Retraining myself to think like a champion in the office and on the water. Photo credit: Brett Seng

Every day is the Championship day!

As I mentioned in my last couple of posts, I took a little over a month to go fly-fishing for Steelhead in February/March. I rented a house in Forks, Washington, with a great friend and photographer, Brett Seng.  We fished together just about every day for the next 35 days. It was a fantastic trip in so many ways. I stayed with friends at Jeff Brazda’s Bogey House for a few days. If you ever get the opportunity, I highly recommend it.

Every year, a good buddy puts together a group of anglers and rents out the lodge for a few days. Our host invited a guest he played football with earlier in his career. This guest is an avid angler and current NFL coach. All of the anglers own their own companies and care deeply about company culture. The coach taught me the most about company culture this week.

Humble and reserved

The coach was not only the most unassuming guy at the dinner table but the quietest and most humble. Coach probably had the most to brag about, yet he was the most reserved. I admired his style. The only bling he brought to the table was a newly minted Super Bowl ring. You would have seen jazz hands all night long if it were me. I would be waving manicured digits like a freshly crowned, I mean engaged, Beverly Hills trophy wife showing off her 2+ carat VVS1 Tiffany bauble. Beverly Hills blowhard, this guy was not. The coach was your everyday Joe. You would have never known this guy was a celebrity, let alone a recent winner of the Super Bowl. Badass.

Coach retrained my day-to-day mentality

One of the guys in the fishing group is a world-class fly-fishing caster. He competes internationally and consistently places in the top 10.  Competitors cast with both their left and right hands, and the caster with the longest combined distance wins. He is extremely good and takes casting to a level that combines the balance/elegance of yoga and the power of an Olympic gymnast. In angling circles, casters at his level are referred to as Jedi’s, and watching him cast will make you wonder if “the force” really exists.

He can defy gravity with a rod and line. That all being said, our Jedi has the occasional tendency to psych himself out on the day of the competition. The coach said he could “fix” our brother angler. What I learned while listening to the coach was personally life-changing. I won’t be able to do the lesson justice in 1700 words, but I will provide the cliff notes.

Coach asked our guy a couple of questions:

Coach: When is your next competition?

Caster: April, San Francisco Casting Ponds

Coach: How far does the number 1 guy cast?

Caster: About 180 Feet

Coach: How far are you casting now?

Caster: About 180 feet

(Note: This is with a fly rod. Most anglers, myself included, cannot cast this far with conventional spinning rods and lead weight.)

Coach: So you can beat this guy?

Caster: Yes, I usually beat everyone in the prelims and the warm-ups.

There was more back and forth, but Coach’s message below is the loosely quoted meat of the conversation.

“We do not train FOR the Super Bowl. We have a saying. “Every day is the Championship day.” We train every day as if it is the day of the Championship. This way, when the Super Bowl day arrives, nothing is different. With this mentality, the day of the Super Bowl day is just another practice day. The day of the Super Bowl is just another “every day.”

“If you don’t train every day as if it is Super Bowl day, you can psych yourself out on the big day. That day becomes a different and “special day.” It is not just another “every other day.” If you train as if every day is Super Bowl Day, nothing will be different or “special” on the day of the Super Bowl. Every time you make a cast in your practice sessions, take one breath and have one thought. “One breath, One thought.” That thought could be that your next cast will be a championship cast taking place at the San Francisco Casting Ponds.”

We were hooked

“One breath, One thought.” was the mantra of the evening.“One breath, One thought.” I must have heard this 15 times throughout the evening. He also suggested our angler travel to the casting ponds and practice a couple of times in the actual environment so that he would know exactly what to imagine and think about as he trained with the mentality that “This next cast is going to be the championship cast.” 

Yes, this is essentially the practice of visualization. When the Coach explained it, it wasn’t an unbelievable mind trick. His explanation was sound logic.

Later in the evening, Coach said something to the effect of his team. “These guys are championship players. They need to be championship fathers and husbands. Every day is a Championship day. Not just on the field but off the field as well.”  This guy epitomized a big-picture thinker.  

HRN with Tom Cable, SuperBowl winner, an everyday guy and HR hero.

Masterclass in company culture

Needless to say, the softest-spoken guy at the dinner table had everyone’s attention. I went into my fishing bag and pulled out my little Moleskin to take notes. Some were staring at me at the table, but I didn’t care. This is the stuff I live for. These are the lessons that you won’t get anywhere else. This is the guy who created the Super Bowl mentality and moved players to believe in not just themselves but also in each other as a team. What HR guy wouldn’t want to remember this stuff?

For the rest of the trip, we were constantly asking our brother caster the following:

Q: “What day is it?”

A: “It’s championship day!”

Q: “What are you?”

A: “A champion!”

When you have everyone in the group reminding you of how to think about your game and everyone in the group encouraging you, you can’t help but feel better and elevate your game. And that is precisely what I saw. The group dynamic changed. The mood was lighter and more celebratory. I can only imagine what happens at the professional level.  

Style and Grace

I fished with our competition caster over the next few days and saw his casting go to another level. He cast with “style” and “grace,” and he cast with a “street attitude.” His casts were landing right where they should. Even if you didn’t know anything about casting, if you watched this guy, you would see that he was very different from the other hacks (us). You could tell he was applying what the coach had discussed the night before. He was a Champion caster.

Casting and the corporate world

• If you are preparing for an interview, practice the questions and think about yourself in front of the hiring manager and the interview room. See yourself confidently answering the questions and creating a rapport with the hiring manager. Go through the entire interview in your mind’s eye. Coach explained that before the game, his quarterback goes through the whole game with all the plays on the field. He doesn’t just visualize the game; he physically plays a winning game.
• If you have a big presentation coming up, practice that presentation in full dress rehearsal mode. Practice in the conference room you will be presenting and practicing out loud. When you practice at home, imagine yourself in the conference room with the faces of the attendees looking directly at you and seeing them on your side vs. against you.
• If you are a manager, treat your team as if they are all champions. Talk to them as if they are winners. Talk to your team as if they are children, and you will see childlike behavior. Talk to them as adults, and you will experience adult-like behavior. It was great to hear the coach talk about this. His thoughts echoed my thoughts which I blogged about here. 

A once in a lifetime trip

At the beginning of the trip, I explained to my roommate my goal: to learn. I knew a lot of knowledgeable anglers would surround me. I didn’t see many fish on this month-long trip but learned much about fishing, casting, tying flies, and rowing a boat. Just as important, I learned a ton about people, teams, myself, and group dynamics thanks to the folks I was able to spend time with him and others, including the Coach. Next time you are doubting yourself, think about being a Champion.

Thank you, Brett Seng and Coach Cable, for an amazing month!

See you at the after party,
HRNasty

nasty: an unreal maneuver of incredible technique, something that is ridiculously good, tricky, and manipulative but with a result that can’t help but be admired, a phrase used to describe someone good at something. “He has a nasty forkball”.

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