Mastering the Mental Framework to Handle Pressure and Achieve Success Beyond Statistics

About training the mental to let go of everything else and be in the moment. My name is Brian. I live in Tucson, and I am a pilot for a major airline. Probably the thing that drove the, uh, interest the most is having kids who are athletes and coaching them. My background is, uh, I spent twenty-five years in the Air Force as a fighter pilot, and, um, learning how to, um, handle stress and perform in, uh, stressful environments is a thing that was ingrained in me for a long time through-throughout my career. And then as I did a lot of youth coaching, seeing the different, uh, approaches, most of which are not really approaches at all, but just, uh, kind of reactionary failures of coaches and parents. You know, I have plenty of failures in my past too, on how to get kids and people in general to understand how to, uh, handle not only adversity, but the pressure of the moment. Really by happenstance, meeting Coach Scruggs and working closely with him before I really knew his background or really even who he was. But immediately when, um, watching him and listening to him interact with the athletes that he was coaching, for someone with an ear to hear, it immediately jumped out as this guy approaches it totally different and very effectively. And so, you know, it was immediately insightful. Uh, the book was very easy to read. He framed it in a biographical sense, so he starts with him as a kid and talks about his childhood, and so it's very engaging from the get-go. Very touching, uh, very emotional, uh, as a parent. Every parent should read this. The insights in here can help you teach them how to approach, um, performance on any level. It was a fantastic book, uh, very readable. I think the part that probably... it's probably the heart of the book in my mind is part two. It's chapters four, five, six, and part two is titled The Battlefield of the Mind. It's how to handle that stress in the moment and really all the competing interests that are fighting to win, unbeknownst to the athlete or whomever, uh, the subject matter is. He elucidates how to identify the competing interests and how to focus on what is important in the moment. And, um, I would have to say that is the, the really the pivotal point of the book. I think the power of the mental framework that Coach Scruggs outlines is that it gets you to focus on what is important. And pretty much everybody agrees, and so do I, that it's process not outcome that you have to focus on. That's the hardest thing. You don't know how to apply the change. That's one thing great about this book, is he, he shows you what you need to do, the words you need to avoid, the statements you need to avoid, the sentiments you need to avoid in order to help yourself and your son or daughter, uh, really thrive in the moment. And so he gives frameworks for what to focus on. He brings it around to how to focus on process and understanding that it's your humanity and the things that drive us all and the thing-- and how we are created in the image of God. He does a great job of showing how you can do that in the moment on the athletic field without being corny. It allows you to focus on what matters most so that you can not only succeed in the moment, but succeed long term. This is a book to show people how to actually make that happen and show you the process of, of doing that and how we really can focus our efforts, get rid of all the pollution, and really help people, young people, become better people through sport, and that's how it's powerful, I think. Uh, I think one of the first things that any reader can do, and this is simple but not easy, like so many things in life, is changing the way... critique of yourself or of your child. What you, what you wanna do is you wanna show the positive alternative. It's in the moment, but when you fail, you don't judge yourself by the stats. Coach Scruggs says the thing, it's success beyond statistics. You have to focus on what the approach was. Were they engaged in the moment? It will really change, uh, the way you approach whatever competitive endeavor you're in and really your life. And the way you engage, if you're a coach, with your athletes, if you're a parent, with your kids, with your spouse. So it's really for everybody.