The Science of Self-Talk | Athlete CEO: Peak Performance | Josiah Igono & Erik Averill

Athlete CEO

How can some players overcome mental hurdles and self-doubt to hit that game winning home run, make that difficult catch, or sink the perfect putt? Why do we see so many first-round draft picks ending up a bust?

At AWM Capital, we believe one of the greatest drivers of your wealth is your human capital and one of the goals of the Athlete CEO podcast is to help you learn new ways of tapping into your full potential. That's why each month we’re joined by Josiah Igono, Ph.D. of Performance Psychology and founder of All Things Performance for our Peak Performance edition of the podcast to discuss concepts and tactics to help us improve our performance in all areas of our life.

In this episode, Josiah and Erik discuss how we can redirect our words and emotions to improve performance through a practice called reframing. Josiah shares the science behind reframing, the power of hearing your own voice, and achieving one of the major keys to success: self-awareness.

Episode Highlights

• What is reframing? (1:38)
• How is this different than just “think happy thoughts”? (2:52)
• Finding what you can do vs what you can’t do (4:32)
• The power of your voice (5:42)
• Don’t lie to yourself (7:30)
• Defining psychology (8:00)
• Evaluating your current frame (9:45)
• The importance of self-awareness (11:01)
• “Everything boils down to self-awareness. Once you become self-aware, that is when change can happen because you know now that the problem exists.” – Josiah Igono
• Insightfulness during COVID (13:14)
• “I think that reverts back to your previous conversations: clarity, who do I actually want to become? Who do I want to be? How do I want other people, not to perceive me so that I can have some facade or to attain approval, but to genuinely have healthy relationships? How do I do that?” – Erik Averill
• The limbic system response (15:08)
• “When you look at an individual and you see their performance, you see how they live. It's like seeing an apple or a fruit on a tree. When you see an apple or a piece of fruit hanging on a tree, that is not telling the full story. The full story is the root system, right? What is the root system? The root system can be things like beliefs. It can be things like memories, reactions, actions. It can be words. It can be memories. These things all feed into the trunk of that tree.” – Josiah Igono
• Modeling during childhood development and its impact today (16:46)

Resources Mentioned

• Permission to Feel by Marc Brackett, Ph.D.
• Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
• Tactical Field Manual by Josiah Igono