Why You’ll Freeze in a Crisis... and How to Stop It

What do elite performers, world-class cops, and Olympic athletes have in common? They train the mind as hard as the body. In this mind-expanding conversation, Travis Bader is joined by Jeff Johnsgaard, veteran police officer, Force Science Institute consultant, and founder of Training on Purpose by Design.

Jeff has taught use-of-force and high-stakes performance across four continents and multiple tier-one units. But in this conversation, he pulls back the curtain, not just on tactics, but on the mental software upgrades that determine who thrives in danger and who shuts down.

You’ll learn:

• How to reframe fear as fuel.
• Why most training creates failure under real pressure.
• The shocking truth about “slow trigger presses.”
• How elite operators pre-live critical incidents through mental rehearsal.
• Why your body can’t tell the difference between imagining and doing.
• What’s wrong with the way we teach cops, kids, and executives, and how to fix it.

This one isn’t just for shooters or law enforcement. It’s for anyone who wants to perform better when it counts.

🔗 Learn more about Jeff’s work: https://www.onpurpose.training and follow him at https://www.instagram.com/jeff_johnsgaard/
🎣 Silvercore Club members: Don’t miss 40% off Skeena Spey Lodge and Tiffany’s bacon recipe!
👉 Not a member yet? Visit Silvercore.ca/club

Silvercore Podcast 164 Jeff Johnsgaard

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Travis Bader: [00:00:00] The Silvercore Club is growing. We have the Outposts, which is the private members podcast. It comes out every single week. We talk about matters to do with physical health, mental health, those quiet conversations that don't quite make it into the podcast tips and tricks that we're able to share, both for myself and those within the Silvercore Community.

We've just launched the backend blog and we're growing that out. Right now we've got the document. That's Sean Taylor, X jtf two, an elite athlete put together on mental and physical wellness and performance. That's free to download for any Silvercore Club member. And Tiffany put out her no Fail bacon recipe, which is amazing.

If you like bacon [00:01:00] and you want the best bacon you've ever tasted, that recipe is available for Silver Core Club members. And let's not forget July 29th to August 2nd. If you're into fishing or you want to be into fishing and you want to go for steelhead in a world class location, the fabulous ski of Spay Lodge in Terrace, British Columbia is offering 40% off for Silver Core Club members.

Only a few limited spots left. If this is something you're interested in, I'm going to be there. My wife, Tiffany's gonna be there. We'd love to be able to meet with you and the rest of the club members, do some fishing, spend some time in the lodge, and really connect as a community. If you're a club member, jump on these.

If you're not a club member, just go to Silvercore.ca/club and you can check code. These offer is, and all of the other perks and benefits that go along with being a Silvercore Club member. Now without further ado, let's get on with this [00:02:00] podcast. I'm joined today by someone who spent decades studying how we perform Under Pressure, a veteran police officer, instructor, and internationally respected use of force expert.

He's a senior consultant with Force Science Institute and the founder of Training on Purpose by Design, where he trains law enforcement and military professionals using evidence-based methods rooted in neuroscience. With human behavior, his work bridges, science and application to better prepare those who face real world danger.

Welcome to the Silver Corp podcast, Jeff Johns guard. Hey, Travis. Pleasure. Thanks for, uh, having me. Absolutely. Well, it was kind of fortuitous how this one came about. I'm, uh, sitting in my studio here and, uh, getting hungry and I'm like, well go over to the local eatery here. And I'm fortunate where I work and where the studio is.

Uh, in British Columbia, we don't have many gunsmiths, but I have two gunsmiths businesses within about, I don't know, five minute walking distance of where I'm at. And [00:03:00] so. There I am walking over to get some food and I look out front and I can see a fellow in front of this nondescript building because nobody wants to advertise that they're at Gunsmith.

And it's Monday and I don't know what it's like in the states where you're at right now, but you know, in Canada, for whatever reason, gun stores like to be closed on Monday. And he's standing out there and I said, I think you're gonna be waiting a while if you're waiting for the, uh, the Ken Smith to open up shop and.

He looks up and he says, Travis. And turns out he listens and watches the podcast and we talked for a little bit. He's like, you gotta meet this guy Jeff. He's amazing. And man, he was singing your praises. So I'll just put a shout out to aj. Aj thank you very much for helping facilitate

Jeff Johnsgaard: this podcast. I'll flip a 20 in his, uh, in his pocket the next time I see him then for that as well.

I think, I think it was funny because as you said, fortuitous, uh, I believe it was like, that was literally, I think he just dropped me off at the airport. So I was in Abbotsford. I did a week long, uh, course for the Abbotsford pd. And then, uh, I did some stuff with AJ and his, uh, [00:04:00] his crew. 'cause I'm also a budah, like a, a martial artist at heart.

And uh, uh, we just kind of the lineage and had a great weekend of, of stuff. And then I think he dropped me off and then he met you. So that was kind of funny. Yeah.

Travis Bader: You know, I dunno, the, the universe unfolds as it should. Totally. As they say. Right. So, uh, uh, you've got an interesting background. Uh, I've done a little bit of research on, you looked at a few of the, uh, different programs you offer and some of your history, but.

Um, why don't I hear it from your mouth? Tell me a little bit about what makes Jeff, Jeff and, uh, what you're doing in the States now. It sounds pretty fricking

Jeff Johnsgaard: cool. Oh, well, yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, I'm always trying to offer value, right? And so I appreciate coming on the podcast and I hope that, uh, you know, whomever the, uh, the six listeners or whatever that actually want to hear me, don't actually wanna hear anything I have to say.

Uh, not to say that you've got way more than six, but, uh, you know, I wouldn't worry about it. Enjoy the, enjoy everything I have to say, but I also wanna offer him some value. So, [00:05:00] uh, I guess I'll, you know, ask me anything you want. Uh, but I would, I would kind of try to frame it, uh, as we do a talk here, like to, to think about.

You know, what I really do is, uh, I guess one of the things I really do is I'm a software guy, and that doesn't mean anything to do with computers. That means that, you know, I love hardware. You know, you wanna put a, put a TV screen called a red dot on top of a gun and maybe you'll shoot better or, or, uh, you know, the latest Bell or Whistler Gadget.

And I'm all about working the tools and uh, uh, uh, you know, and all that kind of stuff. But at the same time, I've really, uh, been fortunate, uh, because I found like interesting and talented people and just stalked them until they became my friends and, and the rest of it. And, uh, uh, you know, like. Uh, we're talking, uh, four continents, five tier one organizations behind closed doors all the way to the tier, I'll call it 99 level, or just like the, I'm a civilian day one, just kind of thinking about self-defense.

And usually that's the realm I work in. You know, I'm trying to get [00:06:00] people, you know, in these tense, uncertain, rapidly unfolding, ambiguous situations under high stakes and pressure. How the heck do we perform better? And as again, I come back to the software. And so, uh, uh, if I can give someone a software, a mental upgrade, and then that'll take us down the path of talking about attention focus, what are cues?

How do we know what we're going to do? And, and the rest of it, which I think is kind of what we're maybe we'll get into. 'cause I'm very passionate about it as well as many other things. Hmm. Uh, but that is, if, uh, I call it a, you know, if I had a. A stupid human trick or the, uh, superpower, so to speak, right?

I just kinda look at what people do and just offer 'em ways of, as I said, that software upgrade or looking at it differently or being more purposeful and deliberate with what they're doing and just getting way more value out of it. Whether that's a SWAT team, whether that's a, uh, a person who's trying to be better at, at presenting in business because they're nervous or anxious, whether that be whatever.

And so, um, yeah, I mean, uh, I don't know where we want to [00:07:00] go with it, but I'll just frame everything we're about to talk to about, with the idea. I'll say to, to you and the viewers, you know, what, what are you gonna do? When the test happens, how do you know what you're gonna do when the quote test happens?

And that test could be anything. It could be a car accident, it could be your child injured in front of you, you know, and you've got some training in CPR First aid and stop the bleed, comma. But how do you know you're gonna not freeze? How do you know you're going to rise to the occasion? Uh, and so there's a lot of research around that.

The concept is called threat or challenge. And by simply framing your mind, seeing that what the demands of the situation is this a threat to me or a challenge to me? We can kind of unpack that some more. You actually have psychological and physiological changes just based on how you feel about it. And the only way to, um, uh, to really, you know, put [00:08:00] that on and, uh.

Uh, and make it more robust, durable, resilient, right? All these words that we're, we're keen on, in, in, uh, uh, you know, the communities that are outdoors and the communities that are thinking about defense and the communities that are, you know, that, that we're, I mean, let's be honest, that's what we, that's what we do.

It's what we're a part of, uh, in these, in these situations. Uh, I always say that experience, of course, is the key factor for that, but it has an emotional flavoring or tag. And so the line I love is experience. It's always gained moments after you needed it, right?

Travis Bader: So isn't that true?

Jeff Johnsgaard: Right? And now that I've been through that, I needed it 18 seconds ago, right?

I needed it yesterday. I needed it. But now, uh, so how do we be more intentional and deliberate with shaping our mind with, uh, and then there's this, uh, tensional quadrants. There's just this concept and maybe we can talk about that because I found it very useful. Anyway, so. The point [00:09:00] being is that let's have a conversation about, you know, what exactly happens, especially in time, compressed, ambiguous, high stakes environments, or just any time when you are feeling, whoa, the boss said, I gotta do a presentation.

Whoa, I have a game or a competition or something that I'm training for and I want to perform my best. Well, I start from the absolute worst case scenario in my mind, where you've got literally within fractions of a second, there's a gun. Uh, uh, I train cops all the time. Uh, you know, retired 21 years now myself, uh, sorry.

After 21 years I just retired. Let's be Oh, you're looking pretty good for being retired 21 years. Good for you. Yeah. Words matter. Let's be clear with more words matter. Let's be clear with language is an imperfect form of communication. So here we go. Mm-hmm. And so, um. Uh, in law enforcement, it, it is a standard thing that the, the, the odds are very well stacked.

That the [00:10:00] first tip you're in a gunfight is not that you've been shot at, that you have been shot probably in the head or neck. Now solve the problem. This is a fact. If you're not training from that fact, cognitive dissonance will take place, which is a fancy mouth, words for the real world. And what is happening is not lining up.

With what I believed or came to believe the world was going to be like. And now I'm having all this sh there's shock, novelty, surprise. I'm perhaps going internal with my focus of attention, which is not usually a good place for executing skillsets and, uh, and, and understanding information and, and learning how to be and perform our best.

And so, uh, uh, anyway, this threat versus challenge, there's a lot of research on it. These are not words I made up. Uh, uh, and, uh, you know, your heart functions differently if you believe I have been here [00:11:00] before, or I have seen things like this, or I have the ability to pivot and adjust, uh, go to exhilaration instead of anxiety threat state, uh, where your heart and your attentional systems function less optimally.

Uh, it's just amazing stuff we didn't know. We didn't know. And so when I. Sorry.

Travis Bader: No, no. Hey, you, you know, I, we spoke before on the phone and I made notes as I was going through. I was like, you know what? My goal here when speaking with you is twofold. Number one, you've got a lot of really cool research and courses and information stored in your head, and I'd like to find a way to be able to unpack some of that ways.

And you've, you and I talked on that and you've looked at different ways that we can do that. And you've actually put out some articles on your website. It's uh, uh, we're gonna have links in the bio here on purpose training, but we'll have links to these things in the bio. [00:12:00] But the second part that I'd like to, uh, unpack is you as an individual and you brought something up, which was kind of interesting because I know I should say, I have a feeling I know a little bit about you.

And you are an excellent presenter and you're an excellent instructor, but sometimes we can get lost in the instructor persona and trying to separate the instructor from the individual I looked at as one of the challenges that, uh, I'd like to try and see what we can do here. So you mentioned something about a stupid human trick.

Um, when was the first time that you realized you had this skill as a stupid human trick?

Jeff Johnsgaard: It was in Austin, Texas. The Seattle of Texas as I'm told. And, uh, so I was, yes, it's, I was just there a couple months ago. Yep. And, uh, I'm taking a course from a guy, uh, [00:13:00] uh, he wrote a book called Training at the Speed of Life, volume One.

And so he's one of the guys that's a good book. He co-invented these FX marking cartridges, which is these little paint bullets in a cartridge based technology, uh, uh, that, uh, typically law enforcement in the military shoot at each other. And I'm very, very opinionated about how to use those things. And I didn't know what I didn't know.

Before I met this guy. And so I would distinctly remember a time where I'm taking this instructor instructor course, right. So how to train instructors or whatever you call that, a master instructor, whatever you wanna call it. Sure. And, uh, uh, so just a short version of this so I can get to that moment is, is we've got a scenario going on where there's a vehicle stop and there's a role player and it's gone to guns.

And then there's a, a basically a prop, meaning the cop is the prop because the instructor is learning how to teach that person. And I'm behind that guy learning how to teach that guy how to then teach that that guy, it's kind of, he's like a, like a human snake of people just [00:14:00] following this, this guy around.

And so there was an incident that happened where the, uh, the, you know, the, the cop was doing his thing, but he was having a, uh, i, I use these technical terms all the time, but his, his gun got dicked up. And so we had to ick it, right? So it was going bang and it went click and it was having this trouble, but it, the trouble was based with the technology, the conversion kit, and it was getting all dicked up.

And he and the, and the instructor wanted to just fix it for him. Not because he wasn't doing the right thing, he was doing the right thing, but it was a technological failure. But that is called a gift. And so is it something that could happen in real life? It is. And so anyway, so as we're unpacking and I'm behind this person, behind this person, and there's someone behind me.

We started coaching. And so I'm very specific about coaching. Uh, there's a great book if anybody's ever into it, both with physical skills coaching like, uh, sprinting and the rest of it called the Language of Coaching by Nick Kelman. Uh, and, uh, you know, how, how to develop cues and how to use [00:15:00] words because words have meaning.

And so, uh, uh, this is, this is that thing where, you know, I could say to you, uh, inward opening door, well, does that mean it opens to me or does that mean it opens into the room? I could say, right, I could say slow trigger press. Well, what does that mean? I could say anything. Am I I standard? Uh, I always say is, you know, draw me a lamp and that's a desk lamp or a Genie's lamp or a whatever.

Sure. But we're speaking English, and so I just assume you get it because I told you the thing. And so that's how I learned what I didn't know. I didn't know this stupid human trick about language and about the ambiguity of language. And just because I had something in my head and maybe that I'm amazing at performing it doesn't mean I can get that into someone else.

Furthermore, so that they can do it with a part of their brain that happens without thinking about it. When you don't have time to go. [00:16:00] What did Travis tell me to do? What does policy say? What would be best? No, no. A gun appears in under a quarter of a second, a quarter of a second, and has shot me in the face already.

It takes the average person 0.25, so there's within one second there's four trigger presses, if not five, because it started on the first round. You're standing there eating up all of those rounds. In that case, how do I then learn how to train someone to do optimal? Right, because there is a very, very big difference to me, Travis, between reactiveness and responsiveness.

And so how do I train someone to have a, a, uh, deliberate, I'll call it, uh, yeah, yeah. Let's call it more deliberate programmed responses versus these primal reactions. And so because we all do stuff without thinking about it. And now I can start to move you towards [00:17:00] research, talking about how, uh, there's a vehicle stop, traffic stop study is called Done by Forced Science, where 93 officers were doing, working a vehicle stop and all of a sudden a driver produced a gun and 90, 90 0 out of 93 officers did something very not optimal that had them sucking up a lot of rounds.

But if I could just jump in and go touch 'em on the shoulder just for a second. Pause. Talk to me about what you're, oh, no. Forget it. They'd say, I'd already do. If you gave them a fraction of a second, they would do something way better, but they didn't. And mm-hmm. It was a huge gut check for me, looking at something like that research and going, oh, the reason they're doing not optimal, which is, let's be honest, they're doing something very not good that's gonna get them killed.

Is directly the result of the training I had put them through, because that's the standard in law enforcement right now. And that I remember humbling, [00:18:00] shocking kind of thing.

Travis Bader: Yeah, I, well, I, I think I remember that, um, that forest science, um, research that you're talking about there. And if I recall correctly, only like a very, very small percentage of, of people in that situation, like they're coming up, driver's side gun comes out and they.

Person starts shooting or they draw a gun and most of the officers draw and they go around the back and they're trying to find, cover, some just freeze. Uh, and only a very small percentage reached out and grabbed that hand and controlled the muscle on it. And, uh, if that's the same one that I'm thinking about, and the people that did that are people that had, um, previous martial arts training, combatives training, well, you're

Jeff Johnsgaard: on the right track, so let's stick with this and sharpen it.

So 93 officers and 90 did something not optimal, which was try to out draw a trigger plus, right, right. When the gun is within reach. So checking the gun or, or just doing anything else other than, oh no, there's [00:19:00] a gun. Every time I see a gun in my previous history training and experience, you have a gun. Oh, it's time to do the gun thing.

I have a gun. You have a gun. It's a bad thing. I got a bad thing, stopper. Let's get that out and do the thing. But now, in this case, it's extremely not optimal. You're literally being shot at, you're standing, quote on the ax or you're standing in an area or moving backpedaling into an area that's gonna get you hit by traffic.

Sure. And all this, all this non-optimal stuff. The three people who did something other than that, let's double tap on that. Two of them, would it surprise you that they were defensive tactics instructors, longtime Marshall artists had done lots and lots of, whether you want to think of it as repetitions or experience or whatever, with things such as that, a gun close to me.

Maybe I get mine out, maybe I do something else. Maybe I, or there's some sort of, uh, difference, some variability, uh, and I know how to deal with that. I've seen it before, but one of [00:20:00] them. One of them was just a standard officer. She wasn't like former CIA or something like that, right? Uh, she checked that gun, got her pistol, went to work.

Uh, never got even, never got even got shot. Uh, dealt with, like, dealt with the threat, uh, and, and all the rest of it. And in speaking to her, here's the key point, bringing it all the way back around to threat challenge type stuff. The key point was, is they said like, so tell me about that. Well, I'm not an instructor, I'm not an anything.

She goes, but. Every time I do a vehicle stop, she goes, actually, every time I do anything on the job, I always take a moment and sit and think about it. Okay, so now your ideas intrigue me. I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. Tell me more about that. Right. Okay. So first of all, you know, I'm trying to double tap on the why, and she said, well, I'm not, uh, look at me.

I'm, I'm not big. I'm not strong. I'm not fat. I'm not the biggest, the strongest to fastest. I'm not any of that stuff. I am safe because [00:21:00] I see things happening. I react sooner. I use my weapon systems. I know how to get distance and disengage or engage in things like that. I'm like, Hey, I'm loving what you're saying.

Okay, so tell me more. She said, well, every time I do a vehicle stop, for example, I go back and I think. How could that have gone wrong? And I went interesting language asking her some more because she's a, I would call her honestly an expert performer, but she's like a Wayne Gretzky to me. Hmm. I'm told I don't know anything about sports really.

I'm told Wayne Gretzky was a, was a goat greatest of all times before. That was a term. But I'm also told mm-hmm That Wayne Gretzky is not very good at coaching, getting that into someone else's head. This is what I'm told. Mm. And so I find that with a lot of experts is that they're very good, but they're just like, what's wrong with you?

Aim harder. Why don't you get this right? Suck less, you know, that kind of thing.

Travis Bader: Suck less,

Jeff Johnsgaard: even if it's well-intentioned. I mean, I spent some time with the British Army, very not [00:22:00] well-intentioned, right? I mean, it was theology, right? So, uh uh, that was a thing. So back to this officer, she said, not only would I envision it happening, here's the key point I.

And what I would do in response. So she, through Theater of the Mind, through visualization imagery, was giving herself repetitions or experiences of seeing something evolve. Having it being, you know, flavored negative I suppose going, coming out at you, but instantaneously linking that to a response. So when it did happen, she was, had already been there.

And then I can tell you about talking to Michael Phelps, guy's got 16 gold medals. Hey Michael, what do you think Your one-up over the competition was thinking he was gonna go, well, detective of a 17 foot wingspan. But no, he said, [00:23:00] my ability to imagine and visualize. And I went, oh really? Which led me down 3, 4, 5 more questions in a new path in my life.

Such as, such as, uh, you know, he could not only envision, so we're talking goal setting, we're talking things of that nature with imagery and with, uh, races. But actually you can practice repetitions. And I'm gonna tell you about a couple of studies that'll blow your mind with that. Where, where practicing mentally is almost as good as practicing physically.

Heaven forbid we did both of them. Less wear and tear on the joints as well, but also the, the residue of quote unquote negative. Thinking there's, it's sure one study that's gonna just like key point it and blow it, blow you away. But again, it's the residue, the emotional tagging. Uh, I don't know how, uh, the youngest view, the youngest viewer or listener's gonna be, but back before your iPhone had a contacts app, you had a Rolodex, right?

[00:24:00] So there's this Rolodex of cue cards. And I think of that as an analogy where when I see this stimulus or perception car coming at me, there's this thing happening, oh, whatever stimulus response, I go through my Rolodex of experience. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to take that experience.

There's a gun, I do this, there's a bleeding. I do this, my child runs to me, I hear them scream, which of course has happened. I'm a father of two, you know? Mm-hmm. This big, tough and guy. And then all of a sudden I heard my daughter scream out front, and I'm running it to the front door and I got a frying pan in my hand still.

And I'm just combat, combat. Ineffective, right? Sure. Combat ineffective. But I'm the guy who teaches this stuff, but Oprah in this area, I hadn't quite dealt with young daughter screaming daddy, you know, that kind of thing. And so to carry over. Mm-hmm. Right? And so, uh, uh, this emotional tagging of the cue card, we, we dog-ear it and highlight it with relevance and [00:25:00] emotion and context.

And that allows us to instantaneously not only select a skill, but have the confidence and competence necessary to execute in a meaningful way. Trust me, that does not mean it's always gonna work out for me. Absolutely not. Mm-hmm. I can tell you that so many times in my life, but I know I will do everything I can to the greatest of my knowledge, skills, and ability.

I know I can pivot and adjust because I can do difficult things. That's great. Jeff, tell me three things that are difficult that you've done because it has to be grounded. In reality, right? It just can't be some fictitious house of cards. Mm-hmm. So back to the traffic stop study she had done that Michael Phelps had envisioned diving into the water goggle, flipping full of water.

And what he would do is, uh, quote unquote, he, he envisioned it happening and how to recover in a world class way. [00:26:00] That actually happened to him in a gold medal match. I think it was just one not match race. Again, me in sports, but, but I dunno what, Hey, I'm on the same page as you. What curling India was in, I dunno, whatever Michael.

Yeah, but so it flips, he says when that happened. I had been there before, so I just executed that thing. But he too was like a Wayne Gretzky. He too was an amazing person, uh, high level elite athlete. But I had to ask him a bunch more questions, which is my stupid human trick. Seeking first to understand from that person's point of view, and then being able to wrap and feed knowledge into knowledge so that you remember it, do it, and the rest of it.

So,

Travis Bader: so here's, here's an interesting one. When you bring up that Phelps one and, you know, you've brought up a bunch here, I'll, I gotta show for the people who are looking on, on camera right now. Uh, you can see all the different notes I've been taking as you've been [00:27:00] talking. I'm gonna try and touch back on a couple of them that I think are pretty interesting, but by you.

Go ahead. Well, you, you talk about, um, uh, Michael Phelps and how he pre-visualize how he would deal with catastrophic goggles filling up in an emergency. I. How would he deal that in a world class way? And that brings to mind the matrix when Neo goes in to see the oracle and she's like, oh, watch out for that jar, or whatever it was that was on the counter that he's gonna knock over the shelf.

Right? And, and uh, he's like, what? And then he knocks it over and he's, she says, well, what's really gonna cook your noodle is, would you have knocked that over if I didn't say that? Yeah. Right. So my mind immediately goes, like, I, I remember, um, when I was in elementary school, one of the mothers didn't want to go out on the ice and ice skate with the kids and the parents.

And, uh, she says, I'm a single mother. I can't afford to fall down and break my arm. I can't do that. And my father talked her into going out and ice skating. And what did she do? She fell down and she [00:28:00] broke her arm. Now, would that have happened if we didn't implant that into our mind ahead of time, would Michael Phelps have, uh, just not had that, uh, issue?

And I've thought about that back and forth in speaking with an a tier one fellow, Sean Taylor. He is ex JTF two. Um, and his thoughts on these different things about how we create a reality through thought and through process. Really at the end of the day, does it matter? Because if that's a reality, does it matter how, if we create it ahead of time or how we rationalize it afterwards, as long as the reality is one that we are, is acceptable to us.

So I, I thought an interesting concept I'm gonna lay with you.

Jeff Johnsgaard: Yeah. Is it possible that a goggle could flip full of water? Yes. Is that optimal? No. How do you recover in a world class way? 'cause you can't yell time out. Is it possible I could get shot and uh, uh, let me try to think of, what is his name?

Marcus Young comes to [00:29:00] mind. Marcus Young. It was like Ukai, California. I don't dunno why this one just popped into my head. Uh, shot point blank in the face, wrestling with a suspect. Takes the first round in the face. Next round, destroys his gun side, his weapon, side arm, humerus, uh, subsequent rounds, uh, front of the vest, back of the vest.

Uh, the guy then jams the pistol up underneath his, uh, uh, uh, other side, uh, armpit. 'cause he is like literally a, uh, white supremacist, uh, trained violent sociopath, probably because he knew his vest wasn't there. Fires another round, blows out his scapula. Thankfully not his, uh, not his, uh, uh, spine drops to the ground.

And Marcus, who's got a 17-year-old ride along, you know, you can only imagine sitting there with eyes spinning like a slot machine or something. A Walmart security guard comes over, subsequently gets stabbed by the same guy. He goes down, he, he, Marcus goes, I remember my hand. I was trying to get my gun out.

And I [00:30:00] look and I realize my arm. Is not working. It's gone. But you know, but I've been here before because they taught me to grab my gun with my other hand, but it ain't working. I looked down and his hand was shot and mangled. It's like, couldn't even deactivate the safeties. So he calmed himself down and coached that kid how to get his gun out, put it in his hand, end the threat further.

He started coaching the kid how to direct ambulance and, and units to them. Then he started directing the ambulance units where and how to patch him. Then he gets taken into hospital. He started directing them. Please take two vials of blood because I want to prove that I wasn't on alcohol or any other, uh, any other, uh, uh, you know, barbiturate or you know, any other thing.

Sure. Because there is a civil fight that's going to happen next. He's already. Putting himself into the next fight, the next plan, the next thing, the next, and keeping himself on the entire [00:31:00] time. When talking to Marcus Young, he's, you know, I mean, a lot of great stuff happened there, Marcus. If you could put it down to a couple of key principles, what would they be?

He's like, because I had envisioned it before, I anchored it to something rich, deep and meaningful. As in, I'm not gonna die here. I'm going to go home to my family. So when it happened, I had been there before. Now going out onto the ice, catastrophizing and focusing, which is my guess what happened to that lady, I'm going to fall.

The ice is dangerous, there is, et cetera, et cetera, versus Put me in Coach Gunfights are dangerous, but I'm wanting to go with this group into that. Into that house or the, you know what I mean? Or, or I rise to the occasion and if things happen, I'll pivot and adjust and continue to be task focused. There is a distinct difference between, uh, what, you know, what we're talking about [00:32:00] between that tier one operator and the lady on the ice, but it's still happening between their ears.

Sure. So I prefer to be ready for all circumstances having gone through it to a rich, deep, meaningful level, uh, so that I have all the cue cards that I could possibly have. It's free. It happens in seconds. You only get better at doing mental rehearsal with mental rehearsal. I mean, literally I do it, I do it with everyone from people who wanna be better in business to people who, can you teach my child to play the violin faster?

Yeah, I can, I have know nothing about the violin, but I'll have them learning and being in that environment and learning how to thrive and, uh, seek out challenge because struggle. Means you are learning. We must embrace the struggle. If there's no friction, then there's no learning. And with no learning, there's no growth.

And at the center of my being is growth. And so, mm-hmm. And these are the conversations that I have with people to get them real sharp and define this thing called your [00:33:00] mind that you're always using, but perhaps not in a world class way.

Travis Bader: A lot of people are very afraid of failure. And they're risk adverse.

And they view failure as not a stepping stone to success, but they view it as a roadblock. And I gotta do everything right. So I just don't fail that one time. And I'm sure you've heard that study about the, uh, I think it was a pottery teacher and they said, okay, this side of the class, I want you to make the perfect pot.

You know, none of you guys had done pottery before, but it's gonna be perfect. Take all the time you want this side of the class. I just want you to make as many pots as you can. And of course, the ones that just did it over and over, they weren't afraid of making that one perfect pot. Inevitably, they all ended up making better pottery than the ones that took their entire semester making that one perfect pot because they failed and they rebuilt and they failed, and they rebuilt, and they kept going through that.

So I guess my question to you would be, how do you help somebody realize that [00:34:00] failure isn't fatal, that success isn't final failure isn't fatal to quote Churchill, but. And be able to apply that in a meaningful way in their life, in business, in their life, in sports, or in the shooting world, that they should be s seeking out failure on a, in a meaningful way.

Jeff Johnsgaard: Uh, well, I mean, that is a very profound statement and so, uh, I mean, we could always dodge around the word guided. Error would be a term in, in the, in the, in the, in the research guided exploration. Uh, I, I, I typically, I will ask them to build two boxes, two mindsets. Uh, in the research it was called the, uh, Dr.

Tim Lee, he called it the think box. In the play box, I believe. I just, I'm not a fan of those two words. I like the explore and the perform. Um, uh, Ron Avery competition shooter, I think he calls it the training mindset and the trusting mindset, [00:35:00] although, I don't know if he, he, I heard him use those terms before.

I don't know if we're using them in the same manner, but, uh mm-hmm. I want to build a, uh, we're entering a frame where we're literally seeking how, where things don't work so well. And so it's called the challenge point framework, where you're kind of at this 70% of the time, maybe a little more, you're doing it not bad or doing it.

Okay. But you gotta be, you know, dicking it up. 20, 30% of the time, uh, struggling finding it like quote unquote error or geez, that doesn't work so well, et cetera, in order to be at optimal growth at optimal learning. Uh, now it can't be all struggle all the time, so this is keenly linked to motivation.

Keenly linked to motivation. And the number one thing I would want is for people to be motivated. You could have the worst instructor and the worst program in the world, but if you're just motivated, you're gonna get some stuff out of that. If you're not motivated, you could have the best instructor and the best program in the entire world, and you're just checked out of it, and you're not gonna get any results out of that, that, that are worth a lick.

[00:36:00] And so, uh, there are these, uh, conceptual, uh, uh, dials, I guess that they've been often referred to as. And learner motivation is one of them. So whenever I work with someone or a group or whatever, I'm always trying to leverage all of these things at one time. So every time I give feedback, my sole focus is to help to establish a feedback loop in that person so they have intrinsic feedback so they know mm-hmm.

How to self-correct, diagnose, et cetera. Now, that doesn't mean I don't tell people descriptively explicitly. Hey. Yeah, I see you doing this. Maybe do some of that. But, um, if I can get them to invest in the knowledge, again, we're back to this, the, uh, confusion means you are learning something new. It's a good thing.

Mm-hmm. Uh, uh, frustration. It means you're on the verge of a breakthrough, and we need to tuck into that. So I, I shape their mind. I offer them to say, I don't want you to be goal or [00:37:00] results focused. I want you to be process or effort focused. I'm on the right path. Taking another step today, because let's be honest, you might have a goal to be level whatever, uh, or, uh, get job X or something like that.

But hopefully there's always going to be more growth and more stuff after that, right? Whether that's, whatever that looks like, you know, you can still be a better communicator, which in turn made me a better father. Uh, you know, uh, happier husband, uh, a better, just all that, all these things in life as well.

So I'm always trying to leverage those principles and concepts. Error is absolutely necessary. So we have to embrace the struggle. It's like healing, right? Healing is not linear. We take these ups and downs and turns as we're on our way to. Growth or healing or something like that. And so again, this is just a full sin.

This is just Jeff, you know, talking. This isn't a training because I would now say, so Travis, what did you get from that? Hey, talk to me about a time in [00:38:00] your life when, hey, how could we to create that loop? Because as soon as I hear you say what you're gonna say, I immediately know what to say to you next.

If I've defined the end state, which is a training situation as well, if I ask you to demonstrate the arm bar or the golf swing. I wouldn't because I wouldn't know golf swing from a golf. But, uh, uh, uh, and you know, as soon as you do that, I immediately know what to say, do or drill or experience or whatever to put you in next in order to keep shaping you towards more efficient, effective, et cetera.

And so everything is reverse engineered from that capacity.

Travis Bader: You talk about words mattering, and you use an example about slow trigger press. That's one that messed me up. Like I started shooting when I was four years old, got my first rifle when I was five, and I was coached slow, easy trigger press, slow, easy trigger press, and.

And I applied that to shotgun. I applied it to [00:39:00] pistol. I applied it to, uh, rifle to snap shooting to offhand. And I just, I just applied that to everything. And I remember being outta the range in my, uh, late teens. And there is, and I was out there and I was like, I know I can shoot, but man, and okay, I'm slow, easy trigger press.

I'm off target. I'm holding, I'm back on target. Slow, slow, slow. I'm off target, back on slow, slow, slow. This guy looks over to me and he says, what the hell are you doing? You're taking forever. And uh, I look at him and he is got this full get up on, and he's, uh, a super Gucci rig and he's a, uh, a world class, F class shooter.

And he's like, when you're on Target, you press the trigger. I'm like, yeah, but I'm doing a slow easy trigger press, right? And he's like, yeah, but you got it wrong. You got sh Doesn't mean you have to take, so you don't take a minute to pull that trigger, right? And all right, so words do matter. Um. And you know, another one I've, I've heard in, in the idea of words [00:40:00] matter, um, trying to describe to somebody how you hold a pistol.

And back in the day they would say, well, look at your hand. Do you see steel dripping out of the the bottom? Because if you do, you're gripping too hard. But other than that, you can't grip hard enough. And then they said, no, no, no. We're gonna change this a bit. We're gonna have a budgie grip. So pretend here's my budgie, I'm gonna give you this budgie.

Hold it in your hands. How, how hard do you wanna hold that? Well, I don't, this is my pet bgy. I don't want it flying away. How hard do you gonna hold it? Well, hard enough doesn't fly away, but not so hard that I kill it, right? Like, so that's what we're looking for is budget grip. And then fast forward a bit more, and I was listening to instructors say.

How do you know if you're gripping too hard? If you see plastic dripping out the bottom? 'cause now of course we've got polymer framed, uh, guns. But I went and I asked each one of these different instructors that I've had through my life, I put my hand out. I said, can you grab my wrist and show me how hard you're gripping this gun?

And each one of 'em gripped it [00:41:00] just the same, whether they're doing budgie grip or they're, they're doing plastic or steel melting out the bottom. I'm like, got it. Okay. Um, so words matter. How we interpret those words really matter. And the tangent off of that is the words that we feed ourselves. I. Uh, I would say we have to actually believe too.

'cause if we're just giving ourself false positivity, false wins, we're going to not learn to trust ourselves. And I think that shows in our performance. And now all of those tangents I'm gonna throw over to you.

Jeff Johnsgaard: Okay. Well, so let's talk about the first one. That was the slow trigger press. So I had every well-intentioned instructor and then I became one because I went through the course and I had instructor on my shirt.

Therefore, I was gifted this knowledge. That's, which had nothing to do with that in any of that training. How to put it in someone else's head, right? Mm-hmm. And so, uh, uh, uh, I had these people in my ear slow trigger press, or I'd stand next to them yelling, slow trigger press, [00:42:00] or as a well-intentioned instructor, I'd see a right-handed shooter on the pistol putting rounds to the left.

I would immediately come by and tell him to do some more zoomie guy stuff on the left side of the gun. And look at that. The rounds are going straight, and I'd, we'd get carpal tunnel from high fiving and they'd, they'd call and I'd, we'd walk away. I'd walk away, and three months later, heaven forbid, 12 months later, they walk in and I'd go, don't you remember anything?

Because it was a well-intentioned bad idea, number one, for me to e just walk up and give feedback. They had no idea where that feedback was to land, how, and I wasn't setting it up in them. So we can have an entire discussion about feedback. The now if you are giving feedback, uh, or you are doing some descriptive coaching or something like that.

What I do, again, my stupid human trick, I have this entire thing called owning the grip. And owning the trigger. And that is an experience I take you down while you're shooting a [00:43:00] gun with, try this, try this, try this. What did you notice? And we do everything to build out the concept for you. For every way you can grip the gun and make it better for you.

For every way you can pull a trigger and make it better for you. I was taught a trigger press was straight back to my nose holding the, you know, the, the pistol up in front of me. Well actually, if I pull the trigger back, so it, it, it touches just over my left shoulder, my trigger finger, where to hit.

There. I finished flat on the trigger. And I'm dead eye duck every time. I don't want you to do that. I want you to go through this process called owning the trigger. That's where you hold the gun. Now let's own the grip. Respectfully. I believe you were, we were taught, I was taught how to stand. I was taught how to present a gun.

I was taught how to hold a gun. I was taught how to shoot a gun. It's in the exact wrong order. I wanna know where my finger finishes flat so that there's no undid disturbance to the pistol finishing flat at the moment of shot discharge. Now that's [00:44:00] where I hold the gun. Then that's where I support the grip for not only recoil control, which is one point of aim, but recoil management, which is the use of that recoil to move to a new point of aim.

And now we're just unpacking all sorts of shit. Hopping awesome ways of being skillful with the tools. But it all has to do with language. The language of coaching, the language of guided exploration, right? 'cause we're linking together these concepts and the process. I want you to know the process to go through for you because now you got a glove on, now you got an injury, now you got a different size gun, now you got a whatever.

And the more times you go through it and own it for you, not because I was on a range where a tier one instructor who I absolutely believe in said That's it. How do I know that's it? When he's not there, I have to own that material for myself. So that emotional coating is not made up. [00:45:00] It is because you are putting rounds through the same hole on purpose by design.

But I used to, I. You know, like you're on the SWAT team and we're not gonna do this entry until we get it right. We're gonna do it till we can't get it wrong. We're gonna present this presentation till we can't get it wrong. Business, whatever. Right. Well, respectfully, it's, it's, it's a well-intentioned bad idea.

I mean, if you were to go about it in another way, uh, which is how to unpack and learn what other people were attending to, the, the, the meaning they got from those things in order to drive their next decision or behavior. And that's all through the use of a language, which is what I'm a big proponent of, the purposeful and deliberate use of language.

That's how you get into decision making. That's how you get into coaching. That's how you get into optimizing behavior. And so, uh, your second example, I know it was grip, uh, but, but, but, oh, sorry. And so now with slow trigger press, the [00:46:00] unfortunate residue of that in the research is a motor skill trigger press.

In this example. A motor skill is recalled at the speed at which it is laid down. And if I need, if you all of a sudden, uh, drew a weapon system, which three to five feet, three to five seconds, three to five rounds, all of a sudden I have, I'm coming out of the holster. I'm not sight alignment, sight picture, do it.

No, it's match, match, match, match mash, early one handed fire. Well hopefully ballistically, moving to a position of advantage, shifting my eyes and attention to where I want the rounds to go. Moving from gazes action coupling to onsites on trigger. Uh, that is the reality of a situation. And so when we go back to the traffic stop study, we saw these cops trying to outdraw a gun firing at them right up close.

And there were all kinds of. Errors because they were practicing at the speed of qualification, but now they were trying to recall and drive a motor skill at the speed of [00:47:00] survival, which was a lot faster. Were they going to challenge or threat? Obviously, most likely to threat. This isn't working.

Cognitive dissonance, holy crap, this gun's firing at me, this, et cetera. And that is not where high performance lives. So now there's all sorts of residue and like you said. Being in there. So what's the takeaway for your listeners? Once you can do something quickly, do it quickly, uh, but be careful what you wire together, what you muscle memory together.

Competition shootings, excellent. But when I put a competition shooter in a scenario where now they're getting shot at, they're used to standing out from cover. They're used to doing things after post gunfight engagement. Post gunfight engagement is the number one largest training scar I see in cops.

Full stop. Because we don't do it. We wire it out. Uh, for our scenarios, for our, our targets, our two dimensional targets, I will never have someone shoot it [00:48:00] a piece of paper until they experience to a rich, deep, meaningful level. What threat cues even look like? That mean I need to get a gun out. You're doing yourself a disservice by not doing that first because perception and the reason to get a gun out, it's not even there.

Which is the most important thing an elite athlete does. An elite performer does under $30,000 eye tracking software. We see seven year counter terrorist members not moving faster, moving fractions of a second sooner to a threat. Mm-hmm. Because they had game intelligence. This Wayne Gretzky effect, this knowing what to pay attention to, what it means and what to do in response instantaneously.

That is the power of language and experience.

Travis Bader: So I've got two kids as well and uh, one of 'em got a driver's license. He other one's just getting his driver's license. I'm teaching both of them. I'm putting them both [00:49:00] through young drivers as well so they can get the, uh, the other side to it. But, um, the way I teaching it is I explained, well, you've gotta be able to see into the future a little bit.

You have to be able to be a mind reader. What's that person on the road doing? What's this person over here? Tell me, when's the light gonna change? Well, how do you know that? Well, the hand is coming up. The, the night it's counting down, it's a bit stale. Great. You're a mind reader. What's this person gonna do when the mind when it starts to, uh, to change, they're gonna run it because they're going at a certain speed or they're gonna come into my lane.

'cause I've can see them in the mirror and they keep looking over in the mirror and they're glancing right. So, uh, the whole game is how to read the minds of the other people out there. So if something does go wrong, they're not reacting to, oh my God, a car's stopping right in front of me. They've already made the decision that that car might stop in front of them, or someone might cut in front of them because they've read that so they can react.

Sooner.

Jeff Johnsgaard: Okay, so this is exactly the [00:50:00] exam. This is exactly the example that I use when I teach this stuff for whomever, myself or for science or whatever driving, because we all have experience driving. So that's exact, that's exactly it. Um, um, there's a great study done where they took high, um, in the United Kingdom, you get to be a level three pursuit driver.

Believe it or not, it's like three months long and it's done in the public pursuit driver. Cool. Yeah. Nice to be an instructor for it takes two years Okay. At that digest, right? Yeah. And so, uh, you take these level three drivers, this pursuit drivers, and take novice drivers and had them put on eye trackers to see where their foveal central vision was looking.

Now that doesn't tell us where their, what they were attending to mentally, but it gives us a window into what they're looking at, et cetera. And at normal speeds, novice and, and these high-end experienced, uh, elite drivers looked around. The same, but when they got going real fast, [00:51:00] the experts shifted into another gear.

Metaphorically speaking of how to look around differently. Hmm. We didn't even know that happened. It was not something, that's why I have the, that's why I named my company this. We were not training it on purpose by design. It was the hopeful residue of all the experience and runs through the, the entry or the presentation.

We weren't deliberately understanding what was happening. And once we did, could we train that purposefully, Hey, look here like this. Yeah, absolutely. And did that mean way more people rose to the level? Yep. In way less time. Yep. There you go. So we gotta talk about cognitive load, right? And we gotta talk about attentional processes.

We gotta talk about this quote unquote muscle memory or unconscious competence with the tool. All with your what? Same with mine, with my daughter driving the car. My son driving the car. When have them talk [00:52:00] out driving. So daddy showed first we got in the car. Well first of all, the first time we got in the car we did, it was all visualization and mental rehearsal.

I had her go ahead and you set the seat for yourself. I said not to be comfortable not to drive. I said For yourself. 'cause you know, as you set the seat in mirrors. Okay, so you set the seat in mirrors we're in the garage. Car's not even on. Then I walked around the back of the car and I said, Hey, can you see me in your rear view mirror?

Yeah. Can you see me now? No. Okay. How much of the car can you see a bit of it? Does the car matter? I. Is that something we care about? Not really. Is it ever gonna change? No. Okay. So would you like to see more of the road or more of your own car? Yeah. Actually, I wanna see more of the road. Okay, so adjust your mirror to make that.

It was this long process so that she owned her mirror setting for her. She didn't do what dad told her. She knows the process to get in any vehicle and optimize it for her. Same with the steering wheel. Same with the seat seat pedal placement, right? For a distance to pedals, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Then as we're in the [00:53:00] vehicle, we say, okay, now just grip onto the steering wheel. Take a few breaths and relax. We're not even gonna drive yet, okay? Just relax. Alright? Think of a time. When we were driving and whatever, whatever, like where you were in the car and it was a happy time where you were in the car and felt, think of a time when you felt in control of something else.

And I bring that over into this vehicle now because you are in charge of this vehicle. Alright? So notice how it smells. Notice the radio, notice the grip, and I want you to now envision this happening. And I had her wired together, breathing and regulating herself mentally and physiologically while doing so.

Had a great experience. Turn the car on, pull it out, pull it back in the garage. Done first one space practice. Beautiful. But then as this went on, next sessions and next sessions, right? So we'd always reinforce all of that. I said, okay, dad's gonna talk out everything he's doing. And so I'm looking to change lanes.

I look for, I then sign, I then do that. I tell you all this stuff on how to [00:54:00] work the tool, the car, he then starts to do that. Okay, we're just in a parking lot 'cause I, I scale it down, right? I use non-consequential technologies or a parking lot with not other cars. I use Airsoft without shooting pellets.

Mm. 80 to 90% of the time, uh, before I ever would shoot pellets or bullets or anything like that. Right. For example. And then once she would then drive and talk out what she was doing, I knew where her attention was. As that started to go, she started to say, and now I'm changing lanes, and all those other little components just happened.

Mm-hmm. I knew that she, her attention and therefore cognitive load was decreasing because she was becoming more unconsciously competent. Automaticity with the tool. That's the moment, Travis, you can start teaching game intelligence. Uh, just the words I put on what you were already doing. Sure. When there's more attention, because now I'm working the tool, the gun, for example, and I don't have to [00:55:00] think, you know, slap the bottom of that rack, the cop, do the whatever, all that to a stoppage drill.

I can now start to pass on game intelligence. Alright, so now honey, as I'm driving, I now see what's predictive behavior. What are the critical cues? You already mentioned a bunch of them. The, the stop hand flashing. What does that mean to you? Well, okay, so how do we know? 'cause maybe she never attended to it, so draw her attention to it.

I am always shaping attention and intention with what I'm doing and providing for people coaching, feedback and training. Uh, then as that started to take place, I'd say, okay, great. You know, we're entering a school zone. Look at what dad's doing. Oh, you're breaking. Am I? No, you're putting your foot over the break.

Oh, it's called covering the break now. Why do you think I'm doing that? I'm shifting my eyes and attention. I'm slowing the car down, shifting my eyes and attention over here because why? Because kids can appear. And what are kids? And my daughter, they're, they do crazy things all the time. Yes, they sure [00:56:00] do.

Unpredictable. So I'm teaching her where to look, how to create or maintain safety or advantage by slowing down predictive behavior to on the next. Then she does it, then I do it again. I add more to it, more to it. I teach her to look at brake lights, right? Park lights as a car goes into park, predicting someone may open the door, look into their mirror to see if someone's there or not.

All these critical cues of quote unquote game intelligence, predictive behavior and decision making, which I do in gunfights, I do in business meetings, I do in interrogations and interviews I do all the time. It's called calibrating. Other people left of bang, noticing the anomaly. Uh, and that makes a decision and all this great stuff.

So it's exactly that. I just sharpen it by putting more of a. Process and, uh, maybe definitions or, or tangibility and handles on it.

Travis Bader: So what would be an example of how that would be related into a business meeting or into a [00:57:00] corporate setting?

Jeff Johnsgaard: Well, so what's your desired end state? So now, uh, let's say, so I'm in a negotiation.

Alright? So how am I calibrating the other person? It would almost be like, uh, poker game, right? Tell and things. Uh, maybe, uh, as I'm standing up at the front is the, is the person that I'm presenting with, you know, uh, uh, I wanna make sure they're calm, cool, and collected. Hence what I talked about at the very beginning.

This circle of personal excellence or this idea that we can build in a state. Of mind where we are, uh, functioning, uh, uh, processing information. Calm, but, but either maybe calm, like I wanna go to sleep or calm, like I'm, I'm in a recovery phase or calm, cool and collected processing information on the inside.

I'm like that, uh, swan's legs under the water, right? Sure. Just in the way, but I look calm, cool, and collected on the outside. So in a, in a business meeting, I, I have to ask the person, right, are you nervous up in front of people? On a scale [00:58:00] of, of zero to 10, talk to me where you're at. And some people, you know, in Spiders Heights, public speaking, whatever, right?

Um, and now we'll start addressing that. We'll go through mental rehearsal on that. And here's the key points. I gotta get some of this research out to you. The brain doesn't know the difference. Right. Mm. It doesn't know the difference. So, uh, you know, uh, MMA fighting. Okay? So by simply showing, uh, if, if, um, I guess this might just be audible, but just imagine for those of you who can't see me, that, uh, you know, if I was gonna punch you, uh, now watch this and I'll notice.

What do you see? And now all of a sudden, my right arm's caulking, right? Okay. And through talking about it, I don't tell you what did you notice? What's the first thing to move? Hey, have another look. Hey, your shoulder goes back. Before it goes forward in this case. So that's called a critical cue. That's an area to observe.

But is that the only place I wanna focus? No. And then we have to unpack what I do. There's two types of vision, central vision and ambient vision, [00:59:00] foveal and peripheral vision. And there's two different reaction times to that. So in sports volleyball, golf, hockey in gun fighting, in, in, in MMA, we need to learn how to use these different parts of our eyes to leverage the reactive systems of our, uh, uh, uh, of our, of our ambient, uh, vision.

To notice these critical cues happening right away, for example. So, I mean, this is in a business meeting, it's exactly the same. Or imagine I, I'm, I'm interrogating someone, literally as a police officer, as a detective sergeant, I'm sliding over an evidence presentation to say, is there any reason why your DNA shouldn't be found at that scene?

Or some big, what we call a most important question. You know, like that kind of stuff. But, but sure, before I've done that, I have positioned myself in a way to look for where critical cues are going to happen. Pupil dilation, flushness of eyes, immediate reactions to the vascular system, and all this stuff that I'm [01:00:00] constantly calibrating with anyone I'm doing anything with.

Because it come becomes second nature. That doesn't mean they're lying or not, it just means that these are all things that are happening in that environment. And if I'm focusing on task and process, I'm probably not internal going, oh God, what if this doesn't happen? And I. It's the reshifting, the catching myself not focused on the right thing and shifting to what are the critical cues when driving in a gunfight in a business meeting and procedures and process.

That is the skillset. It's actually called top down attentional control. And that's the metaphorical muscle that I'm always trying to build in people. But you can't do that until they know and, and experience and have foundation with when were they in an optimal performance state. Maybe that was just bacon cookies.

Travis Bader: Hmm. So from your perspective, as you look out into culture into [01:01:00] institutions, what makes you want to stand up and say you're getting this completely wrong? Well, I, I,

Jeff Johnsgaard: it's, it's almost a what doesn't I hate to, all right. I don't mean to be, I don't mean to be some sort of, uh. I don't mean to come off that way, but once you know this stuff, you can't unknow it.

And so yeah, there's a just a,

Travis Bader: there's a difference between arrogance and confidence. So you're not coming off in a certain way. Well,

Jeff Johnsgaard: I hope I'm not coming off. You know your stuff. Yeah. I mean, uh, but yeah, I'm very opinionated. But those opinions are grounded in. Actual application. Durable learning performance under pressure.

This is, this is the thing. So let me just, lemme just tell you this one little study with putting right and, and this, this one did it for me. Imagine this. Okay, so there's a study done at university 'cause you can get a university student to, to sign up to do anything for 20 bucks, right? So, so they get these university [01:02:00] students, you're gonna do 10 putts.

You're gonna come into this, to this and do 10 putts on the, like golf putting six days in a row. Alright? So you're gonna do 60 putts, but we're gonna break you into three groups randomly. The the control group. We're gonna just say, do your best on each shot and you do whatever that is. Go ahead and do that.

Then we're gonna get another group. We're gonna say, do your best on each shot, but just before you do it, we want you to envision the just missing. Then we asked the gr, then they asked a group, it wasn't me. They asked a group, do your best on each shot. Just before you put envision it going in, guess what?

Now to be clear, they took a, they, uh, took this group of people, they had them, uh, do a performance test, ranked them from basically like novice, putting medium, I can't remember what it was, but it was three levels. Put them at different [01:03:00] distances from the hole so that it was all kind of about the same.

Right. So I, I would've been very close. Other people would be very far from the hole if they're better. Right? Sure. Okay. So after six days they do a performance test. The control group got 9.9% better 'cause they were doing practice. Hmm. The positive group got 30.4% better. Three zero. Wow. This is the biggest hit, the negative imagery group who did exactly the same physical repetitions as everyone else.

Got worse. Negative 21.2%. Whoa. 50% difference between thinking and envisioning it, going in or not.

Travis Bader: Wow. What a man

Jeff Johnsgaard: thinks he'll do. So here's the residue, here's the takeaway. It almost gives me goosebumps. What are you leaving thinking about? Because you can [01:04:00] not only neutralize, but massively negate even quality physical practice.

Mm. So if you shoot a group here in the upper chest and here up in the face and zoom that guy. What are you going home thinking about 150 cy alignment trigger press. Nailed it. Or that guy. And I also think about that guy, but I used to go home, punishing myself over it, lamenting on it. And I didn't know because I had learned from a teacher very, very early in life who looked at me, little Johns guard.

I was a fat, happy kid just, just moving around. I wasn't caring about class. She walked over to me, we'll just call her Mrs. M, that total. And she looked at me and said, you have trouble concentrating. And I looked up at this person of prestige and I said, I have trouble concentrating. You have trouble in languages and math.

And I went, I'll have trouble in languages [01:05:00] and math. And she sent a post-it, not a suggestion to my brain going, why should I even bother trying? So I tried out for sports and I wasn't good at that. So I just ate and I was happy. That wasn't until later in life that I realized the residue in my brain, my subconscious brain about these things.

I. Then I needed to deliberately learn how to optimize them. So you can literally wipe out by thinking, quote, unquote, negative. So I don't think that bad things or misses or I didn't get the job, or that's happened a ton in my life. Absolutely. In fact, there are things that I, I have tons of regrets. I, I, I hear people say, I live a life of no regrets.

I'm like, that's amazing. I have tons of them. I just don't live in the toxicity of them anymore. I think, and here's the phrase, feed forward. My feedback is feed forward centric so that what will I do? How did that go? What did I learn? Take the positive from that and how will that look next [01:06:00] time? And I never leave.

I, in fact, there are six people on the planet that I know that I will go through four on four scenarios with them that they design because I don't know, the rest of people have this unintentional, which is your main question here. When you look at society, when you look at training in law enforcement, when you look at the, the unintended residue of the experiences of even being on the line, shooting at a paper target are astronomical.

If you haven't done. Early context cue recognition, post gunfight behavior, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. As an example, heaven forbid you go into a presentation feeling like you're gonna fail, break your arm, slip on the ice, and you do. And now you walk away going, this just isn't for me. Maybe this career choice, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

All of that stuff is BS. Failure is feedback. What are you going to do with that feedback? [01:07:00]

Travis Bader: So I think you and I, and probably a number of the listeners, probably had that same teacher who inputted that negative information. Um, when you talk about that one round that goes off on that side, that little guy, of course we'll just borrow from Super Troopers.

I wouldn't worry about that little guy. But you used to worry about it. You're saying you had these things imprinted in the back of your head and you had this idea, I'm never gonna be good at math. I'm, I'm a hyperactive student. Um, but you no longer live in the toxicity of that. So my question would be how did you reach that realization and what do you do internally or externally to not live in the toxicity of that moment?

Because I think a lot of the people listening will have negative things happen to them and will ruminate on it, and it's a natural human response to replay it live in the moment, go through it. I mean, that's what PTSD is all about. They've had these experiences and [01:08:00] they ruminate. How did you break forward to no longer live in the toxicity of that moment?

I simply, uh, and I say simply

Jeff Johnsgaard: as in, I simply used, I simply used a tool. A tool. I didn't know I was doing it at the time. Uh, it just slowly in, I slowly came about learning about it. Uh, haphazardly, I guess. Or, or, yeah. Uh, and that tool is Theater of the Mind is mental reversal is imagery visualization.

Right. I just don't like the word visualization. 'cause if you ask people to visualize it, it biases thinking pictures. And if you took a hundred people that were a cross section of the society and you asked them to, to envision something, to a deep, rich, meaningful level, 20 to 50 of them won't actually see pictures.

So by using that word visualization, they feel like they're not doing it right. And it's not for me, et cetera, seriously. But in order to do this properly, you, you use all of your senses, [01:09:00] uh, you know, to as, as much as possible. There's one track, phobic learning. I have a good friend who is a, uh, officer in New York, nine 11, can't even, he won't get on a plane.

Can't smell jet fuel again. It's a no go full stop. One track phobic learning associated it to, uh, horror and all the rest of it. And okay. And that's absolutely cool. If you ever want to get over that. You know, just like, let's talk about it. Uh, you know, but he drove from Florida to Montana to train with me and back because he doesn't get on airplanes, right?

So we're, we're born with four and eight fears, right? Smothering sudden approaches, loud noises, and uh, uh, and heights. Everything else is learned. So if you're afraid of spiders or if you're afraid of, you know, whatever it is, and you get this anxiety, and that's most important, I guess let's, let's reframe it.

Period. We should talk about mindsets, growth mindset, Carol Dweck's work, that kind of idea. Mindsets are malleable. This teacher, Mrs. M right, gave me this mindset. I didn't even know. I didn't know. And [01:10:00] I viewed the world through it from that point on. That's why I wanna shake my fist out, you know, all the rest of it, to say the least.

And so you can, mindsets are malleable and changeable, and you can do that. So what I, what I do with people is you take them through experiential training and it, you, you can use the theater of the mind, right? So you can use mental rehearsal to do that. Your brain. And not tell the difference between practicing something that you know about.

They can't just say like, pretend to fly an airplane if you don't know how to fly an airplane, right? Mm-hmm. Uh, and actually doing it. So, uh, things that you can do easy, like in a laboratory, right? Like a piano playing. So they get a bunch of piano players and they give 'em this noted sequence, this new novel sequence, and they have them go away and I imagine playing it.

And they had some other people go, uh, play it for the exact same amount of time. When they came back, the people who imagined it got almost as good as the people who actually did it in their mind. Wow. Now what [01:11:00] if we said play it? But since it's hard on your joints, it's hard to set up. You can't always be in front of a piano or practicing in a car or whatever your thing is that you're practicing.

Do some more quote reps in your mind. Imagine if we stack them. I. And imagine if we flavored it that way. So it's not that I, uh, I don't miss, it's not that I don't have, uh, uh, where I, where I try to do my best and my best. I am another key point here. I cannot control outcomes and I can only control what it is that I put in.

And I know that to do my best means to regulate my physiology and my psychology. And in order to do that, this idea of theater of the mind or mental rehearsal is absolutely, absolutely the same as if you did it yourself. Hence why you can envision a goggle flipping full, your goggles flipping full of water, or you being shot in whatever without that happening, right?

But you gotta have, uh, tangibility. An [01:12:00] engagement with the material. You can't just, right, you can't just be there. Okay, so now we, uh, envision yourself, uh, uh, you know, doing a, a, a reload while your arm is shot to hell and whatever, you know, something like that. Oh yeah, now you're all good. How do you go away owning that material?

So this is the key point here, right? So you gotta give someone an experience of doing it, and then we start leveraging that some more. When I give them an experience of doing that, what I'm actually doing is, is I'm helping them to learn how to think. About how they think it's called metacognition. It's just fancy mouth words for something I believe should be taught in grade two.

Heaven forbid, everyone should be taught it before you get a license or walk into a voting booth. Right. It's just like, well, true. Yeah. You're just being, you're being directed and you're not thinking about how you think, you're not thinking about mm-hmm. What you're now thinking, saying, or doing in response to something else.

Right? And so there's lots of ways to go about leveraging [01:13:00] that, whether that's, uh, uh, some people, you know, uh, I wanna put them in a physical state of uncomfortableness, so maybe we're gonna exercise and well, we're exercising. We get a hold of our psychology and our physiology and go, Hey, I'm in an uncomfortable place right now, but I'm, I'm, I'm thriving.

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm rising to the occasion. I get in a cold tub and my psychology and my physiology is like, no. And I. He is breathing in attentional focus to regulate myself down. Like just by doing that right now, I got goosebumps all over my body. Sure. I put myself there. I think about that hostage negotiation shot and well, there it is again.

And I get an, an entire reaction across my body that I could interpret as, uh, as, as a threat and as, oh no. Or I could interpret as challenge. When I think of those things my body vibrates with, put me in, coach, it doesn't vibrate with, oh [01:14:00] no, this is anxiety. Mm-hmm. And that is the reframe. Anxiety is a natural, normal thing.

It means you care about something, it's future oriented. It's the only re I'm, I'm sure no animal does that. The gazelle could be eating and all of a sudden the tiger comes out and, and cortisol and the rest of it, and it moves. And then once that's done, it's back eating again. But we're thinking. Will this brush also have a tiger?

What would've happened? Oh, could you imagine if, and then we, seriously, that's what we do, right? Yeah. So how do we then think, and not just positively? 'cause that's, that's silliness, right? Mm-hmm. I don't just always think rainbows and sunshine, right? But I do think, what am I gonna do with this information?

How is this leveraging? How am I growing? How am I learning to pivot and adjust what is important to me? Now, life's most powerful question. I stole it from Brian Willis, an amazing Canadian trainer in Calgary. Win what's important now, wi what's important next, [01:15:00] life's most important question. And I wind it into everything I'm doing.

Uh, and so that is that, uh, focused on the process, focused on, um, on, on catching myself and knowing that real time tools are focus of attention and breathing. I. So then I say, okay, so now let's get ahold of our physiology by breathing. There's this cyclic sigh or, or physiological sigh. You know, I show 'em a two minute, uh, Andrew Erman video.

Right. And there's lots of research on that now. But we have to deliberately wind that in. So my daughter driving something happens, do your breathing. Ah, okay. Back in charge, snapping on. And we give little doses of that while teaching them how to emotionally regulate again, while teaching them how to emotionally regulate in the community.

It was always, quote, stress them out to inoculate them against stress. That is a absolutely flawed model. That's not the case. Mm-hmm. You cannot inoculate [01:16:00] someone against future stress. You're a different person. Right. Uh, in a different river every time there are things mm-hmm. You can do ahead of time.

You know, get lots of sleep, gratitude, nutrition, exercise, et cetera. But whether you said or didn't do all any of those things, all of a sudden in this moment, something's happening, anxiety, et cetera. Are we depression that's past focused? Uh, are we fear right in the moment, which is a mobilizing response.

I love it. It it, it allows me to get my, uh, get my resources ready, but I regulate them to a level that's not too much. And taking me into a place where physiologically and psychologically I'm not in an optimal state. That's different for driving than smashing a door open with a gun and a whatever. Then different from learning and writing a test.

Those are just, and I learned those, put them in those experiences and have my kids when driving, have my people, myself when, when visualizing and imagining to [01:17:00] atch and reframe all of those things to challenge not threat.

Travis Bader: So you're talking about getting goosebumps a couple times when you're, uh, the psychophysiological response to just visualizing different things that are happening.

And I remember a, uh, was it an instructor? I think it was an instructor who once came up and says, I want you guys to close your eyes. Right. Or they either had us visualize it or they did it right in front of us. I'm trying to remember, but they got a lemon. Have you visualize a lemon? I either visualize it so well that I, I see them doing it and they start slicing this lemon open and they take a peel off and you can see them.

It's squirting some water and lemon juice out and they stick it in their mouth and they bite down hard on this and talking the class through this process. And then the class would have a physiological response. So the mouthwatering and that lemon flavor and that kind of, uh, [01:18:00] that sort of battery acid kind of, uh, twinge that you get just from thinking about it or just from seeing it on screen, you can have that a physiological response.

And when you talk about that reframing, I think that's a powerful one. It's one that I use, it's one that I've taught my kids. They talk about anxiety or fear, and I'll ask 'em the question, are you afraid or are you excited? Right. You have a test coming up. Are you afraid of the test? Are you excited about what's gonna happen?

And that subtle reframe, because I don't think the body really knows the difference between excitement and fear. And if you can psychologically reframe whatever that's happening from that negative, like, I don't like what's happening to this is awesome. I'm getting on a rollercoaster and we're excited.

It's, uh, it's a powerful tool that I will use to help myself and others, my kids get over something that might, uh, be otherwise labeled as fear. That's

Jeff Johnsgaard: absolutely, so, [01:19:00] you know, I I, I went down this rabbit hole, this thing called neurolinguistic programming, right? So I'm in these, this long seminars and stuff, and there's this one lady there and we're doing a phobia cure.

So this lady is literally petrified of spiders and she knew it come Friday, they were gonna bring snakes and spiders and all sorts of stuff to this thing, and it was a phobia cure. If you were ready to get over it, you're gonna get over it. Short version of this story is, I talked to her with the fancy mouth words for 20 minutes.

She was ready. She was in a, uh, I guess you'd call it like a, a, a, a place where she was. Something's gotta change that. Something needs to change now. And that something is me, we call it threshold, right? Where she's, she's ready to make a change and, uh, I talked to her and reframed the next thing you know she's got a tarantula.

Walking on her hand 20 minutes later, she has the same physiological reaction to it, but she is interpreting it through the lens of exhilaration instead of anxiety and fear and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Mm. Here's the key point. I'm watching this happen, this 68-year-old lady, [01:20:00] and I, I, I'm happy, but I'm sad that I said this afterward.

And I looked at her and I said, now, your whole life, you were literally paralyzed to the point of like phobic responses to spiders. You, you were wrong about that, weren't you? Like now you're not. And I said, imagine all the other places in your life that you've been holding back that you no longer need to hold back from.

And she looked at me and I got, again, I have this entire reaction across my body, and a year later she had been traveling and she'd been doing like just all this stuff. And when you asked me What are some of the things that you see going on in society or in law enforcement training or in any, whatever it is.

These are the things I see. And it, they're Mm. There're these parking breaks we're putting on each other ourselves. They're these limiting things that we're putting on ourselves and each other and our groups mm-hmm. And our society and all that. Heaven forbid when my [01:21:00] responsibility is to take a civilian in just a few hours and offer them the very best training I can for self-defense, for optimization of a sport or whatever.

You know what I mean? Something like that. Mm-hmm. When there's high stakes and pressure on it. And I think the gravity of that is so tremendous. So tremendous. So, you know, when you're reframing, uh, that's exactly right. Um, in his book, the Ace Factor, Mike Spic talks about World War II pilots. It was like a 1966 study.

Herbert Weiss, Herbert Weiss, or Weiss was studying Sure. World War II pilots. I. And he said that basically if you were a World War II pilot, you were a flying Turkey, meaning like you had next to zero life expectancy, uh, as a, so here we are climbing on the graph. I'm just, my hand is very low. For those of you who can't see, uh, until you had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and then seven, five to seven key phrase here, Travis, decisive engagements.

When you survived, [01:22:00] thrived five to seven times decisive engagements in the air, your life expectancy was up near a hundred percent. Wow. So how do we can't in our society, just throw people to war, throw people and just hope for the best. Right. You know, the, uh, the Spartan Warrior hope they come back. Right.

You know, the young man hope he comes back and survives. But we can create pre. Combat veterans. We can do prehabilitation with our people. We can dev, we can develop through scaled scaffolded progression, deliberate work to make a business executive, to make a presenter, to make someone who's able to engage and stay engaged in a conversation and relate to people and be more expressive and whatever, whatever, whatever.

And I know this because I do it in what I consider to be the harshest environments. Just a few seconds [01:23:00] training a part of the brain to happen without thinking about it. Reactions and efficient and effective movement under time compression and ambiguity and the rest of it. So if I even have a couple of seconds to think about what to do, it's like cheating to me.

In order to perform better.

Travis Bader: Huh? Have you ever had a student who completely changed your understanding of what it means to prepare for violence? Oh, that's a good question.

Jeff Johnsgaard: Uh, so just so I, uh, lemme see if I'm on the right track here with that, maybe you'll have to ask me that again, but something else triggered in my mind.

So I'm, when you, the, the last thing you would ask was as well about, about reframing. So I've got these Sure. These, uh, shooters come in. So I've had some cops who like didn't qualify. Imagine if I had a script that was written out that I read at them that took just a few minutes and instantly four to six of them were never needing to re were always able to qualify after that.

Imagine if that were the case. And all that script said mm-hmm. Was [01:24:00] brought 'em into the range. Had them sit and emotionally regulate through visualization and imagery. That same thing was done actually in a study. With, uh, three minutes. It took a, a group of law enforcement split 'em into two groups, read a three minute script at them, just one group, the other group, nothing where it was.

Take a deep breath. Now, uh, in a moment you're going to go through a, a use of force scenario, not talking about what it was gonna be, but as things unfold, you notice how easily you are able to focus now on what's important. Notice how you're able to respond with just the right da, da, da, da. Notice how, mm-hmm.

You are just a script. Three minutes, one time, everybody went into the same scenario and the only thing they could measure was shock placement, although I'm not a big keen on that, but, uh, 50% accuracy, 33% accuracy. One time, wow. Three minutes. So then I've got another friend, Austin, who's uh, he does a lot of, uh, uh, active shooter [01:25:00] response.

So just like cops going into school shootings. And he, he reframed my thinking on coaching and teaching that he said, the most important place I can be is as a safety officer. And I went, okay, why? Because I'm giving them their gear and that's the moment I have to get into their head. And I went, oh, now you've got something.

Tell me more about that. He says, Hey, you're just about to go into an active shooter situation, right? So just imagine He goes and he's moving them from threat to challenge. Yes. He's moving them from, I don't wanna look bad, I don't want ego, I don't want you mean ego or not, but we don't want to look like we don't know.

Right? Sure. I mean, there's always that, uh, he said some, imagine someone's down the hall. Killing children. Is that acceptable to you? Absolutely not. Alright, so what are we gonna focus on doing? And by even talking in that manner, I move myself towards goal focus, towards do what to do towards external focus of attention towards and regulation of [01:26:00] mindset and, and guess how much better they performed.

Mm-hmm. How do we catch ourselves not in a, so I'll call it just a threat based state and shift immediately to a challenge based state. This is the point you've already brought up the key phrases, Travis. So hey, you're gonna give that presentation, oh no, next month or whatever, whatever it is. All of a sudden I've got, that's a, that's a threat Avoidance behaviors versus what I do with people.

Okay. How can we prepare? How much time have we got? How, what's the best way we can start to do, uh, behaviors to do with, uh, uh, you know, my own personal excellence, putting in the work rising to the occasion? It might mean it works out or not, but either way I will learn from it and get better at it. And so now how do we start focusing on those things, which is task oriented, process driven, et cetera, et cetera.

And so now when I wind that into, I have put in the work and I will do the very best that I can based on [01:27:00] that, and I will always learn and grow. I mean, that's the focus, the reframe, the thing. And so we need to not just to talk about it. What I do is actually do it because doing, mm-hmm. Like when people say to me, well, take me through the, uh, the own your grip or own your trigger, I was like, I'll give you the lesson plan, but taking you through it and experiencing it, now you own it for you.

That's the key point

Travis Bader: there. So if you were forced to throw away everything that you currently teach and you could only pass on one truth to a student to help them survive violence, what would that be?

Jeff Johnsgaard: That is not a good question. What the,

Travis Bader: it's a good question for our podcast, and it's a

Jeff Johnsgaard: good question for social media,

Travis Bader: but,

Jeff Johnsgaard: uh, no. Okay. No, no. I just, I'm coming down on you 'cause it's like I immediately think of [01:28:00] three things. Uh, okay. So if I were to throw everything. And, and it's a very hard question to answer because of this. Am I talking to who?

So my, what I do is I give people five more pounds on their barbell. And my stupid human trick is the ability to do that with 30 people at one time, but it's five slightly different pounds because you're different people at a different place with the material. Learning is not an event, it is a process.

So I need to know is the fight on Monday. So it's happening right away. Because I first wanted to say, honestly, I would say to them, stay curious, growth mindset, heart of a warrior, you know, something like that. Because they'll figure it out. But that's only if they got the time to do so. If I had, if the fight was coming up right away, I would say something more to do with the will to act.[01:29:00]

Right. The power of the force is, is right. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the force. Right. The, the ability to actually do something. Ronan one of my favorite movies, if there is a doubt. Mm-hmm. There is no doubt. Yes. But the second part of that he didn't say was, so do something.

Link that to a response and behavior, even if that's just preparation internally, well outside you look like calm, cool, and collected. So if I were to pass that on, I'd wanna know where that person was at in order to give them the best five pounds for Monday. Generally speaking, I would say that uh, emotional regulation is the thing because we don't have the time to polish a skillset and that has to do with breathing and focus of attention.

That is the base of the pyramid for everything that I teach. Emotional

Travis Bader: regulation. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that we should be talking about? There's tons of stuff [01:30:00]

Jeff Johnsgaard: you. Maybe another conversation 'cause we've been going for so long already. But, uh, you know, I would want people to understand that conceptually there's a few models for where you could put your attention if attention is so important.

'cause Jeff says, right. Not 'cause Jeff says, but I'm, I'm, I'm bringing that. Sure. Many, many, far more intelligent people and performers have said that, but they, conceptually it can be in this quadrant, these four places. It can be internally or externally focused. And then it could be internally or externally.

Narrow or broad. So I'm a, I'm a, I'm a batter at the, here's a sports analogy, I'm gonna suck at it. All right. But I'm a batter Mm. Uh, on home plate, right? I guess that's where they stand. So, and so I could be internally focused on the grip of the bat. I could be internally that's narrow, internally broad on the feel of the swing.

I could be externally focused on the, a critical cue of the angle of the pitcher's arm or something. Or I could be externally focused broad on [01:31:00] like the, the, the watching 'cause they know Jeff's at bat. So the outfield just walks its way in, right? Or something like that. Uh, external, broad. And so by knowing what quadrant of attention you are in, expert performers know what quadrant they're in and what quadrant they should be in and how to switch and get there.

So am I focused on the right information? Wayne Gretzky or expert performers don't just know what to focus on. They know when to focus on it. What it means to drive their next behavior. That means they know all the other stuff that's screaming for attention. That's captivating me driving a car. Whoa, what happened over there?

Oh, still driving a car. Rear end the guy. I mean, it happens all the time. I got caught in the right quadrant, external. Focused on the wrong thing, for example. And so that is how I start to deliberately, we have to have a language, we have to have an understanding. I start to deliberately put that into other people.

So now they have their [01:32:00] own feedback, their own analysis, and can start to make themselves better. 'cause my sole purpose is to remove myself from the equation. Mm-hmm. Again, the, the, the, the, the only reason to understand these quadrants of attention is for top down, attentional control, or to catch myself not focused on the right thing and refocus on the right thing.

Travis Bader: So people wanna learn more about this. You do have some free resources on your website. Oh

Jeff Johnsgaard: yeah. I'm happy to talk more about it anytime with you, with, with you, with you as well. But yeah. Uh, and I, thanks for that. You know, point, there is a couple of articles. I do want to do a, uh, uh, that, that circle of excellence I talked about, I keep saying, I'm gonna just do that up and put it on the website.

Uh, I would certainly offer it out to your, uh, to your listeners as well, and we'll, we'll try to get all that done.

Travis Bader: Tell me more about the circle of excellence. I really want to know, so what would that look like if you had that, uh, completed?

Jeff Johnsgaard: Uh, so well, well, what it simply is, I mean, I, I do it all the time.

I just haven't recorded it. Uh, so this, uh, uh, I, like, let's say [01:33:00] Travis, you and I are working together. And so whether that was for pick a topic, you wanna be a better coach, uh, you wanna be better performer, you want to give a presentation, whatever that is, right? And so, uh, one of the first things we will do after we have a conversation is we will, we will take you through, uh, imagery, through Theater of the Mind for, uh, um, you know, notice yourself perhaps in a room or, or in the room you're in, notice a circle of light.

Uh, and this circle starts to form. Whatever size is up to you, whatever color is up to you. But inside of that circle is you, uh, uh, when you have been performing your best, perhaps when you have been doing right. So this circle of excellence. And so we would then build that out to include all the times when you know you have been performing well or, uh, the times when you haven't, but you took the learnings.

And as we step into this thing, it's actually a physical thing I like to do, to have people move because you can, by changing your physiology, moving you change your [01:34:00] psychology much easier. It's hard to think your way into a new way of acting, but act your way into a new way of thinking, right? And so it's true.

All these little tricks I use to, to get this, that's what I mean. I am good at what I do, so of excellence. And then I then. Took in turn and built that even more. So, uh, you know, hugging my daughter, I love you, daddy, anchored that into it. Uh, the time when I did really well at the, uh, you know, in high stakes and pressure, and I anchor that.

I put that in there and I, and all these things, and then I strip away the events and leave all the feeling, emotion, et cetera, all the resources because if I'd done it one time, I have the ability to do it, be at heights and be at ease. You know, be calm under pressure, refocus when I was not focused on something, all that stuff.

And then we use that. We can then carry that with us or step into it and leverage it. It puts us in a resourceful state where we can access, uh, and uh, really perform our [01:35:00] best. Then we take that grounded foundation of that which we're adding to literally, I add everything of every day, how to. Great talk with you, Travis.

Felt like I was as engaged as I could be, not being in a room with you, you know, but better than to have done it, than not do it because we're so far apart. I'll anchor that and do it. I'll anyway, on and on and on and on. So it becomes founded in reality then, then that keeps getting added to now when you are.

You can actually use a kinesthetic anchor. I typically do, uh, uh, I use my thumb touching my, my third finger here, this knuckle. 'cause it's really awkward to be able to do that. So I, I build it up in my mind until I'm to this point where it's like at a crescendo where it's like, I feel it. There's the, the temperature, the movement, the, all those things that make it vibrant for me.

And I press that anchor. I love you daddy. I pressed that anchor. I was doing really well and I pressed that anchor. I caught that thing and coached well, and I pressed that anchor and I put those things in. So if I ever need to access it, [01:36:00] there's a physiological. Psychological cue associated to it, instantaneously done.

Uh, there's lots of little tricks and things like that. You can do that to the stock and cheek weld. You can do that to the driving of the car. I did it with my daughter. When your hands are here, it helps you to focus even more now on what's important. It helps you to Right. You see the language. Awesome.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. All that stuff.

Travis Bader: Well, I really enjoyed this conversation. I'm looking forward to our next one because, uh, I think there's a lot more in here that we can unpack. Jeff, I want to thank you for being on the podcast. Oh,

Jeff Johnsgaard: it's been a pleasure, man. I love good conversations. So, uh, you know, we'll, we'll talk more offline and, uh, look forward to being back.

I hope you hope the audience got some value.