The Inner and Outer Game of Life [Part 2]

 What step will you take tomorrow to elevate your mental game? Whether it's seeking out a mentor, challenging self-imposed limits, or starting a reflective journaling practice, this conversation is an invitation to commit to mental conditioning with the same rigor as one commits to physical training. Embrace the process-oriented mindset we advocate for, letting go of outcome dependence and cultivating an intrinsic motivation that drives growth. 

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Chapters

• 0:36 Developing Your Inner Game
• 9:23 Developing a Stronger Inner Game

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:37

So welcome back to the show we are discussing in the last podcast, in this one, the difference between the inner game and the outer game. We have to know what game we're playing in life that if we don't know we might get stuck. We might get stuck in the outer game of approval, of acknowledgement, of achievement, where our sense of okayness, our psychological safety, our ability to expand our capacity and build a stronger self-concept is conditional. Here's the thing how much of sports and life is mental? I asked this to a coach just recently, a club coach who has been around and is very successful coach. He started off by saying 50% and then he said 60% and then he said 70% and it wasn't long until a few more minutes. We're in a conversation. We both realized, wow, the game is 100% mental and if you're trying to put a number on how much of the game of life, of sports, is mental, that's below 100%. That means you're just trying to compare your physical capabilities to your ability to sustain a specific mindset for success. An athlete's performance, a businessman's performance, in any one moment is more dependent upon their ability to manage their goals, their motivation, their confidence, their inner domain, their mental toughness, their emotions and their faith. My question is then how much time are you spending on developing your inner game 5%, 10% and is there a way to integrate your life and integrate practice and integrate your ability to be aware of the inner game and to develop that while you are competing, while you are practicing on a day in, day out basis, that helps you to reach your potential? The development of the inner game and why it's so important is because it is positive, impactful and, most importantly, it is permanent and unconditional. If you understand and know how to develop your inner game the inner game of life, of sports, is happening inside of you then you become bulletproof. You can build confidence that is spontaneous. You don't have to fake it until you make it. You become what you create internally.

Speaker 1: 3:42

So when you're taking on a challenge, when you're taking on a goal, when you're competing in a high stakes environment, you're willingly putting yourself in situations and environments that's going to test your capacity, that you are going to have to stretch your current capacity or your current self-concept, where you're going to be met with resistance, where you're going to need mentorship, and this is going to help you to develop your inner game when you're facing that challenge, when you're facing the struggle, when you're facing the opponent, you know that you have to expand in the face of that challenge. You have to expand in the face of fear. So we'll talk about this in multiple different ways in podcasts to come, but I wanna introduce something. I think about mindset, I think about attitude. I think about your attitude, and what your attitude comes down to is your ability to respond to a circumstance and your ability to place meaning on circumstances that are unfolding in front of you.

Speaker 1: 4:59

See, here's the thing that nobody can take away from you Is the development of your inner game, which means that it doesn't matter how things are turning out out there. You can consciously decide how you're gonna respond and what you're gonna make it mean to develop a stronger, more resilient, more courageous, more confident, more faith-filled internal domain or self-concept. Nobody can take that away from you, which means that things can be however they're gonna be out there, and it doesn't change how you feel about yourself, about your potential in the next moment. The last moment can go however it went, and it doesn't derail you. You can use it as information to build a stronger self-concept.

Speaker 1: 6:00

Your self-concept is how people view you, based upon how you respond. Are you hanging your head? Are you keeping your head up? Your self-concept is who you believe you are, regardless of how that last moment just went. Your self-concept is how you are acting habitually your patterns, your behaviors, your current actions. Your self-concept is who you aspire to believe you can be, who you know you can become your future self.

Speaker 1: 6:35

This is the accumulation of your self-concept, and when we relentlessly focus on what we can control and the development of the inner game, we give ourselves this ability to compete for what we call your center, to develop this edge in life where you don't have to win to feel like a winner, but yet you have an uncommon, unmatched will to compete, where things do not have to be a certain way for you to be okay, and you're able then to release attachment to specific outcomes, which allows for you to compete at a level that other people can't even fathom. You become more process-oriented rather than the results driven. You focus on the things that are gonna get you there, that are gonna get you to the goal. So this is about understanding that the development of the inner game means that we walk into environments, we walk into situations, we take on goals and challenges that are going to expand your capacity. It's going to force growth. We do this willingly. This is the development and the understanding of the inner game.

Speaker 1: 8:00

And so my question to you becomes if you wanna create an uncommon will to compete, one does not depend upon extrinsic conditions, on other peoples approval, on whether or not you won the game, but on your ability to just develop your inner domain. What are you doing? What are you going to do tomorrow morning when you wake up? To develop your inner game, to orient yourself to the development of your self-concept, so you're able to release your attachment to specific outcomes, so you're not putting your self-worth in your specific role or whether or not you won the game, but you are relentlessly developing an internal domain that's unconditional, that's permanent, that's positive and then, most importantly, is impactful. See, because you have a uniqueness, you have something to bring to the world that is uniquely yours, and you're not going to ever find it in extrinsic motivators like accomplishment, achievement and approval. You're going to find it by tapping into the development of your inner game.

Speaker 1: 9:23

So my challenge to you is to sit back with yourself for a moment and ask yourself if I was going to develop a stronger orientation to my inner game, what would that look like?

Speaker 1: 9:38

What would I start with? What is one thing I can start with tomorrow to help me to build a stronger orientation to my inner game? Is it reaching out for some sort of support or coaching? Is it picking up a different belief about yourself? Is it some journaling that you might want to engage in to begin to explore what is something you're going to do to develop the inner game? Remember, the game of life and the game of sports is 100% mental. Anything less than bringing your 100% attention to it, just like you can bring 100% of your attention to your physical capabilities and then the development of skill, you should bring 100% of the development of the inner game and your mental performance. Anything less than that is leaving potential on the table. So I encourage you to work towards one step, one thing that you can do that's going to help you bring an orientation to your inner game Approaching life, approaching sports from the Inside Act. Thank you for your time.