How to be a SUPER You ! | Ep 048

🏀  Unlock the power of mental toughness with Dre Baldwin, former pro basketball player turned motivational icon, TEDx Speaker and author of 35 books on the topic!

➡️  Meet the Guest: Dre Baldwin
As CEO and Founder of Work On Your Game Inc., Dre Baldwin has given 4 TEDxTalks on Discipline, Confidence, Mental Toughness & Personal Initiative and has authored 35 books. He has appeared in national campaigns with Nike, Finish Line, Wendy's, Gatorade, Buick, Wilson Sports, STASH Investments and DIME magazine. 

Dre has published over 8,000 videos to 142,000+ subscribers, his content being consumed over 103 million times. 

Dre's daily Work On Your Game MasterClass has amassed over 2,900 episodes and more than 7.3 million downloads. 

In just 5 years, Dre went from the end of his high school team's bench to a 9-year professional basketball career. He played in 8 countries including Lithuania, Germany, Montenegro, Slovakia and Germany. 

Dre invented his Work On Your Game framework as a "roadmap in reverse" to help professionals with Mindset, Strategy, Systems & Accountability. 

In this game-changing episode:

🏀 Discover the pivotal moment that transformed Dre's mindset at age 14
🏀 Learn how to visualize success and adopt a winner's mentality
🏀 Explore the crucial "third day" concept for maintaining motivation
🏀 Gain insights from legends like Floyd Mayweather and Michael Jordan
🏀 Master the art of 'being' vs. 'doing' for lasting success

Dre shares wisdom from his vast experience, including insights from his popular books "Work On Your Game" and "Super You" and "The Third Day". Whether you're an athlete, entrepreneur, or anyone striving for greatness, Dre's journey from underdog to impacting over a million lives will inspire you to crush your goals.

Ready to level up your mental game? Hit play now! 👊

➡️ Chapters
(00:02) - Mental Toughness and Personal Growth
(04:20) - Overcoming Fear of Failure in Sports
(10:42) - Mental Conditioning for Success
(18:08) - Visualizing Success and Self-Perception
(22:18) - The Power of Personal Growth
(26:47) - The Importance of the Third Day
(32:39) - Building Mental Toughness Through Discipline
(37:47) - The Power of Discipline and Self-Improvement


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Connect with our Hosts:
Stacey: https://www.instagram.com/staceymgrant/
Mark: https://www.instagram.com/mark_lubragge_onair/

➡️ More about the guest: Dre Baldwin
Website: https://www.dreallday.com/
Books: https://bit.ly/4diBtPc
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drebaldwin/

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*THE OPINIONS OF OUR GUESTS ARE NOT OURS* 
The Gurus & Game Changers Video Podcast  follows the paths of influential leaders from humble beginnings and/or seemingly insurmountable obstacles to where they are now.

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➡️ Thanks for watching:
#MentalToughness, #PersonalGrowth, #OvercomingFear, #Sports, #MentalConditioning, #Success, #Visualization, #Self-Perception, #Discipline, #Self-Improvement, #Motivation, #Resilience, #Commitment, #ThirdDay, #Accountability, #HighStandards, #Discipline, #Self-Awareness, #LawofAttraction, #Influence

Transcript

00:02 - Mark (Host)
What is the voice inside your head? Telling you I don't want to talk about the voice inside my head. Why? Because the voice it dictates. According to Dre, it dictates everything you do. 

00:08 - Stacey (Host)
Well, the voice inside my head yesterday was super negative and I talked about this in the podcast that I had to literally go in there, reach in my brain and be like what are you doing? You're being negative. I admire that you have to change your mindset immediately because of all the amazing things that are happening. It's a skill. 

00:22 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, it's hard. 

00:23 - Stacey (Host)
It's hard Because you start to go down that trail. 

00:26 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, do you know what I mean? Well, life takes you there. This is happening, just a reality. 

00:30 - Stacey (Host)
It's so busy and so stressful and this person and that person and you really have to pull yourself out of that thing. But, Dre, his best advice was given to him by one of his 14-year yeah you gotta buy your game. You gotta buy your game and the other one is Don't play scared. 

00:47 - Mark (Host)
Don't play scared. 

00:47 - Stacey (Host)
Don't play scared and you gotta buy your game. 

00:49 - Mark (Host)
That's good life advice. The buy your game, by the way, is go get the skills you need to be successful. 

00:53 - Stacey (Host)
Right. 

00:54 - Mark (Host)
Don't be scared to employ them, yeah. 

00:56 - Stacey (Host)
Fast forward to like. However, many years later and he's on a professional basketball team. 

01:00 - Mark (Host)
Yeah. 

01:01 - Stacey (Host)
All because of his mindset. 

01:03 - Mark (Host)
Despite failing early on. 

01:04 - Stacey (Host)
Yes, a lot, and then fast forward. 

01:06 - Mark (Host)
now he's written how many books? 35. 35 books, tedx speaker. He works with people constantly. He's helped and I say it in the intro he's helped literally over a million people with his programs and his courses and all sorts of stuff. 

01:18 - Stacey (Host)
And he's so motivational. But he's like super down to earth, nice guy, really really interesting to listen to. He's got a lot of cool stories. You guys are going to love this thing. What else does he talk about? He talks about three ways people can motivate themselves. How to deal with people who are like mailing it in. How to be mentally tough. 

01:38 - Mark (Host)
How to be mentally tough. 

01:38 - Stacey (Host)
How to be mentally tough. Those are good suggestions too. I have to say, like I listened to that, I was like, oh, I haven't heard that one. 

01:44 - Mark (Host)
Cause I've heard. 

01:44 - Stacey (Host)
I've done a lot of self growth stuff, but if you guys haven't done self self growth stuff, this is a good guy to start with. 

01:52 - Mark (Host)
It's a great guy Cause you know what he covers so much. Let's not just like, let's talk about mental toughness. It in every way. You need to think to have a better tomorrow and get the stuff done that you know you need to get done, that's beneficial to you, that you are not doing he's a philly guy, he's a philly, he's a philly guy. We always appreciate that that's true, so listen up, you're going to enjoy it. 

02:13
This is trey baldwin hi, I'm stacy and I am mark, and this is the gurus at game changers podcast. Welcome everybody. So you want somebody who can actually change your game and maybe help you live a better life than you need to hear from today's guest. Today's guest is a former professional basketball player, turned personal motivator, tedx speaker, and he has countless pieces of content, thousands pieces of content that have helped over a million people in more than 50 countries live a better life. This is Dre Baldwin, and you have to hear what this man has to say because he quite literally could change how you see yourself and how you approach your every day. So it's Dre all day Dre. Welcome buddy, welcome to the show. 

02:59 - Dre (Guest)
I'm excited to be on here with you too. Thank you for having me on. That's great. 

03:07 - Stacey (Host)
We are so excited to have you on here, so I've been watching a ton of your stuff. 

03:08 - Dre (Guest)
I've been kind of stalking you. 

03:09 - Stacey (Host)
I you probably can feel my presence on all of your, all of your stuff, and you have a lot. But I love the story that you tell about just going to get right in here, when you were 14 years old and you had another friend who was 14 years old, who was a really good basketball player, and he gave you some really good advice. Can you talk about that? 

03:24 - Dre (Guest)
Yeah, he did your research. So I'm trying to remember who that was. Okay, it was my eighth grade or middle school classmate, brandon, and he was the best player in our middle school and we were about to go to different high schools for ninth grade. So at the end of eighth grade I just asked him for some advice and he told me two things he said number one you got to stop playing scared. And number two, you need to go buy a game Now, stop playing scared. I understood and he was right. And number two buy a game. I never heard that before and he went on to explain. He said, jerry, you just don't have any skills. You can't drill, you can't shoot, you don't grab any rebounds. When get the ball, you shoot it and sometimes you make it, sometimes you don't, but you're not bringing any skills to the table. And he was absolutely right and I was humble enough to accept his advice and applied it over the next 20 or so years. And those were the seeds of where Work On your Game came from. 

04:18 - Stacey (Host)
And that's Work On your Game, that's your program and I think like. So you actually kept trying to play basketball, right? So you tried out what three times and it didn't come through. But you kept trying and I wanted to ask you what made you keep trying, why basketball, yeah. 

04:33 - Dre (Guest)
So high school, I tried out four times. I made it once, so I was one out of four. So if I was playing baseball, that's not bad, that's true. Playing basketball. Yeah, if you're not on the team after at least the third try, usually most players quit. So for me, what I like to tell people, Stacey, is that I was dumb enough to keep trying. 

04:51 - Stacey (Host)
No, it obviously worked. 

04:52 - Dre (Guest)
Yeah, and the great thing is and I have told people this as well, Mark and Stacey is that because social media didn't exist at the time, that was actually good for me, because had I been able to look at social media and see all the other kids my age who were already creating some success at that point in basketball, I would have been comparing myself to them and it might have caused me to quit. I don't know if it would have, but it might have and at the same time, the way that I didn't make the team three years in a row who knows? I might have been getting ridiculed on the internet for not making the team. So all these things could have happened had social media existed. The good news is I was limited to just the people I physically knew, which is not nearly as many people who know my name or know about me or can hear me now. So it was actually good that I was kind of in a sheltered I guess we can say relatively speaking environment to where I could fail in peace. 

05:39 - Stacey (Host)
So then, by the time I got there you'd seen in the senior year? You didn't. He had this thing about you. I wasn't even that good in the senior year, yeah, but I mean, you had this thing about you where you kept just practicing and practicing and practicing. Wasn't there a friend of yours, too, that came up to you and said why do you keep practicing basketball? What are you doing? 

05:52 - Dre (Guest)
And that's kind of like, as I saw all of your stuff, I kept thinking, well, yeah, it was everybody in the neighborhood who would say that it wasn't one person. Just say you're out here practicing, but you're not. You don't have any success, what are you doing? It's not translating. And they were 100% correct. Again, they were right Now again, had it been a million people saying that, or 10,000 on the internet, again, it might have affected me more, being it was only maybe 30. 

06:18
I was able to work past it, past it. So what made me keep going was, well, I tried other sports at that point. So I tried a little bit of baseball for a couple years. My dad was a youth baseball coach still, actually, to this day, still coaches baseball 30 years after my career ended, and he still coaches. And I tried a little bit of football never really played seriously, and I never really looked at any other sport as a possibility. 

06:41
There's a beautiful tennis court right next to the basketball court in the neighborhood that I'm from. Nobody ever uses it. I think I would have been a good tennis player, because a lot of things you need for basketball speed, agility and as a solo sport, so you can practice a lot by yourself. I think I would be good at tennis, but where I come from, nobody played tennis, so there was no inclination to even try and there was no other sport that I knew of that I could have played. So basketball was last shot. 

07:03
If I was going to do something using my body, it was going to be basketball. That was the last chance that I had, and everybody where I'm from plays basketball. So that's the reason why I stuck with it, because I didn't have anything else to do. I knew I wasn't going to be like my. I have a sister. She's a year older than me and she was an amazing student, excellent student. I knew I wasn't going to be that. I was going to be good enough in school, not amazing. So basketball is my one chance to be significant. I think my aim for significance is going to be through basketball and even though the success wasn't happening yet Stacey I figured that this must be the best. If I'm going to do it, this is going to be the route that it happens. 

07:40 - Mark (Host)
Does that fall in line with what you talk about finding your super you, and it's part of it. 

07:44 - Dre (Guest)
It confidence, yeah, yeah, because what the super you is about, mark, is about unlocking and living with your highest level of confidence, and that starts with the way that you see yourself in the mirror. It starts with who you decide that you're going to be as a person, and I think the first person I heard really explain anything like that was reading seven, seven, what is it? Seven habits of highly effective people. 

08:02
Steven w and he had an example in there of picture yourself five years from now walking towards you in the street. What do they look like? How do they walk, how do they talk? What do people say about them? What's their energy? How are they carrying themselves? And you need to start conducting yourself as that person right now. And that was what I started to build in my own mind. I had this imagination or this imagined image in my mind of who I was going to become as an athlete, even when there was nothing in my tangible reality that said that that was gonna happen. So that was really a mental process that I was doing before I was able to articulate and explain it. 

08:37 - Stacey (Host)
I mean like is that like your parents? Or like is it just intrinsic? Where does it come from? Because I know there's so many kids who will stop trying, and I don't know if maybe it's just today, but I think there's a lot of people in general who, if they fail a couple times, they just stop trying right. I mean, what you did was really sort of different. I think I don't see it that often. 

09:00 - Dre (Guest)
I think so as well, and that was a thing even back in the day, that someone would try a thing a couple of times and they would quit. And nowadays it's the same thing People try a couple of things and they quit. And I'm glad you brought that up, stacey, because in Napoleon Hill's book Think and Grow Rich he talks about the six basic human fears, and when he wrote it it came out in the at the height of the Great Depression. So the number one fear he listed was the fear of poverty, because people were worried about losing their money, because that's what was happening. And one of the other fears on the list that if he was to write it again today I think this would be number one is the fear of criticism, and a lot of people don't do things these days because they don't want to be criticized or ridiculed or made a meme out of on social media, because they don't want to get the backlash from everybody else for trying and failing. 

09:47
A lot of people don't try things that they don't want to fail publicly, and it's not because they can't achieve, it's not that they can't keep showing up, since they don't want to keep showing up and coming up short, and especially if you don't have a track record of success. So if I was to try something today for example, stacey and Mark and it fails and a bunch of my followers let's say know about it, it wouldn't bother me that much because I know that they know I have a track record of success to stand on, so I don't feel that bad about it. Right? If I was brand new and nobody knew me and I was coming out of nowhere and failed immediately fell on my face, well, that's a little bit more difficult because I have nothing to lean on that says you've done this before you can do it again. 

10:23 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, that's funny. You say that that was my first question. I wrote down as young versus old. Like we have dealt with adversity, we have created a foundation to say we know. We know what to expect even in the worst of times. We know we've gotten through the worst of times. What advice do you have for the 13, 15, 19 year old that hasn't Great question. 

10:42 - Dre (Guest)
It comes down to mental conditioning. So I have a book called work on your game and the first chapter of that book is about mental conditioning. And mental conditioning works similar to physical conditioning, whereas on a, let's say, on a basketball court, people think that incorrectly. They believe that reason basketball players do to sprint something down the court, or football players up and down the field or every other sport, is so that when you get in the game and you start running, you don feel fatigued. That's actually not true, because fatigue is not a binary, it's not a either you are, you're not. It's a measure of how fatigued are you and how quickly do you recover from the fatigue. 

11:13
So a well-conditioned athlete let's say stephen curry you can have him sprint up and down the court 10 times. 

11:19
He needs 30 seconds of rest and he can start sprinting again, whereas you you have someone who is poorly conditioned, just a lower level of conditioning. 

11:25
They need 30 days or 30 hours before they can sprint up and down the court again. 

11:29
So it's just a measure of how much fatigue, how much is the fatigue affecting you when it does hit you, or how long does it take for it to affect you and mindset it works the exact same way when things don't go right, when things don't go the way that you're expecting them and everything is just messed up. How long do you allow that to bother you before you get back on the horse and get back to your job? And some people they can be annoyed for 90 seconds and they get back to the business, whereas other people they will quit right there and never come back, or they need 90 days or need nine weeks before they come back to the thing, like there are people who are maybe some people listening to this today. They may not to admit it, but they are still allowing themselves to be held back by something that happened to them three years ago and that's a measure of how mentally conditioned are you. It's not a yes or no, it's just a measure of how much. 

12:15 - Stacey (Host)
And how do you get that mental conditioning then? Because I, you know, can it be learned or is it just sort of something that you're born with? 

12:22 - Dre (Guest)
That was absolutely learnable, because mindset is the foundation of all success, is the foundation of all failure and the foundation of all mediocrity. So the mental conditioning is all about how the subconscious mind is programmed. And the subconscious mind is programmed through three specific things, and three only. There's repetition, there's immersion and there's emotionalization. So any one of these three things repetition is just telling yourself the same thing over and over and over again. You tell yourself anything enough times, even if it's a lie, you will come to accept it and you will live it out. 

12:50
Immersion means immersing yourself. Think about if you jump into eight feet of water. You're completely immersed in the water and you're probably only focused on how do I navigate in this water? If you can't swim, how do I get out of here? And if you can swim, you still use out the focus so you don't drown in the water. So immersion is basically crowding, crowding out any other consideration besides the thing that you were involved in. That's what, if you anybody ever been to a 12-step program or rehab program? The whole purpose is to immerse you in an environment so that you can't focus on what got you in there in the first place. 

13:19
And the third one is emotionalization. 

13:21
The great thing about emotionalization is it can happen that fast. 

13:24
You can go through one highly emotionally charged experience and it changes you subconsciously for the rest of your life, with only going through it one time, whereas with repetition you may have to repeat it a hundred or a thousand times before it has its effect. 

13:35
But emotionalization you can go through something once one tragic situation, a car accident, a plane crash that you see, or a family member loses a life, somebody gets a cancer diagnosis that you see, or a family member loses a life, somebody gets a cancer diagnosis. That can change you immediately and it only took two minutes to go through the experience. But any one of those three programs the subconscious mind and the challenge is Stacey that most people are not aware of this process and most people usually don't go through some random tragic or highly emotionally charged event that changes them, at least not on their own accord. It may happen randomly, but they don't plan it and because of this, most people end up being conditioned by default, which means you're conditioned by whoever you're around and whatever you're around and unfortunately, since most people are average by definition, most people get conditioned to be average. 

14:21 - Stacey (Host)
Wow. 

14:23 - Dre (Guest)
Can I? 

14:23 - Stacey (Host)
just dig in. I don't know if you have a question, but I just want to dig into that. Second because I know like yesterday I was feeling like so stressed I'm moving the studio, just making it like real world. Yesterday I was like just feeling like, oh God, I have this to do, I have that to do, I have this to do. But I knew that I was starting in my brain to start to go down this bad path. So I just had to stop and say to myself okay, you need to change your mindset. Right, Because I know it's so important, because I listen to people like you, Dre, all the time. I'm trying to figure this out. Which one of those would I use on myself? Would it be repetition, Like this is really great, this is really great, this is awesome, this is positive, here's the good stuff, here's the gratitude, like would that be the thing? Like how do you, how do what I personally do? That's kind of what I did, you know, try here's the positive things, but what do you think? 

15:09 - Dre (Guest)
well, it worked. If it worked, then I would say just do it. But what I would say is actually a different answer is because what you need to do is change your mindset in a moment, and the first thing that we got to go back to the basic here. Change is instantaneous, all right, change is something that happens in a moment. So if I just said to everyone now and you too, mark and Stacey picture an elephant in your mind, all right, you got it, all right. Picture a basketball All right. Picture a NASA rocket you see how quickly you got that image in your head just as soon as I said it. So change is instantaneous. The human brain works that fast. The mind works that quickly. As soon as you give it an image, it automatically can bring it up in your mind. 

15:46
The challenge for people is and the thing that you described there, stacey, is that you probably had done that sometime in your past. That wasn't the first time ever in your life. You ever said I need to change my mindset, and then you started doing something and it actually worked. So you already had something to call on. So it's kind of like like I'm not running right now, but I can. I am conditioned to run outside for six or seven miles in miami heat. So just because I'm not running right now doesn't mean if you took me down there, I need to start at zero. All right, I can get out there and I can run it if I put on my workout gear and warm up because I've already done the work ahead of time. 

16:18
So, mentally, we call this doing your homework and I tell entrepreneurs this all time. You thought homework ended when you got out of school. No, it didn't, it just started. So doing your homework is the preparatory work that a professional does to be ready for a situation before it happens. So, mentally, mental conditioning is similar to what I said with physical conditioning the reason that a football player does the sprints up and down the field in practice so that when you get in the game you need to sprint up and down the field. You can do it and it doesn't destroy you because you did your homework of doing the conditioning. This is the reason why athletes practice more than we play. Most athletes have 10 practice sessions every one game, at least at the professional level. We do, and it's the same thing when it comes to any professional doing anything a professional speaker, a professional coach, an author you do your work ahead of time so that when you get into the situation, you're already ready for anything that could be thrown at you. So it appears to the observer that the professional is just so naturally talented and good. And, yes, many professionals are very talented and they are very good, but it's the work that you didn't see that makes the work that you do see appear effortless and easy, because they did their homework ahead of time. So that's what doing your homework is about is preparing yourself mentally for the situation before it occurs. And I'll give you one last piece here. This is the reason why people do I don't know if either you do any type of mindfulness exercises or yoga or meditation and what's the reason that people do those and what's the reason that those are called a practice and are not called a science. 

17:41
The reason that meditation is called a practice is because the 30 minutes a day you spend meditating is not for that 30 minutes. It's practice for the other 23 hours and 30 minutes in which you're not meditating, so that when something crazy happens that you don't control and other people do stuff that you have no control over what they do the other 99% of life that you don't control. You have already practiced going into a calm, meditative state. So the practice. 

18:08 - Stacey (Host)
I love this I love that I love this. 

18:09 - Mark (Host)
You know one of the things that I do if there's a big event coming up or there's just something on my mind, I know this Friday like, let's say, a move is going to happen. 

18:20
People say, well, visualize being successful in that moment, and you can do that for sure. But I like to visualize the day after Because to me there's a determinism to it, it's going to happen. I'm not going to worry about it because it's going to happen and I know I'm going to do whatever I need to do to make sure that it happens the right way, whatever that means in that moment. But I visualize the day after. How am I feeling? 

18:39
about how how yesterday was and it's always, it always feels wonderful when you, because then you're back then you reverse engineer it and you start taking care of, to dre's point, you start practicing and taking care of all the little things that get you to that friday so that saturday feels great, it's a little mental game I play with myself. 

18:59 - Stacey (Host)
Yeah, I love that, and I also love the story too. Just just to stay on the super you just for one more second. 

19:05 - Dre (Guest)
Um, the story that you tell about your friend's coach the experiment that the coach did with the basketball team and for those who don't follow sports, basketball team it's, let's say, 12 guys. He tells them I'm going to have each one of you pretend to be one of your teammates all day in practice. So the purpose of the experiment was for the players to show each other who they were, rather than the coach telling them, because when you're on a team for a whole season, eventually especially with younger players you tend to think that maybe the coach has it out for you, or the coach is just hating on you, or the coach is only criticizing you. So he said I'm going to make one of your teammates pretend to be you all day, so whatever mistakes that you're always making, they will show you, so that you don't think it's just coming from me. Let your own teammates show you who you are. 

19:45
So, as he's going down the line and randomly doing this assignment, our storyteller, his name is tucker. He got assigned to be and he was like maybe the 10th best player on the team. So this guy is mediocre on his best day and on the assignment, though, he was told that he needed to be his teammate, mike, who happened to be the best player on the team. So the question then I asked people is how do you think he played in practice that day? 

20:06 - Stacey (Host)
well, I know because I listened to you so the answer is he played amazing. 

20:11 - Dre (Guest)
He made. He was making all kinds of shots, doing all kinds of moves that he never tried. His teammates are looking at him wide-eyed and slack jaw, like where's this coming from? Because, again, they're with him every day and they had never seen him do any of this. So they're wondering where is this coming from. 

20:24
And that's an example of tapping into the super you. And the key is that this is not faking it until you make it, because you can't fake making a shot in a basketball game, like the ball either went in the hoop or it didn't. So what he had done is become this higher level version of himself, channeling his teammate mike because someone had told him to do it. And the the moral to the story is the point of story is this guy, tucker, already had those abilities within him, because it's not like just because the coach said you pretend to be mike, all of a sudden he just all just randomly became good at basketball. Either you have those abilities or you don't. He already had the ability. What he didn't have was the permission to use them to permission and what the super you, that the super assignment right, was the coach giving him permission to be something other than what he had always been? 

21:09
so he was given permission to step outside of the box through this little experiment, and and that's what made all the difference- it's like a brilliant coach, right. 

21:17 - Mark (Host)
It reminds me of something else I heard you say in either one of your TEDx speeches or maybe another interview, something about like you lay out a to-do list and then you have to step back from that. This is what I want to accomplish. You step back from that and you say, well, who do I need to be as a person in order to to hit this to-do list? And then the concept is because you're not that person because if you were, it wouldn't be on your to-do list because you would have already done it. So let's say, like I want to quit smoking, that's not on my to-do list because I'm a non-smoker. So if you're, if you're defining yourself as somebody who's trying to quit smoking, but you change it to I am a non-smoker, that can come off your list. It really is a self-perception, self-talk and, to your point, um, becoming the person that you're giving yourself permission to become, the person that can accomplish the things you want to accomplish. 

22:07 - Stacey (Host)
I find that fascinating. 

22:08 - Dre (Guest)
I think that's some groundbreaking exactly yes, and the reason why that matters is because the process for achieving things in life is being, then doing, then having, and it's a three-step process. The challenges Mark many people go through their entire lives. Most people understand the concept of goals, even if they don't have them written down. People get it I want this much money, I want this position, I want this house, this car, whatever. Most people get that part and most people logically understand you can't get something for nothing. So they figure you have to do something to get the outcome. So most people spend their entire lives in this loop between doing and having. So let me do stuff. Do I have my outcome? No, let me do more stuff. Do I have it? No, let me do more stuff. Let me change what I'm doing, let me do it harder, let me do it faster, let me do it sooner, let me do it better. So they just go through this whole process of doing, doing, doing. And you know the saying. 

22:54
People say we're called human beings but people spend their lives doing Right. So people stay focused on this doing part and all people look for when they haven't achieved their outcomes or they're frustrated by their lack of accomplishment, they say well, I got to figure out what else I need to do. Or let me go work harder. I mean, you got the whole thing, nobody cares. Work harder, all right. Double down on effort and listen, I'm not against hard work. I mean, my whole thing is called work on your game. I can't be against hard work. 

23:20
But at the same time, we have to understand that before you start doing stuff, the first thing you have to ask yourself is what type of person do I need to be? And being is not about actions, it's about your aura. It's about your energy. It's about your aura. It's about your energy. It's about your presence. It's about the way you think. It's about your posture, both internal and external, and who you see yourself as when you look in the mirror. When that changes, you can take the same actions, or even less actions than what you took before, and you'll get a completely different outcome because the energy is different. And this is how people talk about the law of attraction. 

23:51 - Mark (Host)
Hey guys, thanks for listening. If you like what you're hearing, please leave us a review, give us a follow, subscribe, all those things. All those things. We love it because we read each and every comment and it helps shape the show, so we would appreciate it. 

24:04 - Stacey (Host)
Please, and back to the show. 

24:07 - Dre (Guest)
This is how the law of attraction actually works. Most people bastardize the concept. But how the law of attraction actually works. Most people bastardize the concept. But how the law of attraction actually works is you get yourself in the right energetic state and when you're in a certain mental and energetic state, it automatically leads to certain actions and then those actions lead to an outcome. That's the entirety of how the law works. It's not just thinking. It's thinking which leads to doing, which leads to outcomes. 

24:29 - Mark (Host)
I'm like here. 

24:31 - Stacey (Host)
So excited to talk to you. This is just so, so great. 

24:33 - Mark (Host)
What do you tell the people who and we all have them in our lives and we all know them they, they're not ready for this message. How do you get them to see the benefit? Because, like I wish all the time people would feel the way I feel because of how I approach things and how accomplished I feel and how just amazing I feel Like every day, positive and self-talk, and all that it's true. How do you get people that the window's not open to that? 

25:01 - Dre (Guest)
How do you convince them? Well, you got two options. Option A is, first of all, you can't convince anybody of anything, so you can't convince them. So if you're at this level and you see some other people who are at this level, you want to bring them up to your level, the number one thing you can do is you can set an example and hopefully influence them, but you cannot make them want something that they don't want. 

25:24
That's impossible. It's like trying to pull a donkey up a mountain. You're only going to get tired and the donkey going to get annoyed. It's not going to happen. You can't do it. They're going to dig in their heels and you're not moving. So you can't get them to see it. What you can do is set the example with how you're living and what you're doing and the results that you're getting, and eventually some of those people are going to see what you're doing and how you're doing it and three, five, ten years later they're going to you and say, hey, tell me some of the books that you read, or tell me what conferences do you go to, or tell me how you do that mindset stuff you're always talking about. They will eventually come around when they're ready to come around and unfortunately, mark, some of those people are never coming around. They're never, coming around. 

26:05
People are who they are and it is not our responsibility, especially those of us who are in this position, where we are giving people the game when it comes to mindset and growth and personal development. The thing that we all have to accept is that you're talking to about 2% of the population and 2% seems like a small amount, but 2% of 8 billion still a lot of people and you just have to understand that most people are not seriously interested in personal growth and personal development. Now it's becoming more ubiquitous because social media makes it more easily accessible and more people are kind of like OK, that sounds like that, open my eyes a little bit, but they have to come around at the pace at which they come around. So our jobs and I tell this to entrepreneurs all the time. So you're asking this question. I'll tell you. 

26:49
What I tell them is that you have two options. You can either you can be the, the social activist who, meaning you're trying to get people who are not really interested to get interested. You can do that if you want. I understand it's going to be frustrating because not everybody wants to hear it, so if you want to do that, do it. Or the other thing you can do is go find the people who are already converted and priest to the choir. So if you're running a church, for example, do you preach to the people who came to church or do you preach to the people standing on the corner outside of the church? Who's more interested in the message? That's just a question that you have to decide which one you want to talk to. You can convert either one, but it's a little bit more work. If you go to the guy standing on the corner who didn't come into church, they see the. They know you're in there. 

27:28 - Stacey (Host)
They didn't come in. 

27:30 - Mark (Host)
Right. 

27:30 - Stacey (Host)
So one of the other things you talk about that I love is the third day concept, and if you could kind of go through that and also mention, like the caveats of the third day, I think they'd be really helpful for our audience. 

27:40 - Dre (Guest)
Sure. So the third day is all about showing up and giving your best effort when you least feel like it. So an example that I use is someone who hasn't worked out in a while. They have worked out before, but they haven't worked out in a while, so they have to kind of get back into it. They decide they're going to hire a personal trainer, join a gym and start working out again. So the first day they're really excited New workout gear, new workout sneakers, new 25 pack of boot camp classes and a new trainer. They show up to the gym and the trainer is going to kick their butt. 

28:08
I've worked in gyms before, stacey, so I know what we do. Our purpose when you come in, especially if you already joined, is we're going to give you that free session that you get when you join and we're going to kick your butt in that workout. So bad, just so you understand how much you need us. All right. That's the point. It's kind of like a uh, what they call it, like sticky. It makes it sticky that you're going to stay in the gym because you already made the commitment. Even when I was selling gym memberships, I would do this to people. They would come to the gym like I want to take a look, and I walk them through the gym and I had them get on equipment. Now I had them do stuff I knew they couldn't do, so they could feel how out of shape they were, so they knew they needed the membership. So you're going to kick your butt in that first workout. You drag yourself home and you're going to say, hey, I'm doing this because you voluntarily chose to join the gym. Second day you got a little bit of so body today because the upper body was yesterday. You're going to drag yourself home and you're going to say, with just a little bit less energy, I'm doing this. Again, you signed up for this. 

29:03
Now, on the third day, everything starts to change. The third day, grab your phone and text your trainer and say just charge me for the session, I'm not coming. All right, that's what happens on the third day. Third day you don't want to talk to the smiling person at the front desk. You don't want to hear your trainer's mouth. Your body sounds like a bag of microwave popcorn when you get out of bed. 

29:30
You signed up for is not one big party and there is some real work involved and it's going to take grit and determination and, okay, this is not, it's just going to be as fun as it looked on a brochure. 

29:40
Right, there's some real work involved here, and that's what the third day is about, and the reason that the subtitle of the third day is the decision that separates the pros from the amateurs, because it's all about what do you do when the third day happens. It's not a matter of if it happens. It's a matter of what you do when it happens. And in anything you do in life whether it's raising kids, whether it's having a podcast, whether it's writing a book, whether it's starting a business, whether it's starting a new job anything you do in life that has some type of substance. At the end, there's going to be a third day, actually going to be third days, and the question again is what do you do on the third day? Do you show up and give your best effort and find a way to do so, or do you either quit or just kind of half-ass it and mail it in, as we said? So that's what the third day is all about. 

30:26 - Stacey (Host)
You've never had a third day right. We all have third days you just have to fight through it, right? I think it's cool too. You talk about like the people who wake up on that third day and go and do their thing. You know that. You know they don't quit right. Nothing happens to them. They don't get like accolades, they don't get rewards, right? Oh yes, because that's who they are like that's my point, and that's who they are. So they're, they define who they are. There's somebody who works out. 

30:51 - Mark (Host)
Not, I'm trying to join a gym, I'm trying to get in shape. I'm someone who gets up every morning. That's what they're saying to themselves, so that third day could be the fourth day to fifth day they're. Maybe they're wearing that pain as a badge of honor at that point because that's who they are. I think that's so important people redefining who they are and and raising the bar on that definition, because too many us, and all of us do it in different areas of our lives. Right, we define who we are, but don't push that envelope, because that self-perception is everything Right for people that don't know that. 

31:25 - Stacey (Host)
So if they're looking for some sort of reward, you know what I mean they don't get a reward, right, dre? And then the person who quits doesn't really get. Nothing happens to that person either. 

31:34 - Dre (Guest)
Yes, yeah, I forgot the disclaimer, so I'll go over those. So the disclaimers are number one when you do show up on the third day, you're gonna have that day. You don't feel like going to the gym or you don't feel like recording your podcast, you don't feel like sitting down, but you're going to remind yourself of this whole concept. Oh yeah, the third day, and you're going to show up and have a great day, a great performance, but you don't get any rewards for doing so. There's no. There's no trophy. There's no round of applause. You don't get recognized on the internet. Nobody really cares that you showed up on the third day. And then the other disclaimer is if you decide not to show up, let's say you do roll over in bed and text the trainer and just let him charge you for the session, but you don't come. Let's say you don't write the 500 words for your book, or you don't record that episode of your podcast, or you don't finish putting together the next module for your course that you've been working on for three years and you don't do it. It doesn't come out and nobody cares that you didn't show up. There's no penalty. You don't stop liking you, your followers don't unfollow you, nothing happens. So the question is, why does the third day matter if there's no penalty for not doing it and there's no reward for doing it? And the answer is that your relationship to the third day will not become obvious until it's too obvious to do anything about what is now obvious. So it becomes so clear whether you've been showing up or not that you can't hide it. 

32:50
So this is like the athlete in sports who forgot to get ready for the season during the offseason. So he gets to the first day of training camp and you realize, oh, I'm not in shape, I forgot. Well, it's too obvious now and you can't act like you did do the work. And that's what the third day is all about. That it becomes obvious in the long term because every day there's a small, little incremental difference that happens when you do show up or when you don't show up, and they start to compound on each other. So it's kind of like compounding compound interest. When people talk about in finance it's the exact same way that there's these small differences that add up over time that you can't even tell the difference from day one to day two, but by day 1000 it's very clear who's been doing what and who hasn't are there three tips that you can give for someone to become more mentally tough? 

33:33
well, first of all, you got to be in tough situations. It's the number one thing to be in. To become more mentally tough, you have to go through tough things. You can't become mentally tough everything's easy. And the thing about mental toughness the way I define it is your willingness to continue being disciplined and confident, even when things aren't working, even when things aren't going the way that you expect them to go. So some people can call this grit, determination, perseverance, persistence they're all similar meanings in this context. And to become mentally tough and go through tough things. You want to do this voluntarily. So don't wait for life to throw tough things at you, because that usually comes at inopportune times, when you don't want it to and you have to deal with it. 

34:10
So putting yourself in tough situations means a few things, a few things you can do. You can do something like hiring a coach, joining a mastermind, hiring a personal trainer All right, they're going to push you. That's their job to push you. And it's also holding yourself to certain standards and holding yourself to certain accountabilities that you have to live up to, even though nobody else even knows about it. And, again, there would be no penalty if you didn't do it. This is how you toughen yourself up by forcing yourself to perform at a certain level, even though maybe nobody's watching, maybe nobody cares and maybe there is no immediate tangible payoff for doing so. But it builds the toughness in you so that when you do get into a situation that is actually tough, you're ready to handle it. And this is exactly what I was referring to when I said doing your homework. So this is why, for example I don't know if either of you follow boxing, but a fighter like Floyd Mayweather, when he would spar and sparring is just practice boxing a round in a boxing match is three minutes. 

35:01
He would do an 18-minute sparring round and he would have six different opponents. So the first three minutes would be one guy he would spar. Then the bell would ring. That guy would get out and ring. Another guy would come in, he would spar the next guy. He would do that six times and he never stopped. He would fight each one of the six guys and they would each get three minutes, and he would do that for 18 minutes. 

35:18
So then, when he got into the fight that you saw on TV and around is only three minutes. Well, that's easy. So that's doing your homework. So he put himself in a tough situation so that when he got into the real situation it wasn't there's no parachute in the game, but when you get on the court and there's no parachute it's easy to run, all right. So it's just making it harder in your training than it is in the game, and this is something that I don't know. If you saw the Michael Jordan documentary a couple of years ago, all right. So in the documentary Michael Jordan, what he kept saying, he keeps saying I push my teammates in practice so that when we got in the games and we had to play the New York Knicks or detroit pistons, nothing that they did was worse than the things that I did to them. So they were battle tested for the games and that's the whole point trey what? 

36:04 - Mark (Host)
what was the toughness you went through that got you to where you are today? 

36:07 - Dre (Guest)
man so many things? Well, it would. I would have to start with the failures as an athlete in high school, just starting there and just building the the persistence muscle to keep going. Because I finally even though my senior year on the high school team I only scored two points a game is at the bench. Now I tell people I had, I had a front row seats to the whole season, right there, right there on the bench watching the games. 

36:29
But the fact that I made the team provided some validation to me. That was the first thing that I actually did make the roster. And then, right after that, my freshman year of college, I walked on and I was on the basketball team. So now I'm a college player. And then in college I didn't even play my senior year because we got a new coach and I butted heads with the coach and I was part of the cleaning out process. So my senior year I wasn't even on the basketball team, but then a year after that I was playing pro ball. 

36:52
So it was all these times I had these setbacks and then I came back, back, and then I came back, set back and come back, and every time I did that that just built more. Yes, it built mental toughness, but it really built confidence. It built a whole lot of confidence in me that any setback that I face, I know I can beat it. And I just kept doing that over and over again, even once I got into the pros. There were times where I wasn't sure there would be a next opportunity after the current opportunity and I just had to keep coming back. And that's really where I started to build what I built here, because there were times where I was unemployed from basketball and I started to say, okay, well, what if the phone doesn't ring again? What can I do next? And I started to build the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. And that led to where we are today. So the answer to your question what built the toughness in me is dealing with the setbacks and having a solid foundation of discipline. If I had to give it one thing, if I had to point to one attribute, it would be the discipline, and I'd be remiss if I didn't bring this up the discipline. 

37:47
I have to credit that to my parents. I come from a two-parent household. My parents were not entrepreneurs. They were not trying to groom me to be an athlete. Had I never picked up a ball, they wouldn't care. Their thing was you're going to go to school and get good grades and graduate and go to college. Cause my parents, my mother, did eventually graduate from college, but not until I was in college. She dropped out of college to raise her two kids. They had kids when they were in their early twenties and their thing was just about discipline. Go to school, get what we didn't get, which was a degree. That's what they cared about. 

38:17
I didn't care about athletes or entrepreneurship, and both of my parents worked jobs that I don't think they were as excited to go to their jobs as the three of us are to go to our jobs, right, but they went to work every day, every day, and even when my dad worked far away from home and times he didn't even have a car, he would take public transportation and I eventually saw where he he worked. 

38:37
I knew how far he had to go, and in the snow in philadelphia, that's where I'm from. So in the snow, in the rain, whatever, he went to work every day, even though I know he wasn't always excited about it. I know my mom wasn't always excited about her work. She would get on the phone after work when she got home and talk trash about her co-workers. I don't know who she was talking to when I went here, so so I knew they didn't love their jobs, but they showed up to work every day, and when people asked me where the discipline came from, the other thing I had to say about my parents is that they never preached any of this. They just did it, and, as they say with kids, they don't do what you say, they do what you do, and I had to have gotten that from them because I couldn't have got it from anywhere else. 

39:18 - Mark (Host)
I guess you're, and you're going to pass that on to your son. Absolutely. Yeah that example, setting the concept of not. You have to stop negotiating with yourself. 

39:27 - Dre (Guest)
There's something that you said. 

39:28 - Mark (Host)
I'm a big proponent of that. Can you explain what you mean by that? 

39:32 - Dre (Guest)
Yeah. So that goes right along with the discipline and mental toughness. So negotiating with yourself is like, for example and I know this happens with a lot of entrepreneurs is that they start to get so focused on their business that they let their health go. So they say well, I want to wake up. I usually wake up at six o'clock and go to the office. But OK, dre, what I'm going to do is wake up at five o'clock, work out at home, then go to the office, but when I'm goes off at five, I'm tired, tired. I don't feel like getting out of bed. So next time I talk to them all right, how you doing with those workouts? Uh, it's up to six o'clock, so they're not getting out of bed because they're negotiating with themselves about am I going to do this or not. 

40:07
So the mental toughness and discipline is all about being non-negotiable with yourself. And what I tell people is that, listen, when you were a kid and your parents said be home by 11 o'clock or there's going to be a penalty, you made sure you got home by 11 o'clock. When you went to school, when the teacher said have this, this paper is due by Friday. You couldn't turn it in on Tuesday. Now you had to have it in on Friday or you failed the assignment. 

40:27
When you have a job and the boss says, have these papers on my desk by Thursday, you can't not do it If you want to keep your job. If you've been in the military and you get a direct order, you have to follow it. It's not a back and forth. I don't want to. I don't feel like it. So I tell people you need to show yourself the same respect that you showed all those other people. If you have a client-based business and you have a meeting with a client, you can't just show up 30 minutes late oh, I was tired, I slept in. That's unacceptable. So show yourself that same respect. Show all the other authority figures in your life. And that is that discipline is supported by structure. When you put the right structure in place and discipline becomes a lot easier. A lot of people try to force feed themselves discipline and that's the reason that it doesn't work. But they don't have a structure in place. 

41:10 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, it's conditioning yourself to listen to yourself and respect yourself Right and now, if I I always use the phrase you have to become your own mother. It's funny you said that as an example my mother and not father. 

41:19 - Stacey (Host)
Well, it could be your father. 

41:20 - Mark (Host)
But for me, my mother. If my mother said do X, you did X. 

41:22 - Stacey (Host)
There was just no. 

41:24 - Dre (Guest)
Or the wooden spoon came out. Oh, shoot the Philadelphia Italian Right. 

41:28 - Mark (Host)
So that's the way it works. 

41:29
So in your head now you're old enough, yeah, consequences for yourself or all you do is you condition yourself to not listen to yourself and accept failure over and over and over again. And who's going to pull you out of it? Nobody, because you turned off the one voice, the only voice that could get you to take action. I love the concept. That's why I wanted to bring it up. So you wrote you literally wrote a book on discipline. You literally wrote a book on confidence, on mental toughness, on personal initiative. If anybody wants to get the first book you wrote like what's the? What's the one you need them to read first If they're just starting out on this journey. 

42:05 - Dre (Guest)
I would have them read Work On your Game. That's where I basically laid out the entire Work On your Game philosophy, where it comes from. A lot of these stories and anecdotes I've been sharing here are in that book. So it's kind of like taking you through where working your game came from, while explaining to you why I'm the one talking about it, because the one thing that I'm saying it, but people want to know why, why do you care about this? So these things that you've all been asking me great questions led to these philosophies, led to these principles. So that book gives you a little bit of the story and all of the framework. 

42:35 - Mark (Host)
Got it Work on your game I love it, didn't you write. You wrote 31 books, right uh, technically 35 35 he's more prolific than we thought and and his tedx speeches and countless interviews. You have time 31, 35 thousands and thousands of pieces of content wow, it's amazing but you must, you must enjoy it. You can tell yeah, look he, you love this space that you're in. Yeah, yes, absolutely. 

43:00 - Stacey (Host)
So what's the future for you, dre, and how can we help you get there? 

43:04 - Dre (Guest)
What is the future? Well, the future is we want Work On your Game to become ubiquitous with personal and professional development, the same way that Just Do it is ubiquitous with athletic gear. So that just means getting people to hear the message, to find out about me. I would guess most of the people listening to this never heard of me before today. So I appreciate you two for sharing this platform so that they can find out that I exist. 

43:27 - Stacey (Host)
Oh my God, this has been so amazing and I totally needed to talk to you today, Dre. 

43:30 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, this is great. Where can people find you? 

43:42 - Dre (Guest)
Where you can find me. I'm everywhere online, so any social platform you prefer, I'm on all of them. All of my profiles are public, so I'm probably most active on Instagram. Instagram is just my name at Dre Baldwin, my book the Third Day. Anybody watching on video is this red book right here. So the Third Day is a decision that separates the pros from the amateurs. It's all about showing up and give your best effort when you least feel like it. We talked about that at length here. You can get a free copy of it, a physical copy. We just ask. As you cover the shipping, just go to thirddaybookcom. That's all spelled out. Thirddaybookcom. 

44:05 - Stacey (Host)
I love it. 

44:07 - Mark (Host)
This has been awesome. Thank you, Jay. We can't thank you enough. This has been great. Thanks for everything. Thanks for sharing. 

44:10 - Stacey (Host)
Visit us in Philly when you come back. 

44:12 - Mark (Host)
All right, buddy Be well. Thank you again. Thank you all for watching you. Thank you all for watching, Thank you. 

44:17 - Stacey (Host)
Jason, you're still here. You're still listening. Thanks for listening to the Gurus and Game Changers podcast While you're here. If you enjoyed it, please take a minute to rate this episode and leave us a quick review. We want to know what you thought of the show and what you took from it and how it might have helped you. We read and appreciate every comment. Thanks, see you next week.