Be Undaunted – Episode 4

Dr. Jim Loehr: Energy Is the Currency of High Performance

In this powerful episode of Be Undaunted, George and Tara welcome world-renowned performance psychologist Dr. Jim Loehr, co-founder of the Human Performance Institute and author of 19 books, including The Power of Full Engagement, Mental Toughness, and Leading with Character.

Dr. Loehr is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on human performance. His groundbreaking work on energy management has shaped elite performers across business, sport, medicine, military, and law enforcement.

This conversation explores a foundational truth:

Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of performance and life.

Energy Is Life

Energy Management vs. Time Management

Dr. Loehr challenges the traditional time management model.

“Time has no force. It’s the intersection of energy and time that gives life meaning.”

You can spend hours with family or at work, but without full engagement, the return is minimal or even negative.

The Four Dimensions of Energy

Energy isn’t just physical stamina. It has four dimensions:

High performance requires training in all four.

The Four Emotional Energy Quadrants

Leaders often live in the High Negative quadrant:

While this state can drive short-term results, it is toxic over time and leads to burnout.

The key is oscillation:

“Fully engaged when it matters. Disengaged when it doesn’t.”

Recovery Is Not for Wimps

A major myth Dr. Loehr dismantles:

“Recovery is not for wimps. Recovery is for superstars.”

Growth happens during recovery.

Corporate leaders often lack an “off season,” making intentional recovery even more essential.

Training Emotional & Spiritual Muscles

Just like physical muscles, emotional and character “muscles” grow through stress and recovery.

Want more:

You must intentionally invest energy in those qualities.

If you don’t train them, they atrophy.

The Tombstone Exercise

Dr. Loehr shares his powerful “tombstone” exercise, used with elite athletes and executives.

When asked what they want engraved on their tombstone:

Instead, they choose:

This reveals what Dr. Loehr calls:

“The Hidden Scorecard: How we treat others is the ultimate measure of a life.”

Standout Quotes

Practical Takeaways

Learn More About Dr. Jim Loehr

Dr. Loehr’s work, books, and resources can be found at:  https://www.jim-loehr.com/

If you enjoyed this episode:

Until next time — Be Undaunted.

High Trust Leadership by George Dom

https://www.georgedom.com/book

More about George Dom:

https://www.georgedom.com/

More about Tara Collingwood:

https://www.dietdiva.net/

Follow the show: Apple Podcasts • Spotify • YouTube

Be Undaunted is produced by JAG Podcast Productions: www.jagpodcastproductions.com

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of Be Undaunted, Tara Collingwood and George Dom dive into one of the most overused (and often misunderstood) words in business and culture today: leadership.

Rather than adding to the noise of countless books and definitions, Tara and George break leadership down to its core and explore what it really means to lead, whether you're running a company, parenting a family, coaching a team, or simply leading yourself.

What Is Leadership Really?

If you ask 10 people to define leadership, you’ll likely get 10 different answers. George reframes the conversation:

Leadership isn’t about titles, rank, or corner offices. It’s about influence.

“It’s not about rank or job. It’s about how your presence influences everyone around you.”

Everyone Is a Leader

Tara shares how she once felt intimidated by the word “leadership,” assuming it applied only to CEOs and executives. But leadership shows up in everyday life:

Leadership begins with the hardest person to lead: yourself.

Are you showing up with integrity? Energy? Discipline? Emotional regulation? That’s leadership.

Leadership at Every Level

Drawing from his experience commanding a Navy squadron, George explains that high performing teams don’t rely on a single leader at the top. They develop:

Organizations that depend on hierarchy alone move too slowly. Modern leadership requires distributed influence.

The Power of Trust

Trust is the foundation of effective leadership.

George distinguishes between honesty and candor:

And here’s the key:

Energy Is Contagious

Leadership energy spreads:  good or bad.

If you show up exhausted, disengaged, or burned out, your team will feel it. Leaders must manage:

Tara highlights real-world signs of burnout (like emails at all hours) and emphasizes the importance of modeling recovery, rest, and self care.

“Your body is business relevant.”

Without proper sleep, nutrition, movement, and recovery, leadership suffers.

Leadership in Uncertainty

Leadership shows up most clearly in moments of change and crisis.

Change always brings anxiety. Leaders can’t eliminate fear, but they can absorb it.

People don’t follow plans when they’re anxious.

Authentic leaders acknowledge uncertainty while reinforcing shared values and collective strength:

“Leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about becoming someone others are willing to follow when the answers aren’t obvious.”

Key Takeaways

Reflection Question

If leadership starts with how you show up, not just when the sun is shining, but in the middle of the storm.  How are you showing up today?

Follow and subscribe to Be Undaunted on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.  Also please rate and leave a comment if you enjoyed the podcast.

Until next time—be undaunted.

High Trust Leadership by George Dom

https://www.georgedom.com/book

More about George Dom:

https://www.georgedom.com/

More about Tara Collingwood:

https://www.dietdiva.net/

Follow the show: Apple Podcasts • Spotify • YouTube

Be Undaunted is produced by JAG Podcast Productions: www.jagpodcastproductions.com

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the first-ever guest episode of Be Undaunted, Tara Collingwood and George Dom sit down with extreme open-water swimmer Ryan Stramrood to unpack how an “average guy” went from couch potato in his late 20s to tackling some of the coldest, most dangerous waters on Earth, always in nothing but a Speedo. Ryan shares the mindset tools he’s developed through brutal endurance challenges like Robben Island, the English Channel, and even a mile swim in Antarctica (for a Guinness World Record). The conversation dives into discomfort, fear, pain, failure, and the power of training your mind to keep going when everything inside you says “quit.”

Key Topics & Takeaways

1) From “fat and lazy” to the first brave step

Ryan didn’t wake up wanting to be an ice swimmer. He started by joining a client’s swim squad, tried to keep up in a fast lane, and ended up so wrecked he had to stop and vomit. But the real turning point? He showed up again the next day.
Takeaway: The comeback after embarrassment is often the true beginning.

2) The moment a “pedestal” goal becomes possible

Ryan met someone who had swum from Robben Island to Blouberg Beach (South Africa) about 4.5 miles, averaging ~2.5 hours for many swimmers and you have to do it without a wetsuit (to make it “count”). Being in the same lane as “someone who did that” made the impossible feel… reachable.
Takeaway: Proximity to people doing hard things expands your belief in what’s possible.

3) Cold water as a classroom

Ryan didn’t choose cold water.  Cape Town’s waters are cold. Over time he learned the cold isn’t just physical; it triggers a powerful mental alarm system.
Core idea: Humans evolved to avoid cold, not endure it. Your brain will scream “danger—get out” long before you’re truly at your limit.

4) What he thinks about for hours in training

Ryan describes long pool sessions (7–10 km workouts/hundreds of laps) and how his mind stays anchored to purpose: the “why,” the goal ahead, and small motivators (yes, even Strava accountability).
Takeaway: Long endurance is built in boring places, day after day.

5) Fueling an ultra swim (and why marshmallows matter)

Feeding while swimming is a logistical puzzle: you’re treading water, trying not to sink, keeping feeds short, and fighting cold. Ryan explains why marshmallows are a favorite:

• easy to eat fast
• don’t turn into rock-hard toffee like chocolate can in cold conditions
• a “treat” that helps mentally bridge to the next feed
  Takeaway: Perfect nutrition matters, but something you like can be the difference between finishing and quitting.

6) Panic, breathing, and the mind under stress

Tara relates to open-water anxiety where breathing control changes when your face is in the water. Ryan explains how early cold and fatigue can trigger mental spirals and why it helps to expect those thoughts and not treat them as truth.

7) The “pain cave” and staying when it’s awful

George brings up endurance runner Courtney Dauwalter’s “pain cave.” Ryan agrees: the goal isn’t to love pain but rather it’s to recognize it, train around it, and learn its patterns.
Takeaway: Experience teaches you the difference between “this is hard” and “this is dangerous.”

8) The mind’s “end point” vs the real end point

One of the biggest episode mic drops:

• Your brain has an “end point” where it insists you must stop.
• But that point is often far earlier than the body’s true limit.
  Takeaway: Growth lives in the gap between what your mind claims is the limit and what’s actually possible.

9) Failure isn’t automatically valuable

Ryan shares a life-changing failure: during a North Channel attempt, he experienced SIPE (swimming-induced pulmonary edema) and nearly died. But the bigger lesson came later in how he initially mismanaged that failure by blaming everything and not processing it.
He introduces two types of failure:

• Good failure: you get introspective, learn, adjust
• Bad failure: you bury it, blame, quit, or repeat patterns
  Takeaway: Failure only becomes fuel when you extract the lesson.

10) His final challenge to listeners

Ryan’s closing advice:

• Don’t only set goals you know how to achieve.
• Pick the goal one notch beyond certainty—where there’s no roadmap.
• Find your own “classroom” (doesn’t have to be cold water).
• Understand your mind is overprotective, and we can learn to manage it.

Take Home Messages:

• “It’s very commonly known it’s 30% body and 70% mind.”
• “Your mind is designed to keep you safe… and it’s a little overzealous.”
• “Not all failure is good… growth comes from introspection.”

Ryan Stramrood reminds us that being undaunted isn’t about being fearless.  Rather it’s about understanding your brain’s protective instincts, choosing a hard goal anyway, and learning to keep moving when discomfort shows up.

Be Undaunted.

Ryan Stramrood is an ultra open-water and ice swimmer, internationally sought-after speaker, and author of Push Past Impossible. He’s completed extreme swims in places including Siberia, Antarctica, and South Africa’s shark-inhabited waters—and has completed the Robben Island crossing 145 times.

Book:Push Past Impossible — Ryan Stramrood

Ryan Stramrood:  https://ryanstramrood.com/

High Trust Leadership by George Dom

https://www.georgedom.com/book

More about George Dom:

https://www.georgedom.com/

More about Tara Collingwood:

https://www.dietdiva.net/

Follow the show: Apple Podcasts • Spotify • YouTube

Be Undaunted is produced by JAG Podcast Productions: www.jagpodcastproductions.com

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In our first episode of Be Undaunted, we lay the foundation for what this podcast is all about: helping each other lead stronger, elevate impact, and live with more energy — even in the chaos of modern life. We kick off by introducing ourselves. I’m Tara Collingwood, a performance dietitian to Olympians, executives, and high achievers under pressure. My co-host George Dom brings decades of leadership experience as a former Navy fighter pilot and Blue Angels flight leader. Together, we explore what it truly means to be undaunted.

Being undaunted doesn’t mean being fearless or reckless. Instead, it’s about acting with intention despite fear, leaning into our values, managing our energy, and showing up even when it’s easier not to. We emphasize that undaunted people — and leaders — are not perfect, but they are intentional and resilient.

George shares a framework of three core traits he’s seen in undaunted leaders across high-performing military and corporate teams: clarity, trust, and energy. Clarity means knowing the mission — or, in civilian terms, your purpose. Trust is the foundation of high-functioning teams, and without it, teams become fragile and ineffective. Energy is the third pillar, and it’s not just about managing time — it’s about managing personal energy across physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions.

I expand on energy from a performance nutrition perspective, focusing on four key areas: nutrition (what and when we eat), movement (how inactivity affects our brain and body), recovery (both sleep and true rest), and how our physical state affects our leadership and relationships. Without energy, we simply can’t show up as our best selves.

We also discuss the importance of mindset. Without a compelling why, real change doesn’t happen. Values, we agree, must be more than words — they must be lived and reinforced through culture. George shares how his company created alignment between core values and daily behavior by recognizing team members who exemplified those values each month, turning ideas into action.

We wrap by setting expectations for what’s to come in the podcast: honest conversations between the two of us, practical tools, powerful guest stories, and strategies to help all of us lead more intentionally, recover more deeply, and build trust at every level — in work and in life.

(00:00) – Intro
(00:34) – What Does “Be Undaunted” Mean?
(03:12) – Clarity, Trust, and Energy in Leadership
(06:03) – Defining Mission and Purpose
(08:09) – Why Trust Is the Foundation of Great Teams
(10:21) – Physical Energy and Performance Nutrition
(14:00) – Training Energy Across All Dimensions
(15:26) – The Role of Mindset and Values in Leadership
(17:33) – Bringing Company Values to Life
(18:44) – Creating a Positive Work Culture
(20:34) – Why We Launched This Podcast
(21:13) – Final Thoughts: Be Undaunted

High Trust Leadership by George Dom

https://www.georgedom.com/book

More about George Dom:

https://www.georgedom.com/

More about Tara Collingwood:

https://www.dietdiva.net/

Follow the show: Apple Podcasts • Spotify • YouTube

Be Undaunted is produced by JAG Podcast Productions: www.jagpodcastproductions.com

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Be Undaunted - the podcast that helps you lead strong, elevate your impact, and live with more energy, especially in a world that has definitely not hit the pause button.

George Dom is a former Navy figher pilot, Blue Angels flight leader, and corporate executive.

Tara Collingwood has been a performance dietitian to Olympians, CEOs, and everyday people who are under pressure.

We specialize in high-performance leadership and people who want to lead their lives more intentionally.  Instead of trying to get by, we want to help you build the types of energy systems that make life feel doable and exciting again.

In the Be Undaunted podcast, you'll hear stories from the cockpit to the sidelines to the boardroom, and people living every day life at full speed.

We'll talk about resilience, clarity, mistakes, and lessons that make us both better leaders - and better humans.

We aren't just talking about physical energy, but mental and emotional energy too.

In each episode, we'll give you something that you can put into action right away - a mindset shift, skill, strategy, or simply a better way to think about the day ahead.

If you're ready to grow, strengthen your leadership, and reclaim your energy; if you're ready to feel more intentional, and more capable, you're in the right place.

Welcome to Be Undaunted.

High Trust Leadership by George Dom

https://www.georgedom.com/book

More about George Dom:

https://www.georgedom.com/

More about Tara Collingwood:

https://www.dietdiva.net/

Follow the show: Apple Podcasts • Spotify • YouTube

Be Undaunted is produced by JAG Podcast Productions: www.jagpodcastproductions.com

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.