Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 666, with guest Jim Hensel, founder of Mayhem Mindset.

What Is Mayhem Mindset

Tom Rowland: Jim, how are you, man?

Jim Hensel: I'm doing well, thanks for having me.

Tom Rowland: Man, thank you, we've met before, and you spoke at Waypoint, very impressed with that, and most recently I was with Michael Chandler and we were talking about you and the work you've done with him, and of course you've done tons of work with Rich Froning and all the people at Mayhem. If you don't know who Rich Froning is, he was the first person to repeat as CrossFit Games champion, then won four times, then went on to do team and has won three times with a second place, and something tells me he wasn't very happy about that second place. He's also surrounded himself with ultra performers and created this CrossFit Mecca in Cookeville, Tennessee, which is really incredible, and you've been a big part of the mindset there, you have something called Mayhem Mindset, I love it, what is it?

Jim Hensel: I love your t-shirt by the way. Mindset is such a challenging word, it's used so many different ways in our culture today, and I think people, my mindset incorporates being motivated, rules, habits, values, all these different kinds of things, and to wrap your arms around that and make it something actionable is what Mayhem Mindset is about.

Tom Rowland: Well, it's obviously working.

Jim Hensel: You talk about Rich Froning, you talk about winning, I'd give this one little perspective right away. Rich Froning does not really care about winning, and that always blows people's minds when I ask him about it, that's one of the perspectives people bring me, tell me about winning, help me be motivated. Rich Froning doesn't really care about winning, what he hates is to lose. Rich Froning loves to train, and he hates to lose, and that's connected to some natural ability, some freaky natural ability, and it also has something to do with his nature, how he was raised. He'd call it the perfect storm. You make the joke about that second place, he has no medals in his house, all those medals and awards are in a closet downstairs in a room his wife tried to turn into a man cave, with some pictures on the wall he's pretty embarrassed about. The only medal I ever saw on display in the years I was at the barn training with those guys was the second place, and that hung on the chalkboard every day, because it stuck in his craw.

Tom Rowland: Really? That's actually, I didn't think you were gonna say that, but that's super funny, and yes, I can see that, your strengths can also be your weaknesses.

Jim Hensel: Do you want to talk about a foundational perspective? Each one of us as an individual brings nature, nurture, the way we were raised, a core set of beliefs, all of that to this idea of mindset. And in the culture we live in, unfortunately everybody wants to talk about staying motivated or rules or habits, and that's only part of the equation, I talk about identity, values, and routine, those three things are how you re-aim, and it's important for each individual to understand what those things are, not just show up and say, sell me a t-shirt and tell me how to stay motivated. Whether it's Michael Chandler or Rich Froning, I've worked with a bunch of professional football players, military guys I really respect, I'm working with the barista at the coffee shop, the guy who's a big shot at Chick-fil-A, I don't care who it is, whoever you are as an individual trying to reach your potential, I think the three most important ingredients are understanding what your identity is as a human being, your personal identity, not Rich Froning's, because you ain't Rich Froning, understanding who you are as an individual, how you fit in your family, your community, your team, that's the position of strength. Then understanding your value system, outside of emotion, emotions in neutral, how do you make your choices and decisions, that's done by your strongest beliefs, we're all trying to do that, that's just part of being human. And then connecting those things to a great routine, those are the three things you gotta have, quantify, and know, so you can put it into practice, and that's what the Mayhem Mindset process is designed to help you sort out.

Finding Purpose After Rock Bottom

Tom Rowland: That's one of the things I came away from your talk with, the clarity you can help any individual understand, let's take the first one, understanding who they are as an individual and why that's even important, because a lot of people ask me questions like, how did you find your passion, how do you know what you're passionate about? Sometimes it's like lightning strikes, but other times you really need to do some introspective work to look at yourself and decide, this is what I'm passionate about, this is what I'd do for free and be happy about it. You help people break down and write down a lot of things, that's one of the things I remembered, how you were writing things down. Talk about how you help someone understand who they are as an individual, and where they sit in their family.

Jim Hensel: Yeah, once again, a lot of confusion in the culture about how to do that. My wife left me, this is where this gets started for me. My wife leaves me, I've got two daughters who I am now the sole parent of. I've known my wife since I was seven, we'd been married almost ten years, and I loved her, and I'm in the darkest spot of my life, not sure which direction to go. And in that space, as I'm trying to control my emotions and figure out my way forward, what I realized was I didn't own any of my beliefs or values. And I didn't do this because I learned it in a book, I did it because it was a fight for my life to be okay, and I literally decided in that dark spot I wasn't going to read a book, nobody was gonna tell me how to do this, either I was gonna sort this out for myself or I was gonna sink. But at that point in my life it was important enough to really sort out who I was and figure out these words being thrown around, purpose, passion, what does it all really mean. So I think in this process I've created, the power behind it is it's simply a process for you to figure it out, not for anybody else to tell you, we don't tell anybody what to believe or what to do in Mayhem Mindset, it's a process for you to put it all on paper. And here's some things we know to be human, not because I say it, but because science has taught us this, there's not a human being walking the planet not dealing with these truths, and they're as true as gravity. Number one, the limbic part of your brain fires first, so we all feel first, there is emotion, emotion gives our life meaning, and we've gotta learn how to control those emotions. The second part of your brain that fires is the neocortex, and it puts language to what you feel, those things are supposed to work together, if it's not in language, it's not a tool, so if you can't get into critical thinking and tell me who you are and what you believe, you're a person who stays stuck in emotion, and your life is gonna be based on emotion and momentum, instead of living life with it, you're gonna live life because of it. And this is where I was back in that dark day, when I started to reach out to this idea of what's the critical thinking way forward, I know my heart hurts like crazy, but how do I think about my way forward, and what I realized was I didn't own any of my value system, it was my dad's or some preacher's, it wasn't mine. So for an individual to do this work, to put something on paper, craft it, design it, test their values to make sure what they're believing isn't BS, it's really real, and come out the other side with actual practical mindset tools, how do I keep my emotions under control, dial them up when I need to so people know I love and care about them, put them in neutral when the next thing I'm supposed to do is just be clear about my response. That's the power in it, write it down, and if you can't stand in front of the mirror and define yourself and say, here's my purpose, here's my core values, then how are you gonna live it? It's not possible.

Tom Rowland: That's awesome, man, so how many people, when you start working with them, have any sort of idea who they are?

Jim Hensel: I think it's really important to say, I call what I do a game, there are some rules to the game and some terms we define, and my challenge is always, in thirty seconds or less, define yourself, meaning you can clearly state to me what you think is purpose for your life, core values that represent your strengths, weaknesses, and ideals, not just ten cool words you picked, but actual beliefs connected to your strengths, weaknesses, and hopes for the future, in some sort of mission statement to hold yourself accountable. I've been doing this eighteen years now, and I've never had one person be able to do it in those terms, because we're just not thinking about it in that kind of detail. I get people who can name two or three core values, but if I start putting pressure on that value, it's like teaching someone to power clean properly, I pay attention to where their feet are first before anything else, then we get them in the front rack position and check their base, I'm literally doing that to you mentally, saying, mentally, physically, and spiritually, do you know who the hell you are? Have you made choices in those spaces, and under extreme adversity, does that stuff hold up? Because if it's not defined and practiced, it doesn't hold up under real extreme adversity, and that's the spot I found myself in twenty years ago, I thought I knew who I was and what I believed, but under the extreme pressure of divorce and being a single dad, that stuff didn't hold up, I couldn't really tell you what it meant. I come from a strong faith background, and all I could do was beg for help, and it got pretty pathetic and pretty weak. So one of the things I had to do for me personally, I'm not putting this on anybody, was decide, I was challenging the value of faith in my life, either I'm shit-canning all that and walking away from it, or I'm gonna test it and decide what it means in my life as an individual man, and I'm either gonna live it or throw it out, that's how real that was for me. So not too many people in this game can step right up and really come up with, this is purpose, this is values, and this is how I'm connected to routine in my life and scaling it and living it every day.

Tom Rowland: Wow, how long did it take for you to bring yourself out of this dark spot with this different way of thinking?

Jim Hensel: Crazy, I put the girls to sleep one night, and I was watching Gladiator, just trying to medicate with a movie, needed to watch something to take my mind off it. And there's a scene where Maximus is standing in front of Commodus, relegated basically from general to slave, fighting on the coliseum floor, nobody really knows who he is, and he pops his helmet off and defines himself, my name is Maximus Aurelius Decimus, and in that space in my life at that moment, I heard Maximus say, this is who I am, this is what I believe, and this is what I'm gonna do. And I'm like, okay, that's what I'm doing, I'm a writer, so it took about six months to craft it and get it squared away in my life, but I wrote a code for my life, I called it the strength and honor code, had a buddy draw a tattoo, and I made a commitment that every choice, every decision moving forward would be filtered through purpose, values, connected to routine, and I was gonna live by it or die by it. I started doing it, and my life straightened out, I got my emotions under control, and when I couldn't get them controlled, these values became the filter, there wasn't anything I wasn't gonna do unless I filtered it through fight, work, hope, faith, team, family, excellence, purpose, responsibility, love, and freedom. What do those values say, here's what my emotions say, acknowledge that emotion, I didn't say validate it, I said acknowledge it, understand how I felt about it, and I worked hard to get my emotions and values working together, and it became the platform I operated from. Eighteen years later, I'm doing it for somebody else, and I had zero intentions of that, it was just for me, and I named it after the movie, my code was called the strength and honor code. I went back to painting houses, my dad was a painter, didn't get along with him all that well, hated painting houses, told my dad when I left for college I'm never gonna paint another thing as long as I live, and here I am back humbled with these two little girls, having written this code. Then I'm thinking I'll go volunteer at high school and teach tackling, and I got there and realized I could help a young man sort out some of this for his life, and it's just grown over the years, and there are way more people in the online course now who have nothing to do with high profile sports.

Purpose, Passion, and Your Worst Enemy

Tom Rowland: Yeah, I was gonna go into that, because the reason I always look to people like Rich or Mike Chandler, or any high performer, especially military people, is what they've done has been tested at the extreme end of the scale, and if it works for them there, it's probably gonna work for me making a decision about my business or family. And you can take little pieces of what high performers do and apply them to your life, and be better at whatever you're trying to do, a better father, a better husband, a better fisherman, a better weightlifter, a better golfer. And that's why I'm fascinated by this subject, because I had my own epiphany that the way you think about things, the mindset going into something, is the single greatest dictator of whether you're gonna be successful. For me it was when my wife and I started talking about having kids, and I started thinking, I want to be this type of person, this type of dad, I want to reflect these values onto my unborn child, and things started changing because I started listening to different people, reading books, surrounding myself with top performers, watching what they did and how they thought. What's interesting to me about your program is what you're doing is helping someone organize their thoughts, their values, their priorities, their life, around things that are very simple, not unlike weightlifting or a golf swing, where you have to think about where your feet are, where the club is, how you're standing, how you're breathing, and walk through this process, and then everything's right and the swing goes perfect, versus just getting up there and swinging without thinking about it.

Jim Hensel: Everything you said is right, maybe to start with the first thing, there are so many high performers where what they do is very instructive, and there's a lot we can learn from, and in my process that falls into routine. I said there were three important components to being able to re-aim your life daily, identity, values, and routine, so if we spend all our time paying attention to what high performers are doing inside of routine, we're leaving out who you are as an individual, and this position of strength that all of us are trying to make our biggest choices and decisions based on our strongest beliefs, that is to be human, that's as real as gravity. So if you don't know who you are and you're just operating off what Rich does, you're in trouble, that won't withstand extreme adversity. And a lot of the things Rich does, here's an example, he gets this question all the time in seminars, teach me how to be more competitive. What you don't understand is being competitive is not a problem for Rich Froning, it's the opposite, in his individual design he is way too competitive all the time, it's made him a CrossFit Games champion, but it makes him an asshole when he's playing wiffle ball with his friends and runs over the twelve year old girl at second base.

Tom Rowland: That's actually, I didn't think you were gonna say that, but that's super funny, and yes, I can see that.

Jim Hensel: So this idea of purpose, I wanna run you back to that, this idea that people kind of, I don't believe purpose, let me try to break down some language, it's important to define terms so we're talking about the same thing. Purpose is not in what you do, what you do, the job or the task, should be filled with your purpose, so many people chase the do, the job or the task, I'm gonna go work here, it didn't work out, I don't feel passionate about it, go to the next thing. Kids at the university tell me all the time, I just don't agree in this field, I don't wanna do that, I don't feel passionate about that. So purpose can't be what you do, my first conversation with Rich Froning was, if I take CrossFit away from you and today is the last day you do it, who the hell are you? That's why Michael Chandler came to me, I got this many fights left, he was using this to aim and create a vision for his life past fighting, we did some organizational stuff, but that's not why he used it, and same with Rich, caught off guard, what if I could take that from you, bro, you don't do that tomorrow, I could steal the do from you, I could say that to anybody. You're retiring from the military, you're injured, think about all the places what we do can be taken from us, what you're telling me is when that happens, that's it for you as far as purpose is concerned, you're just designed to CrossFit, and of course nobody believes that, there's mental, physical, and spiritual parts of who we are. If you could never go fishing again, and this is your last day doing this podcast, are there other things in your life filled with purpose? So purpose can't start with the do, purpose is in your design, we gotta walk back to your heart, how it's wired, what your talents are, and connect that to your strongest beliefs, and if we do that properly we can come up with ideas about why you're on this planet, and it has nothing to do with the do at first. Then connect those three things, and if you can do that, that dog will hunt, but if we work backwards trying to copy Rich or Mike, we're leaving out your values and personal identity, we need to flip it, figure out what that is for you, and then routine and advice from high performance, we can get nuggets from that that help our mindset, and it's practically applicable to our lives.

Tom Rowland: And so many times you hear, what is your why, I'm assuming that's kind of similar, but there are a lot of terms people throw around, passion, motivation, what's your why, what's your purpose. I really like that you identify that, because you hear it with young people all the time, I'm just not passionate about that, really, what have you been passionate about, you're seventeen.

Jim Hensel: There's so much wrong with that word passion in my mind, that's the one word you might as well swear, in my game I hate the word passion, because passion really has everything to do with emotion and what I feel good about right now. What about all the things you're supposed to do that you don't feel good about, because that's half the game, you wanna be great at a sport, you're not gonna feel good about training every day. I've been married twenty-six years, I don't necessarily feel great about my relationship with my wife every day, I don't know about you guys, you're all better than me and I'm a sinner, but that's how it works in my life. There's all kinds of things that are super valuable and filled with purpose that have nothing to do with emotion or passion, matter of fact, my emotion and passion will destroy me if I get that wrong, if we're just chasing making me feel good all the time, you're screwed, if you expect to get to the next level and have purpose in every area of your life and reach your potential.

Tom Rowland: It's so interesting you said your passion can destroy you, explain that, because I can see it clearly.

Jim Hensel: Let me use Rich as an example, and I wouldn't use the word passion, I'd like to throw passion out, because passion has everything to do with emotion, and emotions give our life meaning, I'm not suggesting we're not emotional, I love my granddaughter with all kinds of passion and emotion unlike anything I've felt, but I also need the ability to put my emotions in neutral when appropriate. Emotions and this idea of strongest beliefs, you shouldn't be able to tell where one starts and the other finishes, they should work together, an amalgamation of who you are mindset-wise, and that's not the way it works in our culture. In Mayhem Mindset, we separate those things for purposes of defining you, that's the whole point of the game, we wanna talk about emotion and feeling and we wanna talk about energy, that's to stop and consider based on a belief. So if we walk this all the way back, I wanna use the word purpose, through this process, what happened in my life, I can work somebody down through this, and by the time you finish, you'll have a clear understanding of what purpose is for your life, I can guarantee it if you do the process, not because it's special, because it's just a process and you can figure it out. Purpose is not discovered under a rainbow, it's not in a pot of gold, that's the way people set it up in our culture, if lightning strikes you, if you get the right opportunity, you're gonna somehow find purpose, and I think that's horseshit, I see so many people in really bad situations throughout history who live with a strong sense of purpose and made sacrifices, and it didn't have anything to do with passion, Viktor Frankl in his book, living in a concentration camp filled with a strong sense of purpose, now apply that to most Americans today. So we're gonna walk purpose all the way back to three words for your life, connect that to values and write it in a code you have every day, I don't know whether you're gonna live it or not, that's the game once you've defined yourself, will you be the man or woman you said you were gonna be? Purpose is not elusive at all, passion is elusive, but purpose is not. Rich Froning's three purpose words, they are compete, protect, and move, at the very core of his entire being, this pours out of his heart, he doesn't have a choice, in everything he does he's gotta be moving first, he has a strong sense of protect and compete that pours out of his heart, and if he does those in the wrong space, it'll destroy him, to compete in the wrong place is his worst enemy. So one of the clues to purpose is it's your worst enemy, and I help people dig to that all the time, they think, well, I'm just too competitive, I just gotta quit being competitive, no you don't, it's your gift to the world, just do it in the right space.

Grace Versus Truth

Tom Rowland: Now that is something I didn't really expect to hear, that's very interesting, that's your gift to the world, because it really is, if you're a competitive person with a competitive fire in your belly and you enjoy competing, but you're doing it at the barbecue against the twelve year old girl, or against your wife in an argument, or against your business partner in a hiring dispute, that can totally destroy you, because now you're emotionally invested in the wrong environment, that will destroy you, I never really thought about that.

Jim Hensel: We gotta work hard in those spaces to separate being right and wrong, your ego, and the truth, and in Mayhem Mindset those are all very different things, arriving for other people when it's appropriate, and being able to put your foot on the neck of the person you're competing against inside the rules of the game and dominate them, there's nothing wrong with any of those things, just do it in the proper spaces. I worked with a guy who's printing money in his business, he comes to me all hung up on, I just can't stop creating a vision, I can't stop dreaming, I'm not satisfied with what I'm doing, and if you tell me what your biggest problem is and I can remove the negative emotion, I'm gonna find purpose there, it's coming out of you without you even trying.

Tom Rowland: Dig into that a little bit, this guy, somebody might call him a daydreamer, but he's like, no, it's a vision, I can't stop doing this, I'm doing it at all the wrong times, maybe it's messing me up.

Jim Hensel: What he was upset about was doing it at the dinner table with his wife and five kids, he can't stop, but it's made him hundreds of millions of dollars, so from a business perspective he shows up, his team's in the room, he's got the money guy to slow him down, the accountant, and he sits down and says, this is what we're doing, and the accountant says, sorry boss, that's not what the checking account says, but he's got people in place around him in business to keep that vision-creating from running off the rails, but then he can't figure out why he can't get that squared away at home with his kids. So we work all the way back to helping him understand, that's your gift to the world, now inside your value system you need values that are clear targets to aim at, who you be versus the do, values and talents and purpose versus the job or the task, who you be, what pours out of you to create a vision, to forecast, to walk into a room and be right, pretty right all the time, I made three hundred million dollars last year, and this is what's going on in his head, but it's not working with my wife and kids, because they don't give a crap, dad said he was going hunting or fishing this weekend and he wasn't present the whole time. So it's not a bad thing, it's a good thing, I just need clear values in my life that I'm willing to aim at, and inside the value of family in his life, he defines it clearly, it's not being him in that space, he's not the vision caster, he's the dad, he's going to Alaska, hunting bear with his kid, doing all the things he wants to do. And when he got that sorted out and stopped feeling bad, casting a vision ends up being pretty dang easy, and then we did some work on the difference between dreaming and fantasy, don't fantasize, I got no room for fantasy, fantasy is a waste of time, dreaming connected to routine, actually doing something about it, super important, aiming high, super important.

Tom Rowland: In a situation with a guy like that, do you ever do an exercise about, what's your vision for your family, you're so good at this vision deal, let's do a vision for your family, what does that look like, when you put a high performer who's obviously very good at what they're doing, but not doing it in that context, what happens?

Jim Hensel: All the time for people, this is how I come at it with soldiers or athletes, picture a box, I'm drawing a box on a whiteboard, I'm gonna put compete or adversity in that box, that's that space with clear boundaries, and then I put real life around the box, this wide open space that's real life. Learning to shift gears between compete and real life, super important, where do your emotions go, let's talk about strategic, let's talk about tactical inside of compete, how do you get into that space properly, how do you allow yourself to be everything you were designed to be there? And then where high performers really struggle is in their interpersonal relationships, they haven't thought through and put into language, how do I just go home and be a daddy, because their kids don't care about all the things they're doing over there, you're a father, you know this, they just want you to be dad, just show up and be dad. That was destroying my life, me personally, Jim Hensel, my intensity levels, who I be is to coach, challenge, exhort, encourage, it just pours out of me, doesn't matter what job I've ever had, from construction to firefighter, I show up and naturally I'm encouraging and coaching people, my wife doesn't want that, she doesn't need any mindset coaching, and my older kids now don't need any of that unless they ask, I'm not saying this out of ego, I don't know too many people better than me in this space, I'm a pro at this, I invented this, and I got eighteen years of making this work in people's lives, so if you ask me to help somebody sort out purpose and values, I can do it sorta cold now, looking at my own kid.

Tom Rowland: How tough is that, to see that if you just did this, but it's unsolicited, to someone who really doesn't wanna hear it?

Jim Hensel: Most of the time, the truth only helps if it's asked for, sometimes it's our role and responsibility to tell someone the truth, it's our duty, and I get that, I created a tool called the grace versus truth tool, and this changed my life, and I use it every day, it's the most important perspective I ever gained in my entire life, and the tool was designed to take my need to be right, my ego, out of the conversation, and arrive for the other person, what do they need from me? Picture grace on one end and truth on the other, a spectrum, when I arrive based on role and responsibility, my level of consciousness is what do they need from me here, grace on one side means I got you, you're not accountable, I'm carrying you today, which is important, or somewhere in between truth, meaning you're fired, I'd like to invite you to be successful somewhere else. My nature is to compete, to challenge, exhort, encourage, tell the truth, and when I was young and that wasn't connected to the other person's needs and emotion, it just made me look like an asshole, and it hurt worse because in a lot of ways I was right a lot, I'd give them perspective, yo Tom, dumbass, do this, what the hell is the matter with you, just do that, you'd be alright, interpersonally, how's that go over? It is, I just kept being the guy who thought I had something to say, but I was mostly just wounding people. So grace versus truth, it's not a conversation I go into taking my need to be right out of it so there's no ego, I want to give them the truth based on my role and responsibility in their life, what do they need from me today, a little bit of grace sprinkled in or a lot of grace, today I just got them, or we gotta be really truthful here, what does this person need from me. Conversations with Michael Chandler and Rich Froning are awesome because I can just tell them the truth, we get past the relationship growing part real quick because those dudes are looking for the truth, no offense taken. So grace versus truth, an example of a practical mindset tool, if you apply it and arrive for somebody else, especially relationship-wise, remember, high performers have a hard time getting out of the box of adversity and compete where they excel, and getting over into relationships, where what somebody else feels and thinks matters. Do you wanna be right, or do you wanna be married? Having some practical ability to understand that and some tools ends up being valuable for men and women.

Living Well and Dying Well

Tom Rowland: Man, that's awesome, so when someone is interested in your program, does it take some people a lot longer than others, and are there different ways to go through it, do they do it personally or online?

Jim Hensel: A couple different ways to get connected, thank you for asking, mayhemmindset.com, there are two ways to work through the program, one is self-paced, you get access to a workbook, an actual physical workbook I send you so you can write, creative power, write it down, and you get access to all the online content, videos broken up into what we call challenges, you get a video for a week, an audio section, a reading section, and I present a mindset challenge for the week, you do the work, the writing, questions I'm asking to help you quantify and define yourself, and by the time we're done, remember that challenge, thirty seconds or less to define yourself, purpose, values, and routine, we write it all into a code. We start strategically and narrow it all the way down, and when you're finished we have a hundred percent success rate for somebody who goes through the process and finishes the work, let me be clear, not everybody makes it through, it's a lot of work, it takes about twelve weeks, and if your level of consciousness is you're just looking for motivation, wrong program, if you're just looking to do or say what I do and say, wrong program, if you're trying to be Rich Froning, wrong program, this is a process for somebody who has some time to think, that's the greatest hurdle I have, at first an awareness, holy crap, I need to know what my strongest beliefs are, I need that written down and organized, I need to know who I am as an individual, if you don't define yourself, somebody or something else will, I promise you that, if you don't know who you are, you won't know how to fit in your family, your team, or society, so you gotta have that to connect properly. So we've got the self-paced way, and we have a live webinar version, you get the workbook, all the audio and video, plus every Monday either me or one of my assistant coaches pops on and we do a live webinar, informal, we talk to people all over the world in different places in the course, maybe one guy's in challenge three, one guy's in six, one lady's in nine, there's a little community, we do that on Mondays. And then I do individual work with folks who wanna reach out, we'll do a company webinar where somebody's whole team goes through it with me, and I try to keep three or four individual clients as time allows, and it's scaled in price.

Tom Rowland: That's interesting, do you ever have Ultra Performers specifically, but have you ever had anyone say, well, I don't know if I want to get a hold of some of these things, because that could be my edge, the fact that I'm so emotional about some of these things, maybe that's why I'm winning, or why I made this amount of money, or got this job, maybe if I got a hold of that, that would go away, is that something you encounter?

Jim Hensel: Yeah, for sure, because of the culture we live in, it's possible, and it's being done right now, where people are born and then they die, and all they get really good at is routine, and routine is really important, I dealt with this back when I was a player development coach at a couple universities in the football programs, and the process ends up being the most important thing, and it's vitally important, a process that works and you can replicate, that falls over into routine for me. It's possible to make a ton of money doing all those things and live and die inside of that, and there are people that do, my experience is those people's interpersonal relationships suffer, they don't know how to connect, and they end up at the end of it without a strong sense of purpose and meaning, and it's easy in our culture to focus on motivation, especially if you've been given a lot, and we can be too process-oriented and forget the importance and value of the people inside the process. I work with a guy who sold his business for a hundred million dollars, he inherited it from his father, worked in it thirty-seven years, and I was speaking at a conference he was at, and he comes up to me with tears in his eyes, just retired, and says, holy crap, I got more money than I know what to do with, I've got this big boat my wife and I were gonna go around the world on, and I'm waking up, he said, I wasn't a bad man, I didn't cheat, I sent all my kids to the greatest colleges, provided for their lives, they're all set, success, success, success, I don't know any of them, none of them wanna talk to me, I have no relationship, I've been planning this trip with my wife, and my wife just told me she doesn't even like boating. He got lost in the process, making money, he had a great routine, he had it locked in, all that stuff he did right, and he forgot about the interpersonal relationships that ended up mattering to him, and he's in tears telling me he'd give the money back to have his kids over, to know his grandkids, and then to make it worse, he died of a heart attack on that boat weeks later. From the outside you'd have been like, dude, got it all figured out, big house, all by himself, I don't know, man, the definition of success and purpose for high performers, they can fixate on staying motivated and doing a great job in the process and routine, and not transition to the relationships around them that are supposed to matter. I'm dealing with an athlete right now who doesn't give a shit about any of that, but he's also twenty-six years old, we'll see, from an old man to a young man, we'll see what matters to you later, you do you, I'm not here to tell you, but our culture made that possible.

Tom Rowland: There are seasons in your life where you're choosing not to have a girlfriend, choosing not to have relationships, you're gonna pour yourself into whatever sport or activity it is, and maybe this stuff comes later, but that's just a season.

Jim Hensel: That's right.

Tom Rowland: So I was gonna ask a couple final questions, one of them was gonna be, describe disappointment, because in my opinion that's a pretty disappointing life you just described, with that guy who had whatever success, lots of money, lots of toys, but missing the most vital parts of human existence, what is excellence, paint the picture of what that life could have been, or what you see as an excellent life?

Jim Hensel: Can I give you my analogy? I'm very careful about how I do this in Mayhem Mindset, I don't want to get it wrong, Mayhem Mindset is not for me to tell you what to believe, it's for you to organize what you believe and test it so on the other end you have something authentic, and if it's authentic you'll probably live it, my values may be different than your values. And what I'm about to say, some people might say is religious, what I can control in life is what I've been given, and what I've been given is the time I have on this planet, so my mindset is live well and die well, that's how I think. I'm older now, fifty-three going on fifty-four, and I can see the other end of this, I'm dealing with my parents, my dad's close to dying, these are things I'm serious about. Based on this religious experience I came through, I think about disappointment and excellence, and both of these play out in this scenario in my head, what if it really happened that when you died you went to heaven or hell, let's say for argument's sake it did, and let's say somehow I sneak in, and God plays two lives up on a big screen, one is the life I lived, one is the life he intended for me, and somehow by some cool editing they overlay, and you get to stand there, hey, you're in heaven, you're saved, whatever, you made it, good for you, but you get to watch your life play out and see what he intended for you and what you actually got. Now on the other end of that, when that's done for me, I will feel disappointment, maybe some grace, and maybe some excellence. So for me, I'm not overly concerned about what happens when I'm dead, what I have control over is this life, what goes on here, so I'm living for these experiences and moments, working hard to be a good man, living my values every day, and when I make a mistake authentically trying to live those values, and I do all the time, I say I'm sorry quickly, fix it, try not to make that mistake again, and I give forgiveness quickly. And in the spaces I know are purpose in my life, I'm pushing the envelope, I wanna get it all, live well and die well, and I'm trying, in a thoughtful way, to avoid disappointment. Eliminate the stupid shit first, stop sabotaging yourself, get that figured out, maybe that's twenty through twenty-four, then get some idea of purpose and values locked down so you've got that clear path in front of you, and make everything you do filled with a sense of purpose based on what you said you believe and who you are. And when you get to where I'm at in life, for the most part I've eliminated the stupid shit, I'm pretty clear about what purpose is in my life, and now I'm trying to narrow, because the opportunities are huge, I could do a bazillion purposeful things now, I'm trying to narrow that to three or four things I can be intentional at and be great at, not just good, but world class. So that's kinda how I look at excellence and disappointment.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, disappointment or regret, regret is a strong word.

Jim Hensel: I have a lot of regrets, tons, I look back and I'd do all kinds of things different, you wouldn't even have me on this podcast if you knew who the man was going to be for the first twenty-six years of my life. The difference between me and a lot of people is the regret lives in the past, and I look back to measure how far I've come, regret doesn't live in my present, and it doesn't live in my future, I've dealt with it appropriately.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, that always takes you down a different road though, certainly we've all made horrible decisions, but if you had changed those decisions you wouldn't end up right here helping so many people, you wouldn't end up here in this sense of gratitude for where you are in your life. Regret, one hundred percent, and you've dealt with that regret already, I have as well, and I'm very comfortable with where I am right now, but waking up with regret is a bad place, especially at our age, I'm your age exactly, when's your birthday?

Jim Hensel: August seventeenth.

Tom Rowland: No way, I'm the nineteenth, 08/19/1968, we're right there together.

Jim Hensel: Yeah, I'm older than you.

Tom Rowland: But barely.

Jim Hensel: Two days.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, well, fifty-three is a funny time, because just like you said, I can remember my childhood, but I can also see there's not that much left, so there's a value on time, I like what you were saying about living intentionally now, being the best in the world, because at fifty-three there are opportunities every single day, do you wanna do this, do you wanna do this, and there's so much value in saying no to things as well, I'm gonna say no to that great opportunity because my heart's not in it, and yes I could do that, but it's gonna keep me from something I'm really excited about, and maybe I don't even know what that is yet, but I know it's not that, so I'm not gonna do it.

Jim Hensel: Yeah, people say it all the time, well, I don't know what to do, remember the do, the job or the task, before you choose, make sure you know who you are as an individual and what your values are, don't chase the do. At this point in our lives we cannot afford, I don't mean money-wise, I can kind of afford to do whatever I want, but as far as the sense of purpose and being world class, I can't be chasing the do, I gotta keep it narrow, I don't believe in balance, balance means I can be pretty good at a lot of things, I'm not interested in being pretty good at a lot of things, I wanna be the best at a couple things, so that's pretty narrow for me, I wanna be a great grandpa, a great husband, I'm messing with this tactical games thing, which is how I compete, I love to shoot, I love to do all that, that's really important to me, and I wanna make a difference in some people's lives, outside of that I can't really be doing a lot of other things, I'd like to go bear hunting in Alaska, gonna have to say no, I don't know where I'd put that in the schedule.

Tom Rowland: Yep, I do know that. Well, this has been fantastic, and at fifty-three, having a wonderful career and a life a lot of people would trade in for what I've been able to do, I would still like to do your program, I think that organization and introspection and checking in with yourself, even at this age, or maybe this is the most important age, I don't know, maybe it is.

Jim Hensel: Thank you.

Tom Rowland: But I sure would have loved to have done this when I was twenty-two.

Jim Hensel: Man, it's so crazy, when is the wrong time to stop and get reorganized and be clear? I know, we all come to some big pivot points, but my mindset is it's a master's degree level in identity, values, and routine for somebody, it's not an entry-level please-motivate-me thing, I don't even want those people to sign up, I'll give your money back, it really is for somebody who has a level of consciousness and a little bit of time who says, heck yeah, I'm gonna stop right here, first of the year I'm gonna stop and slow down, I'm gonna give twelve weeks to put this in front of my brain, and get reorganized because I know who I am, I just wanna test it a bit, shift it around, make sure I know how much of what I'm doing is really routine and momentum. Look what COVID did to people, exposed people who'd just been living based on momentum and routine instead of being connected to something, so it's not a bad idea every now and then for somebody to take a little time and make sure they're where they wanna be.

Tom Rowland: Do people go through your program and then maybe ten years later go through it again, or a few years later, just to reevaluate? At fifty-three, I know there have been lots of different seasons in my life, when my kids were young I wanted to send them to the right schools, give them the gift of education, and ethics and morals and a code to live by, and now they're older and out of the house, so this is a different season, and it's kind of like, am I still where I was ten years ago, or is this a brand new chapter, do you have people go through it multiple times?

Jim Hensel: That's a great question, the final challenge in the process is about how to use it as you grow, our identity and values are intended to grow, you should never be more than ninety percent done with that in your life, so we talk a ton about how to re-aim. Yearly, I do this, it's my practice at the beginning of every year, not necessarily to go through the whole process, but to go back to my core values and update them. I see this problem in businesses all the time, where I go into a business or athletic program and they've got the values written somewhere, but nobody knows what they are and they don't live them. My value of family was one thing when I was divorced, another thing when I got remarried, another when my kids left, another as a grandfather, that value is evolving, and as part of our process we take values in and out of the system, these are ideal values, I change them out every year at the beginning of the new year, bring in a new value I do a study on for the course of the year, and actively live that value out in my life. So I have values that are growing, that I'm sharpening the definitions of, and values I'm bringing in as clear targets for the next year, so that stuff is never stale, identity and values are always developing, or should be, or it's not what they're supposed to be. We have a couple new courses coming out this year, a Spanish course launching, and an athlete course specifically designed to take what you do, and we're calling the course we have now the basics course, and we'll have an advanced course, applying it to athletics and business, I wanna help people use it and evolve it, we should be growing this stuff all the time.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, it's like a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset, if you believe in the fixed mindset, this is who you are, that's your identity and it's always gonna stay that way, where a growth mindset is exactly what you just described, yeah, that's where I was, and I'm happy with that, but now I have grown, I've had new experiences, new education, learned new things, new relationships are now in my life, there are things important to me I didn't even know about before, how could you not be growing and changing? That's super refreshing to hear that's what you do. But if anybody wants to explore this, where would they go?

Jim Hensel: Mayhemmindset.com.

Tom Rowland: Mayhemmindset.com, and could they get in touch with you, or is there a place to get more information, or is everything right there?

Jim Hensel: It's all right there, if you just email info@mayhemmindset.com, I'm there, and we'll get that email and respond to you. The only social media I use is Instagram, Jimmy underscore Hensel, and we pay attention to all of that, we'd love to communicate and reach out.

Tom Rowland: Okay, awesome, man, well, thank you so much for your time, this program is just incredible, it's fantastic, I love it.

Jim Hensel: Thanks, thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

Tom Rowland: Thank you, alright, that's it for this week, we'll see you next week.