Ep. #1171: Dr. David Yeager on Helping Youth Build Confidence & Succeed

David Yeager: [00:00:00] And so life is trial and error and adolescence is the R and D department of our culture, where they’re going through lots of trial and error, trying to figure out what’s going to be valued, what’s going to be accepted, what’s going to be respected, and there will be difficulty. And if something’s really hard, that doesn’t mean that you’re destined to be a loser forever.

It actually could just mean that you’re in the process of a really tough R and D process. Like you’re on. It light bulb 99 out of 100. 

Mike Matthews: Hello. Hello. This is muscle for life. And I’m your host, Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for a new episode, an interview with Dr. David Yeager on how to help young people build their self confidence and achieve success and specifically how to motivate young people to strive, to set high standards, to set high expectations.

And then work to achieve those standards and achieve those expectations and develop the resilience that’s required to do that and develop the growth [00:01:00] mindset that is required to do that. And as you will learn in this episode, the primary factors of youth motivation also apply to adult motivation. They apply to self motivation.

So even if you don’t have any youth in your life right now who you’d like to motivate, To succeed and to build self confidence and so forth. I think you will find this episode useful in motivating yourself to succeed and build self confidence. And finally, if you are not familiar with my guest, Dr. David Yeager is a leading behavioral scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, and he specializes in youth motivation.

And he also recently released a book called 10 to 25 the Science of Motivating Young People. That’s how I found him and his work, liked it, asked him to come on the show, and here we are. Before we get started, how would you like to know How to drop from 18. 9 percent to 10. 2 [00:02:00] percent body fat in just 14 days.

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On Amazon, whichever Amazon you shop on, and if you do read it, or if you do listen to it, I’d love to hear your feedback. So please let me know. Hey David, nice to meet you. Thanks for taking the time to do this. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So I came [00:06:00] across you and your work via your book, 10 to 25, the science of motivating young people.

And as a former young person, I guess I, some people would say I’m still young, but I’m not 10 to 25. And as a parent of two kids, one 12, one seven, it immediately grabbed my attention. And the first the first question I wanted to ask you is. Looking broadly, what are some of the kind of psychological peculiarities, if you will, of younger people and the science of motivating younger people versus let’s say People who are not 10 to 25 years old, people who are older.

I’m sure there’s some overlap, but that was the first thought that I had that I wasn’t surprised that there is a literature specifically for younger people, but that’s where I thought it might be interesting to start and just hear about some of those differences. 

David Yeager: Yeah, for sure. And so there’s no kind of hard and fast rule.

I’ll tell you why I say 10 [00:07:00] to 25. So 10 is generally the age at which pubertal maturation begins for young people. So that’s a company with an increase in Hormones like testosterone, estradiol, et cetera for the gonadal axis. Also you see things like growth spurt and changes in the brain relative to, in particular, social status and respect.

So there’s a kind of social reorienting of the brain. At that age, and that’s responsible for a lot of things we tend to get frustrated by with young people where the adult says one thing and the kid hears something different. So if we say, don’t forget your coat, what they say is stop saying I’m dumb and it’s like, why didn’t I say you were dumb?

I just told you to get on your coat, but they’re really reading between the lines. And what’s happening on the other end on 25? That is usually in our culture when people tend to adopt an adult like role, and that could be in the workplace could be in terms of establishing the professional identity or starting a family, et cetera.

Now, 10 is a biological onset. 25 is [00:08:00] socio cultural offset. And so obviously there’s permeability in both of those. But What we find is that there are surprising similarities across that age range, where in general, what tends to motivate young people is very similar. And it’s this being attuned to their social standing, their prestige, their reputation, et cetera.

Now, could young kids also care about their social selves? Of course. Kids who are I have an eight year old and he’s worries about having no friends and that’s something he’s concerned about, but he’s not like mad if I tell him to put pants on he’s not offended, right? It’s reasonable for me to control certain aspects of his life and behavior for an older person.

So our, 29 year olds prickly in general, like they’re. If you talk down to them, they would be surprised by it. But for someone who’s really well established in their life and their career, they’re not as on high alert for being looked down on or not taken seriously. So you can think of 10 to 25 is like a lens that helps us understand motivation in general, in terms of people becoming an [00:09:00] adult.

There’s something I call the OXO principle that many people in design have heard of, which is the idea that if you ever use OXO products they have big squishy handles. And those were invented by a guy whose wife had arthritis and she couldn’t handle a steel potato peeler. It hurt her hand too much.

So he made big squishy handles. But it turns out everybody just likes big squishy handles. And so you design for one population, ends up helping others. And that’s how I tend to think about this book also. 

Mike Matthews: And this point of Status is, of course, just as applicable as you’re saying to really people of any age, but it sounds like there’s a sort of consciousness of that is developed at a younger age.

And it makes me think of some research that was in a book on. Parenting, I forget which, that was talking about what kids find motivating about school. And according to the research cited in this book, it was two things. It was one, having a sense of success, and two, enjoying time with friends, having friends, having a [00:10:00] positive social experience.

And according to the literature that was being referenced in the book, those were the two factors that explained at least the majority of the motivation any kids got from school. And it sounds like that those 2 factors, those things don’t necessarily change as we get older, maybe to become more complex, but it sounds like the foundations of the psychological foundations of motivation, they develop at an early age.

And then are there any. Major shifts in that psychology as we get older. 

David Yeager: Yeah, there’s, and by the way the book I liked the most on that topic you just said is this is my, by my colleague, Rob Crosnow, it’s called fitting in, standing out. And his argument is like in high school, you have two jobs is to do well in school, but also to look good in front of your friends, or at least not look awful in front of your friends.

And that, that adds complexities to the process of going to high school. But I’ll say that in the book, I have this term that I call the adolescent predicament, and it’s very simply the mismatch between the status and respect that you think you’re ready for and what society gives [00:11:00] you. And there’s a study I like to cite from the late nineties, and it’s a hidden study.

People don’t talk about it that much, but it was very simple. And in this study, the researchers asked teenagers whether they should have certain rights and privileges and at what age. And then they ask adults about those same ones. So an example is when should you be able to write a letter that’s critical of the principal and publish it in your school’s newspaper?

And Adults are like, maybe like a 10th grade. That’s 11th grade. And kids are like seventh grade. And so there’s this disparity between being ready for something in society, granting it to you. And when you’re in that predicament, then you’re like over interpreting things, you’re reading between the lines, you’re trying to be concerned about how People are treating you because it’s focal.

It’s like at the front of your mind and this extends later. So I talked recently to someone who’s a general counsel at a large fortune 500 company. And a big challenge is they’ll hire young [00:12:00] hotshot lawyers who are 24 who come out of Georgetown and other top law schools. And then they’ll submit briefs for the They had lawyers to edit before they go to the client or they’re filed at the Supreme Court or whatever.

And they’re always getting tons of feedback. The briefs are not ready. And from a certain level, it makes sense. Like, why would a 24 year old be ready to file something for the Supreme Court? That takes a lot of expertise and experience. But the junior employees think of it as, This person is not seeing me as promotion material, like I’m going to be stuck in this entry level job.

Now, that’s someone who has lots of status in our culture, right? They have a degree from a top law firm. They’re presumably really smart. So you’d think societally they’ve got it all. But in that moment, they’re in an adolescent predicament that they think they should have certain rights, privileges and respect, but they’re not being granted it.

And that causes frustration for Now, the footnote to this is the general counsel I talked to is getting ready to retire and he’s going to be a teacher when he retires. And I was like, do you think at [00:13:00] 60 years old when you’re teaching and the principal comes in the back of your room and starts critiquing your teaching that you’re going to be like, yes, I’m ready for all your feedback.

He’s no, I’m gonna be terrified that they’re going to think I’m a bad teacher. So the idea is like anytime you have a shift in your status and your. Your situation, you could be thrown back into some of the same mentality that we’re in as a 13 year old or a 22 year old. 

Mike Matthews: Interesting. And do the experiences, the social experiences, the status related experiences that we have when we’re younger, I’m assuming that can.

Markedly influence how we respond to these types of situations when we’re older. Cause some of us maybe had very positive experiences on the whole socially growing up. You mentioned in high school, not wanting to look like an idiot in front of your friends or your peers wanting to look good in front of your peers.

And then you have people who had very negative experiences specifically in regard to how their peers viewed them, how their peers 

David Yeager: treated them. Yeah. I don’t really make an argument that is similar to how people think [00:14:00] about attachment with young babies. So there’s certainly early developmental research that if you are an unresponsive caregiver to a baby, then it’s very hard for them to have attachment and good relationships later in life.

I I would say that certainly a bad adolescence can leave a mark on people can influence you, but it’s not, It doesn’t like tank to you for life in the way that people worry because the kind of unpleasant reality is a lot of times if you’re excluded or left out, it forces you to adapt and make different friends or change, a little bit about how you interact with people.

And sometimes that’s a positive experience, even though it feels terrible in the moment. And so I think that what I tend to emphasize is that. Everyone’s trying to go through life, trying to figure out how to belong and be accepted and feel good at what they’re doing, whatever it is, and you don’t fully know in advance what is going to be accepted and valued.

And so life is trial and error, and adolescence is the R& D department of our culture, where [00:15:00] they’re going through lots of trial and error, trying to figure out what’s going to be valued, what’s going to be accepted, what’s going to be respected, and there will be difficulty. If something’s really hard, that doesn’t mean that you’re destined to be a loser forever.

It actually could just mean that you’re in the process of a really tough R and D process, like you’re on light bulb 99 out of 100. That’s for Edison. At the same time, there are certain junctures in life where it really matters that you get over the hump really well. So we think a lot about the advanced math and science courses that people take that either prepare you to go to a four year college or not.

We think about. Did you commit to a sport or some other activity that took four years of commitment? In college, what was your major? If you didn’t go to college, did you get in hired by an employer that invested in your skills and helped you grow even if you’re not going to post secondary education?

So there are certain moments where a small decision could have a reverberating effect, but we try not to be too deterministic about windows of opportunity being missed and your life being ruined afterwards because that just [00:16:00] ends up being unmotivating for people. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, completely. There’s a parallel in the world of health and fitness as well regarding body weight and regarding genetics.

And yes, some people are genetically predisposed to have a harder time managing body weight, for example, than others, but that doesn’t mean that they are destined to forever be unhappy with their health. Their body composition it just means that some people may have to work a little bit harder at it than others.

It may be a little bit more obnoxious for some people than others, but the attitude of maintaining that agency is very important in understanding that you don’t have to give in to maybe you have an outsized appetite, for example, and that’s just a genetic thing. 

David Yeager: Yeah. I think that In our growth mindset research, which is the idea that people can grow and develop, and it’s the opposite of a fixed mindset idea that you’re one way or not for all time, [00:17:00] there’s this interesting parallel of comparing yourself to others versus comparing yourself to a potential future self.

And when we engage in comparisons to others, then it can feel like nothing we do matters and we can’t improve. But if you compare yourself to where you were in the past or where you could be in the future, then actually improvement is really possible. And my favorite. Lines of research on this is people who had strokes.

So if you compare yourself to someone who’s never had a stroke, you’re like, Oh I can’t use the side of my face. I have no, use of this hand. I’m different and I’m always gonna be different. But if you compare yourself after months of physical therapy to how you were right after your stroke, a lot of times you’re like a lot better and you’ve recovered 80 percent of your functioning or 50%.

So that’s not nothing. So that is growth and improvement. So I think like in terms of self improvement, it’s often helpful to focus on within person comparisons, not between person comparisons. 

Mike Matthews: Agreed. Great point. In your book, you talk about the importance of a few different types of mindsets. You have the mentor mindset, you [00:18:00] have the enforcer, the protector mindsets.

Could you talk to us a bit about these mindsets and how they influence younger people for better or for worse? 

David Yeager: Yeah, so a mindset is just a person’s belief about themselves and the world around them and how it works. And you can have a mindset about a lot of different things. In the book, I write about mindsets that leaders have about people they interact with.

So it could be parents about their kids, managers about their direct reports, coaches about their players or educators about their students and on. And there’s a long line of research over 80 years on leadership styles. So there are. Styles like being an authoritarian, like a dictator style.

That’s one style you could have another is being more authoritative. It’s a very firm, but caring. Another is very mean, very permissive, just letting people do what they want. And that research is very useful and very prominent, but hadn’t really been integrated across. These different types of roles, parenting, managing, coaching, et cetera.[00:19:00] 

And what I wanted to do was to do two things. One is say, all right let’s just come up with a set of terms that you could use regardless of what, whether you’re talking about parenting, coaching teaching managing, et cetera. And second interrogate where those styles come from. It’s not if you have an authoritarian dictator leadership style that you necessarily.

I don’t know, learn that from your dad when you were a kid and right, it’s not like we do 100 percent of what our parents did to us. A lot of people do the opposite of what the parents did. If everyone did exactly what their parents said, then every child would have the exact same religious beliefs as their parent.

And we know that’s not true. So kids are clearly rejecting some things their parents believe in and do. So if it’s not just inherited as a style, then where do these styles come from? And that brought us to the idea of mindset. That what we learned is that. People differ in how they view the younger people or the direct reports that they’re in charge of.

And those differences of opinion, those differences of belief, give rise to different styles and [00:20:00] patterns. To be very concrete there’s a prominent belief in our culture that young people, in general, are what I call neurobiologically incompetent. That they lack a prefrontal cortex, they’re impulsive, they’re short sighted they can’t be trusted, they’re a danger to themselves and to others.

And if that’s your starting belief, then you have a question to ask yourself, do I want to be mean and force them to like, not be a danger to themselves and others, or do I want to be nice and just let them know that I care about them? And one mindset is what I call an enforcer mindset. And that’s the belief that a people are incompetent, be, I need to be mean and tough about it.

And if that’s your belief, then. Your main goal is to just enforce rigorous standards and uphold really just demanding expectations. Emotions be damned. Yeah. Just get compliance and yeah, just to get compliance. And that’s people can think of classic coaches like Bobby Knight, who’s going to choke you and throw a chair at you if you break the rules.

And it’s because he wants to win at [00:21:00] all costs. And he thinks players fundamentally are going to be undisciplined and unruly unless they’re terrified of the threat of punishment. Or if you’ve seen the movie Whiplash, there’s like a ridiculous jazz instructor who’s not happy until Miles Teller’s hands are bleeding because he’s practicing so much that enforcer mindset doesn’t come from a crazy place.

If you truly believe that young people are undisciplined and ready to quit and rebel at any time, then you feel like the only way to. Be a high performer as a team is to coerce them with threats of punishment and tools of control. Another belief is that, yes, young people aren’t capable of very much, but I wanna be nice to them.

And that’s what I call a protector mindset. And there it’s look, the world is cruel and harsh and I need to protect you from suffering. And I’m gonna do that by not expecting very much. And in fact, it would be mean of me to expect a lot. And deep down know that you can’t accomplish that. Because then I’m holding you to an impossible standard, and that’s cruel.

[00:22:00] So in a protector, you look at someone who’s under distress who’s stressed out, who’s feeling overwhelmed, and you’re like, let’s get rid of those expectations. You shouldn’t be doing this. And so you set very tiny, manageable goals with the hope that they’ll build up confidence. Again, but that fundamentally comes from a belief that you don’t think someone can do very much.

And I see this a lot in sports. They’re like, you guys are nine. You’re you can’t do anything. You can’t zip up your own pants or tie your shoes. So we’re not going to expect you to do anything. 

Mike Matthews: Can’t even understand the rules of the game. So just go kick the ball around. 

David Yeager: And then, and I see this a lot in girls sports.

So like when My daughter played boys baseball until 11 and then I was like, all right, these 12 year olds are going to be jerks. So let’s go to softball. And I could not believe the low standards of the softball coaches, like in the same league, in the same area, like on the same field one day later.

And it’s she was playing with all the boys yesterday. Like, how come you think she needs to stand in a line of 12 girls and do three grounders per practice? So I [00:23:00] think that a lot of people have a well intentioned desire to be a protector. I think it could fold into our stereotypes about who’s capable of doing what.

And I see it a lot. I see it with parents, I see it with coaches, I see it with teachers in low income urban schools in America. The, it’s called a pobrecito mentality, like the poor little one, and I need to protect them from distress. Both of those mindsets end up not leading to optimal performance.

If you’re leading a team, and so the alternative is to take the best of both, and that’s what I call a mentor mindset, and that’s similar to the authoritative parenting and leadership style people may have heard of, and that’s very high standards, very high support, and it turns out that that ends up getting the most out of young people in their performance.

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Use the coupon code muscle when you check out and you will save 20 percent or get 6 percent cash back and try Phoenix risk free and see what you think. Can you talk a bit more about that mentor mindset, [00:26:00] high standards, high support, how do you go about doing that effectively? 

David Yeager: Yeah, so I’ll just tell a story.

And I’ll just say that I spent a long time reading the literature, but I also paused my academic research for years and just followed good leaders around. So I found. The most successful high school physics teacher in America, and I called him every Friday for three years. I contacted the CEO of Microsoft and through him met their top manager for young talent.

I found a grocery store manager in Norway who never has the problem of. Young employees going to hide in the back room and smoke weed and take naps on a cardboard box and pretend to work like that’s a big problem. The U. S. They don’t have that problem and has at this grocery store. And I found America’s best basketball shooting coach.

The his name is chip. England is a shooting coach for the Spurs for a long time now for the Thunder. And I’ll just tell you about chip who is very similar in many ways to these other exemplary people. Yeah. Very strong mentor mindset. If people don’t [00:27:00] know basketball they are an organization that often was winning and because they were winning, they didn’t have the number one or even number five pick in the draft very often.

And so they would draft lower and there was always some flaw in their players that had to be fixed and they were known for. Drafting players, for instance, that couldn’t shoot very well, and then through chip’s guidance, turning them into great shooters that allowed them to compete for championships. So Tony Parker, who people follow basketball know is a now a hall of famer.

He used to be so bad at shooting that every time he shot, his coach would say that’s a turnover in his head. And so chip is A very high standards shooting coach. Like he’s not going to take Tony Parker or quite Leonard. It’s another guy who, when he was drafted, would fling the ball over his shoulder.

And so it was very inaccurate shot. Chip’s not going to be like, all right, great shot. Just keep doing it. Cause he knows they’re not going to make it. And then the team’s going to lose. So he has to uphold a very high standard if they’re going to compete at the level [00:28:00] that he’s, held accountable for, but he’s also not a monster.

He doesn’t draft Tony Parker, Kawhi Leonard, or team doesn’t draft them. And Chip doesn’t say everything you’ve done is wrong. Let’s break you down and build you up from the bottom. It doesn’t do anything like that. But I would have said going in that’s, that would have been my stereotype of a top NBA shooting coach is they would say, you’ve had all these mediocre travel team coaches your whole life who didn’t actually understand shooting mechanics.

And you’ve got all this, Scar tissue from bad coaching. And now I’m going to fix it. That’s not what he said at all. 

Mike Matthews: It sounds like maybe the objective reality, but it doesn’t need to be said like that, even though it may be true. It sounds 

David Yeager: so Chip has a different theory of the objective reality.

So just take the example of quiet Leonard flinging the ball over his shoulder when he was drafted, you could say his coaches didn’t care. Or you could say his coaches didn’t know how to coach shooting. But Chip’s theory is that in America, if you’re precociously athletic, you play one, two or three years up on your travel team.

[00:29:00] And so Kawhi was probably playing with 12 year olds when he was eight or nine. And arm strength is like the last thing to come when you’re a kid. And so the only way he could score would be to fling the ball. But probably leg strength and jumping and basic athletic ability was probably precocious.

And so if you just keep playing on these select teams and you keep winning and you keep moving up the ranks, playing with older kids and it’s successful at meeting the goal, then they don’t change it. And so you could take bad form and mechanics and say, actually, this is a sign that you are such a freak great athlete that you were able to succeed with your adaptation to the task.

And the adaptation of the task was flinging over shoulder when he was too young to have the upper body strength to shoot. So that’s the kind of hypothesis, but notice how it starts out as a compliment, not you were undisciplined. You never went to the gym and worked on your shot correctly. You didn’t seek out coaching and therefore you’re a bad person and a bad player.[00:30:00] 

But that’s like a lot of, that’s the enforcer mindset perspective, right? It’s you probably had coaches who told you how to do it and you decided not to. So you must be hardheaded, pigheaded impossible to coach. Chips is no, you’re probably, it’s cause you’re an amazing athlete. And you adapted and you were successful, but now we’re going to go from having a few years of a career where you’re the best athlete, but then once your skills decline, you’re out of the league to stay in the league for 15 years because you develop an outside shot and they have to respect that.

It’s very much a high standard of we need to fix this shot, but it’s very emotionally supportive and never crushing your spirit or tearing you down. And I think there’s some lessons in there that if even the most NBA’s most terrifying coach, Greg Popovich, like in a cutthroat league players is cut out of nowhere.

If even in that setting, the number one best person at coaching the chip England for improving your shot, if he has relationships first before criticism. He’s building rapport, [00:31:00] getting you on board with his vision, treating you like a human and a person before he like relentlessly critique your shot, then like the rest of us don’t have an excuse if we think it’s too much work to do the mentor mindset because he has every reason to take shortcuts if there was a shortcut, but there’s just not a shortcut to transforming shots in the right way.

And chip doesn’t. And therefore chip does it this better mentor mindset way. 

Mike Matthews: Is there another element that follows a case you have the building of rapport you have acknowledging what is good and what is right that you’re seeing that makes a lot of sense and now you have to get down to the work though of improving this person’s skills.

Are there any just stand out strategies or coming down a level tactics in your research that just exemplify this mentor. Approach. 

David Yeager: Yeah, I’ll tell you a few things that are really surprising for me. And one is something I call collaborative troubleshooting. It’s an approach that every mentor mindset exemplar I [00:32:00] found used.

It’s very different from yell, tell, blame and shame, right? So the conventional approach is I, the expert know what you should have been doing and you weren’t doing it. And the fact that you’re not doing it means that you are rebelling against me, you’re impossible to reach you’re trying to sabotage my team, my machine, my group, et cetera.

Or minimally just not caring. Or you don’t care. But, and so in general, a mistake is characterized as a moral failure. In the conventional view, because it’s like a lack of character basically is what’s causing it. And it’s not just sports. I’ll tell you, I I interviewed this great physics teacher and the low income school in El Paso, Texas.

And in, I don’t know if you’ve spent any time in low income public schools, but kids are just wandering the halls like at any given time. And it’s interesting. And so kids are just wandering the halls. This teacher’s class and I would talk to them. And I was like, who’s the opposite of this great teacher we’ve been talking about?

And [00:33:00] oh, it’s my my English teacher. And so I was like, all right it sounds like you got a story there. Let’s hear it. And this kid says we had to write an essay in my English class and there were, I had to write both sides of a persuasive argument, pro and con. And I can only come up with half.

So I went to the teacher after class to say, I only got half of this. I need the other half. Could you talk it through with me? And the teacher said, This is a predominantly Latino student school, she said, which is, you didn’t understand it because you didn’t want to. And then she threw a stack of worksheets at him, said, I’ve already explained it.

You need to go read this before I’ll talk to you. And he was in tears as he told me the story, and I was like why? What’s the problem? He’s it’s so unfair. I’m like why is it unfair? Because from the teacher’s perspective, they’re thinking, I did explain it. And you’re not doing it.

And so you must be slacking. And the kid’s I have ADHD. I only remember half of what anybody says to me. This is the only way I get the other half. I can’t imagine doing anything but coming to you and being like, I got half of this. I need the other [00:34:00] half. Could you explain it to me? And she’s trying to accuse me of not caring.

It’s I didn’t have to come in and get the other half, but I did because it mattered to me. And I always think about that, that like the, and the enforcer mindset, we start with a presumption of moral character failure, that’s the cause of a mistake or a confusion. And. And then we imply they need to fix that moral core before we’ll talk to them.

And you see this on every athletic field. You see it in the boardroom and in companies, they’ll just fire you or take you off important projects because they’ve made a summary judgment about you as a person. They’re like, you’re a slacker or you don’t care. But in a mentor mindset, it’s a very different approach.

And so what they do instead is, Anytime there’s a mistake, you see what I call collaborative troubleshooting. And it’s first acknowledging what they did with the person did right already relatedly saying the reason why they made a mistake is a legitimate reason, usually because the task is actually hard and it’s impressive to get it a hundred percent right.

[00:35:00] So shouldn’t feel ashamed if you got 75 percent right. And then what they do is they bridge to a better understanding by figuring out what was going on. So like why. So they presume positive intent, like presume you were trying to do this. And then they’re like, okay why couldn’t you take the next step?

Why couldn’t you fix this? And it turns out that novice mentors at that moment fall for what I call the compulsion to tell, which is okay, I see what your problem is. I noticed you did this. I noticed you did that, which you should have done was ABC. So now go do ABC and then you’ll be fine. And turns out that.

Doesn’t work. If you look at the top tutors, the one on one tutors who help kids turn around their academics, 95 percent of what they say is a question. They are not sitting there explaining the laws of momentum and physics and explaining how to take the derivative of a function or how to balance a stoichiometric equation.

That’s not what great tutors are doing. They’re not like reteaching the content. They’re mostly asking questions. That’s [00:36:00] what, 

Mike Matthews: YouTube is for. Or Khan Academy or something. 

David Yeager: Or yeah, or just re watching the material. But it takes guts to collaboratively troubleshoot because if you ask an open ended question, you might get an answer you’re not expecting.

Like they may have been confused or frustrated or lost for a reason you didn’t anticipate. You as the coach or leader or mentor. And then you have to think on your feet, and a lot of people aren’t willing to do that because it’s easier to be like, I know you did wrong. Here’s why you did it wrong.

Go do it right. And here’s how. And that compulsion to tell feels good. It feels like we’ve imparted knowledge and wisdom. But in fact, the goal isn’t for them to think of us as the only source of wisdom. The goal is for them to be able to think for themselves after they’ve solved this mistake or problem and think in the future.

Chip England, the shooting coach, is my goal is for them to have a coach in the head. So I practice with the player for an hour. There’s 23 other hours of the day where they need to be coaching themselves and then six other days in the week. So if I don’t give them a coach in the head, they only get better in the hour they’re with [00:37:00] me.

And that’s not enough time. So a big tactic to answer your question is collaborative troubleshooting. And the key part of that is asking good questions. And a lot of people get that wrong because first they want to tell. And second, the kind of questions they ask are condescending. They’ll say something like.

What were you thinking? What were you thinking? It’s not an authentic question because the implication is you were not thinking. So instead, there’s a different kind of question that I call an authentic question with uptake where I’m built, you build on their ideas basically, and that helps you troubleshoot.

Mike Matthews: In your book, you talk about helping younger people manage stress, managing anxiety stressors versus stress response. Can you talk to us a bit about that? 

David Yeager: Yeah, that’s another thing I saw great mentors do again and on my research. So imagine a world where a mentor has super high standards and they’re holding you to them because that’s the path to growth.

That’s how you’re, someone’s going to get better. All right, and then I’m asking, and then the mentors asking open ended questions, [00:38:00] making the young person explain themselves and think on their feet. That’s like uncomfortable for a lot of people, the mentees or the people being led may not like being asked all these questions.

They may not like being required to meet a very high standard because it feels uncomfortable and that becomes an issue if you realize that stress Which is the natural byproduct of that discomfort is often viewed in our society as always a bad thing and stress is something that harms our performance.

It disturbs us. It knocks us off track. So if that’s your belief, then the minute a mentor pushes you and puts you in a stress situation, you’re like, this means I should stop or this mentor is being too hard. Et cetera, et cetera. And so what I realized is that you have to adapt language that’s counter cultural with respect to stress.

If you’re going to hold someone to a legitimately high standard and the language is counter cultural is to reframe [00:39:00] actually the physiological arousal of your body as a positive sign that you’ve chosen to do something important and ambitious and also that your body’s mobilizing resources to achieve that.

Demand. And this comes from work led by Jeremy Jamison, who’s at Rochester is one of my closest friends and colleagues. And Chris Bryan, who’s at U. T. Austin in the business school and several others. And what we find is that giving people an interpretation of their stress as something that’s possibly helpful and it’s potentially a resource doesn’t just make them more motivated.

It actually changes how their body responds to the stress. And we know this because we’re like sending electrical signals across the chest cavity to see how much blood is held centrally versus going to the periphery. And we’re calculating basically the dilation versus constriction of the blood vessels in our studies.

And all of those physiological measures are changed when we just tell you that this stress can be enhancing message. And the stress can be enhancing message is the following, that when you feel your [00:40:00] heart racing and you’re breathing hard and your palms are sweaty. That doesn’t mean you’re about to fail.

It actually means your body is preparing for success. And specifically, it’s because your brain and your muscles are made up of cells, and cells are better at performing when they have oxygen. So you’re breathing more to get more oxygen into your blood, and your heart is racing to get that blood to your muscles in your brain.

And you’re sweating to cool your body down. So that way the blood is cool as it gets to the different parts. And also your body’s releasing hormones and they get to your extremities faster when your heart is beating. And so knowing that information allows people to Reinterpret the butterflies in their stomach as a positive sign that they’re ready to succeed.

I tell a story in my book about my daughter who was trying out for cello for first chair, and I don’t know anything about cello or first chair or whatever, but she was nervous about it. And so she got in the car and was like, I have butterflies in my stomach. I don’t think I can do this. And I was like Scarlett, do you know what I’m going to say?

And she was like, [00:41:00] yeah, you’re going to say that the butterflies in my stomach are a sign that my body is sending oxygenated blood to my muscles so I can perform at the level of my preparation. And I was like, how did you know I was going to say that? Cause I don’t remember ever saying that to her.

And she’s Oh, two years ago when I was water skiing and I was floating in the water and I had never gotten up before. And you were holding the skis and uncle Luke had the boat ready to say, hit it. And I had the same feeling and you said that is my body getting more oxygenated blood to my muscles so I can hold onto the ski rope and pop up and have a blast.

And that’s what I did and I never forgot it. And like I was just floating around for 30 minutes as she was skiing around Wisconsin Lake. And. She remembered that stress lesson in a totally different setting years later when she went into cello and now it’s something she finds useful to this day. So these messages don’t just have to be taught in a physical performance setting.

They can be taught in a psychological performance setting and they end up. [00:42:00] Accompanying the push to meet a higher standard in that stress response itself becomes a kind of support that allows you to meet that higher standard 

Mike Matthews: and expectation. If you are trying to achieve a high standard, then you already know that it is going to involve experiencing this stress response again and again.

And that’s normal. It’s nothing to be alarmed about. It’s actually a necessary part of the process. 

David Yeager: Yeah. If you look at these bios of great quarterbacks in the NFL a ridiculously high proportion of them barf before every game, and it’s not because they suck at being quarterback. It’s because it matters so much to them that they do well, that their body is like super optimizing everything for blood flow to the body and an optimizing performance.

And they’re not nervous. They’re like, they have a positive excitement. They’re ready to perform at their best. But if they were just taking a nap, that’s very, that’s do you not care? And that’s very countercultural because if you Google image search stress reduction memes lots of [00:43:00] cat posters for some reason.

I don’t know why cats are the universal symbol of like trite wisdom in our culture, but the non cat posters would be things like Go drink chamomile tea, go on a walk, go do some yoga, take a nap. But it’s if I’m going to present to my boss’s boss in five minutes and I need to go kick ass, that’s not the time to take a nap or go on a walk in nature.

It’s the time for me to mobilize my resources and optimize my performance. 

Mike Matthews: I’ve shared the little bit of advice a number of times that proceeding. Something that you want to be very alert for that. You need to be at your best. Cognitively, one of the best things you can do is a short workout, 15 to maybe 30 minutes of cardiovascular is great for this, just moderate intensity, simply for the reasons that you’re describing.

And also you probably know this, but some of the listeners may not know that I read about this in the book might have been peak performance by Stolberg and one other, but it’s fairly common. With elite athletes to also have this [00:44:00] perspective that you just shared, it’s very common for them to feel that stress response.

You could interpret it as are you nervous? Maybe not nervous, but they are definitely teed up, but. They interpret it as exactly what you were saying as this means, this is a good thing. This means that my body is ready to perform. This means that my mind is ready to perform. If I didn’t feel like this, then I should be concerned.

David Yeager: Yeah. And there’s a, I gave a talk recently for all the head coaches at the university of Texas at Austin, and they won the commanders were also, I happened to work there, but they’re also fabulous cause they won the commander’s cup for the top. Performing college programs in the NCAA and I was talking to the women’s golf coach and she’s what do I say to people, my players who struggle with putting and we talked for a bit and what we jointly agreed on is this idea that if you’re up there about to put in, you’re thinking, if I miss this, Then it means I’m no good.

I don’t belong. I’m not a good golfer. If the [00:45:00] implication of the performance is an all or nothing thing, then that stress is very negative. It’s a fear about being labeled something bad forever. Yeah, it like strikes at your identity, right? And that which that leads to the feelings of shame. This classic, experimental psychology that, shame is a fear that your core self is.

Flawed and has been revealed publicly. And so when we’re ashamed, we tend to shut down because you want to hide whatever it is that’s causing shame. But in a very different way to think about that putt is I practice a lot. This is a chance for me to show what my preparation has taught me to do. And.

If I miss it, I either didn’t prepare well enough or I wasn’t in the zone enough, but it’s not that I’m not a bad golfer. It’s one of those two things. And so it’s also a start of troubleshooting no matter what it is. And so the reason I’m excited is I get to show people how well I’ve prepared.

And that’s fun for me. And when you do the latter, then you tend to not choke. And this, of course, goes back to Sian Bailock’s research on choking. She’s now, I think, at [00:46:00] Dartmouth as president, but her book Choke talks about this and I recommend it. 

Mike Matthews: And there also should be a statistical awareness too, that even if you’re a great putter, let’s say a great putter makes it.

70 percent of the time from that distance. Then 30 percent of the time, even a great putter misses it. That probably also is relevant in such a situation. I know we’re coming up on time. You have a, you have another meeting you got to run to. So I don’t want to run over before we wrap up here, is there anything else that is bouncing around in your head that you want to share or anything that I should have asked?

David Yeager: First my 12 year old son didn’t believe I was going on a podcast called muscle for life. Cause he’s you should go on a podcast called pudgy for life or muscle for high school and no muscle after 

Mike Matthews: sounds like you’re a typical 12 year old. 

David Yeager: Yeah. Yeah. Which made me feel like, okay, good.

I feel like I nailed it in this book that it feels like I proved my point. But I think that the, probably the biggest. Punch line lesson is look, there’s so much advice out there about leadership styles and optimizing performance, [00:47:00] and it makes it seem like you have to do everything perfectly the first time and in perfect balance.

And my book 10 to 25 is not like some diet book that says, look, the best way to lose weight is to eat none of the food you enjoy ever. That’s impractical and insane. It’s more like. The book I needed to read as a parent of four, I teach 170 undergrads, 18 to 22 year olds, every semester, I lead a team of 20 year olds, like 30 people, sometimes 40, and I coached baseball, I coached 8 to 13 year olds, four nights a week, so this is like stuff I needed to know, and I would say that in addition to everything I’ve shared being a revelation when I learned it, I also learned that you get a do over, you don’t have to optimize it, Every time and the first time, and I learned this from this wonderful parenting coach.

I interviewed for the book named Lorena Seidel, and she’s look, you can have, you can blow up at your kids and you have not ruined them for life because [00:48:00] you can go talk to them and say, look, I didn’t live up to the standard in our family. I still need you to do this thing. It’s very important. But I wasn’t curious enough about why.

You are resistant and why you couldn’t do it. So I would like a do over where I ask you first, what were your reasons for why this was not a reasonable request for me so that I can then support you? And what she finds is that kids mainly remember the do over and probably so do employees and so do like players on teams.

They’ll remember that more than the first time you were crappy. So I think that’s my punchline is that there’s a ton in the book that, that you could do. But my expectation is that these are all journeys that people are going to be on to. Helping others, but also making their own lives easier as they try to support the growth of people.

They’re in charge of 

Mike Matthews: that’s a great message and a message that I’ve given in the context of health and fitness saying, Hey, you can quit diets. You can quit exercise programs. You can learn from those experiences. You just can’t quit all of them, but you have time. You don’t have to be perfect. And a lot of yeah.

What you’ve been [00:49:00] talking about in today’s interview, I think for people listening, it’s probably already occurred to many of them. But if it hasn’t, I think that there’s something to be said for taking that approach with ourselves as well. And looking at how do we are we the authoritarian?

Are we the protector? Or are we a mentor to ourselves? And a lot of the advice I think is also useful in that perspective. 

David Yeager: I think that’s really profound because all this stuff applies to self talk as well and how we treat ourselves when we’re striving. And I think your insights are very important there.

Mike Matthews: Yep. And I think it might be hard if you treat yourself one way to then treat other people. In another way, so 

David Yeager: think of ourselves as works in progress and the people were relating as well. 

Mike Matthews: Absolutely. Let’s wrap up quickly with people can find you find your work. Obviously, the book 10 to 25, wherever people like to buy books, but is there anything else that you would like people to know about?

David Yeager: I’m just a nerd scientist. So I have linked in, you don’t have a tech talk. Come on. [00:50:00] No, I don’t have time for that kind of I do statistics rather than short videos with advice and means. But I have a nerd professor email just that anyone it’s publicly available at UT Austin. I run an Institute called the Texas behavioral science and policy Institute.

So we’re always putting out new findings. We’d love for people to just stay. Involved in support in any way that they find useful. Yeah. And if people want to learn more about how to put these ideas into practice, we have taped an episode of masterclass, which is an educational website. That’s going to come out around new year’s.

So it’s me and Carol Dweck who developed the concept of growth mindset, Steve young, who’s a NFL quarterback, and then several characters from my book. And so there were a lot of exercises, lots of ways to double click on this information and love it. If people checked out the masterclass episode coming soon.

Mike Matthews: Awesome. Thanks a lot for your time. I really appreciate it. 

David Yeager: Yeah. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate it. 

Mike Matthews: Every day, your biology is changing. It’s getting stronger or [00:51:00] weaker, faster or slower, healthier or sicker. And the driving factor behind these changes is not your genes or environment or even your age. It’s your lifestyle, how you eat, how you exercise, how you sleep, how you supplement.

And not just how, but how often, because what you do every day is far more important than what you do every so often. That’s why I just released a new book called Stronger Than Yesterday, which is available right now over on Amazon. and which is a daily reader with 169 short and insightful chapters that give straightforward and practical answers to perhaps the two hottest questions in fitness.

One, How do I look great? And two, how do I feel great as well? In short, Stronger [00:52:00] Than Yesterday is a book that you can dip into every day for a morsel of education, a spark of encouragement, or a moment of joy. And by doing just that, by reading and applying just a few daily pages, you can gradually upgrade your mindset diet, exercise, supplementation, rest, recovery, stress management, and more.

So again, the book is called Stronger Than Yesterday. It’s available right now on Amazon, and I’d be honored if you got a copy, gave it a read, and gave me some feedback. I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did subscribe to the show, because it makes sure that you don’t miss new episodes.

And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn’t like something about this [00:53:00] episode or about the show in general, or if you have. Ideas or suggestions, or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, Mike at muscle for life.

com muscle F O R life. com and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you’d like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I’m always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.