Todd Stottlemyre on Mastering Your Emotions to Master Your Life

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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today we have an awesome episode. Just flat awesome. Our guest is Todd Stottlemyre. Todd Stottlemyre was a professional baseball player, won multiple World Series championships, most notably the Toronto championships back in 92 and 93.

Won double-digit games, I think nine out of his 15-year career, maybe more. Definitely had a 15-win season, four or five shutouts. I mean, Todd Stottlemyre was an absolute stud as a baseball player. And when someone from his PR team reached out to me about being on the show, I jumped at it because, so basically Todd's on the show because he wrote a book. The book is called The Observer.

It is, but it's not like your normal professional athlete memoir. In fact, it's nothing like your average professional athlete memoir. It's actually a fable. It's a story. It's a narrative in which the lead character is actually a female and it's really interesting.

And what Todd has done with this is weave in like the life lessons that he learned growing up. You know, this is, you know, he grew up at Yankee Stadium. He knew Yogi Berra. He knew Mickey Mantle. Like this is a second generation baseball family, the Stottlemyres.

And actually Todd and his father were the first father-son duo to win 300 games in the MLB. So with that experience comes a lot of highs, a lot of lows, and it's not just sports stuff. I mean, despite all his success on the field, you know, the home life for Todd hasn't always been the best. And what he does with this book is weave through this narrative and fable of like a female business executive and the things that she faces. But the situations, the feelings, the emotions, the challenges are really his stuff.

And man, it's just so introspective. I was like, this is a guy I got to talk to. And he ended up being absolutely tremendous. I just enjoyed this conversation so much. I think you will enjoy it as well.

And I hope you'll connect with Todd and maybe get the book if you want to give it a read. Especially if you're a baseball fan, I think you'll love it. Only because to see the challenges that this woman faces in the book, knowing that really these are a lot of the things that Todd faced in his own career, I think it's really, really cool stuff. Before we get there, I've got to give a shout out to the people that make this podcast possible. And today I want to give, I want to talk about Donna for Agents.

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Let's do it. And I appreciate you having me on for sure. Cool, cool. So, I have to say this and get this out of the way. I'm sure you get this a lot, but I was also...

I was a college baseball player, so I watched you play, and I think it's cool. You're the first pro ball player that I've ever had on the show. I have had a couple professional football players on, but you're the first baseball player. And if it's okay with you, I just have a couple questions I would love to ask you in that arena first before we get into the book and stuff, just because I don't get to talk to many pro guys very often on the show. Yeah, of course.

So, here's my very first question. And maybe this isn't where most people would start, but I'm really interested in how... So, you have this tremendous career. I think it was 37 is when you finally retired. You've hit 15-game winner, World Series championships, done just about everything you could do in the...

What did you have? Three or four shutouts? I mean, you played at the highest level. Okay. Then you hit 37, and it's time to move on to the next phase of your life.

Yeah. I know even as a college player, and then I played some semi-pro, which is basically like bars pay for your stuff, you know, post-college. When it was time to hang them up and move on to the next thing, I really struggled with... There's just something about sports and how in those moments, you're complete adrenaline, complete focus, and then you go into like the office environment or the work environment, and it's just not the same. Like, you can't get back to that place.

So, someone who has played at that level for so long, how did you acclimate yourself? How did you put yourself into the, you know, to be successful? Because you've done, you know, you have your own investment fund. You were a successful, you know, financial asset manager after a career. How did you make that transition?

So, tough. First of all, for me, I think it was a little easier for me from a transition standpoint because, you know, I was running into injuries. I was having a hard time staying on the field. And I really, truly felt like I'd left it all out on the field. Like, I didn't have anything left in my tank.

You know, the problem with a lot of guys, especially in professional sports, is when they get to the end or when they're done, they don't think they're done, but no one wants them, right? And that becomes very difficult because this thing they've been doing their whole life and, you know, from a kid working up to it, it's like they still feel this thing, this, that they can play and they can perform. And, you know, I didn't have that. I had something different where injuries really started to take its toll on my body and I knew it was over. And, but the transition into the next thing, I didn't know the next thing.

I didn't have a plan. And fortunately, the economics of our financial whereabout, because I was so overpaid in the game and we were great stewards and we had, you know, we were basically financially free. And, and because of that, I could take my time. Here's the biggest thing that I think I've found out the difference between sports and business or having a job. In sports, it's like an immediate response.

If you do well, it's also an immediate response. If you don't do well, because there's a crowd, they're either cheering for you or they're booing you in business or having a job. It doesn't really work that way. It's not like, Hey, I did, I had a great meeting. It's like, I don't have anyone respond.

And, you know, sometimes you don't know if that meeting was productive, maybe for another month or another quarter or, or so on and so forth. So you didn't get the immediate response of either doing well or doing poor. So that, I think that's the biggest thing that I found in the biggest difference between sports and business or sports and having a job and sports and life. Although I feel like that the game team sports really reflect business. And I, and I believe that they're, they kind of are very, very similar, uh, in a lot of different ways.

So I, I, I completely agree. I feel blessed. Uh, I was a football and a baseball player my whole life. And, uh, and like I said, played in college and, and I consider that experience to be able to have as much as I did, even such a blessing, uh, for, for my, for the next phase of my life, because, um, it, it really teaches you trust. It teaches you respect.

It teaches you how to operate, um, you know, cause, cause on a team. And I, and I think this is, this is sometimes you can tell when someone has never played team sports, um, I feel like on a sports team where you actually give a hundred percent and everyone is self-awareness, uh, you learn self-awareness because if you're striking out every time or you can't throw the ball over the plate or on foot, you know, football, you can't tackle anybody. It, you become very aware of that. And you kind of, and if your self-awareness isn't up, you kind of get shuffled out of the herd that, you know, the rest of the guys aren't going to put up with that. And, um, you can tell when people haven't had those experiences.

Well, you know, I think, you know, you nailed something there, awareness and clarity and being in the present moment. So important, man. And, and, you know, I always tell people, I say, you know, think about how many people go to work and think about vacation. They get on vacation. They think about work and, and it's really that clarity of being in the present moment and being the best version that you can be.

I, you know, the other things with sports too, is in business. Is it's getting a group of people to pull the same rope, to have the same vision, something that's bigger than themselves. And, you know, when you see companies or businesses, when you see, uh, an assembly of a team of people all working for a common purpose, um, you see great success. I think, uh, a lot of times the breakdowns are, is when individuals on the team, their individual performance is more important than the outcome of the game of the team or of the business. So when you can pull that off, right.

I always, you know, I keep it very simple. I said, listen, I was a starting pitcher. I didn't play shortstop. I didn't play center field. Like my center fielder, he had that.

He took responsibility for his individual role on the team for the betterment of the team. And it's like in business, you have in business, you have, you know, a support staff, you have a leading staff, you have people in the front lines, you have people, you know, in the trenches and in the back. But if everyone individually is very, very focused and harnessing their role and becoming the best version they can of their role because of what it means to the business or what it means to the team, this is where you start to get peak performance. Yeah. So how do you, um, how do you get people aligned?

You know what I mean? Like in, in, in a team format, I think anyone who's listening, who's played, you know, there's, I don't know. I guess I, maybe I'm, I can't articulate it perfectly, but you can really, there's a lot of pressure. There's a lot of peer pressure, um, to, to, to buy into the system. Right.

And if someone isn't, it's immediately obvious that they're not where in business settings, oftentimes if someone's not bought in, they can kind of hide and, and, and, and it can be more difficult to say, okay, uh, uh, Tammy, she's all the way in, but, but Johnny, he's not, sometimes it's very difficult to tell. So, um, you know, kind of as you've, as you've gone, grown in your career and dealt with companies and become a leader in a business world, you know, how do you start? How do you see that? How do you get people pointing in the same direction? That's awesome.

First of all, if, if I'm the leader of the team and, or I'm the manager of this group or whatever, um, and I go and I share my vision with the rest of the team and I tell the rest of the team what we're going to do this year, you might not get all of the buy in. Right. What's unique about a sports team is everyone goes, um, collectively together. And always the vision is always to win a world championship. It's the greatest thing in sports.

Um, but when you get to the business aspect of it and, and inside sports, just so you know, there are guys, everyone on the team also has individual goals, but those individual goals, what they do is by the individuals hitting their goals, they help the team win the world championship. Okay. Now let's go to business and in business, if I'm declaring as the leader of this business, if I'm declaring the vision and where we're, our company's going to go or where we're going to go as a team, that's okay. It becomes great. When I come out of the corner office and I go to the team players, the people on the team inside my business and I sit down with them and instead of telling them what their goals are, what if I turned it around and I asked the question, tell me about your goals.

What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to do here at this company? And then as the leader, my job is to then help them hit their goal. And by me helping them hit their goal, then the mission of the team starts to happen. Now the, the company and the, and the team and the mission and the vision, we can start to accomplish those things.

If I'm the leader and like, once again, instead of forcing the goals on them, how about if I just say, let me figure out what are your goals? What do you want to do? What do you want to accomplish? How do you want to fit in? How do you see yourself on this team?

Let me help you become the best version of you at this company, on your job, on your role. And by doing this, by me helping you, and by me helping you hit your goal, we're going to hit our team goal. You know, man, you know, problem is too many times, Ryan, you know, as leaders, what happens and we have these big titles, right? Hey, I'm the senior vice president. So it's my job to run this team.

And then I start telling my team what we're going to do. Well, it's easy. Someone on the team might be like, hmm, man, sounds great. But like, I'm not in on that. Or, you know, yeah, it's easy for you to say, we're going to do all the work.

You can see all the breakdowns that can happen. But man, it is so much more powerful when I go to the team and say, what do you want to do? What do you want to accomplish? Let me help you do that here. We believe in you.

We're counting on you. We and I empower that teammate and I empower them to want to dream, to want to do more, to want to become the best version of themselves. That's when my team mission starts to explode. Yeah. You know, I love that because a huge issue in my industry, a lot of the people are listening to this, is this old world mentality of, I sign your check, just do what I bleep and say, because, you know, this is your job and you should just be happy that you have a job.

So show up and do it and don't give me any crap. And then what happens is, so you have this mentality and it's starting to change. That's starting to change. But it's still pretty pervasive. The insurance industry still believes it's like 1974.

They haven't yet moved into the, you know, beyond that. But what happens then is you get this belief in philosophy that people don't want to work hard, that it's really tough to find good people, that everyone's kind of out for themselves and they're just looking to hose up your business. And it feels like what you just described is exactly where that disconnect is, is that, yeah, I'm a human being, right? Like, sure. I want to sell as much as I can to make my family money.

And then it's the leader's job. If I'm, if I'm paraphrasing what you said to align that goal of, I want to sell as much as I can to what the company needs to be successful. And in that, if you can figure out how to do that and get those things running in parallel, that's where the real power is that I, that I kind of put that into, you know, it's the psychology of accepting my message and, and how am I, how am I accepting this message? Right. Yeah.

And, you know, if, if I want to get the most out of my team as a leader and I want to be able to empower and encourage them to be independent thinking and what they want to accomplish and then empower the hell out of them to accomplish that, encourage the hell out of them to then, to then achieve those results. But if I'm just dictating and, and that model is broken and that's, and you'll see it everywhere, not just in the insurance industry, but you see people showing up for work, just checking in. And here's what happens if they work nine to five. And I'll just use that for an example. They don't really work nine to five.

They don't put in, they don't put, they're not all in. They're not all the efforts, not there. The grit's not there. The discipline's not there. The commitment's not there.

The passion is not there. They don't feel like they're living their purpose. Let me tell you something. Most people that are just checking into their job, they checked out by two, but their pay stub or their check in, check out says nine to five, but by two, they quit performing in most cases, right? And by three, three 30, you got to start to get a lot of water cooler conversations.

And by five, four 30, what happens? Everyone's staring at the clock and it's kind of like, and at four 30, they're already planning dinner when they got 30 minutes to produce and to get better at their job. I couldn't even imagine as an athlete being in the seventh inning of a game, trying to figure out what I'm going to do after the game. Cause the second, the second, my focus goes to something beyond my performance, I start performing very, very poorly and I'm going to get exposed in, in the sports world. Yeah, I, I, I agree with you, man.

So, um, I want to, uh, I just want to, there's a question I want to ask you. It's a little off topic when we talk about, but before it leaves my coconut, I want to make sure I ask it. Um, and, and, and if this is, um, if this is a, uh, uh, uh, a lazy question, you, you can let me know that too. But, but I, I just, it's something that's always been interesting to me. Um, when I played any sport, uh, I was always, um, and after, this is more like after I got done and kind of thinking back to those, to the times that I played, um, um, I would dissect some of the moments where I felt I played the best.

I was at my, my highest levels. And in those moments, some of the things, one of the characteristics that, that I felt was the most common was, um, and I don't know how to describe it any better than this. Uh, have you ever seen the movie for love of the game with, uh, Tom, uh, not Tom. Um, oh my gosh. Uh, he's in, I'm, he's in water.

Kevin Costner. Oh my gosh. He's the Kevin Costner. So in that movie, he's getting yelled at by all these Yankees fans. He's on Detroit.

And he has this moment where he says, uh, he, he, he says, clear the mechanism, which is kind of hokey to me, but, but the idea was he shuts out. He goes from super loud and they're blowing horns at him and they're yelling at him to completely calm and quiet. And, uh, I'm interested since you've literally stood on the mound that the movie is based out of, and you've had 70,000 people both yelling for you as a, you know, and against you, how did you pull yourself in, into that moment and be as present as you needed to be, to be as precise as you needed to be, you know, in your career? How did you, how did you do that? How did you make yourself that focused?

So they call it, you know, I call it getting in the zone. Um, you know, there's some science that says, talks about how it's about getting into flow. Right. And it's where, it's where you have a hundred percent focus at the task at hand with literally where you silence and block out literally everything else. And when this happens, when you get that intense on your focus, I can, I can tell you that.

And I've told stories about this. I have literally pitched in games, um, sold out crowds, playoff atmosphere, people on their feet, yelling and screaming, waving towels. And literally what I, while I stood on the mound, it was as if I was in the stadium all by myself. Can't hear a thing. Literally cannot hear a thing.

Literally cannot place a face on a fan or anything else. Because the focus is so intense, uh, and the goal of what we're trying to accomplish, you literally take your performance into a state of flow or getting into the zone. It's where your focus and, and the intensity and the intention of what you're trying to accomplish. It's where it's, I call it silencing the rest of the world. By the way, this is also where peak performance happens.

This is where, you know, my father was so good at it. Um, he would get into flow watching a program on television. You could literally stand behind him, yell into his ear and he would not hear you because he had you so blocked out because he was used to taking his mind and concentration into a state of flow that he could literally get there pretty, pretty, uh, pretty fast and, and then stay in it. Um, so it's crazy. Um, but that state of flow and getting into the zone, that's a place where you literally consciously perform at your very best.

Um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, at the time I woke up on game day for me, the day I was going to pitch. And as a starting pitcher, you, you, you, you certainly couldn't do this every day. You'd be exhausted and, and worn out. But, uh, every five days by the time when I started waking up, uh, or when I woke up on game day, I got into the habit. I didn't want to waste one ounce of energy mentally, emotionally, or physically.

I wanted to store all of my energy, uh, for my performance that night at seven Oh five. So one of the ways that I protected my energy is I didn't watch any television because I didn't want to emotionally get caught up into anything that was coming my way. Okay. And I also didn't have any conversations with anyone, no text, no email. Of course they didn't have that back then, but no text, no email, no phone calls, no conversations with family.

And then I would get to the locker room about noon, seven hours prior to game tank game time. And the reason I wanted to get there so early is I wanted to get in my environment that was protected. See, all of my teammates knew that on game day, I wasn't going to have any conversation. They already, they knew my routine, no conversations. There was no sense even asking me a question.

I wasn't going to answer them. I wasn't going to respond. And I just went into this place of being very quiet with myself, just getting centered. And then the, the, and then from noon until seven Oh five, the routine really started. And it was like a slow road, a slow road routine because, you know, it was a seven hour period.

And the last thing I wanted to do was get too high in my focus or intensity at two and waste and deplete energy. Right. So I learned over the course of 15 years is, Hey, what's the perfect routine for me so that when I hit that mound at game time, mentally, emotionally, psychology, from a psychological standpoint, from a biology standpoint, I could get myself into the state of flow, total focus, total concentration so that I could perform at a peak level that night. And that kind of takes me into, into the book because there's some themes in the book that follow a lot of what you're saying. So I think it's easy.

Someone who's listening to this can probably say, you know, geez, you know, Todd, I can completely see that for a pro baseball player, but you know, I sell insurance for a living or I'm an underwriter at an insurance carrier. Like what is flow really do for me? And, you know, I got to show up every day and it's kind of monotonous maybe, or feels that way at times. How does that work for me? Like, how do I take that and apply that to, you know, my everyday business life to be successful?

So I always say that, you know, there's two, three really important things, functions that you have to perform on a daily basis. Maybe it's five max. I want to, I want to identify when those three to five things are going to happen during my workday. Maybe the first one is at 9 30 or 10 AM that morning. So I know that going into that, I start preparing mentally and maybe it's a closing, maybe it's a closing of a contract or what have you, right?

Hey, look, I can't have this mind all over the place and being scattered and not dot the I's and cross the T's and make a mistake on a contract. So I know that if I can identify, you know, what are those three to five key things that I got to accomplish today? That is the most important. It's the most important part of my day. It's the most important thing I do that day for my highest performance and for that office and for that team.

Well, and here's the other thing is, is that then when there's a gap in time between moments, I need to pull back, rejuvenate a little bit, make sure I gain the clarity. You know, I'm not a big believer in grinding and working 24 hours a day and this and that. I think that it leads to burnout and this and that. But it is like, for an example, for me personally, if I have a meeting at noon and then I'm going to do a podcast at two and my meeting is over, my 12 o'clock meeting is over at one, between one and two, what I don't want to do is spend a whole bunch of energy on another subject because I want to make sure I have clarity and awareness and I'm preparing to give my best version of myself on that podcast at two. That podcast might be over at two to three.

Maybe I have to be on a stage now at 7 p.m. that night to speak to a group of entrepreneurs. I want to make sure before I step on that stage, I don't want to come out of a meeting and go right to the stage, you see, because I'm not going to have time to prepare my mind, get clarity, awareness, get totally present and really sort out is where are my peak performance? What are my peak performance thoughts that I want to share with this group? I want to prepare for it. Look, if you don't prepare for a meeting or for an event during the day, the most important things, if you don't prepare, when the opportunity shows up, you're going to miss it.

So when I think of preparation, I think about preparing. Now, an opportunity might pop up because I prepared, because I prepared my mind, because I prepared my emotions, because I've gotten present and I've created this awareness. When the opportunity shows up, I'm ready to act on the opportunity. If I did not prepare, I might miss it. I heard two things in there that I think are like, if this were DJ Khaled, they'd be major keys right on Snapchat or whatever he does.

I completely agree with you. And actually, this idea of building space in your day to let your mind reset or slow down or whatever or clarify, it's something that I struggle with for sure. I'm the kind of person who is, this task is done. Let's go, what's the next tab open on my computer? Let's start dealing with that task and let's deal with this one.

And then I get to 3.30, 4 o'clock in the afternoon and I'm fried physically and mentally, just completely fried and kind of useless for the rest of the day, which doesn't always work well when you've got a seven and five-year-old at home and they want to play and it impacts your whole day. And I have started, I don't even know if I've done this consciously, but I have started when I feel myself kind of tipping over into that, I take, I, you know, my, my, my office, my COVID office is in my basement. So I'll walk upstairs in the house and I don't know, just do anything, turn on, turn a simple podcast on and just sit there and listen to some podcast about some topic just to like reset my brain off of everyday stuff or, or just be in silence. And sometimes I just go for drives for 20 minutes around the neighborhood just to pull it back in because, because, because, because I think this is an interesting idea. I'm really interested in your perspective on this.

If you don't take those moments too, right? If it's just constantly full, what I find is when the opportunity, when, when an opportunity does come in out of, out of left field or whatever, you're not, you can't, you can't take advantage of it because you're like, I got 17 other things going on and my brain can't process the fact that, wow, this, this thing just, you know what I mean? Like if you, if there's not space in your day, then you've kind of, you've kind of closed yourself off to serendipity. Does that make sense? A couple of things here.

You said, you said some valuable things. Number one is like, I would stress to people, get your days, right. You got to get your days, right. And it's like, and if you can get your days, right. Cause I always tell people, I said, listen, a day is nothing more than a miniature version of what your life looks like.

Do you want days of chaos and a life of chaos, a life of always being late, a life of never performing at your peak, at peak levels. It's like, so I would say, get your days right. Now I always compare and, and look, I'm, and I'm sure there's a lot of science that that's behind what we're talking about too. But think about this for a second and athlete, um, and professional sports. I'll talk kind of through there to like in spring training, two to three hours of practice.

It's about what it is. And, and it's very intense and very focused. Um, and then the games, whether it's football game, basketball game, whether it's a baseball game, whatever, what, you know, it could be a sport, a game, most games, what do they last anywhere from two and a half, three, three and a half, four hours. A game doesn't last 12 hours. How about a surgeon?

You know, a lot of surgeries, um, you can look at it and say, Hey, this might, this surgery might be an hour. This one might be two hours, three hours. I don't know any surgeons that, that do surgeries that last 24 hours. Right. Go to a movie.

How long is the movie? It's like two to three hours, maybe two hours, hour and a half, 90 minutes. The highest performers in the world. Get really focused and really, and intensify this focus and get to the task at hand and get into a state of flow, get into the zone. And, and it's a hundred percent attack attention on the task at hand for short periods of time.

What am I talking about anywhere from 60 minutes, um, maybe up to 180 minutes, but at some point through 60 minutes to 180 minutes, you're going to start to lose concentration. You're going to start to lose focus. This is where we got to go take a time out. And sometimes a 20 minute break, like you talk, it could be taking a drive. It could be taking a walk.

It could be going to the office, closing your door and maybe putting on music or some, something to get recentered. Now, once I've come out of it and I've gotten recentered, guess what? I got to, if I have another meeting or something that's really important and I got to perform again, I have to work my way back to that place of peak performance, not a light switch. It's not something we can turn off and turn on. See, once I come out of state of flow, once I come out of the zone, once I come out of this place where I'm literally focused in becoming and being the best I can, once I come out of it, you know, there's some science that says it might take you 17 to 20 minutes to actually get back to the same state.

So that way, you know, that mindset and that thought process as a starting pitcher in major league baseball, if I lose my focus and concentration for, for literally one minute, science says it could take me 17 minutes to get back to the place I just left. Yeah. By the way, in that 17 minute window of leaving it, I am going to get killed. On that baseball field. So there, so it's kind of like, it's this ongoing thing.

It's this ongoing coaching. And the second you feel like your mind is starting to get distracted, right? It's called time out on yourself. Pull yourself back. It's, it's really observing where my thoughts taken me and are my thoughts driving my emotions?

Are my emotions driving my actions? And it kind of relates to the book that I wrote because it was such a huge focus of mine. And, and so, I mean, there's a lot in there and we're talking about a lot of different things, but, you know, it boils down to is what does your day look like? You know, which is why one of the things I, in the book, I call it the championship hour. Yeah.

What do you do the first hour of the day? All right. And I'll give you an example. You know, you see, and you've watched this and we've all seen this and, and, and, and, and maybe somebody that's listening, they've been there, you know, you kind of, the alarm goes off, you hit the snooze buzz, snooze button, you get another nine, 10 minutes, you hit it again. And then by the time you get up right now, I got to race to the shower and coming out of the shower and throwing my clothes on, you know, and I'm racing out the door.

Cause I'm going to be late to work and I'm either putting my makeup on or I'm shaving or I'm doing whatever I'm doing on the way to work. And, and maybe I grabbed a protein bar, I grabbed something and I'm eating it on the way to work. And then I get to the work and now what, what's happened all of a sudden, my mind, my body, my energy is in this like craziness. And the opposite of that is what if I got up and in the first hour, I prepared and worked on my mind. I worked on my emotions.

I worked on my state of being, I worked on my physical fitness. I prepared me for what's going to happen during the day. See, cause I'm not going to be in control of everything. That's going to come at me during the day, but I am in control of that first hour. Now it becomes a decision and choice.

What am I going to do with it? How am I going to live my life? Yeah. Live my life on the run. And see, that's the beauty of this is like, if we can get our days, right.

Get the first hour of your life every morning, get that one right. Cause that's going to prepare you for the day. And then we'll start to get our days, right. And as we get our days, right. We start to align ourselves with our better self.

Yeah. I love that concept. I completely agree with you. I changed, I changed the course of my work life about seven years ago. I started getting up at 5am and I would hashtag on Twitter, not, not for any accolades or expose, just, just, it was like a check for myself.

Like I got to go out in the public and timestamp I'm up. And my only purpose of that was in, sometimes I would read, sometimes I'd just take a long ass hot shower and get my brain going. Sometimes I would, you know, sit, sit and sometimes I'd just sit there and think sometimes I would, I would get into my day a little bit if I was feeling good. So it, but going from like waking up at the last minute, like you described to, to 5am and 5am is arbitrary. It's a different number for everybody.

That's what it was for me that, that has really these last seven years of my life changed my productivity, my mindset, my ability to function throughout the day. Um, I, I, man, I, I couldn't agree with you more there. I couldn't. Yeah. It's so good.

It's so powerful. And it's, you know, it's one of the tools and it's like, it, it kind of, it's that, it's that same mindset of what am I preparing for? See, and, and, and because our days can get crazy and, and life is going to come at us and life's going to come at us, whether we like it or not, as we enter into the workforce and as we go through our day. Um, but how do we enter into it? What kind of mindset do we enter the day with?

Right. What kind of, what kind of emotional, what kind of state of being where, where are we? What kind of confidence, what kind of preparation, how are we taking on the day? And if you take on the day on a hurry and as it comes at you, you know, you're going to see a lot of like, just craziness, frustration and, and overwhelm. And it's like, man, every day is like this craziness.

Um, so I would tell you, you know, and you're right. 5am is, is a great time and works for you. For some people, it might be 4am others. It might be six. And, uh, you know, I, I, I just say, you know, start your day with you.

You're important. Man, you are, you are so important. Aren't you? And, and when we don't make ourselves important, where we work on us, where we grow ourselves from the inside out, where we work on our minds and we work on our physical fitness and we work on our clarity and awareness, man, we're, we're, we're going to, we're going to miss out on some of life's greatest moments. Yeah.

Well, I want to be respectful of your time. So I know that you have a lot going on, but I, I want to transition these last, these, these minutes that we have together, you know, uh, I want to talk about the book. So first question and, and, uh, and, and just everything you've done, this wouldn't, this is not a memoir, right? It's not, uh, it's not, you know, uh, uh, you know, it's not the classic book. If someone were to say jock athlete, success guy writes book, this is not the book that I think most people would picture.

But, uh, you know, like I said, in the beginning, I started reading it a few days ago at 5am and I re I really like it. I, I, I think I love the format and I, I'm not saying really like, like I'm surprised. I just, I, I, I think the format, the, the narrative, you know, the, the way you have it as a narrative, like just how did you come up with maybe tell us a little bit about the book, give everyone kind of the high level and then, you know, kind of get into how, how you came up with the formatting of this. Cause I don't, I, it feels it's unexpected. I think it in a really positive way.

Yeah. You know, I'm going to answer the second one first book started because, um, you know, this book and I've had a lot of people say, Todd, why didn't you just do a memoir? Yeah. Right. And, and I think it is a kind of a shock that I wrote this fable.

The main character is a woman. She has a son, you know, she really looked up to her father. I would tell you that this story of what this lady entrepreneur goes through, um, a lot of the story and a lot of the plots and themes throughout the book was based on true life events of things that I went through personally. Okay. Now, why didn't I just do it as a memoir?

Why did I build characters and make it a fable? I wanted it to be relatable for every reader that picked up the book. And what I mean by this is I wanted to strip away all the excuses of someone saying, if I wrote it as a memoir, yeah, Todd, that's easy for you to say, but you lived out your childhood dream. You had great parents. You had a great upbringing.

Your, your playground was Yankee stadium. You knew Yogi Bear, Mickey Mantle, all these hall of famers. And, and, and you got to get access to all these people for your benefit. That's true. Yeah.

That's true. Um, and, and so the other thing, the re other reason why I wanted to do it this way was I wanted to get, make sure that I was vulnerable. So for an example, it's kind of funny to me, but it's like, I can tell a true life event story around the character in the book and point to the character in the book. Yeah. So it allowed me to be more vulnerable, more truthful with the audience.

How did the book, how did I even get to this book? And, and Ryan, I'll tell you, it was 1993. And this was after growing up with my, my father was a legendary, you know, pitcher for the New York Yankees and, and grown up at Yankee stadium and monument park being our monkey bars for my brothers and I, and going to the stadium every day and standing in the outfield grass next to Mickey Mantle. It's like a dream was inspired there that, you know, we wanted to follow in our father's footsteps and, and we were able to do that. And, and then if you fast forward to 1993, um, I'm a pitcher with the Toronto blue Jays.

We just won our second world championship and we won 92. And then we want to get in 93. Now, if you'd have looked at me from the outside world, you'd have been like, guy grows up in Yankee stadium, lives out his childhood dream. He's in his late twenties. He's making millions of dollars.

And now he's a two-time world champion. It's like, geez, look at this guy. There was a problem. The problem was in the winter of 93, uh, I look in the mirror. I can't stand the person looking back at me.

And even though outwardly the outside world, I looked great. The inside world, what was going on inside of me was darkness. And it really stemmed from 12 years prior to that moment. And 12 years prior to that moment, I was 15. My little brother was 11.

He was on his third bout of leukemia and the doctors came and they said his only chance for long-term survival was a bone marrow transplant. I happened to be the perfect match. I gave him the bone marrow transplant. My marrow eventually put him into a coma that eventually took his life. Tragic.

It was like, imagine, imagine being a parent having to bury your 11-year-old son. My parents went through hell with it. It was tragic. It was so sad on her family. For me, of course, sadness.

I just lost my 11-year-old brother. I was 15 at the time. And he was like my best friend. But there was two other emotions I left the hospital with. I left with hate.

I hated the world. I hated the world because it didn't seem fair. I was like, how can my 11-year-old? It's not fair that he was only here for 11 years. And then the other emotion I had was guilt.

I was guilty as hell. I was like, my marrow put him into a coma. And I started blaming myself. Now, here's what I would tell you. I rewired that guilt and that hate inside of me because I played that story in my mind and in my heart.

I played it over and over and over. So what happened? It started to become who I was. So every time I was competing and I couldn't control an outcome, hate and guilt would come up out of me and come to the surface, anger, frustration, explosions. And what would happen?

It would ruin the mastery of that moment. It was always keeping me from being the best version of me in that moment. And I got to a place, Ryan, where I wanted help. See, I believe that in order for someone to improve, they have to want to improve. For someone who wants to maybe get off drugs and alcohol, they have to want to.

For someone to battle suicide, you know, looking at both sides of the fence, you have to want to live in order to live. See, I wanted help. I reached out to my guru. A guy's name is Harvey Dorfman. He wrote the mental game of baseball.

I called him up. I said, Harvey, I said, this is Todd Stottlemyre. He says, I've been waiting on your call. I didn't even know he knew who I was. And I said, Harvey, I said, I need help.

He goes, I know. We booked a two-hour meeting. That two-hour meeting lasted 12 hours that day in a hotel room. In the first hour, here's what he asked me. He said, would you do it again?

I said, do what? He said, would you give that bone marrow transplant to your little brother all over again? I said, man, I said, I do it every minute, every hour, every day. I do it over. And I just broke down in tears.

And he had broken me. And he got right in my face, really close. And he said, Todd, did you already do that? I said, yeah. Did you do everything you could do?

He said, yeah. He said, Todd, you're not God. And you didn't kill your little brother. You did everything you could. He says, you need to forgive and you need to let it go.

And I broke again. And it was almost like it was the first time someone had given me permission to let it go. Someone had reminded me that I did everything I could do. In the last hour of that meeting, here's what he said. He said, listen, for the next seven days, I want you to do a challenge.

And this is a great seven-day challenge for the audience. Here it is. He says, you're not allowed to respond or react to any stimulus that gets your mind going or gets your heart, your emotions. So if something's bothering you, instead of reacting, he goes, you're not allowed to react. You're not allowed to respond.

He says, you can only document. He said, you see, Todd, I need you to observe your thoughts. And I need you to observe your emotions and document. In seven days, we're going to build a tool chest of principles and models to not only help you get into peak performance, but when you can't control a situation to help you stay in peak performance, not only on the field, but off the field. This was the making of the observer.

This was the making of the observer. And it was really, it was my mess. It was my mess of explosions, not being the best version of myself, costing our team to lose games. It was my, I was not only on the field, but off the field. And because I wanted to be a better human being, it's my message now that I can deliver because I was able to overcome.

And even though I was able to overcome, I'm 55 today. That happened in 1993. And it's been a work in process. So here's what I would tell you. Inside the story of the observer is over 50 different high-performing principles and models, peak performance ideas.

Every one of those changed my life. And for the reader, as they go through the story to grab onto a model or principle, there's an opportunity that if that shoe fits for you, it could be life-changing. So, you know, I just think there's a better way. And if we look at 2020, Ryan, and we come out of that now, but if you take a look at 2020, look at the hate all over social media when it came to politics, when it came to race. When it came to COVID, when it came to business, look at people's reactions.

People's reactions are just telling you who they are on the inside. That was me. My reactions were horrible. They were explosive. See, those knee-jerk reactions will tell you what people are going through on the inside.

See, my inside needed fixed. And it was all about becoming the observer of how I think and how I feel. And as a human being, if you don't like the state of being in, the state that you're in, you can change it. And there are tools in this book to help you change your state. I appreciate you sharing that story with us so much.

I mean, I didn't know. And that's very meaningful. I think that's incredible. I think it's incredible for a bunch of reasons. One, because to me, the timing of the book and just that story, 2020 was, I think, I think it exposed a lot of things for a lot of people.

I think it brought things, emotions, feelings, events that you haven't dealt with, relationships that you haven't dealt with. I think it, beliefs that you haven't dealt with. I think it was an uncovering. It was like a mound of dirt had been pushed off of us. And now all of a sudden, we got to deal with all this stuff that we were able to bury for so long.

And it impacts your business life, for sure. It impacts your family life, your relationships with friends, with colleagues, with a, but really, you know, I firmly believe that our mind and our body are two separate things. And that the relationship, I think, and this is really where you have gone in this conversation, and it's very meaningful to me. I feel like the relationship between our mind and our body is something that we don't spend enough time on. I think we take for granted that they're the same thing.

I don't believe they are. And I think we have to work on that relationship. And a lot of these emotions that are buried down in, they're not necessarily your mind. They're things that are buried into your body. They're stresses and muscles that you didn't even know were there from when you're 15 years old.

And these are the kind of concepts and tools and methodologies that help us work through them, which isn't necessarily easy, but certainly seems worthwhile to me. That's why that first hour of your day, spending time with yourself to take inventory of how do you think? How do you feel about certain things? What would you do differently? What would you change?

How can I learn? How can I get better? See, I mean, without that peace and without that time of working on us, then we never get to a place to really live out the gifts that we've been granted. And we've all been given different gifts and different levels of gifts. And, you know, it's just so powerful that literally when you'll stand back from yourself, it's like, man, because look, you can lie to a lot of people, but you can't lie to yourself how you're thinking.

Right. And it's like, you can, you can, you can tell people that things are great, but on the inside, man, you're going through turmoil. You know, you're going through turmoil. And, and, and, and as we, as we, you know, as we become aware of this, as we become conscious of our thoughts and our feelings, we have the power to change those if we don't like those. One of the tools I have in the book is called the 180 degree mindset.

It's one of my favorite ones. I had to use it on the mound all the time. The second a negative thought in my clarity and awareness of understanding and being aware of my thoughts, the second I would have a negative thought, I would call time out on myself, literally time out and be like, no, no, no, no. And it'd be like, what's the opposite of that? What's 180 degrees from that negative thought?

A positive thought. Okay, now if I have the positive thought and I'll begin to channel my focus now on the, on the positive thought, I'm driving my energy and my focus and attention towards the positive thought to now to positive feelings and emotions to now a positive action. Now rewind it. Negative thought, focus on the negative thought, emotionally feel like crap. And then actions that then back up these bad emotions and these bad thoughts.

Knee jerk reactions of hate all over the internet. If, listen, Ryan, if you have an opinion about something or a political opinion or religious opinion or a business opinion or a COVID opinion, and I'm on the opposite side of that. Something happened in 2020 instead of saying, ah, and me trying to understand what happened. My knee jerk reaction is I got so passionate around something that my insides, just like me, would come to the surface and my knee jerk reaction was hate. Like, screw you.

You're wrong. I can't even believe you think that way. I can't believe you would do that. I don't ever want to see you again. That happened all over 2020.

I mean, I never, I didn't plan the timing of the book. I'm not that smart. But the timing of this book of what we're going through, not only as a nation, but as a world, it's kind of like, I live that. I live that darkness. I live that if it was my way or the highway, man.

It was like, I was all in on me. And if you didn't like it, screw you. And didn't, aren't we going through this today? Instead of whatever, whatever happened to the golden rule. Ryan, I want to treat you how I want you to treat me.

What the hell ever happened to that? And it's crazy. And it's this awareness and this clarity of how we're thinking and how we're feeling and be able to stand back from it. Spend time with ourselves and alter our thoughts and our emotions and our strategies to what we want to become and who we want to become and what we want to achieve. So important.

Yeah. Wow. The book is The Observer. We can get it wherever books are sold. I'm also going to have a link for everyone listening.

You can go to the show notes if that's easy for you. I'll have links to the book or whatever. But you can also just go right to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, all the places where books are sold. I highly, highly recommend The Observer. I think that, I think for 2021, you know, this is exactly the type of book, the concepts in the book are, you know, I mean, just, we didn't get into the nitty gritty, but I kind of, you know, what I kind of wanted out of this was to show everyone who's listening the concepts and who you are and have you talk about them versus just, you know, read the book.

You know what I mean? I didn't want to hear the book. I wanted to hear from you. And man, this has just been absolutely tremendous. I appreciate you so much and your thoughts.

And I hope that everyone listening, just go pick this book up. Like, you're going to be happy that you did. Like I said, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm three chapters in and I'm blown away. I'll have it done by the end of the weekend. And, and, and I've just, I, I'm, I'm impressed, man.

I'm so happy for you in that, you know, this isn't just another memoir, you know, from a, from a, from an athlete. This is, this is, this is really good stuff. So, so thank you. Brian, you know, uh, I appreciate you and having me on because you give me a chance to, to connect with, hopefully connect with your audience. And, you know, this was, this was hell I went through and, and, and misery and pain.

And it was my mess. And, and it's really become my message and my ministry to, uh, all I want to do is connect with the people who want more and, or want something different, or maybe they're in a dark place like I was, or maybe they're not in a dark place. They just want higher performance and really dedicated my life that, um, you know, the first half of my life was about me. I want to make the second half of my life about helping other people achieve everything that they want to achieve, perform to their highest levels, accomplish that. But more importantly, to find a place of peace and love and joy and happiness and fulfillment, because fulfillment is the greatest wealth that we can ever, that we can ever, uh, discover.

Yeah. I, thank you, man. I appreciate you. I wish you nothing but the best. I hope the book knocks it out of the park and, uh, you know, I'll be a huge supporter and I have a good feeling that, uh, everyone listening to the show will be as well.

Thank you. See ya, see ya, see ya. You go fuck yourself with your fat fucking ass. Do you want to have a few drinks and smoke a joint, Bubbles? Yes.

Yeah, see ya, see ya, see ya. See ya, see ya. Do you want to have a few drinks and smoke a joint, Bubbles? Yeah. Close twice as many deals by this time next week.

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