The Daily Drive

By Austin MerrillSociety & Culture Sports Business

The Daily Drive episodes

August 31 588. The Secret Gift Athletes Never Receive
Send us Fan Mail
Austin names a gift every athlete is given that most never receive: the fact that you are chasing something you will never actually catch. He builds it through video games, where you beat the levels, run out of things to conquer, and put the game down. Sport has unlimited levels. You could play until you are a hundred and never perfect it, which is frustrating until you consider how boring it would be if you did. Championships are a reminder you figured it out this time, and then the next season starts and the puzzle resets. He argues the adventure, not the medal, is what athletes are actually there for, and says the same running has followed him past baseball into his business and his spiritual life.
Support the show
Check out my newsletter!
https://theweeklydrive.beehiiv.com/

Instagram: performancebyaustin
(760) 685-4445
[email protected]
genesismpc.com
4 min
August 30 587. A Sure Fire Way To Fail Miserably
Send us Fan Mail
Austin lays out what he thinks is the universal reason athletes execute poorly, at every level from LeBron to a nine year old: self consciousness, performing while monitoring how it looks to other people. He frames the alternative through the image of a tree that cannot eat its own fruit. You are meant to produce something others can use, and when you self serve you consume from the environment instead of adding to it. He tells the story of a professional basketball player stuck in his head about his shot selection, and how redirecting him toward defense and making his teammates better took the pressure off. The practical move when you are too far in your head is to go external: help somebody, teach somebody, name who you are playing for.
Support the show
Check out my newsletter!
https://theweeklydrive.beehiiv.com/

Instagram: performancebyaustin
(760) 685-4445
[email protected]
genesismpc.com
4 min
August 22 586. The Trait Serial Champions Share
Send us Fan Mail
Austin pulls an excerpt from a Jordan Peterson lecture: once you establish an aim, you lay an interpretive filter over the world that only admits what moves you toward that aim and what would block it, and hides the rest. He argues this is what the championship mentality actually is. The athletes who win repeatedly aren't chasing a single destination; they're carrying a question they can't answer until their career is over, namely what they're capable of if they give their very best the whole way. Everything else gets filtered out in service of that question. He closes on the honest version of the tradeoff: you can't give an eight out of ten version of yourself and achieve ten out of ten things, and if balance is the condition you're choosing, that's a legitimate question too, just a different one with a different answer.
Support the show
Check out my newsletter!
https://theweeklydrive.beehiiv.com/

Instagram: performancebyaustin
(760) 685-4445
[email protected]
genesismpc.com
4 min
August 21 585. The Secret to Real Mental Prep
Send us Fan Mail
Michael Phelps is worth studying because he ran two things at once that most athletes treat as opposites. He used inversion, deliberately thinking through everything that could go wrong and preparing for it, including training with water in his goggles. The same swimmer would also visualize the night before with a specific script, rehearsing the exact behaviors and the way he wanted to carry himself. Both can be true at the same time. Results are out of your control, but behavior is not, so rehearse the behavior and then account for what could stop you from executing it. That balance is what makes an athlete hard to surprise in competition.
Support the show
Check out my newsletter!
https://theweeklydrive.beehiiv.com/

Instagram: performancebyaustin
(760) 685-4445
[email protected]
genesismpc.com
3 min
August 20 584. How to Never Lose Focus in Competition
Send us Fan Mail
Roy Halladay was demoted to the minor leagues and hanging on to his career when he started putting a small piece of black athletic tape under the brim of his hat. After a pitch he did not like, or after a hitter, he would look at the tape, breathe, reset, and get back to the version of himself he wanted on the mound. The specific strategy is not what matters. The principle is that an anchor gives your attention somewhere to return to, the same way a ship with an anchor down still drifts in a storm but does not end up somewhere else entirely. Athletes lose focus constantly, including elite ones. The difference is having a system that gets you back, and building it before you need it.
Support the show
Check out my newsletter!
https://theweeklydrive.beehiiv.com/

Instagram: performancebyaustin
(760) 685-4445
[email protected]
genesismpc.com
3 min
August 19 583. How to Detach from Results
Send us Fan Mail
Tim Howard played goalkeeper for the US men's national team while living with Tourette syndrome and obsessive compulsive tendencies, in the one position on the field that leaves you standing still with nothing to do right after a mistake. What changed the course of his career was fly fishing. He spent his off days on the river, got good at it, and built a real second passion outside of soccer, which gave him somewhere else to put his identity when soccer went badly. This episode makes the case that detaching from results is less a mental technique than a function of how many places your identity is stored, and that the inability to walk away from a mistake is what quietly ends careers. The closing question for athletes: is all of your water poured into the same cup?
Support the show
Check out my newsletter!
https://theweeklydrive.beehiiv.com/

Instagram: performancebyaustin
(760) 685-4445
[email protected]
genesismpc.com
3 min
August 18 582. Lightning McQueen's Lessons on the Mental Game
Send us Fan Mail
Austin uses Cars as the way into a principle most elite athletes already run on: the growth usually is not inside your own sport. Lightning McQueen thought he knew how to race until a cop took him onto a dirt road, where he found out he could not take a turn on sand. He practiced in worse conditions than the ones he competed in, and came back a better racer. Austin connects that to Kobe Bryant taking ballet, Victor Wembanyama running stairs while dribbling, Jaylen Brown training underwater, and Phil Jackson making the Bulls practice with the lights off. The takeaway is a question: pick a domain outside your sport that actually interests you, then do the creative work of figuring out how it applies to what you do.
Support the show
Check out my newsletter!
https://theweeklydrive.beehiiv.com/

Instagram: performancebyaustin
(760) 685-4445
[email protected]
genesismpc.com
4 min
August 18 581. The Hidden Strategy of the Greatest Tennis Players
Send us Fan Mail
Andre Agassi told a story about the moment he knew he would never beat Rafael Nadal, and it had nothing to do with tennis. Agassi prided himself on being the last one out of the locker room. Nadal walked in after him, his locker jammed, he hit it once, it opened, he said "let's go," and walked out. Austin uses that moment to make the case that your competitive baseline gets revealed by the small things that don't go your way, not by the big moments everyone watches. The episode closes on the unnoticed reps available every week: traffic, lost keys, a phone you can't find.
Support the show
Check out my newsletter!
https://theweeklydrive.beehiiv.com/

Instagram: performancebyaustin
(760) 685-4445
[email protected]
genesismpc.com
4 min
August 17 580. Two Mental Keys to Dominance
Send us Fan Mail
Shawn Green's book The Way of Baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 mph opens with him in Toronto, put in timeout by his manager, everything stripped away except hitting off a tee. Hitting off that tee over and over he found a meditative state, then realized he could enter it on purpose, then realized he didn't need the tee to repeat it in games. Two principles come out of it: constraints create freedom, and the ability to find refuge in the basics is everything. Every day you are building a new building, and the foundation has to hold whether it's a ten-story day or a one-story day. If you're slumping, strip it down to one drill and one thought and give it a week.
Support the show
Check out my newsletter!
https://theweeklydrive.beehiiv.com/

Instagram: performancebyaustin
(760) 685-4445
[email protected]
genesismpc.com
4 min
August 16 579. A Biological Blessing
Send us Fan Mail
Tarik Skubal, a two-time Cy Young winner with Detroit, was traded to the Dodgers and asked before his first LA start whether he was nervous. His answer was essentially yes, of course, and if he weren't he'd be more worried about that. Nerves and adrenaline are a neutral biological response, and the mind is what appraises them. Stevie Nicks calls that fear magic, John Mayer calls it beautiful, and most athletes read the identical signal as disqualification. The appraisal is trainable, but the nerves never go away, so you either live with them or get out of the kitchen.
Support the show
Check out my newsletter!
https://theweeklydrive.beehiiv.com/

Instagram: performancebyaustin
(760) 685-4445
[email protected]
genesismpc.com
3 min

About The Daily Drive

From the publisher's feed

Aiming to provide perspective not perscription and "Just in Time" learning, not "Just In Case" learning.

These episodes are meant to make you think, make you ask important…

Share The Daily Drive

Sign up to save your podcasts

The Daily Drive

The Daily Drive episodes

About The Daily Drive