Perseverance, grit & performance with Mike Barwis

Mindset is what a person thinks about themself or a business or all the parts of a team. In this episode we sit down with Mike Barwis. He’s trained olympians and countless elite athletes across the MLB, NHL, NBA, and the NFL. Mike uses Levels with many of the athletes that he trains, but we didn’t talk much about metabolic health and instead about mindset, how he trains athletes not just physically, but mentally.

Mindset lets you do extraordinary things

The mindset that elite athletes cultivate separates them from the field. In his experience Mike Barwis has seen countless athletes with seemingly less physical talent win with their mind.

“Son, I know you never missed a sprint. It’s because you’re really tough. And he looked at me and he smiled back and said, “Coach, it has nothing to do with that. I didn’t want to let you down.” And I smiled and I looked at him and I said, “Son, that’s the whole reason I come to work. I don’t want to let you down.” His mindset and my mindset were in the same place for each other. And it allows you to do things that normally people can’t do.

Your mindset shapes your reality

The power of the right mindset transcends professional sports and applies to the winners in any pursuit in life.

what you find is the mindset that you’ve developed along the way will determine the outcome that you achieve. It’s no different than any aspect of life, whether it be business, whether it be relationships, whether it just be yourself image, how you talk to yourself, what you think becomes reality. Perception is reality. What you perceive to be reality becomes reality. So your perception needs to be controlled in a way that you create the outcomes that you desire.

You can’t do common things and expect uncommon results

An athlete or companies willingness to do the things no one else will do is what sets them apart. Elite athletes don’t expect to follow the norm and out-perform their competition. Businesses shouldn’t either.

When you look at athletics and you see some of the premier athletes, the top players in the world, some of them are the most gifted physically, but not as many as you would think. Most of them were the most committed. They were willing to do the things that others weren’t to have what others could not. They were willing to do the uncommon things. They didn’t try to do what everyone else did and expect to be something more. They did what no one else was willing to do so that they could achieve what no one else could achieve. You can’t do common things and expect uncommon results.

Being relentless increases your opportunity

Having the mindset needed to maintain commitment and cross the threshold of success is often the difference between those that make it at the highest and those that don’t rather than a lack of potential for success.

Most people quit just before they get what they want. They get to a point where they’re just about to achieve it and they can’t sustain that level and intensity, they can’t sustain that level of commitment. They’re unwilling to be relentless. And when you hit that point, you take away your opportunity

Get comfortable being uncomfortable

The more you can put yourself in uncomfortable situations in training the more comfortable they feel under the stress of competition.

training has to transcend your lifestyle. It has to become what you are. If it becomes what you are, you become comfortable in the uncomfortable. And when someone else is placed in an environment that is uncomfortable at a competitive level against you, they feel that discomfort. But if it’s where you live, it’s comfortable. There are people that live around the world in militant zones and guns and bombs go off every day and you don’t see them flinch. The reality is they’re comfortable with that environment, as discomfort is surrounding. And training, when you put yourself in an environment to allow yourself to train in a level that no one else is comfortable or work at a level that no one else is comfortable, to do the uncommon things persistently, you end up in a position of achieving a level of comfort with what most people call discomfort. And it allows you to separate yourself from the individuals that are average.

There are no loses unless you lose with ego

How we frame loses changes our perception and can turn a negative experience into a stronger response.

I tell my children this all the time, I’ve got four kids and I tell athletes, “When you lose, you chose to lose.” And they say, “What do you mean? Well, maybe the person was better than me on that day.” Yeah. But you only lose if you are defeated and don’t learn something and change something after the defeat, you can turn every loss into a victory if there’s substance that you learn from that loss and you modify it to make yourself stronger than you were the day before, therefore turning a loss into a victory

Deserve is a very dangerous word.

Results are not a given, pushing as hard as you can every day is the only way to take the opportunity your gifts provide.

People say, “I deserve to have this.” We deserve nothing. We really deserve nothing. The reality is, you’re grateful for what you’re enabled to achieve. And you should use what you have to the best of your ability every day to say thanks for what you were given. The reality for me when I look at the big picture, if I don’t run as hard as I can run and work as hard as I can work to achieve greatness with the gifts I was given, they probably should have been given to someone else

You can only control 2 things in life

Attitude and effort are the only things you can control to improve performance.

You control two things in life, your attitude and your effort. If you have a positive attitude about everything you do, and you focus on achievement and you give relentless, insatiable effort, nonstop consistency with a tremendous focus, then you achieve your potential. And your potential is not something that is an opportunity, it’s something that should be an obligation. If you’re not the best you and you’re not impacting the individual’s lives around you with all that you have, and at some point you’ve stolen part of your gift, and the question is, do you want to be less than you were designed to be? Nobody wants that.

A great mindset in elite sports is a great mindset for life

If you can translate winning attributes and habits from one area of life to another, you’ll set yourself up for true success.

But those same attributes that made you great in sport are the ones that will make you great in life, will make you great in business, will make you great in all that you try to attack. If you’re willing to harness it and put in the same effort you put in, your achievement level will equate. So the reality is, are you willing to understand that your value was always inside you and can you get it out for any journey that you have in life? If you can, you’re successful.

Losing is learning

Understanding your weaknesses and being honest about them is the fastest way to learn, especially when you lose.

you never have to lose in life. It helps us find our weaknesses. It helps us overcome our weaknesses. It helps us overcome our fears. From the time my children could talk, you can ask every one of them, people walk up to them all the time, the players do it. They’ll say, “What is fear?” My kids will say it’s a liar very intently and very aggressively, because it is. It stands in the way of everything you want to achieve in life and tries to defy the greatness inside you. You need to crush it and pass through it.

Greatness is going beyond yourself to lift up others

Elevating others takes great leaders beyond the ordinary and unlocks new levels of potential for everyone.

So this guy who was working to achieve the highest level in the NBA and win an NBA championship, proceeds to get on his hands and knees on a floor and crawl with her for 45 minutes side-by-side cheering her on. And when they would finish, she would fall on his lap and tears down her face. He would hug her. And when they’re done, he looked at me and he say, “Coach, thanks, man. I know you got other groups, you got things to do. I appreciate it.” I said, “No, man, this one’s on me. I’ll stay. I got you.” The reality is he was willing to take everything within him and give it to somebody else to make them better. That’s what we’re here for. When you find the greatness in you and you not only allow it to elevate you to a level of achievement that people can’t obtain, but you then take it and are willing to give it to someone else to help them achieve a level they only imagined they could attain, then you’ve found who you really were meant to be.

Understanding how to serve makes the greatest leaders

Servant leadership is the best way to encourage the individuals around you to follow you and perform at the highest level

On every wall in every gym I’ve ever had, I put up a quote that says, if the people we work with today mean more to us than we do to ourselves, we’ll be good at our job. And the reality is, it’s getting to a point where you are willing to sacrifice all within you for the individuals that surround you and willing to lift them up. That’s what makes a great leader, being a great servant. Understanding how to serve in such a way at such a high caliber of self-sacrifice that the individuals around you will follow you through just about anything.

Simplify problems to their source

Problems can quickly manifest and cascade unless the mindset is to simplify and address the root cause.

I think a lot of times, one thing goes wrong and then there’s a tiny little thing that happens somewhere else. And the next thing it starts to emulsify and mix together, and it becomes this massive problem, which in truth is one little simple thing. So exhale, slow down the situation, realize what actually happened. What is the real problem? Focus on that specific issue. Simple things. Playing basketball and my jump shot is gone. I can’t make a jump shot. I’m terrible. I stink. Guess what? I had a problem, my son is sick. My wife, her grandmother died and now I have to deal with that. Next thing we know my jump shot’s a massive problem. Why? Because my mindset is just deteriorating and my world is collapsing around.

A simple exercise for focus

Whether it’s in sports or business focus is a critical tool for success and a lack of focus becomes clear with simple tests.

I always do this one little process with people when I talk about focus. I say, “Close your eyes. And everybody close your eyes. And I’m going to tell you to open your eyes and I want you to find everything that’s red. When I tell you to open them, open them. When I tell you to close them, close them.” So I say, “Go.” They open their eyes. I give them about five seconds. And I say, “Okay, close them.” And I say, “Tell me everything that was red.” And they list four or five things quickly and they’re proud. And then I say, “Okay, tell me everything was blue.” And they can’t name anything. And I laugh. I’m like, “Why can’t you tell me anything blue?” Well, you told me to find everything red. So you’re telling me that if you’re not focused on your task, you can’t accomplish it. You can’t find the blue stuff when you’re focused on the red stuff. So don’t let the world distract you from your focus. Get on the thing that you are trying to fix or change, simplify it to what’s actually happening and then focus on changing it, and don’t involve anything else but that tangible aspect that you need to change.

Focus on how you are different vs the competition

Success starts with understanding who you are and why you’re uniquely different.

Most places open thinking I’m going to be a restaurant like that restaurant. Well, what makes you special? What makes you different? What are the attributes that you have that separate you from someone else? And how are you going to cultivate them to make you the uncommon place that everybody wants to be and to make your product different and more exceptional than the individuals around you? But oftentimes they’re so focused on what the other people are doing, that they don’t focus on what makes them special. Show me who you are, don’t replicate what someone else does, because who you are may be exactly what someone wants, that they just can’t find anywhere else. That’s a piece of the puzzle that I think oftentimes is overlooked.

Mike Barwis: When I was coaching at West Virginia years ago, I had Mike Lorello actually play for the Pittsburgh Steelers. See, a wonderful guy, tough kid. I had probably some of the toughest kids I’ve ever coached. And our running and conditioning were absolutely measurable. And we used to just pound them. It was the hardest running that anybody had in the country. We were known for being able to just dominate people or wear them out. Our offensive line played to the second level and could run like our Tbs, and were still strong and powerful. And people would say, “The runs you have are just hellacious. Nobody could do those.” And when he was leaving, he looked at me and he said, “Hey, coach, I want to let you know I never missed a sprint.” And I smiled and I said, “I’m well aware of that.”

Mike Barwis: That was pretty rare. I could count on one hand the amount of kids that did miss a sprint. And when you missed it, people had to run. You had to run or the whole team had to run. And I looked at him and I smiled and I said, “Son, I know you never missed a sprint. It’s because you’re really tough. And he looked at me and he smiled back and said, “Coach, it has nothing to do with that. I didn’t want to let you down.” And I smiled and I looked at him and I said, “Son, that’s the whole reason I come to work. I don’t want to let you down.” His mindset and my mindset were in the same place for each other. And it allows you to do things that normally people can’t do.

Ben Grynol: I’m Ben Grynol part of the early startup team here at Levels. We’re building tech that helps people to understand their metabolic health. And this is your front row seat to everything we do. This is a whole new level.

Ben Grynol: Mindset is one of those intangible things that spans life, spans business, spans everything that we do. It’s interwoven into the fabric of society. And it’s one of those things that you can’t really put your finger on, what exactly is mindset? Because it depends on the situation. Is it perseverance? Is it grit? Is it sticktuitiveness? Granted, these are all the same things that are semantically different. Mindset is one of those things that’s a belief in oneself. It is the way that a person thinks about themself or a business or all the parts of a team. And so had a chance to sit down with Mike Barwis, legendary trainer in professional sports. He’s trained athletes at the Olympic level. He’s trained athletes across the MLB, that’s Major League Baseball, NHL, National Hockey League, NBA, and the NFL. And so Mike uses Levels with many of the athletes that he trains, but it’s not the physical component, the metabolic health that was of interest, it was talking about things around mindset, how he trains athletes not just physically, but mentally.

Ben Grynol: What are some of the takeaways that can be applied to business and startups? How can people in life in general think about mindset and apply it to themselves. So without going too deep into it, Mike and I had a very meaningful conversation around mindset and execution. Here’s where we kicked things off.

Ben Grynol: Well, it’s very cool to connect and talk because I think a lot of the things that you do, there’s a physical component. There’s no doubt about that. But more of it is a mental component. It’s this thought around mindset. And I think some of these tie into the principles that you have around grit, science and family being these core values of Barwis to set the table. So you’ve got, I guess this saying, if you want to call it; create the player, develop the athlete. But what you do extends so much further than that. And you’ve got four training facilities, so two in Florida, one in Michigan and one in Colorado. And what you alluded to is you train professional and Olympic athletes and then also do a lot of deep rehabilitation. And so the question becomes, how do you think about mindset when undertaking all the work that you do?

Mike Barwis: Mindset really covers every action in life. So I’ve had the blessing of working at highest levels in athletics for many, many years; ran the West Virginia University, ran the University of Michigan. I have worked in virtually every pro league with the Mets in baseball, the Redwings. You name it, we have done it. And every professional league had some type of involvement. And what you find is the mindset that you’ve developed along the way will determine the outcome that you achieve. It’s no different than any aspect of life, whether it be business, whether it be relationships, whether it just be yourself image, how you talk to yourself, what you think becomes reality. Perception is reality. What you perceive to be reality becomes reality. So your perception needs to be controlled in a way that you create the outcomes that you desire.

Ben Grynol: When you’re working with all these different people. There’s got to be this component. And I think a lot of this ties into the parallels of what it takes to build a startup. But how many times have you seen people that are… Let’s focus on athletes for now. People who might not be the most physically gifted. Obviously if you’re competing at a professional or an Olympic level, you have to be very good at the physical aspect of whatever sport you’re competing in. But how many people have you seen where you go, “That person is not physically the best, but mentally they’ve got this toughness,” if you want to call it that, this grit and perseverance where you can see how focused they are and you go, “That’s a winner and they’re going to win because of the way they think about themselves”?

Mike Barwis: I mean, that’s actually relatively common, to be honest with you. When you look at athletics and you see some of the premier athletes, the top players in the world, some of them are the most gifted physically, but not as many as you would think. Most of them were the most committed. They were willing to do the things that others weren’t to have what others could not. They were willing to do the uncommon things. They didn’t try to do what everyone else did and expect to be something more. They did what no one else was willing to do so that they could achieve what no one else could achieve. You can’t do common things and expect uncommon results. And that mentality is a guideline that if you have tremendous talent and you have the persistence and the grit and the goal to adhere to that every day and have no surrender in your will, you have a great opportunity to achieve greatness.

Mike Barwis: And some guys are very gifted, but don’t have that. Most people quit just before they get what they want. They get to a point where they’re just about to achieve it and they can’t sustain that level and intensity, they can’t sustain that level of commitment. They’re unwilling to be relentless. And when you hit that point, you take away your opportunity. Some of those great athletes who are extremely gifted, I’ve seen many times, they don’t make it, or they can’t stay there because they don’t have that relentless persistence to achieve greatness. And you’ll find individuals who are decent athletes, they’re very good, they’re very talented, but they have that mental edge and that commitment, and it catapults them beyond individuals who are much more gifted than them and allows them to sustain that level for a longer period of time.

Ben Grynol: Yeah. I mean, that’s very much a Gogginysm. If you look at Cameron Hanes or David Goggins, they’ve got this outlook of being uncommon amongst the uncommon. And when you start to think about that, it’s exactly what you’re saying, where somebody might not be the most gifted in something, but if they’re willing to put in the work, they’re willing to put forth effort every day to get incrementally better and they think of themselves as training, whether it’s for a sport or training mentally for life, if you want to call it that, because we all have these oscillating up and down moments, whether it’s work-related or personal related, it’s just that’s life. And people who have this mindset of I’m going to kick the shit out of the day, no matter what comes at me. And I know that I can do this, even if it’s a zone of discomfort. That is how you develop that grit, I think. And people who are good at putting themselves in a zone of discomfort on a continuous basis are the ones that developed these battle scars, if you want to call it that.

Mike Barwis: Yeah. I mean, no question. I always say training has to transcend your lifestyle. It has to become what you are. If it becomes what you are, you become comfortable in the uncomfortable. And when someone else is placed in an environment that is uncomfortable at a competitive level against you, they feel that discomfort. But if it’s where you live, it’s comfortable. There are people that live around the world in militant zones and guns and bombs go off every day and you don’t see them flinch. The reality is they’re comfortable with that environment, as discomfort is surrounding. And training, when you put yourself in an environment to allow yourself to train in a level that no one else is comfortable or work at a level that no one else is comfortable, to do the uncommon things persistently, you end up in a position of achieving a level of comfort with what most people call discomfort. And it allows you to separate yourself from the individuals that are average.

Ben Grynol: Yeah. I think Malcolm Gladwell talked about that in… and I can’t remember which book it was, David and Goliath, and he was talking about a remote hit versus a near miss. And it had to do with people who are in, I believe they were in England when war was going on. There was this camp of people that a bomb would go off or there would be some airstrike and people would think like, oh my goodness, I’m so close to this, I’m going to die. This is a danger zone. And other people just lived through it and they’re like, “It didn’t get me today.” Whether it’s rational or not, they developed this mental toughness. And it’s like, if you want to get me, you’re going to have to try harder. That is the perseverance or the gritty mindset of today’s another day.

Mike Barwis: I agree. And there should be pride in being the best you. I think a lot of times people look at things, well, I have to be cocky, I have to be arrogant. No, you don’t. You have to be confident in what was given to you by God or your mom or your dad, and have the ability to know that every day you have a second in front of you that allows you an opportunity to be the best you. It doesn’t matter the circumstance. People who embrace the hardest circumstances in positive ways achieve things that other people only can imagine. And I think that you see people, like you said, who’ve been in extreme situations yet have an attitude of you won’t break me, you won’t overcome me. I am what I am because I’m strong, and this is how I was designed, this is who I will be till the day I die. And that mindset allows you to overcome a lot of things in life.

Ben Grynol: Yeah. I mean, when people win with ego and people lose with humility and lose with a sense of effort, where they go, “I lost and I know I lost. And what that means is I’m going to have to work harder to try to win.” People who win with a sense of ego have almost this entitlement. And it’s again, not extrapolating this to anyone who wins, but if you do have a sense of ego because you’ve been pushed up your whole life to say, you are a winner and you are the best, and people are given, I guess, this irrational sense of self. And you can see it.

Ben Grynol: This does exist in professional sports where somebody is put on a pedestal and maybe that person is physically gifted, maybe they don’t perform up to their level of gift that they have. But then there’s the other person who is… let’s say it’s basketball. They’re on the court and they lose, but they’ve got this sense of effort and humility. You always bet on the person who’s going to come through in the long run. Because you go, “I know that that effort is going to push through and transcend.” That is what is going to get the last basket when things are really hard. It’s that effort and not having a sense of, well, we’re going to win because I’m the best.

Mike Barwis: No question. I mean, over the years working with thousands of Olympic and professional athletes in over 45 sports, there’s a lot of times I have watched games and it’s come to the clutch times and I know the player, I know what he’s been through, I know what he struggled through, I know what she’s suffered with, and I know they’re going to dominate at the end of the day. I mean, I know it’s going to happen. And I’ll say something watching the game, and somebody will go, “Aah, come on.” And next thing you know, it happens. And they’re like, “How do you guess that? How do you know that at this moment?” I’m like, “Because it’s the most turmoil and most stress this individuals’ faced, and I know what they’ve been through. They’re unwilling to relent in those situations.” Somebody is going to crack and it’s not going to be that individual. And learning that when you do lose with humility, you really never lose in life unless you choose to.

Mike Barwis: I tell my children this all the time, I’ve got four kids and I tell athletes, “When you lose, you chose to lose.” And they say, “What do you mean? Well, maybe the person was better than me on that day.” Yeah. But you only lose if you are defeated and don’t learn something and change something after the defeat, you can turn every loss into a victory if there’s substance that you learn from that loss and you modify it to make yourself stronger than you were the day before, therefore turning a loss into a victory. Most victories, you walk away happy, but don’t really focus on what I learned from the victory. So in truth, you actually, oftentimes don’t get better. But in reality, when you lose in competition, if you learn that weak point, if you change that thing about you that made you vulnerable, the actual loss became more important than the victory because it has fortified something in you that has allowed you to be successful for eternity, because you’ve changed something in you or modified a piece of you to allow yourself to be less vulnerable in the next competition.

Mike Barwis: So we choose to lose. The reality is if we’re beat and we do nothing, nothing changes. If we do something, something changes. So do something and make yourself better.

Ben Grynol: Yeah. I mean, that’s really the principle of putting in the work. When people talk about putting in the work, it’s not about… You don’t get toned muscle, you don’t get a six pack, let’s use that analogy by doing sit-ups once a week. You get it by doing 10 sit-ups a day or an hour. Some incremental work towards your goal. And too often people think that they can do the work, like they’ll put in the work, they’ll run a marathon in one day and then they won’t run the rest of the year. Well, that’s great. 26 miles, very commendable. But if you’re going to do two miles a day over the course of a year, you are going to get the muscle memory, you’re going to get the perseverance and the grit where two miles is nothing. And then you start to face these uphill challenges and you go, “Well, I can do 20 consistently. I don’t have to work for that. I’ve put in the effort.”

Ben Grynol: And too often, you find again, whether it’s… You can pair it back to being work-related. You put in little bits of work every single day to get incrementally better, you’ll get better. But if you just go for this pinnacle moment, you miss the journey along the way.

Mike Barwis: For sure. Two things there. I think Wolff’s law is a law of medicine. It was originally developed for bone. And what does that mean? I mean, Wolff’s law means the body conforms and adapts to the intensities and in the directions it’s officially subject to is its actual verbiage. What does it mean? What it means is, if I took a squat, for instance, I put that squat on my back. Whatever it might be. I take a bar and I rest it on my spine. It weighs 500 pounds. My body will conform and adapt to that 500 pounds in a downward direction traveling through my spine if I do it on a habitual basis. Therefore I pull calcium out of my diet and I start to harden and thicken the bones to handle the heavier stressors. My tendons modify. Originally it was thought as bone. It’s anything that adapts in a human body.

Mike Barwis: My tendons modify, the number of sarcomeres that I engage per unit of contraction increases. All of these things start to happen at a neurological, a neuromuscular, a biochemical level in the human body to change who we are to handle that stress. Why do we think that’s only when it comes to training, it’s also your mind. When you face continuous stress and your body learns to accommodate and adapt to that stress again and again, if it’s habitual, we get stronger, we get better at dealing with that stress and inherently we achieve higher levels. And like you said, the journey is really what’s important.

Mike Barwis: I always talk about medals and awards. I’ll tell kids, “Hey, look, what do you want? You play baseball, right?” And they’re like, yeah. You want to win the world series, right? Yeah. You want a world series ring? Yeah. Okay. I want a world series. Great. You want a world series ring, that’s fantastic. I’ll tell you what, I’m going to go buy the ring and I’m going to give it to you. Does it mean the same thing to you? And the kid says, “I like to have the ring, but no.” Well why? Well, I didn’t earn it. So you’re telling me that ring and the actual achievement have no value at all, it’s the journey that you took along the way. It’s the sacrifices you made. It’s the sacrifices your family made. It’s the people who fought and struggled next to you. It’s the sleepless nights. It’s the days when your body was just absolutely vulnerable and shot and you still moved forward. It’s all of those things that gave the inanimate object substance, that gave it something of value. All of those things make us desire achievement. It’s not the actual inanimate object. It means nothing. It’s all the sacrifices and all the suffrage along the way of the journey that makes it special.

Mike Barwis: And I always tell guys, look, sooner or later, we’re all going to leave this earth. And the reality is, you want to die as God’s champion not as a mediocre man. So give what you have of you every day, so then on the last day you can look your maker in the eye and say, “Today I’m okay with death because today I’ll die your champion.” If that is your mindset, you achieve greatness. But that’s a relentless pursuit that has to have consistency.

Ben Grynol: Yeah. You start to realize the more that you have focus. Let’s use focus, the word for mindset, that things might have extrinsic value. So let’s say the ring. There is some sense of extrinsic value. But the intrinsic value that is created or formed from earning that, if you want to call it a possession, that far outweighs any extrinsic value. People who’ve earned those keepsakes, they’ve earned them and they mean more than any… Sure, there is a price that you can put on something. But rationally, it is a reminder. It becomes this keepsake and it doesn’t mean that you can rest on your laurels and anchor on that and say, “Well, I’ve earned it. Now it’s over.” That is a reminder of what hard work gets you. And if you want to keep earning those, you go, “Well, I’m starting the journey.”

Ben Grynol: You have to almost wipe the canvas and have no ego associated with it and say, “Fresh canvas. Today is a new day. I’m starting fresh.” And if I want to earn that same thing and take a journey, I can’t take it for granted that I have already earned one, because that means that I’m not approaching it with the right mindset anymore. It’s that beginner’s mindset that if I want to earn this, I’m going to have to work just like everybody else to earn it. And you might have mental heuristics or shortcuts along the way of how you can do it a little bit better or easier or more efficiently than you did in the past, but it doesn’t mean that you have to work less. You actually have to work harder because it’s too easy to fall into the trap of saying, “I’ve already earned one. I know I can do this again.” And you have to look at it and go, “I’m going to have to work my ass off if I want to earn anything and I’m not entitled to anything in this world.”

Mike Barwis: I agree with you. And I think that comes down to deserve. Deserve is a very dangerous word. People say, “I deserve to have this.” We deserve nothing. We really deserve nothing. The reality is, you’re grateful for what you’re enabled to achieve. And you should use what you have to the best of your ability every day to say thanks for what you were given. The reality for me when I look at the big picture, if I don’t run as hard as I can run and work as hard as I can work to achieve greatness with the gifts I was given, they probably should have been given to someone else. There’s something in there that you have to understand, what you were gifted is yours because it was gifted to you. Whether or not you obtain that potential with it is up to you under two tangible controls.

Mike Barwis: You control two things in life, your attitude and your effort. If you have a positive attitude about everything you do, and you focus on achievement and you give relentless, insatiable effort, nonstop consistency with a tremendous focus, then you achieve your potential. And your potential is not something that is an opportunity, it’s something that should be an obligation. If you’re not the best you and you’re not impacting the individual’s lives around you with all that you have, and at some point you’ve stolen part of your gift, and the question is, do you want to be less than you were designed to be? Nobody wants that. Then be the individual you were made to be by giving relentless effort and having a tremendously positive attitude about it. That puts us in a great situation. Focus is key.

Ben Grynol: If you’re doing rehabilitation work… So let’s use the example or make an assumption that somebody goes through something. They face adversity in life and they have a physical disability, or they ended up having a neurological condition from whatever event happened. And prior to that event, they had an iron mind. And that event becomes this catalyst where you have to rebuild that. Again, there’s a physical component that is its own challenge. But how do you take people who’ve faced this adversity and help them to achieve the physical rehabilitation that they want, that’s their goal, but also build in that mental toughness to say, “You can do it. You can put forth the effort.” Or the other side of it is, somebody could have the right mindset, but the physical component isn’t coming as quickly because it takes time. How have you worked with people to balance those two needs?

Mike Barwis: I think everyone’s circumstance when it comes to a catastrophic instance are very different. Some people are strong and relentless and fighting, and it’s a long slow process, but they haven’t lost their faith or their strength. Some people are broken. They’ve lost their faith or their strength. When you take everything that is normal and you remove it from someone’s life and you ask them to still exist is about as difficult as life can get. And I used to be a person who ran and jumped and played, now I can’t even roll over and put my pants on. I have to have someone take me to the bathroom. You have taken their freedom and what they thought was who they were away from them.

Mike Barwis: It’s not uncommon when you see an athlete retire for them to have troubles, because they think that the athletic sport was their identity. It’s who they were. It’s not actually the case. You hear oftentimes, the sport is bigger than every person. Well, if no person played the sport, the sport wouldn’t exist, so I doubt that that’s reality. The truth is you have to find the greatness inside you that you were gifted. It’s not in the air, it’s not the floor. You don’t find it in the carpet. You won’t see it in a building. It’s inside you. Greatness it exists inside humanity.

Mike Barwis: Find the greatness in you that separates you and uplifts you and lets you achieve every tiny interval. Because every little gain is important. It’s the little things that add up to the big things. And teaching someone to refine themselves to, look, we need a twitch in your toe, we need a movement in your ankle, we need a little bit of an activation in your quad. Each one of those things are momentous. And we’re going to pack those with relentless persistence so that we achieve the greatness in you. And sooner or later, we will be where you want to be. But understand that the journey is never easy nor was it supposed to be.

Mike Barwis: But oftentimes as we go and we make strides, people will say, “Hey, you’re an angel.” I’ve heard that. It’s not me, it’s you. The truth is, when you go to bed at night, make sure you say thanks to the right person. And it’s not Mike Barwis, it’s God and you. God willed it and you were willing to be relentless to attain it. Those two things allow you to separate yourself and become what everyone told you was impossible. That’s the degree of mindset that it takes to recover and return. And it requires a faith. It requires a belief in oneself. It requires an attitude that allows you to know that it is achievable, not one that is defeatist and puts you in a hole that says, I can’t be there. You can’t be sorry for yourself in those circumstances. You have to fight because God will will it, but he’s asking you to do the work.

Ben Grynol: Yeah. There are all these pinnacle moments in life where you end up rebuilding a sense of identity or a sense of self. And maybe it’s event based. So as you suggested, somebody goes through some type of event that is physically life-changing or there are events that might be a little bit more emotionally challenging. And that’s, as you alluded, to a professional athlete is at the end of his or her career and their sense of identity, everything that they’ve worked towards in life feels like it is just no longer there. And so you can take this; it can be having kids, it can be graduating college, it can be all of these things where people have to rebuild their sense of self and sense of identity.

Ben Grynol: And that’s where it comes down to looking within to say, do I understand who I am? Do I understand what makes me a person? And disconnecting yourself. Because the sense of self is a sense of ego. And I don’t mean somebody who’s overly confident, ego. It’s the Freudian ego where our ego is wrapped up in this identity of, I am a professional athlete. I am a XYZ. As soon as you can disconnect that and you remove your sense of ego and you go, “I am me and this is what makes me a person,” that is a very challenging thing to do. But the more people do that, I think the more that you can develop this mental toughness or this mental acuity to be malleable to all of these life events.

Mike Barwis: Absolutely. And I mean, it’s understanding that, like we talked about earlier, the greatness is inside you and it’s really our job to get it out. I think oftentimes the institution of women’s soccer or the institution of men’s football do not make players great. Players who were given tremendous gifts and worked their entire lives and sacrificed on a habitual basis every second of every day to attain a goal made themselves great. The game itself didn’t make them great. They found something inside them that made them great at a game. But by the grace of God, they were able to play the game at the highest level and achieve amazing things.

Mike Barwis: But those same attributes that made you great in sport are the ones that will make you great in life, will make you great in business, will make you great in all that you try to attack. If you’re willing to harness it and put in the same effort you put in, your achievement level will equate. So the reality is, are you willing to understand that your value was always inside you and can you get it out for any journey that you have in life? If you can, you’re successful.

Ben Grynol: So when you’ve been working with all these different people from different backgrounds, different walks of life I’m sure you’ve seen people who have faced adversity. And on one hand, adversity can seem like something that people don’t want to face. And on the other hand, there’s a sense of importance the more times that people go through adversity, and especially when you go through it as a collective, whether that’s a small team or a larger group, you form different bonds within that group, and it’s glue within these network connections. Why do you think adversity is important? And how have you seen people face it and then overcome it to better themselves?

Mike Barwis: I mean, adversity is facing a lot of different ways. I mean, you kind of marked on a team setting of adversity and then there’s individual adversity as well. Adversity challenges us. Like we talked about earlier, you never have to lose in life. It helps us find our weaknesses. It helps us overcome our weaknesses. It helps us overcome our fears. From the time my children could talk, you can ask every one of them, people walk up to them all the time, the players do it. They’ll say, “What is fear?” My kids will say it’s a liar very intently and very aggressively, because it is. It stands in the way of everything you want to achieve in life and tries to defy the greatness inside you. You need to crush it and pass through it.

Mike Barwis: That reality and that mentality is what allows us to attack and overcome adversity. It’s also what allows us to adapt to the adversity and become stronger, become better versions of ourselves, become able to achieve things that we couldn’t achieve the day before. When you face it as a team, it’s even more unique in that we suffer for someone else. Anytime we’re fighting for someone outside ourselves that we love or we care about, we will always fight harder because it’s much easier to quit on oneself because you can accept it much more readily than quitting on someone you love and knowing in their mind they’re thinking you quit. So team environments put us in situations where we’re able to even fight harder. Or families when we’re struggling in life for business or positions, we’re fighting for someone bigger than ourselves. To us, our family becomes bigger than ourselves. It’s not a sport, it’s not a game, it’s something that I value even more than my own life, my child’s life, my wife’s life, my husband’s life, that allows us to achieve things that normally we couldn’t achieve because we’re unwilling to relent for them.

Mike Barwis: When I was coaching at West Virginia years ago, I had Mike Lorello actually play for the Pittsburgh Steelers. See, a wonderful guy, tough kid. I had probably some of the toughest kids I’ve ever coached. And our running and conditioning were absolutely measurable. And we used to just pound them. It was the hardest running that anybody had in the country. We were known for being able to just dominate people or wear them out. Our offensive line played to the second level and could run like our TBs, and were still strong and powerful. And people would say, “The runs you have are just hellacious. Nobody could do those.” And when he was leaving, he looked at me and he said, “Hey, coach, I want to let you know I never missed a sprint.” And I smiled and I said, “I’m well aware of that.”

Mike Barwis: That was pretty rare. I could count on one hand the amount of kids that did miss a sprint. And when you missed it, people had to run. You had to run or the whole team had to run. And I looked at him and I smiled and I said, “Son, I know you never missed a sprint. It’s because you’re really tough. And he looked at me and he smiled back and said, “Coach, it has nothing to do with that. I didn’t want to let you down.” And I smiled and I looked at him and I said, “Son, that’s the whole reason I come to work. I don’t want to let you down.” His mindset and my mindset were in the same place for each other. And it allows you to do things that normally people can’t do.

Ben Grynol: I remember you were telling the story about crossover influence. And a lot of it has to do with the way that you’ve got the facility set up. Or through any of your coaching experience, where there are people who are training, let’s say they’re athletes that are training and then people who are going through rehabilitation. And there seems to be the sense of people are on… physically, they’re on two different trajectories altogether. They’re just not doing the same things. But mentally and emotionally, they’re influencing each other, they are inspiring each other and they’re pushing each other. You were telling a story about one person who… I think it was a professional athlete and they watched somebody go through rehabilitation. And they said, that is one of the strongest moments I’ve ever had experiencing this rehabilitation with my daily training where I got to watch a person and go, “You’re doing the tough work. I’m just showing up and I’m trying to stay physically active. You’re doing very hard work.” And I remember the way you told the story, it was one of those moments that really stuck with that person for the rest of their life.

Mike Barwis: I’ve seen that moment so many times in the world’s greatest athletes that it makes me happy to know that we do what we do in our facilities, to know that a young boy trying to take his first step or a little girl trying to stand is fighting a fight not any different than an individual trying to be the best in the world at a sport, just a lot more difficult. And when they come in here, good human beings should feed off of good human beings. We only want good human beings. We want people who care about humanity, care about each other, are willing to fight and sacrifice for the people who can’t fight for themselves. And when you bring that into one area, whether you are the best player in the NBA or the best player in the NFL or the best player in the NHL or the bass player in the MLB, or you’re a little boy trying to take your first step, we’re all the same.

Mike Barwis: We’re all people, we’re all equally valuable, we all should care about each other, we all should fight for each other, we all should get excited when we achieve greatness. The people that are struggling with the neurological disabilities, they’re looking up to their fans, their superstars. They’re like, “That’s a guy that I have watched on TV and think is a hero.” However, when that pro athlete shows up and watches that little boy or girl struggle every day to take a step, the true hero is shown. They look over and say, “I come in here and work. What I thought was harder than anyone in the world with my body to achieve something and my mind to fight through things. And I look over and see that young child fight for five months to lift that foot and move it two inches. And I see what has been taken away from them and how hard they work to get it back. And I realize how special that is and how lucky I am.”

Mike Barwis: I think last time I talked to you, I talked about Draymond Green, actually.

Ben Grynol: Yes.

Mike Barwis: He had a young girl who was in a car accident. She was actually a newscaster and was paralyzed from the accident. And hadn’t crawled, move, stood, done anything prior for a number of years. And Draymond was doing drills and cutting and working with me and we’re doing different movements and actually working on some rehabilitative stuff as well. And it was his first exposure to our neurological program. And Dre, outspoken human being, but an incredible person, he would sit for… Hey, I want to understand this. Super bright. I want to understand what you’re doing. I understand why you do it. I want to understand how you affect these people. I want to understand what they went through. I want to see them get better.

Mike Barwis: And he was watching this young girl crawl for the first time. She pulled her knee through and she collapsed and she was struggling and fighting. And the tears were running down her cheeks and we’re in the middle of a drill cutting. And he looked at me and I saw his eyes start to water. And I said, “Are you all right buddy?” And he looked at me and he said, “No, coach, I’m not good at all.” And I said, “What’s the matter?” And he said, “Look at her fight, man.” He’s like, “Look at what she’s going through to achieve this.” He’s like, “She’s awesome.” And I smiled and I nodded my head and he goes, “Is there any way I can help her?” I said, “Man, nothing but air and space. You’re the hero. They all look up to you buddy.”

Mike Barwis: So this guy who was working to achieve the highest level in the NBA and win an NBA championship, proceeds to get on his hands and knees on a floor and crawl with her for 45 minutes side-by-side cheering her on. And when they would finish, she would fall on his lap and tears down her face. He would hug her. And when they’re done, he looked at me and he say, “Coach, thanks, man. I know you got other groups, you got things to do. I appreciate it.” I said, “No, man, this one’s on me. I’ll stay. I got you.” The reality is he was willing to take everything within him and give it to somebody else to make them better. That’s what we’re here for. When you find the greatness in you and you not only allow it to elevate you to a level of achievement that people can’t obtain, but you then take it and are willing to give it to someone else to help them achieve a level they only imagined they could attain, then you’ve found who you really were meant to be.

Ben Grynol: That moment takes him off of this pedestal. It’s two humans that are experiencing something at the same time. And outside of the facility or outside of that moment, they might have very different lives that they’re leading. But inside of that micro-moment, it is something that only the two of them are sharing together. And all of a sudden it creates this balance between two people where you realize that you’re both human and you’re having this connection that there aren’t flashy cameras going off, and there’s not an audience that you’re trying to impress. It’s you and you, and that’s it. It’s two people. And when you share these experiences, there’s something that you can’t really put your finger on what it is, but you know that that emotional connection of doing that thing together, it’s something special. And I think that’s what builds this toughness, or maybe this belief in oneself. He wasn’t doing that because he was trying to make himself feel great. He was doing it because, as you suggested, he was giving himself away to another person so that they could both share this energy together.

Mike Barwis: And that’s a tangible aspect. I think a lot of people think the energy or the environment is not that important. I’m here to tell you if you don’t have a good energy and a great environment forget it. You start to minimize the will of a human being. And when you can create an environment of self-sacrifice, caring, intensity and a willingness to go to the wall to achieve what you set out to, you can inspire anyone around you. You can change and metamorphosize the environment that you sit in. You can create an environment that allows greatness to not only come out of you, but out of the individuals around you. And that to me, is a tangible feeling. You can feel when intensity changes, you can feel when someone cares, you can feel self-sacrifice and you will find in you how to equate that level, that special when human beings find human beings and they find greatness together. That’s what life’s about.

Ben Grynol: Yeah. There’s that old adage characters built by what you do when no one’s watching. There isn’t a scoreboard. There’s no one that’s sitting there going, “Great.” Whomever it is, professional athlete or not, you’re a hero for doing whatever you’re doing. As soon as you remove that and somebody is willing to put in the work or do a certain thing when no one’s watching, it’s what you do when no one’s watching that actually matters because that’s back to effort. That’s back to doing things because you believe it’s the right thing to do. Or the thing that deep down, when you look introspectively into yourself and you say, “Who am I? What do I do? How do I think about my actions and myself?” And you’re doing something because you know that is you. That’s something that remove all of the outside influence. That’s something that’s important. And I think that’s how you develop this consistency in applying the sense of mindset.

Mike Barwis: On every wall in every gym I’ve ever had, I put up a quote that says, if the people we work with today mean more to us than we do to ourselves, we’ll be good at our job. And the reality is, it’s getting to a point where you are willing to sacrifice all within you for the individuals that surround you and willing to lift them up. That’s what makes a great leader, being a great servant. Understanding how to serve in such a way at such a high caliber of self-sacrifice that the individuals around you will follow you through just about anything.

Mike Barwis: One thing I see a lot of times in young coaches or young business people, they’re so set on how much money I can make, how much I can get, what do I get? That they don’t really ever become good at what they do. Because the reality is, your job is to do what? Your job is to work and achieve things for someone else. Your job is to grow and offer something of you that betters this world. If you’re only focused on what you’re taking in and never on what you’re giving out, you will have no success. You have to be able to give and serve to find what really makes you special. And I think that’s often overlooked.

Mike Barwis: Well, I want the job that has the most money. I want the job that makes me have the greatest impact. And if I can have that job, if it was $5 or $5 million, I’m going to be relentless at it. I want the job that takes my abilities and my traits and allows me to control my attitude and effort, and achieve greatness for something. And usually if you find that, sooner or later the other things come, but you can’t focus on what you’re getting. You have to focus on what of you you can give to change the world.

Ben Grynol: So when there are these moments in life where everyone’s going to have oscillation, the ups, the downs, the times when even if you believe in yourself, there are times where things can be more challenging. And so what can people do? What are tangible things that people can do to improve their mindset? And this is, I guess, the questions outside of there are things that we can say; eat well, sleep well, exercise, practice, mindfulness, expose yourself to discomfort. These are all factors, but are there any specific things, if you were giving somebody that you’re training or just somebody that you meet a piece of advice or feedback that’s, I’m lost, I don’t know how to improve my mindset anymore. What’s something that somebody can do to start to take those steps?

Mike Barwis: Simplify the situation first. I think a lot of times, one thing goes wrong and then there’s a tiny little thing that happens somewhere else. And the next thing it starts to emulsify and mix together, and it becomes this massive problem, which in truth is one little simple thing. So exhale, slow down the situation, realize what actually happened. What is the real problem? Focus on that specific issue. Simple things. Playing basketball and my jump shot is gone. I can’t make a jump shot. I’m terrible. I stink. Guess what? I had a problem, my son is sick. My wife, her grandmother died and now I have to deal with that. Next thing we know my jump shot’s a massive problem. Why? Because my mindset is just deteriorating and my world is collapsing around.

Mike Barwis: The truth is, I was a great basketball player who had a fantastic jump shot two weeks ago. Did that disappear? Did my abilities change? Did who I am suddenly deteriorate? No. I just need to go back and realize that my jump shot is going down, probably because I’m making some mistake or I’m second guessing myself and losing focus. So if that’s the case, I’m going to go in where I was quiet. I’m going to focus on what I have to do. I’m going to spend the extra time to lock the world out when I’m working on that and only focus on one specific thing, because we’re no good at doing 10 things at once. We’re only good at doing the one thing in front of us.

Mike Barwis: I always do this one little process with people when I talk about focus. I say, “Close your eyes. And everybody close your eyes. And I’m going to tell you to open your eyes and I want you to find everything that’s red. When I tell you to open them, open them. When I tell you to close them, close them.” So I say, “Go.” They open their eyes. I give them about five seconds. And I say, “Okay, close them.” And I say, “Tell me everything that was red.” And they list four or five things quickly and they’re proud. And then I say, “Okay, tell me everything was blue.” And they can’t name anything. And I laugh. I’m like, “Why can’t you tell me anything blue?” Well, you told me to find everything red.

Mike Barwis: So you’re telling me that if you’re not focused on your task, you can’t accomplish it. You can’t find the blue stuff when you’re focused on the red stuff. So don’t let the world distract you from your focus. Get on the thing that you are trying to fix or change, simplify it to what’s actually happening and then focus on changing it, and don’t involve anything else but that tangible aspect that you need to change. And then change your mindset about how you’re going to perform. Talk to yourself, tell yourself you’re going to be great, tell yourself you were great, tell yourself you will accomplish it. Attack whatever your task is with the idea that I’m going to achieve it, and you will.

Ben Grynol: Yeah. That translates right into business and to startups exactly too, is you hear so often there are reasons… Let’s use startups. There are reasons that startups fail, many reasons. They can be underfunded, there could be team dynamics, there could be… you name it. But one of the things, and you never want this to be the outcome, if you run out of capital and you can’t raise, that’s an issue. If there are team dynamics, that’s an issue. But the one thing you don’t want to fail on is focus. And so when startups fail, because they have a lack of focus and everything is a bright, shiny object, or we’re trying to do a hundred things when we should actually do five and do five really well and knock them out and then go do five more. You have to be fast, but you also have to be focused.

Ben Grynol: And I think that the whole exercise of closing your eyes and what you see, tell me everything that’s red, and then tell me everything that’s blue. That is the exact case of saying we are going to ignore everything and we’re just going to focus. That gets back to the Jump shot. That is how you get your jump shot back is by focusing on what is in front of you and not focusing on everything else, it becomes this distraction. And it’s such a great parallel to have because you go focus is what maintains that mindset for you.

Mike Barwis: 100%. And it’s funny. So we do business consultations and we work with large corporations to help them in that exact area. Obviously, there’s 37 different companies in the BARWIS Corporation. So we’ve been successful in developing companies and growing them and achieving success with those corporations. So we do do that. We do a number of things where we consult for corporations and other areas. And you’re right, it’s the exact same thing. It’s learning who you are as a corporation. What do you actually offer? What makes you good at it? And how do you focus on that instead of the other things everybody is trying to feed you to focus on? A lot of times, people get distracted. Well, I have to be good at hair cuts inside my center versus I have to be good at the training that allows it.

Mike Barwis: I’ve been to many places where if you’re looking at a performance center where they have 50 little things that they do, that are all unrelated to performance, and then the performance center is garbage and it closes. Most places don’t make it past three years. If you make it past three years, you’re usually successful. In three years, you know who you are, the community knows who you are. Your goals, and your focus have been placed in an area that you attained or you ordained to be an area you wanted to be successful. You have pushed yourself to develop that area and you haven’t diluted it with other things that are unrelated to that area. If we have a primary focus and we attack it with the same relentless mindset that we do sport, we will achieve in anything in life, especially business.

Mike Barwis: Most places open thinking I’m going to be a restaurant like that restaurant. Well, what makes you special? What makes you different? What are the attributes that you have that separate you from someone else? And how are you going to cultivate them to make you the uncommon place that everybody wants to be and to make your product different and more exceptional than the individuals around you? But oftentimes they’re so focused on what the other people are doing, that they don’t focus on what makes them special. Show me who you are, don’t replicate what someone else does, because who you are may be exactly what someone wants, that they just can’t find anywhere else. That’s a piece of the puzzle that I think oftentimes is overlooked.

Ben Grynol: Yeah, that’s exactly it. It’s okay to have outside influence. Everything in life is a remix where somebody’s playing style is an amalgamation of Gordie Howe. Let’s use NHL. They’re Gordie Howe, Paul Coffey and Sidney Crosby. And you go, “Wow, that’s a very unique plank sell.” Maybe throw Wendel Clark in there too. Why not?

Mike Barwis: A great player.

Ben Grynol: Very great. But if you go out with absolute mimicry where you just try to be Wendel Clark, you’re not actually playing your game. So it’s okay to have the influence, but you do you, avoid the mimicry, just leave it behind. And whether that’s in sports or business, don’t worry about mimicry. Just focus on building what you believe in building.

Mike Barwis: I agree. We’re only great at being ourselves and who we are as a culmination of our gifts and our abilities fortified with our journey. What we’ve been subjected to and what we learned from it and put into our repertoire to make us special, cultivate that, it may be a piece of what you learned from Pavel Datsyuk or Stephen Yzerman or whoever it might be. But cultivate that in you because it makes you unique and special. Don’t try to be them. If you’re them, you’re just an imitation of what you see instead of a cultivation of what you are.

Ben Grynol: That’s exactly it. Well, this has been awesome, Mike. Where can people find you? There’s so many cool things that you’re doing, but where can people find you and what can they look into? What are some takeaways?

Mike Barwis: Our website is barwis.com. You can find a lot of information about us. We’re a large number of companies around the world, we’re different countries as well, but in the United States we have multiple places in Florida, one in Deerfield Beach, one in Port St. Lucie, Florida, one in Colorado, Michigan, that you can find the centers, but most of our stuff is online. And we do have BARWIS Anywhere, which allows people to have interaction from any site and be able to be a part of who we are, which we’re growing into a lot of these things, motivational pieces and the mindset and the performance and the training cycles and all the other variables that hopefully will help people. That’s the goal. If we can impact lives before we leave here in a positive way then we’ve done our job.