Episode 12: The Power of Attention with Paul Dewland
Paul Dewland 0:00
Why would companies spend billions of dollars on advertising? What are they after? They want our attention. How much is our attention worth, and how important is it? If they want our attention that badly, there’s got to be something to that. Right? What you put your attention on is what shapes the direction and the quality of your life. So, when people really realize that it’s like, “Everything that I direct my awareness to has an impact on me and shapes how I perceive things and how I feel.” That’s huge!
Matt Johnston 0:45
0:36 The human experience is the greatest project any of us will undertake, yet it’s often the one we spend the least amount of time working on. My name is Matt Johnston. I’m a self-professed personal development junkie, a retired pro-golfer, and I now work for an organization that provides employee and health benefits to hundreds of thousands of people. It should be common sense to realize that what happens at work is what people bring home, and what happens at home comes with them to work – but that’s too often ignored. That’s why, each week, I hope to uncover a little more around what it means to be a human working and living in the 21st century. We’ll be learning from experts, having conversations, and getting insights into all those things that fall at the intersection of life and work. Emotional and physical health, skills and money, all the relationships we navigate each day, and – of course – the purpose and meaning we all desire. This is The Human Assignment.
Hello and welcome back to the show. My guest today is Paul Dewland. Paul is a mental performance coach who’s best known for working with some of the best professional and amateur golfers in the world. I first met Paul about ten years ago, when I was playing golf myself. He was working with a few people that I knew, and shortly after they started working with him, they were getting great results and were raving about this savant of a mental coach Paul Dewland. So, I begged for an intro and convinced Paul to become my coach. Since then, he’s become a very close friend of mine, and he’s had a profoundly positive impact on my life. Paul is just a wonderful guy. He is super, super smart, and very good at what he does. So, from the moment that I decided I was going to have a podcast, I’ve been wanting to have Paul on the show. There’s so much that I could talk to him about – certainly in sharing the work that he’s doing with athletes and corporate clients.
So, in this podcast, I decided to focus the questions on the topics of…It really came down to I wanted to focus on resilience and mental toughness, because those are two words that we hear all the time. They’re kind of almost buzz words. I think you’ll really enjoy Paul’s thoughts on these areas and some of the insights that he gives into the work that he does with his clients, and (I think) some of the strategies that he shares and speaks to are both actionable and something we need to focus on. We have to be consistent with. These things aren’t easy, but they seem like basic concepts. I’ve already listened to this recording a couple of times, both in my effort to be a better interviewer, but mostly because Paul’s message was so important for me. It certainly couldn’t have been a better time to interview him. So, I’m very excited to share Paul with you all and look forward to having him on for future conversations.
If you want to learn more about Paul and the work he’s doing, you can visit his website at pauldewland.com. That’s P-A-U-L-D-E-W-L-A-N-D dot com. If you want to support eh show, the best way that you can do that is by going over to iTunes and giving us a review. So, without further ado, it’s my pleasure to share my conversation with my good friend Paul Dewland.
Paul Dewland, welcome to the show.
Paul Dewland 4:01
Thanks for having me!
Matt Johnston 4:01
Thanks so much, for taking the time. It’s so nice to connect. We used to live three minutes down the street from one another, so I would stalk you on a daily basis, and I miss you, man.
Paul Dewland 4:14
I miss those days a lot, actually. Those were some fun times.
Matt Johnston 4:17
Oh, my God. I know, I know. I didn’t realize how lucky I was to be able to hang out with you and that we had an amazing crew then. Well, Dewls, there’s so much that we can talk about today. I’m excited to get you on the show because the work that you’re doing with some of the best golfers in the world, I think, certainly translates to the theme of this show: the human assignment. I think there’s a number of topics that we can cover. I know you do work with leadership work and with executives. So, it’s going to be a fun chat and hard for me not to go all over the map, because there’s so much that we could talk about. I thought a place that we could maybe start, by giving a background on who you are, is: when you’re at a cocktail party and you run into someone for the first time and they ask what you do for a living, how do you respond?
Paul Dewland 5:07
I’ll typically use the term “mental coach,” which is the most common way of describing my work. I’ll say that I do it with golfers and people will kind of look at me and go, “What’s that if you’re not in that world?” So, I have to explain to them that, you know, anything that is meaningful or important is going to have an emotional piece to it. So, when someone is over a putt for a lot of money or to determine what their status is in the tours that they’re trying to plan, or something like that – that there’s something really important on the line – there’s an emotional reaction to the situation. So, I always explain it like, if I put a 2x4 on the ground and, say, walk along it, most people could do that pretty easily. But if I put the same piece of wood 50 feet in the air, and then took the person up 50 feet to walk on it, it would be a completely different scenario.
So, what would change is what I would describe as just the state of their system, and a lot of that will be emotional, but that will also have some physical and mental manifestations, in that they might be shaky. They would walk way differently; they would be more careful. They’d be paying attention to what they’re doing in a different way, and then there’d be a part of them saying, “Don’t fall! Oh, no! What’s going to happen if this happens?” So, my job is to help people develop the skill – and that’s probably the most important thing about this work. It’s that it’s a skill.
If you have the correct things to practice and you do that consistently, you can get better at what I would call “accessing your skills under pressure.” So, being able to walk more similarly to the way you walk on the ground when you’re 50 feet in the air is kind of the intended outcome of what I do.
Matt Johnston 7:04
That’s such a great analogy, walking on that 2x4. Obviously, in the case of the 2x4, when you take a 2x4 and move it up into the air, there’s legitimate consequences there. You know? It makes sense that there’d be fear coming up and what have you. What are the biggest barriers accessing their skills, as you say?
Paul Dewland 7:25
Typically, like I said, it’s emotional. There’s a story we tell ourselves about the situation. So, if it’s a tour player, then they’re standing, you know, over a four-footer for a win. It’s the story about the situation. It’s not the putting itself, or the skill, rather. It’s the story I have about, “Okay, so this putt means that I’ll make a million dollars,” or, “This means that I’ll get my status on this tour for a year,” or, “I’ll win a trophy,” or, “I’ll make my family proud.”
There’s something that is going to happen as a result of making or missing the putt, and that’s what freaks people out. Now, in the case of falling off a piece of wood, there’s a real, physical consequence. Everything else is basically a story. It’s a story that we tell ourselves about what the putt means. Typically, we attach either, “I’m going to be really happy,” or “I’m going to be really unhappy,” to that.
So, that’s where we start to load up all the things that we do in our life with all sorts of extra drama, by making a story up about what’s going to happen. This is why you and I can have a conversation, but if I’m up in front of a thousand people at a conference or something like that, I’m going to have to do some very different things to prepare to do that so that it’s similar to a conversation I might have with you.
Matt Johnston 8:58
Yeah. We’ve gone back and forth on this many times over the years, but it’s amazing how this pops up in different areas in my life now that I’m outside of sport. As you talk about that your work is a skillset to be developed, what are the skills that then go into calming this voice or whatever it may be? Accessing your skills?
Paul Dewland 9:19
So, there’s quite a few different factors. There’s different skillsets to develop. So, I think maybe there are two key ones that we can talk about today. One is more of a knowledge or a concept. When we understand the concept, it gives us a roadmap. Another one is really more inclined to be called a skill is basically an attentional skill. So, the two things that I think we should talk about are: number one, do you have the ability to hold your attention on what you want to hold it on for extended periods of time?
So, if I’m 50 feet in the air and my attention is well under my control, then I can actually put enough attention into, “Okay. I’m just going to pay attention to walking on this piece of wood.” Again, people say, “Well, that’s easier said than done,” but that’s what we have to do. It’s a skill you have to practice, so that if you practice controlling where your attention is – and that’s a whole skillset in itself, like I said – then you get so absorbed in what you’re doing that you lose sight of what it’s going to create. In other words, the story kind of falls into the background. If you’re on the piece of wood and you’re so focused on what you’re doing, that the background of the ground, 50 feet in the air, falls away and you’re just on the piece of wood.
That allows you to have more access to your skills than if you were going back and forth between trying to walk on the wood and looking at the ground or thinking about the story of what could happen if you fell, or what are people going to think of me if I mess up on this speech? What’s going to happen if I miss this putt? What’s going to happen if I make this putt? Versus absorbing yourself in what you’re doing. Being able to control your attention but also be aware that your attention’s drifting. We talk about the mind a lot, but I think the idea of attention is more important. Because, if I can direct my awareness where I want it directed, then I really control the quality of my life. Don’t I?
Matt Johnston 11:36
Yes. Absolutely.
Paul Dewland 11:37
Now, the second thing that goes with this – and I think you’ll see how this all connects up – is understanding what we actually have control over. So, as it relates to a golfer, we don’t completely control whether or not a putt goes in the hole. When we’re speaking in front of people, we don’t control how they perceive us or whether or not they agree with our material or like us or find us entertaining. We do control, basically, preparation for either of those tasks. So, if I’m going to prepare for a putt, there’s certain things I have to do. I have to read the green. I have to pick a line. I have to do my rehearsals. I have to make sure my setup’s right. I have to make sure my alignment’s good. I have control over those things for the most part.
Whereas, whether or not it goes in? There’s other factors that determine whether or not the ball’s going to go in. So, I can do all of the things that I control, right, in terms of preparation. There might be a gust of wind. I might hit a spike mark. I’ve seen in the master’s, Phil Mickelson, I think it was an 0-7 or something. I was actually watching this. He hit a putt and some seed fell out of a tree from the sky on his line and it bounced off of that seed. You can find it on the internet if you just google “Phil Mickelson master’s [seed.” I think if I put “seed” in, then it works. You’ll see the ball gets marked offline by this seed that falls out of the sky.
There’s so many different things that we don’t control, but basically the thing that gets in the way is our ego. It’s more interested in the outcomes of what we do in the story that is attached to it than actually doing the task itself. So, most of us are at odds, battling between trying to do our task well – or, in this case, in the case of a piece of wood: walking on the wood and paying attention to walking on that wood. But then, there’s the other part that jumps in and goes, “Well, what if we fall?” “They better like this.” “Hey, if they like me, I might get a promotion.” You know, all of the stuff that comes in versus, “okay, let’s just do this.”
So, if you’ll understand what you do and don’t control, but you can control your attention, then knowing what you control is kind of useless. But now, as it relates to knowing what we can control, there’s some pretty interesting things that I ask most people in golf. Like, for example, “Do you control your swing?” At first, they say, “Yeah.” But I’m saying, “Okay, so if I said you have to make a perfect swing right now or I’ll shoot you, you could do it.” They kind of go, “Well, no.” Then, here’s an interesting actual exercise for people. If you get a piece of paper and a pen and write your name. Just write your first name. Below that, duplicate it with every detail about the handwriting perfectly. Like, everything has to be exactly the same. You could be there for 20 years. You won’t do it the same way twice.
So, the nervous system did not develop in the way it’s developed to do things consistently over and over. It’s developed for variability and adaptation to the environment, because the environment’s constantly changing, so we have to be adaptive to it. So, then, we’re under the impression that, you know, if I don’t do it perfectly every time, then there’s something wrong with me. It’s like, no. That’s actually the way you’re designed, but any skill that we do over and over – when we practice it – we reduce variability. So, when you’re learning how to write when you’re young, there’s a lot of variance. Every letter looks radically different when you first start. As you get more and more practice in, putting in the repetitions, they look similar and similar until we develop a style of handwriting that looks like ours almost all the time, although it’s never exactly the same twice.
Matt Johnston 15:41
Right. I use the skillsets that you’ve shared with me all the time or try to go back to them. Just even relating it to doing this podcast, right? There’s no way. I can control my preparation, but God knows what’s going to come out of my mouth when we press record here each time.
Paul Dewland 15:58 inaudible
Matt Johnston 16:01 So, I’m guessing a first step in understanding what we have control over is just the awareness. Like, starting to list those things.
Paul Dewland 16:10
Yeah. We could break it down into a lot of different ways. So, let’s talk. I talked about public speaking earlier. A lot of the things that we worry about are, I guess I’d say survival based. So, there’s something - people can go online, I’m sure many have heard of it – called Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. There’s basic human needs that we need to survive. So, the bottom is things that are literally survival-based. So, food, water, air, shelter, and safety from immediate threats. You die if you don’t have those things. So, we have a system called “fight or flight.” If it gets triggered, we either have adrenaline released so we run, or if we’re getting attacked by a bear, we fight the bear.
That surge of energy allows us to do something that helps us survive. So, then the next one off is security. This is basically where you can predict safety. So, I can predict that I have food, water, shelter, and I’m protected from the elements. Thousands of years ago, you’d be protected from other tribes or from predators. The next one off is belonging. You know, thousands of years ago, tribally. If you were not accepted by the tribe or by your family, it wasn’t just a social thing. It was a literal death threat because you didn’t have the security of a group of people to protect you. So, just those three alone, all sorts of stuff gets triggered in the brain because the brain equates it to…So, for example: somebody’s afraid of losing their job. Well, rationally, we know, okay, so I’d probably get another one. But there’s another part of us that goes, “I’m losing my source of income here, which feels like a threat to my security.” SO, people start to panic about those types of things, or worry about them. Which, of course these things need attention, but the basic reaction is a life or death reaction to a situation that, you know, for most of us is fairly manageable.
It’s like, “Yeah, I’m going to lose my source of income. I’m not happy about that,” but that’s, for most people, as much of an inconvenience more than anything else. I’ll find another job or change my career path or move to a different city or something like that. Whereas, the fight or flight reaction that gets triggered, that most people would call, when you think about it, “irrational.” It is more of a survival-type of chemistry that gets released into the bloodstream, and this is where people start to, basically, what we call stress. It’s our reaction to these situations. We have a survival instinct release into our system when it’s really just something that’s manageable.
Matt Johnston 19:26
One of the things that I’m getting an image of, whether it’s standing over a putt on the 18th green that you have to make, or…
Paul Dewland 19:35
What’s interesting, I want to point this out: what you just said, “that you have to make.” This is language that’s woven into everyday conversations that we hear all the time, but really, when you look at what is it that we really have to do in life? We have to survive. So, “have to” means survival, right?
Matt Johnston. 19:53
Right.
Paul Dewland 19:54
So, we don’t have to make the butt, because “have to” implies “I’m going to be injured or die,” basically.
Matt Johnston 20:00
Right.
Paul Dewland 20:01
Whereas, “I want to.” I want to make this putt. We actually use language that reflects survival unknowingly. Everyone does that. Everyone uses that type of language. “I have to make this.” “I have to get ready for my test.” “I have to get that promotion.” “I have to keep my job.” You have to breathe. You have to have water. You have to have food. You have to sleep. You have to have shelter. The rest of it is all “I want,” right?
Matt Johnston 20:29
Mm-hm. Mm-hm. That’s such a great point. What I was going to say is that what I end up feeling in those places, where I perceive, it’s almost like a life or death threat. Whether it’s standing in front of a large group of people and wanting to get it right in a presentation or wanting to make that putt on the 18th hole, or whatever it may be, it’s like my options shrink. My world gets really small. When those consequences don’t exist, it certainly feels more expansive.
Paul Dewland 21:00
Yeah. You know, as it relates to, say, speaking, everyone’s heard the story that the biggest – next to death – people are afraid of public speaking. Because, if you’re ostracized from your tribe thousands of years ago, it is a death threat. So, although it’s not an imminent thing – like a bear chasing you – that same chemistry gets released in a social situation. So, that’s super confusing. There’s a lot of different factors that go into…Some people thrive in those types of environments, because, you know, both genetic and their upbringing, there’s different conditioning in them that they don’t interpret the same way.
So, everyone’s going to have a different reaction to those situations based on their own history. But we all have a history. You can’t do anything about it except start where we are with it and recognize it. Again, we have to view these things as skills. Right now, a lot of people are really good at freaking out in front of large groups, or really good at freaking out over putts. They’re really good at it. That’s the skill they’ve developed. But, for the most part, we’re not victims of these things. We can change them a lot. I’ve seen some pretty miraculous stuff happen when people are… Here’s the key – the absolute key: People are consistent in terms of their practices. You can listen to this podcast or read a thousand books on a similar subject somewhere, listen to audio tapes or whatever, and if you don’t practice these things, this knowledge is worth nothing. It’s not easy and it’s not quick. So, most of us give up. Then, that’s where, if there’s anything I can urge your audience to do is – look.
If there’s anything in here that makes sense and you find a way to research this enough to know exactly what to do, don’t take any other change on in your life for a year. I mean a year. Stick with it. I don’t like to say this too often to people because it can be discouraging, but a lot of the real breakthroughs for the players and the people that I’ve worked with, they come somewhere in year two of doing this work, where it’s like they’re chipping away, they’re chipping away, they’re chipping away, and there’s nothing happening, there’s nothing happening – or nothing visible happening. I use the term “visible” and “invisible” progress. So, visible progress is when you see the fruits your labor coming out. Whereas, invisible progress is like if you plant a seed. You water it, and you water it, and you water it, and you water it, and you don’t see any evidence of growth. It doesn’t mean there’s nothing happening, it’s just you can’t see it yet.
So, for people to actually have a visual image, every day they put a rep in – every time they do one thing that they want to get good at – it’s impossible not to make progress, but it’s not always going to be visible. I think people need to take that idea as a sense of encouragement to say, “I’ve been absolutely successful in growing. I just can’t see it yet,” because that’s the way the brain develops. This is really changing structures in the brain. Every time you take an action, consistently and repeatedly in the right way, you do change. It just doesn’t show up immediately. One of the little phrases: if you do the right things in the right way, it’s impossible not to get better.
More than anything else, I think people have to understand that idea to give them encouragement to say yes, if I keep this up, over and over and over, I will see progress. I just don’t know when, and that’s none of my business. I just have to put the reps in. Back to what we control. We don’t control our skill development. This is an interesting one. We don’t control whether or not we get better at something. We control the quality of the repetitions we put in.
Matt Johnston 24:57
I love that.
Paul Dewland 25:00
Yeah. It’s amazing. It’s that everybody’s like, “I’ve got to get better at putting.” No. You know, I have to play with the semantics on this, but it’s not wordsmithing. This is really an important distinction. No, you’re not here to get better today. That’s your intended outcome, but you don’t have any business there. You can monitor your progress over time, but your job is to put the right quality of reps in and the right number of reps in. Then, trust that that’s going to do its work, whenever your system allows for that to emerge as a skill. Then, therefore, start to translate into outcomes. I always kind of liken it to, you know, if you’re baking a cake and keep opening the oven door. You plant a seed and you start digging it up to see how it’s coming. You can actually interfere with the skill development process by being too outcome oriented. In this case, you don’t control whether or not you develop skill. You control the quality of your work. When people really understand that…We’ve gone off on quite a tangent, but let’s bring this home to the initial idea.
Matt Johnston 26:23
I love this tangent. I think we’re speaking around the next question I was going to ask anyways. So, keep going.
Paul Dewland 26:30
Yeah. So, how this all relates: what is resilience? Resilience is understanding what we control, number one. Number two, focusing my attention on that. Number 3, understanding that there’s certain things I don’t control that aren’t going to kill me, but it’s going to feel like it. What I can start to recognize is that those stories that pop up in my head – “Yeah, I got to make this putt. I’ve got to get my status back. I’ve got to win this tournament.” You know, it’s like, “Wait a minute. I want to, but, no, I don’t have to. I want to do what I can to be prepared for this putt or prepared for this speech. Let’s see how it goes.”
That sounds like, okay, “Welcome to Loserville,” but that’s not, because if you take responsibility for the outcome directly, you’re going to put…Basically, you’re going to have three things going on consistently in your system. Pressure, frustration, and anxiety. So, if I put a gun to your head and said, “Sink this putt,” you’re going to have anxiety and pressure for sure. But, if I put a gun to your head and say, “Prepare as well as you can,” well, there’s an increase in accountability. You have to be massively accountable to do everything you can to be ready for that putt. That’s the extent of what we can do. When we really get clear on that, that reduces pressure, but that also increases accountability. A lot of people wouldn’t like that, to be honest. They’re like, “Well, that means I’ve got to do more to be ready, but I can’t expect whether or not the putt goes in.”
Matt Johnston 28:05
Right. Like, it sounds mechanical, what we’re talking about. When I think about some of the best performers in the world - so, on the sports side, but also on the business side, what’s fascinating is of course they care deeply about the outcome. When I have conversations about sharing the principles that I’ve learned from you and the talk about this obsession with the process. You know, people say that they do care about the outcome. Of course, they do. But when I watch – and I don’t even realize that they’re doing it – they just love what they’re doing so much. There’s this switch that happens.
I just watch these incredible performers. Of course, they want the outcome so much, but this switch that they do – and, again, a lot of them might not even know that they’re doing it – where they just love what’s happening in the moment. They love the pressure. They love the creativity of making a tough business decision, or whatever it may be. It’s very nuanced, but I think this is so important what you’re talking about, because this idea of resilience is thrown out all the time. We hear it. You want to be resilient. You want to be resilient. But it’s hard to know what the hell it actually means.
Paul Dewland 29:15
Yeah. A big factor of that is attentional absorption. I mean, just watch a musician. When they’re entrenched in a performance, they’re not even aware of what’s going around in their surroundings quite often. Tiger Woods said he blacked out over a lot of his shots. He had no idea what was going on. So, being able to be absorbed in what you do feels great. Really, the burden in life is all the stuff we don’t control. Like producing outcomes. I agree with you completely. We’re all intending to produce outcomes: make money, win tournaments, impress people with our speeches, educate, inform. Whatever it is we’re intending to do; those are desirable byproducts.
Of course! A farmer wants the crop. He’s not just going to farm and say, “That was fun,” and then plow it under. He’s going to take it to market. That’s the intention. But if we don’t control it, then it’s not our direct responsibility. But it is a massive source of feedback. If your crop is lousy, you have to study it. Study the process and say, “What happened that produced this?” If you’re more entrenched in the learning from the feedback versus judging the feedback is bad – like, “Well, that’s it. I just lost my crop!” versus, “All right! So, what happened there?”
Everybody’s like, “Yeah, that’s so hard!” Yes. This is what we’re talking about here. If you develop this mindset that you’re absorbing what you’re doing and you’re absorbed in the learning, I would say you’re probably going to be one of the most successful people in your field. The people that are unsuccessful or stagnant are the ones that are just caught up in producing outcomes. This is what leads to deception and cheating. Like, cheating in golf. It’s like, “I want the outcome, but I don’t want to have to do the process. I just want the ego gratification of winning.” Well, that’s where that stuff comes from: the desire for the outcome, not for an appreciation of developing the skills to get there.
Matt Johnston 31:16
This is awesome. I just love talking to you. We’ve been talking around this here, but let’s dig into the actual skills. I guess, when a player or a client outside of golf, or in the business world, or where have you, come to you, what is the work that you’re doing? What are the skills? We talk about the work and doing the work, and you’ve spoken to a lot of it here, but let’s just dig into the actual things that you’re doing so that we can give people some takeaways from today’s chat.
Paul Dewland 31:42
Well, my job as a coach is to educate and then help people learn from their experiences, and make sure they’re practicing correctly. So, first thing, as always, is an information exchange. I’m almost always telling people ideas first. I say, “Hey, so here’s your problem. Here’s what we do.” For example, if I work with someone. They’re distracted while they’re playing golf, and they’re over-shot and they’re thinking about dinner. Okay. So, you’re not preparing properly for the shot, basically. So, we have to identify that they have a problem controlling their attention. Maybe it’s also motivational; maybe they’re so sick of golf and sick of talking about golf that dinner is the only satisfying thing in their life. So, it’s the same thing. People are at work and it’s like, “Why can’t I focus?”
Well, it’s because you work too much, or you hate your boss and you don’t feel any meaning coming from what you’re doing, so here you are trying to force yourself to do something that, you know, you’re not even enjoying anymore. That’s what happens a lot when you take too much responsibility for the outcome; our jobs all become burdens, versus something pleasant to do. So, diagnosing what the actual source of the problem is a big part of it. Let’s say someone does have, you know, basically deficient attention – which is pretty common these days because everybody is distracted with the zillions of bits of information coming at them, not only in their environment, but out of that stupid thing they hold in their hands and look at every ten minutes to see how their friends are doing on Instagram. Their attention’s constantly wavering.
Attention’s a bit like a muscle. If you hold a ten-pound dumbbell in your hand at 90 degrees, after a while that muscle’s going to start to fatigue. Attention is the same. The majority of people can’t focus their attention on any one thing for more than 10 or 15 seconds before there’s something else it darts to because it’s looking for something interesting. Our attention. A lot of it is, for example, getting them meditating. Practicing meditation, where you hold your attention just on the sensation of breathing in your body. At first, people can do that for may be 10 or 15 seconds and then the attention goes, drift off into their head, and they start thinking about “What am I going to have for dinner?” or “Yeah, I’ve got to finish that presentation for tomorrow,” or “I’ve got this to do.” Before you know it, you’re trying to pay attention to the sensation of breathing in your body and you keep thinking about going shopping.
Being aware of what your attention is doing and then practicing holding it in one place and being aware of where it is at any given time is huge. I think I said earlier, basically our attention is our life. What we have our attention on defines what our experience in life is. We have the ability to control your attention. Most people would say we don’t, because they’ve never exercised that. I will do this exercise with people and say, “Okay. So, if you’re in your house, just quiet down for a minute and just listen. Is there sound of traffic in the background? Is the fan from the air conditioning running? Or is there the sound of the wind or somebody in your house? Is there water running? Is your fridge running?” They go, “Oh, yeah. I didn’t really notice it, but yeah. The air conditioning’s running.” Okay. So, your attention wasn’t on it. So, there’s constantly thousands of bits of information coming at us, but we narrow our attention down to just a few. We just become habituated to those things.
So, being able to control what you put your attention on to the point where you even block out a lot of the other stuff that’s going on in your environment, and – more importantly – keep your attention out of the mind that starts to produce all of the stories that cause pressure and anxiety and frustration. To me, that’s the skill of all skills. If there’s one skill that people would say, “What’s the most important thing?” it’s attentional control. It’s not sexy when you first hear it. It’s like, “Well, that’s not very interesting. That doesn’t sound exciting.” That is the keys to the kingdom in my opinion.
Matt Johnston 36:17
Well, the good news is you haven’t changed your tune. I think 10 years ago, after every meeting you had or if I listened you talk to a big group, you used to say, “Meditate for five minutes a day. It’ll change your life.” Someone would come back a week later for their next appointment with Paul Dewland, and there’s all sorts of sophisticated equipment on the [36:35 inaudible to help us do various things to improve our game. You used to say, “Are you meditating yet?” “Nope.” “Okay. Well…”
Paul Dewland 36:44
People hate it, because it’s, for the majority of us, it’s hard. Most of us suck at it. Most people don’t even understand that you can control their attention, let alone be aware of what they’re doing with it. You know, I tell people quite often, put a timer on your phone every five minutes and just take note of what your attention is on. Is that what you want your attention on or not? Is that what you would plan to do all day? They come back and say 85% of those alarms, it was like my attention was on thinking about something that had nothing to do with what I deem important or meaningful. This is really interesting. The advertising industry – I don’t know what the numbers are specifically. Maybe you do. How much money is spent in North American advertising every day?
Matt Johnston 37:39
I have no idea if you’re asking me.
Paul Dewland 37:42
Okay. It’s in the billions. Why would companies spend billions of dollars on advertising? What are they after?
Matt Johnston 37:51
Attention.
Paul Dewland 37:52
Yeah. They want our attention. How much is our attention worth? How important is it? If they want our attention that badly, there’s got to be something to that. Right? What you put your attention on, it is what shapes the direction and the quality of your life. So, when people really realize that, it’s like everything I direct my awareness to, has an impact on me and shapes how I perceive things and how I feel. That’s huge!
Matt Johnston 38:27
You mentioned the word “resilience” earlier. These are words that we hear a lot. If you’re reading wellness blog posts or the Harvard Business Review on great leadership or hearing about the greatest athletes of all time. You hear the words “resilience” and “mental toughness” all the time. Right?
Paul Dewland 38:45
Yes.
Matt Johnston 38:46
I don’t hear a lot about holding your attention. But, you know, mental toughness sounds so sexy, right? That you will the ball to go in the hall. You know? Tom Brady willed the team. The reason why I’m honing in on this is that what you’ve done in here in the conversation and what I’m hoping to dig a little bit deeper into is that we hold these athletes on this pedestal and assume that the conversation is so fascinating behind closed doors. I think that it’s these skillsets that you’re working with your players on. My guess is that the skillsets that you’re working with your players on, and that Tom Brady is working on himself, and others are things that we can all do in our own time. In our living rooms, in our bedrooms.
Paul Dewland 39:32
Yes! Anyone can get better at this. It’s like fitness. Anyone can get more fit. You might not be as fit as Tom Brady, but you can improve your fitness. You can improve your attentional control.
Matt Johnston 39:46
So, we’ve got meditation as a skillset. I’m wondering if it makes sense to talk a little bit about the skill of meditation, or do you want to talk about some of the other things that you work on with your players?
Paul Dewland 40:00
Well, that being the ascent, if you know what you control but you can’t control your attention, then it doesn’t matter what you know. So, I just wanted to back up a little bit. You mentioned resilience and mental toughness. Those things are byproducts, in my opinion. You don’t develop mental toughness. Mental toughness is the ability to understand what you control that really those outcomes, I can’t attach meaning to the outcome. I have to attach meaning to what I do and how I do it. Everybody talks about meaning in life. We’ve all had victories; they go away. After five minutes, ten minutes, two days, five days, the victory’s gone. It’s like, people win a tournament in golf and then two weeks later they’re like, “Yeah. I don’t really care anymore. It’s over.”
But that’s what they were pursuing for their whole life.
Suddenly, you know, they thought that was going to be this huge meaningful thing, when it’s almost scary that it’s like, “Wow, I’ve forgotten about it already.” And they’re off to the next one. And the one after that. And the one after that. It’s just like a bunch of dominoes getting knocked over. Versus the actual absorption in what you’re doing. So, people that are resilient don’t know they’re resilient. They’re absorbed in what they’re doing. They’re fascinated by it. They’re fascinated by the process. There’s an experience they’re having while they do it that they can’t get enough of. They appreciate results because it’s feedback, and they value learning over value producing. I know there’s going to be some eyes rolling when I hear this.
Like I said, everybody’s pursuing those outcomes. You don’t have to think about the outcome to produce it. You have to think about what you’re doing to produce that outcome. So, when you really understand that…Farmers just trust that nature’s going to take its course, because farmers don’t grow, let’s say corn. Farmers create conditions for corn to grow. So, if I get so absorbed in understanding farming and learn about how to do it most effectively and efficiently, the crop is going to take care of itself.
You know, people would use the word “faith” on that. Not religiously, but just faith that the best possible thing is going to happen if I do the best possible process here. The thing is, everybody’s like, “Great! So, I’ll do the process well and I’ll learn this absorption thing, so I get the outcome.” We missed the point, because every high achievement person that I know that has achieved a lot, they at some point get sick of it because it lacks meaning, because they’re always pursuing something they don’t control, and there’s always an element of frustration, anxiety, or pressure that goes with that. Versus, “I just love doing what I’m doing.”
I mean, there are people who golf professionally that I work with. They’re like, “I’m friggin’ sick of this.” They’re living their dream and they’re sick of it. There’s guys that are, let’s say accountants, that can’t wait to go play golf so they can be absorbed in the process and enjoy themselves. So, it’s got nothing to do with the game. It’s the way that we’re going about it. So, resilience is about your ability to be absorbed in it and detach the stories from the outcome. Ironically, we know the outcomes will be produced by the activity, but that’s not the primary thing we value.
Matt Johnston 43:43
So, Paul, for the golfer who is sick of playing golf… I know that you get a lot of players who come to you when they’re in a low. They’re frustrated. What do you actually do? What we’re talking about sounds amazing, but then we lose perspective. That’s when people end up not knocking on your door but trying to bang it down.
Paul Dewland 44:13
So, coaching is an artform as well as a science. I mean, when someone first comes to me, the majority of what I do is listen to them for a long time until they’ve sort of exhausted themselves, because they’ve usually got so much stuff going on in their head, they don’t even know how to think straight. Then it’s a matter of, okay, so let’s start here. Doing one – and this is really important. One simple thing at a time. Part of my job as a coach is to hesitate, to give people massive amounts of information and, you know, that’s a challenging one for me because I like talking about this stuff.
But, to give them enough information that there are things to practice and then get them just practicing those things and learning how to accept that the results aren’t going to come right away. That’s what’s going to be the skill that you develop, and eventually you get better and better at that. You learn to trust. Some people will be like, after six months, “Hey, this ain’t going very well.” It’s like, yeah, I know. You can’t judge it by the visible progress. You have to look at the invisible progress. They’ve been going about things wrong for seven years, and it’s just accumulated to the point that the access to their skills has gotten so bad they just can’t play at all anymore. You don’t just change the course of your behavior and your results overnight.
Sometimes – and this is part of the problem – people will get just this one little thing. They’ll pick on it, and – eureka! They play good. But more often than not, it’s a lot. You have to stay consistent. The word “patience” comes up. Patience comes from understanding that it’s going to come when it comes, but it will come if I work. It always does. I’ve never seen anybody not make progress. I’ve had some people that have come to me with impossible cases of the yips. Impossible! A year and a half later, they’re playing some of their best golf. But they had to stay consistent! The biggest part of my job is to just say, “Look. If you don’t trust what we’re doing, quit. But if you do, get your ass in gear and keep going. That’s the tougher part of this job, is to stay consistent with something and not go for the quick fix.
Matt Johnston 46:48
Amen. Paul, I could talk to you all day here. I’m going to beg you to come back for more episodes going forward. I’m reminded that this whole conversation is around this idea of obviously falling in love with the day-to-day activities. Identifying what’s important to you and then falling in love with those day-to-day activities or doing them.
Paul Dewland 47:12
By the way, most people that get jobs are excited as hell when they get it. Right? So, it’s not the job that’s the problem. If you’re sick of your job, it’s typically…and this is a sense of encouragement, not of criticizing anyone. If you’re tired of it, you’re tired of how you’re doing it, now what you’re doing.
Matt Johnston 47:35
Yeah. I mean, there’s all sorts of factors that can go into influencing that.
Paul Dewland 47:40
Of course. I’m not downgrading those things, but, for the most part, when people just accept that this is what they have to do right now, and I’m going to enjoy the process, it’s amazing that little declaration can change an awful lot about not only how much you enjoy what you’re doing, but how well you do it. I’ve seen people change the course of their careers just with that simple idea. It’s like, wait a minute. Why am I sitting here torturing myself doing something that I said I wanted to do?
Matt Johnston 48:09
Yeah. You alluded to it earlier, that I spent many years playing a game for a living, and you’re around people that do the same thing. And often, they’re quite miserable in their job. So, if someone doing that can be miserable in their job, it shows how easy it can be to shift into that sort of mindset into a job that isn’t a game.
Paul Dewland 48:37
For sure.
Matt Johnston 48:39
So, Paul, before we get going, are there books or resources that you would recommend to anyone to start with?
Paul Dewland 48:47
You know, I get that all the time. I’ll talk to a group of people, for example, and they’ll be like, “That was amazing! Is there something I can read on this?” It’s like, “Well, what did you learn today?” “Well, I learned this.” I say, “Okay. Now go practice that for 6 months and don’t touch a book.” Seriously. Our education system, for all of its merits, has one weakness in that we all get in the habit of accumulating information. We almost look at education as a form of entertainment. It’s like, “Wow, that’s cool. Wow, that’s interesting,” versus, “Okay. I just learned something incredibly meaningful, that if I got really good at that, my whole life would change. All right. I’m sticking with this one thing.” Put the book in the drawer and do that one thing. There’s such an under abundance of that in our culture. Everybody’s collecting information. Quite often, it’s like let me see if I perfect my knowledge, then I’ll take action. Doesn’t ever lead to action. It leads to the habit is accumulating more information. So, people who find this challenging, they’ll hear me say this and go, “Okay. I’m going to do this one thing.” Two days later, it’s like, “God. This is hard!” Yes! It is!
Matt Johnston 50:07
I love it. I was king of teeing you up there because I used to ask you that all the time. Like, we would talk about meditation. I remember the first time we talked about meditation. It’s like, “Okay. What are the three best books on meditation?” You’re like, “Go do it! Don’t read three books and then do it. Do it!”
Paul Dewland 50:26
Yes! Even if I give people a very simple form of meditation, they’re like, “You know what? I’m going to go take a course, or I’m going to get this app, or I’m going to read this book.” I’m like, “God! No! No, no, no, no!” Like, what’s his name? Hershel Walker. He was one of the best football players coming out of college when I was young. He was huge. Like, his muscles were huge. I was like, “What gym do you go to?” He’s like, “I just do sit-ups and push-ups when I watch TV.” The guy was massive and super strong and super-fast. So, there’s some very mundane practices that can lead to some huge breakthroughs in terms of people’s performance if you just stick with some simple things. But sometimes it’s not sexy, and it’s certainly not entertaining.
Matt Johnston 51:15
Well, Dewls, thank you. I so appreciate your time. This has been a blast, as always, chatting. I think that before we pressed record here, we were going back and forth on all the things that we could cover today. So, I look forward to checking back in – if you’d do it again – to get you back on the show. But, before we go, I just want to thank you for all that you do for, obviously, people in sport. Just the work that you do in the world. It’s had a huge impact on me. You’re a great friend and someone that I really look up to. So, I just can’t thank you enough for all that you do.
Paul Dewland 52:00
Oh, thanks, man. As always, it’s been a ton of fun.
Matt Johnston 52:03
As I always say, to be continued. I look forward to the next one.
Paul Dewland 52:07
Yes, sir. Sounds good.
Matt Johnston 52:08
Thanks, Dewls.