The Brave Athlete -- and Screenwriter!: Simon Marshall and Lesley Paterson on PYP 550

2023 Update

I'm rereleasing this episode (first time ever in 9 years of this podcast) because one of today's guests, Lesley Paterson, just made the news by winning a BAFTA for screenwriting.

So I'm coat-tailing and name-dropping like crazy.

And I'm also inviting you to relisten to this episode with the hindsight that Lesley would bring her goal-setting and goal-achieving skills from the athletic arena to the world of creative writing. Is it possible that The Brave Athlete  is really a book about The Brave Life?

Listen again (or for the first time) and let me know what you think!

2018 Show Notes

Lesley Paterson, aka the "Scottish Rocket," is a three-time world champion in off-road triathlon, an Ironman triathlon champ, a professional mountain biker, an athletic coach, and a world-class slinger of profanity.

Simon Marshall, her husband, is a sport and exercise psychologist at San Diego State, performance psychologist for BMC Racing, and a self-described "mid-pack age-group endurance athlete."

Together, Lesley and Simon comprise Braveheart Coaching, a service that gets athletes performing to their potential in spite of the "3-pound lump of crazy" that lives in their cranium.

They've written a fantastic book called The Brave Athlete: Calm the F*ck Down and Rise to the Occasion. In our conversation, I made the unwarranted assumption that the asterisk was standing in for the letter U, of which Simon quickly disabused me.

I will warn you that we do drop a bunch of f-bombs during the interview (facks and ficks and fecks, of course ;), so this is NSF work or day care or church or, possibly, first dates.

Here's what you need to know about Lesley and Simon: they're hilarious. They're brilliant. They honor evidence over anecdote and conjecture. They aren't afraid to call bullshit when they see it (or bullsh*t, if you prefer).

They have fantastic accents (especially Lesley; sorry, Simon). And they have the experience and content knowledge to help you achieve your athletic goals. If you don't consider yourself an athlete, they invite you to reconsider, and then act like one.

In our conversation, we covered:

the surprising benefits to swearingathletes engage in volitional competition"our other choices conform to our identity"athletes are humans firstwe all experience thoughts and feelings that we don't want, and that's okLesley on retiring at age 20 as a big failurethe bedside manner problem of many elite coachesthe ability to give harsh feedback with compassiontalent and the Rudy Syndromesport allows us to look deep into our soulswe're most vulnerable when we're in pain, so that's where our biggest discoveries laymost of us have lost our sense of suffering, so we reconnect with it through ultra endurance eventswalking your first 5k still makes you an athlete - if you own itthe 7 characteristics of a mature athlete (and why that's different from - and preferable to - a "strong" athlete)the Chimp, the Professor, and the Computer - a highly simplified brain science metaphorhow to intentionally replace fight or flight with "brave" habits"can you see failure as an opportunity and source of feedback?"finding your "fuck-it" momenthow to not fixate on outcome even in high-stakes events"effort and attitude are always within your control"the four levels of the "Me-Tree"the problem with athletic hyper-specializationthe "holy trinity" of psychological death: embarrassment, humiliation, inadequacyslaying the meme-turdswhen the "participant mindset" is a cop-out"don't compare yourself to others" - nonsensemotivation is a warm bath that soon goes coldthe secret of The Brave Athlete: these are life skillsand much more...