt like when I finished those were top 10 interviews. Wow. That's incredible. Yeah. And it's it was just a little reframe of the mind, right? And so I guess the first step for people is to kind of maybe try to catch themselves or become aware when they are in that negative cycle. And then how can they, how can they kind of go back and that's where I think the book is so powerful, right? Because then they can, they have these frameworks that they can go back to like, oh, I'm thinking negative. Okay, wait, stop. What's rule number one? What's rule number two? Let's, let's go through this. You know, another thing is, you know, I think that's the first step in the process of the book. And so the ego is our biggest adversary and keeps us from, from being a fully, fully present and, and fills us with fear and comparison. One of the things that the ego does is takes things personal. So when I think of inter excellence, I think of self mastery. When I think of self mastery, I think of mastering the ego. And when I think of mastering the ego, I think of three things being unembarrassable, unoffendable and unirritatable. And so I'll tell you a story. A little while ago, or I was on this road trip and I was going to go meet a friend for lunch. And I show, I drove an hour and a half to meet the friend for lunch and they were busy, didn't get back to me until two o'clock. And they said, can we switch it to dinner? And I thought, oh, I don't have time to, to do this on your schedule. I'm a busy guy and I've got other people that want to see me and I need to. And so I was like, wait a second, are you taking this personal that, you know, he didn't get back to you in time and now he wants to switch it and whatever. And I thought, yeah, because I was trying to think about, well, what am I going to do now for lunch and dinner? Where am I going to stay tonight? And, you know, who am I going to meet up with? And then I thought, well, taking it personal, that meant that I was not going to have dinner with that person. And, but if I didn't take it personal, then everything's on the table. I can do whatever I want. There's no emotional attachment to one way or the other. And so I thought, if I didn't take it personal, I probably would go to dinner with that person and I would spend the night in this area. And so I decided to stay in that area. Went to dinner, had a great dinner. The next morning I'm going to a coffee shop to have a zoom call with a spiritual mentor and Nick. And then I'm driving in that area. I'm like, this place looks really familiar. And then I was like, oh my gosh, this is, I think this is where I did an inter-exitance retreat with this client friend. And so I texted her and I said, Hey, is this where we did our retreat? And she's like, yes, yes. I said, well, you're in town because it was in her hometown. And she said, yeah, so we met for brunch and it was amazing. And I hadn't seen her for a while. She's pretty busy winning LPGA golf tournaments. But the only reason I was able to meet up with this old friend was because I didn't take it personal. I went through that little tool. Are you taking it personal right now? I love that. Yeah, that's really great. And what you've gone back to what you said before, you said it in a different way, but it kind of reminded me of the old saying that when you believe that life is how it is. It's happening for you, not to you. Right? It's kind of like similar to what you were saying before. And so kind of when you look at that mindset of like, oh, this happened, oh, this didn't happen to me. This happened for me. And how can I make the best out of this situation? Then you went further on and talked about kind of removing this. Am I offended? Am I, is my ego getting in the way here and looking at those things? It sounds like what I love about you is that it's like a lot of spirituality, kind of like inner, it's very much intergame. It's not just like head talk and like, oh, you know, like a normal kind of professional sports team coach might be more like training and physical and, you know, this kind of thing. Whereas you're working a lot more on the kind of spiritual emotional side of things. How did you, is there any kind of maybe books or learnings or things that you studied over the years that helped you become more in tune and learn some of these kind of things that you learn? Obviously, people should get your books and that would be the best way to learn from you. But I'm always curious about like, how did, how did you kind of get into all this stuff? Or were you always kind of like this? Well, I go into the desert and, you know, spending five years full time writing and researching the book. There is some got some authors that I love, like, for example, Malcolm Gladwell, I think he's such a good writer. He's such a good observer of human behavior and human nature. Henry Nowan, also extraordinary. I would love to write like those guys. Yeah, we were talking about kind of any kind of spiritual practices or teachers or things that you've learned along the way. Any kind of learning there. One of the things that I remember when I was in the desert was that when I realized that training your heart is the key. And so two things that I tell professional athletes that are unique to what I do compared to a sports psychologist. And so maybe they want a sports psychologist instead because I use sports psychology, goal setting and visualizing and things like that. But Interexcelence is focused on believes that the heart is the key to your life, your heart and subconscious that we're far more than thinking machines. We've got to get to a deeper level than just your thoughts. We've got to get to your greatest fears and your greatest dreams. And we've got to understand what your heart deeply wants in order to really maximize your potential. And so that's a big difference because sports psychology is really just focused on the mind and ignores the heart. And so when I realized that the heart is the key, then the next obvious question is, well, how do you train the heart? I've never heard anyone say that before. So that was what the majority of the time in the desert was starting to figure out. And I realized that the Bible was going to be the best source for that. So heart transformation, Interexcelence is about heart transformation to go from a self-centered human nature of which leads to self-protection and fear. What are people thinking about me? I need to self-protect to a selfless and therefore fearless nature is that's the training that we do. And it's really training for joy. Most people come to me as a pro athlete and they're coming for essentially happiness. I define happiness as a positive temporary feeling based on what's happening. You get some good transaction, then you're going to feel good. You get a good meal, you're happy, bad meal, you're not happy. You get a good result in whatever you're trying to do, you're happy, you get a bad result, you're unhappy. So they want more happiness because they want better results, they get more happiness. It's a very surface level pursuit that I was caught up in most of my life and that it's easily caught up in too, especially if you're talented because you can get a lot more success in these transactions. And so what I teach people is how to pursue joy because joy is so much more powerful and eternal and helps you become better at everything. Because joy is really the foundation for self-control. If you want to get good at everything and anything, then self-control is so crucial. And it's joy is the foundation for that. We also have Interexcelence has nine disciplines. I abbreviate Interexcelence IX and it stands for Rumanumon 9. There's nine characteristics of the best possible life that I listed earlier. And there's also nine disciplines. And one of those disciplines is to deprive the appetites. And so we need to do hard things. The best possible life has one foot in joy and one foot in suffering. If you want to grow bigger muscles, you got to break them down. If you want to gain wisdom, you have to go through things and embrace things. You can't run from it. You got to face your fears. And you have to, if you want to really get wisdom, to me, I define wisdom is to know who God is and therefore who you are, what he's doing in the world. How you can join in. Or if I'm talking to someone who's never had any spiritual experience or doesn't speak that language, I would say wisdom is keen inside and how to live with absolute fullness of life to have unobstructed views of beauty and connections and possibilities. And so that's what Interexcelence is about. I help people pursue that. And when you pursue that, then your transactions get a lot better as a byproduct. I love that. I love how you kind of describe the levels and talking about like a sports psychologist, because I would say kind of like the first level is realizing that you, you know, sports psychology and, you know, using your mind the right way, maybe developing some mental models or frameworks or whatever. That's one, that's one level. But then the next level, I think the higher level, what you're teaching is kind of getting into the heart and all the kind of all the other things we spoke about on this episode. Jim, this was amazing. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm preordering your, your book on audible as well, the best possible life. Can't wait to listen to that one. Highly recommend people get Interexcelence. Where can people, if people are interested in maybe doing a retreat with you or learning about your books, following you, where can they do that? Yeah, we've got a newsletter. If you go to interexcelence.com, you can sign up for the VIP newsletter and then you'll hear about all the retreats and the workshops and we build houses in Mexico twice a year. That's open to the public with full Interexcelence Retreat attached to it. And it's less than a tenth of the normal cost of an Interexcelence Retreat. And so I'm also on social media, Instagram, Interexcelence Jim Murphy and other social media outlets. So your handles on social media are Interexcelence Jim Murphy. That's Instagram, Twitter or X's Interexcelence and I'm not sure what the rest are. Okay, we'll have, we'll have some things in the show notes here as well for sure. Jim, this was amazing. Thank you so much for the things that you're teaching because it's really, it's really deep man. It's not just the psychological stuff. It's going deeper than that, which I really love. Thank you for all you're doing for not just professional athletes, but for everyday people like us who are listening right now. And yeah, I really enjoyed this and I hope we can do it again sometime. Yeah, I would love to. Thanks so much. So much for having me on your show. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, it would really mean a lot to me. If you would forward this episode along to any friends, family members, anyone that you think that would get value out of it and learn something important. The mission at Peak Performance is to help people prioritize and transform their health. And so if you think someone will get value, please, please, please do forward this episode along to them. 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