7 Principles of Inner Excellence to Stay Calm Under Fire | Jim Murphy

“Confidence is super helpful, but there's something even more powerful than confidence. And that's being fully present. If you have two athletes that are the same talent, I'll take the fully present person over the fully confident one every single time. Because when you're confident, you can get careless. But it's way less common if you're fully present.”— Jim Murphy

Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management

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Presence superior to confidence; confidence breeds carelessness

“The pursuit of extraordinary performance and the pursuit of the best possible life are the same thing. What good is it if I can spend my life making people really successful, winning an Olympic gold medal or being world number 1 or making millions of dollars, if it doesn't make a difference in their heart and in the world?”— Jim Murphy

Philosophy & Reasoning · Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management

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Peak performance path equals best possible life path

“You're only as stable as whatever you're worshiping. Everyone has a god. There's no atheists. Everyone worships something. There's something at the top of your heart, and that's your god. For me, it was being the superstar. I lost it and lost everything. And so I was as stable as it was. When I didn't have a good season, I didn't want people to tell others that I was a pro baseball player. Because I was unstable.”— Jim Murphy

Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Stability depends on what you worship at your core

“What does it mean to be present? A lot of people don't go far enough. They just say, oh, just don't think about anything but what you can see or be where your feet are. That's such a limiting view. For me, it's super important to explain what this is. What we're going for is this sense of freedom, this sense that anything is possible, this heightened awareness. To get that freedom, what I call this flow of resonance, where you're in sync, you just feel really connected, grounded, centered.”— Jim Murphy

Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Presence is self-forgetfulness; selfless equals fearless

“What I've seen with people that are very talented is exactly what you said. It's just next, next, next. Like, let's get another goal, let's achieve something else. It's a dangerous trap. The more talent you have, the more likely you can get in this trap. The trap is: I set a goal, I work at it, I get a result, and then I process that result in my mind. Do I like it? Is it good or bad? Did I win or lose? And that's going to impact my beliefs because beliefs are feelings.”— Jim Murphy

Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Talent trap: achievement cycle blocks deeper examination

“When you're in that moment when you're nervous and you really want something, the best performance comes when you have freedom. What you can do is ask yourself, what do I want more in this moment? To be successful right here this one time, or to get better at these moments? In other words, to master my ego, to not be so caught up in what people think. Most people come to these points in their lives where they're really uncomfortable, and they back away because they're too uncomfortable.”— Jim Murphy

Psychology & Behavior · Strategy & Decision Making

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Ask: outcome now or skill mastery? Lean into discomfort

“If physical fitness requires breaking down muscles to build them stronger, it's the same thing with wisdom and courage. You can't gain courage by constantly just making yourself more and more comfortable. Aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort. If you want wisdom, then you have to go through things. You need that jacket that's two sizes too big. You have to have trouble. You have to have adversity in your life. There's no way to gain wisdom just reading about it on the couch.”— Jim Murphy

Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Wisdom and courage require adversity like muscles need strain

“The greatest resource other than love and wisdom is courage. Because we can all have it. Love is hard to sacrifice yourself, and wisdom takes a lot of study and surrender. Courage, every single person on the planet can have courage. That's what I found is the most common amongst the highest performers in anything. They may not have a lot of wisdom or love, but they have courage. What I mean by that is they're willing to face their fears. They're willing to look foolish. They're willing to fail.”— Jim Murphy

Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management

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Courage universally available; performers face fears willingly

“I don't tell people what to do. I try never to tell people what to do. I just wanna help them clarify what they want most. This is a good example: people that are very talented, they get caught up in what I call the competitor's trap. What do you really want for your kids? If you want your kids to be happy, I could set up a program where every Friday I'll call your kid and tell them a joke at 3 o'clock. Is that what you want most for them? A little laugh once a week?”— Jim Murphy

Leadership & Management · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Don't prescribe; help clarify true desires and purpose

“Principle number 1 for inner excellence: everything is here to teach me and help me. It's all working for my good. So we're going to go look for those moments when you're most uncomfortable and say, this is my teacher. Inner excellence is about expanding what you believe is possible. There's three pillars of inner excellence: belief, freedom, and focus. To be fully engaged in the moment, have freedom to play like a child, and expand what you believe is possible.”— Jim Murphy

Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Inner excellence pillars: belief, freedom, focus

“The best possible life has one foot in joy and one foot in suffering. This is not how I would prefer it. I'm not a fan of suffering. What I'm saying is that I believe that this is just how the universe works. It's not something I'm advocating for. I'm just explaining what I found. You can't gain courage by constantly making yourself more and more comfortable. What God does is he gives you a jacket that's two sizes too big. That's what a loving parent does when you're 4 or 5 years old.”— Jim Murphy

Philosophy & Reasoning · Psychology & Behavior

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Best life has joy and suffering; growth requires oversized jacket

“Most people go on vacation to escape their lives. I'm gonna go on vacation, I don't wanna think about work, let's not talk about work, let's not talk about anything back home, we're just gonna relax. That's a very common idea. It's like escaping your life. Why do you have a life that you wanna escape from? Rather than going to escape your life on vacation, the best vacation is one where you go to enhance your life.”— Jim Murphy

Philosophy & Reasoning · Psychology & Behavior

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Vacation to enhance life, not escape it; pause to clarify purpose

“I had $90,000 in debt, I had spent my life savings. I could not see how the book wasn't going to fail. I called my friend Rick and said, tell me what to do. He said, find a homeless person and help them. I find this homeless harpist, I give him $100, all the money in my wallet. He comes back and gives me a bracelet and a card. I open the card: 'Thank you so much for caring for me. Love, Zoe.' I said, do you know what your name means? He said, no. I said, it means absolute fullness of life.”— Jim Murphy

Philosophy & Reasoning · Psychology & Behavior

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Synchronicity: homeless man named Zoe after 5 years studying fullness of life

“Surrender is so hard, especially when you're talented. But at that moment, I felt like I had nothing. And so to surrender nothing is much easier than to surrender a lot. You've got a successful life. It's very hard to surrender. But that's the key, surrender your little power for the power of the universe.”— Jim Murphy

Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning

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More talent makes surrender harder; surrender small for large

“I felt God saying, there's nothing you've ever done or would ever, could ever do would change how much I love you. I felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. I had a million things to do, it all had to be done yesterday, I didn't know how to do it. And that weight of the world fell off my shoulders that night. I said, God, I'll do whatever you want. Just tell me what to do. I'll move to Nepal, I'll give away all my possessions, live in an orphanage, volunteer the rest of my life.”— Jim Murphy

Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Surrender releases burden; easier when you have nothing

“Busyness is one of the biggest things that we do so we don't have to get deeper and face our fears and look at life at a deeper level. That deeper level is what you alluded to in the very beginning. We're created for relationship. When you understand that you're either walking in love or fear, and love is this willingness to sacrifice for others, and fear is these walls that we naturally build, it's this self-centeredness that's inherent in human nature that is important to take care of ourselve...”— Jim Murphy

Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Busyness avoids depth; love sacrifices, fear walls off

“When I come to those moments, I'm like, oh, I'm so uncomfortable right now. And then sometimes I've forgotten. It's like I had this conversation with my spiritual mentor, Nick Osborne, and he said, what God does is he gives you a jacket that's two sizes too big. That's what a loving parent does when you're 4 or 5 years old. You don't buy them a jacket that's perfectly fit because they're going to grow out of it too fast. So the parent's going to buy them a jacket that's a little bit too big.”— Jim Murphy

Philosophy & Reasoning · Psychology & Behavior

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Discomfort is oversized jacket meant for growth

“The quality of your life is based on 3 elements: your inner world of thoughts and feelings, beliefs and desires; your frame of reference mindset from which you see the world; and your relationships. This was 5 years of full-time writing and research. That is a very holistic approach. If you want human optimization, we need to be holistic. We need to get deeper than just the mind. We need to go into the heart, into the subconscious.”— Jim Murphy

Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning · Leadership & Management

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Holistic optimization requires inner world, mindset, relationships